03.17. THE BARREN FIG-TREE

THE BARREN FIG-TREE

Luke 13:6-9 This Parable formed part of the conversation which our Lord held with those who reported to Him the fate of some Galileans whom Pilate had slaughtered in the temple. The Galileans were notoriously turbulent, and on more than one occasion Pilate quelled their disposition to riot with the decisive and unrelenting ferocity that characterized him. On this occasion he seems to have stepped beyond his jurisdiction, and to have sent soldiers into the temple to slay the sacrificers among the beasts they were sacrificing — an act which would have desecrated a pagan temple, and which was peculiarly horrible in a temple so sacred and exclusive as that of the Jews. Indeed, one is tempted to suppose the atrocity had been magnified by rumor, and that what had at first been related in strong figures was at last taken literally; that Pilate had slaughtered some Galileans who had come to the city to sacrifice, but were not yet inside the temple; and that some one returning to Galilee, and finding himself an object of interest as a participator in the disturbance, and desiring to make a terse and picturesque report of what had happened, said with an allowable figure of speech that Pilate had mingled their blood with that of their sacrifices. This report a hearer taking literally might suppose to mean that Pilate had sent soldiers into the temple and had slain the worshipers among the altars and sacrificial animals.

Whatever the act of Pilate had been, those who now spoke of it seemed impressed, not so much with any perfidy or profane ferocity on his part, as with the exceptional guilt which they suppose these Galileans must have incurred to justify their consignment to such a doom. They argue that God would not have delivered up any of His worshipers to so shocking a death, had they not been guilty of some exceptional iniquity. And with the pleasure men find in speaking of the disasters of others while themselves secure, and of commenting upon wickedness which they believe to exceed their own, these persons come with their story to Jesus, hoping to hear some edifying discourse on the wickedness of the world at large, and some suggestions which may warrant them in congratulating themselves with still more satisfied complacency.

