Fruit and More Fruit

This is the fruit of the Spirit. It is not the fruit of Stephen or Tom or Paul or Bill or Cindy. Andrew Murray wrote it this way, The branch is nothing more than a rack from which the fruit of the vine hangs. It is the sap from the vine coursing through the branch that produces the fruit. Likewise, it is the life of Christ flowing in us that produces anything worthwhile. The truth is we cannot produce this list.

You cannot put your little fruit of the cup mug on the dash of your car with patience on it and say, okay, I'm going to produce that today. The people we rub shoulders with often rub off on us, don't they? That's why we as parents tell our kids to be careful who they hang around. We believe the old saying that you are who your friends are or you soon will be. The same truth applies to our relationship with Christ. The more time we spend with Him daily through praying and reading His Word, the more we become like Him. Today on Wisdom for the Heart, we're going to learn the importance of abiding in Christ. When you abide in Him, He gives you the evidence that you've been hanging around Him. You pick up His character, His perspective.

Here's Stephen Davey with today's message. In our last discussion, we began to uncover the meaning of Paul's words when he wrote in Romans chapter 7 verse 4, these words, look there again. Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead that we might, what? Bear fruit for God.

I hope after these sessions, you don't go around wondering why you're a Christian. One of the incentives, one of the primary motives for God as He wooed you to His Son to be His bride was that you might have an offspring. The offspring of your union with Jesus Christ is fruit unto God.

And we began to look at a few of those. Last Lord's Day, we talked about the fruit of speech and the fruit of spiritual maturity, the fruit of sacrificial giving and the fruit of saving truth. There are some 80 times this word karpas or karpon appears in the New Testament. And we kind of stopped there last Lord's Day. And I wanted to just go further one more time as we work our way through the end of verse 6 today on this theme of bearing fruit for God. Let me give you three more kinds of fruit that we bear for God. First of all, we're to bear the fruit of our Savior's character. In Philippians chapter 1 verse 11, we're told that we've been filled with the fruit of righteousness, which comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. This is the fruit of God or the fruit unto God that comes from the character of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. It takes the union of the Savior with our lives for us to bear anything that's living, which then of course produces, well, we could be a little more specific with another kind of fruit.

We could say it this way. Second of all, we bear fruit of sanctified conduct to God. The passion of your bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ is to make you holy and blameless. It is a process that began at the altar, so to speak, when you were converted by faith in Jesus Christ alone. And it continues until the day you are perfected. That's what Paul wrote. He who began a good work and you will perfect it at the day of Jesus Christ, Philippians 1 to 6. That word perfect has been misapplied to a believer reaching some state of sinless perfection.

The verb epitelos simply means to complete, to mature. And the promise of Philippians 1 6 is that Jesus Christ begins the process of maturing when you're united to him by faith and he will obligate himself to complete it when he appears or through death glorifies you to be with him. The point is the true believer has the work of Christ continually developing and maturing and perfecting, renovating life from the inside out.

And this process of renovation is not a touch up job. It isn't a little pain. This is more like a wrecking ball and a bulldozer as he comes and he wipes us out and he starts anew. One author rattled my cage with this thought when he wrote, Christianity is not something to just keep people civil. Christianity is like dynamite to blast us loose from our prejudices, our weaknesses, our besetting sins, our unclean and unchristian habits, our petty selfishness and all the rest of the things that chain our lives to meanness and mediocrity.

This is the conduct of Christ within us that becomes fruit unto God and everybody observes it. Would it be a shock to somebody who lived in your dormitory, your room or on your floor? Would it be a surprise to the guy you played golf with last weekend? Would it be a shock to the neighbor nearest your backyard fence? Would it be a surprise to that one nearest your cubicle or in your shot? Would it literally blow them away to discover all along that you're a married man and you're a married woman, married to the bridegroom who is Jesus Christ and you have his name?

Would that be a surprise? This holy conduct backs up our claim to be married to the one, the holy one who rose from the dead and we bear within us the holy one and then exposure to him produces that holy attribute that we so long for and see him developing in and through us this passion for holy living. A few months ago my wife gave me a little book that gives the history of words and phrases. It's a fascinating little book that you don't necessarily read from cover to cover.

It just sits on your desk like it does on mine and every once in a while I'll pull it out and read another rather fascinating paragraph that gives the background to some very interesting words or phrases that are popular. I read just a few days ago about the popular phrase, mad as a hatter. You remember that one? Mad as a hatter. Perhaps you remember in the novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland which we were required to read in fourth grade which nearly ruined my educational process. At any point there's that character known as the mad hatter, right? He was that loony character who was always befuddled and confused and upside down and really he was insane I guess you could say. The truth is the phrase mad as a hatter actually referred to makers of hats in England. Many hat makers seem to be like this character, mad, insane with their strange twitching facial muscles, especially the old hat makers and their stumbling gait and their incoherent speech. And so the phrase grew out of that and people would refer to old hat makers as mad. So that mad hatter or you're mad as a hatter came into being.

