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[0:00] You can be turning to Luke chapter 6. Luke chapter 6. We started this section called the Sermon on the Plain several weeks ago.

[0:22] ! And through it we've mentioned that Jesus had his disciples with him after spending a night in prayer. And when he was done with that night in prayer, he chose 12 of those disciples to be apostles.

[0:42] It's important to notice, we go through what we're going to look at today, that verse 17 says that there was a great crowd of disciples there. Along with a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the sea coasts of Tyre and Sidon.

[1:00] It was a mix of all kinds of people. And in that mix of people, there was a range of people that went from true disciples, to people who called themselves disciples, to people who were just curious, and then to people who were in the end antagonistic to Jesus.

[1:24] Through this whole sermon, we've heard Jesus address his disciples with truths that were important to their lives as disciples. But along with that, there's been a second current.

[1:40] A current aimed at those who were on that spectrum from casual disciples to enemies of Christ. A current that was strong with warning.

[1:51] One of the things I've been impressed with as I've gone through this sermon on the plain, at least personally, it's been how Jesus had this care for his disciples.

[2:03] He's not this cold preacher who's spouting out facts that, you know, Oh, yeah, that's right, I wrote down, I need to speak this, and oh, yeah, I need to speak that.

[2:17] Jesus has a genuine care for the people who are gathered before him. And I think a genuine care, not just for those who would be close to him, but even for those who would be against him.

[2:31] So what he's been teaching has been not only to teach his disciples, that's been the one current, that's been the stronger current, that's been the thing he's really, he meant there, he was meant to, he meant his teaching to be for the disciples.

[2:47] But all along, he's meant to have this current that would be a warning to those who were not yet true disciples.

[2:58] So as Luke brings to an end his recording of the Sermon on the Plain, Luke includes, now if you compare this to the Sermon on the Mount, which there's a lot that is the same, you're going to find a different tone.

[3:13] You're going to find a tone that is there in the Sermon on the Mount, but because of some of the things that Matthew deals with, because it was to Jews, and to some of the people who were legalistic and trying to entrap Jesus, Jesus directs some of their sayings specific to them.

[3:32] Now, those things were said, but as Luke is writing to Gentiles, and they have no clue about all what's going on in the background, Luke tailors what he is including in his message.

[3:44] He's not changing the Word of God. He's not leaving out anything important, but he's speaking. Think of a pastor. I mentioned this before. Think of a pastor as he preaches to his people. He doesn't change the Word of God, but he speaks it in a way that the folks he is preaching to, most are able to hear it, and it would be most applied to them, and that's what Luke is doing here.

[4:08] He's including parts of the Sermon on the Mount, and from other places in Jesus' sermon, to get across this message of care that he has for people, but there is a warning right along with it.

[4:21] He wants to warn people to make sure that they have the heart of a true disciple. The heart of a true disciple.

[4:32] Let's take our Bibles and look at Luke chapter 6. I'm going to read verses 43 to the end of the chapter, verse 49. For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit.

[4:51] For each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush.

[5:02] The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

[5:16] Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like.

[5:32] He's like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it because it had been well built.

[5:46] But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who builds a house on the ground without a foundation. And when the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.

[6:02] Let's pray together. Father, I thank you for your word. And I praise you, Father, for the picture of your son that's here, for his care toward those people that are before him, care that was clear enough, that didn't mince words.

[6:27] He wasn't going to let people slip because he wouldn't tell them the truth. Thank you that he loved his own enough to tell them what they needed to hear. He even loved those who had never turned to him enough to tell them what they needed to hear.

[6:45] And I pray that you would be with us. Lord, as we look at this, these two little sections, I pray that you would help us to see where we sit in this.

[6:58] We're disciples, or at least most of us here we call ourselves disciples. I pray that you'd show us whether we have the heart of a true disciple, and that you would help us to rest in you. And we pray your blessing in Jesus' name.

[7:11] Amen. So you can see in your Bible before you that it's probably headed up, there's two sections here that are headed up by a phrase.

[7:23] One's talking about the tree and its fruit, and the other's talking about building your house on the rock. And as Jesus has been teaching and speaking to them about attitudes that Christians need to have, his disciples need to have, and the opposite attitudes.

