To the Tree [Trinity 8; St. Matthew 7:15-23]

The Lord Jesus Christ speaks, not just to His generation, but in history and to us today.

“A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.”

What Jesus is saying today is what we talked about last week. How, even if we were to make the decision to follow God’s Commandments, we would be doing so in sin. As Jesus has said, a diseased tree cannot bear good fruit.

This is nothing more than a teaching of the doctrine of Original sin: the Biblical fact that humanity is completely fallen into sin and is therefore a diseased tree that can not do good works or produce good fruit towards God. Thus, for all your trouble at sanctifying your actions and turning your life around, you deserve nothing but eternal and temporal punishment and death.

On one level, we hear Jesus like this, speaking in metaphor about trees and sin. Yet, there is not just one level here and the topic of this conversation is certainly not just you and me, nor is it an essay on how to care for trees.

In this section of St. Matthew’s Gospel, we are hearing part of the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon that not only taught us Jesus’ own prayer, but also that the poor in spirit are blessed. It is here, in this Sermon, that most people will label Jesus as the new Moses, because we hear a lot of Law or commands to do certain things.

St. Matthew is writing to the Jews, primarily, so Jesus is not just upholding the 10 Commandments and all other laws of God, but He is adding to them. Do not just “Not murder”, but make sure your neighbor is protected and don’t even think badly about him. Do not just “not commit adultery”, but make sure unmarried couples remain chaste and don’t even think about another woman in your own marriage.

In fact, Jesus’ conclusion here is that “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (5:48). Jesus is not just the greater Moses, but the stricter Moses. Where Moses was incomplete and lenient in teaching God’s Law to the people, Jesus includes the very thoughts and emotions within ourselves as admissible evidence into the case against us, which inevitably leads to our being found guilty.

Thus, when Jesus begins teaching about trees, He is not teaching within a vacuum nor is He using random flora to paint us a picture. Jesus is bringing into the foreground all that has transpired between God and His people. In this case, from the very first interaction at a very different tree, Jesus wishes to draw our attention.

God made His people, people of promise. Thus, they become the tree. Their roots are the root of Jessie for out of its stump a branch shall grow. This stump is what is leftover from the Fall of Adam. In the Garden of Eden grew the Tree of Life and the forbidden Tree. Of the Tree of Life they were to eat and of the billions of other trees. But of the one forbidden tree they were to not eat, lest they die.

It was at that tree of knowledge that God held Church. It was at that one tree where Adam would be able to show his belief in the Lord. It was there that Adam encountered the Law and could do nothing to change its words. It was there that God’s love showed forth brightest, because He met with and spoke to Adam.

Don’t let the devil fool you. There is a temptation so great that you will fall victim to it, just as Adam did. You can not resist temptation on your own, neither can you be enabled and empowered to defeat sin.

Repent. The Tree has been cut down. Eden is destroyed. The rebellion that Adam and Eve displayed is alive and raging in your heart. Since this corruption is in your veins, you are a diseased tree, good for stoking the fire, but not for producing good fruit.

The Lord has promised that:

“There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
    and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
² And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
    the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
    the Spirit of counsel and might,
    the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord." (Isa. 11)

The Word declares that the Tree of Life is still upright. That it has not left the earth with the destruction of Eden and that God’s people are still in His care. For the stump survives through the Branch and from it true knowledge will arise.

Though Eden is gone, it was but a picture of the paradise to come. This one Branch will produce good fruit. This one Branch will posses the Spirit of the Lord. This one Branch will offer Himself upon a tree of death and convert it to the Tree of Life. The Branch is Jesus.

Jesus is the Good Tree and the fruits He produces are life, light, and the forgiveness of sins. Upon the cross, an instrument of death and torture, Jesus suffers and dies to purchase the life of Jesse’s stump and all believers in Christ. In what’s called the Great Reversal, Jesus makes death produce life.

Meaning, by His death sin, the power of the devil, and even death is put to death. With these defeated nothing can come from this tree but life, as only the true Son of God can give: in His Body and His Blood.

Do you get it? The stories in Genesis are not just fun things to share and make art crafts out of, they proclaim Jesus. Both the OT and the NT point to a suffering and dying Messiah sent to justify all men.

If you did not put this together yourself, then you need to hear more from your catechism. It is not just for fun that you call yourself Lutheran and it is not just for giggles that you call yourself a Christian. Because you are those things, you believe and are baptized, but believe what?

Believe that Allah and God are the same? That everyone is going to heaven because God is love? That what you believe and what church you attend doesn’t matter?

Adam didn’t believe it mattered what tree he ate from, as long as he was eating like God told him to. Jesus, on the other hand, does think it matters. It does matter which God you worship. It does matter which church you attend and it does matter what kind of fruits you are receiving from the prophets.

The good fruit is cross fruit. The bad fruit is everything else. The good fruit is baptism in the water flowing from Christ’s pierced side, flowing in this Font. The good fruit is the Gospel, preached in every word of God from Genesis to Revelation. The good fruit is the Body and Blood of Jesus, given and shed for you to eat and drink.

Making distinctions is important, for we want the good fruit and not the bad. Therefore Jesus leaves us with obvious locations of His promises in physical form. The Lord promised Life from a tree and you have it. The Lord promised His Word and you have Him.

The Lord has promised righteousness, innocence, and blessedness forever and in Christ these things are possible, even for a poor, miserable sinner such as myself. The One who does the will of our Father in heaven is Jesus and He enters the kingdom of heaven through the tree of the cross.

Trees and branches were broken off and tossed in the fire that you may be grafted into the Good Tree. In unbelief, you will be broken off again. If you continue in belief, God is able to graft you in again (Rom.11).

In mercy, Jesus is the true Vine and in baptism you are the branches, grafted into the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ in order that the promises of the one, Good Tree are now yours.