“Shall I bring my new wine that rejoices God and man to an end and go about domineering over the trees?”

(Judges 9:13)

In one of the churches in which I am privileged to preach, I have been working through the book of Judges. It is a rich book filled with the foibles of a people seeking to rule over themselves, acting as if they had no King. Indeed, they may not have had an earthly king like their neighbors, but they had a divine King to whom they constantly refused to submit, preferring to bow before the works of their own hand. Sadly, it would seem that the church has not much changed across the ages, with every man doing what is right in his own eyes.

In this context, there is a point, after the death of Gideon, that his son Abimelek (the son of a concubine) treasonously hires useless men to detain and execute his brothers (all but Jotham). Jotham returns for one final passage where he utters an imprecation against Abimelek in the form of a parable. In this parable, the woodlands seek to find a tree to rule over them as king, moving from arguably legitimate candidates to eventually the illegitimate bramble bush (illustrating their choice of Abimelek). 

The whole of the sermon can be heard here:

What is striking, as a principle, is that to rule as king, each of these trees fears losing its God-given fruit. With their fruit gone, how then shall these trees be judged (Matthew 7:16)? Jesus treats the fig tree that bore no fruit quite harshly (Matthew 21:18-22), and out of season at that! With that idea in mind, I spent some time this morning reflecting on the kind of fruit that all of us are to bear (Galatians 5:22-24), namely fruit that is useful to both God and man (the uniting theme of each of these fruits). 

So, as you look over your life, ask yourself, what aspects of the fruit you bear bring joy to both God and man? Obviously, what is most important is that we are pleasing to God, and by doing so, often we will earn enemies of men on earth. Yet, if you are pleasing to God, though the wicked may not appreciate it at the time, you will find yourself being useful to men — salt and light as Jesus speaks of in the Sermon on the Mount.

What strikes me is how often we, as Christians, get the language backward. We often worry first about whether men rejoice in us and then let things fall where they may with God. Paul makes very clear the danger of being a man-pleaser (Galatians 1:10), reminding us that the purpose we were entrusted with the Gospel was so that we would please God regardless of whether any people will take pleasure in the message we bring (1 Thessalonians 2:4).

So, Christian, who does your fruit rejoice? Does it rejoice God? Does it rejoice man? Might it even rejoice God and man (in that order!)?