Are You A "Fig Tree" Christian?

Happy Sabbath, all of you! Good to see you over here. I think last time we came, I think we sort of figured out it was maybe seven years ago that we were over. Joan and I came over, and we really enjoy coming over for the weekend.

The ladies' weekend went very well this morning. And as I told them, we always enjoy seeing old friends. And I always say about Mr. Segley and his wife, we knew them in the other century, you know, back in the 1900s. That sounds like a long time ago now, doesn't it? And you know, when you get to come to something like this, you get to meet old friends.

And usually, you know, because everybody's aged so much, I just turned 75 back in November. And anyway, you meet old friends, and they say, well, you sure do look good, you know, for a 75-year-old man. And I remember what Mark Twain said, when friends begin to flatter you about how young you look, it's a surefire indication that you're getting old. And it certainly seems that way, doesn't it?

All of the friends that, like when we went to college, I told Mario when we were in his home, or at least I don't know if you heard it or not, but I was going up the stairs, had a picture of himself and Kati when they first got married.

And I said, Mario, I remember when you had that much hair. You know, time marches on, doesn't it? And there was a time when I had more hair as well. I remember over in Israel, I went to a barber over there. He couldn't even get a comb through my hair. It was so thick. And I don't know where it is.

Now I can grow more hair on my arm than I can grow on my head. What a predicament we are in, isn't it? When we get older and older. Well, what does God expect of us when we're called?

You know, we grow older year by year, of course, start young and we have all kinds of hopes and all kinds of aspirations. What does God expect out of you? Well, you know, what God expects out of you and me is that we bear fruit in our lives. That we bear fruit. That's a real short answer to that. He expects us to not just bear fruit, but to bear much fruit. You know, a lot of fruit in our lives. You know, Jesus and his disciples arrived in Jerusalem, along with a very large crowd that often came down to Jerusalem for the keeping of the Passover.

And Jesus made a triumphal entry into the city, and then he made a quick visit to the temple. And then Jesus did something which seemed somewhat out of character for him. Something you didn't expect for Jesus to do. He curses a fig tree. You remember the story in the Bible about that? If you want to turn to Mark chapter 4, we're going to talk about this incident that was there. So he curses this fig tree, and Christ does not do anything without purpose.

What lesson can he be conveying by what he did? What was the purpose of it? What was it for? Well, we're going to explore that in this sermon this afternoon. The title of this message is, Are You a Fig Tree Christian? You know, there are different kinds of fig trees. I mentioned to the ladies that in our home, a rental home we had up in Northern California before we left the Bay Area, there was a huge fig tree in the backyard.

And I think it was huge. It was maybe from here to that wall. And it was just loaded down with figs. And you could hear these things drop. It was like raining figs. And I loved to sit out there and eat those raw figs and enjoy doing that. I didn't enjoy picking all of them up because there were, I mean, a whole lot of them from that one tree. And of course, there are other kinds of trees as well, which is going to be the subject of what Jesus Christ did.

You know, how can we in our lives, brethren, avoid the problems, the curses of life? How can we do that as God's people and reap the rich blessings of the favor of God, of His presence in our lives? How can we do that? We want to get the good things that come into our lives and that God will bless us bountifully.

Now, you may ask, what do you mean by fig tree Christian? Well, we're going to let Jesus Christ answer that question because He does give, there's an answer here for that particular question. What is a fig tree Christian? Let's go again to Mark chapter 11. I think I said four, but Mark chapter 11. And down in verse 11, and we'll read through this passage and make comments about it. But here it says, And Jesus went into Jerusalem and into the temple, so when he had looked around at all things.

So you can imagine here, here Christ is standing in the area probably outside of the temple, not in the holy place, not in certainly the holy of holies or any of that, but He was just standing and He was observing. It's like somebody came into this room right here and started looking around and looking at what people were doing, what their attitudes were, and what was taking place.

So we need to sort of put ourselves there with Jesus Christ. So He sort of looked around at things as the hour was already late, and He went out to Bethany with the 12th. Now, you may not know or remember that who lived out in Bethany. Remember Martha and Mary and Lazarus? And then Lazarus was a very rich man. I don't know whether the disciples were staying out there with them or not, but they were very good friends. I guess we'll have to ask Christ when He returns.

But it's probably a pretty good guess that they were out there. But it says going on here, now the next day when they had come out from Bethany, He was hungry. Now, one of the things that I think we need to inject into this story here is to remember that Jesus was in His 30s.

