Daily Devotional – Sept 25, 2020

Faith Baptist Church

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It's about gone. I hope your week has gone well and as you're finishing up the work week, that your last day of work, assuming that you have the regular

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Monday through Friday shift, that your last day of work will be productive or will have been productive depending on when you watch this devotional.

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And I also trust you're looking forward to a good weekend and the Lord's Day gathering together with God's people.

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Well, how's your garden doing? We have some friends of ours that mentioned a month or so ago that their tomato plants were just looking awful.

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I mean, just terrible. They were scraggly, scrawny things or hardly any tomatoes on the vine and they just couldn't figure out what the problem was.

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And this year they had done a different system for mulching and so forth.

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And so they kind of dug around, around the base of the plant, pulled away the mulch and right away realized what had happened.

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The roots of the plant were not getting enough oxygen. They weren't getting enough minerals and so forth.

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And they were just, the plants were dying because of some problems in the root system.

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I ran into something similar at home in the house. We had some house plants that all of a sudden were really looking pretty bad, pretty sickly.

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The leaves were just wilting and some of them turning brown and couldn't figure out what the problem was.

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We were faithful in watering them and so forth. And obviously, nobody in my household is a green thumb and we're not really plant specialists, but nevertheless, we knew looking at the plant, something wasn't right.

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So got to looking a little further, digging a little deeper, literally, and realized that the pot that this particular plant was in wasn't draining properly.

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And consequently, the dirt was just staying moist, wet all the time.

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We water it once a week or something like that, and we didn't realize it, but the water,

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I mean, the dirt was never drying out sufficiently and we put more water in it. So, well, we do know enough about something like that, that if the plant, the roots just stay constantly wet in the dirt, at least in this particular kind of plant, that you'll get root rot.

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And that's what happened. So you just pull on a little bit of the plant and it's like, there's no roots to it.

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The thing comes out, there's no roots in it. And it took quite a while to figure that out. We didn't notice the problems at first.

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I mean, everything looked fine. The leaves are green. It seems like it's growing. It just seems fine for a while, but then the problems showed up.

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Problems appeared and that compelled us to look beneath the surface, discovered the root of the problem.

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Well, Thomas Manton wrote this. He said, as when the root of a tree perishes, the leaves keep green for a while, but within a while they wither and fall off.

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So love is the root and heart of all other duties. And when that decays, other things decay with it.

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Did you get that? Love is the root and heart of all other duties.

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And when that root love decays, all other things decay with it.

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Now we get some biblical precedent for that and understanding in Jesus teaching in John chapter 15, he's teaching his disciples.

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This would have been the night of the upper room, John 15, he's teaching his disciples.

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And he talked to them about the vine and the branches. He said, I'm the vine, you are the branches. But then in verse four of John 15, he says this, he said, abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.

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So first of all, Jesus establishes the fact that our fruitfulness as his followers depends upon our abiding in the vine.

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But then a few verses later, Jesus discloses a critical component of that abiding and the corresponding fruitfulness.

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Verses eight and nine, he says this, by this is my father glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

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But listen, as the father has loved me, so have I loved you.

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Abide in my love. You see, Jesus is making a connection here between abiding in him, abiding in love, bearing fruit for him.

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The clear indication is if you're not abiding in Christ, not abiding in his love, you'll not bear much fruit.

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And then Jesus talks about the fact that one aspect of that fruit bearing is obedience.

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Now, we all understand that obedience can be carried out in a very slavish manner.

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You can technically obey and do what you're supposed to do and yet not really have much love in that obedience.

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You kind of see that. We talked recently about the prodigal son. You kind of see that in the older brother in that story, the prodigal son, right?

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He was doing everything that his dad wanted him to do, told him to do. And yet he wasn't abiding in his love.

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He wasn't really doing any of that out of love for his father.

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So Jesus says, if you're going to bear much fruit, you need to abide in my love. And he talks about one aspect of that fruit being obedience, but he ties it to the root of love.

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In John 15 verses 10 and 11, he says this. He says, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love.

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Now, you could read that literally this way. He says this, if you should keep my commandments, if you happen to keep my commandments, you shall be abiding in my love.

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I don't think what Jesus is saying is this, that if you keep the commandments, it's a proof that you're abiding in love.

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Rather, he's saying, if you're abiding in my love, you'll end up keeping my commandments.

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So in other words, as Manton said it in a negative way, love is the root of genuine obedience.

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Without a healthy root, a healthy love for God, obedience will decay.

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That abiding in the love of Christ and the corresponding fruitfulness is also the key to joy because then

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Jesus says right after that, these things have I spoken unto you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.

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So the abiding in the love of Christ, abiding in Christ, and showing that love, letting that love show forth in obedience, is a critical key to joyfulness in the

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Christian life. Now, by the way, isn't this also Paul's point in 1

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Corinthians 13, that love needs to be the root of our ministry, of our work, of our labor, of our service, of our obedience?

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Because remember what he says in the first three verses? He says, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love,

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I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. In other words, the fruit is decayed.

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And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love,

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I am nothing. The fruit is decayed.

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And then he says, if I give away everything I have and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love,

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I gain nothing. The fruit is decayed. So let this challenge us to examine our hearts, our motives, and what's behind our acts of obedience, our acts of ministry and service, and what we do.

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At least we profess that we're doing it for the

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Lord in service for him and so forth. Are we doing such from the root of love?

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If love isn't at the root of it, then the fruit will decay and rot on the vine.

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So let's be challenged by that today. All right, let's have a word of prayer and allow the

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Lord to speak to us and challenge us from his word and ask him to do so. Father, we thank you for this convicting message that at the root of our behavior, our obedience, our service for you must be love for you, must be love for Christ.

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And I pray that that root being properly rooted in abiding in the love of Christ will result in the production of much healthy fruit in our lives.

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We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, well, have a good rest of your

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Friday and weekend. And if you can make it Sunday morning at 1030 for the

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Lord's Day worship service, also having Bible study at 930, I encourage you to do that at church.

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If you can't, you can join us on live stream, live streaming the morning service anyway. And then just this reminder, this will be the last devotional on Facebook or YouTube or however you're watching these every day.

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This will be the last one for a few weeks. I'm going to take a little bit of a hiatus, get some much needed rest and refreshment and hope to come back and actually have some better devotionals.

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We'll see. We'll see about that. No guarantees or promises there. But nevertheless, it'll be a few weeks before we get back to this and we'll surely notify of those return to the devotionals through the different media.