How To Test the Fruit - feat Beth Moore

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You know, something that really just kind of gets my goat and grinds my gears, if you know what I mean. Something that I just can't stand.

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It's one of my biggest pet peeves. It's when biblical phrases, things that are from the Bible, they're true, they're things that we should be able to use and not have a problem with using.

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When those kinds of phrases and things become weasel words, when they become just sort of like this thing that you say, and what you mean is something unbiblical.

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I just hate that. I hate weasel words in general, when people use weasel words. It's so annoying.

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It's effeminate, to be perfectly honest, to not speak directly. I don't think that women should use weasel words either, but I understand why women don't speak as directly as men sometimes.

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I just, I get that. And so, but there's a lot of these weasel words. A lot of people have been making fun of words that Christians use that are essentially weasel words.

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You know, nuance, journey, missional, things like that. But this one is biblical, so I wanted to address this in particular.

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I'm going to use the Beth Moore tweet, where she's talking about why she took out some of the stuff about homosexuality being a sin from one of her books or something like that.

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I mean, I never read Beth Moore books. I don't really care to read Beth Moore books. So that's what

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I think this is about. She removed a few paragraphs about homosexuality being a sin or whatever. And people were challenging her about that because it's pretty ridiculous, right?

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So here's what she says. This is an example of what I mean. She says this. After taking three years to pray and to test the fruit, there's the weasel word, testing the fruit.

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After taking three years to pray and to test the fruit, it became clear to me that my words in this section, words that exceeded scripture, were stopping many from God's words which follow.

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It wasn't a doctrinal shift. When our words keep people from God's words, we've overspoken.

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Okay, so the idea is here that she tested the fruit of calling homosexuality a sin.

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And because she did that, she was preventing people from hearing God's other words as well because they didn't want to hear it.

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People were getting so upset. But how dare you call homosexuality a sin and this and that. And I don't want to hear what you have to say.

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And so therefore, that's bad fruit. And she's not the only one who does this. I mean, this is not something that's isolated to Beth Moore, lest you think

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I'm just beating a dead horse here. And people are beating up on Beth Moore. That's really not the case at all. People aren't beating up on Beth Moore.

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But she's not the only one who does this. I remember very specifically, very vividly, I was biking. I'm saying this because this is what

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James White always says, but I actually literally was biking. I used to bike,

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I used to live in Brooklyn. I used to bike to the Rockaways. You go through Coney Island and there's a bridge that you cross and you get to the far

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Rockaways and you come back. It was like a 30 mile ride. It was awesome. So I used to always listen to books and stuff. And I remember very distinctly listening to the

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Matthew Vines presentation, the famous one that James White reviewed and critiqued and all of that. And this is what his big thing was.

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A bad tree bears bad fruit and a good tree bears good fruit. And me feeling lonely for my homosexual desires is bad fruit.

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And you see, this is the thing. So that's a weasel word. It's so frustrating when people use it that way. But the thing is, this is a biblical term.

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This is a verse from Matthew chapter three. Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

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This is the words of Jesus. So that was John the Baptist, bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

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Okay, so bearing fruit, that's a good thing. And this is what everyone's referring to. This is the words of Jesus. Every good tree bears good fruit, but bad trees bear bad fruit.

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A good tree cannot produce bad fruit nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

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So then you will know them by their fruits. And so this is a biblical idea that angers me.

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It's become a weasel word because bearing fruit is a specific thing.

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And bad feelings is not what it's talking about. Feeling bad or feeling angry or feeling offended or feeling frustrated, or even being so frustrated that you don't wanna hear anymore is not the bad fruit that the

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Bible is talking about. Do you know how I know this? This is the thing. This is not up for debate.

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This is not questionable. This is objectively true. Bearing bad fruit is not making someone feel angry.

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Bearing bad fruit is not making someone feel so angry that they don't even wanna hear the words of God anymore. You know how

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I know this? Because we have examples in the Bible where the apostles and people do this and it's not bearing bad fruit.

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It's not bearing bad fruit. You see, here's the thing. When John the Baptist gives us this amazing little verse, bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

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I pulled it off a Bible hub here because it gives you all the different translations. This is epic because it tells us what bearing fruit is.

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It's doing things that are consistent with repentance. In other words, it is obeying the law of God, obeying

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God's moral commands. That's what bearing good fruit is. It's not making someone feel warm and fuzzy inside.

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It's not making someone feel affirmed in their sin. It's not making someone feel okay with their sin or softening their sin or things like that.

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No, it's doing what God says to do and not doing what God says not to do. That's what bearing good fruit is.

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So if you are having homosexual lust, that is bad fruit. If you are having homosexual lust, that is bad fruit.

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Now, if you're telling someone that homosexual lust is bad and they feel bad about it, that's actually good fruit.

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You see what I'm saying? So Beth Moore has it twisted here. Beth Moore has it twisted. Look, there's just a few examples of this verse.

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Just to show you the flavor of what this means. This is the New International Version. Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

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Okay, great. English Standard, bear fruit in keeping with repentance. Okay, this is the Christian Standard Bible. I like this Bible in many ways.

