Book of Romans, 8:1 - Fruit Bearing of the Believer, Pt. 3 (09/22/2019)

Turn with me, if you would, to Romans chapter 8, verse 1. And we're also been in Colossians chapter 1.

And today, we may move around a little bit beyond those. So I'm not sure how much it'll help you to go into Colossians today.

But if you weren't here the last few Sundays, we've been kind of going through the book of Colossians, looking at things that the

Lord does to us and for us at the moment that he saves us. And the 11th one, if I can remember that that's the right number, was that he begins to create fruit within us.

He causes us to become fruitful. One of the ones prior to that that was kind of interesting, but similar, was that he causes the word of God to become fruitful within us.

But that's different. That's two different things. The word of God being fruitful within us is one thing.

And lately, we've been talking about the 11th thing, which is he just makes us become fruitful. We've been talking about what does that mean to be fruitful?

So we'll continue with that today. Let's pray. Lord, we ask you to bless this portion of the service.

Lord, may you be our teacher. Show us things that you mean for us to learn today to prepare us to live this life in these end times.

And Lord, help us to call upon these things we're learning when we need them and as we need them.

May your Holy Spirit bring them to our minds when we need them someday in the future. Lord, be with us now during our time of study.

And we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, well,

Roman chapter 8, verse 1 talks about how once we're saved, one of the great effects of that is that we walk not after the flesh, but according to the

Spirit. And in that discussion, we're talking about some of the things that the Holy Spirit, what that means, what does the

Holy Spirit do to us and for us in our salvation. I want to go back just for a second here, because we're talking about fruit.

And there's two aspects to it, two completely different subjects that we've talked about.

One is the interesting parts in the Gospels where Jesus talks about false teachers and false prophets.

And he says, you know them by their fruit. So maybe we could call that negative fruit, like bad fruits,

OK? How do you know a false teacher when you see one? And if you remember, what we've talked about so far is that there's two things you look at.

They're life, but that takes some time, doesn't it? You can't judge that in a day or a week or a year. Sometimes it takes, my rule of thumb, three years.

You kind of know someone if you watch them for three years, maybe. But you have to watch their life for a while to see what they're really living and if they're living what they're preaching or not.

Secondly, the other part of the fruit is the doctrine itself, what the actual doctrines they teach.

Do they meet the Bible? Are they taking it out of context? Is it in context? Are they in the word, so to speak?

So those two things. And then after that, we start talking about a whole different idea is what about when you judge

Christians or non -Christians, what do you look at? Not so much teachers, but just people.

Well, you still judge by the fruit. And that's kind of what we're just now been getting into. When I look at that, most of these passages we've looked at where we talk about, where it specifically talks about false teachers and what their attributes are, which

I'm going to look at that one more second today before we go into what I want to talk about. But as you look at that, that is wholly, if you look at context, it's wholly dealing with Bible teachers, not just everybody.

So you can't really take that and use it to judge just people. So the way

I view it with people, what you're going to be presented with in the Bible is what are the fruits of the

Christian, the true born -again person. What does that look like? And it's going to be listed.

And there's a couple of different ways we can group them to help ourselves remember the different groupings of these types of fruits that all

Christians have. Doesn't mean we all have all of them or that we exhibit them all the same amount all the time.

Doesn't mean that. But all Christians do have some fruit. And the way you judge a non -Christian is by the absence of those.

So it's not like a whole other list for the non -Christian. That's not what we're going to have. We're just going to have the absence of these fruits that Christians have.

So that's kind of how we'll approach that. But I wanted to look at this. I want to remind you of a couple of things here on the false teacher side of those fruits are actually listed.

What's interesting about it is that there are 24 fruits of the false teacher.

And that is the number of man is 6, right? Satan's number is 6 times 4 is 24.

And that's how many there are. Which, if you look at the fruits of the Christian and the different things that God gives us, it's 21, which is

God's perfect number, 7 times 3. So that's kind of interesting, the number of each. Isn't it interesting that there's more fruits of the false preacher than there are good fruits for the

Christian? It just shows our fruits are more powerful. We don't need as many, right? We don't need as many because they're more powerful.

But there's several passages we looked at. One was Matthew chapter 7. One was 2

Corinthians chapter 11. One was Galatians chapter 2. And then there was 2

Peter chapter 2. And what's interesting, when you take, and there's other places you can look, but you don't get a whole lot of new points from the other places.

This gives us most of the points that the Bible teaches us about false teachers.

I think it's interesting, in Matthew chapter 7, verse 15, when Jesus is speaking, he says, "'Beware of false prophets which come to you "'in sheep's clothing, but inwardly "'they are ravening wolves.'"

And then later, when you get to the Gospels, Paul says, you had false prophets, but now there are false teachers among you.

There shall be false teachers among you, which shows that the concept of the prophet is dying away. And as Paul said, prophecy shall cease.

So as the church became mature, and certainly as the Bible became canonized, where we had the whole

Bible, prophecy ceased as a gift that's in the church. But teaching took its place.

