Hebrews Lesson 68 September 21, 2006
NKJ Matthew 11:28 "Come to Me, all you who
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
We are in Hebrews, but we won’t be
there for long. So let’s orient again. Hebrews 6:7-8 has this illustration about
the fruitfulness of the believer and we have to understand what the Bible means
when it talks about the fruitfulness of the believer and why fruitfulness is
important. We have to understand what it is and what it isn’t, what it is good
for and what it is not good for. God did not call us to be fruit inspectors,
but to be students of the Word abiding in Him so that He can produce fruit in
us. So we have an illustration in Hebrews 6.
Hebrews 6:7-8 is in the midst of a
section dealing with a warning passage against believers who have completely
fallen away or on the verge of completely falling away and how dangerous that
is. Then there is this illustration.
NKJ Hebrews 6:7 For the earth which drinks in the rain that often
comes upon it, and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated,
receives blessing from God;
NKJ Hebrews 6:8 but if it bears thorns and briars, it is rejected and near to being cursed,
whose end is to be burned.
The focus is on two things - fruit
production (or the production of the plant) and the end results (blessing or
cursing both in time and eternity). We have looked at the symbols there and
seen that the earth is the believer. The rain represents the provision of God
– the Word of God and the Spirit of God. The herbs represent the
production of good fruit or divine good that has eternal quality to it. The
thorns and thistles are the production of evil, sin and human good. The
cultivator is God. God is the one ultimately producing the fruit. It is not ourselves. It is not our own efforts that produce the fruit.
We are to be in right relationship with God the Holy Spirit. We are to be
walking with the Spirit, abiding in Christ, dependent upon the Word of God,
taking in the Word of God, applying the Word of God. When we are doing that,
then it is the Holy Spirit who takes that in an unseen invisible way and He
produces growth and maturity in us leading to the production of fruit. So we are
going through the passages. Now these passages are all important because we
have to recognize that the Word of God doesn’t tell us everything there is to
say about any particular topic or subject or doctrine in any one verse. So we
take different key passages where some was revealed here, some was revealed
there, and some more was revealed over there. We start putting these together to
create a clear understanding of the entirety of doctrine. So we moved from
Hebrews 6:7 to begin our study in John 15:1-6.
In John 15 we saw that there were
three types of branches. There were the non-fruit bearing branches that were to
be lifted up. That is the corrected translation – not cut off, but lifted
up. These represent young believers that are nurtured so that they can produce
fruit in coming years as they mature. Then there were the fruit bearing branches
that were pruned for greater fruit production. This represents discipline in
the positive sense of the word, not discipline in the sense of punitive
punishment. (That’s kind of redundant isn’t it?) It is not punitive discipline.
It is productive discipline, teaching us to be disciplined in the Christian
life and to do away with that which is not productive. Then the third was the
non abiding branches which were pruned, completely removed, discarded as
useless which is a picture of divine discipline on the believer in time even to
the extent of the sin unto death.
We saw secondly that the goal in
John 15 is fruit production. The believer is to abide. Some 6 times that word
is used – to abide. Several times the word fruit is used. That is the
goal – fruit production.
NKJ John 15:8 "By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you
will be My disciples.
So you will become. That is in the
process of becoming something that you weren’t before. We saw that there were
truly three different stages of fruit production mentioned there - those who
bore fruit, those who produced more fruit, and those who bore much fruit. We
see the same kind of thing in Matthew 13 which we will
look at a little more this evening. Believers produce fruit in different
levels.
So the goal is fruit production. The
third thing we saw is that the sole and necessary condition for fruit production
is abiding in John 15. You have to abide in Christ.
NKJ John 15:7 "If you abide in Me, and
My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for
you.
There is doctrine.
It’s not just a feel good thing. It
is not a subjective or psychological thing. It is based upon the Word of God
comprehended, studied, understood.
You can’t believe what you don’t understand. You can’t understand what
you haven’t thought about. That is why the Old Testament talked about
meditation all the time.
Furthermore we learned from this
that this (the fourth point) abiding is not some subjective or psychological
state; but is related to doctrine in the believer - leading to the fifth point
that abiding is not simply a positional reality or and abstract doctrine. It is
manifest in an ongoing relationship with Jesus Christ as indicated through prayer.
There is the two-way communication. God speaks to us through His Word. We speak
to God in prayer. It is two people as it were - two persons. God is a person. He
has the ability to communicate. We are people. We are designed for fellowship for
intimacy with God. The term abide emphasizes this intimate ongoing relationship
of the believer. The relationship as I have said already isn’t based on
subjective impressions or subjective criterion of having a close walk with
Jesus or feeling like you are closer to Jesus because you have sung a lot of
Christian choruses and everybody had a good time standing up and stomping their
feet and clapping their hands and swaying to the music and enjoying the beat. But
it is because you follow clear markers in Scripture to indicate you are abiding
in Christ.
