Fruitful Love
Fruit Bearing • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 5 viewsNotes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Greetings…
Over the last few weeks we have been examining and studying the expectation God has on Christians being “Fruit Bearing.”
John 15:1–2 (ESV)
1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
10 Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
Obviously, from these two passages alone anyone can see that when sinful man agrees to the God’s plan of salvation there is promise being made by man to “abide by the will of the Father” (Matthew 7:21).
Matthew 7:21 (ESV)
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
By doing so we demonstrate our love for God.
John 14:15 (ESV)
15 If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
It’s that love I want us to focus on in our lesson this morning.
To biblically determine what “Fruitful Love” is and how we can bear that fruit in our lives.
Galatians 5:22–23 (ESV)
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
With that in mind let us consider first…
Love Is Trained
Love Is Trained
We Are Not Born Loving Others.
We Are Not Born Loving Others.
Children are not born with what it means to “love others.”
A baby cries when it doesn’t get what it wants.
This behavior does not stop, even into adulthood, if they are not trained properly.
We have all seen the toddler throwing a fit because they didn’t get what they wanted.
We have also all seen men and women “by age” throwing similar fits because they are not getting their way.
The Starbucks employee who made a video “crying” that his boss expects him to work hard in his part-time job each day he is scheduled and was told “no you can’t take mental health days whenever you want” do that on your time not company time.
The young lady who graduated with a degree in communications and acting and was complaining that no one would hire her at the wages she wanted.
The reason I am bring this up is not to discourage children but to remind adults that children must be taught almost everything.
Are there certain divine attributes that children do not need to be taught because they were created with it, sure, but those things are few as they are meant to lead one to find God.
11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
This is obvious in how God describes the foolishness bound in a child’s heart because of their lack of understanding.
Proverbs 22:15 (NKJV)
15 Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of correction will drive it far from him.
Proverbs 22:15 (HCSB)
15 Foolishness is tangled up in the heart of a youth; the rod of discipline will drive it away from him.
Jeremiah 4:22 (ESV)
22 “For my people are foolish; they know me not; they are stupid children; they have no understanding. They are ‘wise’—in doing evil! But how to do good they know not.”
9 “To whom will he teach knowledge, and to whom will he explain the message? Those who are weaned from the milk, those taken from the breast?
We Must Be Trained In Loving Others.
We Must Be Trained In Loving Others.
This, of course, is an convenient reality for many throughout the scriptures.
Men have to be trained in how to love their mom, dad, wives, and children.
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
1 Timothy 5:7–8 (ESV)
7 Command these things as well, so that they may be without reproach. 8 But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
The other day I mentioned the post the young woman made concerning her disappointment that there were so many men unwilling to help women in need, and my response which was a boy can’t be a man until he understands this.
1 Corinthians 13:11 (ESV)
11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
Women have to be trained in how love love their husbands and children by other women who have been trained in how to love their husbands and children.
Titus 2:3–4 (ESV)
3 Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, 4 and so train the young women to love their husbands and children
Over and over Jesus had to teach what it means to “love one’s neighbor.”
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
25 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” 27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” 29 But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
36 Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” 37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”
James 2:8 (ESV)
8 If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well.
Summary
Summary
The point is this, love for others is not genetically inherited, a person must be taught, trained, and showing what loving others really is.
Now the reason there is confusion in the world on this is because we have rewritten what the word love means throughout the centuries.
Mankind wants love to be an emotion when in reality…
Love Is An Action
Love Is An Action
This Is Why Love Is Fruit.
This Is Why Love Is Fruit.
I say mankind wants love to be an emotion because man, in general, wants to do whatever he/she wants to do.
If love is an emotion one can simply “fall in love with someone or something” and just as easily “fall out of love with that same someone or something.”
How many divorces have taken place because either one or both of those in the marriage say “I have simply fallen out of love for my wife or husband.”
That is true but not in how they mean it.
They mean it as “I have no emotional longing or desire for my spouse” but in reality what they have done is “stopped actively seeking the best for their spouse and putting their spouses needs ahead of their own.”
But “true love” is an active product i.e., fruit.
Galatians 5:22 (ESV)
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness
As I read 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 I want you to notice how each thing mentioned that loves does, cannot take place unless one is actively producing said action.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
Love is a fruit produced i.e. action, by the branches.
1 John 3:18 (ESV)
18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
John 14:15 (ESV)
15 If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
14 Let all that you do be done in love.
Summary
Summary
In the letter the “great apostle of love” wrote titled 1 John we find the word love used 46 times in 26 verses.
In that letter twice we read that “God is love.”
8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
This means everything God does is love and is how we know how to love our neighbor.
16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
Conclusion
Conclusion
As Christians who counted the cost of discipleship, accepted the gift of grace, gave our word to put God first in our lives in everything, and then had our sins washed away by the blood of the Lamb it is vital we reciprocate what we have witnessed in God concerning love for others.
We actively seek their spiritual wellbeing by helping them get to receive their crown of life and eternal inheritance.
14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Invitation
1 Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; 2 but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.
6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,
33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
32 “Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. 33 But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.
8 in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
1 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.