Well, good morning. Welcome to
Sovereign Grace Baptist Church Bible study in loop. We're continuing
our study here in chapter 13. We're in verses 6-9 today. The parable of the barren fig
tree is what this is known as. Let's just back up then a few
verses to the beginning of the chapter because this is closely
tied to that and the previous things that we learned in chapter
12 and 11 and 10 and 9 and 8. all the way back to the beginning
of Luke chapter 3 especially. So let's turn our attention to
Luke 13 verse 1. There were present at that season
some that told him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled
with their sacrifices. And Jesus answering and said
unto them, suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above
all the Galileans because they suffered such things? I tell
you, nay, but except ye repent, ye shall likewise or all likewise
perish. Were those eighteen upon whom
the tower of Siloam fell and slew them, think ye that they
were sinners above all men that dwell in Jerusalem? I tell you,
nay. But except ye repent, ye shall
all likewise perish. And he spake also this parable.
A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and
he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he
unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I am
come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down,
why cometh it the ground? And he answering, that's the
vine, the dresser, he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone
this year also till I dig it about and dung it. And if it
bear fruit, well, and if not, then after that thou shalt cut
it down. So that's where we're at today,
this parable of this fig tree. And again, he's speaking, always
good to remember that he's kind of speaking to a mixed crowd.
There was a multitude there, as we learned in chapter 12.
And he had certain things to say to the disciples, and he
had certain things to say to the multitude. And they were
quite different, the things that he spoke to them. And he has,
apart from that, he has separate things that he said to the Pharisees
and the lawyers, and woe to you scribes and lawyers and all that,
because really they were The religious leaders were the ones
that were tasked with declaring the gospel from the Old Testament
and preaching it to the people, feeding the flock, and preaching
grace to the hearers, and yet none of that was going on. And
so we had this parable speaking to this mixed crowd. mostly comprised
of the curious yet unbelieving, and the lawyers, and the Pharisees,
and also the disciples. And remember what the word of
the Lord was to the disciples concerning parables. And Norm
brought that out Wednesday night in our Wednesday night message. From Matthew chapter 13, in verse
10, if you want to turn over your Bible, we'll read a couple
of verses from Matthew chapter 13. We'll read verse 10 and 11, then we'll
kind of skip down to verse 23. Because this parable regards
the sower. The parable of the sower. In
Matthew 13.10, the disciples came and said unto him, Why speakest
thou unto them in parables? And He answered and said unto
them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of
the kingdom of heaven. But to them it is not given."
What a clear, decisive declaration of the Lord. And He's sovereign. What a statement of sovereignty.
He decides who gets it and who doesn't. And the ones that He
doesn't give it to don't want it. And it's an act of divine
mercy that He overcomes that in them because we're all in
that same boat of we don't want it, we don't want you, we have
our own ideas, our own righteousness, and He overcomes that. So He
answered and said unto them, because it's given unto you to
know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is
not given. But he that receiveth seed into
the good ground, in verse 23, remember he goes through all
the various kinds of grounds, and some fell on stony ground,
some fell on thorny ground, some fell by the wayside, and none
of those took root. None of those were fruitful.
And yet the only ground that bore fruit was the good ground
that the Holy Spirit had prepared. to receive the seed, and in verse
23, he that receiveth the seed into good ground is he that heareth
the word, and understandeth it, which also beareth fruit, and
bringeth forth some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.
And those are just relative It doesn't mean that you need to
bring forth, well I brought forth a hundred or I brought forth
this. It's just an example of that they bore fruit according
to God's purpose. You know one of the great mysteries
of the kingdom and perhaps the greatest mystery is Christ coming
to save his people from their sins. The great mystery. It's a great mystery, Paul wrote. He died in their stead on the
cross, paying the debt of sin they owed. And you know, the
natural man says, well, I don't owe anything. I have no debt. And if I did sin, it wasn't very
much, or it wasn't too serious. I always like to say about my
youth, well, stuff that we did then wasn't much of a crime in
those days. But now you probably go to prison
for those kind of things, you know. So we have relative views
of crime and sin. And as time goes on, the threshold
gets lower and lower to what we consider not acceptable. And yet it remains the same.
