Good morning! Anyone starting the morning with healthy fruit today? Lots of great benefits come from fruit and it is an important part of your daily nutrition. Let’s take a look at Words of Encouragement and the fig tree and see what this whole fruit producing thing is about.
For today, I want to take a close look at figs and producing fruit. Let’s start with the parable of the fig tree:
Luke 13:6-9 niv
Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’
“‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’”
In this parable, we can see that the owner of the vineyard is God. The fig tree could be you or me. The gardener is Jesus. Let’s come back to this after we look at the benefits of fruit…the fig.
The Fig Tree produces a sweet and healthy fruit.
A natural result of a healthy fruit tree or plant is that it produces good fruit. If it’s not producing fruit, it is not healthy and productive and not fulfilling its purpose. There is a reason for producing fruit.
Figs are delicate and perishable. They are often dried to preserve them. So it produces a sweet and nutritious dried fruit that can be enjoyed all year round. There are multiple varieties of fig, all of which vary widely in color and texture. The natural sweetness caused it to be used as a sweetener way before the days of refined sugars.
Figs help with high blood pressure, take away the feeling of being hungry, helps in weight loss, builds bone density, helps with digestive wellness (good way of saying it), and has its share of good minerals (potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron and copper and are a good source of antioxidant vitamins A and K).
And you’ve heard of Figgy Pudding, right? I found that Figgy Pudding is actually a sweet development from medieval English sausages. The “fat, spices, and fruits (the best preservatives of their day) were mixed with meats, grains, and vegetables. This was packed into animal stomachs and intestines” to preserve the food for long periods of time.
It’s no wonder carolers used to sing…
“Give us some figgy pudding. We’re not leaving until we get some!”
I doubt many of us would be singing that today!
In the Bible the plant becomes a symbol of prosperity, wellbeing, and security. Along with the vine, to sit under the plentiful shade of your own fig tree is the epitome of safety, peace and wellbeing. Fig plants don’t grow overnight, and it takes time to cultivate and nurture them – their maturity indicates that the gardener has been continuously and steadfastly there, tending to their growth over the years.
Fertilization along with adequate light and water, proper soil conditions — including nutrients — and favorable temperatures all work in concert to shepherd the tree to that stage.
Back to the parable. The Father says the tree isn’t producing fruit, cut it down. But as the gardener, Jesus has shed His blood for our forgiveness. The tree has been given new life. Therefore, it’s been given life-giving sustenance now with the ability to produce good fruit!
A healthy tree produces good fruit
So here’s the deal with a healthy and thriving fig tree, it can’t help but produce good fruit. It’s not forced to produce. It doesn’t have to push itself. It doesn’t have to try harder, grunt more, push harder, or become something it’s not. It’s a natural result or ‘fruit’ if you will, of a healthy functioning tree.
So it is with us. If we are a healthy, functioning person who is walking with Jesus in our every-day-walking-around-kind-of-life, we will naturally produce good fruit. Producing good fruit won’t be something you will be forced to do or have to be told to do. It won’t even be something we have to work harder at doing. “Now Scott, go out there and be more like Jesus or you aren’t a good Christian!” If someone has to tell me that, then it’s not worth saying because it isn’t gonna happen anyway.
Matthew 7:16-20 niv
16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.
By your fruit you will be recognized!
Challenge of the day: Take a step closer to Jesus in your every-day-walking-around-kind-of-life. The closer you get to Him, the more natural you are at being like Him, thus producing good fruit – naturally. So be it!