So Jesus talks about false prophets because he still lives in the Old Testament. Even when he was on the earth, it was

Old Testament economy. Wasn't until after Pentecost that the church started. But Paul talks about the fact that there were false prophets, now there are false teachers.

Isn't that interesting? I find that interesting and important because one of the biggest false movements in the world today is the charismatic slash

Pentecostal movement, where many of them, not all, but many of them believe they still have apostles, they still have prophets, they still have a word of knowledge, a word of wisdom, and things that the

Bible says have ceased. So those little things are interesting. If I see that verse in a minute where Paul said it,

I'll point it out to you. But the main thing I wanna do is just go over these signs or fruits of the false prophet one more time.

And they come from all of these four passages. In the Matthew passage, it kinda starts out talking about them as deceitful.

They're like wolves wearing sheep clothing. So they deceive us into thinking that they're Christians and maybe that they're good

Bible teachers when they are totally the opposite. And so it begins to talk about, number one, their bad behavior.

That's one of the fruits you can look at. They don't live right. Later on, it talks about them being fornicators and all these different things in their lifestyle that they try to hide sometimes, but that's how they're living while they're teaching about Jesus, supposedly.

So they have bad behavior. And then the second thing I noticed in Matthew 7, they're unknown by the

Father. Now, that doesn't mean he doesn't know who they are, what it means, and he doesn't know them as children.

He said, you did many wonderful works in my name, but I never knew you, depart from me. So they're unknown.

And then when I get into the 2 Corinthians passage, I see the key word is there that they are false.

They are false and deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ.

So they, it's kind of the Greek word there means spurious or untrue.

They're untrue apostles. So they call themselves apostles, but they're untrue apostles.

So they have bad behavior. They're unknown to God. They are false, completely false from what they want us to think that they are.

And then when you get into the Galatians chapter two in the second Peter chapter two passage, you see that they come in secret.

It says they come in secretly, unawares to the church. At first, we think they're true Christians and good teachers and so forth.

And they come to spy out our liberty and to bring us into bondage. So they come, number four, they come like a spy from Satan to see what we're doing in our church.

This is kind of frightening when you think about it, but the Lord's warning us to watch for these things.

So they come in as spies to spy out our freedom. Now, what does that tell you? They're wanting to do is bring us back into the bondage of the law.

So they're usually legalists. They usually want to bring us into some form of keeping rules.

And then the fifth thing we see is, and this is where I saw this and found it interesting. I said it was

Paul and I was wrong. It was Peter, second Peter. My point is it was in the church age, not in the gospel times when

Jesus was still in the Old Testament. But second Peter 2 .1 says, but there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers.

I think that's significant, the way that's worded. So he talks about false teachers.

It says that they bring in damnable heresies, which tells me that their doctrine is not just sort of bad.

If people believe their doctrine, those people are damned unless they repent of it.

And the Lord deals with all that, doesn't he? But if they live their whole life believing the doctrines that these people preach, they end up going to hell.

That's why Jesus inspired Peter to say they are damnable heresies.

Man, that's not just saying, well, they teach some stuff we don't agree with, but they're our brothers. It's not like that.

They teach stuff that sends people to hell. So it's more serious than that.

And then it goes, as you keep going through there, it talks about the fact that they actually create new

Jesuses, not the true Jesus of the Bible. They create false Jesuses for people to worship and false gospels, which is not in this passage.

But it says even denying the Lord that bought them. So they're not even talking about that Jesus, the

Jesus of the Bible. They're denying him and teaching a different Jesus. And it goes on and talks about how they themselves are damned.

It says that they are popular. It says, and many shall follow their pernicious ways.

They're popular. And it goes on and says they're blasphemous by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.

So they speak evil of the truth and of Jesus. They're blasphemous. They're libelous.

They say things about you and me that aren't true. And won't try to cause the world to hate us and saying lies about us.

They're slanderers. They bring up straw men arguments. They're all about things.

They're covetous, in other words. They're fleshly. They're unclean. They hate authority.

They're presumptuous. They'll walk into church, say, well, I'd like to have that position. They've only been here like five days and they want that position, right?

They're presumptuous that you'll just give it to them. They're self -willed. They are blemishes in our fellowship.

Now, that's God's viewpoint. Like, if we let them in and they stay, and it says, and they'll fellowship with us, as God looks at the church, he now sees blemishes on our church.

Wow, that's interesting, isn't it? They're adulterers, continually, it says.

Not just make mistakes, one -time mistake, or whatever they want to call it. They'll go back and do it again.

They have a continual lifestyle of adultery. You don't want them in your church, men, because they'll try to steal your wife.

Ladies, you don't want them in the church. If it's a female false prophet, she'll try to steal your husband.

This is, by nature, how these people are. Adultery goes with false doctrine because false doctrine preaches idolatry, and idolatry is spiritual adultery, and they go hand -in -hand.

The Bible says they do. I've observed it in my life. I've seen people that go after legalism, and I watch them, and they got all these rules, and all of a sudden, they're running off.