And so unto you is this understanding given about the kingdom of heaven
and about sin and about being redeemed. You know when people
are saved, they say, thank God. I don't know why he saved me,
but he did. I was a great sinner, but he
was a greater giver of grace and all those things that we
recount. But unto them, it's not given. I don't need it. I don't want
it. It's okay for you. If you need
that crutch, it's okay, fine. But they don't understand and
they don't see. Unto you is given the understanding
of grace that saved us, that brought us up out of that pit
that Norman was speaking about here, the terrible pit. And until
you've been hauled out of that pit, you don't understand that
you were even in the pit. It means nothing to you. Unto
you is the understanding that caused us to repent. And that
word, as Norman brought out, really means turning. Remember
John the Baptist shall come into power of Elisha the Tishbite,
and that his name Tishbite meant the turner. Elisha the Turner,
and he said of John, he'll turn many to the Lord their God, and
turn them away from their own self-righteousness, their own
works, their own whatever they depended on, their own denials.
Turn them from that to turn to the living Christ for salvation,
because He's the only one. turning to the living God. And you know, John, he reported
that same thing. We just read about this parable
of the fig tree, and he said it's not doing any good, cut
it down. And he kind of said that, John
the Baptist kind of said that same thing in Luke chapter 3. If you want to turn there, we'll
read about several verses from Luke chapter 3. Luke 3, 3, and he came into all
the country about Jordan preaching the baptism of repentance for
the remission of sins. And that really means repentance
because of, in regards to remission of sins, that your sins have
been paid for. Your sins have been resolved. They're not yours
anymore. They've been paid for. Then he said in verse 7, to the
multitude that came to him to be baptized, there were these
people that were just doing it because they were curiosity seekers
or they wanted to be in on the latest religious fad. John seemed
to be pretty popular. They were coming to him from
all over the area. They said, we want to be baptized
too. We want to be baptized. O generation of vipers, who hath
warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth, therefore,
fruits worthy of repentance." Bring some evidence. Bring some
evidence that you've turned from... And he says, don't think... And
he gives a for instance here. It's not the only thing. And
we could take this next sentence make it a blank and we could
write in a multitude of religious observances and things that we
do here. But he says, think not to say
within yourselves that we have Abraham to our father. They said,
And we could say today, well, I've been in church all my life,
and my parents were in church all their life, and blah, blah,
blah. And yet, that doesn't count anything. You can't say, well, just because
we've been in church all of our life, or we've been in an assembly,
I'll say, not necessarily church, that that counts for anything,
because it does not. And don't begin to say for yourselves
that, well, I filled out this form, And I said this prayer,
or the various multitude of things that we do, well I got baptized
last week. That should do it. And all those
works that we do in place of just trusting in Christ, and
that can never happen unless a divine work of grace happens
in you. So he says, think not to say
that we have Abraham to our father, for I say unto you that God is
able to these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. What
an observance there. And now in verse 9, and now also
the axe is laid unto the root of the trees. Every tree therefore
which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into
the fire. Boy, what an observance that
John makes there, and he's looking at all these people that are
just steeped in religion and works and keeping the law and
all those things that should have been pointing them to Christ.
The law was the schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, and yet
to them it was just, well, here's a list of doo-doo stuff that
I have to do to be righteous. And all of these I've kept from
my youth up. I've done all these things. What
else do I need to do? So in the context of this parable,
we look back at a few words of Jesus regarding the Jews as at
large this multitude, primarily folks of the Jewish nation there,
and as a nation at large, and those religious leaders in particular
who should have been feeding the flock and declaring the gospel,
but in fact they did not. In fact, they did the opposite.