You know, and when you're a young man, as He was, and all of the disciples were young men, you know, what is the number one thing that happens when young men work really hard and they walk to a far piece? What do they want? They want food, right? You know, we have four grandchildren, and I am amazed how much they can eat. You know, it's amazing. They're teenagers, and I jokingly have said that we're going to build a pier near a house where the trucks can back up with the food.

You know, that's how much food these boys are eating. You know, my wife bought 108 eggs for our trip over here for them, and we're concerned it's not enough to feed them while we're gone.

But anyway, they were hungry, and Christ was hungry, and it says, in seeing a far off, it says, a fig tree having leaves. So here's this big, robust, beautiful fig tree that He sees from a far off, and He went to see if perhaps He would find something on it, and when He came to it, He found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. Now, oh, wait a minute here. I said it's out of character what He did. Why would Jesus expect that there would be figs when it wasn't fig season? You know, was Jesus, again, out of character here?

Well, it is an important question we need to ask, and we need to answer. So He didn't find anything that was on that fig tree. Jesus is hungry, and He sees this fig tree with many leaves from the distance, and He's hopeful. Now, why would He expect there be figs at a non-fig season? And Mark notes that this was not a fig season. That was, again, in fact, two months off. It was two months before there was fig season. So was Jesus being unrealistic? You know, did He curse this poor little fig tree? You know, Jesus said, let no one eat fruit from you ever again. You know, Mark comments that all His disciples heard Him say this. Again, why would He curse a fig tree when figs were not in season?

Well, you look in the Bible knowledge commentary. This is what it says about this particular passage. In Palestine, fig trees produced crops of small edible buds in March, followed by the appearance of large green leaves in the early April. This early green fruit, or the buds, as it refers to here, was common food for local peasants. And in absence of these buds, despite the tree's grain foliage promising, their presence indicated it would not bear fruit that year. Again, that's from the Bible knowledge commentary. So, this fig tree gave the appearance of offering edible fruit, but it did not. In other words, the fig tree was the symbol of a fake Christian. Looks like it should have fruit, but it didn't have fruit. Have you ever met someone like that? That you thought they were a Christian? And the first thing, when they opened their mouth, you knew that they were really not Christians. You know, it is very disappointing.

You know, people depend on you, and they depend on me. And, you know, we have to provide them what God has brought us into the church to do. And that is to be the kind of people that we really have something to pass on to somebody else. That we speak the truth, and that we know how to instruct the truth, and as best we know how, of course. And over the years, you learn the answers, don't you? You learn what to say and what not to say, when to say it, when to not say anything, and when to answer a question. You learn those things over the years.

And I imagine if we added up the years that you've been in the church, it'd be quite a long time. A lot of years represented right here in this room.

You know, I began when I was 17 years old, and that was a good time ago, you know, that when I began, I didn't grow up in the church like a lot of people do, but I saw what it was like out there before I came into the church.

And I never wanted to go back to this world and be a part of this society.

You know, this fig tree again represents, can represent, a Christian in this regard, an unproductive Christian. And as I mentioned to others before, but you know, there are good fig trees, like the fig tree behind our house up in northern California, when we lived up there. And I was pastoring the Bay Area churches. There are good fig trees and bad fig trees. And hopefully we will choose to be a good fig tree and produce a lot of fruit.

You know, the way that Mark constructs parables here, the fig tree and the other parable that follows this is where when Christ goes and He cleans the temple, they fit together.

In fact, they could contribute to one another to give us some understanding of why Jesus did what He did. And it suggests there's a connection between the cursing of the fig tree and the cleansing of the temple. And that's not something I came up with, by the way. That came from the English Standard Version study Bible. So that comes from a study Bible that these two parables are connected with one another. The incident of the fig tree both interprets the cleansing of the temple, which we're going to talk about, and is interpreted by the latter incident. And that's from the new international biblical commentary. And it goes on to say Jesus' disappointment with the fig tree is like His disappointment with Israel. And of course Jerusalem, where the temple was, which was the chief shrine of Israel. And His judgment pronounced upon the tree is like the threat of God judging and setting a judgment soon to fall upon the city of Jerusalem, which Jesus' words and actions in Mark 11 verses 15 through 19 prefigure.

