8-28-11 Fruit – Remain in me

I’m going to start off with a few easy questions and then work our way into harder ones. What fruit does an apple tree produce? Apples. What kind of fruit does a pear tree produce? Pears. What kind of fruit does a grape vine produce? Grapes. Ok, you’ve done really well. Now for the harder question. What kind of fruit were you created to produce? We know what the purpose of an apple tree and a pear tree and a grape vine is, but what is your purpose?

I was reading Genesis a few weeks ago and I came across this passage:

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground–trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Genesis 2:8-9 (NIV)

Why does God put these two stories together? God had just formed all kinds of animals – birds, fish, mammals, but God doesn’t say anything about them. Instead he plants us so-to-speak with the other trees of the garden.

What’s interesting is that throughout the Bible, the authors of many of the books make references to us producing fruit.

If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your forefathers. He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb . . .Deuteronomy 7:12-13 (NIV)

When we think about it, this makes sense. The apple tree produces apples. The human being produces humans. Children are our fruit. But this isn’t the end of it. The Bible writers go on to tell us that not only is there physical fruit that comes from the womb in the form of babies, but that there is spiritual fruit that comes from the seed to God.

Babies come from their father’s seed which is planted in the womb of their mother. The child grows up to become much like his or her parents.

However, most of the summer we preached a series of messages about the kingdom of God, where Jesus says, The kingdom of God is something that grows inside of you. In a parable Jesus says the kingdom starts small like the tiniest of seeds, but it can grow really big, like the tallest of trees. This seed of the kingdom is planted there by your Father in Heaven, and we’re told that in order to become fully human, in order to become all that you were created to be, you must learn how to grow the seed of the kingdom of God inside of you, so that it can produce spiritual fruit.

The kingdom of God is like a seed and that seed has all the DNA of heaven inside of it. However that seed can lay dormant inside of you your whole life, never sprouting, never growing, never producing the fruit that you were created to be filled with. There is external, physical fruit which is our children. And there is internal, spiritual fruit, which comes only from God. This series is focused on helping us to understand what the fruit is and how it grows.

This series we’re seeking to understand how we grow the seed of the kingdom within us, because for most of us in the room, these ideas about the kingdom of God growing inside of us, are new ideas, and for many in the room, there are a dozen varieties of hellishness that we have growing inside of us – anxiety, fear, low self esteem, depression, lust and addiction just to name a few.

How do we kill those things that are growing in us? And how do we grow the DNA of heaven – love, joy, peace, patience, inside of us? How do we grow the kingdom of God inside of us?

Two weeks ag we read where Jesus began this discourse saying, “I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You  are already clean (or pruned) because of the word I have spoken to you (John 15:1-3). That’s all the further we got two weeks ago.

Today, we continue reading. Jesus says: Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:4-5

We said two weeks ago that in this teaching Jesus is referring to a vineyard. Father God is the Gardener, Jesus is the trunk vine, and you and I are the branches and the big question that Jesus is presenting is how do the branches produce fruit? Let’s start with this little phrase.

Look at this little word. Remain in me. Why the word “In”? Why not, “Remain attached to me?” That would make more sense to my way of thinking. That’s what branches do, right? They need to stay attached to the main vine or they die, but Jesus uses the word in. Remain in me.  It’s that pesky word “in” that keeps popping up. The kingdom of God is with-in you (John 17:21). Streams of living water will flow from within you (John 7:39). Jesus is again pointing, not at outside fruit, but inside fruit.

He’s saying don’t interpret this teaching as “If I love Jesus then he will bless me with a big house and nice cars, numerous vacations and a big 401K.” Jesus is again pointing toward inward fruit of the kingdom of God. This doesn’t mean that you won’t be blessed externally, but blessing starts inside and moves outside, not the other way around.

In our American culture, we are taught that if we make enough and do enough and become educated enough, then we will have enough and be happy, but we know this isn’t how it really works. Jesus turns that around and says, “No, no, no, you must be good on the inside before things can be good on the outside. The outside is an overflowing of the inside.

Now, if we actually take this literally, Jesus is saying, “Stay connected to the inside of me,” which means stay connected to my heart, to my will, to the things that make me tick. Seek what’s on the inside of me, the things that are dear to me, and important to me. Seek the things that I know, that I believe about the world. Which if we know anything about Jesus’ teaching, we know that the main reason he stepped down out of heaven is to proclaim and make available the kingdom of God. “Remain in me” Jesus says. That’s a loaded statement.

How do we remain in Jesus? According to Jesus the greatest command of life is to: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ Mark 12:30 (NIV)

Love is about what’s inside. Jesus says in this passage, if you remain in me, then I will remain in you. I get God’s Spirit being on the inside of me, but how do I get in Jesus? The answer is love and deep connection.

A vine cannot produce fruit if there’s no juice flowing. It can be connected physically by the tough exterior bark and still not produce anything. Some of you here, might call yourself a Christian, and you might come to worship, and you might even put some money in the tithing box. You might have Christian friends and you might listen to Christian music and you might even have a fish bumper sticker. You might have all the physical connections with being a Christian, but if you are seeking God’s love, his truth, his will, and serving out of that, then it’s all empty. It’s all external, while nothing’s happening internally.

Jesus got very angry with the religious leaders of his day because they did all the right things, but they did it with the wrong heart. If you do all the right thing externally, but you fail to be the right person and have the right heart internally, Jesus calls you dead wood.

What’s the most important thing in life? Let me ask you this, is loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength a priority in your life?” We all know what the right answer is, but is this the most important thing in your life – to love God with all that you are – to seek after him and his will and to know him and join him in the work he’s doing in the world?

