The Parable of the Fig Tree

The questions we wrestle with as Christians about who God is, how do we live out our faith, what is the Bible, what is the truth of the Bible, what are we supposed to believe? How are we supposed to live? There are really big, deep questions that we ask each other, that we ask God, that we wrestle with ourselves. And that's why the Cultivate podcast exists, to help us go deeper in our understanding of who God is, his word, and the way that he's called us to live. Hey, everyone.

Welcome to the Cultivate Podcast with The Grove Church. I'm Charlie Loften.

I am

the lead pastor there, and we are here with Calling

it back to an old one, the one that Charlie loves.

I was gonna go to a newer one, Bagel. I was gonna go Bagel, but the one

The one whom Charlie loves is a good one.

Fair enough.

Really sticks me out beyond all the other staff members.

Oh, okay. I was wondering, like, amongst what group? But you're, like, specifically amongst the staff.

Yeah. I'm thinking, like, Jesus' inner circles. Know those were his friends, too, but

Right, okay.

Seems like transfer that over to your life.

Would be your out to, like, everyone Charlie knows or everyone at the church, but amongst the staff.

I would still be, like, number two or three on that list too, but I know you have a wife.

I'm sorry. Right now, Charlie gives the ranking system in order of the staff who he loves the most to least. Go, oh, no. Me.

Abigail Abigail. Abigail. I can't even remember anybody else's name. Maeve. She's not technically

on staff.

She's an extension of staff.

Wow. Abigail Boone, our creative director, podcast producer, MC.

Like DJ, oh, with my headphones. I was like, I rarely do that. Nope. Nope. Oh, whenever you say

Rarely do that. Obviously. There is sometimes that you do DJ.

Well, I was thinking like if there needs to be a playlist made for something, for, like, the launch party or something like that. And I was like, that's an interesting title to give me for something that I rarely do.

Yeah. Mean, to me, would only do that. I I would only say that half joking. Like, who who's DJing this? But, like, like, to me, curating a playlist for an event Is not empty.

Does make you a DJ.

Sure. But I'm getting there. Have been practicing. I told you that I'm working on DJing. Got the app that has, like, the turntables and stuff.

You need an actual turntable.

I know, but that's a pretty big investment. Or I have to, like, really know if I can figure this out or not.

You know who used to do that? Kim Blanchett. Oh. Did you say my mom? Yeah.

Wow.

Kinda meant as a joke, and I remembered she listens to it.

Let's make a list of all the people Charlie knows in most likely to least likely to have ever DJ'd, coming in at coming in at last, my mom.

Kim Blanchett, to those who don't know her, would add her maybe lower on the list, but to those who know the random breed really know her? Like, that's not shocking at all. Not shocking at I'm sure

you know. It's a woman that goes to our church, by the

way.

Been going for it longer than me. Longer time. Really? Yep. Luke 13 verse six, Parable of the Fig Tree.

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 back 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. Cut it down.

Who is he talking to? That was really short.

It is short. And I'm guessing it is one that you're not particularly familiar with.

I think I well, I kinda at first thought I had heard it, but is there other fig tree stories? Yes. Okay. So hot chance it wasn't this one that I've heard.

Right. There's one where just Jesus just kind of randomly for seemingly no good reason. Just he walks past a fig tree and didn't have any fruit on it. He curses it.

What I've heard. Yes. Okay. So he's talking to no. I don't know who he's talking to.

There's something about Pilate up above, and surely he's not talking to Pilate.

Yeah. No. So, you know, basically, there's some people that came to him and were just asking him questions. So we get that we I really get that this is kind of more of a crowd moment. People are he's in q and a moment.

People are asking him questions. He's given answers, and now he just chooses to also then add in this parable. So let's let's call it crowd.

But it could it's not they just asked him a random question. The question they

asked him was, there was some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.

Right. Like they mixed Pilate's blood

into it? No. There were some he mixed some of these people's blood in with sacrifices. Oh. And so basically

That is concerning.

The the idea being, does that make this you know, and then Jesus says, do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? And so basically saying that just because something really terrible happens to you doesn't mean that you are a worse person.

So then this is a response to that?

It feels like it's like, hey. While we're here, I'm gonna I'm gonna bring tell

you one more thing. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. I don't think it has anything to do with the

That. But he is talking to a crowd. Yeah. Okay.

So let's just make sure we just break down it simply. K? Okay. There's a guy. He owns he owns, you know

A vineyard.