What we know now is that these hat makers before the invention of felt making machines in 1846 would make it themselves and it was made from a matted animal hair or perhaps wood fibers and part of the making of this process included the chemical mercuric nitrate. We now know that long time exposure to mercuric nitrate causes confusion and loss of muscle control and a stumbling gait and incoherent speech. It was simply they didn't know it then but that profession's exposure to this chemical produced the effects of insanity. What a tremendous spiritual principle in the natural world long term exposure to certain things produces long term effects. So also in the spiritual world the believer having been exposed to the Holy One eventually begins exhibiting the symptoms of holiness. Thus holy conduct is produced as fruit by means of exposure to the Holy One. So fruit unto God is the fruit first of all of our Savior's character. Secondly the fruit of sanctified conduct and third let me give you one more the fruit of the Spirit's control. Look at verse 5 in Romans Chapter 7 where Paul writes for a while we were in the what in the flesh. This word Sarx translated in the flesh is translated a number of times in the New Testament and and you have to let the context determine who exactly he's writing to and here the context clearly refers to someone who's not yet been born again as opposed to that one who was in the spirit this one is in the flesh. He says here for a while we were verse 5 in the flesh.

Look here the sinful passions which were aroused by the law. We'll talk about how that happens next Lord's Day Lord willing we're at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for what fruit for death. Verse 5 they were at work and the members of our body to bear fruit for what.

Thank you so much. I'm glad to know you're awake and with me fruit for death. He will contrast then verse 4 you could circle that phrase fruit for God. He now contrasts that in verse 5 with fruit for what. You're amazing fruit for death.

Right. So you have the law which produces fruit unto death and that's true simply because no one can keep the law and the law simply passes one sentence on everybody and that sentence is death. But the Holy Spirit produces fruit unto life. I want you to turn to Galatians chapter 5.

You've never been outside Romans in about three years. Here we go. Galatians it's to the right. Galatians chapter 5. Probably no better text to contrast these two categories of fruit the fruit of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit and Paul's letter to the Galatian believers. Look at Galatians chapter 5 verse 18. He will describe those who are led not by the spirit but by the law and here is the fruit of the flesh. Verse 19. Now the deeds of the flesh are evident. This is fruit everybody can see. They are immorality impurity sensuality idolatry sorcery enmities strife jealousy outbursts of anger disputes dissensions factions envying drunkenness carousing render that orgies and things like these of which I forewarned you just as I have forewarned you that those who practice keyword there those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

Why warned them of this. It's possible to be in the community of believers when this letter was read and not be in the community of faith. It's possible for somebody then and now to say well we belong to the spirit but if we operate in and we live in and we enjoy and we practice and we revel in the works of the flesh as given here we are self-deceived not in the spirit and on our way to that eternal death. So these are the fruits of the flesh. Now notice verse 22 but I'll contrast but the fruit of the spirit is love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness self-control against such things there is no law. In other words there are no laws given to prohibit this kind of living. No one would ever want to prohibit this kind of living but there are many laws that try to control the living of the flesh but there are no laws to try to control the living of the spirit.

Everybody wants this and everybody would hope to have it and be around those who exhibit it. By the way if you go back to the beginning of verse 22 you notice that this is not called the fruits of the spirit but the fruit of the spirit and that's very important to understand. We tend to think of these as separate issues though they are separate expressions and wonderful expressions but we we tend to miss it here. God is not producing the fruit of love and some believer over there and then the fruit of gentleness and some believer over here and the fruit of patience and another believer over there and he is producing all of these in any one believer. We would perhaps think in our minds well you know it's obvious that God wants to develop the fruit of patience and those working with two year old this morning under attack as we speak right now or maybe he wants to develop self-control in the parking lot crew or or maybe gentleness and junior high workers we can understand that. We also have the mistaken notion that what we will do is allow God to work in us this one fruit of love and and then maybe once we get that nailed down we'll go over here and allow him to work out that fruit of gentleness and don't cross me while I'm in love because he hadn't made me gentle yet wait till I get there to cross me and maybe God will do these works as we nail and master all of them down. We have this mistaken notion this is one fruit with many expressions rather than one apple on a stem this is like one cluster of grapes and if the spirit of God is at work in a believer's life he will be at work in every one of these areas surely he focuses on one at some time you know he's working on a particular area in your life but we can't say well God just didn't want that one in my life evidently you know I'm just not gentle or I'm not patient but boy it's great to have sister so-and-so is patient you know she's just a compliment to the body of Christ and glad to have her here no that isn't it at all. Long-term exposure to the spirit of God produces these kinds of symptoms. It is the fruit of the spirit.

The first three are perhaps the best known so let's deal with them just for a moment and then we'll move on. The fruit of the spirit is what is love. It's impossible to be a partaker of the divine nature God being love without exhibiting that fruit as well. We need to know that love is the opposite of the work of the flesh. The work of the flesh is self-centered the work of the flesh is selfishness. Everything in this list that we read earlier sets its desire against the spirit.

Why? Because they are only concerned about their flesh and so they're involved in immorality because it feels good impurity because they want to sensuality because it all revolves around them idolatry because they want to worship what they want to worship and on down the list you go. It is themselves I me my is the work of the flesh the work of the spirit is that quickening where suddenly we begin to care about somebody other than I me and mine. An unbeliever you might say is loving all but they have a motive for that love it may make them feel better it may make them look better but the believer is capable of loving in a purely motivated fashion because God's work is at their heart and in their life. I love the way Donald Gray Barnhouse paraphrase first Corinthians 13 that great love chapter we like to think about and read love he writes it this way very practical terms is unselfish. Love is interested in other people love thinks of the life and problems of others and tries to say the word and perform the act that will make life a little happier for them. Love is not envious when somebody else gets a promotion or a prize or a bargain. Love is actually glad when oil is discovered on your neighbor's property. Imagine that love does not go around talking about its own achievements.

Love leaves statistics to God. Love is genuinely interested in the other person's job and wants to know he's getting along. Love does not lose its temper is not hasty does not snap at others. Love puts the best possible interpretation on words and events. Love will never think the worst of others. Love is never glad when others get into trouble. It is never happy about sin. Love is always glad about the truth. Love will stand anything love always wants the best. Love will endure any offense and you read a list like that and you say it's impossible right.

It is. There's no way you can produce that. That's why it is the work of God in our hearts to make us something other than that which we would be without him totally involved in ourselves and our own flesh. He goes on to record the fruit of the Spirit is also not only love but joy. This word sarx or kara has nothing to do by the way with circumstances. That's why Paul could write I am sorrowful present tense yet I continually rejoice.

How do you get those two together. I am sorrowful but I am continually rejoicing how why. Well this is the fruit of the Spirit of God and Kara is that word that joy which is grounded in the awareness of a relationship with God. Sorrow comes from life. Joy comes from being related to the life of God's spirit.

The next fruit follows naturally it's the fruit of peace. You know I have read that the worst ocean storms that rip across the Atlantic creating incredible waves. The storms never go more than about 50 feet deep. In other words you go down 50 feet and the water is calm. Up above raging stormy wind waves. You would think it would envelop the whole of the ocean and yet you go 50 feet deep.

It's calm. I remember as a boy growing up near ocean view in Virginia in Norfolk Virginia going down there and playing on the jetties those stone piers that they built out to diminish the currents and we'd hop from rock to rock risking our lives and having a blast while we did it. And I would see off to the left or the right these green plants floating on top of the water.

Broad green leaves. They would be dashed against the rock to the jetty. They'd be thrown about. They'd have surf. They'd be sprayed. They'd be tossed upside down. All kinds of things happen to them but yet they would flourish.

Why? Because if you happen to explore you'd follow that slender plant stem as it goes down to the rock below and its roots like tentacles wrap themselves around the rocky shore and then into the nourishing soil. Up above chaos turmoil wind wave stress pressure.

How does it survive? It's anchored where the water is calm. That is the illustration of this word peace.

It has nothing to do with things being settled on the surface. It has everything to do with things being settled deep within the soul. United with the Spirit of God. I like the way the hymn writer penned this truth. This great rendering of this Greek word for peace. He wrote it this way.

Hidden in the hollow of his blessed hand. Never foe can follow. Never traitor stand. Not a surge of worry. Not a shade of care. Not a blast of hurry. Touch the Spirit there.

Why? Staid upon Jehovah. Hearts are fully blessed.

Finding as he promised perfect peace and rest. Before we leave this text would you go back again to the first part of verse 22 and would you notice that it is called this cluster. It is called the fruit of who? The fruit of the Spirit.

It's not ours. In fact a close examination of Romans chapter 7 verse 4 tells us that we do not necessarily produce fruit. We simply bear fruit.

Andrew Murray wrote it this way. The branch is nothing more than a rack from which the fruit of the vine hangs. It is the sap from the vine coursing through the branch. That produces the fruit. Likewise it is the life of Christ flowing in us that produces anything worthwhile.

The truth is we cannot produce this list. You cannot put your little fruit of the cup mug on the dash of your car with patience on it and say okay I'm gonna produce that today. Somebody jumps in front of you and you lost it.

You didn't even get out of your driveway hardly right? Why do we always fail? Well one of the things we try to do is come up with this ourselves. No this is the fruit of the Spirit. It is not the fruit of Stephen or Tom or Paul or Bill or Cindy.

