Copyright © 2004 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
Eileen and her children knelt on a blanket under a tree and pawed through the basket. One after another they examined their apples. They had picked for an hour in warm sunshine. Eileen had been stung by a bee. And they found the results terribly disappointing. Each apple was small, misshapen and had at least one worm hole. It wasn’t the sort of fruit they were used to seeing at Kroger’s Supermarket in Glen Ellyn.
Larry and Eileen had purchased a 60 acre plot of land in the far north suburbs of Chicago. It was a beautiful site dotted with huge oak trees. There was a large farmhouse, a cottage, a good-sized pond full of bass and bluegills. And spaced out along the edge of the lawn above the pond about twenty apple trees.
While I was in seminary, Beth and I lived in that cottage, providing a bit of security for the place when the owners were away, which was most of the time, all but a few weekends a year. Our responsibility was to make sure things were in order whenever they did show up. We cleaned the house and called for repairs and service when needed. Now Larry decided he wanted better apples.
I called a tree service company and they came out to look. Nothing had been done to the apple trees in years. The service recommended a severe pruning in the early spring while the ground was still frozen and some spraying during the growing season. It cost Larry several hundred dollars. He and his wife were stunned when the saw the pruned trees – it looked to them like nothing was left. And the results that first fall were disappointing – a few small apples. There were no worms because of the spraying, but they found nothing like the bountiful crop they expected for all they had paid the tree service. So they gave up and did no more care for the trees. We moved away, but I imagine it wasn’t long before things were back the way we found them.
Spiritual life can often be like Larry and Eileen’s attempt to grow good apples. Every once in a great while we take a good look at the results of Christian faith in us as individuals and as a church and we get disappointed. There’s fruit, but it seems scrawny. And the worms are there. In spite of being believers, we and our brothers and sisters in Christ can’t seem to get along with each other any better than other people do.
Every now and then we sporadically enter into some sort of improvement project, either individually or corporately. We try to improve our spiritual fruit production with an intense plan of devotion, perhaps during Lent. We spend money on books or a special speaker and maybe add another program or service to our church and personal schedules. We do some pruning, make some sacrifices. And for awhile we manage to keep it all going, aglow with excitement in expectation of the large shiny fruit we expect to see in ourselves and in the lives of others.
Then the actual fruit of our spiritual efforts turns out smaller than we expected or there’s none at all. We get disappointed, turn our attention elsewhere, and go back to neglecting matters of the Spirit.
We sit at one of those points of disappointment right now. Last Sunday this sanctuary was full of excited, spiritually alive worshipers. We came through the intense spiritual discipline of Lent. Many of you gave up some small pleasure for the season and engaged in prayer, study and devotion. You may have gone to see the Passion film, enriching your appreciation of what Jesus Christ did for us. Some of you gave extra time and effort to prepare music or flowers or food for the services of Holy Week. And Easter was a glorious celebration – not disappointing at all. Christ is risen and we all rejoiced.
Now seven days later, here we are. I’m guessing ahead of time as I prepare this message that there will be not many more than half the number of those who sat here on Easter. I commend those of you who came today. At least the seventh fruit of the Spirit is showing up in you – the fruit of faithfulness. Yet even that is tested on a day like the Sunday after Easter. Where are the lasting results of all that spiritual activity this spring? Where are the great crowds Gibson’s movie was to bring back to church? Where even is the sense of joy and peace that you and I experienced last Sunday? Where’s the rest of the fruit?
To answer that question I would like to ask you to enter with me on an after-Easter spiritual journey. I realize that in the rhythm of school and business life around us, this is a time to finish courses. Final exams are not far off, classes will soon be done. Taxes are mailed, inventories are completed. The “work year” is almost over for many of us. It will soon be time to rest, to vacation.
Yet in a different sphere of life, work is just beginning. All around our cities, farmers are plowing. Seeds are being planted. The next few months will be the busiest of the year for those in agriculture. Cultivation, irrigation and fertilization will be the focus. It’s all aimed at producing a harvest, bringing forth fruit that’s worth the effort.
