Before we begin, I want to correct something I said last week that was scripturally wrong. I said that Jesus laid His deity aside. Jesus never laid His deity aside. He did not stop being Who He was. He was God; He was God the Son, and He is ever God incarnate.
What I should have said was that He laid aside His glory, and He laid aside His right to act as God, submitting Himself to being a servant.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we want to thank You for the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Lord, we thank You that we live in the light of that. That is the truth—not just that He died for us, but also that He rose for You and for us, and now is seated at Your right hand forever, until all nations and all things come down to His feet and bow to Him.
He is rightfully the King, and we bless You for Him. Now, Father, as we come to You, we ask that You would open the Word to us and speak to us from the Word. We pray, Lord, that You would build up Your people through Your Word by the Holy Spirit. We give You this time in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Okay, let us read a few verses this morning. First, we want to read the parable that we were in last time, in Luke 13, beginning with verse 6.
A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit thereon, and found none.
And he said unto the vinedresser, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why doth it also cumber the ground?
And he answering saith unto him, Sir, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it:
And if it bear fruit thenceforth, well; but if not, thou shalt cut it down.—Luke 13:6-9
Then, in Psalm 16, verse 10—again, this is the verse that foretells the resurrection of Christ. It is used by Peter in a sermon in Acts 2.
For thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol.
—Psalm 16:10
Then I would like us to turn to John 14, beginning with verse 16.
And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may be with you for ever,
Even the Spirit of truth: Whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: ye know Him; for He abideth with you, and shall be in you.—John 14:16-17
Now, last time, in looking at this parable, we focused on the owner and what he was looking for. He was looking for fruit. He was looking for figs on a fig tree, and we understood this as the Lord Himself, Who has implanted in us the seed of life—the life of Christ Jesus Himself—in our hearts.
He has implanted that into us. Everyone who is born again, everyone who believes on the Lord Jesus Christ and is born again, receives that life into them. The fruit that the Lord is looking for in our lives as individuals, in our lives collectively as an assembly, and in the life of the church itself, is the life of His Son in us.
He wants to see the very divine nature that was in His Son—not divinity, but the divine nature, as it speaks of in 2 Peter 1. He wants to see that produced and manifested in and through us as His fig tree.
We also talked about the fact that, since He planted it, He expects it. He expects it to be exactly what He planted. For example, I do not know how many of you are gardeners. I do not claim to be a gardener, but I do some gardening.
If you buy something to plant—say, tomatoes—you get a package of tomato seeds. On that package is a picture of a tomato. It shows you what it is supposed to look like. You are laughing. What it is supposed to look like, huh? Yes, because some of you have been gardening and planted them, and they just do not come out that way.
But the whole thing is this: the Lord has implanted into us the life of Christ, and He expects the life of Christ in us to be manifested. There is a consequence for that life not being manifested, for it not growing into full fruit. There is a consequence for it.
We talked about this as a serious thing—not the loss of salvation, but perhaps the loss of vocation or place in the kingdom.
Then finally, when the owner said, “Let us cut it down,” we had the intervention of the vinedresser, who came in and said, “Look, let me deal with this for a while before You cut it down.” That is where we ended. We talked about that as a further grace—not a new grace, but grace magnified to an even greater extent.
A lot of times, we think of the grace of the Lord simply as the blood of Christ for us. But we worshiped this morning around the resurrected Christ, and the resurrected Christ also dispenses more and more grace. He brings us into a fuller—not merely knowledge—but a fuller experience of what that grace is.
One of the ways He does this is as High Priest: He intercedes for us. Where we find ourselves not measuring up, He prays. He prays for us, and He prays the will of God for us. That is the whole key. He is ever praying for us that the will of God would be done in our lives, in our assembly, and in His church.
This morning, I want to focus on the vinedresser and what he does. We talked about intercession. Do you know what the Lord Jesus’ first prayer was when He ascended and took His place as High Priest before the throne of God?
“Send them a Helper. Lord, send them a Helper who will not just be with them, but in them.” That is His first prayer. That is the eternal prayer.
Think about this: He did not say, “Let the Holy Spirit fall upon them for this time that they need.” He said, “No. Let Him come and dwell in them.” This is His prayer for us.
So we want to look this morning at the vinedresser as a picture of the Holy Spirit. He would give us another Helper to be with us and to dwell in us. It is the Holy Spirit Who was sent to do the digging and the dunging.
Now, I put “dunging” there because Kenny always uses alliteration, so I thought I would use alliteration. We have two Ds there, okay?
When we think about this, it is the Holy Spirit Who is working in us to work out the life of Christ in us and through us. He does this by working in us to will and to do of His good pleasure. This is the ministry of the Holy Spirit Who dwells in us.
A lot of us—I remember when I was a young Christian—grew up as Catholics. You know: Father, Son, Holy Ghost. But for a long while as a young Christian, you just think you are on your own. Jesus has shed His blood for you; now you go and make do as you can. You try to please God.
I remember reading books that started to talk about the Holy Spirit. My younger brother and I were reading the same books, and we called the man who led us to the Lord. We said, “What is this? What is the Holy Spirit?” He came over and shared with us.
It was almost like those disciples Paul met when he came to Ephesus. He asked, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit?” They said, “We did not even know there was a Holy Spirit.” Well, I knew there was a Holy Spirit, but who knows what He is?
We had been reading a book by Ray Stedman. He talked about having a car. A car has an engine in it, but a lot of us are like people who drive a car without using the engine.
For those of us who are old, remember The Flintstones? Remember their car? It ran by foot power. A lot of us live our Christian life that way. We live it under our own power, trying to do things in our own strength.
You open the hood and say, “Oh, what the heck is that?” It is an engine. “What do you do?” Well, you turn on the key, and it goes. Then you learn. But the whole thing is that there is another power—not just your power.
But I am not here just to talk about power. We want to talk about the Holy Spirit working in us to will and to do.
There are so many ways we think about the Holy Spirit that are wrong. We think of Him as an influence. He is not an influence. He is the third Person of the Trinity. He is God.
The Holy Spirit is as much God as Jesus is God, and as much as the Father is God. He is God. He is equal.
He was not sent to us merely to make suggestions. You know, when you retire, you become a consultant. “Well, if you do this, things will work out right.” He is not a consultant, just guiding you on your way: “I need to fix this up, and I will see you in another three months. We will see how it is going.” That is not it.
When the Lord prayed, “Send them another Helper,” He did not send Him as an influence or a consultant. He sent Him into us to be Lord.
He is to be Lord over the whole redemption of our souls and our bodies. He is the One Who is leading it, and He must be Lord. He is to have complete sway over us, just like the gardener, when he says, “I am going to dig and dung.” He has complete sway over that fig tree. It is his work that is going to revive it.
I remember, as a young Christian growing up in Southern California during the Jesus movement, hearing about Jack Hayford. I do not know whether you are familiar with him. Jack Hayford was a very popular pastor at Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California.
He did a series on Nehemiah, and when he was doing the series, he likened Nehemiah to the Holy Spirit. Nehemiah, in this picture, was sent to rebuild Jerusalem and rebuild the wall. This is the Holy Spirit’s work.
The Holy Spirit knows everything that is going on, but Nehemiah went in with his eyes wide open. He surveyed everything. In Nehemiah 2, he goes secretly through the city at night, looking at all these places.
Then, in verses 17 and 18, he says, in effect, “Look, I know the condition. I know your condition.” He does not give a word of woe. Instead, he says, “I have been commissioned by God, and even the king of Persia has given me everything that is needed to do this job.”
“What I am asking you to do is cooperate with me. Cooperate with me in doing this, because I am here to do this. I have been sent to do this.”
The Lord comes in, and He wants our cooperation in His work. God’s King has His wealth and power at His fingertips, so to speak, but He is saying, “You have to cooperate with Me. I will not force this work. You have to cooperate.”
When we look at the ministry of the Holy Spirit as seen in the vinedresser of Luke’s parable, he says, “Let me dig around it,” and then, “Let me spread dung.” I think that is the King James Version.
We want to look at these two things: digging and dunging. When you go home tonight, you can say, “What was Jim talking about?” “He talked to us about dung.” I am sorry; I should not even say that.
Now, when we talk about digging, he is not talking about digging a hole. He is really talking about cultivating: “I am going to cultivate around here.”
What he is saying is, “I am going to cultivate in order to encourage, nurture, and maintain growth in the plant so that it produces fruit.” And it is not just fruit; it is mature fruit. It is fruit all the way to its rightful end, so that it looks like that thing on the package.
I want to draw an analogy here. A gardener has tools. Now, I am not talking about a guy with a lawn business. I am talking about regular guys who go into their garage and, once in a while, go out and putter around the yard.
Again, I am not talking about taking care of your lawn or trimming hedges. My wife had wanted a garden for years. I am not a finesse guy, but I said, “Okay.” I cleared a little plot down the driveway, about yay wide, and it went all the way down the driveway. Then we planted some plants.
When I tend that little garden, I use certain tools. I want to liken those tools to what the Holy Spirit most often uses when He is redeeming us, when He is saving our souls.
He uses the Word of God to instruct us, convict us, direct us, warn us, and encourage us. He uses the Word of God as almost His main tool.
But He also uses people. It could be family members—mother and father, sisters and brothers. He uses the assembly, brothers and sisters in the assembly. He uses them to speak into our lives. Because they have relationship with us, they are able to speak into our lives.
This is like the Old Testament times. The people had the Law, and if the Law did not get to them, the Lord sent prophets. He sent people. They were not special in any sense except that the Lord spoke through them. That is what made them special.
Then sometimes, when other things do not seem to work, He uses circumstances. He uses circumstances to shake things up, so that we get our minds away from ourselves and see, “Oh, God is trying to talk to me.” So He uses our circumstances.
How does this relate to gardening tools? Well, I want to talk about three tools I use when I am gardening.
First, there is a cultivating rake. It is a regular rake, about so high, and on the end it has four prongs. They are longer—about as long as my index finger, about three inches.
Then I use a weed trowel, which is like a shovel. It starts out about as wide as my forefingers, then tapers down to a point. It is about seven and a half inches long. It is longer than the cultivating rake, and it has a handle, which makes it look bigger, but the trowel itself is only about seven and a half inches long.
Then, if I have to do something drastic, I have a pitchfork or a shovel. That is for when I have to do something drastic to those plants.
These tools are interchangeable with the Holy Spirit. In other words, the Spirit uses all these tools too. Sometimes He uses the Word as a cultivating rake. Sometimes He uses the Word as a weed trowel. Sometimes He uses the Word as a pitchfork.
Well, actually, I am going to take that back. It is circumstances, really, that are like a pitchfork or a shovel. Sometimes He uses the weed trowel in the same way. It could be people; it could be the Word. However the Lord is dealing with us, that is what He uses—whatever is best.
Let us look at the cultivating rake. My cultivating rake, as I said, is only about three inches long. It is used for the upper soil, the topsoil. It does not go very deep.
After a week or so, when you water and so on, the soil starts to crust over on top. Sometimes you see weeds beginning to pop up through the surface. You take that cultivating rake and turn the soil over. You go around the plant, raking here and there.
That does a couple of things. First, it loosens the soil itself. When soil gets clotted up, nutrients do not come out of it. So you are making it so that things flow better.
You are also making it so that, if you are watering—especially if you put a hose down at one end and let it trickle so everything gets watered slowly—anything in the path that would keep water from getting to the other plants is taken away. You cultivate it away.
Another thing it does is this: all those little weeds that have started to grow, whose root systems are not yet very deep, are loosened and brought to the surface. You can just pick them up. It is not drastic; you just pick them up.
It also turns the soil so that the soil underneath suddenly gets air and sunlight. It reactivates the nutrients in it that the plant needs to grow.
The Lord uses the Word and other Christians to point out things in us that are causing us not to be fruitful, not to be in the place where our lives are being transformed. He might point out habits that need to be changed. Again, these are things toward the surface.