It is His. So there isn't any cause for self-congratulation. In fact it would do us well if we would correct our theological vocabulary in a practical way rather than saying oh you know so and so my sister or my brother in Christ they're such gentle people. They're such joyful people. You know I wish I'd been born that way.

No. The truth is they aren't peaceful. They are not joyful in and of themselves. They are simply responding to the Spirit of God. His joy and peace is evident in their lives. It is like sap in that vine flowing out and they simply bear it before God and others. In John 15 our Lord delivers what some call the secret to a fruit-bearing life when he said I am the vine. You are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him he bears much fruit for apart from me you can do at least one thing. Where'd I go off? For apart from me you can do what?

Nothing. John 15 5. The secret of fruit-bearing is not a secret. It's very clear.

It's a relationship. And without him we can do nothing about this fruit-bearing. Throughout John 15 the relationship is evident. In verse 4 he says abide in me. The latter part of verse 4 abide in the vine. Verse 5 he who abides in me. Verse 6 abide in me. Verse 7 you abide in me. Verse 7 the latter part my words abide in you. Verse 9 abide in my love.

The word abide meno simply means to remain. It means that you have a desire to have intimate and close fellowship with God. It says I want to be where you are. David said this is my one desire and this is what I will seek after with my whole heart that I may dwell in the house of God. What is he saying? He wants to be in some building?

No. He wants to be with God. That passion. That desire to abide with him when you pray to him. That drives you to his word. To study his word so that his words abide in you. So that you relate the events of his life to him. So that you praise him for his delight and his discipline.

You are then abiding in him and he in you. None of you fathers ever sat down with your son and said okay I want you to walk like I do. Now watch me and then you walk across the living room floor and you make him watch, take some notes and then say okay now you try it. He gets up and after a while he can do it. No. He just walks like you. None of you mothers ever sat down with your daughter and said okay watch how I brush my hair.

Listen to how I sing or laugh and I want you to speak like me. So say it with me y'all. Not you all but y'all. Say that. No.

No formal lessons at all. They picked it up from you. How? They simply learned it by abiding with you. When you abide with him he gives you the evidence that you've been hanging around him. You've picked it up. You've picked up his character and his perspective and his accent on life. So bearing fruit and all that we've discussed is unlike the law it is not a list of things to follow, things to do and things not to do.

Bearing fruit in the spirit is a relationship that you enjoy and develop. It was Dr. Alexander Graham Bell who advised the parents of a little deaf blind mute girl to send for a teacher from the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts and Ann Sullivan, a 19 year old orphan, accepted the call and went to help this little girl named Helen Keller. You've probably read some of the story and so you know of the arduous work that Ann Sullivan went through just to get Helen to understand the relationship between what she was pressing into her hand and that meaning of word and then that relating to some physical tangible object. But she kept with it and eventually Helen caught it. After two years Helen was able to write and read fluently in braille and she would by the way learn many languages and be fluent in them all.

She learned at age 10 the variations of sound by placing her hands on the throat of Ann and feeling the larynx and knowing the difference then in sounds that were loud or soft, high or low. Eventually she was accepted at Radcliffe College and she went there and Ann of course had to go with her but willingly did and pressed every lecture into Helen's hand. Fifty years of companionship ended when Ann died in 1936 and Helen wrote these endearing words about her friend who had become her eyes, her mouth, her ears. My teacher was so near to me that I scarcely thought of myself apart from her. Her being was inseparable from my own. I feel that the footsteps of my life were in hers. All the best of me belonged to her. There was not a talent or an inspiration or a joy in me that was not awakened by her loving touch. You know in many ways what Ann Sullivan was to Helen Keller Jesus Christ, our bridegroom, wants to be to every believer.

Our ears, our eyes and our mouth. Our inseparable friends. So may I read this back to you again editing it slightly so that it refers to our divine ever faithful bridegroom. He is so near to us that we scarcely think of ourselves apart from him. We feel that his being is inseparable from our own and that the footsteps of our lives are in his. All the best of us belongs to him. There is not a talent or an inspiration or a joy in us that has not been awakened by his loving touch.

Friendship, relationship with him like that will allow us to bear offspring by means of our union with Christ unto God that will be evident to the world. With that we conclude this lesson and also this teaching series called The Beauty of the Bride. This is Wisdom for the Heart with Steven Davey. If you've never introduced yourself to us we have a magazine called Heart to Heart. We send Heart to Heart magazine to all of our Wisdom partners but we'd like to send you the next three issues as our gift to you. Our number is 866-48-BIBLE. That's 866-482-4253. We'd love to talk with you and introduce you to this resource Heart to Heart magazine. Call today. Thanks for joining us. Come back next time for more Wisdom for the Heart.