NKJ John 15:10 "If you keep My commandments, you will abide in
My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love.
If we disobey, we are not abiding in
His love. Are we out of the family now? No. Are we in the wood shed? Yes. That
is such an old saying. There has got to be something new, but I don’t think
that parents today discipline kids. So I don’t know
what the contemporary idiom would be. Are you having a time out? Somehow it just doesn’t communicate,
does it? You sinned and you are going to have a spiritual time out. It just
doesn’t work. You see God built these things into the whole framework. You have
got to have corporal discipline.
If you don’t keep His commandments,
you don’t abide in His love. You have to know the commandments to keep them. You
have to come to Bible class to learn them. You have to study the Word, read the
Word, know what they are, and be reminded of them. It doesn’t just happen.
The overriding mandate throughout
this whole section and I have pointed out is love. Jesus gave us the
commandment that we are to love one another…
NKJ John 15:12 "This is My commandment,
that you love one another as I have loved you.
That was based on the new
commandment in John 13:34-35. Love is not marked by feelings, not by emotion,
not by feelings of warmth and rapport; but by objective standards of doing what
the Word of God says to do. People can get legalistic about it and they can be
doing what the Word of God says to do and there is no relationship. You have to
be careful not to go too far to the other extreme. Love is measured by keeping
the commandments. This leads to the production of fruit. As I have said already
the sole and necessary condition to produce fruit in John 15 is abiding in
Christ.
Now we go to Galatians 5 which tells what the fruit of the Spirit is. This is a
comprehensive list but it is not an exhaustive list.
NKJ Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
NKJ Galatians 5:23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.
That means it gives us a lot but it
doesn’t tell us everything there is to say about fruit. But what I want you to
notice as we go through this study tonight is that fruit in the Bible is
character. It is the virtues of the Christian life. It is not external
behavior. It is not witnessing. If you grow up in some Christian contexts fruit
is pretty much defined as how many people you witnessed to this week –
how many people you lead to the Lord. If you didn’t lead 5 people to the Lord
this week, you aren’t producing any fruit. But when we go through the Scripture
that’s not really how the Bible uses the term fruit in relation to the
Christian life. It’s character transformation. Again and again and again it has
to do with what happens on the inside as God the Holy Spirit takes the Word of
God and uses it in the soul of the believer to produce the character of Jesus
Christ.
So we went from John 15 to Luke 8
last time. We went to Luke 8. That was the parable of the soils. Just to give
you a brief review to help you get it back in your head, we had the story of
the sower who comes along and casts the seed. The
seed represents message of the gospel of the Kingdom of God. The seed lands on
four different kinds of soil. What we learned from this again is that not all
Christians bear fruit. Some don’t bear fruit. There is growth but there is no
fruit. We saw that the seed produces a plant. When the seed falls on three
types of soil, it produces some kind of growth. It is only the first soil where
the path is trampled and the seed is taken by the birds that it is not a
believer. The other three examples include the rocky soil. We saw that the seed
germinates; it grows. It generates. It sprouts. There is life, but it withers
because of the lack of moisture. There is clearly birth, the beginning of life.
It hears. It received the Word with joy. It is the same thing said in Mathew.
“Believes for awhile.” That is not said in Matthew, but Luke makes it clear
that that is what is meant by receiving the joy.
But it fails under temptation.
Then we have the second kind of
soil, where the seed falls amongst the thorns. Again it is choked out but for
the seed to be choked out there has to be germination and some growth. Then it
is choked out. This is choked out by the details of life – distractions.
This represents the person who receives the message of the kingdom but there is
some growth but not much growth. There is no fruit production because it is choked out by the thorns. There are too many
distractions in life and this is the person who never gets very far in his
spiritual growth. Then it is the last soil where we have fruit produced.
What makes the difference is the
kind of soil. The message is, what kind of soil are
you? In other words, what is your volition toward the Word of God? That makes the difference. Now what I
want to do before we go on (I keep threatening that we will go to Ephesians 5,
but I keep finding other passages to go to.) Let’s go to Matthew 13. I just
want to point out a couple of things here. You may not realize it (Some of you
do because you have been around awhile) but many of these passages that I am
talking about are also at the heart of the debate that goes back and forth over
the nature of gospel, assurance of salvation, and what is known as the debate
between the free grace gospel verses lordship salvation.
