Fruits of Life

John 12:23-24 "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a seed of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces a great crop." So your walking down a dirt path in the woods. You look around, surrounded by the beauty that is definately not man-made. You might be an athiest, you might be agnostic, but one thing remains true about this wilderness. Its not MAN-made. It may be man-known, as you can know about it and see it with your eyes, but it isnt made by you. This existence, these beautiful pines and oaks, these blooming bushes with thier many flowers and such all go about existing, and they produce their fruit. Perhaps we can learn something walking down this path. Take a closer look and see the fruits around you. Some plants produce delicious fruit, and others produce poisonous fruit. Some produce bad fruit that will kill us if we eat it. There are poisonous flowers and everything. Matthew 7:18 "A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Its wonderful that we can learn about a plant from its fruit. But it goes further when we use fruit as an analogy. The results of sin are like the fruit of a bad tree, and the results of Christ are like good fruit from a good tree. Humans produce fruit too. Your fruit might be a great character trait in you. It could be a love you have for friends and family. You might have some bad fruit in your life, some issues and struggles that hold you back spiritually. I believe its a spiritual law that God gave us so that we could have the ability to see whats going on inside of us. Trees and bushes produces all kinds of fruit, they dont have a choice, its a law of existence. I'm a huge fan of apples. I love me a good apple, and I love an apple tree even more, because in its existence it produces that fruit, and it is sweet to my lips for sure. What if we were just alittle bit more reflective. What if we stopped and looked at the fruits of our lives in a deliberate way. I think we all do this, whether we make it deliberate or not. If we dont recognize we do it, then it comes out in our words anyway. Listen to people, they will tell you. Oh....I'm just struggling with addiction to this, or I'm struggling with an unrighteous desire for that. If the root is good it might be like...God healed this persons sickness, or I saw God move them all to raise their hands in praise, or praise God because he caused us to get some much needed rain. My point is, as humans, we are so consumed with the fruit of existence. I meen we hold it quite high. If we have a sin, then 9 out of 10 times we recognize it in our life because of the bad fruit it produces, and not the root of what it truly is. Listen to what Paul says in Romans 6:19-23 "I am using a human analogy because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you offered the parts of yourselves as slaves to moral impurity, and to greater and greater lawlessness, so now offer them as slaves to righteousness, which results in sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from allegiance to righteousness. And what fruit was produced then from the things you are now ashamed of? For the end of those things is death" He is "using a human analogy, because we are weak in flesh." He is speaking in specific words using an analogy of fruit, in words that relate to the flesh, and that point to the root. "For just as you offered the parts of yourselves as slaves to moral impurity...." Break this down to more than a sentence. The parts of ourselves is representing the fruit of our existence. The parts of ourselves are the things that define us. They are the things we do, the places we go, the words that come out of our mouth, and the thoughts we have amoung many other things. The moral impurity is the actual sin itself! We offered our fruit as a slave to sin, and therefore it was not good fruit. It was rotten fruit, it was poisonous fruit, and it was a product of sin in us. It was a product of a tree rooted in death. "And what fruit was produced then from the things you are now ashamed of?" Well, what was produced from your mistakes? What did happen because of your sins? Not in an eternal perspective, because we are free from the eternal consequences of sin in Jesus Christ. Still from a fruit perspective, what was produced in your life when you sinned?" Then he throws in one final blow to point out the results of being rooted in sin, "for the end of those things is death". Its an anology of what goes on because of sin in our life. What gets me, is how often we get cought up trying to fight sin in vain ways. We are like, oh, look at that piece of bad fruit I just produced in my life, its no good, and we pick it throw it to the ground! "phew" we tell ourselves, I am redeemed for that sin. Then another bad piece of fruit pops up, and we are astounded, I thought I was done with this struggle. So we pick that fruit and throw it to the ground. Allright, Im right with the Lord again, we tell ourselves. Then another piece grows on that tree, and its bad fruit. We pick it, and throw it down. Another, and another, and another. We might get so tired out of this process that we just give up and accept that fruit as a part of who we are, spending our entire lives picking bad fruit from our tree. We end up with a fruitless tree that has a bad root. This is crazy! Cut down the tree already! Grow a new one in its place! "For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root." -Henry David Thoreau You may ask how? How can I destroy the root? How can I destroy the sin? Bury this truth in your heart. Its not the bad fruit we are called to destroy, but the root of that fruit. Its good to get rid of bad fruit, but if we rocognize "that bad fruit" as the manifestation of sin and not the sin itself than that threatens the hold sin has on our lives. Because then, we can truly repent and Christ can uproot that tree of death! Therefore it is in Christ that the tree of death is undone. Only Christ can forgive you of your sins, but that is if you recognize the sin. If we get hung up thinking the fruit of sin is the sin then we cant reach true repentence and were cought in the cycle. Now in the place of that tree of death Jesus will plant himself, and he will produce good fruit. But as long as that bad tree is rooted in us, we will find at best a constant struggle to produce good works before the Lord! Faith leads us to the Love of Christ, which destroys darkness in our lives.! "But now, since you have been liberated from sin and become enslaved to God, you have your fruit, which results in santification---and the end is eternal life! For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ!" How profound! You see, a new fruit shows a new tree has been planted in our lives. And recognize that you did not plant that tree, and that you did not have the seed inside of yourself. The seed was Christ, who came from heaven, who died to sin ONCE AND FOR ALL; BUT IN THAT, HE LIVES. That is wonderful language, break it down. He died, he went into the ground, and IN THAT PROCESS HE LIVES FOREVER! He blooms in wonderful display, and his fruit is eternal life! Therefore, the fruit of rightousness, of redemption, and of love is LIFE! Have you witnessed the fruit in the life of someone you know? Have you seen a Life that is lived like its eternal, and free from death? I gotta tell you, its amazing, and those people inspire us onward. Jesus talked about the fact that you can know a man by his fruits, He even encourages people to look at him that dont believe, and to believe in who He is because of the fruit He produces. John 14:11 Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me. Otherwise, believe because of the works themselves." His works are the Fruit of His Existence. His works are good, and complete, and of Love because he is rooted in God the Father, in a very real way. And the fruit is only a result of who He is in the Father. It is produced because He is rooted deeply and eternally and completely in God. His root is Life, and Life eternal. So learn, that the fruit points the root. And if the fruit is bad, then pray to have the root revealed so that Christ can hack it away, and renew your life in him. This is a good way to get to the sin where its rooted, so we can truly confess it. And then sit back and watch, as he produces good works through your faithfullness, and through his love of you, and through your wisdom to recognize the root needed to be forgiven more then the fruit needed to be picked. One seeks God through faith in his grace, and the other through works. Thats to say, one man will produce good works because he is in Christ, and another will spend his life picking bad fruit from a bad tree and miss the point altogether, decieving himself into thinking he is doing good work In the end he will end all he will end up with is a fruitless tree with some bad roots. But the good work is only done when we have faith in Grace through Jesus Christ, a new root, and a new tree. Now, when you start producing that good fruit through Christ, it is nourishing, to you, and to those around you. You will find that people will come to you, and they will desire to know where your life-giving fruit comes from. They will wonder how you produced it and where it came from! And, for sure, being rooted in Grace through Faith in Jesus Christ, you can and will proclaim. It is in the Glory of God that I find my life! It is Jesus Christ. Luke 8:15 But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop. - Remember Jesus is the Word, and the word tells us about who He is. When you find this truth, and you uproot that sin and plant Grace in its place, you will be attacked...but you will persevere, if only you retain it. It must only fall on good soil, on an open and believing heart. John 12:23-24 "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a seed of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces a great crop."