He came 'seeking fruit.' Now I may just notice, in passing, how
pathetically and beautifully this incident suggests to us the true,
dependent, weak manhood of that great Lord. In all probability He had
just come from the home of Mary and Martha, and it is strange that
having left their hospitable abode He should be 'an hungered.' But so
it was. And even with all the weight of the coming crisis pressing
upon His soul, He was conscious of physical necessities, as one of us
might have been, and perhaps felt the more need for sustenance because
so terrible a conflict was waiting Him. Nor, I think, need we shrink
from recognising another of the characteristics of humanity here, in
the limitations of His knowledge and in the real expectation, which
was disappointed, that He might find fruit where there were leaves. I
do not want to plunge into depths far too deep for any man to find
sure footing in, nor seek to define the undefinable, nor to explain
how the divine inosculates with the human, but sure I am that Jesus
Christ was not getting up a scene in order to make a parable out of
His miracle; and that the hunger and the expectancy and the
disappointment were all real, however they afterwards may have been
turned by Him to a symbolical purpose. And so here we may see the weak
Christ, the limited Christ, the true human Christ. But side by side,
as is ever the case, with this manifestation of weakness, there comes
an apocalypse of power. Wherever you have, in the history of our Lord,
some signal exemplification of human infirmity, you have flashed out
through 'the veil, that is, His flesh,' some beam of His glory. Thus
this hungry Man could say, 'No fruit grow on thee henceforward for
ever'; and His bare word, the mere forth-putting and manifestation of
His will, had power on material things. That is the sign and impress
of divinity.
But I pass from that, which is not my special point now. What did
Christ seek? 'Fruit.' And what is fruit in contradistinction to
leaves? Character and conduct like His. That is our fruit. All else is
leafage. As the Apostle says, 'Love, joy, hope, peace, righteousness
in the Holy Ghost'; or, to put it into one word, Christ-likeness in
our inmost heart and nature, and Christ-likeness, so far as it may be
possible for us, in our daily life, that is the one thing that our
Lord seeks from us.
O brethren! we do not realise enough for ourselves, day by day, that
it was for this end that Jesus Christ came. The cradle in Bethlehem,
the weary life, the gracious words, the mighty deeds, the Cross on
Calvary, the open grave, Olivet with His last footprints; His place on
the throne, Pentecost, they were all meant for this, to make you and
me good men, righteous people, bearing the fruits of holy living and
conduct corresponding to His own pattern. Emotions of the selectest
kind, religious experience of the profoundest and truest nature, these
are blessed and good. They are the blossom which sets into fruit. And
they come for this end, that by the help of them we may be made like
Jesus Christ. He has yet to learn what is the purpose and the meaning
of the Gospel who fixes upon anything else as its ultimate design than
the production in us, as the results of the life of Christ dwelling in
our hearts, of character and conduct like to His.
I suppose I ought to apologise for talking such commonplace platitudes
as these, but, brethren, the most commonplace truths are usually the
most important and the most impotent. And no 'platitude' is a
platitude until you have brought it so completely into your lives that
there is no room for a fuller working of it out. So I come to you,
Christian men and women, real and nominal, now with this for my
message, that Jesus Christ seeks from you this first and foremost,
that you shall be good men and women 'according to the pattern that
has been showed us in the Mount,' according to the likeness of His own
stainless perfection.
And do not forget that Jesus Christ hungers for that goodness. That is
a strange, and infinitely touching, and absolutely true thing. He is
only 'satisfied,' and the hunger of His heart appeased, when 'He sees
of the travail of His soul' in the righteousness of His servants. I
passed a day or two ago, in a country place, a great field on which
there was stuck up a board that said, '----'s trial ground for seeds.'
This world is _Christ's_ trial ground for seeds, where He is testing
you and me to see whether it is worth while cultivating us any more,
and whether we can bring forth any 'fruit to perfection' fit for the
lips and the refreshment of the Owner and Lord of the vineyard Christ
longs for fruit from us. And--strange and wonderful, and yet true--the
'bread' that He eats is the service of His servants. That, amongst
other things, is what is meant by the ancient institution of
sacrifice, 'the food of the gods.' Christ's food is the holiness and
obedience of His children. He comes to us, as He came to that
fig-tree, seeking from _us_ this fruit which He delights in receiving.
Brethren, we cannot think too much of Christ's unspeakable gift in
itself and in its consequences; but we may easily think too little,
and I am sure that a great many of us do think too little, of Christ's
demands. He is not an austere man, 'reaping where He did not sow'; but
having sowed so much, He does look for the harvest. He comes to us
with the heart-moving appeal, 'I have given all to thee; what givest
thou to Me?' 'My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill;
and he fenced it and planted it, and built a tower and a wine-press in
it'--and what then?--'and he looked that it should bring forth
grapes.' Christ comes to each of you professing Christians, and asks,
'What fruit hast thou borne after all My sedulous husbandry?'