He owns a vineyard. He's And got he's got he's got much fig trees. Mhmm. One fig tree in particular is not Producing. Producing for free.

He's like, get get rid of it. Let's put another one in its place. And the gardener says, just let me give it another year. I'm gonna work really hard with it, give it another year, and then and then if after the year then it it's still bad, then we can cut it down. Mhmm.

I mean, that seems like a fine thought.

And this also kind of thing that I talked about what for me was last Sunday, yesterday, actually for me it was yesterday, but for other people it's gonna be two and a half weeks ago. Mhmm. I talked about that. One of the things I don't like about movies are movies that just stop rather than really kind of bringing it full closure.

I love those movies. When you were talking about it on stage,

was like,

That's a great way to end it sometimes.

No, it's never a good way to end it. Why tell me half a story? Why tell me half a story? There's no good reason to tell me half a story.

It's the artist's intent.

You fill it in yourself. Well, that's kind of how I felt about The Matrix, and then they made sequels to it that were worse than the story I had in my mind.

Well, whenever you said you like it when it, like, types up something on the screen, I leaned over to I was sitting next to Melanie, someone at our church, I was like, he would love a good rom com book. You see end in sight the whole time.

You're never going to go wrong with me with a movie that's formulaic, a TV show that's formulaic.

The couple always gets together in the end.

Scooby Doo, Phineas and Ferb, Fast and the Furious, action movies with, you know, name them, right? Oh, no. They're gonna get him. Oh, they didn't get him. He beat up all everybody and killed all the right people at just the right time.

Give me a good Jason Statham movie where it's like, he's just an ordinary man who used to used to be this agent. Now I'm just trying to live an ordinary life and they brought me back in and I had to kill 500 people to save this girl. Yeah, great. And you think they're gonna get him, but they don't. And it's just, you know exactly what's gonna

happen for all the

an hour and a half, like, was great. It was great. Heidi was like, How was that movie? Was like, They killed the bad guys really creatively.

That's all the variation you need. So are you saying this parable cuts off? Oh, because we didn't get to see it

becomes So what happens in a year? Gotcha.

The dude that even make it or not?

That's point is about It seems to not matter.

Yeah.

So it does not matter. It does not matter whether or not the tree did something after a year.

Could be way off base, but I feel like it's more about the guy that's like, give it one more chance.

So who yeah. So who's the main the main character here then is the gardener. Mhmm. Who is who? Who's he represent?

Us? Who's the tree?

People who don't know God yet. I'm just taking liberties here. Yeah. I can be totally wrong. That's fair.

Because we've talked about

in People previous who have not yet fully done whatever it

is that the owner of the garden. Want to be done. Well, because we've talked about in other parables where it's God is, like, unreasonably generous of how much he's held back for so long. Mhmm. And he's just, like, been unreal patient.

And he already he already has so then the person who owns

the tree is Has already been patient. Who is he?

It's God? The owner of the tree is God.

I think so.

And he's already been patient

Mhmm.

For three years. Finally he's like, Okay, now is the time. And someone who has both the position and the influence with the father and the ability to give and extend even more grace and to, quote, tend to this tree is asking the owner to do this.

So is he Jesus? No, that wouldn't make sense. They wouldn't know that difference. Right? I guess he says stuff they don't understand all the time.

They say things that they don't understand all the time.

That's not a good reasoning.

I cannot begin to I I I cannot believe that on any level, anybody who heard Jesus give this parable head in, I'm sure since that we're talking about memes, was that this episode or last episode you were asking me about a meme? Ever seen the meme? Was like, there's a group of people talking in circle, and then there's somebody out here that kind of shouts something at them, and they kind of just go, thumbs up, and then they just go back to talking.

I haven't seen that.

I'm sure that it's like everybody's over here talking about,

and then

Jesus, Hey. Like It's the kingdom is like a guy who had a tree, and it wouldn't bear fruit for a few years. They told him to cut it, the gardener says, no, man. Give it another year.

They're like, okay. Anyways Great.

Thanks. Thanks for whatever that was. I can't imagine. Mean, again, it's so simple. It's not like it's shocking or there's something really off putting about it.