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Therefore, produce fruit consistent with repentance. Here's the King James. Bring forth therefore fruit.

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Meet for repentance. So you might not understand what that means, but it means essentially the same thing. Fruit that is consistent with repentance.

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You see, that's what we're talking about here. The fruit that you should bear, the good fruit, is fruit that demonstrates your repentance.

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You stop doing the bad things you were doing before. You start doing the good things that are brought forth from the spirit of God, consistent with the word of God, consistent with the law of God, and that's what bearing fruit is.

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Okay. Now, you know how I know that Beth Moore's wrong about this where she thinks that people that are getting so angry about you calling something a sin, they don't wanna hear

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God's word anymore. That's not bad fruit. You know how I know that? Because the apostles do it. The apostles do it.

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This is Acts 7. So Stephen is about to get stoned and he gives this amazing, epic sermon where he goes through the

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Old Testament and talks about everything that happened to the Israelites. And then he talks about the Son of God and he talked about the kingdom of God and how it's all the gospel.

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And what does it say that they do? It says, at this, they covered their ears, cried out in a loud voice and rushed together at him.

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Some Bible translations say that they stopped their ears. They did not wanna hear it anymore.

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Are you willing to say that Stephen was bearing bad fruit? Was Stephen going further than the word of God?

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And the proof of that is that they didn't wanna hear it anymore. They didn't wanna hear that the blood of Jesus was on their own heads.

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They didn't wanna hear that. They didn't wanna hear how Stephen saw the Son of Man standing at the right hand of the

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Father. They didn't wanna hear that anymore. Therefore, that's bad fruit. I don't think so.

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We got also the apostles here. Or I'm sorry, this is Jesus giving the apostles instructions, right?

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And what does he say if they don't wanna hear, if they wanna accept them in one of their villages? He sends the apostles out to preach the good news of the kingdom of God.

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And what does he tell them to do? He says, preach it. And some of them are gonna say, don't preach it anymore. We don't want you here.

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And what does he say to do? If they refuse to listen to you or to listen to your message, shake the dust of your feet if you leave.

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So he says, look, some people aren't gonna wanna hear it. Does that mean you're producing bad fruit? Does that mean you're going further than my words?

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No. It means that they don't wanna hear it. It means that they're apostate. It means that they're reprobate potentially.

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So shake the dust off your feet. It's not your words, they're rejecting me, okay? And so the fact that they don't wanna hear it and that what you said was very true, was very biblical, but they don't wanna hear it, so therefore it's bad fruit.

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That is so stupid. You know how I can know that that's not evidence of bad fruit?

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Because Jesus does this as well. The purpose of the parable.

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This is something that some people wanna debate, but it's not debatable either. Why does Jesus speak in parables? They ask him.

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They ask him, the apostles actually ask him. They say, Jesus, you're telling us these parables and we don't even understand them.

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And then you explain them to us, but why are you teaching in parables? Why don't you just teach us directly? You know what

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I mean? Why do you do this? And this is what Jesus says. He says, this is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear nor understand.

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Do you hear what he's saying? He's speaking to them in parables so that those that aren't meant to hear it, don't hear it.

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He doesn't want them to. That's why he speaks in parables. There are certain people that are meant to understand.

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There's other people that are meant not to understand. And that's why he speaks to them in parables so that they don't wanna hear it. They don't accept the words of God.

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And so if saying something in such a way that some people don't wanna hear it and they get offended and they get angry and they wanna hurt you and they wanna stop you and they wanna stop their ears.

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If that is evidence of a bad tree, then I'm sorry. You just made a standard that Jesus himself doesn't meet.

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Jesus would be a bad tree if that is the standard. But it is not the standard. So this weasel phrase here that Beth Moore uses, oh,

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I used to call homosexuality a sin but I stopped doing it because it was bad fruit.

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I tested the fruit for three years, I prayed about it. I tested the fruit for three years and people didn't wanna hear anything else

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I had to say. Therefore it's bad fruit. That's not the standard, man. Woman, that's not the standard because Jesus doesn't meet that standard.

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We have too many of these rules, these pious sounding pharisaical rules that Jesus doesn't even meet.

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Like, oh, you can't speak in aggressive tones. You can't joke, are you kidding me? You can't joke about other people?

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Like these standards that none of the apostles met, that Jesus himself didn't meet and you're trying to put that yoke on me?

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Stop being a Pharisee. Stop being a Pharisee. Anyway, as you can tell, that does grind my gears just a little bit.

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So I'm not gonna give you the rules of how to check fruit and things like that. But look, it's very simple. Things that bear good fruit are true things.

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Things that bear good fruit are things that drive you closer to Christ and loving

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Christ more, which is to say that you obey Christ more. In other words, it's not about warm and fuzzy feelings.

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It's about obeying Christ and considering him your Lord and taking what he says and what he says to do more seriously than what you think you should do and what comes from you.

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That's what bearing good fruit is all about. You see what I'm saying? So anyway, I hope this was helpful.