Lordship salvation in essence says
that the way you know you are saved is because of the fruit that comes out in
your life. Of course all of these passages that deal with fruit would come to
play in that debate. Their
argument is if you want to know if you are really saved, if there has been
regeneration that has taken place, it’s going to
produce fruit in your life. If you don’t see the fruit, then you weren’t truly
saved. You weren’t genuinely saved. You didn’t have saving faith.
On the other hand the free grace
gospel says, “No we have to make a distinction between justification which
happens when you believed and received the gospel and sanctification which is
the spiritual life.”
This debate goes back a long time
into history. It has taken different forms in different groups. I think I
pointed this out before that at the time of the Reformation beginning in 1517
and in those early years, Luther did not grasp justification by faith alone in
all the ways he did a little later on, right at first. But he was close. Those of you who go
shooting catch the metaphor. He was on the paper. He might not have been in the
bull’s eye or on the black but he was at least on the paper. He had a young sharp
student by the name of Phillip Melangthon who was
really the man who formulated and systematized Luther’s theology. Melangthon had a crisp clear understanding of the doctrine
of justification by faith alone. At the instant of faith in Christ we received
Christ’s righteousness and God imputes that righteousness to us. On the basis
of the possession of Christ’s righteousness we are declared
just by God. It is not that we are just. It is not “just as if I never
sinned” which you will hear some people express. It is on the basis of the
possession of Christ’s righteousness that you are declared righteousness. It is
not that you are made righteous. That is an important distinction.
In Roman Catholic theology there is
this confusion between justification by faith and sanctification so that
justification is the process of being made righteous. So in Roman Catholic
theology justification isn’t a point in time, a slice of a nanosecond when all
of those things happen that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to you. God the
Father looks on that righteousness and declares you to be righteous because you
have received Christ’s righteousness - justification by faith alone. When we
talk about sanctification and spiritual growth that’s what Roman Catholics mean
by justification. You see they have confused that. For them justification is a
process. How do you know you are justified? Because you look
at the morality in your life and the religion in your life and the good works
in your life. If that’s not there, then you need to go get some more
grace. After Luther and then later Calvin began to teach a true crisp
unadulterated doctrine of justification by faith alone, the reaction from the Roman
Catholic Church was that if you teach these things - that all a person has to
do is trust in Christ to be saved and they will be saved and they can’t lose it
- then what is it to encourage them to be moral and law-abiding and to be good
people. You have just taken away all of the motivation for that. You have to
load them up with guilt.
When I was in Connecticut people
understood this because Connecticut had a population that was about 70% Roman
Catholic. Nearly every one in Preston City Bible Church came out of a Catholic
background. If I said Catholic guilt, they knew exactly what I was talking
about. That is where that term comes from because you have to put this load of
guilt on people otherwise they won’t keep doing what is right; you can’t control
them. They are so afraid that if you tell people that
they are saved by grace that they will become licentious and just go out and do
whatever they want to however they want to. You can’t control them any
more.
So by the end of his career a guy whose
name is Dave Anderson who pastors is very good in this area. Dave has done some
tremendous work. In this he shows in an article published in the GES a few years ago how in Calvin’s later editions of his institutes (which
is what we have published today) that he goes through a change. He begins to
try to answer this objection from the Roman Catholics and he slips into
lordship view of perseverance of the saints - that if you don’t show fruit you
weren’t really saved. That begins to develop within Calvin’s thought and later
it entered into reform theology and it’s been this debate that has gone on down
through the centuries. Is a person purely and simply saved by faith alone in
Christ alone? If they believed the gospel such that they truly understand the propositions
that Christ died for their sins they understand that they can’t do anything for
their salvation. They understand that Christ paid it all. All they have to do
is receive it as a gift, believe in Christ, accept His substitutionary
death for them and that is all they need to do to be saved, that if they live
like the devil for the rest of their lives, are they still saved? If the answer
to that is yes, you understand grace. But if the answer to that is no, then you
are starting to muddy the water a little bit and you are confusing fruit
production with germination and the beginning of the plant. That is what we are
really dealing with here. Matthew 13 – the parable of the soils and Luke
8 are parallel passages and that is where you get into a lot of the debate. But
I wanted to come back to this and point out something that I think we need to
pay attention to.
In Matthew 13 just like in Luke you
have four responses to the gospel message. The parable begins in verse 3.
NKJ Matthew 13:3 Then He spoke many things to them in parables, saying: "Behold, a sower went out to sow.
NKJ Matthew 13:4 "And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them.
NKJ Matthew 13:5 "Some fell on stony places, where they did not
have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of
earth.
See there is life. There is
germination. There is some growth - a little bit.
NKJ Matthew 13:6 "But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had
no root they withered away.