It's just like, okay. Yeah. I mean, there is a question of like, if there's something weird about it, like, why does the gardener care? Like, what is it to the gardener? Well,

the gardener is the one that's taking care of it. What a puppy? But he's

the one that's cultivated. Even a, like

Well, that's coming from a non plant person. I mean,

that's what I'm saying. Like, we're several levels down now. I'm not even a dog person. Sure. But, like, I guess

I'm a plant person, and I would be very sad if my roommate was like, let's just I'm like, just one more. I think I can get it to produce leaves or whatever.

But, like, what's your emotional attachment? Like, like, you have a tree, like, again, this is not a plant that you're keeping in your house. This is a tree that is a part of a tree farm.

Well, maybe he thinks he might get fired.

He can't get fired by the person that is the one that owns the tree for, like, it's not his fault. No, no, no. That's, I don't that's right thinking about it. There's something about he's got an emotional investment in this tree, which I think is unusual. I think it is supposed to be unusual.

Okay.

Because, again, it is not a little baby a crippled baby sheep that you raised from the beginning or anything like that. I mean, it's like and it's not your one special tree that your your daughter planted when she was three. Is a it is part of a commercial tree farm.

Sure. Okay. I guess that's fair. You need to come to my house and see my plants.

That's thinking that that's not the that's not the right parallel. It's like you've got a Christmas tree farm, you've got all these trees that are making really nice Christmas trees, you've this one that just won't get past two feet tall.

It's

like, it's taking up space and using water and get rid of it and put a tree in there that'll actually benefit the farm. That's the gardener's job is to cultivate trees that will benefit the farm. And he has a seemingly Attachment to it? Deep attachment to it. I think that's supposed to be unusual.

Okay. Even though I do love my plants.

Again, there's a difference between your plant farm that

is And supposed to produce

a commercial tree.

And so Okay. Again, you said this is just like a random add on. This is not answering something they've asked him

about. Right.

So that would make it even more confusing. Yeah. There really doesn't because it's not like it they could be like, oh, he was talking about x, y, and z. That's why he said that.

I mean, the closest that you have right now, verse five, I tell you no, but unless you two unless you repent, you two will all perish. So saying people that have bad things happen to them are not worse than people who don't have bad things to happen to them, but ultimately, everybody is the same. Everyone needs to repent or you'll perish. And then he follows that up with a story that clearly is about the grace and patience of God. Say

clearly That's right.

I say clearly, but I say, I mean, clearly to us, I can't imagine that it was at all clear to them.

Right. Okay. So that that is on the right track of God being Yeah. He's withholding his Right.

That's what I'm saying. And and the thing about the gardener and the irrational connection to it, I think that probably makes the gardener more Jesus rather than

That's fair.

Because if that's your if it's you trying to defend your cousin who you want God to be a little more patient with, there's too much emotional distance between the gardener and the tree. You know? And so there is a distance between the Son of God and us, even though he has become a a man. Right? But there there is a there's a distance between them, and he but he has a deep rooted love and compassion for the tree.

It kinda reminds me of is that Sodom and Gomorrah? Is that how you say the name? Or it's like if you find one good

Yeah, it's Abraham. He's Abraham's kinda bargaining

asking over over, like, just What if I can get these this to grow? Yeah. And he's, like, asking for more patience.

But, again, the reason why I think that the people would not have understood what Jesus was talking about, I don't think they could have identified the gardener. Like, I think they would have

They wouldn't have pieced it as, like, the guy who's telling us is the gardener? Like, who like, what

I mean, he's a he's a good teacher, but what pull does he have with God Okay. To tell people to not I just don't think they would've They didn't have

him as like a deity.

Right, right, right. I just don't think they had him on that level yet. Okay. And so I think at best, it would've just been they would have just the gardener would have been irrelevant really to the story, but just more about God has been patient and will continue to be patient. Because the interesting thing, again, not only does it not tell us the story stops rather than ends, really not only does it not tell us what happens to the tree in a year, it really also doesn't tell us whether or not the owner of the tree agreed.

Leave it alone for another year and I'll dig around and fertilize. It bears true next year, fine. If not, then cut it down. That make verse 9.5, no, I said what I said, cut the tree down. Know, mean, like the story just kind of, again, it doesn't tell us whether or not the owner agreed with him, and it doesn't tell us if he did what happened to the tree a year later.

Again, I think the shocking stop to that is to do the thing, again, that I hate in artsy movies everywhere, which is like

But that's really good for you sometimes to ponder it yourself. You wouldn't have done good in these times then. Nope. To just, like,

think I was not meant

to

live in a place with Eastern ways of thinking and oral traditions. I'd have been really good in an oral tradition and the fact that if you say it, I remember I that you said could have been good at that. And eventually, and I did, it took me a long time, I eventually learned the discipline. But I hated literature classes all the way through college. I just didn't get it.

