Plants Which God Hath Not Planted
JESUS CHRIST had spoken certain truths which
] were highly objectionable to the Pharisees Some of His loving disciples were in great fright,
and they came to Him and said, “Knowest Thou not that the Pharisees are offended?” Now our Saviour, instead of making any apology for having offended the Pharisees, took it as a matter of course, and replied in a sentence which is well worthy to be called a proverb, — “Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.” Now we have oftentimes, as Matthew Henry very tritely remarks, ja number of good and affectionate but very weak ’ hearers. They are always afraid that we shall offend other hearers. Hence, if the truth be spoken in a * plain and pointed manner, and| seems to come close home to the conscience, they think that surely it
ought not to have been spoken, because So-and-so, and So-and-so, and So-and-so took offence at it. If we never offended, it would be proof positive that we did not preach the Gospel. They who can please man will find it quite another thing to have pleased God. Do you suppose that men will love those who ‘faithfully rebuke them? If you make the sinner’s heart to groan, and waken his conscience, do you think he wil! pay you court and thank you for it?
* Matt. xv. 13.
Nay, not so; in fact, this ought to be one aim of our ministry, not to offend, but to test men and make them offended with themselves, so that their hearts may be exposed to their own inspection. Their being offended will discover of what sort they are. A ministry that never uproots will never water; a ministry that does not pull down will never buildup. He who knoweth not how to pluck up the plants which God hath not planted, scarcely understandeth how to be a worker of God in His vineyard. Our ministry ought always to be a killing as well as a healing one, — a ministry which kills all false hopes, blights all wrong confidences, and weeds out all foolish trusts, while at the same time it trains up the feeblest shoot of real hope, and tenders comfort and encouragement even to the weakest of the sincere followers of Christ.
Our Saviour was thus led from the remark of His disciples to utter this memorable proverbial saying. If we understand it aright, it applies to every doctrine and to every false system of religion. Whatever God hath not planted will be rooted up.. As for heretical teachers, let them alone; they be blind leaders of the blind, and if the blind lead the blind they shall both fall into the ditch. Many good people are greatly concerned about the growth of papacy in England. They fear the day will come when papacy shall have quenched the light of Gospel grace. I trust you will not get nervous upon that point. It is of little consequence what men are, if they are not saved, if they are not brought to know the Lord. I do not know that it is a very important item what kind of religion they have if they have not got the true one. They may receive the awful doom of unbelievers in Christ, and enemies to the Gospel, as Romanists or Mahometans; or like too many in this land, being merely professing Christians who deceive themselves and others, they may incur the same wrath of God, and inherit the same condemnation. But do not think for a moment that the harlot of the Seven Hills will ever prevail against the bride of Christ. Not she. The Lord will by-and-bye, when her iniquity shall be full, utterly destroy her. Only be sure in your heart that God has not planted it, and you may be equally sure that He will pluck it up. Prophets may plant it with their pretended revelations, martyrs may water it with their blood, confessor after confessor may defend it with his learning and with his courage, time may endear it, literature may protect it, and kings may keep guard about it, but He that ruleth in the heavens, and careth nought for human might, shall certainly grasp its trunk, and, pulling it up, even though it be strong as a cedar, shall hurl it into the fire, because He hath not planted it. Yes, every hoary system of superstition, every ancient form of idolatry, every venerable species of will-worship, shall be certainly overturned, as God is true. Leave them alone; be not over anxious.
The Greek word not only signifies plants — for you know we are in the habit of calling a thing a plant which grows in the woods — but the Greek word has nicer discrimination. As Tyndal very well remarks, it is not merely a plant, but a root that has been designedly put into the ground and taken care of. We must not only be comparable to living plants; but we must be comparable to those which come under the Gardener’s care, which are planted in the soil, tended
cs by His skill, and looked upon with interest as being His own. Now, there are many professors who are like wild plants; they were never planted by any servant of God, much less by God Himself. They are thorns and briers; they bring forth wild fruits, noxious, bitter, poisonous, acrid, and deadly to the taste of the passer-by. They grow in abundance. London is like some wild heath that is covered with its ferns and gorse, and even with something worse than these — wild plants that spring up spontaneously. Now, these will have to be rooted up. When the day comes for God to clear His commons, there will be a blaze indeed, when He shall say, “Gather them together in bundles to burn; but gather the wheat into My garner.” The drunkard, the swearer, the adulterer; those who live by cheating and robbing their neighbours; those who never darken the walls of God’s sanctuary; those to whom the Sunday is the busiest day in the week; those who are without God and without hope, and without Christ, these we may call self-sown plants, uncared for, untutored, and must be rooted up, for He will say, “Gather out of My = all things that offend, and they that do iniquity.”
Some of those plants that God never did plant are very beautiful. If you go into the fields, there are many plants that grow there that are quite as lovely as those in the garden. Look at the foxglove and the dog rose; look at many of the blossoms we pass by as insignificant, they are really beautiful; but they are not plants that have ever been planted. Now, how many we have in our congregation who are really beautiful; yet they are none of God’s planting — men and women whose character is upright, whose manners are amiable, whose life is irreproachable. They are not immoral, they neither cheat nor lie; but they are exemplary; their disposition is kind, tender-hearted, and affectionate. But there must be something more than this, for Jesus says, “Every plant which My heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up.” Though it be a lovely plant, though it seems to be a fair flower externally, yet since the root of it hath sucked its nourishment out of the wild wastes of sin, whether of infidelity or lawlessness, it is evil in the eye of God, and it must be plucked up.
Further, how many there are of our wild wood plants that even bring forth fruit. The schoolboy in the country can tell us that the wood is an orchard, and that often he has had many a luscious meal from those wild fruits that grew there. Yet, though the birds may come and satisfy their hunger from these wild fruits, and though the seeds may be in the winter the sparrow’s garner, and the linnet’s storehouse, yet they are not planted, and they do not come under the description of plants that have been planted. So, too, there may be some who really do some good in the world. Without you a mother’s wants might not be provided for; from your table many of the poor are fed. This is good; I would that all of you did more of it, but remember that this is not enough; there must be God’s planting in you, or else the fruits you bring forth will be selfish fruits. You will be like Israel, who was denounced as being an empty vine, because, forsooth, he brought forth fruit unto himself. Charity is good. Noble charity, be thou honoured among men! But there must be faith, and if we have no faith in Christ, though we give our bodies to be burned, and bestow our goods to feed the poor, yet where Christ is, we certainly can never come.
Many of those wild plants have very strong roots. — If you were to go and try to dig them up, you would have a task before you not easily accomplished. Look at the wild dock: did you seek to pull it up? Piece after piece it breaks away, and you have to send some sharp instrument deep into the soil before you can root it out, and even then, if there be but a piece left, it springs up and thrives again. Oh, how many there are who have as much tenacity of life in their false confidence, as there is in the dock — in its root! Some cannot shake. “I never have a doubt,” said one, “I never had a doubt or a misgiving.” You remember Robert Hall said, “Allow me to doubt for you, sir,” because he knew the man to be an ill-liver. And so some are not in trouble as other men, neither are they plagued like other men; they speak with an air of satisfaction; their language sounds like assurance, but it is presumption; it looks like confidence in Christ, but it is confidence in themselves. And such will strike their roots very deep, and they will be very strong indeed, so that you cannot shake them; yet, alas for them! they are not plants of the Lord’s right-hand planting, and therefore the sentence is passed; and ere long it shall be executed without pity — they shall be rooted up.