We have that example here in the next I don't know if we'll
get to that today about the woman that had an infirm spirit for
18 years and she was all stooped over and couldn't straighten
up. And he healed her on the Sabbath day, and they just took
umbrage at the fact that he healed her on a Sabbath day. And he
put them to shame. So I don't know if we'll get
into that exactly today, but that's coming up. But that was
their idea, was we got to observe the law as long as it conforms
to our idea of what the law is. And they were always coming up,
lawyers are always coming up with loopholes. Well, we can't
carry anything in the palm of our hand on the Sabbath day,
but if we turn our hand upside down and put it on the palm there,
or if we hold our robe up and make a pouch out of it and we
put stuff in there, that's not forbidden by the law. All these
things that they did to skirt the idea of the law, which was
to bring them to Christ, and the Sabbath, which was to enter
into the rest of the Lord, the rest of self works. He that entereth into his rest
has ceased from his own works. I just don't know how much clearer
that could be brought, but you know, unless you're born again,
you can't see. or understand the kingdom of God. You can't
understand those spiritual things that are in these parables, bring
that out. So, these folks that should have
been feeding the flock, that should have been looking at the
scriptures, the roles, and saying, as our pastor always brings out
from Zechariah and Numbers, oh, what a wonderful picture of of
our Savior here in this block of Scripture. And as we're always
fond of saying, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures
the things concerning Himself, not just those 30 places where
you have a little star in your Bible that says, here's a Messianic
prophecy. It's everywhere, it's all of
it. In some way, shape, or form. So, in Matthew 23, 13, he said,
Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, you actors. You
shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. For ye neither go
in yourselves, and neither suffer ye them that are entering to
go in. What a picture of that barren tree. What a picture. You don't do any good, and you're
actually hindering those that want to come in. So as we examine
parables, they're usually given in context of some event that's
transpiring, and the Lord uses it for a spiritual application,
and we could go back to Luke chapter 5, and he had that
parable of the wineskin and old wine and new bottles. And then
we look back at that scripture in Leviticus 19, where you weren't
supposed to mix these two kinds of fabrics together. And it was
a symbol of mixing works with grace. It wasn't that fascinating
back then, and so he gives them this parable. You can't put a
patch of a new cloth on an old cloth because it will just make
it worse. So we have that parable. Then
from Luke chapter 8 we have that parable of the sower that we
just referenced in Matthew 13. It's the same parable of the
sower. The seed is sown but only takes
root and bears fruit in the good ground prepared by the Holy Spirit. Here in Luke 13, We have this
parable of this. this barren tree, barren fig
tree in the middle of the garden. And, you know, the fig tree I
read where, well, they don't bear fruit the first two years,
and sometimes it's well into the third year before they actually
bear fruit, and then it's not the best fruit. They have to
be a little more mature before they bear fruit that's good,
but that's really not the issue here. The issue is that all this
time he's had national Israel that was in charge of the, that
had been blessed with all the Old Testament, had been blessed
with the Law, been blessed with the Prophets, been blessed with
the delivery out of Egypt, been blessed all the way back to Abraham
and before. And yet, spiritually dead, most
of them. Not all of them, but by and large,
the vast part of them was It was just stuff you have to do.
All that thou sayest, we will do. And then they turned around
and didn't do it. And rebelled at it. The parable in Luke 13 just matches
up with the other ones. You can't mix the hypocrite's
religion of idol worship and self-righteousness with the church. You can't mix those two things.
And as you go through the New Testament, you see that the apostles
and the disciples, they were always up against that. Well,
I know you're saved by grace, but you still need to be baptized.
Or you still need to be circumcised, or you still need to do this,
or you still need to do... They're always trying to introduce
this old works religion to grace. and thereby revealing that they
had not much understanding of grace. So here we have this certain
man, he had a tree planted in his vineyard and he came and
sought fruit thereon and found none. And you know, you just
go back through the Old Testament and you just see that over and
over and over again where the Lord brings this out. And here
he has this this garden, this vineyard, and in the middle of
it, it's a tree that, of itself, it bore no fruit. A tree that
blocked the light of the sun from the vineyard, and Amir,
my brother, had this big garden in the back of his place, but
he had so much shade from these poplar trees that grew up behind
it that it never did well because it couldn't get any light. And
until they cut down those trees, he didn't produce much out of
that garden. And then it took off and went
like crazy when it got the light. And so we have this tree that
blocks out the light of the sun from the vineyard, a tree that
it's spreading out and its roots are absorbing the nutrients that
should have been going to the the good plants that should have
been feeding the flock, as it were. And yet they were sucking
that up, sucking the nutrients away from the good plants, and
it was not doing anything. It was just going into this tree,
and the tree just got bigger and bigger, and it just caused
more damage and more damage. So not only was it not doing
anything good, it was the opposite of that. It was a deterrent to
it. So he said to the dresser of
the vineyard, behold, these three years I have come seeking fruit
on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down. Why cometh it the
ground? That's what John said in Luke
3. The axe is laid to the root. It's coming out. It's chopping
down. The religion of works and self-righteousness
rooted in unbelief have just been reported through the scripture
from Abel and Cain. right up to today. And it will be until the Lord
comes back. People will be trying to incorporate
that same thing. You know, Jeremiah, in Jeremiah
chapter 8, if you want to turn in your Bible, we're going to
read 3 or 4 verses from Jeremiah chapter 8. Beginning in verse
9, The wise men are ashamed. They
are dismayed and taken. Lo, they have rejected the word
of the Lord. And what wisdom is in them? Isn't
that just a picture of what we're up against in religion all the
time? Their wisdom is just nothing. And it always results in a sad result. You've got people, I don't know
if I'm saved. Yesterday I felt like I was,
today I don't. Because it's all dependent on
what they do. Yesterday I did good stuff, so I'm with the Lord
and I feel good. But today I had a little setback,
so now I'm not sure. Because it's all based on what
they do, not based on what Christ did for them. And it's all man-centered. And they keep going to these
religious people, and they keep giving them the same thing. Oh,
you're just having a bad day. Don't worry about it. Or, you
need to repent. You're backslidden. Or, on and
on and on. Here's some more stuff. Say nine
this's and that's. Or, make a donation to this charity. scrub the floor in the fellowship
hall or do something and then you'll be square and you'll feel
better. The wise men are ashamed, they're dismayed and taken low.