I just want to know the answer. What is the answer? And they weren't giving answers. And it finally wasn't until I started reading books that I really liked that I was like, uh-oh, oh, oh. But they never gave me an opportunity, gave me very few opportunities in high school and college to read books that I wanted to read.

That I enjoyed. Yes. Yes. Or sometimes even understood.

I remember, like, it was like pulling teeth being at the beach, and I had to read Roll of Thunder, hear my cry. And I was just like, I'll do anything to not read this book, but I had to by the time I got back to school. Yeah. So,

again, what the result is doesn't matter. The big picture idea here is God is gracious, and we have an advocate that is asking God to be even more gracious. I don't think there's anybody who could have put all of those pieces together initially. I think they could have put together maybe that God is being patient with fruitless trees.

But it is kind of like a double patience.

Yeah. But then again, God has already been patient. Who's this other guy that's telling God to be even more I know that they could have connected who that advocate was. Yeah, so again, don't know that they could have put all that together. And again, it's two thousand years later, we are loosely putting it together.

I know we can't say it here definitively, and I can say with 100% confidence Jesus was thinking of himself when he talked about the gardener. It's like, no, it doesn't matter who the gardener is. The idea is that God is gracious and is continuing to even be more gracious. Stop trying to make something out of everything, Charlie.

What if Jesus had a code with the disciples and he was like, when I wink, I mean, I I'm meaning myself. So he's like, the gardener, wink.

Finger

guns. Yeah. That's me.

And they wouldn't even believe him if somebody came back from the the dead. Wink, wink. Yeah.

And they're over there like, Oh, yeah. I think we could have made the Bible more comical. Not that there's not funny parts, but I think He I could have written it in such a

think there are funny parts. I think there are funny parts. Again, it's maybe because I have a weird sense of humor, and I'm finding humor that there's not where there's not, and so I'm just reading into it, I think it's funny. I think Jesus is being like, man, who gonna who gonna gonna who got a kid? They're gonna ask for a loaf of bread and give him a rock.

Yeah. You think that's funny.

I think that's funny. I also think it's funny when Paul says, man, these pharisees and there and these people who are obsessed with circumcision, I wish they'd just take their knife and cut the whole thing off. I don't remember that. That's in Galatians. Think that's funny.

Yeah. So I mean, there's there's anyways, I think it's some some things are fine. I think some of these stories are meant to make you kind of go. Yeah. Oh, wait.

Yeah. Was he serious? Was he serious? Yeah. Who knows?

Who knows? Yeah. And so I think we struggle with, I think, the big idea of this passage. You've got a very disciplined owner who has a very specific objective of what he wants. He's an eternity.

I want these trees to produce fruit.

And

he was patiently letting this tree kind of work some things out for three years and is at least considering a fourth. Yeah. We either imagine God as infinite number of years waiting for a tree to get it right or

Coming back tomorrow.

The first day it's supposed to produce fruit, it doesn't. I'm burning it to the ground and maybe a few next to it just to teach them all a lesson.

Definitely not even someone else that's like, well, give it a second.

Yeah, the story of Noah is that way. Story of were two worst stories in the Bible, worst air quotes, story of Noah, the story of the conquest of Jericho, where there's just a lot of

killing. Miss. Killing, not killing. Right.

We miss how gracious and patient God was, that from the moment of judgment to the actual execution of the judgment of Noah's one hundred and twenty years, the moment, you know, the Israelites get all the way to Jericho once, and God sends them back for forty years and wander back to come back. I mean, not to mention how long ever long it took them to get from Egypt to there, and God constantly pushing stories towards them. Hey, judgment's coming, judgment's coming, judgment's coming, gets them all the way there, and then still circles them around for forty more years. Judgment's coming, judgment's coming, giving all the opportunities in the world to start growing figs. Yeah.

And I think we miss that because we want God to be one of these two, and if He shows any sort of judgment, then He's not gracious, and we lose graciousness or, again, we decide that Jesus is so soft and cuddly and that he would never say things like, wicked servant, get out of my sight. Yeah. Which is what we talked about last week.

