
The importance of our abiding in Him…
A Tree Is Known by Its Fruit…
Matthew 12:33-37
The Message
33 “If you grow a healthy tree, you’ll pick healthy fruit. If you grow a diseased tree, you’ll pick worm-eaten fruit. The fruit tells you about the tree.
34-37 “You have minds like a snake pit! How do you suppose what you say is worth anything when you are so foul-minded?
It’s your heart, not the dictionary, that gives meaning to your words.
A good person produces good deeds and words season after season.
An evil person is a blight on the orchard.
Let me tell you something: Every one of these careless words is going to come back to haunt you.
There will be a time of Reckoning. Words are powerful; take them seriously. Words can be your salvation. Words can also be your damnation.”
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Even the Pharisees should have admitted that the Lord had done good by casting out demons.
Yet they accused Him of being evil.
Here He exposes their inconsistency and says, in effect, “Make up your minds.
“If a tree is good, its fruit is good and vice versa.”
Fruit reflects the quality of the tree that produced it.
The fruit of His ministry had been good.
He had healed the sick, the blind, the deaf, and the dumb, had cast out demons and raised the dead.
Could a corrupt tree have produced such good fruit?
Utterly impossible!
Why then did they so stubbornly refuse to acknowledge Him?
12:34, 35 The reason was that they were a brood of vipers.
Their malice against the Son of Man, evidenced by their venomous words, was the outflow of their evil hearts.
A heart filled with goodness will be evidenced by words of grace and righteousness.
A wicked heart expresses itself in blasphemy, bitterness, and abuse.
What if everything we have ever said were to be played back for all to hear?
Jesus reminds us that what we say reveals what is in our hearts.
What kinds of words come from your mouth?
They reveal what is in your heart.
You can’t solve your heart problem, however, just by cleaning up your speech.
You must ask the Holy Spirit to fill you with new attitudes and motives; then your speech will be cleansed at its source.
Jesus solemnly warned them (and us) that people will give account for every idle word they utter.
Because the words people have spoken are an accurate guage of their lives, they will form a suitable basis for condemnation or acquittal.
How great will be the condemnation of the Pharisees for the vile and contemptuous words which they spoke against God’s Holy Son!
SELAH (let us pause and calmly think about these things)
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Sunday, Dec 18
GOD CALLING
by Two Listeners
SEE WONDERS
“For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man…bringeth forth good things: and an evil man…bringeth forth evil things.”
— Matthew 12:34, 35
Think your thought-way into the very heart of My Kingdom.
See there the abundance of delights in my storehouse, and lay eager hands on them.
See wonders, ask wonders, bear wonders away with you.
Remember this beautiful earth on which you are was once only a thought of Divine Mind.
Think how from your thought one corner of it could grow and become the Garden of the Lord, the Bethany-Home for your Master, a place to which I have a right to bring My friends,
My needy ones, for talk and rest with Me.
Now unto Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. Jude 1:24-25
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