Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text is the Holy Gospel reading which has already been read.

Dear friends in Christ, fruit inspection is important if you want to avoid under ripe or overripe fruit. There's an art to choosing cantaloupes and watermelons, peaches and strawberries at the grocery store. But the most important fruit inspection occurs before it gets to market, while the fruit is still on bushes and trees. The growers and pickers need to know what the fruit should look like at harvest time, to guarantee optimum condition when the fruit makes it to market.

Some fruits are fairly forgiving about when you pick them, but others are quite picky. I read an article last month about the purple raspberry, which only has a harvesting season of about two weeks, and careful judgment is required in picking them. They need to be picked when they are shiny, but not too red. The author said that if you pick the berries when they're red, it doesn't matter how much sugar you add, a pie made with the berries won't taste good. On the other extreme, if the berries are picked when they are dull, they have become overripe and will taste funny and mold within a few hours of picking. But when the berries are picked at just the right time, they are supposed to be sublime and make excellent pies and jams.

If fruit inspection is so critical in agriculture, then you can see why Jesus uses it as an analogy for our spiritual lives in the Gospel reading today. Jesus tells us that we Christians all need to be fruit inspectors, constantly inspecting the fruit produced by religious teachers. We also will learn how to recognize and consume the saving fruits that come from Jesus Himself, and inspect our own lives for fruitfulness through self-examination.

Jesus introduces His fruit inspection discussion by warning against false prophets. He says, "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves." You're all familiar with Aesop's fable about the wolf dressed like a sheep. Last week I read "Little Red Riding Hood" to the girls and it has a similar theme, but with different clothing for the wolf. A wolf needs to look as innocuous as possible to get close to his prey before gobbling them up. Likewise, a false prophet needs to look harmless to the sheep in Christ's flock so that he can infiltrate and try to devour Christians by teaching them false doctrine that leads them away from their Savior Jesus and down into hell.

Jesus then switches to the fruit inspector metaphor to tell us how to identify these wolves, these false prophets. He says, "You will recognize them by their fruits." And what is the fruit of a prophet or religious teacher? His words. A teacher's fruit is what comes out of his mouth. And Jesus tells us that we're never going to get wholesome teaching out of prophets who are like fruitless thornbushes, thistles, or diseased trees. Rather, He says, "Every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit [literally "evil fruit"]. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits." Jesus then goes on to say that on Judgment day the false prophets who assumed that they were on the side of Jesus actually had opposed Him, and they are sent to hell for eternal punishment.

So the next question we need to answer is: what does good fruit look like, and how do you recognize bad or evil fruit? And the answer is that good fruit is the true teaching and saving gifts that come from Jesus, while bad or evil fruit is anything that is sinful and rejects the gifts of Jesus. True prophets will always feed you good and saving fruit that comes from the Person and Work of Jesus Christ, while false prophets will not present the true Jesus to you and will get you to focus on your own works rather than on the Work of Jesus.

The good fruit that true prophets must produce is everything Jesus taught about Himself in the Gospels and what the Holy Spirit has taught us about Jesus in all the Scriptures. Namely, that Jesus is the Word of God, the only-begotten Son through whom the world was created, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, not made but begotten of His Father in eternity. And this divine and eternal Son of God came down from heaven and became flesh when He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, for us men and for our salvation. The Son of God became no less divine in His incarnation but assumed our humanity into Himself so that He could live a perfect life in our place, suffer and die under God's wrath against our sins on the cross, rise on the third day to defeat sin, death, and hell, and ascend into heaven to pour out His Holy Spirit upon the Christian Church and gather repentant sinners into God's eternal kingdom of bliss.

Just before He ascended, Jesus said, "Thus it is written [in the Scriptures], that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations." Jesus said that the forgiveness of sins that He accomplished for all people on the cross had to be preached in His name so that condemned sinners could be saved through repentance and faith in Him. And so on Pentecost, St. Peter preached a sermon on the Person and Work of Jesus and then proclaimed, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself." The salvation that Jesus achieved on Calvary should be proclaimed to all nations without discrimination, and we and our children should be baptized to receive Christ's forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit to lead us to saving faith in the Person and Work of Jesus Christ.

So the good fruit of salvation is given to you through the pure Word of the Gospel and the life-giving Sacraments that Jesus bequeathed to His Church, and true prophets from God will point you to these gifts week in and week out as you gather to receive your Savior's gifts to you. This is what you have called me here to do as your pastor: distribute Christ's good fruits to you through my preaching, teaching, and Christ's Sacraments, so that you can inspect them through faith and enjoy them because they are wholesome and salutary.

On the other hand, bad fruit from false prophets is anything that would present Jesus as less than divine or not truly human. So the teachers of the Mormons, Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Muslims, Unitarians, Universalists, and liberal Protestants are false prophets because they reject that Jesus is truly God and truly Man. But if Jesus is not truly Man, then He could not stand under God's Law in our place and fulfill it in our place; and if Jesus is not truly God, then His suffering and death could not be enough to atone for the sin of the whole world. So it is essential to discern what religious teachers have to say about Jesus before you should believe a word out of their mouths. Jesus said that He is the Way and the Truth and the Life, the only Way to the Father is through Him, and if you are hearing about a Jesus different from the Incarnate One taught in the Holy Scriptures, then you must shut your ears off to the false teacher and send him on his way.

Likewise, bad fruit from false prophets is any teaching that says that Christ's sacrifice for your sins is not sufficient to save you. Bad fruit is teaching that leads you to think that the amount or quality of good works that you do can earn your way into heaven. But if even 1% of our salvation were based on our works, then salvation would not be by God's grace alone but by grace plus works; it would not be received by faith alone but by faith plus works; even worse, salvation would not be completely accomplished by Jesus alone, but by Jesus plus us, and Jesus would be less than a total Savior! If this were true, then we would never have any certainty that we have done enough, prayed enough, given enough, so we would live in constant terror that our salvation is uncertain and we would expect to go to hell because we recognize how rotten and sinful we still are.

But the good fruit of the Gospel, the good fruit that Jesus Himself feeds you today, is that He has done everything necessary to save you by His perfect life, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension; and He has sent the Holy Spirit through the Word and Sacraments to save you by grace alone, not by works. In Holy Baptism He has done the work of adopting you as a child of God and incorporated you into Christ. Or to use an agricultural metaphor, the Spirit has grafted you into Jesus. On the night when He was betrayed, Jesus said this to His disciples, including you: "I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned." (John 15)

Jesus wants you to constantly inspect the good fruit of His salvation through faith so that you may have comfort and peace in Him alone. So if you are abiding in Him by hearing and believing His Gospel, and if He is abiding in you as He nourishes you with His Word and feeds you the good fruit of His true body and blood given to you in the Lord's Supper, then you have nothing to fear, now and forever. Nothing is uncertain regarding your salvation, but you are a beloved child of God and heir of eternal life. St. Paul says in our Epistle that "all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God" and "you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!" You have been made part of that band of eternally saved believers who cry out to your heavenly Father through Jesus Christ, and "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."

But one final bad fruit that comes from the lips of many a false prophet is doctrine implying that a Christian's life need not be fruitful, but that after conversion a Christian can continue to willfully, intentionally produce the bad fruits of sin and unbelief and expect to remain a good tree, saved from the hellfire. Our Lutheran Book of Concord quotes today's Gospel reading to show that Christians who have been made good trees must produce good fruit because it is God's will for their lives; otherwise, their faith is false and hypocritical if they claim to be good trees but produce nothing but evil. So the Lord calls on you to be fruit inspectors, not only judging the fruits of religious teachers to determine whether they are good or evil, but also each day inspecting your own lives for the fruits of good and evil. In other words, do self-examination. Examine your lives according to God's Ten Commandments to see where you have produced good fruit and where you have produced evil. And if you are honest in your inspection, you will be horrified by the rottenness that remains in your life, even after you have been made a good tree by God's grace.

So repent. St. Paul says in our Epistle that even though we believers still have sinful flesh, we no longer owe our flesh obedience; we no longer should be living according to our sinful flesh's desires. Paul says bluntly, "If you live according to the flesh you will die." That is, if you hand the reins over to the devil, the world, and your sinful flesh and let them rule your life, then they will take over and lead you away from Christ and back into eternal damnation. But, Paul says, "if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." That is, if you live in repentance and faith that is produced by the Holy Spirit, if you remain in Christ's grace by His Word and Sacraments, and if you daily put to death your Old Adam and rise up to newness of life by the power of your Baptism, then you will live eternally by Christ's merit alone, because He is the true vine that produces good fruit in our lives. And then, indeed, it is possible in a small way, to see and give thanks for the good fruits that you see the Lord producing in your lives. And that should be a source of joy for us.

But it is true that we remain poor, miserable sinners until we draw our last breath, so we live by the forgiveness of sins, which means that the most important fruit inspection you need to do every day is to keep your eyes on the fruits of salvation that Jesus gives you: look to your Baptism, where Christ has grafted you into Himself and made you a good tree, planted by streams of water and yielding its fruit in due season; look to Christ's Absolution, where the bad fruit of your guilt is sent away for good; and look to the Lord's Supper, where Jesus gives you His body with the bread and His blood with the fruit of the vine, for the forgiveness of all your sins, for union with Himself, and for the strength to lead a fruitful life of faith in God and love toward your neighbor. With the good fruit of Christ's forgiveness, life, and salvation nourishing you, you are and remain a good tree by God's grace alone and you will produce good fruit because it is His will for you. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.