They are readily seen. Sometimes you just notice them and say, “Hey, man, the Lord is showing me this. It needs to be taken care of.” There are habits that are problems.
He is doing preemptive strikes on things, like little weeds. If you let them grow, they will entangle with the roots of your plant and choke off the life so that it does not bear fruit to maturity. That is from the parable of the sower in Luke.
One of the things the Lord says is, “Do not be entangled with certain things. Do not be entangled with the world and such.” As the Lord goes through, He points these things out. A brother might point something out. A sister might point something out. Your dad or mom might point something out. Someone at school might say, “You are doing too much of this, and you are not doing the other things.”
Then all of a sudden, you get conviction in your heart. Well, that is the Lord working in you. The Lord has that little cultivator working, okay?
He is not nitpicking. Especially when we are young, we may think, “Oh, I cannot do this, and I cannot do that.” It is not that kind of nitpicking: “You should not do that. You are a Christian. You should not do this.”
But there are things the Lord is saying: “I am making way into your life. I am not just picking on this thing and that thing. If you look at this, it is actually putting a wedge between you and Me, and we want to get that out of here.” We have to be able to see that.
The turning over of that soil in our lives is one way He begins to renew us. He renews us back to spiritual and heavenly things, and it reawakens us.
I think that is often what happens at conferences, especially youth conferences. These are times when the Lord takes that cultivating rake and starts turning things over and exposing things. Suddenly, people say, “Oh, wow. Lord, I see that. I agree with You. It needs to be taken out.”
“This needs to be changed. Oh, Lord, I am so glad You opened me up. I had forgotten what heaven is like. I had forgotten to look up to heaven. I have not seen You in Your Word, and I have been wondering why. It is because of this.” All these things are the cultivating rake.
Now, the weed trowel is longer, and so it goes deeper. Not only that, when I am using the cultivating rake, I am standing up here. I am far away from the plants, doing my stuff.
With the weed trowel, you have to get down on your knees. You get close to those darling plants you are taking care of. You start to go beneath the topsoil and down into the inner court—even, we could say, into our holiest place, our heart of hearts.
There might be things in there that are blocking the way to fruit, blocking you from becoming fruitful. This weed trowel is really an intimate tool.
When I say “intimate,” I looked it up. It said that intimate means close and friendly. Now, friendly: let us make a distinction between a friend and friendly.
A friend is not necessarily always friendly, because Proverbs 27:6 says:
Faithful are the wounds of a friend.
—Proverbs 27:6
I found another translation that said, “The wounds of a friend can be trusted.” That is a good translation. The wounds of a friend can be trusted. The whole thing is, you have somebody who is faithful—a friend, somebody who cares about you.
Men have few friends. Women, they have no problems. I covet that relational thing you ladies have that us brothers do not. We are solitary men. We do not want to share things.
I am not talking about going around and having a sharing time, sharing ourselves. But we do not share the things that are in our hearts.
I have used this story before. When I first got married, I would talk to Jerry, who lived in San Diego—Jerry Leinberger. I talked to him every week. I would call him up and talk to him.
One day, I was talking to him in the kitchen. I looked around, and Barb was sitting right around the wall, listening. I said, “What are you doing?” She said, “This is the only time I get to know what is really on your heart.”
That is the way men are. The Lord says, “I want to be intimate with you.” We men have intimacy problems in relationships, even with one another. It is more than talking sports. It is really letting somebody know what is going on with you. It is almost like a sign of weakness.
But here the Lord says, “I am intimate with you, and I want to touch those things that are deep, those things that have to be dealt with.” There is something scary about that. “Oh, no, these are going to be revealed.”
But if it is intimate, it is private and personal. It is meant for you and the Friend. Last week’s opening talked about Jesus being our Friend. Here we have Him as a Friend, and He is coming as a Friend.
That trowel is used to get down to the root of the weed. If you just pull off the top, you have a cosmetic fix.