They're fleshly, they're unclean, they hate authority, they're presumptuous, they're self -willed, they're blemishes, they're adulterers, continually.

They influence the unstable. This tells who they pick on, all right? They're gonna find people that are not in the

Word much, yet, and that's who they're gonna bring into their little home Bible studies, and they'll pick on the unstable and try to influence them away from the truth.

It says they're covetous because they're like Balaam, and Balaam preached for money. It says they're cursed by God.

It says they are apostate, which means they started out talking the truth.

They spoke the true gospel as if they were true believers at first, and it looks like they turned away from it, but in reality, they never belonged to the

Lord because God tells us in the book of Jude that he foreordained them for the blackness of darkness forever, so it's not like they were saved and they lost it.

They were never gods. They were these people who said they did many wonderful things in his name.

That's who they are, and he says, depart from me. I never knew you, but from the human viewpoint, it can look like they were saved and teaching correctly, and then they went the wrong way, and we call that apostatizing, but in reality, they never did belong to the

Lord because that doesn't happen to people that belong to the Lord because Jesus is a better shepherd than that.

If you're a sheep, he's not gonna let you apostatize. You understand what I'm saying? So people take stuff out of context, try to use it, but they are what we call apostates.

They seem to have believed the truth, and then they turned from it and taught false doctrine the rest of their lives, and that's how it appears from the human viewpoint.

God knows better, and he tells us his own viewpoint, so that, believe it or not, 24 attributes that they have, so we need to be aware of those and be watching for them all the time.

Would you agree with that? Okay. At the end there,

I stopped short of covering this. At the end there in 2 Peter chapter two, after all of that, when you get to verse 16, there's two little sections there, and the first part of it talks about their end, these false prophets, how they will end up, and it says, but he was rebuked, talking about Balaam, because it says they're like Balaam, and Balaam was rebuked, and the donkey spoke to him with a man's voice and forbade the madness of this false prophet, and then it begins to describe these people, what they're like, what their effect is on the church, and what their end is.

It says, these are wells without waters, without water clouds they are, carried with a tempest.

You know, it's funny, we were driving around, Nana and Charlotte and myself were driving just the other day, probably yesterday,

I'm thinking it was, and we were looking at some of these beautiful clouds that have spun off from the hurricane, you know, and they spin around and they come right over Texas, but they weren't coagulated together as one big rain cloud.

No rain came out of them. They were majestic and beautiful and multitudinous, and they just came one after another, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them right over us.

I'm sure you noticed them, they're beautiful. Not one drop of rain. And this is a perfect picture of a false teacher, because they look like they're a beautiful cloud full of water, water pictures the word of God in the

Bible. Everywhere it's like a word formula. Water is the word. Picture, they look like they're full of the word of God and they're giving you nothing.

It's like a drought. There's not a drop of water in it. And that's a beautiful picture of a false prophet.

So they have many words that can make you feel pretty good for about 30 minutes, usually 20 minutes is about how long they preach.

Make you feel really good and you go home and you don't grow from it. You don't gain one thing from it. Because it's not water, there's no water in it.

It was just a cloud. Maybe it made you feel better for a little bit. But here's how their end is.

To whom the mist of darkness is reserved forever.

So they're bound for hell. And then it talks about who they preach to. For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lust of the flesh, through much wantonness.

So people who are fleshly, people who are covetous and wanton, wanton is sort of a sexual type of covetousness by the way in the

Bible. People who are like that love these kinds of preachers. And they bring them in on purpose and pay them to preach to them.

It says they bring in people having itching ears. They bring the kind of person that their ear wants to hear.

And here it describes what churches that have preachers like this are like. You know, we always pick on the preachers, don't we?

We pick on these sorry, false preachers. I love to pick on them. But we kind of let the congregation go and say, oh, poor, you know, the poor people, they don't understand what they've got.

It's just a terrible preacher. He doesn't even preach the true gospel. And yet the Bible says, no, no, it's the people that pick the person.

The people chose that preacher on purpose because these people, the Bible says, are allured by the lust of the flesh through much wantonness, which means sexual lust.

Those that were clean escaped from them who live in error. So you can have people that had escaped legalism and been taught the right way, been taught grace, and they're brought back under the legalism by these preachers, and it's because they're really fleshly people.

This is just a description of modern day Christendom in America.

While they promised them liberty, you'll be free, you can live any way you want to.

That's sort of their message. But then they'll come on the other side, you can have the other side, the other brand, just as bad of false prophets, they'll say, no, you got to keep all these rules.

So they're going to get you on one side of the other. It's going to either be easy believism or it's going to be keep all these rules.

So both sides of the spectrum with no balance, and they promise them liberty while they themselves are servants of corruption.

The teachers themselves are totally corrupt. They cannot cease from sin. They have no power over their own body.

They have no discipline, no self -discipline, and it will show if you watch them long enough, but by then someone has been hurt.

