Autumn trees withouthttp://threshermediagroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/EP14-Jude-12-13-16.pdf fruit, doubly dead, uprooted. What would make us think that we could expect to receive anything from a tree in this condition? Yet, for some reason (as with the clouds without water), we come running to this doubly dead and uprooted tree looking for something to eat.
Grumblers, malcontents, loud-mouthed boasters. These people are out to please themselves to gain advantage of others for their own benefit—to satisfy their own sinful desires and to promote their own agenda of social and religious advancement. They are ministry builders who use others, in the name of God, to build their platform of achievement.
These idioms mean that it does not matter how much a spiritual leader talks about the word of God, quotes the word of God, or does good deeds in accordance with the word of God, if their lives do not produce God's agape love—the fruit of the Spirit—it is all for naught. As the Spirit affirms, religious ceremony and activity means nothing, all that matters is faith expressing itself through God’s agape love.