Brothers and sisters, how many of us come to meetings or gatherings, wherever saints are, and make sure we have our cosmetic fix? But there comes a time when something happens and the flesh is hit. Suddenly, what is really in you comes out.
There is an old story about a young pastor preaching a sermon. In the front row were these old Scottish presbyters. One older presbyter could not hear that well, so he was talking to himself as the young man preached.
He said, “Oh, yes, that is McLaren. That is McLaren.” The young preacher kept talking. “Oh, yes, yes, yes. That is Spurgeon. That is Spurgeon.” He kept going. “Oh, oh, that is Gregory. That is Gregory.”
Finally, the young man got mad and said something to him. The old presbyter said, “Oh, that is him.”
Well, those things happen. They are the roots that are down there.
The Holy Spirit is the One Who searches our hearts. He is the One Who searches. I want to make that very clear, because it is not us going in and looking for stuff. The Holy Spirit goes and searches because He knows what He is looking for.
He is going for the root of things. He does not want merely to pull off the top; He is going for the root.
Sometimes the Holy Spirit uses the Word to search us. Sometimes a brother or sister will do or say something that brings a thing out, and suddenly the Holy Spirit is revealing it to you: “I want to deal with this in you.”
It is not something of our choosing. It is like saying, “I want to choose my cross.” No, you do not choose your cross; you are given your cross. The same thing is true here. When the Lord starts looking and dealing with you, He chooses the things He wants to deal with.
His order is the key to the things He will do later on. He knows what He is doing.
The Holy Spirit searches our hearts and makes us aware of things competing for our heart’s affection—things seeking a throne in our lives.
The enemy wants us to compartmentalize our lives. “This is my family time. This is my work time. This is my time for the Lord. This is my leisure time.” We have all these compartments, and they do not overlap.
Of course, we can always squeeze the Lord’s time out, right? “Oh, no, I have a little more leisure here,” or “I have more work to do.” The enemy wants us to compartmentalize our lives and seek life from a different source.
The Holy Spirit is going for those roots—the things that capture your heart and your will to serve them. The trowel probes down to the roots of other things that are growing, so that we may recognize what they are and they can be removed.
They have to be removed with our permission. We always have to bow the knee. He does not grab them from us.
There are roots in us that are deep. Some things we do not think of as open sin. We think of hidden things. We can be whitewashed sepulchres on the front, but full of dead men’s bones. There are a lot of dead men’s bones in me, and the Lord has to dig them out.
Some of those roots in the old man are roots of bitterness, unforgiveness, rebellion, deep-seated lust, ambition to be somebody, and things that we do not agree with God are sin. God says they are sin, but we say, “No, no, no, that is not sin.”
The Lord is digging these things out with that trowel. He is getting down to the bottom of them because He wants to remove them so that we are in harmony with Him, and so that the root of the plant is free to take the nourishment it is meant to have and come to full fruit.
Now, the shovel or the pitchfork: the main thing I use that for is when I have to replant something, or when I simply have to dig it out and replace it.
The only time I really see the Lord using this is when Israel went into exile. “I have to replant them. I have to plant them somewhere else, and then I will bring them back.” It is like saying, “I have to bring them to the greenhouse, get them healthy again, and then I can replant them.”
So those are the tools of gardening.
Now, the other action the vinedresser took was that he spread dung. We want to look at this dung, manure, fertilizer—however you want to call it. What is it? Not what is it in its makeup, but what is its value?
Dung is a source of food, of nutrients. Dung is also a source of warmth. That is really weird, is it not? But let us explain these things.
The Holy Spirit feeds us and brings an atmosphere for growth and fruit-bearing through the Word of God and through His people.
Consider the Word. This is important: the vinedresser did not just throw dung on the ground. Farmers in those days mixed dung with straw, and then they spread it around.
I thought, “Man, that is really weird.” A neighbor of mine redid his lawn. They put in topsoil, put manure on top, and then spread it with straw. I thought, “Now, that is so weird. That is never going to grow.”
I asked them, “Why do you put straw on this?” The gardener, the landscaper who was doing it, said, “Straw does a couple of things. First, it keeps the birds from getting the seed.”