Some sheep has been hurt or more. They themselves are servants of corruption for of whom a man is overcome of the same is he brought into bondage.

So these very teachers are in bondage. Satan and demons have spiritual high ground in their life, and they're under this bondage, and they like being under this bondage or they wouldn't still be under the bondage, and they are drawn in by people who just are the same way as they are.

It's pretty frightening. So now that's one reason the Lord gives us a view of the bad fruit so that we can judge these teachers by their bad fruit.

Now, last time we went into John chapter 15. So turn there if you would with me. We started talking about the good fruit that we can judge a

Christian by. These are fruits of the Christian, fruits that all Christians have without exception.

We don't all have the same amounts, some 30 fold, some 60, some 100. We don't have the same amounts, but we all have fruits.

We don't even exhibit all of the fruits all the time, many of us, or we may exhibit some in a weaker way and some in a stronger way, but you're gonna have some of these fruits if you're born again.

And interesting thing is you can group them into groups for different purposes. And I believe that every born again

Christian will have some of the fruits from each group. There are three main groups. You may not have all nine of the fruits that are listed, but you're gonna have some of the fruits in each of those three groups if you're born again.

And then the Lord will continue to bring more fruit into our life, but we're responsible on one end of that, and that is if we have to be in the word more and we have to be abiding in Christ.

And that's what we talked about last Sunday. So I wanna go beyond that today, but if you remember

Jesus said in John 15, one, I am the true vine and my father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he takes away.

And every branch that bears fruit, he purges it so it'll bear more fruit. And then we went from the fruit to the more fruit.

And the thing that causes more fruit is being purged, which means trimmed a little bit, which can be painful.

It kind of pictures that the Lord chastens us sometimes or does things in our life to make us grow, brings hardships from time to time to make us grow more.

But then we got down to verse four and the key word to going from fruit to more fruit to much fruit is this word abide.

So Jesus said, if you abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can you accept you abide in me.

I am the fruit, I am the vine, you're the branches. He that abideth in me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit.

So the way you get to the much fruit stage is by abiding in him. Now we talked about that last time. That is like being connected to him because if you have the vine and you got a branch coming out from it, it's connected.

Connected together is one way to look at it. The word abide itself means to live or dwell in Christ.

So it literally means, I believe it's another way of describing what it means to be spirit -filled. We know we're indwelt.

If we're saved, the Holy Spirit lives in our body. But to be spirit -filled is to have a connection throughout the day with Christ.

You get up in the morning and you tell him, look, you're not the disciple, I am.

So wherever you're going, I want to follow you today. Now that doesn't mean you don't go to work. If you have obligations, you go to work.

But God's omnipresent. So he's going to be at work, all right? So the point is, when you get there, what is he doing?

Whatever it is, you need to do it with him. Does that make sense? When you get to school, he's there.

Whatever Jesus is doing, what you're saying to him is, I just want to do it with you. I don't want to just go teach school because I'm a teacher.

I don't want to go teach stocks because I'm a stock market teacher. I want to go there because I know you're there because we're there.

But I want to see what you're doing with your people and with other people in the world and let me be a part of it.

And have that attitude. Be connected to Christ. That's what abiding in him means. And that's when we get to the stage where we bear much fruit.

Now, that's what we talked about last time. And it's such a great passage.

John 15, starting verse one. You can read it time and time again and gain new things from it all the time.

Another thing we saw that once we get to this much fruit stage, because we're abiding with Christ, look what he says.

He says, you can ask what you will and it shall be done to you. So there's a powerful prayer life comes with this.

So all of this was mentioned in here. Powerful answered prayer. And then it ends up by saying, and herein is my father glorified when we live this way.

It doesn't say we glorify him when we're bearing fruit or more fruit, but it says we do when we're bearing much fruit.

Now, it doesn't mean we're not. I mean, there's other places in scripture where it shows that we are glorifying him with our lives, but it emphasizes when we get to the abiding in Christ stage, bearing much fruit, that we glorify

God. We bear much fruit and we're then called disciples for the first time.

Isn't that something? So, there were in this little passage that we studied last time, you may not have counted them, but there's actually nine benefits of abiding in Christ.

One is answered prayer. That's a pretty nice benefit, don't you think? You can ask what you will.

That doesn't mean what you need. That means what you want and it will be done. Why is that? Because if you're abiding in Christ and you're attached to him, you're wanting what he wants.

Does that make sense? His wants are your wants because you're one spirit at that point, the Bible says.

So, you have a powerful answer prayer life and then secondly, God is glorified. Thirdly, you bear much fruit instead of some fruit.

Much is better than some, don't you think? And then fourth, the father loves you with the same love that he loves his son with,

Jesus said. That's amazing to think about that. Any one of these is something you could contemplate for long periods of time.

And then the fifth thing is you have not just joy, but it says fullness of joy. So, you can be joyful if you're barely saved, right?

You just brand new babies, they're joyful. You can be joyful when you're bearing some fruit. You can be joyful when you're bearing more fruit.