They've rejected the word of the Lord. And what wisdom is
in them? It's none. They answer to that. Therefore will I give their wives
unto others in their fields to them that shall inherit them.
For everyone from the least unto the greatest is given to covetousness. From the prophet even to the
priest, everyone deals falsely. What a declaration against those
people that should have been feeding the flock with the gospel
of freedom and truth. He says, for everyone from the least even
unto the greatest is given to covetous From the prophet, even
to the priest, everyone deals falsely. For they have healed
the hurt of my daughter, of my people, slightly." And that doesn't
mean just a little bit. That word there, the English
translation of that, what we understand it now, it means to
be vile, to trifling and contemptuously. That's how they treat the one
that comes to them that's maybe hurting because of their sin
and conviction. And they go to the religious
people and they give them some load of stuff that the guy said,
well, maybe we should dung it and give it some more time. And
he says, they say, peace, peace, when there is no peace. The only
peace that there is, is through Christ. Peace with God through
Christ. Hosea wrote about it in chapter
9. If you want to turn to chapter
9, I have a couple of verses there. But if you want to read
the whole thing, it's from chapter 9, verse 10 through 17. And Hosea, Norm brought this
out here some time ago, what a wonderful picture of the Lord
and His relationship with the church. And how we are in our
nature. We're just like Hosea, go marry
yourself to this awful thing. In Hosea 9.10 he says, I found
Israel like grapes in the wilderness. I saw your father as the first
ripe in the fig tree at our first time. But they went to Bale Tor
and separated themselves under that shame, and their abominations
were accorded as they loved. They just, they had the good
stuff and then they went off into oblivion. And in verse 17
it says, My God will cast them away, because they did not hearken
unto Him, and they shall be wanderers among the nations. Chop down
that barren tree. Put the axe to the root of that
no good tree. And you know this dresser of
the vineyard says, well, leave it alone for one more year, and
I'll fertilize it, prune it, and nurse it along, and if it
gives fruit, good. If it doesn't, well, you know,
we have examples of that. Moses did that for the people
of Israel. He said, well, don't kill them
all. And Abraham, well, if there's
only one left in Sodom, would you not destroy it? And he says,
okay. And Paul said the same thing
in Romans. Let's turn over there to Romans
chapter 9. It's such a good example. His heart was just broken. Most
of the time we tune into Romans chapter 9 about verse 11. But in the beginning of that
chapter, after that great grace chapter of Romans chapter 8,
where he describes all the things that God does for His people
in predestination and foreknowledge and calling and justification. And then he says in Romans 9,
he says, I say the truth in Christ, I lie not. My conscience also
bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost that I have a great heaviness
and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish myself were
a curse from Christ for my brother and my kinsmen according to the
flesh. who are Israelites, to whom pertaineth
the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving
of the law, and the service of God, and the promises, all those
things that Norm talks about in the service of the tabernacle. They all had their jobs to do,
and they all had these things that pointed them to Christ,
and yet they can't see the kingdom of God. If I could just curse
myself, I'd go in their place if the nation of Israel, my brethren,
could see the kingdom. whose are the fathers, and of
whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all.
God bless forever. Amen. Not as though the word
of God had taken none effect, for they are not all Israel which
are of Israel." That's an important thing for us to always keep in
the back of our mind when we're looking at spiritual Israel.