“But as far as helping the plant, it helps retain moisture. It helps keep that moisture so that energy can be replenished, so that life can be replenished.”
“The other thing it does is allow things to breathe. The straw spreads out. If you look at my fingers like this, there are holes in them, right? There are pockets of air for things to breathe, because to live, you need air.”
With that in mind, when we talk about the Lord using the Word, He does not use the Word alone. He uses the Word with something.
Now, I am not saying the mixture is other people’s teachings. We might say, “Oh, yes, we will read a spiritual book. We read some Watchman Nee, or we read some F. B. Meyer.” But that is not really the mixture. It is not mixing the Word with other people’s teachings.
It is the Word mixed with faith. It is mixed with faith.
When we look at the Word, a lot of times we look at it simply as spiritual knowledge. All we want is spiritual knowledge. The Lord says, “Yes, spiritual knowledge is good, but there are words I am speaking to you that you need to act upon.”
Those are things that He quickens to us and makes known to us. Perhaps a brother or sister comes up and says, “You know, I have a word for you.” Remember in the charismatic days, someone would say, “I have a word for you.”
But the whole thing is that there is a word that calls for a response. That is why it is so important, especially for younger Christians, to read the Word.
As you begin gathering the Word, you may not even know that you know something. But in a time of stress or something like that, suddenly a verse comes to you because you have been reading the Word. The Lord says, “This is the verse. Act on it.”
Even with some things that are doctrine, we act on them. As we respond to the Word in this way, as the Word speaks to us and says, “I want you to respond to this,” we grow in the knowledge of the Lord by experience.
We experience Him fulfilling what He has said. We experience Him leading us in a way. We experience His provision for us in certain times. We experience this through steps of faith and obedience to that Word.
Let me give you an example. One time, when I was really messed up in my walk with the Lord, I was saying, “I cannot get back.” The Lord gave me a word. It was Revelation 3:8:
Behold, I have set before thee a door opened, which none can shut.
—Revelation 3:8
I was in the place of saying, “Lord, I cannot get back to You. I do not know how. Are You just going to leave me for dead?” Then the Lord gave me that verse.
Now, I could have said, “Oh, that is a wonderful verse,” and taken it home saying, “Oh, that is just beautiful.” But the Lord was saying, “Now I want you to act on it. I have given you an open door. What are you going to do? Come to Me.”
“Come to Me. I am letting you know that the door is open to you. I have not shut the door on you. Come to Me.”
There is the faith. When I came and said, “Oh, Lord,” and came to the place of realizing, “Oh, You accept me,” suddenly I could get up.
It is like the man in John 5 who had all these things against him. Someone else was always going down before him, and he had all these things against him. The Lord said, “Arise, take up thy bed, and walk.”
The Lord had that word for him. It pierced right through all the things that were against him and said, “It is not about those things that are against you. It is about what I have said. The power is with Me. The grace is with Me. I want to give these things to you.”
“Now the door is open. Respond.”
That is one example. Lenny Amato talked about the time the Lord told him to go to that young lady, and he responded. He went to the young lady, and suddenly the Lord was trying to do something.
We are not simply gatherers of spiritual knowledge. We are to walk in the light of the Word as He gives us that light to walk in.
It is not that we want the light as much as we want the life. The light does not do enough for me. I need the life that is behind the light.
Do you know what it says about Jesus? It says:
In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.
—John 1:4
His life. That is the whole thing the Lord is after. What is the fruit? It is the life of His Son in us. We receive it as the Lord opens the Word to us.
The Word is also mixed with the life of your brothers and sisters. I want to say that it is not just that we go to a Bible study and share with one another.
There are times when we observe in our brothers and sisters the life of Christ. It is unbeknownst to them, because if they knew it, they would be so proud. But they do not know it, and you see things.
All of a sudden, you see somebody laying down their life. You see somebody suffering as Christ suffered.
Let me use an example I have used before. When I was on tour with the Trotters, there was a guy who was really psychologically, and I think spiritually, oppressed. He was wearing me out, just wearing me out.
