A Barren Tree

Luke 13:6-9

            And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

We are told it took a fig tree three years of growth before it began to bear fruit, but the caretaker of the tree ask the master to allow one more year and if after special care it did not bear, it would be destroyed.  The fig tree was a symbol of the nation Israel and God was going to give it one more chance before judgment.  We know Israel rejected Jesus and the apostle John gives this account in John 1:10-11, “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.”  We also know that a future hope for Israel remains.

Do you identify with the parable of the barren fig tree?  I do, and today is a milestone for me, God has allowed me to live longer than my dad and his dad did, I’ve reached 73 years of age, and when this paper gets published it will be many months after the fact.  As I take inventory of those 73 years, how blessed I am that God is all knowing that He saw me before I was in my mother’s womb and that before one day of my life on planet earth He numbered each day correctly and knew of that day in a hotel room in Victoria, Texas, where I would bow my knee before a Holy God and confess my sins and my need for a Savior.

For twenty plus years I was given everything to succeed, a safe home, parents that feared God and went with us to church, food, shelter, teachers, both at church and school who were willing to equip me for success, but I was like the fig tree, I was barren.  I married Jan at age 23, she was smart, beautiful and a hard worker, she was very careful with the money we had, and blessed me in so many ways, but I was like that barren fig tree in our marriage.  Four years later, after I had an encounter with Jesus Christ, I ask Him to forgive me and come into my life.  That same year, we had our precious little Natalie, she stole my heart, and yet I was often like that barren fig tree, a good dad but often not the best of dads.

I went to work for 3M Company and from a business side of life was a fig tree in full bloom and produced good fruit, but something was missing on the spiritual side of my life, I often followed the world’s pattern.  In my late 40’s I began to engage younger men and share my bought lessons with them, both in my family life, my marriage, and my work life, and my tree began to grow and produce some fruit.  I’ve never stopped asking the Lord to allow me to invest in men who will be 2 Timothy 2:2 men.  This was Paul’s instruction to Timothy and to you and me, “And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”  Have you given any thought to your part in the parable of the barren fig tree?

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice