Monday, December 17, 2018

Fruitful

Fruitful
December 17, 2019
Genesis 1:11 "Then God said, 'Let the earth produce vegetation: plants yielding seed and fruit trees on the earth yielding fruit after their kind with seed in them.'"

In the account of creation, the Lord created the plant life and vegetation. He instructed it to be fruitful, producing fruit in keeping with its kind. In science we understand that the fruit comes forth from the flower of the plant and the fruit itself carries the seed for more plants of its kind. When the Lord instruction the vegetation to be fruitful, He was instructing it to not just bear fruit, but bear fruit with seed, that would yield more fruit. The idea would be proliferation of each respective plant. Several verses later, the Lord made mankind, also instructing them to be fruitful. The idea, again, was that the fruit would contain seed for further creation of its kind.

The continuation of fruit with seed has been working for thousands of years. But the Lord warns us to be careful in the kind of fruit we each produce. In the Scripture, there are certainly examples of bad fruit. What is worse, however, than the bad fruit, is that the bad fruit also has seeds, perpetuating more bad fruit. There is an expression that the apple does not fall far from the tree, meaning the fruit will resemble the kind of specific fruit produced by that tree. And that fruit that fell from the tree, remember it contains seeds for more fruit of its kind, good or bad. 

You and I right now, are producing some kind of fruit, whether you'll admit it or not. Some of the fruit is good and some of the fruit is bad. All of our fruit has seeds that get sown. You show your fruit and the seeds of that fruit get planted in peoples lives around you, good or bad. When you are kind and polite, you sow those seeds into the people in your life, affecting them and those they come in contact with. When you are rude and intolerant, you sow those seeds into the people in your life, affecting them and those they come in contact with. This is all particularly true with the young and impressionable in your life. Maybe these are children, maybe these are new Christians.

You and I have bad habits, even fruitful sin, that plants more sin seed. Whether you admit it or not, you are planting that sin seed in the lives of those around you. You have more influence and affect on people than you realize. Your fruit is affecting those closest to you, the ones you love. And when you sow your sin seed in their lives, you are impacting their life and the lives of their future loved ones, as well. Your sin does not just affect you, it affects everyone you come in contact with and echoes into the future; your grandchildren will even see the seeds of your sin in their own lives some day.  

This is our opportunity to cut out the bad fruit in our lives, to stop sowing the seeds of that bad fruit. It isn't easy and the Lord says the only way to do it is to cut off the branch that produces the bad fruit. You cannot just pick the fruit and throw it away, you have to cut out the thing that is enabling the bad fruit. This might mean cutting out individuals from your life, unfortunately, that are helping you to produce bad fruit. This might mean changing jobs or even careers because it is helping you to produce bad fruit. This might mean throwing away your tv or deleting apps from your phone, because they are helping you to produce bad fruit. The Lord says, whatever it is, you have to cut it out of your life. He uses very aggressive language, saying that if your eye causes you to sin then you are to gouge your eyes out.

Don't take my word for it; look it up:  Gen 1:1-28, Matt 3:8, Matt 5:29, Matt 7:15-20, Matt 18:6, Luke 17:2, Gal 5:22

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