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Remember this pop folk song from the 1960's?
When I was just a lad of ten, my father said to me,
Come here and learn a lesson from the lovely lemon tree.
Don't put your faith in love, my boy, my father said to me,
I fear you'll find that love is like the lovely lemon tree.
Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.
Of course, the problem is that Peter, Paul, and Mary, and whoever else might be behind these lyrics are talking about a different kind of love. “Don't put your faith in love, my boy” is talking purely about romantic love between a man and a woman. The song is actually fatalistic and sad, because the song ends with the message that another person's love and affection cannot be trusted. If one falls in love with another, one is almost destined to be betrayed: “She left me for another, it's a common tale, but true, an older man, but wiser now, I sing these words to you…”
The lyrics tell us not to put our faith in love. If we want to talk about the romantic type of love, that would be true. Any love that is dependent upon us sinners is doomed to be imperfect and incomplete at best. Bad trees produce bad fruit. Lemon trees produce lemons. Lemons and lemon trees have their good points, but in the end, the sour taste of the fruit is quite hard to handle and leaves one with lips puckered — “impossible to eat”. There is a reason that a car or any product that fails to run properly after being purchased is called a “lemon”. It leaves a sour taste.
So if you tried to live your life and gain your daily sustenance off of a bad tree that produces only bad fruit, you are destined to die sooner rather than later.
There are so many bad trees that we all pick fruit from. Too many lovely lemon trees are out there today. They are the pseudo–prophets Jesus warns about — the false preachers of this world who dress in sheep's clothing, who look like lovely people and seem to say the right words and use the right name and have beautiful activities to get involved with. But in reality, they are plundering, ravenous wolves who seek to rob us of life, who kill and destroy. They are the trees that bear only evil fruit that, as Jesus promises not once but twice in this Gospel lesson for our benefit, we will be able to perceive and recognize them by.
Where do we begin in this day and age with so much evil fruit producing trees, so many false, pseudo–prophets and teachers out there?
We begin with ourselves. Without the saving grace and work of the Holy Spirit in our baptism, you and I are lost and condemned creatures, thoroughly and wholly corrupted by sin and the power of the devil. From our conception, we have been sinful, the Psalmist says, unable to do anything on our own that pleases God in any way. We took that fruit which God forbade in the garden. We wanted that knowledge of good and evil for ourselves. We did not want to trust God above and beyond all things to care for us and do what is right for us, and so, we ate that fruit, wanting to care for and look out for ourselves. Whether Adam and Eve in the garden, or all of our daily sinfulness today, we continue to eat that fruit that is so bad for us. The wages of eating that fruit is death, temporal and eternal.
We are false, pseudo–prophets unto ourselves. We will sit back and think we can handle things ourselves. We will try to think and act our own way out of every situation and every trouble that confronts us before sitting patiently at the feet of God's Word and God's Preaching and listening to what God promises to do for us.
We are false, pseudo–prophets to our neighbors and fellow Christians. We are good at convincing ourselves that, due to our stations in life, due to our life experiences and education, due to our superior reasoning, we must know better how things should go in God's Kingdom than God's Word tells us they should go.
Some examples: God's Word tells us to preach the Gospel in its truth and purity to the children of God of all ages. God's Word tells us that catechesis in the Christian faith is a lifelong process that does not end with some confirmation class. God's Word tells us that receiving by faith the Gospel in not just preaching but in the other and equally valid Means of Grace found in Holy Baptism, the Lord's Supper and in Holy Absolution are necessary for sustaining the saints in this mortal life and bringing them to eternal life, that these holy things of God are not just options like foods on a buffet line.
But what do we do? We despise preaching and do not trust the power of the Gospel. Too many think they do not need their children to be baptized. Too many think they do not need the Lord's Supper. Too many think children do not “get anything” out of the Divine Service, out of hearing God's Gospel Word proclaimed, and too many feel the same way about unbelievers in mission fields here and overseas — that we need to dumb down the liturgy, hymnody, and messages from God's Word that He calls us and gives us to pray, sing, and hear; that we need to hide the Sacrament and just preach to them effectively and “winsomely”; that we should be more “friendly” and “seeker–sensitive”.
The fruit borne of this false prophecy of our day and age is deadly. It is generations of children who do not know or understand how to pray, why we sing the Gospel in the hymnody to each other, who do not have the basic understanding of who Jesus is and what He has done for them and is doing for them even now in His Means of Grace. It means generations of people who, when they are on death's bed, may not have anything of the Christian faith to fall back on — no Bible verses learned, no catechism learned, no prayers learned, no hymns learned.
Those who participate in such false prophecy might be saying or even singing “Lord, Lord”. We might have the name right or some of the words right, but if we are not doing the will of the Heavenly Father and preaching and confessing the whole and unvarnished Gospel to those around us — to all ages and backgrounds — if we bow to our reasoning and not to God's Word in these matters, we are speaking a false salvation and replacing God's Word with our own. Woe to them in that day, who have not had total and complete faith in Christ and our Heavenly Father above and beyond all things. It would be better to have that millstone tied around the neck and be cast into the depths of the sea than to cause one of our Lord's little ones to stumble. “I never knew you, depart from me you who are workers of lawlessness,” Jesus will confess to us.
Then, we hear the pseudo–prophets of this culture. The evil fruit of lust and the passions of our desires constantly tempt us. So many are addicted to everything but the things of God, often at the expense of their neighbors. Materialism, food, alcohol, drugs, and pornography are the prominent pseudo–prophets, the wolves dressed in sheep's clothing, the attractive fruit of the lovely lemon trees of our day. They each look attractive. They each offer an escape from the troubles of this life. They each offer something that we think we do not have, but that we think we need.
In the end, we false–preach ourselves into trouble, and too often, we go for the fruit that is deadly for us. It is worship of the self and believing that we can obtain for ourselves what God has not given to us. These all lead to terrible consequences: broken marriages and homes, broken families, broken friendships. It is no accident that the Greek word for “bad” fruit in our Gospel lesson that Jesus uses, which is actually better translated “evil” fruit, is ponerous (po–ner–roose). In that word, you can hear a root word of our current “pornography”. Evil fruit comes from rotten trees.
There is not time to describe all of the lemon trees, all of the false prophets of this day and age. From Christian preachers who ignore and skip over the Gospel to the wolves of Islam, Mormonism, and Scientology, to the ugly and self–idolatrous trees of secularism, moral relativism, homosexuality, and all the other evil fruits that bare themselves to us and tempt us. The picture is bleak. We cannot on our own see the forest for the trees, and we certainly cannot on our own find a tree that is good for us, that has good fruit.
What do we do? Do we give up and give in, try to live as long as we can off the bad fruit? No. Instead, we must humble ourselves, and ask God that we would hear His voice alone, that He would drown out and turn off our sinful voice of false preaching to ourselves and to others. Repent O lost and evil generation. Repent of listening to false prophets, to the pseudo preaching of this world. Repent of actually being a false prophet and pseudo preacher to yourselves and to others.
Repent, humble yourselves, and behold the fact that God has brought to you a tree of life. Here it is: the cross of our crucified Lord Jesus Christ. Look in faith to the tree of life with the only and every good fruit that exists and live. Repent and look, you who are stung by sin, death, and Satan, to this life giving tree that has been raised up by God to give you life through its fruit.
Jesus Christ is the tree of life, with every good. He is the good tree that bears good fruit that can be trusted and that can give true life. His arms were raised here on the cross, much like the limbs of a tree, and He bore good fruit. Water and blood poured from His side and His wounds, and they give life to the world. This is no lemon tree. It is fruit that is sweet, that refreshes, renews, and makes us holy and right before God. We know the fruit is good, because God the Father raised His Son from the dead. So, that fruit is a living and eternal fruit that will not ever be corrupted, that cannot die.
From this tree, our Heavenly Father washes us in the font, tells us we are forgiven from this pulpit, and feeds us the fruit of salvation in His Son's body and blood here at this altar and rail. God's kingdom comes and His will is done continually, because He keeps invading our lives and planting His Good Tree and its Good Fruit right here in our midst in the Divine Service. We do not have to go back in time to find that tree. Nor do we have to hope to receive its blessing. Nor do we have to earn that fruit.
Instead, God keeps planting it all down right in front of us, raining the Good Fruit of Jesus Christ right onto us. We receive it all with faith, and give thanks, and faith says a loud “Amen”. Then, we turn by faith in Christ to the neighbor and extend the good fruit of Christ to our neighbor in need. In effect, we become in Christ good fruit to our neighbor, seeking to confess the pure Gospel to them and share with them the life giving fruit of the Divine Service. When God feeds us with the fruit of our Lord Jesus Christ, the fruits of His Holy Spirit become manifest in us. We become trees in Christ's body that bear His fruit to the world.
How much better and pleasant it is to contemplate the fruits of life in Christ, the grapes and figs and other sweet fruits that God gives, than to always be picking the lemons. Don't put your faith in lemons or wolves, dear children of God, our Father says to us, Instead, look in faith to the sweet tree of life with every good fruit given to us to eat and be truly satisfied: our crucified, resurrected, and ascended Lord Jesus Christ. God grant us this by His grace now and forever. Amen.
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