Proverbs
27:18 ¶ Whoso keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof: so he that
waiteth on his master shall be honoured.
John 12:26 If any man serve me, let him
follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me,
him will my Father honour.
It is interesting that the fig tree in prophecy
is a type of Israel (Hosea 9:1), both in the Old Testament and in the Gospels
where Jesus finds the fig tree not bearing the fruit for which it was purposed
and curses it (Matthew 21:19.) Certainly, Bible commentators in the last century
have been scratching Christians’ ears much like I do my cats’ with preaching
about their own understanding of the meaning of such prophecy and away from the
more important subjects like the Christian’s own faithlessness and worldiness
and bringing shame on the cause of Christ. So, I’ll leave the brilliant
expositors of the future to their works and try to do what I have always been
trying to do here and bring some practical understanding of how this can be
applied to the Christian today.
Look at the connection with John 12:26. Read it
again. Our service to Christ; living as a testimony to Him for others to see,
showing Christ in our daily lives, preaching the gospel, teaching others about
Christ, and being faithful to His doctrines are like nourishing the fig tree.
In doing so, we are taking on individually what ancient Israel was called to do
as a nation and yet refused to do, preferring manmade religion based purely on
surface ritual lacking any real commitment of the heart.
We are called to love one another;
John 13:34 A new commandment I give unto you,
That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to
another.
Romans 12:10 Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in
honour preferring one another;
And, indeed, doing good to all people,
Galatians 6:10 As we have therefore
opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the
household of faith.
As I have said before, the definition of
“charity”, as in 1 Corinthians 13, is the active, beneficent love that
Christians in the body of Christ are to have for each other. The conclusion of
that chapter shows that it is more important than either faith or hope.
We are called to take care of those who can’t
take care of themselves and to reject the world’s ideals of greed, lust,
revenge, envy, pride, and covetousness;
James 1:27 Pure religion and undefiled before
God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their
affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
These things do not save us but are
evidence of our salvation.
Ephesians 2:10 For we are his workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we
should walk in them.
The honor that God bestows on us for
waiting on Him comes later when we face Him. We may work long and hard to make
something grow, laboring each day as we seek to have Christ shine through us
rather than ourselves. We pray to God, let Him speak to us through His words in
His Book, worship with other Christians regularly, seek God’s face and seek to
be changed by Him into the person He wants us to be.
It’s
important to remember that the fig tree we keep and guard and care for doesn’t
grow if we keep trying to graft our own SELF onto it. It grows only as we step
back and let Christ Himself flow through its branches. At some point, if we
have died to SELF and Christ has been manifested in our lives and in our
actions after we have been saved we may one day hear;
Matthew 25:21 His lord said unto him, Well
done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few
things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy
lord.
Proverbs 27:19 ¶ As in water face answereth to face, so the
heart of man to man.
Examine your heart as you would examine
your face in a mirror or, as this verse suggests, in your reflection in water.
Christians are told;
2Corinthians 13:5 Examine yourselves, whether
ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how
that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?
To examine and to prove are synonyms as in the
following verse. The Bible defines its own words through parallel phrasing
among other things.
Psalm 26:2 Examine me, O LORD, and prove me;
try my reins and my heart.
Your heart, the Bible says, is
desperately wicked.
Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above
all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Do you have any idea what it means to be
desperately wicked? The human heart wants to sin against God so badly that it
is desperate to do it. You know, like when a nightclub is on fire and people
are so panicked and desperate that should someone come in to try to help them
the jumbled mess of terrified, desperate people will grab the good Samaritan
and keep him from escaping the fire, as well. It’s happened several times in
history.
Examine your heart. Face what you really are.
You have no trouble believing that an animal inherited its instincts from its
first ancestor but can’t believe that mankind inherited the sin nature from
Adam, probably our only instinct as a human baby has to be taught almost
everything else but particularly how to be good. Many of us have a hard time
facing the truth about ourselves and our need of a Saviour. We think of
ourselves as pretty good people, not as bad as some, so why wouldn’t a just God
give us a pass? But we’re not being compared to other people. Our comparison is
Christ and He was perfect. Are you perfect, without sin?
You’ve told lies. That makes you a liar. You’ve
taken things; time from people, money from an employer who was paying you but
not to do what you were doing, material objects from others or work that didn’t
belong to you. That makes you a thief. You haven’t forgiven when God commanded
it and in spite of the fact that He forgave you. You talk about the confusing
things in the Bible but you won’t even obey the most clear cut standard and
precept of God.
We Christians need to examine our hearts like a woman
examines her face in one of those magnifying mirrors when she puts on makeup.
Then we need to throw ourselves into God’s word to be cleansed, asking
forgiveness and mercy, and seeking Him with our whole heart. Why did you talk
about that person at dinner? Were you really “concerned?” Why did you hesitate
at the newsstand? Was it really disgust you felt at the nearly naked girl in
the bikini, or something else? Why do you covet things you don’t have and don’t
need? Why do you love violence, even the “clean” violence of sports and movies?
Why are you working where you are working? Living in the house you are living
in? Driving the car you drive? Wearing the clothes you’re wearing…or almost
wearing?
I imagine if you dig behind the façade of modern
life you will find sin there and a wordly attitude, hungering for the lust of
the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (1 John 2:15,16) and the
things you want are pleasant to the eyes, something tasty, and maybe even give
you a leg up on your neighbors, your family, or your friends (Genesis 3:6).
Maybe if you examined your heart like you do
your face in the mirror you’d realize you need more of Christ and less of your
SELF.
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