Likewise in the church this is really a season of beginnings, not endings. In the Gospel lesson from John 20, after Easter Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit into His disciples. He sent them out to share the good news of His forgiveness of sin. Then, within less than two months, after fifty days, He sent the Holy Spirit to them even more powerfully, with tongues of flame and the gift of speaking so that anyone could understand. Christ was alive and through the Holy Spirit He would live in His people – and they would bear fruit. The seeds were planted that spring and the disciples began to cultivate them.
So we will focus this Easter season and on into Pentecost on the fruit of the Spirit. God used the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to plant His Holy Spirit in everyone who believes. Now is the time to look for and cultivate the fruit of that planting.
The image of fruit permeates Scripture. Human life begins in Genesis with temptation surrounding a fruit tree. At the end of the story in Revelation 21 is the tree of life with its twelve fruits. God is often pictured tending His people like a gardener tends an orchard or vineyard. Isaiah 5:2 tells of God finding only bad fruit in Israel while Hosea 14 predicts the day Israel will produce good fruit. Psalm 1:3 says a godly person “is like a tree planted by streams of water, yielding its fruit in season.”
Several times in His teaching, Jesus compared His followers to trees and warned of judgment for those who bear bad fruit or no fruit. We looked at one of those texts a few weeks ago in Luke 13. Near the end of His ministry the Lord even cursed and actually withered a tree that had no figs on it – a visible parable of God’s expectation of fruit.
God means for us to bear fruit. These two short verses in Galatians are a description of what that fruit is meant to be. As beautiful as they sound, they come near the end of a letter which is anything but pretty. Paul wrote to a group of churches in Galatia to chew them out for being unfruitful. They were busy as could be, but doing the wrong things. They were working hard at being spiritual, but the results were disastrous. They were trying to be good Christians by keeping the old laws of Judaism. It was producing just the opposite of good fruit. Just preceding the nine fruits of the Spirit is a longer list of fifteen “works of the flesh” beginning in verse 19.
The New International Version translates “flesh” as “sinful nature,” because Paul doesn’t mean that people do these things just as the result of being physical beings. He’s not a gnostic who thinks that matter is evil and spirit is good and that’s all you need to know. “Flesh” is a code word for Paul which identifies all the old sinfulness in us which Christ came to forgive and remove, replacing it with something better, with the fruit of the Spirit. But it’s not just fleshly, physical sin. Many of the “works of the flesh” are spiritual sins like idolatry and hatred and envy.
What makes them all “works of the flesh” is that they are the result of misdirected human effort. The Galatians were trying, trying hard to be spiritual by keeping laws, laws about what they ate and when they worshiped and whom they would associate with. And all of that effort was making them worse, not better. It was making them immoral and hateful and selfish and contentious. The fruit hanging on their branches was rotten. Paul wants them to understand that they were working hard on the wrong things.
This long look at the fruit of the Spirit is to help you and I wonder about our own spiritual efforts and the fruit which we are producing. Are we too spending time and energy on the wrong things? And what then are the results? Is it what God is looking for when He visits His orchard, or is some of our own produce rotten?
Part of the story is right there in the different word Paul chose to describe the bad produce of the Galatians. That which is good is the fruit of the Spirit, but that which is evil is the works of the flesh. At the beginning of chapter 3, Paul asks the Galatians who bewitched them. They were bewitched with their own capability. They believed they could become spiritual through their own good effort. Keep the law well enough and they would accomplish what God wanted.
The image of fruit shows just where the Galatians went wrong. Good fruit takes lots of effort, but in the end you don’t make fruit. You can only cultivate it, only create the conditions which make it possible for fruit to grow. You plant a seed, you water the ground, you shovel on the fertilizer, you care for the tree when it grows, But ultimately, fruit is a gift. Paul said it in I Corinthians 3 verse 6, “neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.”
Those of you who deal regularly with the fruit of the ground know this well. Jeff Anderson cultivates his trees. My wife cares for her roses. Jon Ekstrom tends his vineyard. And they all know that you can do everything by the book, get it all right in terms of water and fertilizer and spraying and pruning – all your effort can be perfect – and the results can still be disappointing. In the end, God makes things grow.