[7:39] And what that shows, he's coming down to the end of this sermon. And he wants to rightly apply it. And he wants people to get the message that's here.

[7:50] And so he spends a couple of verses, what we see as a couple of verses, speaking about evidence of the heart. It's hard to know what people are really like. You often, if you, I almost picked a profession that maybe somebody would be offended at, so I won't.

[8:08] But there are professions you always go into wondering when you're dealing with that person, is this person being straight with me? Is this person being honest with me?

[8:20] You just can't know what's going on in a person's heart. And all of us have been around people that when it's all said and done, well, at one point in their life, you think, wow, that's an amazing guy.

[8:35] Or that's an amazing woman. And then when it is all said and done, later in their life, you found their heart wasn't at all what their mouth said. Or what they claimed to have said.

[8:47] And so Jesus gives us an example from nature. He had talked earlier about not having these attitudes of assuming motives.

[9:04] And we mentioned how people say, oh, you can't judge, you can't judge. And that is, of course, not what Jesus is taught. He gives us here very much criteria for judging what people are really like.

[9:19] And so he gives us this picture from nature. If you walk out into the woods and you go by a thistle bush, you never expect that there'll be grapes growing on that thistle bush.

[9:36] The best you can expect from a thistle bush, if you're hoping for something nice, is a pretty flower. Beyond that, all you're going to get is thistles.

[9:47] And if you go out into the woods expecting grapes and you walk by, or some other fruit, apples, and you walk by some other kind of vine or something on the ground that's just a weed, you're not going to expect apples from that bush.

[10:04] Plants produce after their kind. Apples are produced on an apple tree. Grapes are produced on a grape vine.

[10:15] And that's just always the way it is. Trees reproduce after their kind. Vines reproduce after their kind. Thorns and thistles reproduce after their kind.

[10:28] And you can always identify a tree by its root. And of course, Jesus says this parable and it's pretty evident to everyone. Everyone understands this.

[10:38] No one's going, Now just wait. I think I saw a grape on a bramble bush the other day. No one does that. And so people acknowledge what he was saying.

[10:50] And Jesus goes on in the next verse. In verse 44, he says, For each tree is known by its fruit. For figs are not gathered by thorn bushes nor are grapes picked by a bramble bush.

[11:05] which the good personnel, the good treasure of his heart produces good. We identify people by their fruit. Now, we shouldn't just enter into this thinking, thinking we're just talking about everybody around us.

[11:25] Jesus lays out this teaching wanting people to have the ability to be discerning, but he also wants us to be able to look at ourselves. Good people produce good fruit.

[11:39] Now, we need to be careful not to identify good people according to our thinking of good people or the world's thinking of good people. Jesus is not just saying, oh, good people in general.

[11:50] He's speaking about his disciples. People who are followers of him produce good fruit. evil people produce evil fruit.

[12:02] What comes out of a person is what is on the inside. What is there is what eventually comes out. And oft times that happens when the hammer misses the nail and hits the other nail.

[12:23] What comes out is what's in the heart. Oft times in trials and struggles, that's when what happens, what's really there is revealed.

[12:36] And so Jesus, he uses this principle to warn against false teachers in Matthew, but Luke doesn't address the false teachers here because the Gentiles are not facing the false teachers that Jesus was facing.

[12:51] Luke hasn't included any of the circumstances that you'll find in the Sermon on the Mount when he includes this principle.

[13:03] And so going with the flow of the sermon to this point, I feel that Jesus has included this, or Luke has included this part of Jesus' teaching for three specific principles.

[13:16] principles. First of all, he's given this principle of examining the idea of how what comes out of the heart is what shows, or what comes out of a person is what's in his heart.

[13:29] He's given these principles to equip his disciples with this important principle. You'll find that this principle is repeated three or four times in Jesus' ministry. It's repeated by James in one spot, and it's alluded to, not that like Hosea refers to it, but it's not that Hosea refers to Luke, but it's a principle that God's people have been using down through the ages, and that it's an important principle to give disciples discernment, a tool of discernment.

[14:03] So as Jesus is addressing these people, he's not trying to get them to be what so often people call fruit inspectors.