NKJ Matthew 13:7 "And some fell among thorns, and the thorns
sprang up and choked them.
NKJ Matthew 13:8 "But others fell on good ground and yielded a
crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
That’s comparable to John 15 –
fruit, more fruit and much fruit. There are different percentages of fruit
production.
Then there is a challenge –
the disciples in 10-17 say…
NKJ Matthew 13:10 And the disciples came and
said to Him, "Why do You speak to them in parables?"
So Jesus is explaining that. Then he
comes back to explain the parable in verse 18. Now the thing to understand
about Matthew 13 that you don’t have in Luke 8 is that in Matthew 13 you have a
series of parables that build upon one another. There is interconnectiveness
to these parables so that the symbols in one help you understand and interpret
the next parable because he doesn’t interpret all of the parables for you. So
you are supposed to be able to apply your thought to this and put things
together. The only thing I am concerned about right now is these first two
parables.
So he starts to explain them. It is
the same explanation that we have over in Luke 8.
NKJ Matthew 13:19 "When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not
understand it, then the wicked one comes
and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by
the wayside.
NKJ Matthew 13:20 "But he who received the seed on stony places,
this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy;
This is similar terminology to Luke
8. He is a believer. He just had a little growth before. He doesn’t have any
sustenance. He withers up and is gone. He has no root in himself.
NKJ Matthew 13:21 "yet he has no root in himself, but endures only
for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word,
immediately he stumbles.
NKJ Matthew 13:22 "Now he who received seed among the thorns is he
who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches
choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.
Then we have the explanation of the
fourth one.
Now what I want you to note here is
that on the second soil the soil in the rock ground and the seed falls on the
rocky ground and it germinates – what is that seed producing? Is it
producing the same kind of plant that is produced in verse 23 that bears fruit?
It is the same kind of plant or is it a different kind of plant? It is the same
kind of plant. The only difference between the two is the soil. One is on good
soil; one is on soil that is rocky so it doesn’t produce any in depth root so
it doesn’t grow to maturity. But it is the same plant. Now what we learn about
this is that the plant that is being talked about here is wheat. The point I am making is that what you
have in the parable of the soils is all related to the three that produce some
kind of growth are all wheat. You don’t see the introduction of the professing
or the pseudo Christian until the next parable.
NKJ Matthew 13:24 Another parable He put forth
to them, saying: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed
in his field;
It is the same man sowing the same
good seed. The good seed is the gospel of the kingdom.
NKJ Matthew 13:25 "but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed
tares among the wheat and went his way.
Now you are introduced to another
kind of plant. This is the pseudo-Christian. Not a pseudo-believer. Remember I
talked about that a few weeks ago. We have to keep that clear. There are people
who come along and say well, there are folks who have a false faith in Jesus or
just profess to believe in Jesus.
There is a difference. We have to be very careful here. There is a
difference between saying you profess to believe in Jesus and you profess to
say you are a Christian. If I claim (that is what profess means) to believe in
Jesus; then that is a statement. Unless I am lying I am telling the truth. If I
believe in Jesus; I believe in Jesus. If I say, “I am
a Christian.” I may or may not be a Christian. I may not understand the gospel
at all. I may just be part of a denomination that considers itself a Christian
denomination. They may be liberal. They may hold to a moral view of the
atonement. They may hold to a works salvation. They may hold to baptismal
regeneration. It is just a profession of being a Christian. But if I say I
believe in Jesus, unless I am totally self deceived and I don’t know what I
believe we have to take that to be true. They understand the gospel and they
believe in Jesus.
It is not until the second parable
that we have the introduction of the pseudo-Christian. I am not going to say
pseudo-believer. There is no category for that in the Scripture. The only way that they are identified - the tares are identified and
these are sown by the enemy. They are not sown by the
man with the good seed. It is a different seed. So what we have in the
parable of the sower is this
is all the seed of the gospel that produces all of those
plants. So those all have to be believers - the rocky soil, the thorny
soil and the good soil. It is not until the second parable that we have the
introduction of a false counterfeit plant into the field.
So what we have established so far
is that not all Christians bear fruit. Some all you have is growth. You have a
little stem production and that is about it. Those that grow to maturity produce fruit at different
levels. Some produce 100-fold, 60-fold and 30-fold. Matthew 13 and Luke 8 both
emphasize this and I think if we are honest with the vocabulary that is used
there, then the three soils all represent believers.
Now let’s look at another passage
that fruit production from a different perspective.
Now let’s look at James 1:18
NKJ James 1:18 Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might
be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.