They are, however, disappointed. In this slaughter of the Galileans, as well as in other calamities to which public attention had been drawn, our Lord sees no evidence of exceptional guilt, but rather samples of calamity threatening the whole nation. These disasters were the first mutterings of the storm which was shortly to break over the whole community. The Jews were not to look at the Galileans, or at those of their own number on whom the tower of Siloam fell, as separate from themselves by any peculiar wickedness; they were to consider them as integral parts of the nation, and to accept and gather warning from the strokes which thus fell upon the people at large. These strokes, our Lord says, were meant to awaken the whole nation to its precarious condition. They were meant to make the people at large consider whether they did not as a people together deserve a like doom. They are, in short, the first efforts of the husbandman to stimulate the tree to greater activity. The branches which have been cut off are cut off not for any special fault of theirs, but to quicken the whole tree. If the Jewish ear were opened, it would hear in these thickening accidents and disasters, not any private calamity, but the voice of the husbandman wondering how the whole tree can be made to produce any proper and valuable fruit. Hence the Parable of the Fig-tree. The direct meaning of the Parable is unmistakable. What had happened to these Galileans would shortly happen to the whole nation unless they so repented as to accomplish God’s purpose with them. This Jewish people was like a fig-tree enjoying every advantage, but bearing no fruit. As three years make up the full lime which it is reasonable to spend upon the cultivation of an apparently barren tree, so there is a fulness of time in the history of a nation during which it receives its opportunities. This time had now expired with the Jews, and the forty years that were yet given them, in answer to the “Father, forgive them,” which our Lord breathed from the cross, were the tree’s ultimate year of probation which was to decide its fate. To every nation God has given a special task, and special gifts and opportunities to accomplish it. As the body requires many members, and all the members have not the same office, — as the orchard has many kinds of trees, and one kind cannot bear all fruits, — so each nation has had some special impulse to give to the progress of the race. A modern nation, however civilized, cannot do the work which was committed to an ancient tribe, of choosing out the habitable parts of the earth and sowing the seed which all subsequent times have been reaping. The Greeks and Romans, the Egyptians and Persians, Cyrus, whom God owned as His servant, and many besides, had their peculiar functions in the education of the race and in preparing the world for Christ. But the Jews were called to a distinctive place. A different species of fruit was expected from them. Their special function was to acknowledge Christ when He came, and to form His kingdom. This fruit they had not borne. As a nation they had failed, and seemed likely yet to fail, whatever individuals among them had done and were yet to do. Having failed and continuing to fail, they would become mere cumberers of the ground. There would be no reason why their national existence should be continued. The Parable, however, has important personal bearings. Every man’s conscience gives the Parable a personal application. You would hardly find any one who would deny that God expects some fruit of his life. If you asked yourself or any one else, Is it a matter of absolute indifference to God what results from your life? you would be answered, That it is impossible to conceive of God at all without supposing that He desires every human life to serve some good purpose. This, at all events, is Christ’s view. This it is which made His life what it was, influential to all time, and the unfailing source of the highest energy to all other lives. That is to say, He has given us the most cogent of all demonstrations that in proportion as we accept His view of the connection of our life with God, shall we resemble Him in the utility and permanent result of all we do. It has become obvious that in the world of nature nothing is isolated and independent, but that everything is connected more or less remotely with everything else; that all nature is one whole, governed by one idea and fulfilling one purpose. Human lives are under the same law. No life is outside of the plan which comprehends the whole; every life contributes something to the fulfilment of the great purpose all are to serve. Our Lord tells us that this purpose is in the mind of God, and that He judges us by our fulfilment or non-fulfilment of His will. And that we should be reluctant to bring forth fruit to God, or hesitate to live for Him, has its root in the foolish and objectionable idea that God and we have opposing interests, so that to help out God’s idea of the world and to work with Him and towards His end is really not our best. Nothing seems to teach us that God is all on our side. It has taken men six thousand years to find out some part of the provision for our good which He has laid up in the material world, and it seems it will take us even longer to discover the provision He has made for feeling and thought and for spiritual strength and joy. But not only has each human life a purpose; most men have the more or less distinct perception that they are as fig-trees among vines; that they have peculiar opportunities not given to other men, and that in one way or other they enjoy special advantages. The fig-tree of the Parable was not lost among a forest of precisely similar, equally cared-for and equally uncared-for trees; it was one, standing by itself among plants of different kind, and receiving different attention. You have little feeling of responsibility to God so long as you think you have dropped into your place casually as the seed blown by the wind, or that what you receive you receive not because it is suitable for you, and therefore given by God, but only because you