Jeremiah 11

An Olive Tree

A green olive tree, fair with goodly fruit. Jeremiah 11:16.

You have all seen a part or parts of today's text, but I doubt if any of you have seen the whole of it. You won't find it in this country. It will not grow here because the climate is too cold. It grows, however, not so very far away, for you will find it in millions on the coasts of the Mediterranean and in Italy. You will find it also in the Holy Land. I expect the part of it which most of you know is its oil. You may have eaten it in salad, or had it rubbed on your chest by mother when you had a cold. Some of you may have eaten its berries, not as dessert like other fruit, but as a relish before a dinner-party. They looked like oval-shaped pods of sea-weed, their taste was strange, and I doubt if you enjoyed them very much.

Have you guessed our text? You will find it mentioned in ever so many of the books of the Bible, for it is one of its most common and most famous trees; but the mention of it which we are taking as today's text is in the Book of Jeremiah, the eleventh chapter, and the sixteenth verse “A green olive tree, fair with goodly fruit.”

The Bible first mentions the olive when it tells us that the dove brought Noah an olive leaf to the ark. That leaf showed Noah that at last the Deluge was over, and the waters were abating. We read of the olive in connection with Solomon's beautiful Temple, the doors and posts of which were made of olive wood, as were also its great winged angels called “cherubim.” The oil which is crushed from the olive berries was used by the priests as anointing oil, and it was also burned in the Temple lamps.

Then, when we come to the time of Christ, we find the olive tree associated with Him. We often read of His being on the Mount of Olives. We know that He spent there many a night in prayer, and that it was from that mountain-side that He ascended into Heaven. There were olive trees, too there are some still in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Christ spent some of His last sad hours on earth.

What is an olive tree like? It is a large spreading tree with a gnarled, twisted trunk. Its leaves are lance-shaped. Their upper side is of the shade we call olive green, and their under side has a sheen like silver. Its berries are small and dark and oval-shaped, as we have already noticed. There are four things I want you to remember about the olive tree. Four is a large number, but I think you can manage to remember them all if you try hard.

1. The first is its greenness. It is what we call an evergreen. Autumn does not fade its leaves, nor does winter take them away. That is like the life of those who love Jesus. They never really grow old, and they never die. Their life is ever fresh and never-ending. They do not die when the winter of death arrives; they merely waken to a fairer spring in Heaven.

2. The second thing I want you to remember about the olive tree is its fruitfulness.

It is not content to be merely a beautiful evergreen, it is busy growing fruit. Now, very few evergreens grow fruit, as you know. Of course we have holly berries, and cotoneaster berries, and a few more; but who would think of eating these? But the olive tree bears so many berries that as much as ten or fifteen gallons of oil can be crushed out of the fruit of one tree. The strange thing is that the soil in which the olive grows best is not the sort of soil you would expect to grow a rich crop of oily fruit. It is hard and flinty, but the olive pushes its roots down between the crevices of the flinty rock, and from the cold, unpromising stone it draws the nourishment for its precious crop.

Boys and girls, let us imitate the olive. We too can bear fruit. We can grow loving thoughts and gentle words and noble deeds. And if life sometimes seems as hard as the flinty rock, there is no reason why we should bruise ourselves against it. Why not be like the wise olive and out of its hardness draw rich fruits?

3. The third thing I want you to remember is its usefulness.

The olive tree is not only evergreen and busy, it is usefully busy. The uses of the tree are so many that I believe you would require the fingers of both hands to count them. Try it. Check them off as I name them. (1) Its berries are used for food by the peasant of the Holy Land. They, along with the thin loaves of Palestine, are what he chiefly lives on. They are his butter and jam combined. (2) The oil pressed out of these berries is used for burning in lamps. (3) It is also used for cooking. (4) It forms part of something of which some of you are not too fond, but which none of us could do without I mean soap. Olive oil soap is one of the best soaps made. (5) Its wood, which is hard and beautifully marked, is used by cabinetmakers to make pieces of furniture.

That is one hand. Now for the other. (6) Its roots are excellent for burning in the fire. (7) So are the crushed stones of its berries. (8) From its bark is made a tonic medicine, and (9) a gum used as a perfume. (10) Its leaves form a grateful shade from the burning sun. Under the olive trees especially in Italy, where they are grown in terraces you will find crops flourishing. That is not the usual way, is it? If we sowed our crops in a wood they would never come to anything. But the foliage of the olive tree is not too dense. It helps instead of hindering the growth of the corn.

You see the olive's busy-ness is a good busy-ness. It is an unselfish busy-ness a busy-ness for others. And that is the sort of busy-ness we should try to grow.

4. The fourth and last thing I should like you to remember about the olive is that it requires grafting to make it produce fine fruit.

The wild olive has fruit, but it is bitter, it gives little oil; and the wood of the tree is of no use except for burning. How is the wild olive made into a good tree? A branch from a good olive is grafted into it. That is all.

You know what grafting means, don't you? Perhaps you have noticed apple trees with funny-looking lumps of clay sticking to their branches. Underneath the lumps of clay there is a join in the branch. The gardener has fitted a cultivated branch on to a wild trunk. Later the two grow together and become one, and the fruit is no longer wild but good.

Boys and girls, it is the same with us. We can never bear fine fruit until Christ has been grafted into us, until we give Him a place in our heart. Then His influence will do for us what the cultivated branch does to the wild olive trunk. It will make our fruit good.