There is the active element at
regeneration. God uses intermediate means to bring about regeneration. It is
the word of truth, the message of the gospel that Jesus Christ died on the
cross for us that we might be a kind of firstfruits
of His creatures. So verse 18 is talking about regeneration. That is where
salvation comes into this discourse in this part of James. Then he shifts. That
is the last thing he says in the introduction. Then in verse 19 and 20 he
starts to make the shift to set up the rest of the book.
NKJ James 1:19 So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to
speak, slow to wrath;
“My beloved brethren” is a term that
is used to refer to believers. He uses it many times in this epistle and he
emphasizes the fact that he is addressing them as believers, as regenerate
believers.
That is the outline of the book of
James. You have an introduction in vs. 1-18. In 19 down through the end of
chapter 2 you have a section that expounds on the idea of what it means to be
swift to hear. Chapter 3 deals with slow to speak and the sins of the tongue. Then
starting toward the end of chapter 3 you have a section on mental attitude sins
and on wisdom of the world versus the wisdom of God. This deals with mental attitude
sins summarized by the term anger or wrath here in verse 19.
NKJ James 1:20 for the wrath of man does not produce the
righteousness of God.
That’s what we are after –
production of the righteousness of God. This isn’t righteousness for justification.
This isn’t imputed righteousness because he is already talking about the fact
that they are saved. They were justified, (let’s clarify my terminology
here).
NKJ James 1:18 Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might
be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.
That’s when they are justified
– when they are regenerated. That all happened in a moment in time. It
all happens simultaneously. Regeneration and justification all take place at
the instant of faith alone in Christ alone. Now we are going to talk about post
salvation experiential righteousness as God is going to build maturity into the
life of the believer and produce experiential righteousness
which is part of the fruit of spiritual growth. We will see that as we go
through.
Therefore he says…
NKJ James 1:21 Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of
wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save
your souls.
I love the Old King James – “superfluity
of naughtiness.” Just ask somebody what that means. Meditate on that in your
morning devotions!
It is a great term. It is difficult
to translate the Greek. It literally means the excess in your life which sin
is. Sin is an excess in your life. It is not
necessary. That is the same thing Paul says over in I Corinthians…
NKJ 1 Corinthians 6:20 For you were bought at a
price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.
In Romans 6 he says that…
NKJ Romans 6:2 Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any
longer in it?
Sin is superfluous now. It is an excess. Sin in not necessary. Before you were saved you
had no choice but to sin. Everything you did came out of the sin nature. Human
good came out of the sin nature. Morality came out of the sin nature. Everything
came out of the sin nature. Some of the most evil people in the world today are
not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or
Hugo Chavez. I mean these people are evil, but they are not anything compared
to some of the folks in this country. I mean you think about some of the folks
in this country who are moral and religious. I could name you a couple of
pastors who I am convinced that they are not saved. Boy, do they have a huge
influence. They have no belief in a substitutionary
atonement of Christ, no belief in sin. One of them is out in Southern
California and he believes that Christ died so that you could have a good self-image.
He wrote a whole book on it called Self Esteem,
the New Reformation. This is real evil. This is worse than any of the violent
evil of the Islamic terrorists. That is a different kind of evil. I think that
the worst evil is the kind that comes masquerading in religion or comes
masquerading in morality and comes with all kinds of wonderful social programs
and handouts and everything else with simply the veneer of religion or
Christianity.
So God is producing righteousness in the believer. There is a
pre-condition for this though. That is what is interesting about looking at
James 1:21 because it looks in your English Bible as if you have two
imperatives there - lay aside and receive. Right? That is what it looks like in
your English. Actually in the Greek you don’t. You have one aorist imperative which is, “receive with meekness the implanted
word which is able to save your souls”. Now they are already justified. Aren’t
they? Didn’t we say that already? They are justified. So when it talks about
receiving the implanted word which is able to save
your souls, it is not talking about getting justified. These folks are already justified.
They are “my beloved brethren.”
Hold your place right there and we
are going to have sword drill time. Turn over to Romans 5.
NKJ Romans 5:1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have
peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
Right now according to that verse
what are we? Having now been justified. Just think a little bit. What are we
right now? We are justified. Present tense. Right? Having now been justified. That
“now” is a big word.
“We shall be saved.” Now what tense
do you think that is? That’s future tense. Does that mean we can be justified
and not saved? That doesn’t fit
American superficial evangelical terminology which says that always asks the
question, “Brother are you saved? We don’t use the word “saved” in the same way
the Bible uses the word saved most of the time. Sometimes sozo is a synonym for
justification, but in many cases sozo is related to
the post justification life or it’s related to the future glorification life. So
you have to look at the context to find out. In Romans the word sozo to my
knowledge never refers to justification. That is not the word Paul uses getting
righteousness and being able to enter into heaven. In his vocabulary in Romans
he will ask people, “Are you justified?”
