Fruit

Matt 3:8 "Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance"

 

John the Baptist was a wildman. Not only did he walk around wearing weird clothes and eating weird food, but he walked around in the wilderness shouting "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." He was not preaching where the people were in the city, but instead was preaching in the wilderness of Judea. The world for wilderness means the solitary, lonely, desolate, uninhabited places. I wonder if he wondered who he was going to reach there? Apparently he developed a reputation because, even though he did not go to the people, the people came to him to watch this interesting spectacle of a man. The people of Jerusalem and all Judea and even the religious leaders would take a day trip just to see this guy. When they got there, they got an earful. He called these guys out. He called them a "brood of vipers". He warned them to "flee from the wrath to come." And then he challenged them: "bear fruit worthy of repentance".

 

I am guessing that the people loved it. I am also guessing that the Pharisees and Sadducees hated it. This was the beginning. This was the start. This was the messenger who came to announce who Jesus was. And from the beginning the religious leaders of the day did not like what they saw or heard.

 

Fruit. The problem was the religious leaders fruit. Not their apples and oranges, but the result of their lives. Everyone could see what they were truly like, everyone knew what their inner man was like because of what was produced in their outer life. They acted like they were spiritual but the proof of the pudding was in what they did…and it was not fruit that was consistent with a repentant life.

 

What does that fruit look like? When John said that they (we) should bear fruit that is worthy of repentance, what did he mean? We know that he meant good fruit…not rotten fruit. We know that he meant fruit that was worth keeping not fruit whose only use was to create a fire. (v10) It was lasting fruit.

 

I wonder if my life is producing good, lasting, worth keeping fruit because this is the only kind of fruit that proves that I have genuinely repented. If I have fruit in my life that is sour or dirty or distasteful…if this type of stuff flows from me then that is proof that I have never really changed…there is no repentance. But if the fruit from my life is good, sweet, beautiful it is worth keeping and it shows what I am. It shows who I am.

 

I hope I have repentant fruit.