At another level, all of us, including me can say, “No, no it’s not.” I don’t love God with all that I am, because I still chose my own will from time to time, I still sin, I still do things I’m not proud of and am sure God is not proud of them either.

Here’s a tougher question, “Is that ok with you?” Are you seeking, longing, panting, hungering, craving more of God in your life, or are you ok with where you’re at?

Jesus says, “Remain in me. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.

Wow, isn’t that sort of barbaric for Jesus to say such things? How humane is that? He seems to be insinuating that people are thrown into the fire and burned? What happens with anything that is burned? It is reduced to ash. It’s reduced back to its original state, which is dirt. When you burn branches, the process of burning returns the branches back to their original state – ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

God is the author of goodness and he’s created this place called heaven where all the wrongs are righted and where evil is dead and where there are no more tears, but as we’ve been saying, “There are some things that don’t work in heaven” and Jesus calls us to fight against all that is evil. We are called to draw closer and closer to God so that we produce the fruit of heaven. We are called to draw closer and closer to God so that we become more and more like him.

“If anyone does not remain in me”, Jesus says, the connection to God’s goodness is lost. Heaven cannot grow in you. The seed of the kingdom will wilt and die. The kingdom of God will be lost to you.

If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.

There is a very consistent theme throughout the Bible. The theme is this: The farther people move away from God the more evil they become. Let’s look at how the story of God begins.

The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth–men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air–for I am grieved that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Genesis 6:5-8 (NIV)

God always destroys that which no longer has any good in it. The seed of the kingdom is taken away from those who don’t grow it. For those who don’t want a deep connection to God, and for those who don’t want to grow in their goodness, for those who are ok with the evil condition of their heart, God says, “Away from me you evil doers.”

Here’s what God is saying. We become our choices. Initially you can chose to be angry, but the longer you choose it, the less you have the choice of being angry, you become anger. At first anger is a choice, but the more you chose it the more it becomes your nature. Our choices and our actions are a path that leads somewhere. Where is your path leading? What kind of fruit are you producing?

If you choose your will, instead of God’s, and you choose God to be just a small part of your life, then that doesn’t work in heaven, because God is at the center of heaven. God is what makes heaven work. He’s what makes heaven possible. If you aren’t seeking God to be the center of your will, then you can’t go to heaven because you don’t work in heaven.

If you want to make all the decisions in your life or if you want God to be one of the many side dishes in your life, instead of the main meal, you can do that, but that doesn’t lead to heaven. That’s like you saying to Jesus “Jesus, remain in me.”

Jesus says, remain in me, otherwise, you won’t produce any of the fruit of heaven inside of you today and your life will come to exactly nothing.

Know this, it’s not such a big deal how much evil is in you, but rather what path you’re journeying down and your intentions on that path. Do you want to be like Jesus, but you got a long way to go? That’s ok, as long as you are seeking and desiring to draw close to God and to form your life around his will and not yours. It’s not enough to say, “I want to be like Jesus” without doing anything to be like Jesus. Your will has to match your intentions otherwise it isn’t your will.

Jesus continues: If you remain in me (connected to me, in love with me, with me at the center of your world) and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.

Now, Jesus says things like this numerous times in the gospel accounts of his life. He says things like “Ask whatever you wish, and I’ll give it to you.” And people with a perverted idea of who God misconstrue these statements by Jesus.

Remember in all of Jesus’ teaching, he has been talking about internal spiritual fruit. He’s still talking about that. When he says, “Ask whatever you wish and it will be given to you, he’s saying, “Ask for any spiritual fruit that you want and it will be given to you.” This is indeed good news. Jesus says, if you’re lacking spiritual fruit in any area, ask me for it and I’ll give it to you. Any other translation of this verse takes it out of the context that Jesus is using it.

So what is spiritual fruit? First, I’d like to read a list of things that Paul says will never bear spiritual fruit for us.

The apostle Paul says, “It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time (with you on the throne of your life): repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies (which are comical misrepresentation) of community. I could go on. This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom. Galatians 5:19-21 (MSG)

There’s no fruit of the kingdom of God in such things. All those things are evidence that you are full of yourself, full of sin, full of broken and twisted and distorted ways that will never bless you and never bless those around you. The kingdom will not grow in you if you are ok with those things in your life. They have to be evicted, cut out. Ask God to help you with getting rid of that kind of evil in your life and he will.

The apostle Paul continues:

But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others (love), exuberance about life (joy), serenity (peace). We develop a willingness to stick with things (patience), a sense of compassion in the heart (kindness), and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people (goodness). We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments (faithfulness), not needing to force our way in life (gentleness), able to marshal and direct our energies wisely (self-control). Legalism (rule following without love) is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Galatians 5:22-23 (MSG)

This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

A disciple is one who follows. Jesus says to you and to me, “Come follow me. Remain in me. Be connected to me, love me with all that you are, for I will grow you in the ways of heaven. I am the truth that you are looking for. I am the life that will fill you up with all the goodness that you long for and even more, so much so that it will overflow out of you onto others.

You were produced out of a physical seed that your father planted inside of your mother’s womb. You are evidence of physical fruit. Your heavenly Father has also planted a seed inside of your heart. He wants it to grow, so that you begin to look like him on the inside.

In Genesis one, we’re told that we were created in the image of God. This is what he means. Will you learn to grow the kingdom of God inside of you? You were created to bear physical and spiritual fruit. In your physical being you probably resemble your parents. In your spiritual being you were created to resemble your heavenly Father. How are you doing on that?

The Father is your gardener. Ask you to help you grow great fruit. Don’t be content with where you’re at. God’s not. He wants you to resemble him. Remember, Jesus says the way to growth is through connecting deeply in him.