"For there never is a healthy tree that bears poor fruit, nor a sickly tree that bears good fruit.

Now the axe is already lying at the roots of the trees. Every tree, then, that fails to bear good fruit is to be cut down and thrown into the fire."

Then He told them a story: "Look at the fig tree and all the trees.

For every tree is known by its fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or gather grapes from a bramble-bush.

Then He told them this story: "A man had a fig tree planted by his vineyard, and he kept going and looking for figs on it, but did not find any.

So he said to the vine-dresser, 'Look here! for three years I have been coming to look for figs on this fig tree, and have not found any. Cut it down. Why waste the ground with it?'

It is like a mustard seed which a man took and dropped in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the wild birds roosted in its branches."

Then the Lord said to them, "If you had faith that grows like a mustard seed, you might have been saying to this mulberry tree, 'Pull yourself up by the roots and plant yourself in the sea,' and it would have obeyed you!

So he ran on ahead and climbed up in a mulberry tree, just to get a glimpse of Him, for Jesus was coming through on that street.