[14:15] He's not trying to get around and saying, get people to look at people and say, I think you don't have enough fruit to be a Christian. That's not what this parable is pointing at.

[14:27] It's not about the amount of fruit. Jesus is showing the principle of the presence of the right kind of fruit, which is important and good for us to remember because all of us are growing.

[14:43] And we're at different points in our lives. And some of us may have more fruit. Some of us may have less fruit. And we can't say, well, that person's more of a Christian because they have more fruit, and that person's less of a Christian because they have less fruit.

[14:58] We're not looking necessarily for amount. We're looking for kind. And that's what Jesus was illustrating here. He says, you look at an apple tree and expect apples. He's not saying you look at an apple tree and you expect 50 bushel.

[15:14] He's saying you look at a grapevine and He's not saying you're not expecting 40 bushels from this grapevine. You're expecting grapes from a grapevine. fruit.

[15:25] So He's giving us this principle to show that His disciples will be people that produce fruit that is becoming of a disciple. The presence of the right kind of fruit is an important evidence of a good heart.

[15:44] The kind of fruit Jesus was just speaking to them. If you let your eyes look back through what we call the Sermon on the Plain, even starting in verse 20, you'll see Him talking about blessed are the poor.

[15:56] And down through these, you're going to see things that Jesus is talking about as He's talking about the kind of fruit that comes out of Christians. Loving your enemies.

[16:09] Giving to those in need. Not judging motives. The kind of fruit where people are careful to consider themselves before trying to help others.

[16:22] Jesus is saying that when you have disciples, people claiming to be disciples, they're going to be people who take the things that Jesus has taught and it becomes part of their life and that's what's come out of them.

[16:38] Whereas the wicked, those who are evil, they're going to have things that would not be in line with what Jesus is teaching. teaching. And so showing that those who would claim to be disciples and Jesus is here amongst the crowd that had the range of people who were very close to the Lord and wanted to serve the Lord, to people who were interested in what He was saying, to people who were against what He was saying.

[17:09] and those in that group had this opportunity because of what Jesus was sharing, they had the opportunity to evaluate what kind of fruit is coming out of their lives.

[17:29] What Jesus has said, are these things that I want to do? Are these the kind of things that I have a desire? to obey?

[17:45] Those who would lack that, evaluating their own hearts, might want to say, where am I as a disciple? Not say, do I do enough good?

[18:00] But rather say, who am I trusting? Jesus is the one who does the work. Jesus is the one who produces the good heart.

[18:13] Jesus is the one when the heart has good produced in it, brings out those things which are fruit of that good heart. And so we cannot have the kind of heart that produces good fruit, and that obeys what Christ tells us, if we're not trusting in the work of Christ, the work He accomplished for us.

[18:35] So, I want us to be real careful, Jesus is not in this passage saying, do you do enough? He's saying, are you the kind of person who is producing the kind of fruit, not the amount, but the kind of fruit, that shows you to be my disciple?

[18:59] And then Jesus closes us by drawing this all to kind of a head, and He gives us what we call the example of building your house on the rock.

[19:13] And so He gives a question to all those who call themselves followers of Jesus. As He has this great multitude, people who are truly following Him down to those who are against Him, and He gives this question to those who call themselves followers of Jesus.

[19:34] He says in verse 46, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I tell you? This is very closely tied to what He's already shared.

[19:49] Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you? When the people here address Jesus as Lord, Lord, they mean something.

[20:01] this is not someone who is stuttering. This is a phrase that pointed to the fact that a disciple would consider their master to be someone they would be following.

[20:15] It's a saying that they recognize that they should be following this person and his words should be obeyed. So, Jesus is saying there are these people who say, Lord, Lord, Lord.

[20:28] And we find this phrase in several places of Scripture and that's the idea. These are people who are claiming to be disciples, claiming to be those who follow Christ. They were considering themselves disciples.

[20:40] They were saying that they recognized that he should be followed and his words obeyed. So, that's what he means by Lord, Lord. So, these people were considering themselves disciples of Jesus, but they were ignoring what he said.

[21:00] Oh, Lord, we know that you're the master. We know that what you say is right. We're going to do it and never do it. And Jesus, as he looks at these people with his love for them and wanting them to be true disciples, he looks at them and says, why do you call me that one that you should follow and that you should obey and you don't do it?