And again, that's a new international Bible commentary that says that. And I believe there is a connection between those two. You know what happened to Jerusalem in 70 AD?

That, you know, the armies of Vespasian led by Vespasian son Titus, who was a general of the army, came in and demolished Jerusalem. You know, you can read the story of that in Josephus, where it was just the temple itself was a smoldering mess. Just burned to a crisp.

There's nothing, absolutely nothing, left because of the judgment of God, because they were not living by God's Word. It's like the, what did Jesus say of the scribes and the Pharisees?

He called them blind guides. How'd you like to be led by a blind guide?

These were spiritual leaders. He said, these are blind guides. I gave the example this morning, how'd you like to be led down into the Grand Canyon by a blind guide?

Yeah, well, you know, they were leading Israel, and they were very greedy. A lot of them were very greedy for money. You know, the high priest, as you know, was Caiaphas during this time. And Annas, who had been the high priest, and he wanted his son-in-law to take his place, keep it in the family, you know. Annas and Caiaphas were in charge of the money changers, and all of the people that were on the temple mount. They were in charge of the places that were selling a lot of the goods that were sold on that temple mount. And I don't want to say millions of dollars were coming in, but it was a lot of money that was pouring into Jerusalem. See, it wasn't just Jews. It was people from all over the world that were coming in to that temple. It was an incredible amount of money that was being funneled in there.

And Annas and Caiaphas were sharing this wealth with Herod, who also did not want Jesus Christ to be the king of Israel, although he had a right to be that. Jesus not only had a right from the standpoint of being a Jew, because the scepter belonged to Judah, but he had a right to the the birthright, because he came from the light of Joseph. So he had that right for both the birthright and the scepter. And there were very few. Actually, the grandmother of Jesus was born in Britain, believe it or not. And she repatriated to back down to Judah, and married a Jew there, and they gave birth to Mary.

And so, with the tie-in there, you may even remember when Zenekiah, his eyes were put out, you remember Jeremiah took the two daughters of Zenekiah up to Britain.

And one of those daughters married into the line of Joseph.

And so that's a whole long story, but I'm just to, again, show you how it was that Jesus was also of the Joseph line, which was the birthright. Promises were passed on to Joseph.

So anyway, God was very displeased with the scribes of the Pharisees. Not only called them the blind guides, but he said that they were white in tombs, white in sepulchres.

And he didn't have a very high opinion of the priesthood of Judah of his day, of what they were practicing. And he and John the Baptist basically said the same things about the priests. Felt that they were hypocrites. And Anas and the Caiaphas may have been responsible for the death of Jesus Christ. They had to put him to death to stop him from destroying the economic machine that he had, they had. Because he wouldn't allow that on the temple mount. What was going on the temple mount? We'll talk about that in a few moments. But, you know, God was going to, again, bring down the hammer on Jerusalem, and he did. The cursing of the tree is known as a prophetic sign act. Familiar readers to the Old Testament, regarding the prophets of the Old Testament, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, they would talk about the things that were going to happen to Israel because they did not obey God.

You know, you can go back there and read about those things. And that God eventually did take action against both Israel and then later Judah. Israel in 721 BC and Jerusalem, Judah in, as we know, in 604 to 585 BC. And then later in 70 AD, because of the disobedience of the people. And when he made this, the cursing of the tree and the cleansing of the temple, it was for the benefit of the disciples to teach them that God means what he says. God says, look, if you don't obey me, you're going to come to nothing. You're going to be destroyed if you don't obey me. And of course, they didn't. And God did exactly what he said he was going to do for them. Well, let's go down to Mark 11. Mark 11 in verse 15. So they came to Jerusalem.

Then Jesus went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves.

And he would not allow anyone to carry wares through the temple. Then he taught, saying to them, is it not written, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of thieves. Now, that verse is very important here about this fig tree.

You've made it into a den of thieves. Now, what did he say that the house was for?

It was for prayer. And we need to read that last part of that, because this is where they were guilty, very guilty. They were not only misleading the Jews, but they were misleading the Gentiles.

And all a Gentile is is a non-Jew. And so he said, this house is a house of prayer for all nations, all people, not just the Jews, but all people. You know, Jesus made the statement that the priests went out and they made converts, and they made them, when these converts were twice on the path to hell as they were before. And, you know, they were not leading people in the right direction.

