Good Fruit
Sermon Review
28 January 2001
Isaiah 5:1-5A while ago I learnt how to make a great apple pie. It was by following a simple recipe. 4-6 apples; 2 table spoons of sugar, 2 cloves, a handful of sultanas; and milk & sugar for glazing. What made it special was the pie crust, which was really a scone mix – 2 cups of self raising flour, 2 tablespoons of margarine, 1 cup of milk, and ¼ teaspoon of salt.
A few weeks after my gastronomic success, I tried again but was disappointed when I discovered that my substitution of plain flower for the self-raising flour was a bad decision, despite the fact that I did try to compensate for the difference by using bicarbonate soda. The crust was slightly bitter and flat. Tampering with the recipe proved to be a let down.
Israel’s Tampering With God’s Recipe For Them
God loved Israel, and wanted the best for them. He gave them a great land and great opportunities for a life worth living, yet they tampered with the recipe, and instead of good grapes, they brought forth bitter, wild grapes. This was not good for either themselves or God. You see bad fruit is not only not good for the owner, but for the fruit itself.
If I was going to be a grape I would rather be sweet, juicy, and attractive than small, bitter, and unappealing. Likewise, if I change God’s recipe for my life and choose to do things my way, God not only looses out, but so too do we. We become the equivalent of the small, sour, wild grapes. Because we do lose out by not sticking to God’s recipe for our own individual lives and the life of the church, then lets keep sticking to His recipe.
Last week I talked about being itchy-eared. I challenged you to think about your responses to God’s challenges of last year so that we could successfully move onto the next stage of God’s plans and purposes for us. Today I would like to continue to encourage you to stick to God's recipe – to follow through on His challenges, guidance and encouragement. I would encourage you not to doubt God’s goodness and wisdom and I would encourage you to accept the occasional pain and discomfort involved in adjusting our lives to embrace God’s purposes for us.
The Wisdom & Goodness of God
God is good and wise, yet it doesn’t take much to sow seeds of distrust eg. The serpent in the Garden of Eden Gen.3:1-7. We need to remember that in many ways our lives have predisposed us to distrust messages of love and goodness in general, and in particular with relation to God eg. child abuse, betrayal; personal disappointments and discouragements; current social reverence of science and information; our competitive culture; messages of happiness founded on materialism; suburban mistrust and suspicion; the unrest, corruption, fighting, death and destruction that characterise much of the news from around the world – these all infiltrate and influence our thinking about God.
It is hard to believe in the goodness and wisdom of God when we are bombarded and deeply effected by these and many other things. Especially when we think that such things might effect others, but I am an exception to the rule. We can offset and largely neutralise these messages by remembering to take deliberate looks at nature, Christ, and the church.
- Creation – Ps.19:1-4; Rom.1:20. Take time to smell the roses! How can a being who took time to imagine and create a rose, a sunset, clouds, oceans, forests, and innumerable types of living things from riotously coloured reef fish and butterflies, to powerful creatures like bears and lions, to tiny insects smaller than the bumble bee and the busy ant. A being who has brilliantly balanced environment with life needs in complicated and overlapping ecological systems, including productive parasitic and protective predatorial relationships. A being who created super-novas, black-holes, star and planetary systems, gravity, light, time, and distance. Creation has many messages that call us to trust in God’s wisdom, power & goodness.
- Christ – John.3:16; Rom.8:31,32. God has demonstrated His love historically in the sending of His Son Jesus Christ, and allowing Him to die a sacrificial substitutionary death for forgiveness and eternal life to all who desire it. In giving His Son, God has given His best, and will therefore not withhold all other things good things. He promises to work all things together for the good of those who love and are called to Him 8:28. He is a being who has proven His love by doing such things, and should not be doubted. His intentions are always good. He doesn’t want to ruin our lives; He comes to give life and hope and a future; He comes to undo the damage of the devil and save us from our worst enemies – sin & ourselves. Through Christ, God has unequivocally demonstrated His love for people, and the goodness of His intentions.
