Thematic Bible: Botany


Thematic Bible




You can recognize them by their fruit [i.e., by what their lives produce]. Do people harvest grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistle weeds? In a similar way, every healthy tree produces wholesome fruit; but a diseased tree produces [only] bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot produce bad fruit and neither can a diseased tree produce wholesome fruit.

Therefore, you will recognize them [i.e., prophets] by their fruit [i.e., by what their lives produce]. Verse ConceptsDistinguishing

For there is no healthy tree that produces bad fruit; nor is there a diseased tree that produces wholesome fruit. For each tree is recognized by its own fruit. For people do not harvest figs from thorn bushes, nor grapes from a brier bush.

You foolish person. The seed you plant does not come to life [i.e., grow] unless it dies. And what you yourself sow is not the plant that will [eventually] come up, but simply a seed. It may be a grain of wheat or something else. But God gives it the [kind of] body He wants [it to have], so each seed gets its own plant.

But [remember] this: The person who plants only a few seeds will harvest a meager crop. And the one who plants many seeds [Note: The Greek says, "plants with blessings"] will harvest a bumper crop. Verse ConceptsAgriculture, Qualities NeededCollectionsHeavenly RewardsReward, DivineSeedThriftCultivationReapingStingy PeopleReaping What You Sowsoaringsowing

And why are you worrying about clothing? Consider how [wild] lilies grow in a field; they do not work or weave, yet I tell you that even Solomon, clothed in his very finest royal robes, was never dressed [as luxuriously] as one of these flowers.