They were not leading them properly. And what Jesus was upset about is that not even the Gentiles, or were coming from afar, were being shown a wrong example. You know, you had these very greedy priests, more interested in money, more interested in the money that was coming in from the temple than they were in teaching the truth of the law.

You know, incredible. And looking down their noses at Gentiles, even at this time, Jesus was concerned about what was being done to Gentiles. And he got to the point where he just realized, I can't continue to work with these people. And that's why, you know, the church had to be brought, you know, to bear in Matthew 16 verse 18 that is there. Because they were not even thinking about those Gentiles who were there to find out about this God, that they wanted to worship.

And, you know, you think about the attitude of the Ethiopian eunuch. Now, here he was studying, and reading from the scroll of Isaiah, and Philip goes up and says, do you understand what you're reading? And he says, how can I? I don't have anybody to show me.

I need somebody to teach me. But if you've got a Jew, they've got to put in the wagon with them. Anyone's going to learn the truth of them. So God had to use his church and begin to do that.

So let's get the picture of what happened here. You know, Jesus is talking about. Remember, the temple was on top of a mount. And that area, and I've been to Israel back in the 73, went to the Jerusalem dig in those years. And upon that temple mount now, you've got the Alaska mosque and the Dome of the Rock. But the temple was there. And of course, you had the Holy of Holies, which was behind the curtain in the temple of Herod. Then you have the Holy Place that is within the temple itself, where the altar was. And then outside, there was an area that was for the Jews. And then outside of that was an area that was for solely for the Gentiles.

And out there, you have these tables set up where commerce was taking place. You had money changers. You had people that were there to sell the different things that were going to be sacrificed—the pigeons, the lambs, the oil, the salt. But there was a different attitude. It wasn't a quiet, worshipful kind of an attitude that Jesus expected to find. In a house of prayer, it was the kind of an atmosphere. It was like a carnival. It's like here at church services, we had people coming in who were selling refreshments. And the transaction between the refreshment guy and the person was louder than the speaker—the sermon—that could be given.

And everybody's attention focused on that. How do you focus on the spiritual if these are the distractions that are there? And no wonder Jesus did what he did. He went out to clear those things out. And he was certainly within his rights for doing that. It says here in the English study version, the study Bible, it says, the business activity turns the house of prayer for all nations into a den of thieves and robbers. So not only, you know, was all this happening, you know, the racket from doing commerce, but you had here the Gentiles watching people that were cheating one another, that were lying. Is that the way of God?

So is that the way that you want people to go away from the temple of God, thinking that, hey, that's the way things are done? Well, it was a horrible, horrible example.

Even to this day, I remember walking down through the old city of Jerusalem and down to the Wailing Wall. And if you go down there, it's been a long time ago for me, of course, but I still remember the noise, the incredible noise around the Wailing Wall. I don't know how people could go to the Wailing Wall and pray, frankly. There was so much racket. Everything was so loud. And, of course, a lot of commerce going on as well. Probably, I don't know if it was that to the degree it was probably on the temple now, but it was not a peaceful, trampled place where you go to pray, you know, or you can we can commune with God. You expect the church in one sense to be somewhat like that. You know, that it's a place where we can think about God. But, you know, if you have to listen to a bunch of people haggling with each other and lying to each other and stealing, it puts a pretty bad taste in your mouth.

Doesn't make you feel like, hey, hey, let's go back home and tell everybody, let's go down and that we might know the Lord. No, you don't think that at all. You begin to think, well, I don't want to go down. I don't have anything to do with that.

And so it was hurting the work of God. You know, the scribes and the chief priests heard about this, and then they wanted to kill him when he was clearing out the money changers and doing all of that because they feared him. They were afraid of him because all of the people were astonished at his teaching. And then even he left the city and he and his disciples spent the night on the Mount of Olives. You know, this may have been, by the way, the second time that Jesus had cleansed the temple. You know, the apostle John in John 2 verses 13 through 17 mentions a similar incident at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus Christ. But he uses different terminology.

Many commentators think it happened only once, but the other statement he made, John notes, suggests there could have been two incidents. And you know, what happened here may have been a fulfillment of prophecy. What we read here, obviously, and we're going to show that, could have been a fulfillment of prophecy. Let's go over to Malachi 3. In Malachi chapter 3, verses 1 through 3, it says, Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me.

And who would that have been, by the way?