In the New and the Old Testament, there's a big difference. He
says, neither because they are the seed of Abraham are they
all children. That's what John said. Don't
think that you can just say we have Abraham to our father. You
can't check that box. And neither because they are
the seed of Abraham are they all children, but in Isaac shall
thy seed be called. That is, they which are the children
of the flesh, these are not the children of God, but the children
of the promise are counted for the seed. For this is the word
of promise, at this time will I come and Sarah shall have a
son. And not only this, but when Rebecca also had conceived by
one, even by her father Isaac, for the children, Being not yet
born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose
of God, according to election, might stand not at works. But
of him that calleth, it was said unto her, the elder shall serve
the younger, as it is written, Jacob have I loved, Esau have
I hated. And what shall we say then? Is
there unrighteousness with God? Because he's sovereign and he
elected to love one of them when they were both stinkers. Remember
Jacob, he was Jacob the supplanter, he was called. He was the one
that stole his brother's birthright and inheritance and was a scoundrel. And later on in life, he said,
well, few and evil have been the years of my life. I have
nothing that I could take in the way of merits to the Lord
and say, well, I earned salvation because of what I did. Quite
the opposite. We always find the patriarchs
and those in the Bible saying, I'm a man of unclean lips in
the midst of a people of unclean lips. On and on it goes. I'm the chiefest of sinners. Job said, I'm vile. When he got
a look at himself after regeneration, he says, I'm vile. So, as we look at this, you know,
it's just a testimony to grace. It's the Lord's mercy that we're
not consumed, that we're not chopped down and thrown on that...
He says, chop that tree down, throw it on the fire and burn
it up. Get it out of here. Doing no good. By the Lord's
mercy we're not consumed. It's by the Lord's mercy that
we're given grace to see, to hear, to believe, to give this
fruit of praise to God for what He's done. Here some time ago
in Luke, we had a lesson called Fruit of the Lips. I think it
was based in Isaiah chapter 9, I think. I can't remember now,
but Fruit of the Lips. What is that? It's giving praise
and glory to Him that earns that deserves it, and not we ourselves.
It's not of works of righteousness which we have done. But by His
blood He saved us. And by the renewing and washing
of the Word by the Holy Spirit. So give praise to the Lord to
whom praise belongs. Because to Him belong the issues
of death. To Him belong salvation. Philippians
chapter 1 says we're being filled with the fruit of righteousness. The fruit of righteousness, that's
all in Christ. It says, which are by Jesus Christ. The fruits of righteousness which
are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God. That's
what it says in Philippians 1.11. In Isaiah 57.19 it says, I create
the fruit of the lips. That's where it was, Isaiah 57.19.
I knew I read that. I create the fruit of the lips.
Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near,
saith the Lord, and I will heal him. So he creates this praise,
this praise for the Lord that paid for our sins. and creates this peace, not this
peace that we read about earlier where they say, peace, peace,
when there is no peace. They've healed the hurt of my
daughter of Jerusalem contemptuously and vilely with more works and
more useless stuff. Lastly, we'll close this block
of Scripture up with Luke chapter 13 verse 34, as he goes on here
a little bit later, and he laments, the Lord laments. He's just given
this parable about this fig tree that needs to be cut down. And
you know, it kind of will be cut down in about 70 years. The
Romans Remember, the Israelites were always in this various modes
of rebellion and they finally pushed them too far and they
came in and sacked Jerusalem during the Passover season when
there was 3 million Jews, Josephus says there was about 3 million
Jews in the walls of the city of Jerusalem and they were surrounded
by Romans. and they were building up these
siege ramps up to the walls and people, you know, it was okay
for a while, they had their water, but then they ran out of food
and they were doing all kinds of horrible things to try and
eat and stay alive and they had gangs running around killing
people for whatever they could get and all kinds of horrible
things and people started dying from starvation and maltreatment. And pretty soon they were dying
faster than they could dispose of them. Maybe you've seen in
Ukraine where they're showing them just digging these trenches
and having mass burials because they couldn't deal with them
on an individual basis. And they ended up in Jerusalem. They were throwing dead bodies
over the wall because they just couldn't deal with them anymore.
And Vespasian, I think it was Vespasian, was the Roman general
that was in charge of that. And he said he just wept when
he saw that was going on. It was just so awful that he
just wept over it, that there was that kind of carnage going
on. And so in Luke 13, 34, Jesus says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest
the prophets, stonest them that are sent to thee. How often would
I have gathered thy children together as a hen doth gather
her brood under her wings. and you would not. But what a
testimony to the grace that it takes to overcome that, you would
not. It just takes an act of divine
grace to overcome that. Thy people shall be willing in
the day of thy power. So we'll close there and next
time we'll take up with this woman that has this this infirmity
for 18 years. Another case where, you know,
it was according to the purpose of God that they intersect at
this point, and he's in the Sabbath teaching at the synagogue on
the Sabbath, and this woman comes in. She comes to the synagogue,
because that's where she should have gotten help. She should
have gotten the word, the gospel there, and she was just getting
nothing. But she came. So we'll take that
up next time, Lord willing. So until next time, be free.