They roomed me with him because, as a Christian, I did not go out during the disco times and dance with the rest of the guys. So this guy was just wearing me out.
We got to Sydney, Australia, and he was dragging me around. I had to keep my eye on him for his own safety because he was doing weird stuff. He dragged me—almost literally—through the door of a place that happened to be Teen Challenge.
Remember, Teen Challenge was a street ministry that saved a lot of people from the streets, drugs, and things like that. Was that Nicky Cruz? Who was Teen Challenge? David Wilkerson? David Wilkerson, yes.
I got in there, and there was this fellow about this tall, with a beard. He was not much older than me. I was twenty-two, and he was probably about twenty-eight or twenty-nine. He was from Belgium. His name was Karel Herman.
He took George, and he gave me rest from George for that whole week. Do you not think that was him washing my feet and refreshing me?
It was not just having George off my plate. This brother encouraged me in the Lord. When we left Sydney, I was strengthened and helped.
We have brothers and sisters whom the Lord uses to help us. When you are worn out, you are not much good at anything. Here was a brother, and I know he did not know what he was doing for me, but boy, what a help.
The other thing fertilizer does—and this is really important, because I think we skip over it a lot—is produce warmth. Warmth.
Warmth comes through the communion of the saints. The communion of the saints is where we communicate life to one another. Life is communicated.
It is not just the community at large. Individuals make up the community. That is where we get our warmth from.
Our warmth is not simply because we are here with all these people. I can hide in a crowd, and you can all be cold to me. But warmth, from the Lord’s side, is intentional.
It comes by relating to one another. As I said, I think men have the hardest time doing that. Sisters, you are blessed. You relate easily for some reason. But as men, we do not. There is often a lack of warmth.
I am not here to harp on that, but I will say this: the way warmth comes is through the Lord’s affection for His people. He uses the touch of connection.
You connect with another brother or another sister.
Have you ever noticed a brick building? When they build it, the bricks at the bottom are all lined up. Then the next row of bricks is staggered.
Even at the bottom, a brick has a brick here, a brick here, a brick here, and a brick there. It touches four others. If you are in the middle of the building, you have bricks around you; at least you are touching six. But you are connected.
As you are being built together, you are being connected. You are connected with people below you, people who are your peers on the same level, and people above you.
This is what it means to be in the building of the house of God. There is supposed to be a connection between us, and it is intentional that you are connected.
What does that do to the person who is being reached out to? I can tell you from experience, and I think you know it too: it communicates the reality of the body. There is a real body.
It communicates relatedness. We are not only related in Christ; we are related in locality, and we are related in needs.
It creates bonds—bonds of love, which is the perfect bond of unity.
When we are looking at being put together, this opens doors, especially when I am thinking about reaching out in youth work. A lot of these kids go to fellowships where they are the only young people, and they have to relate with all these old people. That is tough.
But when a brother—especially an older brother—reaches out, it opens the door for the Lord to use you as a vessel to speak into another person’s life.
It may be a word of encouragement, admonition, or correction. It may be saying, “I see these things in you. Maybe you should be thinking about giving an opening,” or something like that.
The important thing is that younger brothers see that you are relatable. You are relatable. There needs to be that in the body, especially among older and younger brothers. I see this everywhere.
Think about Paul. Paul has to be one of the hardest people to have a relationship with. He was so adamant and zealous. He was so zealous that he said to Mark, “Just go home. You are holding me up.”
Yet what do we find years later? He is seeking out a young man. If we read the epistles, he has a number of young men he reached out to and brought along.
Because of his reaching out, they found they were being trained for ministry. What does he say to Timothy? “You know my teaching. You know my manner of life.” You know it because I have let you in.
You have taken me up on that. I have opened the door, and you have come on in.
So we are to be connected to some. We are not asked to be related to everybody in the fellowship. My gosh, no. We are asked to be related to some.
This is not just the Holy Spirit’s work in an individual. The Holy Spirit is bringing the whole assembly, the whole church, into this very thing: warmth.