John the Baptist, right? He prepared the way for the arrival of Jesus Christ. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant. And Jesus did come to present the new covenant, right? And so he came to do that. In whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But he, but who can endure the day of his coming?

And who can stand when he appears? And it says, For he is like a refiner's fire, and like a launderer's soap. And he will sit as a refiner, and a purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as a gold and silver, that they may offer to the Lord, that offer in righteousness. Now, let me, do you think, brethren, do you think that Jesus did that when he came the first time?

To a degree, maybe. The cleansing of the temple might have been a type of what he was going to do.

But we say it maybe happened two times, because, you know, the Bible tends to support the idea of a former and a latter fulfillment. You have a dual fulfillment of prophecy.

You know, it's like Jesus did it in type when he came the first time, but the next time he comes, and that will be in the millennium, is he going to purify the Levi's then? You bet he's going to do it then, in a very real sense. There ain't going to be nobody. There's going to be serving at the temple unless they are of a certain mentality, a right mentality. So, you know, what Jesus did was prophetic from what we can see. But was the act of cleaning the temple out of character for Jesus?

No, it wasn't out of character for Jesus. Jesus had been angry before. He was angry when he called the Pharisees and the scribes, white and sepulchers and blind guides, hypocrites.

You know, he was angry at that time, but it was a righteous anger that he had.

And, you know, they were self-righteous religious leaders, and he had a righteous indignation in defense of God's honor and God's greatness. You know, we tend to find it hard to take an insult, and we want to defend ourselves. God displays self-righteous indignation because of people's irreverence, and they weren't being reverent in the temple.

In fact, even in church, we can be that way. If we're irreverent, you know, I hopefully would never do anything like that. But would God be pleased? Absolutely not. He wouldn't be pleased with it.

So what is the lesson for the disciples? What's the lesson here? How many of you ever watched a program many years ago called Ma and Pa Kettle? Okay, there's a lot of you who remember that. We got a TV when I was, I don't know how old I was, it was in the 50s, four or five or six or something like that. And, you know, it was one of those old TVs about that big around. You had to sit up real close to see any kind of television program, and all the kids in the block would come down to our house, and you'd have like, you know, five or six or seven, you know, five or six-year-old kids sitting on the floor watching Mighty Mouse, and Popeye the Sailor Man. But one of them was Ma and Pa Kettle. But there was an incident I saw, and I know it made an impression on me. I wasn't very old, like I said, maybe five or six, something like that.

But Pa Kettle was sitting at the table, the dinner table, and everybody bowed their heads to pray.

And he bowed his head down. He said, Father, thank you very much for all the things you give to us.

He said, even though we work to do it ourselves. You remember that, the prayer he prayed like that?

In other words, we did all the work, God, but thank you anyway.

Well, you know, in our lives, you know, you look at what you have done in your own personal life, and do you ever have that attitude, that thought? Oh, thank you, God. But even though we did all the work ourselves, well, the reality is, you know, yes, we may have done some work, but what made the difference?

What made the difference was God's Spirit. And without that Spirit, there'd be no work that would be accomplished. There'd be no changing that would happen in our lives.

So we have to give God all the credit. I don't care if we work so hard that everything we do is, you know, hunky door, as they say, and peachy king. You know, I think it was either my fair lady or Shakespeare that he said he talked about the milk of human kindness that is flowing out of your veins by the courts. You know, you still give God the credit, no matter what you do in your life.

You glorify God because he does, deserves the credit in every sense of the word. Now, thinking about this particular topic about the temple, the body is a temple of God's Spirit.

And, you know, if you ever ask yourself the question, is are you taking care of the temple that you are? You know, if we are temples, also, you know, where is the Holy of Holies?

In the human body, I'm talking about. I don't think it's in our hands. I don't think it's in our legs.

I think it's in our brain, isn't it? Our minds. You know, God gives us the Spirit in man, and as Mr. Armstrong used to say so often, the Spirit is in man, it's not of the man.

But the Spirit imparts intellect. And when God gave you His Holy Spirit, where did God put that Spirit?

Well, H of A used to say that it attaches to the Spirit of the man, because it cannot attach to the flesh.

And the Spirit of man imparts intellect so that we know the things of a man.

I guess, as I put it, sometimes cows in South Africa don't know they're South African cows.

You know, they may have perfectly good cows, by the way, but they don't think, they think, well, I wonder what the cows are doing up in the USA.

