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The Words of Jesus of Nazareth
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You will know people by the fruit that grows in their lives
You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has lost its ability to purify, flavour and preserve, how can it be made salt again? It is good for nothing, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot.
Do you pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from among thistles? A healthy tree cannot produce unhealthy fruit; neither can a rotten tree produce healthy fruit. Likewise, every good tree produces good fruit, and every rotten tree produces rotten fruit. Every tree that produces rotten fruit is cut down and used as wood for the fire.
By the fruit of people's lives, you will know what kinds of life they have chosen to live.
Once a man planted a fig tree in his vineyard. For three years he waited for it to bear fruit, but none came. At last he said to the chief gardener: "Three years I have come, each year expecting to see fruit on this fig tree; and still it is barren. Why should it take up space on my grounds any longer? Cut it down."
But the gardener answered: "Allow one more year, until I've had the chance to dig around it, and nurture it some more. Perhaps then, it will bear fruit; and if not, then you would do right in cutting it down."
When your lives bear fruit, my Father is glorified, and you are my true disciples. For a good person produces good from the good that is stored within; while an evil person, out of the evil within, produces a hollow fruitless life.
A farmer went into the field to sow. As he sowed, some seeds fell by the roadside; and the birds flocked down and are them. Some of the seeds fell on stony places, where there wasn't much earth. They sprouted quickly in the shallow soil; but, lacking roots, were scorched by the sun and withered away. Some of the seeds fell among the thorn bushes; and the thorns grew and choked them.
But certain of the seeds fell onto good earth, and these made up for the lost seeds, yielding a good crop; some multiplied by a hundred times, some sixty, and some thirty.
When one hears the word of the kingdom, and fails to understand it, the enemy comes and steals away the seed that was planted in the heart. This is like the seed that feel by the roadside.
The seed that was scattered on stony ground represents those who hear the word of God, and eagerly accept it, but without the roots of inner conviction. Their experience endures for a time; but when trouble or persecution arises resulting from their decision to follow the word of truth, they become discouraged and fall away.
The seed that was sown among the thorn bushes represents those that hear the word, but allow the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, to overwhelm them. The word is choked, and their lives become unfruitful.
The seed that fell on good earth represents those that hear the word and understand its message. Their lives will yield accordingly an abundant harvest: one hundred, sixty, or thirty times the good that was planted.
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These are the very words of Jesus of Nazereth. Taken originally from the Bible , and arranged here by subject as they appear in Lee Cantelon's book "The Words" (c) 1997. [www.thewords.com]
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The_Words
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