July 8, 2001

Works or Fruit?

Hosea 14: 8

Two weeks ago we talked about the book of Galatians, and how the Apostle Paul had written to that church because they had a problem. Teachers had come in, teaching them that they were not saved simply by faith in Christ alone, but by faith plus something. Teaching that they could not be saved unless they also kept the Ten Commandments, and were circumcised, putting themselves back under the Old Testament laws and covenants.

He was contrasting salvation by grace through faith against the idea of salvation by the law, and by doing good works, and as we said then, if you think that salvation comes from good works; works don't work.
Salvation does not come by keeping the Old Testament law. The purpose of the law is to convict us of sin, not to save us. The law cannot save anybody, all it does is show us our shortcomings contrasted against the holiness of God.

So if you think you will please God and gain admission to heaven by doing something, doing some good work, it won't happen. No matter how good a work it is, like trying to keep all the rules, even Bible rules, like the Ten Commandments. That's not what the Ten Commandments are for. They are to show us that we are sinful, convict us, and drive us to Christ for salvation, they cannot save us of themselves.

Does that mean that we don't have to worry about works at all? Does it mean that we Christians don't need to be concerned about what we do, only about what we believe? Just have faith, and then sit back and relax, and wait for Jesus to return and take us home? What do we as Christians need to do about works? How do works fit in with faith in Christ? Last month we looked at one side of the coin, salvation by faith alone, today we look at the other side; Christian works.

If you have your Bibles with you today, and I hope you do, turn to James 2:14.
"What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?
Jam 2:15 If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food,
Jam 2:16 And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?
Jam 2:17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone."
I have heard people say that James and Paul are not consistent in their teachings on faith as opposed to works, that Paul is saying one thing, and James is saying another thing. Nay, nay. There is no disagreement at all. It is just two different approaches to the same topic. James comes at it from one direction, and Paul comes at it from another.

Turn back to Galatians 5, verse 1. After arguing for four chapters that a believer is justified by faith alone, without the law or circumcision, Paul summarizes by saying: "Stand fast, therefore in the liberty with which Christ hath made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."
And then Paul turns around in verse 6 and says the same thing that James is saying: "For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love."

Faith which works by love. Would that be anything like seeing a brother or sister that needed clothes or food, and you told them, "Be warmed and filled," and then you gave them some sweats and a jacket, and sent them home with a sack of groceries? Probably.

Then in chapter six, verse 10, he tells us: "As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, -an action, a good work- especially unto them who are of the household of faith." The thing that we have to get a hold of here, is that works don't save us, keeping the Ten Commandments don't save us, but there is still something that we need to be doing. There are still good works for Christians to do.

Which brings us to the question of today's sermon; when we do good works, who is it that does them, really? Is it us? Do we get to take the credit? Or is it God? Does He get the credit?

Our verse for today's sermon is found in the Old Testament book of Hosea, chapter 14, and verse 8. God is speaking to Israel, and He tells them at the end of the verse: "From me is thy fruit found."

Three things I want us to see today. What does this verse in Hosea really mean? What does it mean to see all our fruit come from God? What does that mean to us, how are we to understand it?

Second, what kind of experience will that make in our day to day lives? Talk is cheap; how does this work? Is it true? What results will I see?

And third, what practical difference does it make? Paul tells us in the 5th chapter of Galatians that we are to have the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, how does this tie in with that?

OK, first of all, what does the verse really mean? When God tells us "From Me is thy fruit found," He wants us to know that all our spiritual fruit comes out from Him. It is not His fruit, it is our fruit, but it comes out from Him. When Jesus said: "I am the vine, you are the branches," it is the same idea exactly. We are a branch that bears fruit, and it is our fruit. It is found on our branch. But it does not come because we are a wonderful branch, it comes because we are living and growing on a wonderful vine.
God is the cause of the fruit. God is the active agent in the fruit appearing. If it were not for God, there would be no fruit. That is why He tells us, "From Me is thy fruit found."

It is our fruit. God is the cause, but it is still our fruit. We are free agents, we are not robots or puppets.
We are not bound up by fate, or karma, or any other such thing, we have a free will and we can make choices. If you choose to sit on your free will and watch TV all day, that is your choice, it is not God's fault that you are lazy. You might be part of the vine, but if your branch bears no fruit, it is not because the vine is bad, it is because the branch is lazy.

If you choose to be used by God, and you are eager to go and do and be used, then fruit will grow on your branch, and it will be your fruit. Great. Wonderful. Do you get any credit for it? Could you have grown it without the vine? No. That is why God tells us; "From Me is thy fruit found." We have a free will, and we can use that will to do good works for God. Now if I did what appeared to be a good work, and meanwhile I didn't want to do it, would it still be a good work? No. If your heart was full of sin, and you had no desire to do the will or works of God, and yet somehow I browbeat you into doing some good work, would it be a good work? No. The Holy Spirit gives us a gracious willingness to do good, a desire for holiness and godliness, and a desire to do God's will. Good works come from a desire, a holy zeal, you do them because you love God, and because the Holy Spirit gives you the want to, to want to.

It is all of God, and we cooperate, we want what He wants, and He uses us to do what He wants done.
And we are the ones that do it. The Holy Spirit is not the one that repents, or feeds the hungry, or clothes the naked or preaches the gospel, we are the ones that do it, when we want what He wants. And if we want what He wants, then it will transform our minds. Instead of being preoccupied with making money, or fixing up our house, or new clothes, or any number of various things, we will be thinking of ways to be useful to God, because we love Him, and we want what He wants. We will find ourselves thinking about how to be useful to the kingdom, thinking of methods of ministry, making plans for service, thinking up deeds of mercy, going and doing because it is what we want to do. It has become our nature to do it. And so it becomes our fruit, but it is found in Him.

God purposed ahead of time that you would bring forth good works. When you see a beautiful painting or a lovely vase, the artist had a plan before he ever started the work, and so it is with God's plan for you.
If you are saved, if you are a believer, you were once dead in sins and trespasses, you were incapable of good works, but God had a plan for you. When you see a fruit tree in somebody's orchard, it is because they had a plan for that tree. That tree is covered with fruit because of the farmer choosing to put that tree in his orchard, and then actually planting it there. And then the farmer waters the tree, and prunes it, and fertilizes it, and it brings forth fruit. It is the tree's fruit, but it is all from the plan of the farmer. Our fruit is our own, but it has it's source in God.

As Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 4; "What do we have that we have not received?" We are to produce and show forth fruit, good works, but we must not forget that all our fruit is from God, it is all found in Him.
Now that we know what the verse means, we need to see how it affects us in our Christian lives.

If you are truly a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, then you have experienced a difference in the fruit that you produced before you trusted Christ, and the fruit that you produced after you trusted Christ. Before you trusted Christ, what kind of fruit did you bring forth to God? Nothing you would talk about in front of your spouse. Nothing you would talk about in front of your kids. Nothing you would talk about in public. Nothing good. Rotten fruit. Dead works.

What kind of repentance did you bring forth? Nothing that did you any good, because in a brief time, you would go right back to the same old sins as you were in before.

What kind of love for God or faith in Christ did you have before you were converted to Christ? You thought God was either a mean spoil sport, or else some sort of heavenly Santa Claus, depending on whether you were naughty or greedy that week. And Jesus Christ was either a nice Christmas story, or a swear word, depending on how you were raised. Romans 6:21 asks the question: "What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death." That was the kind of fruit you had then: rotten fruit. Corrupt fruit. Useless fruit. If you have never been converted to Christ, that is the kind of fruit you still have. Dead works, unacceptable to God.

If you are a believer, compare your life in Christ now to your life then, and think about the truth of what God tells us: "From Me is thy fruit found." Think back to when the law began to convict you of sin, when the holiness of God began to contrast itself to your sinfulness, how did your good works appear to you back then? The law told you what to do, did it enable you to do anything? Did the Ten Commandments enable you to bring forth any fruit? You began to have a clear concept of the holiness of God, and your own sinfulness in contrast to it, but what kind of fruit did it enable you to bring forth? You began to see the holiness of God, but did that produce a love of God in your heart? Did the law make you love God? Or merely see yourself as hopelessly lost and unable to please God? The Ten Commandments set before you a perfect walk before God, but did they enable you to do it? You could see what you needed, but the fruit did not appear. You had no experience of bringing forth good fruit, because the law was not designed to enable you to bring forth fruit, the law was designed to convict you of sin.

That's why Paul says in Romans 7:7 "I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet." When little Abigail gets bigger, at some time she will decide to run across the street from her house to here. Her parents will tell her not to cross the street, but because of the same sin nature that we all have, she will look to see if her parents are watching, and then try to cross the street anyway. Our fleshly nature lusts after whatever it is that we are forbidden to do. The law produces sinful behavior in us because of the depravity of the human heart. It starts when we are children, and it continues for our whole life time. We produce bad fruit, because our fleshly nature is incapable of producing any other kind of fruit. Unless Jesus Christ renews our mind and spirit, the only kind of fruit, the only kind of works that we will ever have will be rotten and useless. And that was your experience your whole life before you came to faith in Christ. Rotten fruit.