- The Church – John17:20,21. Behind the establishment of His church, God’s goodness is again revealed. The desire of God is that the redeemed people on this earth gather together into healing, therapeutic, loving communities in which they can be taught, contribute to the life and faith of others, care for those beyond themselves, help others come to know Christ and grow in discipleship, and into mature men and women of God in the process. Fellowship, worship, prayer for one another, words and challenges of faith, humble encouragement, the power and presence of the Holy Spirit – all these are intended to be positive forces in people’s lives. As such, they are powerful inducements to maintain a right view and attitude towards God, self, others, and life itself. Imperfect as the church is in practice (cf. Matt.13:24-30), it is still intended to be one of God’s best inventions for demonstrating His love & goodness, and one of His main means of encouraging sustained belief in His goodness and love.
Overall, the combination of Creation, Christ, and the Church, God’s wisdom and goodness should not be called into question. In fact, reflection on them are intended to reshape our thinking, enthuse our hearts, and fire up our faith when disbelief, discouragement, and disappointment strike. They are intended to counter the discrediting and deceiving voices of our culture, formative life experiences, and disbelieving hearts. And they need to for too often we wish to change God’s recipe because we struggle to come to grips with a very powerful coercive force – the pain and discomfort that sometimes comes in following God’s recipe for our lives.
The Pain and Adjustment Required To Follow God’s Recipe
There will be some pain and discomfort in following Christ eg. Heb. 10:32-36; Jas.1:2-4. When I was young I spent much time reading Fairy Tales. In fact I began writing a book of them at one stage. This was both good and bad. Good in that I could dream of bad or sad events turning into something beautiful where good would triumph and the heroes and heroines would live happily ever after. Bad where I expected real life to have Fairy Tale endings all the way through. This was unrealistic and potentially set me up for much disillusionment in life.
The truth is that we often come to God with Fairy Tale expectations and want a magic wand to provide alleviation from all pain, suffering, inconvenience, and difficulty. Whereas, God promises that He will work all things together for good (Rom.8:28); that He gives ‘abundant life’ John.10:10; that He will live within the believer, empower the believer, and give them peace, strength, and grace to experience that life John.14:15,27; 1Cor.10:13; 2Cor.12:9 etc.- but not magic wands to fulfill fairy tale expectations.
None of His promises dismiss the need for patience and perseverance which are painful. They do not dismiss the reality of temptation, the pain of sacrifice or the discomfort of change, nor the pressure and trouble of what God sometimes allows or disallows in our lives. The pressure of our own rebelliousness and the call of worldly wisdom are still real.
Unfortunately for us, each of these attack and encourage us to vilify God. They attempt at every twist and turn to call God’s intentions and love into question. They call us fools, idiots, gullible morons, or the equivalent, all in order to cause us to sacrifice our faith in God’s goodness on the alter of discouragement, disbelief, and doubt. Satan loves our tendency to allow pain to alter our beliefs and convictions. The fact is that the experience of some pain and difficulty are inevitable within the midst of God’s promises, but He is no man’s debtor, and hindsight will always prove God’s wisdom, goodness, and grace. What God calls for though is the faith to believe while it hurts, not simply after the event, and not simply because He wants His children to, but because it is true. If you can come to grips with this truth in the midst of difficulty, you are truly blessed.
Conclusion
As you think about whether or not to stick to God’s recipe, to be obedient to His challenges, directions, and guidance, be assured that God knows what He is doing and He knows what is best, for you, for this church, for this world. Once an old lady prayed, ‘Lord, we are afraid of our wills. If we follow our own inclinations, we fear the consequences. Teach us thy will!’ She was a wise woman. When you doubt God’s intentions behind His directions to you, to us, take time to reflect on Creation, Christ, and God’s intentions in establishing the church.
If you honestly come to grips with the fact that God is good, loving, and wise, there is no doubt that even when it comes to difficult adjustments in your life, you will respond well and be blessed in the responding. After all, it is almost impossible to respond well to someone whom you think does not have your best welfare at heart. Be determined to following His recipe this year, to respond when He challenges, directs, guides – you will never be the loser! Israel tampered with God’s recipe and in God’s eyes became small, bitter, wild grapes, unappealing and unattractive.
If we want to be good fruit, succulent, juicy, sweet, and attractive in God’s eyes, lets stick to His recipe for us.
Blessings