[21:24] There are many people, there were many people there at that point who called themselves his disciple, but they just wanted to hear him preach or they just wanted to see him do a miracle or maybe they just wanted to get bread.

[21:48] Maybe they're curious what kind of controversy he was going to stir up that day. They had no intention of obeying what he said. And in churches today, that same thing can be true and in fact, I'm sure we probably have the same range of people here today.

[22:10] ! And so it would be good for us to answer this question before the Lord today. If he said to you, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say?

[22:30] Do you consider the word of God to be important? And he's saying this trying to get them to think about where they were as a disciple.

[22:42] Were they that disciple who was truly following the Lord and trusting the Lord? Or were they there just for curiosity sake? As we think about that question, and please, I'm not pushing anyone away with this.

[23:02] I want us to think, why do we sit here? Why do we listen to the word of God? is it so that we can hear it and obey it?

[23:14] Or is it so that we can hear something new? Or something neat? To think we're smart here or there or smarter than the preacher?

[23:28] Do you see what his word teaches as something for you to do and obey? As you sit in the view and hear the word of God, do you say, Lord, this is for me.

[23:41] I want to do what's here. It's for me. You and I do not have the luxury of saying that God's word is not important. It doesn't matter. It's God's word.

[23:52] Jesus showed that it did matter. So he gives an illustration of the two ways it will turn out for one who calls himself a disciple. In this illustration there is a house built in both sides of the illustration.

[24:11] How the house is built, how big it is, or what color it is, has nothing to do with what Jesus is getting at. The stream beaning against the house is meant to refer to the trials of this life and ultimately the final judgment.

[24:29] In this parable Jesus only focuses on the foundation. If you build a house out on a rock and then you build another house just on the ground or on the sand, if it rains and the water runs down the mountain strongly and runs against that house, one is going to be affected.

[25:00] It's not because of how the house was built, it's where it was built, what it was built upon. The stream will not affect a house built on the rock because the foundation cannot be washed away.

[25:15] The failure of a house here is because the water washes the dirt and the sand away from a house that's just built on sand. When that's washed away then the house tips and then the water gets in and it starts busting it up.

[25:33] It comes down to what we build our house upon. Whether we are trusting Christ as Savior or whether we're just there to listen.

[25:45] whether we're seeing his truths as being that which we anchor our lives on or just curiosities. Do we build our lives on the truths that Jesus has taught or are we just listening?

[26:04] It's not enough to say that you are a Christian but to be a true disciple Jesus requires a heart of obedience. Now our salvation is trusting in Christ but the fruit of that is to have this heart of obedience.

[26:24] So let me ask what do you do with the words of Jesus? Do you care what he says? Do you do what he says? Will you when trials come will your life be destroyed?

[26:39] by the trials? Will you be turning from Christ because of the trial? Will you face judgment because you've not from the heart trusted Christ? The only way to be saved is to trust the work of Christ for you.

[26:58] A person who is trusting Christ wants to do what Christ tells them. A person who is trusting Christ now has a good heart and obeying the words of Christ is the fruit of that heart that flows from him.

[27:21] One thing I want to emphasize as I close, I'm not saying in any way, shape, or form that we as Christians need to have a certain amount of works.

[27:32] I know I've said this. It is not on what we do, it is who we are trusting and what comes out of our life based on who we're trusting, what we're trusting, the work of Christ.

[27:46] These people were meant, as this sermon was ended, to walk away with a desire to look at themselves and say, who am I trusting?

[27:58] What am I trusting? Does my life show it? Do I live in such a way that it shows that I see Christ as Lord and Master and I'm following him?

[28:13] And if you're here today and don't know Christ, let the fruits of your life point to what's really in your heart and trust Christ.

[28:24] Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you for these sayings that are here and how you loved people and wanted them to see the truth of the gospel.

[28:38] I pray that we would be people who love your word, want to live in obedience to it. Lord, we recognize that we will fail and that's that's well, Christ has paid for that.

[28:54] But Lord, help us to be people who live and have the right kind of fruit. I pray that you would be with us as we partake together of the Lord's table.

[29:05]  I pray that you would help us to remember what Christ has done for us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.