But you have fullness of joy when you're bearing much fruit because you're abiding in Christ and that's where the fullness of joy comes from.

The sixth thing is you become the friend of God. I always found it wonderful that God called Abraham my friend.

The friend of God was Abraham. You can be like that. You and I have that ability to be the friend of God if we're abiding in Christ.

And the seventh thing and maybe one of the most wonderful things, he says in verse 15, henceforth,

I call you not servants for the servant doesn't know why the Lord's doing what he's doing. But I've called you friends.

That means I'm going to tell you why I'm doing some of the stuff we're doing together, right? For all things that I have heard from my father,

Jesus said, I will make known to you. So you have revelation that you didn't have until you came to this stage in your life.

So when you get to the abiding in Christ, much fruit life, God will reveal more about himself to you than you have ever known before.

And he will continue to reveal more of himself to you. So maybe the seventh point is the most wonderful and the most important because the more we know about Christ and of Christ, the more we know

God. So the eighth thing is that you have fruit that remains. How many times have you seen people come, make a testimony, get baptized, stay three weeks and leave and then never come back?

That fruit didn't remain. So you'll have fruit that remains, but also the fruit on the inside that we'll talk about a little later that will remain as well.

So you won't have, you won't be fruitful like one week and then three years later, you're off playing with the pigs in the slop again.

It won't happen that way with you. You'll have fruit that remains. And then the ninth thing was answered prayers repeated the second time.

So God repeated it twice. And he says, you have not chosen me, but I chose you.

And I ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit will remain.

That whatsoever you shall ask of the father in my name, he may give it to you.

So there he emphasized that for a second time. These things I command you that you love one another. What an amazing passage.

Now let's talk for a minute about the difference between bearing fruit and gathering.

What does it mean to bear fruit? Does it mean you created it? It just means you hold it.

So if you can picture a tree with branches and the fruits hanging off, it just hangs off of us. The root made the fruit, right?

That's Jesus. So the fruit came from Christ. And as we're abiding in him, like the branches attached to the vine, those nutrients, which is a picture of all the attributes of Jesus, his love, his righteousness, his goodness, his power, all of that comes up through and right out to the branch, into the branch, which is us.

And then it creates the fruit on us and in us. And people can see it. They can see it when we don't have it too.

And so, like I said, with regard to the Christian and those who aren't, those who aren't, it's the lack of these attributes.

You'll just see a lack of this and this is how you can discern that they're not a Christian. All right. So gathering fruit is one thing, bearing is another.

And I just want to briefly talk about gathering because as we break up the fruits into groups a little bit later, one of those groups is going to be convert fruits, which means you will be witnessing to people and people be getting saved because of your life.

And that's part of your fruit. Doesn't mean you save them, but they got saved because you were the human instrument or one of the human instruments

God used to give them the gospel. And then they got saved. And so that fruit attributes to you.

Paul used to call them his children, his spiritual children. And he said, one of my greatest joys and gifts and crowns in heaven is going to be you.

Isn't that great? So you can have that too as long as you bear convert fruit, which means you have the inward fruit and it shows.

So now they listen to you and you tell them the gospel and some of those people get saved. And that's wonderful.

And that's fruit gathering. And in John chapter four, if you want to turn there, verse 34,

John chapter four, verse 34, it talks about the idea of gathering and we'll get back to bearing the fruit because that's the main part of the study.

But this is just, just touches on the one type of fruit that falls under the category of convert fruit.

And that's just one of the three types or groups of the fruit. But when we have convert fruits, we're gathering fruit.

We're actually gathering it, bring it together because what you want to do when you have fruit, if at all possible, and it's not always possible is to bring them in and begin to disciple them.

And that's what church is for church. People get it wrong. It's been this way for a long time. A lot of the evangelical groups like Southern Baptist, they've done some wonderful works, but they get to the point where they think that church, the church service is to bring people in so the preacher can win them to Christ.

If you go that route, your church will be a bunch of babies forever because you're not teaching them anything.

Church is not for evangelism. Church is for growth. It's for edification. So when you do have convert fruit, you bring them in, you invite them to come so they can begin to be taught.

In Sunday school and in church, they can begin to learn the great doctrines of the Bible, which is like their milk and their meat.

And they begin to grow. So we have to gather the fruit if we can. They won't always be gathered because the Lord may have intentions for them to go to a different church somewhere else, and that's okay.

But you do try to gather them. In John 4, 34, Jesus said unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me.

Remember they had asked him, Jesus, you're hungry. You need to go with us. Let us get you some food. And he said, I have meat you know not of.

I love that phrase. I have meat you know not of. I don't need that food right now.

I've got the power of God. And here's what he's talking about. He says, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work.

Say not ye that there are yet four months and then comes the harvest. Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest.

That remains true throughout the church age, right up until Jesus comes back. The fields are white unto harvest.

That means there are people around you in Corsica County, Texas, that will get saved when they hear the gospel.

They will get saved when they hear the gospel. Now they may not get saved when you tell them the gospel because it might be the third time they hear it from a different person.