and all around you are included in some general order of things, and. dealt with in the mass and regardless of individual characteristics. But if you deal with God about your life at all, you find it to be necessarily implied that you ascribe to Him a constant watchfulness over it and a power to introduce what is needful for you, and to give you all that is needed for fruit-bearing, for accomplishing His purpose. The position, then, that you occupy and the advantages you enjoy are the indication that God means your life to serve a good purpose. If you look at life with the secret or expressed conviction that it is a pitiful and contemptible thing from which nothing good can result, it will in your case become a contemptible and barren affair. But begin with the belief that God’s purposes are worth accomplishing, and that they can be and are being accomplished by men, and that you may accomplish them and this will give to your life a steady and hopeful energy, and put your life on the only track that is really eternal. A man may indeed find the thought rising in him, that as some nations have served God’s purpose by war, by godless culture, by living out their own nature irrespective of God, so may I accomplish His purpose although I pursue the bent of my own nature and build up my life solely in accordance with my own views and plans. But why has God given you light about His will if He meant you to make no use of it? You can only judge of the kind of fruit God wishes you to bear by considering the position He has set you in; and you can bear that fruit only by using all the advantages He has given you. The gardener leaves some plants out and unsheltered, but others he brings into the walled garden, and some he puts under glass; and if the vine were treated like a gooseberry bush, it would bear neither grapes nor yet gooseberries. So if we exclude or neglect influences which God has seen fit to furnish us with, we must be failing to produce the fruit He wishes. If He has brought you light in Christ which you are not making any use of, if you decline to live in that communion with the heart of all spiritual life which exists in the Father of spirits, then it must be that you are failing to produce the fruit for the sake of producing which He has given you these advantages. Are you sure there is nothing to be gained by fellowship with Christ? are you sure that you can be as complete a man without this person who felt it in Him to draw all men to Him? are you sure that you can serve every good and worthy purpose just as well without any direct help from Him as with it? Because, if you are not sure, then it is obvious that, for all you know, you are shutting out an influence which would simply make all the difference between bearing fruit and not doing so; between your life serving the best purpose possible and serving a purpose disappointing and disastrous; between fruit borne on the south side of a high brick wall and fruit borne or attempted on the north side. And what can be more utterly humiliating than to have our life examined by absolute insight and the most loving justice, and to be pronounced barren? To fail in any one department of life is humiliating enough, but to fail over the whole, and to find that the whole thing is gone for nothing, must be impossible to bear. To have consciously failed in helpfulness to a friend, or to have failed as a son or as a parent, to have quite disappointed one who was trusting to us, makes a mark on our conscience we do not easily cover over; to be engaged with others in a work all of which is retarded or spoiled by a piece of stupidity or neglect on our part, affects us with a very sensible shame. But think of failing in what our whole life was given us to accomplish! How vain to defend ourselves by affirming that if we have not pleased God and borne the fruit He desired, we have yet not lived in vain! A young surgeon is appointed to an hospital, but the mortality greatly increases; inquiry is made, and it is found that he has neglected his duties. He is charged with neglect, and acknowledges it. “But,” he says, “come with me, and I will show you I have not been idle.” He takes the authorities to his room, and shows them a freshly finished painting or a half-written book which he expects will make his fortune. No one questions whether such a person will be retained or dismissed. For the charge of bringing forth no fruit is not the only one which the owner of the fig-tree brings against it. It also cumbered the ground, took up a place in his vineyard which might be more profitably used. It not only bore no fruit itself, but “sucked the soil’s fertility” from wholesome and productive plants. It used up room and nourishment which another tree might have used for fruit-bearing. This tree had given promise, and because of its promising appearance had been set where it was — but it failed. And it reminds us of the guilt we incur when we engage to perform duties which nevertheless we neglect. Had we not professed a willingness to perform them, others would have been found to do them. Had we not thrust ourselves forward, or would we only stand aside and yield the duties to others, they would be performed; but by taking engagements upon us and not fulfilling them, we both omit our own part and prevent others from performing it: like a crowd idly gazing from the shore at a man drowning, and hindering the one eager to rescue who cannot make his way to the water’s edge through the idle mass. Have you never seen some one spoiling a piece of work which you were sure you could do well, but with which you cannot interfere because the other is the party engaged to do it? Far better that he were out of the way; but until he is discharged by a competent authority, he must be allowed, not only to spoil the work himself, but to prevent any one else from doing it well. The reason why no one interferes with your work is not always that it is perfectly satisfactory. You may blunder and weary, you may do your work in a perfunctory and slovenly way, but while you occupy the place, the better workman cannot interfere to mend matters.