They don't think that way, do they? Because they don't have consciousness.

They're not aware. But God has given us an awareness. So, if the Holy of Holies, let's say the Holy Place, are in the mind, where is the outer court? What is the outer court?

And this is just my speculation here. You and I have been given physical senses.

We have the eyes that we see with. We have ears that we hear with. And then the feel and the taste.

You know, there are these senses. And all that we know comes through those senses to the brain.

And the question is, how are we using those those sensors, as it were?

Are we allowing only the good to go in the sensors into the brain, into the mind?

And that is a part of what I think ties in to the trees that were unfruitful.

The unfruitful Christian has let so many things get in the way of those senses that should be feeding us good things into the mind. We've let them feed bad things into the mind to affect us. So God expects us to use our five physical senses to allow the good things to come into our lives.

And you know, Jesus does say, remember, he says, I am the vine. You are the branches of John 15. But he says every branch that does not produce fruit, you know, is going to be cut off, going to be pruned, and it's going to be thrown under the fire.

So we have a... and it talks about not only that we should bear fruit, that we should bear much fruit. And again, it comes from the senses, our senses, into our bodies and minds. It's all a matter of what you're letting come into your body and what you're allowing to come into your mind. God expects so much fruit from all those who are called down. All of us in that sense are represented by that fig tree. Are we productive fig trees?

When God expects your tree, he expects to find a fully loaded tree with good fruit.

How can we make sure that happens to us? Well, let's go to Psalm 1. Psalm 1.

Psalm 1.

Psalm 1 over here, beginning in verse 1. We want to protect our tree.

Blessed is a man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly. You know, when you're growing up, you're young. It's like, you know, they depict it as you've got this bad angel on one shoulder and it's good good angel on the other shoulder. And, you know, people usually are listening to a bad angel. Well, you know, we got to be careful who we listen to, but he says, blessed are those who walk not in the counsel of the ungodly. We don't listen to the ungodly because they don't have anything to offer to us. You know, they're worse than a tree, a fig tree that has no fruit. 2. Nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the eternal. And in his law he meditates day and night. And it says, And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of the waters, that brings forth its fruit in its seasons, whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper. You want to prosper? That's how to do it. Stay away from those things that rob you of what can be yours, and that is, you know, God's blessing in your life.

Clearly, when Jesus saw the temple that was overrun by merchants, it was as though the reason for the house of God meant nothing at all.

You know, how could you pray? And if you can't pray, if you can't go there, and you can't find God, well, you might as well raise a pagan obelisk there, because they weren't worshiping God.

They weren't looking to God. Not with a lack of prayer. Not going to happen. But, you know, Jesus drove out everything which did not belong in the house of God. Like you probably heard, how do you carve an elephant out of a rock? Take a chisel and a hammer and knock off everything that doesn't look like an elephant. I wish it was that easy. But, you know, Jesus cast out everything that did not belong in a house of prayer for all nations. You and I, again, are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit must be actively at work in our lives. We don't want to smother the Spirit of God by all of the extraneous things that people get, you know, affected by.

You know, you can worry. That can smother the Holy Spirit. No, we don't need to worry. That worry doesn't do any good. We need to have faith. We need to take action in our life, too, but we need to have faith that God will be there. That God will help us.

You know, we need to get rid of the things that are robbing us of the rewards that we can have that dominate and cloud out the effect of God's Spirit in our lives.

For instance, are we growing in wisdom? You know, it says over in the book of James, 1 verse 5, that if any man asks for wisdom, God will give it, and he will not upbraid him. Not going to, in any way, disprove of what the man is asking. You ask for it, he will give it. The question is, why don't we have a bunch of psalmons in the church?

Right? I think because sometimes we don't have faith.

Jesus said, when the Son of Man comes, well, we have faith. We find faith.

So we have to, again, put those things inside of us. Faith has to be there.

To be a productive Christian, to be loaded down with fruit, we've got to be patient, learn patience in our lives. You know, sometimes people, it's like they're demanding, I want it, and I want it right now. You know, where's the patience?

How many times have you been sitting at a stoplight or some other place where you had to stop?

I remember in Maricopa, you know, they have a light that flashes red when a person's on the crosswalk. And I was maybe three cars back. And anyway, there was one car that didn't know what to do when they had a flashing red light. They apparently missed the sign that says, if the light is flashing, stop and then proceed. If nobody's on the crosswalk.