That's when they get saved. You can't control that. I can't control that. The Holy Spirit is the one who calls a person by visiting them personally and just saves them.

While they're still in their sin, he quickens them. He brings them to life. That is his job. Our job is to give them the word because no one ever gets saved according to the

Bible. No one ever gets saved without the water and the spirit. The spirit is the Holy Spirit doing the calling.

The water is the water of the word which you gave them. You and I gave them and if we don't give them, they don't get it unless they get it from another

Christian. They're gonna get it from a Christian or a human and they might just pick one of these up. Well, guess what?

God used human penman to write this. They're gonna get this part from the human side of things. Isn't that something?

No one's gonna get saved without that side of it. I don't believe the stories. I don't believe them for a minute where they start to say in some of these

Arab countries that these Islamic people are out there and Jesus just speaks to them and saves them.

That doesn't happen. It's not real. And they're writing books about it, making lots of money now and people just, people will read anything and believe it in the

Christian bookstore. I don't like the Christian bookstore that much. Just go find a used

Christian bookstore and buy books that are 100, 200 years old. You won't be reading about conversions like that in those books because they didn't happen.

Listen, you've got to have the water. And unless someone went over there, which by the way, is not gonna be a voice that they just hear in their head.

It's gonna be a radio program. It's gonna be a gospel track. It's gonna be a missionary talking.

It's gonna be a human endeavor that God sent or they're not gonna hear it. And if they haven't heard it, they can't get saved, the

Bible says. So believe what you wanna believe. That's what the Bible says. So they've got to have us.

Jesus chose this to be a family business. It's his business and we're his kids and he wants us to work with him.

And our job is to give him the gospel, the true gospel. Do you know what it is?

Jesus died. He was buried. Three days later, he rose again to save his people.

That's the gospel. That's the true gospel. They have got to hear that.

The Holy Spirit's job is to make them believe it. You can't make them believe it. I can't make them believe it.

I used to be frustrated as a new Christian, even a young preacher. Charlotte and I knocked on just about every door in Mahea about four times.

Boy, they pray the little prayer we were taught to give them. And then we'd go to pick them up Sunday. You could hear them running.

They act like they weren't there, but you could hear their feet running from the door. And they'd already told you they'd come and go get baptized.

Yeah, we'll come. And then they run from the door, right? So the technique won't save anybody.

But you still had to give them the gospel. So that was not a bad thing to knock on those doors and give them a gospel track because now they got the gospel.

Now it's the Holy Spirit's job to move in on who the Father sends him to. And that's how it works, right?

It's never going to be any different than that. That's how it works. Now, Paul goes on here in Romans 1, verse 13.

He says, Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren. Sorry, I jumped on you, didn't

I? Where was I? John 4. Let's do this one first. John 4, what'd

I say? 34, is that right? I got ahead of myself. John 4, 34. He says,

I say unto you, lift up your eyes and look for the fields are white already to harvest.

That means there are people around you right now that are going to get saved, but they're not going to get saved until they hear the gospel from some human measure, either the word of God that a human penned or a radio program that a human spoke or a sermon that a preacher preached or a word that a family member or a church member gave them about the gospel.

They are going to hear that. And they're white to harvest, which means they are ready for the plucking. Now that should be encouraging to us as what the independent badgers used to call soul winners.

I don't like the phrase because we don't win the soul, but we're supposed to be gatherers, which means we are supposed to be going out and giving the gospel message to people, knowing that only a small measure of them will actually be saved because only the ones that God knew will be saved, but they're white unto harvest, which means they are ready.

They just need to hear it one more time. And if you're the one that gives it to them, you get the benefit of gathering and the few that you do win to Christ, it'll look like you won them.

We know that's not how it works. Who won them? Tell me, who won them? The Holy Spirit.

God, the Holy Spirit won them because they were lost and he changed their want to and made them want

Jesus and they never would have done it, but he changed their want to. Now, what does he mean when he says they're white unto harvest?

That means the Holy Spirit's already been working on them. The Holy Spirit has been working on them their whole life because even before they were born, they were called from the womb in a sense.

God knew them before he made the foundation of the world. So everything in their life has been working towards that day of their human salvation in time and space when the

Holy Spirit literally calls them and they receive Christ. Everything has been working towards that. They are ready.

You just need to give them the gospel one last time sometimes. That can get you kind of excited again about talking to people because sometimes we think, well,

I can't win them so I just don't need to be focusing on that. We don't need to think that way. It is true that we can't win them, but the

Holy Spirit is gonna win them and he's working together with us and if you happen to be the human instrument at the moment they get saved, you get a crown in heaven for that person.

Why? Because you are the human instrument. You're the one that gathered them. You're the one that brought them into the fold and you'd get credit for that, believe it or not, in heaven.

You didn't save them. You just did your job. You plucked them. You plucked them from the fire and God used you as an instrument for the

Holy Spirit to turn their conscience around where they would love Christ for the first time.

That's pretty exciting. So Jesus talks about it and tells us that they're there and they're ready.

