False Blooms

When I was a kid, my dad always had a big garden in the back yard.  That was because he had four boys … he had four boys to feed and four boys to work the garden.  Granny Whitely lived next door and had a big garden too.  Dad told us what to do in the garden, and then left for work.  But Granny told us WHY we were to do what we were doing in the garden.  Granny explained the difference between pole beans and bush beans.  She explained the sucker shoots on the tomato plants and why they needed to be pruned.  Granny showed us the blossoms on the squash and cantaloupe plants.  Even before the blossom bloomed out, we could see the tiny fruit growing behind the bloom.  But some blooms didn’t have the tiny fruit behind them.  Granny called them “false blooms”.  These false blooms sapped the plant’s energy and didn’t produce fruit.  So, the false blooms needed to be pinched off to conserve the plant’s energy needed to produce the real fruit.  We had to look carefully to see the difference.  We didn’t want to destroy a good bloom, but we didn’t want to waste the plant’s energy on a false bloom.  Hey, there are hundreds of churches in the Chattanooga area.  But not all of them are following Jesus Christ.  Some are deceivers.  In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus identified a “good tree” and a “corrupt tree”.  Then Jesus went on to say in Matthew 7:20, “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”  Hey, look at the fruit that the church produces. If our activity is not producing good fruit, then pinch it off.