Good fruit - bad fruit

August 22, 2007

We all know that Jesus preached that we were to be good fruit or else we would be removed from the branch and thrown in the fire. God had been preaching that for years but He too had been ignored. In fact a whole chapter in Jeremiah talks about it.

24:1 After Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had taken into exile from Jerusalem Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, together with the officials of Judah, the craftsmen, and the metal workers, and had brought them to Babylon, the Lord showed me this vision: behold, two baskets of figs placed before the temple of the Lord.

2 One basket had very good figs, like first-ripe figs, but the other basket had very bad figs, so bad that they could not be eaten.

3 And the Lord said to me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” I said, “Figs, the good figs very good, and the bad figs very bad, so bad that they cannot be eaten.”

4 Then the word of the Lord came to me:

5 “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Like these good figs, so I will regard as good the exiles from Judah, whom I have sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldeans.

6 I will set my eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up, and not tear them down; I will plant them, and not uproot them.

7 I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.

8 “But thus says the Lord: Like the bad figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten, so will I treat Zedekiah the king of Judah, his officials, the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land, and those who dwell in the land of Egypt.

9 I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a reproach, a byword, a taunt, and a curse in all the places where I shall drive them.

10 And I will send sword, famine, and pestilence upon them, until they shall be utterly destroyed from the land that I gave to them and their fathers.”

(ESV)

Notice here however, that God has a special place for the good fruit and the bad fruit. As Jesus says that we will be in-grafted on to the tree, God says that He will send then to a place that they can live and prosper. And then when time is ready, He will bring them back to where they need to be. The others, like the ones that Jesus talks about are going to be destroyed.

God has a special place prepared for you and me. While I will have a time when I have to be moved about, like the exiles of Judah, He will call me to the home that he has prepared for me. It is a good place, it is called heaven. There is where I will be rooted forever. My time here will be temporary but there I will live forever.

Time to inspect the fruit in you?

==Translation Information
Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.