Works of the flesh then are just that. It’s all that we can produce in our lives by our own work, by our own efforts. Without God, without His Spirit, it often all comes to nothing or worse. As soon as we imagine that we have in ourselves the capability to produce spiritual fruit by doing what’s right, then we will begin to fail. The fruit of the Spirit is a gift, a blessing bestowed upon our efforts by the grace of God.
Yet it would be a huge mistake then to suppose that our efforts are useless. Fruit is a gift, yet it won’t grow without water. It won’t grow without nutrients. It won’t grow if insects devour it or frost freezes the blossoms. There is still much for a gardener to do, much that needs to be accomplished if fruit is to be possible.
That’s why I want to talk about cultivation this spring and summer. We cannot simply, straightforwardly put forth all our energy and produce fruit. God gives spiritual fruit to our lives – you and I cannot force it to grow. But we can cultivate it, tend the ground, care for the seedlings, feed the plants. In the next few months I’d like to look at each of the fruits here one by one and talk with you about how it might be cultivated in our lives, how we can prepare the way for God to grow such fruits in us.
So this morning I simply hope to plant some seeds, to provoke you into thinking about the fruit of the Spirit in your own life and in our life here together as a church. To that end I’d like you to reflect on a few cultivation procedures, ways in which fruit trees in general are cared for. These agricultural practices have spiritual counterparts.
First, a fruit tree must be planted in a favorable location. It needs good soil and drainage, plenty of afternoon sun, plenty of space and air circulation. Orchards are laid out with all this in mind. If you and I are God’s trees, then we must be planted in the right places – in worship, in Christian fellowship, in places of service – in spiritual orchards aimed at cultivating the fruit God wants in our lives.
A tender young sapling tree must be staked. Otherwise it will be bent and its roots shaken loose by the wind. You and I and especially children and young believers must be staked firmly in the message of God’s Word, the fundamental commitments of the Christian faith, the basic practice of prayer.
Productive trees need water and fertilizer. They need nutrients sent down deep into the ground around them. Fruit won’t come merely by tending the visible, external part of the tree. You have to pay attention to what is at its roots. Likewise, the visible parts of Christian life are not the whole story. As Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, we all need hidden roots, which drink up spiritual nourishment.
Fruit trees need to be protected. They need mulch to protect them from summer heat. They need the removal of weeds which steal water and nutrients from the ground around them. They need defenses from all sorts of devouring pests such as insects, mice, and deer. In a similar manner, you and I need our lives shielded from the influences and activities which ruin and devour spiritual fruit.
I didn’t know this until Beth helped me learn some facts about fruit trees, but you mustn’t leave fruit to rot on the tree. It falls on the ground and gathers diseases and insects which will attack the tree later. Likewise, Christians need their fruit put to use. They need opportunities to be of service, to practice their faith.
You need to prune. It’s hard and intimidating work with fruit trees. One third to one half of the fruiting wood must be cut off in the winter. That’s good, productive wood which would bud and blossom in the spring. Even some good things must be pruned out of our lives if there is to be spiritual fruit.
Finally, winter has a purpose for trees. They need to be dormant for awhile, to have at least 45 days when the temperature is less than 45 degrees. Yet there is a balance. If it stays cold too long, if dormancy is over-extended, the buds will be killed. Spiritual life requires rest. You can’t always be actively producing. On the other hand, spiritual rest is not a permanent vacation. God means for us to be about His service. Christian life needs that same sort of balance between rest and activity.
As we pray now for God to give us fruit, I hope that you will hear the tone of what Paul said about it. Thinking of how the Galatians had made spiritual life into law, into a list of requirements, Paul concludes his list of fruit with the words, “Against such there is no law.” It’s invitation, not legislation. It’s gift and grace, not rule and regulation. Spiritual fruit is an opportunity our Lord gives us, an opportunity to have gracious lives, filled with His gracious Spirit, growing beautiful fruit out of His grace.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2004 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj