We did our best to follow the lessons we learned on YouTube. One by one we clipped a limb here and sawed off a limb there. After a while, we had a pretty big pile of apple limb trimmings. We continued on until our trees began to look like the ones that had been pruned by the professional we saw on YouTube. When it was all over, we cut out about a third of each tree. In fact, we were a little worried that we had pruned them too much and were afraid that we had ruined the trees.

That spring we waited with anticipation for the new apple blossoms to form, but they never did. That fall, we did not harvest a single apple from our three trees. We knew for sure that we had killed the trees. We decided that if the trees did not produce any apples the next year then we would dig them up and plant something else in their place.

 This past spring, we were delighted to see hundreds of apple blossoms. Yesterday we picked a wheel barrow full of apples. Some of  the limbs were so weighed down with apples that they were touching the ground. There are still several apples that I could not reach even standing on a ladder. They are not beautiful, red, store-bought apples, but they sure are tasty. The pruning worked, and this year we harvested a bumper crop.

In John 15:1-2, Christ said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.” Just like my apple trees, you and I need to be pruned. We need this sin clipped here and that sin sawed off over there. God, the expert husbandman, knows exactly what He is doing. He prunes us in just the right way, at just the right time. He desires that we bear much fruit. Sometimes the pruning can hurt. It is not a fun process, but it is a necessary process.

Had I left my apple trees alone, they would have still produced some apples, but they would have been the little golf-ball sized apples we found on the ground when we first moved here. It is undeniable that the pruning produces better and bigger fruit. In our lives, the Lord desires fruit.

Oddly enough, those branches we cut two winters ago never blossomed while they were laying there on my brush pile. It was only those limbs that were still connected to the trunk of the tree that bore fruit. It is the same with you and me. It is only as we abide in Christ and stay connected to Him that we are ever able to bear fruit. In John 15:4-5, Christ said, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.”

It is amazing what the Lord can teach you from a few backyard apple trees.

I am writing this because of my own experience this week. This morning while I was sitting with my family eating breakfast, it dawned on me that I was not doing what I had preached on the past Sunday. In fact, I was actually doing pretty much the opposite of what I had preached on. In a sense, I found this disturbing because I am the Pastor. If anyone should be living out the previous Sunday’s sermon, it should be the Pastor.

I had preached from Psalm 5:11-12, and the title of the message was “An Admonition for the Righteous to Rejoice.” The verses say, “But let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice: let them ever shout for joy, because thou defendest them: let them also that love thy name be joyful in thee. 12 For thou, LORD, wilt bless the righteous; with favor wilt thou compass him as with a shield.” The passage encourages the righteous to rejoice because God has promised to defend them and to bless them with His favor. I emphasized the fact that as believers we can look past the circumstances of life and rest in the promises of God. Because of those promises, we have every reason to rejoice despite the seemingly negative circumstances that we face at any given moment.

This morning I found myself moping rather than rejoicing. My circumstances are not nearly as bad as what other people in the world face. The problems that I think I have are trivial compared to the devastation that many believers in other places experience. The truth is that I am a Child of the King. I have a loving Heavenly Father who cares about every circumstance I will ever face.

Let me encourage you today with this same truth. If you have been born again by the Spirit of God, then you can rest assured of His promises. He will never fail you. The “Lord wilt bless the righteous; with favor [He] wilt compass him as with a shield.” You are safe in the arms of Jesus!

This is a question that you cannot ignore. Whether you know it or not, you are trapped. There is something from which you must escape.

When people realize that they are in trouble, they always try to escape. The truth is, you were born in an inescapable prison.

“How shall you escape, if you neglect so great salvation?” God is asking you this question to show you that you need to escape from something. It proves to you that you are really trapped.

“Ok, so what am I supposed to be escaping from,” you ask?

First of all, you must escape from the prison of your own sinfulness. Did you know that sin is a prison? I John 3:4 says that “sin is the transgression of the law.” The more you break God’s law the higher and higher the walls get. Like Alcatraz, sin is inescapable if you neglect the salvation God has provided.

Sin makes you trapped because one sin always leads to another. Sin will always take you farther than you want to go and keep you longer than you want to stay. James 2:14-15 says, “Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” No one ever said, “I want to be an addict when I grow up.” But it is the first cigarette, that leads to the first joint, that leads to the first needle, that leads to the first overdose, that leads to death. Sounds similar to James 2:14-15, doesn’t it? If you neglect God’s salvation, you will never escape the cycle of sin.

Second, you must escape from the displeasure of God. The Bible says that God is angry with sin and He must punish it. God has said in Ezekiel 18:4, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” God will pour out His wrath on you and your sin.

“How shall you escape if you neglect so great salvation?” The question proves that you are trapped and that you must escape, but it also proves that the only way you can escape is if you accept God’s great salvation. There is no other way to escape.
So now you ask, “What is God’s great salvation?”

The Bible has a lot to say about the salvation God has provided through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. One aspect of salvation is the forgiveness of sins. Because Jesus Christ died on the cross and shed His own blood, you can have all of your sins forgiven. I John 1:7 tells you, “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” The only way you can have forgiveness and escape the prison of your own sins is to accept the great salvation provided in Jesus Christ.

Are you content to stay in your own prison of sin and be destroyed by God’s wrath, or do you feel as if you must escape? Accept God’s salvation today. Christ will receive you if you will simply come to Him in faith. Repent of your sins and accept God’s so great salvation.
 

I want to focus your attention on that last phrase that Jesus said to his disciples, "Peace be unto you."

Those are the first words that Jesus Christ spoke to His disciples after His resurrection. What an amazing thing to read that Christ said “peace be unto you.” These were encouraging words for week believers. I say they were encouraging words for weak believers because just a few days earlier, a band of Romans soldiers came, led by the traitor Judas, and they arrested Christ. At that point the disciples fled. We know that Peter was off at a distance trying to watch Christ. He stopped to warm himself by a fire and a young maid girl accused him of being one of Jesus’ followers. Peter flatly denied the fact and even claimed that he didn’t even know who Jesus was. The rest of the disciples, except for John, were nowhere to be seen until we read in John 20 that they are all gathered together behind closed doors because they were afraid of the Jews.

They were indeed at this moment very week believers. Christ had told them several times what was going to happen to him. He even told them on numerous occasions that he was going to die. But thankfully, he also told them that He was going to rise again the third day. But we find the disciples here in unbelief. If they truly believed the Lord, our verse would say something totally different. Instead of saying that they were assembled for fear of the Jews, we would read that they were assembled waiting for the Lord’s resurrection.

But in this verse, we see the gentleness of our Savior. Instead of coming to his disciples with a word of rebuke, He comes to them with words of peace. Christ’s first words to His wayward disciples were, “peace be unto you.”

Often, we are no better than the disciples. How often do you forsake the Lord. Oh, maybe you don’t deny Him like Peter did, but you fail the Lord in other ways. Aren’t you thankful that the Lord does not come and rebuke you when you fail Him. Instead the Lord will come near to you and say the same thing to you that He did to His disciples: “Peace be unto you.”

If you are a true believer in Jesus Christ, He can say those words to you because Christ has made peace with God through the blood of His cross, and you have been justified by faith so that now you have peace with God. Because of what Christ has done for you in the Gospel, God’s wrath against your sin has all been dealt with. Christ took the full wrath of God that you deserved on Himself. Oh, what a wonderful salvation we have in Christ. May you know those sweet words of Christ in your own soul today: “Peace be unto you.”