But it is kind of interesting going, you talking about him sending him back, making him wait, or saying judgment's coming the two weeks ago we were looking at. You wouldn't even believe if someone came back from the dead. It's like, gosh, y'all have been told for a long time now. Right. Including us, but like

Chance after chance after chance

chance after I feel like his patience actually has been beyond radical, and you still haven't heard, and he's still willing to do it a little bit longer when Jesus asked him to.

Yeah. So then it just really comes down to we don't think God should hold anyone accountable. Yeah. Where it's there it will be impossible for God to have been gracious enough. And so then that's when we come up with a thing that we talked about before, kind of the Christian Universalist where God's gonna keep pursuing you even after death.

And the way that the rich guy in Hades hollering out to Abraham, like, Okay, well, all right, angels go get him. He said he's sorry now. There is no point in which it is appropriate for God to say, Okay, now, judgment.

Mhmm.

And that's an arrogance on our part and a misunderstanding about our relationship with respect to God.

I also feel like or this may get way too existential, but it's like someone does have to say the fine like, was with my nieces and nephews at the pool, and it's like, you can keep convincing mom to let you stay a little bit longer. At some point

We're not gonna be here next Tuesday.

No, like, we're gonna go home. I will give you, like, three more, like, ten more minutes. At some point Right. And then, like, on the global scale, like the world, the order of the world doesn't work for it to just be like, nothing's ever going to happen. So

here's my classic dad move in that situation. Okay, so I've

got You can drive yourself home.

No, no, no. It's, It's let's we need to leave at four. So, at 03:45, I'm like, Okay, we gotta go. Dad, dad, dad, ten more minutes, ten more minutes. Okay, ten more minutes.

And then I give him fifteen. Now it's four. You asked for ten more minutes, I gave you fifteen, it's time to go. And then we go.

But they're like, I didn't even know you're doing that, though.

But they got to perceive. You gave them more. Got the perceive. I gave them what they asked for and more, but really we ended up leaving exactly when I wanted to leave.

That's trickery right there.

It's a classic dad move. Sure. It's the same thing as like, we need to go to airport, what time do we need to leave? We need to leave at seven so everybody be ready at seven.

Really, you need to get a bigger window if you ever fly with me.

Yeah. And then if we leave actually at seven, I'm like, Good job, everybody.

And then you just got downtime a day.

Yeah, then we just got there a little bit. We got here a lot earlier, thought, I don't think I'd be ready at seven.

I do think that it's just like, is interesting seeing those two back to back of like, they wish there was more patients. But even if there was more patience, they wouldn't have recognized it. But here you're seeing just how much patience is asked for and given.

Yeah, and then in the Parable of the Talents too that we saw last week, and again, as we talked about, we kind of organized these things not based on banger level, but based on themes, right? We kind of got these, what is afterlife and judgment? What is the kingdom ultimately And going to be the Parable of the Talents is, the journey was gone. It was for a long time, an undetermined and undisclosed amount of time, but for a long time. He had a long opportunity.

He could have come in the last few months and been like, He's gonna come back here at some point. I probably need to do something with this. Right? I mean, there's a lengthy amount of time was given, and after a lengthy, generous amount of time, you will be held accountable for what you did with your life. So now we're leaning in more to the grace here, but it's both.

Think that's why, artistically, we're not left with, Did he give him the year and what happened after the year? It doesn't matter. What matters is God is gracious, but eventually you're going to be held to account for whether or not you produce figs or not. So so we got some more of these coming, including one of the ones that you're really excited about, which was Sheep and the goat. Oh, I thought it was the the the 10 virgins.

I thought that

was I like so I listened to a sermon series one time that compared both of those, and I just really like I don't know if we'll go down the same route, but it was really, really interesting.

So after this, we've we've only got Five more. Yeah. Five more.

Woo hoo. I was ready.

And they're all and they're all kind of this in that in that same sort of genre. All five of these are left. They're like, what is the kingdom of what is my responsibility? What is God's level of patience? What is His expectation?

And what does judgment look like.

K.

We're gonna have a we're gonna have a very full picture of this here in about five weeks.

We'll be crystal clear by the end.

Crystal clear. Thanks as always. Abigail. You for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you for listening to the Cultivate podcast.

Our hope is that you are taking steps to go deeper in your faith, that you're asking big questions, and you're looking for answers. We hope that we can be a resource for you through our podcast and any other way that we can help you. You can find all our episodes anywhere that you can find podcasts, including YouTube. And, again, thank you so much for joining us.