It is a warmth of affection. I am not talking about “Oh, I just want to hug you” affection. It is affectionate in the sense that, “I care for you. I care for you.”
My generation grew up asking, “Did your dad hug you?” No, my dad did not hug me—maybe when I was a little kid. But growing up, when I was a teenager, my dad never hugged me.
But the whole thing is not that kind of thing. I knew my dad cared for me. He provided for me. He provided me a place.
So, concluding here: what about the fig tree? Does the fig tree just do nothing? “Oh, that is what grace is. We do nothing.” No, there is something.
I want to give you an example from my own garden, and you tell me what the fig tree does.
Barb’s favorite flowers are peonies. Down by our mailbox, I had a big pot, and we had peonies. They would start to bud, and just as they were about to open, they would turn black and die.
This happened for years. That shows you what a good gardener I am. But we observed it and thought, “This is so weird.” So I said, “Let us plant it somewhere else.”
We took it to the side of the house where there was more shade. I planted it, put potting soil around it so the roots could get out and spread, put topsoil on top, gave it vitamin B1 to stop transplant shock, and watered it.
That year, it bloomed. It had nine flowers, and they were about the size of the palm of my hand. Peonies are so full and beautiful. Ours were white, and some were pink.
All of a sudden, it got into a new place. Boom—that was what it needed. Who would have thought?
Then, on that little strip I dug, I bought some tomatoes. We also got a gardenia from Gourmet Garden. They had them on the table and were giving them away. Barb said, “Why do not you plant it?” So I planted it.
Gardenias have such a fragrant smell. It is just a beautiful smell. But this thing never flowered. “What is wrong with this thing?”
Our tomatoes got to be about this big and never turned red. “What the heck is the matter?”
One day, I was going to Lowe’s to get some tools or topsoil. Raina Ford had said something to me, so I mentioned, “My gardenia does not bloom.” She said, “Just put some Miracle-Gro on it.”
I was in Lowe’s and passed a little stand with Miracle-Gro. I thought, “Oh, what the heck?” So I got some. Every three days, when I watered, I put water with Miracle-Gro on it.
What does Miracle-Gro do, anyway? It is fertilizer.
Lo and behold, the gardenia bloomed. Lo and behold, this year we ate some of our tomatoes.
Now, you tell me: what was the plant’s role in all this? I fertilized it. I replanted it. What did the plant do?
It responded.
Brothers and sisters, what the Lord asks us to do as He is working in our lives with these tools and with this fertilizing is simply to respond. All He is saying is, “Respond.”
“All I am looking for is for you to respond to Me. Because if you respond to Me, you will bloom.”
“If you respond to Me, you will find the life that I have meant you to have. It will go through you, and others will see the beauty. They will say, ‘Who did this?’”
My plants will not say, “Oh, thank you, Jim, for replanting me. Oh, Jim, thank you for getting that Miracle-Gro.” Rather, people will see, and they will give glory to God.
That is what God desires. He desires everybody to see His glory. In seeing His glory in those plants—there is nothing like the glory of a peony—and yet the glory that we are going to have does not even compare.
So, brothers and sisters, the end is this: the Lord is doing these things. He has commissioned the Holy Spirit to come in and work in us to will and to work His good pleasure.
Let us respond to His nudging us. Let us be like Nehemiah, who says, “I have got everything you need. Let us cooperate.” Let us cooperate with Him and bring our heavenly Father and our glorious Lord Jesus the glory due to Their name.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we are grateful that You do not leave us for dead, but You dig around us and You spread dung.
Oh, Lord, how we thank You that just because You died, You are not finished with us. You are working with us.
Thank You, O Lord Jesus, that You pray for the will of God to be done in us. Thank You that You asked the Father, and He sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts to will and to work Your good pleasure.
Oh, Lord, all we want to do is cooperate with You. So, Lord, as we begin to realize that You are working in our lives—You are pruning, raking, dunging, and digging—help us to respond to You and go with You.
We do not want to kick against the goads, but we want to go with You. Lord, we ask that You would help us in doing this. Give us that grace in Jesus’ name. Amen.