And he that reapeth, now that's what you are. Like if you find one of these that's ready and you tell them the gospel and they get saved and you get to see it, you get to bring them to church, maybe help them to get baptized, help them to start studying and growing.

It'll mean a lot to you, but that's not all because it's Jesus said, and he that reapeth receives wages.

So you're gonna get paid for it when you get to heaven. Isn't that something? You get rewards in heaven for doing this work right here.

And he that reapeth receives wages and gathereth fruit unto life eternal.

There's no better job in the world than being a fruit gatherer. That both he that sows, that's the person that just tells the gospel, right?

And he that reaps, that's the person that got to be there when the person got saved. Both of them rejoice together.

And herein is that saying true. One sows, another reaps. I sent you to reap that whereupon you bestowed no labor.

Others before you have already given them the gospel many times in this country usually. And he sends some of us to reap those that we didn't even have to tell them the gospel, someone else did it, but now they're ready and the

Holy Spirit is there and they just need one more word and the Holy Spirit's gonna grab them for Christ. Other men labored and you are entered into their labors.

Isn't that something how we all work together, even other aid, they may have read a book or a sermon by Spurgeon 150, 65 years ago but they don't know what to do.

Their mind isn't right yet. The Holy Spirit hasn't opened their eyes yet and then you talk to them and show them the gospel and the

Holy Spirit lights on them and boom, you see them get saved right there. You just got to reap and you're gonna get paid for that.

So think about it. You want rewards in heaven? You want to get there and be a pauper, be a, who knows, you just have nothing, a street bum in heaven, wouldn't that be something?

At least you'd be walking on golden streets, right? We live in Hawaii. But anyway, think about that.

You don't want to be that way. So here's one place in the Bible, a guaranteed place for you to have something in heaven is to reap some, do some gathering, okay?

So now let's talk a minute about bearing fruit. Go with me to Galatians chapter 22.

I'll tell you what, we're about out of time, aren't we? So let's do that next time. Let's do this instead. Go to Romans chapter one and I'm just gonna finish up this idea of convert fruit because that's kind of what we're talking about in the gathering section here.

So there's gonna be three sections of fruits. One is character fruit, which is on the inside and you have convert fruit, which is kind of what we talked about this morning, where people get saved because you give the gospel and the

Holy Spirit happens to light on them right when you gave them the gospel. And then you're going to have conduct fruit, which is actually how you live.

Fruits under righteousness, we're gonna talk about those three. But convert fruit, look at Romans chapter one, verse 13.

It's the same as gathering the fruit. Romans 1, 13 says, now

I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I proposed to come unto you but was not allowed to.

It says let hitherto, that means not allowed to. That I might have some fruit among you.

So Paul says oftentimes, talking to the church at Rome, he says I've often wanted to come to you physically and be there with you so that I could have some fruit with you.

Now what he, or among you, what he's talking about is I wanna physically travel to this local congregation, the church at Rome, and I wanna work with you to give the gospel to people in your community so that we together can gather some new fruit.

There he's calling fruit, he's calling a new saved person some fruit. So this is why we call it convert fruit.

This is a person who's a pagan worshiping other gods who came to know Christ because of the outreach of this local church.

And Paul said I wanted to come be with you and get some of that fruit with you. So Paul was a fruit gatherer.

I kinda like that phrase better than soul winner, don't you? Because we can't win the soul, so that's a bad phrase. But, and it does come from the

Old Testament. If you read the context, it's not talking about that. So it's a bad phrase for this. So let's just call it gathering together.

I came and I wanted to have some fruit among you also even as among other Gentiles. So Paul was the apostle to the

Gentiles. He wanted to see some people get saved, right? He knows he can't save them, but he knows they can't get saved if they don't hear the word, and that's his job.

So he's gonna give the word, and he's gonna pray and ask the Holy Spirit to light on some of them and save them so he can see it.

And when he sees it, he's gonna call them his spiritual children, and he's gonna expect to get paid for it when he gets to heaven with rewards and crowns and things like that.

There's one place where Paul said, if you wanna know what you get paid with, he pointed to some of his converts and says, you are my crowns when

I get to heaven. So there's the answer. Just being with them forever is gonna be your reward. Think about it.

You have human beings created by Almighty God, which in itself is a miraculous because they're all made from dirt, and yet they breathe and walk and know stuff, and they're going straight to hell seemingly, and you give them the gospel, and the

Holy Spirit saves them, and they end up living forever in heaven with you as a friend. That's gonna be even, that's a reward here when that happens, isn't it?

I mean, can you have a pretty rough week and show up here and see these people and you feel better? And you go home, you feel better all day, don't you?

It helps you get into the next week. I'm the preacher, and I need to have that. I have to have that.

All right, well, imagine if you're in your eternal body where you have no sin and you're perfect, how that will be.

This is like a, what value is there in one human soul? Like, what if we were the only friends, just me and you,

John? There'd be huge value in that. So multiply that by however many that get to heaven because of your witness, and they're there with you forever, and they count you as their spiritual father for the rest of eternity.

