Dear Luke,
I hope that my last two letters
have not overwhelmed you with material to consider. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah
and every word of his is worthy of a lifetime of consideration—and yet, in my
last two letters I have given you so much to chew on that you may well be
exhausted. I hope you have room for
more, because with Jesus, we can always go farther, deeper, in our explorations
of his teachings and his life. There is
no end of the incredible riches of God, and I pray that my letters point you in
that direction.
To conclude his sermon on the
plain, Jesus has two sections that make sense to anyone, even people who have
little or no faith. I don’t find this
nearly as challenging as the part about loving your enemies, but I find it hard
to put into practice, especially in a world that constantly demands our
attention be focused on new products, new opportunities, and at times insults
those of us who choose another path.
Jesus begins the first section
discussing fruit trees. I have never
grown fruit trees, and while I know little about them, I know much about the
product! Jesus teaches that bad fruit
cannot come from good trees, just as a bad tree will not produce good fruit. It makes sense, and for those of us who do
not know trees, we can judge the health of the tree based upon the product—if
it is good fruit, then the tree must be good.
Jesus talked about how figs and grapes aren’t gathered from thorns or
brambles, and he wants us to understand that good people do good things because
their hearts are good, just as bad people produce evil because of the condition
of their hearts. In other words, however
our hearts are tuned, that will directly affect what kind of produce our lives
emit—our hearts overflow into our actions.
People can judge the condition of our hearts based upon our actions.
This may seem like common sense to
you, but remember that Jesus was teaching to a crowd of people who had a
religion based primarily on sacrifices and other actions that made them right
with God. It wasn’t necessarily a
religion of the heart, and Jesus was trying to shift their thinking to
understand that they needed to be in love with God first, and then that love
would overflow into the rest of their lives.
I think those who decide to follow Jesus have to be willing to make the
same heartfelt commitment. It can’t just
be about saying the right prayer and showing up at the right time for a
service; it needs to be a commitment that swallows up one’s life and one’s
heart so that every single action testifies to the condition of one’s heart.
Jesus continues to describe his
true followers, mostly because he is frustrated at those who call him Lord but
do not do his bidding. I’m sure that
you, too, would be frustrated if people claimed to follow you and then went out
and betrayed you by their actions. As an
illustration of someone who acts upon the teachings of Jesus, he lifts up a man
who digs a deep foundation for his house and sets it upon the rock, so that
when the storms rage and the floods rise and burst against the house, the house
does not tremor because of the quality of its foundation. In contrast, the one who builds a home with
no foundation will be ruined when his house falls because the river bursts
against it.
A life of faith is about making a
big commitment and following Jesus with your whole heart. Those who do the minimum, who cut corners and
refuse to hand over the keys to their heart will falter in times of trial and
fail to testify to the Lordship of Jesus.
Those who truly follow him will offer up everything to God, and as a
result each corner of their life will tell God’s story of love and salvation,
so that others may then learn about God.
Think about it, Luke—if you were
going to build a house, and you watched this flood rise against these two
houses, which man would you go to for construction tips?
In the same way, we look to those
with strong faith and model our own faith after that. God’s glory is spread by those who have
committed everything to doing God’s will.
I believe this is a good way to end
this sermon. Jesus wraps up everything
with two images that make sense to the listener. You and I can hear them many years later and
still grasp exactly what he was talking about—that any decision of faith needs
to be made not simply with the hands or the feet but with the heart, so that
the whole life is offered. A follower of
Jesus needs to be passionately in love with God and radically dependent upon
him, so that the whole story of life is told through the lens of faith.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this series
of letters, and I pray that it has given you plenty to consider in your
exploration of Jesus’ life and work.
Sincerely,
Theophilus
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