When did you first begin to bear good fruit? When you received Jesus Christ as you Savior by faith, and trusted Him to be your righteousness. What was it like when you first got saved? Did you feel that you were a part of that vine, that there was a healthy wholesomeness running through you that you had never felt before? Did you feel that you were now able to bring forth good fruit in a way that you never had before? Was it good, did it delight you, did it give you something that you never had before?

Are you still there? Are you still in that place of first fruits? Are you still close to your first love? If you are not, it isn't God that has moved. He has not forgotten what that first love was like, and you need to get back to where you were.

Has there ever been a time when there was no fruit in your life? That is also part of our experience of bringing forth fruit from God. Barren times. Times of drought. Why does that happen? It happens when we get away from God. It happens when we get comfortable in our own strength, in our own ability. We slack off in prayer because we think that we are doing fine without it. Everything is going great, we are healthy, wealthy and wise in our own conceits, in our own self confidence. We become like Samson when his hair was cut off, and he did not know that his strength had departed from him. We think that we will go and do what we did before, and our enemies, our problems won't be able to touch us; and we end up sinking like a stone.

Beware lest God will teach you a lesson. He will withdraw from you for a season, He will let you stew in the juice of your own self confidence, and drown in the flood of your own ego. You will bring forth no fruit at all, and you will wonder why. You will cry out to God, and the heavens will be silent. Like Samson, you will try to do the things that you did before, and nothing good will come of it. Finally you will get to that place when you will say; "From Him must all my fruit be found, or else there will never be any fruit." That is a truth that all of us need to know, be careful that you don't learn it the hard way.

God will not allow us to worship idols, neither will He allow us to worship ourselves in our own strength and call it -Jesus. He will not allow us to walk in our own wisdom and call it -Holy Ghost power. He will not allow us to walk in our own conceit and call it -the love of God. He will deliver you from those deceptions one way or another. Stay close to Him and ask Him to search you, to show you any false way, any false strength, any false confidence that is of the flesh and not from Him.

We need to come to an awareness of our own uselessness in the flesh, and our ability to do all things in Him. Our own ignorance in ourselves, and our wisdom when we are in Him. Our own nothingness and His vastness. He is all sufficient, and we need to go and take His sufficiency and use it in place of our fleshly weakness.

Is that your experience today? Have you experienced His power in place of your weakness? Have you experienced His ability to bring forth good fruit in you where you once brought forth evil fruit? Is that an experience that you used to have, but are not having now?

That brings us to the third point of the sermon, and that is the practical side. Earlier, when I read the verse in Hosea 14:8, I only read the last little bit, I want us to read the part of the verse just before it. "I am like a green fir tree. From me is thy fruit found." Israel is not like Tennessee, it is a country with very few large trees, and comparatively little shade. A green fir tree on a hot sunny day is a rare and welcome sight.
There is shade and comfort from a green fir tree, it is a cool place to rest and relax from the sun and the heat.

Before we got saved, we were in a hot and dry land, there was no rest for us, there was no coolness. There was no shade, no place to sit down and find comfort. Jesus became to us as a green fir tree. He gives us a place to rest. He shelters us from the heat and the glare. He invites us to sit down in His shade and His goodness. Jesus is more than one kind of tree, Jesus is like any and every kind of good tree that we might ever want, and He is able to meet all our needs.

Just as we looked to Jesus at salvation to shelter us from the heat of God's wrath against sin, we also look to Him to provide us with all the fruit we need in any situation. Do you have a bad temper? Would you like to overcome it? Do you have an unforgiving spirit? Would you like to be rid of it? Do you have a mouth that is quick to gossip? Would you like the ability to keep it shut? Are you trying to deal with those problems in the flesh, and are you frustrated that it is not working? You need to deal with your ongoing problems the same way that you dealt with your need for salvation, you let Jesus meet your needs. Just as He is the green fir tree that shades you and hides you from the heat, He is also the orchard tree that provides you with the fruit that you need in your daily life. The same Jesus Christ that saves you from sin and feeds you with the fruit that sustains you, also delivers you from besetting sin. Do you have a problem with some ongoing sin in your life? Jesus is the answer for that too.

Turn to the gospel of John chapter 19 and verse 33. " But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs:
John 19:34 But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water."
Blood and water. Do you know why they both are important? The blood speaks to us of our salvation from sin, and redemption to God, what does the water speak to us of? Turn to that hymn that we sang earlier today, Rock of Ages, page 163, verse 1.
"Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.
Let the water and the blood, from thy wounded side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure; Save from wrath, and make me pure."