I have one or two people, I'm not sure I've got more than that. I got one or two people that from time to time will call me out of the blue and thank me for witnessing to them and the fact they got saved when

I witnessed to them. Not many, but I have, and they'll, every year they'll call and thank me. And I forget about it until the next year, and then they call again, and I go, wow, that is amazing.

Well, in heaven, you're not gonna forget about it. It's gonna be like part of your paycheck is getting to spend eternity with these folks.

So he says, I wanna have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles. I am debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise.

So as much as is in me, there is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are in Rome also.

I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation.

No one gets saved without hearing the gospel, no matter what they're saying about these silly testimonies.

There had to have been a missionary radio program or a Bible, there had to be something. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes it, right?

How do they believe? The Holy Spirit comes and gives them the faith of Jesus, and now they can believe, and they do.

To the Jew first and also to the Greek, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith.

So how important is it that we have convert fruit?

Well, you say, well, not many people get saved now. We're in the end times. That's true, not near as many as in the 80s.

I remember 70s and 80s, we'd go out and talk to people about the Lord, and you'd have like, you know, and one year you might have 100 of them come get baptized, and three or four of them stick with church, right?

So now, you know, it just like the young people, they had babies used to, they wanted to get them in church.

Now I got kids, now it's time to go to church. Now I say, well, now I'm too busy to go to church, see? So everything is changing, and that's part of the falling away, and I know that, but still, still

Jesus said, the fields are white. There are people that are just ready to fall off the vine if you just tell them the gospel one more time, and the

Holy Spirit wants to time that with your words, and then he jumps on them and saves them. Think about it, and they call you a spiritual father or mother the rest of eternity.

There's not gonna be too many rewards in heaven better than that one, so we need to be more cognizant of it and realize it is still our job, no matter how discouraging it may be in the end times, it's still our job, and it's part of the kinds of fruit every true

Christian will have some of it, and I don't mean by that that you will literally be the person that leads someone or a bunch of people to Christ, but you definitely will be given the gospel, and you'll be one of the people that's at least watering or sowing the seed, and hopefully, you'll get to be one of the people that reaps one or two or three or 20 or 30 or whatever.

It's a pretty exciting part of the Christian life. Well, let me end with this.

You remember how we were in Colossians 1 when we started a lot of this stuff about seeing the things that God does for us right when he saves us, over 30 -something listed in that one chapter?

In the middle of all that, it talks about convert fruit. It says, we give thanks to God and the

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you. See here, Paul's praying for his new converts, his new church.

Praying always for you since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love which you have to all saints for the hope which is laid up for you in heaven.

Where have you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel? So it speaks of the word of God and it goes right into the next verse and says, which is coming to you as it is into all the world and brings forth fruit as it does also in you.

So the word of God itself will bring forth fruit in people that God calls. Since the day that you heard of it and you of the grace of God, and you drop down to these same people in verse nine, it says this.

For this cause, we also, since the day that we heard of it, do not cease to pray for you and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that you might walk worthy of the

Lord unto all praising, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might according to his glorious power unto all patients in long suffering with joyfulness.

So that is his prayer, is that his people would be fruitful. And the first kind of fruit is convert fruit.

We'll talk about the other two as we get back together, the Lord willing. I will unfortunately not be able to be here next

Sunday. I'm hoping Brother Ron's feeling well enough. I sent him a text, but he might not be well enough to even see it yet, but hopefully he will be.

And Brother Bill, if he can't, can you fill in next Sunday? We had someone who, one of our teachers with Tradeway who was not able to go out to Minnesota this next weekend and teach.

So Katie volunteered me. So she asked me if I'd fill in. And so I'm going out to Minnesota to preach the gospel next weekend and it will be fun.

Alrighty then. I wish, too bad Jenny Taylor's not here. I could talk about that.

But anyway, so I'll miss you next Sunday. But when we get back, the Lord willing, we'll continue into these other two groups of fruit.

Let's stand and have prayer together. Lord, thank you for your word.

Thank you for how you show us ways to discern people. You show us how to tell a false prophet, a false teacher when we see one.

You show us how to tell a true Christian when we see one. You show us how to tell people who aren't

Christians because of the lack of fruits. And thank you for giving us all this because you said it is appointed unto us to judge all things.

We're supposed to discern all things and yet to be judged by no man. And so Lord, help us to be, to have more wisdom in our dealings with men because of our understanding of these concepts.

Help us also to be desirous, Lord, to bear more fruit and even much fruit in our own lives, that we might abide in you,

Christ Jesus, and have the fruits that come with that, the much more type of fruit, the answered prayers, the powerful prayer life, converts, people who come to know you because of our witness and testimony.

Lord, make it to be so in our lives that we may spend an eternity having the joy to spend some time with people that came to know you because of our life here on this earth.

Lord, go with us into our time of fellowship now. Bless the meal we're about to have in Jesus' name, amen.