If you are justified, then we will
be saved. It is future tense. So I just want you to understand that what I am
saying here in James 1 about “receiving the implanted word which is able to
save your souls” is we’re not talking about justification here, we are talking
about what happens now that you are justified. You have to receive the implanted
Word and that will save you. It is an aorist command. But what is interesting
in the Greek is you have something called a participle of attended
circumstance. I just love these terms.
You don’t have a clue what that
means. What that means – if you go to the grammars they will say that
there are 5 characteristics you look for grammatically in a sentence structure
to know if you have a participle of attended circumstance. You got them here. You’ve
got an aorist participle that precedes an aorist imperative and a number of
other things that are going on in the text. What it basically means is that the
aorist participle lays down the conditions that must come antecedently, preceding
the mandate. In other words before you can receive “the Word that is able to
save your soul” you have to lay aside filthiness and the excess that sin is. Does
that mean that I have to quit sinning before I can get saved? If that’s true
then we are all lost. So we are not talking about that. What we are talking
about here is that one little word that we use a lot - confession. It is
confession. It is the same structure as a matter of fact that you have over in
1 Peter 2:1. In 1 Peter 2:1 you have the command…
NKJ 1 Peter 2:1 Therefore, laying aside all
malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking,
It is the same word. It is like
taking off an old set of dirty clothes.
NKJ 1 Peter 2:2 as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word,
that you may grow thereby,
Before you can desire the sincere
milk of the Word and grow by it, what do you have to do? You have to go through
that process of cleansing from sin, which comes as a result of confession. 1
John 1:9. So you see all of those ties together. Before you can start receiving
the Word implanted which is able to deliver us. Remember the three stages of
sanctification or three stages of salvation. We are saved from the penalty of
sin when we put our faith alone in Christ alone. We are saved from the power of
sin during our Christian life. We are saved from the presence of sin and
glorification. What did I say happens during sanctification? We are saved from
the power of sin so that since we died to sin we don’t have to obey sin anymore.
That is Romans 6. So James 1:21 is saying that we have
to receive the implanted word which is able to save your life. The word here
for soul is pseuche. This word is saving your life. Jesus
said…
NKJ John 10:10 "The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to
destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
How do I get that life? You get that
life by being cleansed from sin and then receiving the implanted word which is
able to save you life which is able to save you from the power of sin on a
day-to-day basis. Then he goes on to develop from verse 23 on the emphasis on
hearing the Word.
NKJ James 1:23 For if anyone is a hearer of
the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a
mirror;
By doer, he means applier. You come
to Bible class and you hear you are to pray without ceasing. You go home and you
don’t pray for three weeks. Have you been applying the Word? No. You see you
are a hearer and not a doer. That is what it means doer is in Christian
service. Doing is application of the Word of God. So this is where we see the
production of fruit coming in at that point. In the implanted word in verse 21
it is the seed that grows up and produces fruit. It is that same imagery that
is used there that buys into that whole fruit production metaphor that we find
throughout Scripture. Now what are some other passages that have to do with
fruit production?
Let’s look at a couple of them.
NKJ Hebrews 12:11 Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present,
but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of
righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
This isn’t legalism. Legalism says
that by doing good, by being moral we please God and gain His approbation. That’s
not what this is talking about. This is talking about that within the context
of divine discipline in the life of the believer; the believer learns to be
obedient, to abide in Christ and to be filled with the Spirit. As you take in
the Word of God and let the Word of God abide in you, then it produces fruit. Part
of that fruit it produces is personal evangelism, right? (I just wanted to see
if anybody was listening.) It is righteousness. This is experiential
righteousness. This isn’t imputed righteousness. So then we have other verses
that back this up. For example…
NKJ Colossians 1:10 that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work
and increasing in the knowledge of God;
This is obviously post salvation.
Isn’t that an interesting word? It
just hit me - increasing in knowledge of God. I wonder how many Christians
there are that this year can say they know more about
God and they know God better than they did a year ago. That is part of growth. It
has a consequence of producing fruit in divine good.
NKJ Philippians 1:10 that you may approve the things that are excellent,
that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ,
NKJ Philippians 1:11 being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
The flip side of that is you don’t
approve the things that are not excellent.
I remember years ago hearing one of
my seminary professors saying to us as pastors, “Men the biggest challenge that
you are going to face as pastors is not choosing between the good and the
sinful. It is going to be between choosing the good and the excellent.”
Don’t get distracted by things that
are fine and fun and good that keep you from the pursuit of the excellent in
your Christian life. That is what Paul is saying here.