Blood speaks to us of redemption, and water speaks to us of cleansing. The gospel message ought to tell us not only about the blood of Christ, it ought to remind us also about the water, because a true Biblical salvation includes a pure walk, and a real cleansing from daily sin. Jesus Christ shed His blood to redeem us from all our sins, and with it there also came forth water, which speaks to us of cleansing, of washing, of sanctification and holiness. It is not enough to be forgiven, it is also necessary to be set apart and to have a pure walk, and Jesus is able to accomplish both our salvation and our sanctification by His sacrifice on the cross.

This goes along with what I mentioned before of Paul's letter to the Galatians; some of us think that we go to Christ for salvation, and then we try to go to the law for the power to overcome our day to day sins.
Do we begin our Christian walk in the Spirit, and then perfect our Christian walk in the flesh? No. The Christ that saves us is also the same Christ that sanctifies us, that produces holiness, fruit in our daily lives.
Is there anything that we can do to cooperate with God in this matter? Is there anything we can do to help with the process of fruit bearing? Yes there is.

We have just said that we need to trust Jesus to sanctify us and cleanse us just as much as we trusted Him to save us, let me give you another very practical suggestion. Take note of what you have found in your own personal Christian life that seems to bring you closer to God, and encourage it. Cultivate it.

Is there something that you do that brings you closer to God? Don't neglect it, stay with it. Do you like Christian music? Good, listen to it.
Do you enjoy sitting down and reading the Bible, just reading on and on, like it was the current best seller, the hottest thing on the market? Do it.
Do you prefer to read the Bible a little piece at a time, and pick it apart, and see just exactly what it is that God is saying? Don't neglect it.
Do you get all excited to talk to other believers about what God is doing, or what He is like, or what His Word says? Then talk to them a lot.
Do you like listening to good Bible teachers on the radio, do they draw you mind and your affections to Christ? Then listen to them every day.
Do you look forward to the Sunday service, to public praise and worship? To remembering the Lord in the breaking of bread? Praise God.
Do you like to get off alone with God, just you and Him, and talk to Him? And seek His face? And listen to what He has to say? Wonderful.
Do you like to sing songs of praise to Him, or play a musical instrument to His glory? Go for it.

Cultivate those things in your life that bring you closer to God. He is making it His business to bring forth fruit in you. As you learn what helps the process, encourage and stimulate what works for you. What ever it is that Jesus uses to draw you to Himself, cooperate with it. All of these things that I have just mentioned are good, as well as other things that I haven't mentioned, but what ever it is that Jesus uses in His relationship with you, cultivate it. Regularly. Religiously.

And one last practical thing we need to remember, don't ever think that you need to bring the Lord your fruit to win His approval.

Have you had a dry time, have you gone through a period when you don't feel that you had any fruit, and it got you down? And now you feel that unless you have some fruit to show Him, you are embarrassed to go to Him empty handed? You feel like you need to produce some fresh fruit before you go to Him? Don't do that. He tells us: "From Me is thy fruit found." If you currently have no fruit, you are not going to get any until you go to Him empty handed and confess your poverty. You don't need to take Jesus a present to make Him like you. You don't need to take Him a gift to satisfy Him with your behavior.
He will accept your gifts and your fruit as a love offering but not as a reconciliation for your shortcomings. He is that Himself. That's what He is.

If you are a person who has never trusted Christ for salvation, don't think that you need to clean up your act before you can go to Christ and be saved. If you got a wound on your face, and gangrene had set in, would you put off going to the doctor until it got better, because you didn't want him seeing you looking that bad? Of course not. You would be dead long before you ever got to see the doctor. If you had cancer in your jaw, would you wait to go to the doctor until things had healed up, because you didn't want him to smell your bad breath? Of course not. You wouldn't get to see the doctor, the cancer would kill you first.
If you think that before you can come to Christ for salvation you need to quit doing this or start doing that to reconcile yourself to God, then you will never be saved, you will die in your sins. It is impossible for you to do anything to improve who you are or what you are without Christ, because if there is any good fruit to come forth from your life, that fruit must be found in Him.

If you are here today as a believer in Jesus Christ, but you have been trying to live a life pleasing to Him in your own strength, give it up.

If you have been trying to please Him by keeping the law, or working harder, or doing anything that He is not the source of and the power for, you are wasting your time, stop it now.

If you have never come to Christ, and you think that before you do, you have to bring Him some reason to approve of you, or accept you, you will die in your sins, and you will spend eternity apart from His mercy and grace.

From Him is our fruit found. Come to Him, receive Him as Savior and Lord, rest in Him, and let Him produce in you those things which are good and acceptable. If you have never trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, why wait any longer? You are not going to get any better, but even if you did, it wouldn't do you any good towards salvation. You have nothing Jesus needs, and He has everything you need, and He will give it to you free. Will you receive Him as Savior and Lord, and signify it by coming down to this altar today as we sing?