Episode 1. Rotten Fruit
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Every life, yours, mine, everybody else’s bears some kind of fruit. Sometimes it’s good fruit. Other times its bad fruit. And bad fruit is – well – bad isn’t it. Join Berni Dymet – as he …
Every life, yours, mine, everybody else’s bears some kind of fruit. Sometimes it’s good fruit. Other times its bad fruit. And bad fruit – well – it’s bad isn’t it.
It is fantastic to be with you on a fresh new week here on A Different Perspective. Let me ask you a question, a “hypothetical” if you like? You go out and you decide to buy two dogs, one is a big black dog, massive, powerful; and the other one is one of those small dogs, soft, white, cuddly, floppy ears, sharp eyes. So you have these two dogs, the big black one and the small white one, here’s the question, “As they grow up from puppies into adult dogs which one will grow up to be the stronger one?” Think about it.
The answer’s quite simple. The one that we feed. It’s a bit like that with us too. We all have good inside, a capacity to do really wonderful things, and we have a darker side, you know that rotten selfish side to each one of us. Which one is going to dominate our lives? Which one is going to be the stronger of the two? Answer, the one that we feed.
When we think about it, we do all bear fruit in our lives. We’re like a tree, we put down our roots down somewhere. Sometimes we pick a good plot of dirt. Sometimes we pick a not so good plot of dirt. And our roots go down and we grow like a tree and ultimately our life grows some fruit. And it’s interesting but the fruit isn’t for us to eat, the fruit is for other people to eat.
The fruit is the impact that we have on the lives of other people. Work, home, family, friends, relatives, work colleagues, the life that we live out, day after day after day. In the morning when we get up and have toast and coffee, during the day at work or at school or at home, whatever it is we do, in the evening when we come home again, at dinner time. Just the accumulation of little things that we do every day: the simple things, the nice things we say, the not so nice things we say, the encouragement we give to people, the criticism we meet out sometimes.
All the little things that we do and the occasional big thing we do, they accumulate into fruit and it’s the fruit of our lives that other people consume. Let me ask you, what does your fruit look like? What does it taste like? What does it smell like? If you were to ask the people around you, the people who are close to you, the people you deal with day after day after day, what’s my fruit like? I wonder what they’d say. Maybe that’s a sobering thought.
Two thousand years ago the apostle Paul wrote a letter to a church in Galatia, (it’s know as the Book of Galatians in the New Testament) and he talks about fruit, the two different types of fruit, the two sides of who we are. On the one hand he says:
Look, you have a human nature and human nature being what it is, we can be selfish and grumpy and we can do all that stuff and we can actually bear some bad fruit in our lives. On the other side we have a capacity to have a relationship with God and out of that relationship, we can bear some good fruit.
No it’s interesting, he doesn’t say, “Look, we’ve got a good side and a bad side.” He says, “Look, basically, our human nature is selfish and basically if we rely on our human nature then we are ultimately going to bear bad fruit.” And you know something, even though we can do some good things, at the end of the day, we are selfish creatures, are we not?
At the end of the day if it wasn’t for the rule of law it would be anarchy in our society. In fact, some of the areas where this program goes are experiencing exactly that in society, because people ultimately, bottom line, are selfish.
So the key difference between what Paul is saying and what we might hear as being “there is good within you” type philosophy, is that he is saying there isn’t any good in us. Ultimately we need God to really experience that good. This is what he says, “Listen to me. Live by the Spirit and you won’t gratify the desires of your human nature, because our human nature wants things that conflict with God’s Spirit, and God’s Spirit wants stuff in our lives that are contrary to our human nature. They’re in conflict with one other so that we end up doing the things that we don’t want to do.”
It’s a bit like that conflict of the two dogs, you know, which one is going to be the stronger one? The one that we feed and Paul is saying, “Live by the Spirit, feed that side of you life and you won’t end up chasing the desires of your human nature.”
Now we all have the most amazing potential. You do. You may not believe it but you go and look in the mirror and you can do some things that other people can’t. You are a bundle, as am I, of gifts and abilities on the one side and failures and weaknesses on the other side and we’re a bundle of that. Each one of us comes as a packaged deal, do we not? And I really relate to that bit where he says:
Look, there’s a side to you where you can live with God and you can do what God wants you to do and the other side, if you want to chase after what your human nature wants to do. Those two things are going to be in conflict with each other so we end up doing the things we don’t want to do.
Now basically, we want to have good fruit don’t we? But selfishness and insecurity and all that other stuff gets in the road and that conflict robs us of what God has planned for us. And then he goes on to say:
But if we allow ourselves to be led by the Spirit, we won’t be oppressed by the rules that don’t work with our human nature.
Now, the out workings of that human nature, you know, the things that just don’t work, they’re obvious: sleeping around, worshiping idols, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, arguments, factions, envy, drunkenness, you know what I’m talking about. If that’s the life you choose for yourselves, a life oppressed by your human nature, you’re not going to inherit God’s goodness.
See I used to think that this was some judgmental Christian talking. You know, the moment he gets onto sexual immorality and sleeping around I’d think, “Oh, ok, here come the Christians, the prudes are talking about sex again and don’t do this and don’t do that.” But he’s saying, “Look, those things in the human nature, you know the things that just don’t work, they are obvious.” And when you think about it, sleeping around, worshipping idols, witchcraft … it’s interesting he lists those and then he goes on to talk about hatred and jealousy and fits of rage and selfish ambitions. All of those things Paul puts in the one bucket and says, “They don’t work and you hang around with that sort of stuff in your lives and it’s going to ruin your life and you’re not going to inherit the goodness that Gods got planned for you.” And then he goes on to say:
Don’t kid yourselves. If you feed your human nature, here’s what will happen, you’ll end up wearing the obvious consequences, but if you turn towards God, the Holy Spirit in your life, then you’ll reap his eternal life, starting right here and right now.
Which ones of those list of bad fruit have you got in your life, have I got in my life? Right now, come on, let’s be honest with ourselves. You look at them and maybe the television shows say they work, but in your heart of hearts and in my heart of hearts, come on, we know that they don’t work. Then Paul goes on to say:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love and joy, and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self control.
What a contrast between our human nature that wants to be selfish and do things we know aren’t going to work. I don’t know what it is about us but we do things we just know are going to ruin our lives and the lives of the people around us because that’s human nature. But the fruit of the Spirit, you know, you put your roots down in the Holy Spirit, you put your roots down into God and his living water that Jesus talked about, will come up and you won’t be able to help it, you are just going to grow good fruit.
Now when you look at them, do you and I want to have love and joy, peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self control, do we want that in our lives? Yeah, of course we do because when we look at that list we know it works. Problem is we can’t do it for ourselves. Problem is we can’t construct that in our own lives.
And that’s why over these next couple of weeks we’re going to be looking at the fruit of the Spirit because that junk we have, we want to get rid of and this good stuff, this good fruit, this stuff that comes from God that comes from his Spirit, that’s the stuff we want. So this week and next week we’re going to be looking at the quality of that wonderful fruit, the Fruit of the Spirit from A Different Perspective.
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