It is experiential righteousness. It
is divine good and it is living a life that is consistent with the righteous
standards of God. He sets out the protocols for living the Christian life throughout
the New Testament. That defines his standards – living consistent with
those standards – standards for the royal family of God.
Back to James. We have come full circle.
NKJ James 3:18 Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by
those who make peace.
The gospel again is pictured as a
seed. As it grows it matures. As it is watered and fertilized;
its fruit is righteousness. It sort of gives us a framework in talking about
fruit.
Now let’s go to another key passage
on fruit. Before we can get to Galatians 5, which will tie it all together, we
need to look at Ephesians 5. So what we have done is tie John 15, Luke 8, James
1, and now Ephesians 5 and then Galatians 5. These are the critical
passages.
Now remember Ephesians is Paul’s classic
concise explanation of the church and the Church Age. Ephesians is a great book
that one day we will get to. It’s so easy to understand because the first three
chapters deal with doctrine. This is who God is and what He has done for you in
salvation. Then the last three
chapters are in light of the doctrine this is what you do. It’s almost like a
sermon. When we take two years to get through the first three chapters, some
how we forget how the last three chapters relate because we are dealing with
all of this great doctrine in the first three chapters. The doctrine always
leads to the real practical stuff. The practical stuff is good. A lot of people
want to jump there, but you can’t understand what it means to love one another,
you can’t understand what it means for husbands to love their wives and wives
to submit to your husbands if you don’t think in the framework of the first
tree chapters. These wonderful, practical commands that relate to husbands,
wives, parents, children that come in the 5th chapter are based on
an understanding of the first three chapters. If you don’t understand that
doctrinal foundation, then you end up (which is what happens in too many
churches today) preaching too many “how to” sermons on how to have a good
marriage, how to keep your checkbook balanced, how to raise good kids. It’s
nice stuff. It’s not wrong stuff. But guess what. Because
it is divorced from the doctrinal foundation, it ends up being nothing more
than preaching morality. People don’t understand why they are doing what they
are doing any more they are just doing moral things. Then end up trying to pull
themselves up by their own bootstraps in their spiritual lives. So we will go
to Ephesians 5 which is the second chapter of the
application section.
He starts to remind them of their
position in verse 8 so he can challenge them to application after that.
NKJ Ephesians 5:8 For you were once darkness, but now you
are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light
What is he talking about here? What
we call positional truth – our position in Christ. Before we were
justified, we were children of darkness. We were in the kingdom of Satan and
kingdom of darkness. In Colossians Paul says,
NAS Colossians 1:13 For He delivered us from the domain of darkness, and
transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,
So when he says “you were once
darkness”, this is what characterized you as an unbeliever. You were in
darkness no matter how smart you were, no matter how high your IQ was, no matter how moral you were, you were in darkness. But now you
are light in the Lord, positionally.
Then he has a command. Walk is a
present imperative. This is to characterize your life as standard operating
procedure.
Some of you may have used this
example when you were a parent or maybe you heard it when you were a kid.
Your father said, “You are a member
of this family and if you are going to be a member of this family you are not
going to act like that. You are going to act like this.”
That is what Paul is saying here.
Now you are light in the Lord. You are a member of the royal family. That means
you have to live a certain way. You can’t live like you did before because
there has been a shift that has taken place. You have been transferred from the
kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His beloved Son. So you can’t live like
you used to live because you are not who you used to be. You are somebody new. You
are children of light, so walk as children of light.
I want you to notice the contrast. I
will come back to verse 9 in just a minute. I have to set you up for something.
We have this juxtaposition between light and darkness – absolute states.
You were once darkness. Now you are light. Walk as light, not as darkness.
NKJ Ephesians 5:11 And have no fellowship with
the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.
NKJ Ephesians 5:13 But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for
whatever makes manifest is light.
NKJ Ephesians 5:14 Therefore He says: "Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And
Christ will give you light."
So there is a heavy emphasis all
through this section on light.
Now somewhere back in the late 200’s
(late third century AD) a textual variant (that means another word) slipped
into the text. So in some manuscripts we find “for the fruit of the light” in
verse 9 “is in all goodness, righteousness and truth”. But the majority of
documents have Spirit there. Three of the uncials (some of the oldest
documents) support one another that the reading should be “light” and not
spirit. I call them the big four because there are four of the oldest
manuscripts. If they all agree then people who believe oldest is right go with
that. But it is a split witness – three against one. One of the oldies
agrees with the majority text that the reading here should be Spirit and not
light.