It is a saddening but also a stimulating reflection, that many duties might be better performed were we out of the way. To many parents it must occur that their children would have been better provided for in an orphan hospital, sometimes even better clothed and fed, better instructed in religion, with a more worthy example to incite them to well-doing, and receiving a better start in life than they can do while their natural guardians are alive and engaged to perform duties which are almost wholly neglected. And in many directions in which our relations in life branch out, it may well shame us to look upon the dead barren twigs into which we send no sap, and which might be all beautified and bending under mellow fruit were some other enjoying the place that we occupy with our lifeless bulk. If others had had our advantages, is it not probable that more beneficial results would have appeared? If others had enjoyed the same parent1 age, the same thoughtful prayerful love watching over their early years, the same clear light regarding duty, the same encouragement to well-doing, — if others had received as fully as we of what is thoroughly beneficial in life, or what goes to form character and to make the conduct wholesome and helpful, — is it not likely that fruit of a rarer quality and of greater abundance would have appeared?

It is impossible that such waste of ground should be suffered forever in such a vineyard as this of the Parable. If we on whom certain duties are depending are the very persons who prevent these duties from being done, this is not a state of things which a wise God will allow. Indolence, distrust, anything which hinders us from working harmoniously with God, must be removed and is being removed from His dominion. Such things can only be suffered for a time, and do not belong to the eternal condition of things. Therefore God in His mercy warns us that all such obstructive dispositions must be abolished. Here Christ in His office of Saviour and Intercessor is represented as interposing between the owner and the barren tree: “Lord,” He says, “ let it alone this year also. Let me give it one chance more, let me do my utmost for it.” This request is acceded to, but on the distinct understanding that this is a last chance. It is agreed on both sides that if fruit be not now borne, the end has come. There will be no more pleading. The spade will be thrown aside and the axe lifted. There is no hurry in the matter, but a distinct agreement — one thing or other must be done — either the fruit borne or the tree cut down. As it is said, “God does not pay on Saturdays, but at last He pays.” His judgments are not weekly, but they are infallibly certain. Every delay He makes, He makes with a distinct understanding of what He means by it, of how long it is to be and of what will take place at the expiry of the term. There comes a time when even the tears of Christ will not save us; when even He can do no more than weep. The Jews accordingly received their year of grace. Judgment was delayed for forty years; for a generation. Time was given for passions to die down, for prejudice to pass away, for reflection to be made on all that Christ had been and done. The tree was digged about and well cared for. Means never before used were now used. Preachers as zealous as the old prophets and with more telling words to utter held clearly before them the king they had disowned. The trees planted near them all began to yield fruit. In fact, as every one sees, it was useless trying to do more to bring them to acknowledge Christ; nothing more could be done. And so the heavy hand of Rome which so long had been held back was at last allowed to fall, and the nation went to pieces under the blow. But when the old tree is torn up by the storm, what chiefly astonishes us is to see that the mass below the ground has been almost as widespread as the branches above: that each branch and leafy twig that has waved in the air is represented by an unseen root or sucker below which has fed and sustained it; and so if you look below the surface through this period of grace, your eye lights upon the sustaining love of God, your ear discerns the regretful, dirge-like mourning that breathed through the words, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” the bitter disappointment and yearning that can only with deepest sorrow and pain give up hoping and that still repeats, “Oh that My people had hearkened unto Me, and Israel had walked in My ways! I would soon have subdued their enemies, and turned My hand against their adversaries.” This Parable, then, bears in it a strong encouragement that may well pervade and strengthen our whole life. For this vinedresser had not interceded for the tree unless he had thought it possible that fruit might yet be borne; and you may be sure the pains he spent on that tree would exceed all that he spent on the rest. You can fancy him leaning on his spade and carefully studying it, thinking of it as he went home at sundown, talking it over with neighboring vinedressers, and coming out early to try some fresh method, resolved that it should lose no chance of mending. And were our ear keen enough to hear the deliberations and judgments pronounced now in the spiritual world, might not some of us become aware that we ourselves were under discussion and that the time of our final probation had come; that methods were now being tried with us which, if they fail, cannot be renewed? If hitherto you have done little for God, and if lately the thought of your opportunities of doing good service has been borne in upon you, if your advantages have been strikingly increased, your position improved, and hindrances taken out of the way, then ought you not in reason to construe this into a renewed invitation on God’s part that you should make up your mind at length to live for Him? Suppose you could overhear the remarks passed upon your condition by these unseen overseers, suppose you could overhear what is thought of your past and what is resolved regarding your future, have you no reason to believe that you would hear remarks very similar to those which were called forth by this tree from the persons who stood and considered it? If it be so, if you are now to be put on a final trial, then He who seeks and longs that you win is at your side to give you every advantage, such arrangement of your worldly circumstances as is most likely to tell upon you for good, such influences brought to bear upon you as you must consciously resist if you are not to bring forth fruit, such promptings of conscience and present light about duty as you must shut your eyes to if you are not to see and obey. If this consideration and treatment of you is going on, and if indeed the main reason of your being in life at all is that it may go on, then are you not to think what may come of it, are you not to bestir yourself to some serious and thorough response to God’s dealing? If you so bestir yourself, then you are certain of success. Christ does tend you. Much that He does may be offensive to you, much unintelligible; but believe in Him, frankly and heartily co-operate with Him; welcome His efforts in your behalf; consider how much fruit His own life bore, how, through neglect and contradiction of sinners, through unsettlement and poverty and at last suffering, He still served God’s purpose. Consider how utterly His life gives the lie to all within you that would either say that life is easy, or that it is fruitless and empty and contemptible. Consider Him and His promise that His Spirit, which made Him what He was, shall pass into you, and take courage to live with Him and like Him. Believe that He means you well, believe that He understands human life and means to make yours worthy, and that if you co-operate with Him, nothing can defeat you.

There is encouragement also for those who have long been striving to serve God. Do not despond about your own bad state and its many unfavorable symptoms. Do not learn to treat life carelessly, as if its duties and trials had no reference beyond the present time; do not treat this world as if Christ had never been in it and had not shown you how everlasting results may flow from a brief time spent among men and their sins and passions. Do not believe that you are left on earth to grope and stumble blind and forlorn to an uncertain termination, but abide in Christ and keep your mind occupied with His ways and seek His presence, until you feel sure that every day comes to you with opportunities of living as He did. It may seem very poor fruit such soil as you are planted in can produce, but leave that to Him; He knows the kind of fruit He seeks from your life; and, if it satisfies Him, it may satisfy you. Do not fancy that all is over with you, and that fruit is what once might have been, but now cannot be. Even out of the withered hopes that lie damp upon your heart and the comforts that have gradually fallen from about you and now lie dead and saddening all your life, your Lord can bring happiness and profit to you, can use these disappointments and griefs as nature uses the dead leaves of the autumn to nourish and feed the spring and the coming harvest. Certainly this remains to us all to say: I may bring forth fruit to God, it is open to me to please and gratify Him, it is open to me to make my life worthy of the approval and commendation of Him compared to whose judgment the praise or blame of men is as the bluster of the wind that, once heard, dies out forever. Life may in other respects be sad and dreary; I may be fixed in one cramped and narrow spot all my days, enlivened and stimulated by no change, the same familiar employments palling upon me more drearily every day; I may have to stand out exposed to burning heat or chilling storms, and may long for shelter, for comfort, for ease, for pleasure, but the want of any or all of these ought not to make me think there is no object in my life, no good use I can put it to, no worthily compensating end it will serve. In the assurance of my Lord I mean to abide, that there still and always remains to me the possibility of doing God’s will, and opportunity of satisfying His purpose with me.