Okay, finally they read the sign. Okay, you know, people get on the horse, they start honking at people just because they don't know that. And I was, like I said, three cars back. And anyway, I got up there and the light was still flashing and I stopped. Why did I do that? Because the sign said stop! Okay, and somebody, I don't know what kind of driver he was, but laid on that horn.

Like, go get going! We've been sitting here long enough. Well, we don't, that doesn't abrogate the law, does it? But anyway, it was just, it was an upsetting thing. I didn't honk my horn at them, but I did point up and I said, read the sign. You know, sometimes that's all you can say.

But we've got to be patient with people. We live in an impatient society.

I think we need more patience the older we get. I remember when I started in the ministry, you know, I had more people calling me Mr. Tuck then than I do now.

Here I was, like, in my 20th. Mario went through this as well, I'm sure. But, you know, and what do you know when you're in your 20s? You know, we had a lot to learn in those years.

But you know what I was amazed by? More than not, I was amazed by the patience of people with young guys that were in the ministry. I don't know if we're going to ever be that way again in terms of having young ministers, but we need to set that example to be patient so God can train these people and they can be used in the ministry. But, like I said, the older we are, the more patience we need to have. And we need to have faith and we need to have endurance. We need to be a doer, as James says, and not just a hearer. These qualities should pervade our lives so that we grow much fruit as a result of those things. We talk about the fruits of the Spirit.

We let the cares of this world drown out the Holy Spirit, like the merchants that were kind of going through the temple and everything. We've got this kind of thing in type going through our minds. We've got our minds on other things, which we shouldn't be loaded down with, particularly on the Sabbath. When we get to the Sabbath, it should be a tranquil time.

Oh, we know how to look like a productive Christian, don't we?

But is there fruit? Or are we like the fig tree that Jesus had to curse because it had no fruit?

Nothing there. He wants to find us loaded down with fruit. You know, it's like you've ever seen a like a peach tree or an apple tree or any kind of tree that there's so much fruit on these trees that the limbs are about to break. That's always a... it's almost... it's a miracle when you see it.

But you know, the... what Jesus was saying when he cursed the fig tree and when he cleansed the temple, he was trying to say, look, Jerusalem, look, Judah, the time is going to come, and your tree's going to be shot down, and you're going to be thrown into the fire. In fact, let's go over to Matthew chapter 3. Matthew chapter 3. But in Matthew chapter 3...

and by the way, here it is John the Baptist who is speaking. So you can see how closely knit to each other John the Baptist and Jesus Christ were. And you know, it is very interesting that there were some people that actually thought that John the Baptist was the Messiah. John the Baptist didn't think that, but there are people that thought that way. But in Matthew 3, down in verse 10 here, John is saying, and he says, he's talking about, you know, here the scribes and Sadducees, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And you know, they claim, well, we have Abraham as our Father, for I say to you, Jesus... John says, I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. Now, verse 10. And he says, even now the axe is laid to the root of the tree. It's like here, you got this unproductive fig tree. And the axon takes his axe and the sharp edge of it is right. He's aiming for the roots. And you destroy the roots of something, it's not going to come back. But he's saying, this is where it is. God's about ready to cut your tree down.

He says, and it says, therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. He says, I indeed baptize you with water under repentance. But he who is coming after me is mightier than I whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winning fan is in his hand and he will thoroughly clean out the thrushing floor and gather his wheat into the barn. But he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

And you know, that happened to Jerusalem. Like I said, Titus came down in there in 70 AD.

Read Josephus, by the way, he'll give you a real good description of that.

What happened there just was burned down to rubble, not recognizable after 70 AD.

You know, the moral and religious depravity of the religious leaders prompted Jesus' actions with both the cursing of the fig tree and the cleansing of the temple. And they were prophetic signs for telling the impending judgment upon Judah that would occur with the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 AD. It came to pass. It happened. Let us be ever mindful of that, that we are being judged, brethren. Judgment is upon the house of God, even as Peter himself said.

And we must not be fig tree Christians who are void of fruit. But we want to be the fig tree that is fully loaded with much fruit. So I challenge you to be that fruitful tree and be the kind of Christian that Jesus Christ expects us to be. I appreciate the opportunity to come over and to talk with you and to spend some time with you. I appreciate the invitation from Mr. Segley to come over. And thank you very much for your attention. Hope you have a good Sabbath.