People who look at things like this
have various rules. One of the rules is that you should take the harder
reading. It seems to me that the reading that would be harder here would be
Spirit because light is used in juxtaposition to all the way through it would
be easy to see how a scribe would come along and say well it would make more
sense fruit of the light rather than fruit of the Spirit. I am just going to
write that in the margin. Then the next thing you know it is copied in. So I
believe that as you have in the King James and New King James, which is based
on the TR but the TR is related to
the majority text, that it is fruit of the Spirit here. But in either case they
are used synonymously in many places in Scripture so we shouldn’t get too caught
up one way or the other. This production of the Spirit which
is a production of walking in the light is defined as goodness (divine
good) intrinsic good, righteousness and truth – veracity and integrity.
This is what is produced when the believer is walking in the light. Of course
if the believer is walking in the light he also walking by the Spirit and
abiding in Christ. All of these terms for walking are synonymous to one
another. What we see here in Ephesian 5 is this
juxtaposition between two absolute conditions - you are either in the light or
in darkness. You are either foolish or you are wise.
Skip down to verse 15.
NKJ Ephesians 5:15 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools
but as wise,
You see you are either walking as
fools or walking as wise. You can’t be a little bit of both. You have a
tendency today from a lot of people to say it is done a little bit by the
Spirit and a little bit by the flesh. But I don’t believe that. It is either
one or the other.
Galatians 5 makes it very clear. We
will see that next time.
NKJ Ephesians 5:16 redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
NKJ Ephesians 5:17 Therefore do not be unwise,
but understand what the will of the Lord is.
NKJ Ephesians 5:18 And do not be drunk with
wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit,
It’s an instrumental dative there
indicating that the means of spirituality is going to be in one case is wine and
in the other case is spirit. You will mostly hear people talk about when you
are under the influence of alcohol it controls you. We talk about influence or
control. I think these are confusing terms. Control would indicate that you
don’t have any volition. Influence is a better term, but the emphasis here is
on the instrumentality. In other words you are using wine to get spiritual. That
is what was happening in Ephesus. One of the gods that they worshipped in
Ephesus was Dionysius. He was the god of wine. So if you wanted to get close to
the god of wine, guess what you did. You went out and drank wine until you got
so drunk that the spirit of the god would enter into you and speak through you
in ecstatic utterance. Gee, tongues. Wow! See how all of this relates? You get
a bunch of pagans coming out of a pagan Greek background hearing terminology
that is similar to some of the stuff that was going on in their pagan
background and they started assimilating it instead of making radical
distinction. So what Paul is saying the way to be spiritual is not by means of
wine, which is what you are doing on the weekend going up and dancing around
with all the priestesses, but it is to be filled by means of the Spirit. The
Spirit is the means. It is not the content. If we were talking about the
content, we would use the genitive there. But it uses an instrumental dative,
which means something completely different.
I can say, “Fill my coffee cup with
coffee.”
I use the English preposition with. The
content of filling is the coffee.
Or I can say, “Fill up my mug with
that pitcher.”
Then the pitcher is the means of
filling it. When you are indwelt by the Holy Spirit
you have got all the Holy Spirit you are ever going to get at the instant of
salvation. You don’t get anymore. You don’t get filled up with any more. But
you are either going to be filled up with something by the Spirit or you are
not. Look at the result.
You are filled by means of the
Spirit. What are the results?
NKJ Ephesians 5:19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord,
NKJ Ephesians 5:20 giving thanks always for all things to God the Father
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Then it talks about wives submitting
to your husbands, husbands loving their wives and fathers raising
up your children.
Flip over to the parallel book,
which is Colossians. The command there is…
NKJ Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all
wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual
songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
What are the results?
Have we heard that before? Yeah, we
just heard it. It is the result of being filled by means of the Spirit.
Didn’t we just hear that? Yeah we
just heard that. It is the result of being filled with the Spirit.
Wait a minute. Here it is the result
of letting the word of Christ dwelling in you. If A produces X behavior and B
also produces X behavior, there has to be a relationship between A and B. In
other words the filling by means of the Spirit is talking about one aspect. The
letting the word of Christ dwell in you is the other aspect. The Holy Spirit
fills you with something. You are filled by means of something, but what are
you filled with? You are filled with the Word of God. So when we are in right
relationship to the Holy Spirit, the dynamic, the sanctification dynamic, that
is filling us with His word, is operational. As we abide in Christ and walk by
the Spirit it produces fruit, but when we sin and we grieve and quench the
Spirit it stifles that ministry and there is no filling and growing. He is not
taking the Word and filling our lives with it. So there is no growth and no
fruit production. That brings us up to Galatians 5.
I will go over this again next week
because it is so important and critical to understand how these passages all
fit together. Then we will wrap up this side trail on fruit production up in
Galatians 5.