God’s Word talks about the harvest of righteousness – and if you’ve ever lived in a farming community you’ll know that harvest time is a time of huge celebration. So this harvest of righteousness – it’s not just empty words, it’s a big deal.

 

The Fruit of Righteousness

One of the things that we do in this world – particularly, let me say, in the West – is that we get hooked on junk food. Pretty much, most people need three meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner. Some don’t get that of course, and others skip meals because they’re too busy to eat. And in between meals we like to have little snacks and often the snacks we consume can be our undoing.

Instead of healthy snack of a banana or an apple or an orange, we go for the chocolate bar or the doughnut or the packet of chips or something equally unhealthy. Of course, one of those every now and then, no problem but if those are the things that we snack on most of the time, they are going to make us sick and tired, literally.

I’ve done that a few times in my life and each time I have eventually come to my senses and replaced those unhealthy snacks with healthy ones, well, at first it seemed like a real burden to give up the junk food snacks, but within a day or two, here’s what happens:

1. What I found is that I rediscover how wonderful fruit tastes: a sweet mandarin, a juicy orange, a crisp apple, a ripe banana. They are fantastic. What a surprise!

2. Within just a few days, I am feeling much healthier: more energy, more alert, a spring in my step. The fruit, as it turns out, is good for us in so many different ways.

Last week on the programme we were chatting about reaping the harvest of righteousness and we saw that God’s righteousness is two things: it’s both bad news and good news. Bad news because He is righteousness and we are not and eventually that brings His wrath crashing down on our heads and good news because He knows that, which is why He sent us Jesus Christ His Son to save us.

Now we are going to talk about the bad news and the good news a bit more next week on the programme but right now we are going to look at the fruit, good, healthy, life-giving fruit. As I mentioned just earlier, making the transition from bad eating habits to good eating habits, at the time always seems … well, it feels like we are making a sacrifice, giving up the sweet chocolate bars and the fatty chips. It’s never fun making that choice and starting on the journey towards healthy eating. But not only is the fruit really, really nice, it yields fruit in our life. We feel better; we have more energy, right?

We know that and it’s the same with sin and righteousness. When we are addicted to some sin – we all have one or two sins that we are predisposed to – it seems like such a sacrifice giving them up, it really does, even though they are not good for us; even though they are hurting us. And often times God helps us by sending us through a rough patch; by disappointing us, so that we can learn for ourselves the impact that our sin is having so that we can feel the pain and have the opportunity to let go of the sin and turn back to Him.

Have a listen to what the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament has to say about this. Hebrews chapter 12, beginning at verse 5. If you have a Bible come there with me. He writes:

And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as children— ‘My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by him; for the Lord disciplines those whom he loves, and he chastises every child whom he accepts.’ Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline?

If you do not have that discipline, in which all children share, then you are illegitimate and not his children. Moreover, when we had human parents to discipline us, we respected them. Should we not be even more willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share his holiness.

Now, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.”

You know what he is saying? No pain, no gain, right? And in a sense, that’s what is going on here. So often, we’re travelling through tough times and we don’t take the time to read the signs. We squeal in pain, "Oh God, why is this happening to me?" and we don’t stop to hear His answer. Often times the reason it’s happening because God is at work in our lives and leaving the sin behind is hard, our flesh is addicted to it. It’s like a heroin addict leaving the drug behind. It’s hard, it hurts. And God lets it happen to us because He loves us; because He knows that the peaceful fruit of righteousness is so worth the effort and the pain.

Can we just talk about that fruit for a moment? Can we talk about the harvest; the gain that comes out of the pain? Because it’s like the real fruit that I was talking about before – it is fantastic. When we are wallowing around in our sin, well, you know, that affects our lives. Someone who is living constantly in sin of anger is going to have a rotten life, right? Someone who is labouring under the yoke of unforgiveness is going to have a rotten life. Someone who hasn’t learned to sacrifice and to love is having unhealthy, tragic relationships. The list of cause and effect goes on!

And most times we don’t even notice them. We don’t stop to think about the sin – the cause – and the effect that it’s having on our lives. I use this word "sin" deliberately, as much as it jars with many people because it’s what God calls our rebellion. It means literally to "miss the mark; to miss the whole point; to miss out on our share". And that’s what we are doing when we are rebelling against God. We are missing out on the goodness, just like when we are stuffing our faces full of unhealthy food, we are missing out on energy and well-being that should be going on in our lives.

But when we allow God’s discipline – through the difficult and often painful circumstances we are travelling through – be the tool that helps us let go of the sin; the tool that shows us the pain and helps us to the heart decision of letting go and turning back to Him, then here’s what’s going to happen: just like giving up junk food snacks, it’s not going to be a pleasant start. It always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time but the peaceful fruit of righteousness, well, it’s kind of like that sense of well-being and vibrancy and energy that we get when we ditch the junk food in favour of the good stuff – the fruit.

I just want to encourage you that sometimes the tough patches are God’s polishing cloth in our lives. And the sin He’s putting His finger on right now is actually ruining our lives. It’s robbing you and me of the peaceful fruit of righteousness that He wants us to live in day by day. So we can struggle and squirm and fight God. The problem is, the longer we do that, the longer He will keep us in that uncomfortable place. Or we can go to Him, ask Him to show us what He is doing and let go of that sin quickly. Yes, even though it never seems pleasant at the time, more likely painful and the sooner we get with His plan; the sooner we will be living in the peaceful fruit of righteousness. What do you think?

 

The Harvest of Righteousness

I remember when I was in my last year of High School – quite a few years ago now – I travelled to a country town to teach the clarinet at a music camp during the school holidays. And I had the opportunity to stay for a week on a farm. Now, this was a large property and they farmed many thousands of sheep – thousands of them. It was quite an experience for a young guy because I’m a city boy.

I had spent all my time growing up in an industrial city so I had never really thought too much about, well, where things come from – milk, after all, came in bottles, eggs come in cartons, meat comes from the butchers and so on. You don’t really think too much about it when you live in the city, so spending this week on the sheep farm was the most amazing experience.

We had the opportunity to help dip the sheep, so you had to pick them up and throw them down the shoot so they ended up in a trough full of sheep dip – it was back breaking work. And for a lad who had never really thought too much about where lamb chops came from, other than from the butchers, it was a real eye opener.

Farming is hard work. Ever since then I have had the greatest respect for farmers. And not only is it hard work but pretty much they only get their income once or twice a year. And that happens when they take what they have grown - whether that be a crop like wheat or sheep or cattle for slaughter or wool for clothing – when they take what they have grown to market. It happens at harvest time.

But of course there are many things that can interrupt the harvest: drought, flood, fire, a plague of locusts, diseases in animals. And even when there is a bumper crop, often as a result of the abundance, the prices the farmer gets at market are going to plummet. So it’s a tough life and that week on the sheep farm has given me a deep, abiding respect for farmers and their families.

But there is something else, another lasting legacy that this week on the farm, as a young lad, has left with me and that’s an appreciation of the tough reality of farming on one hand and the sense of jubilation of a successful harvest on the other. See we city slickers hear this word "harvest" and it really doesn’t mean too much to us. It kind of washes by. But harvest time is the culmination of the farmer’s work. It’s the time of reaping the reward. A successful harvest brings great joy and a sense of accomplishment and relief and safety and provision, not just for the farming families, but in fact, for the whole community.

That’s what "harvest" means, so when the Bible talks about "harvest" that’s the sense of what’s going on. And remember back then in the first century, there was no welfare or Government assistance or anything like that. If the harvest failed, people starved and it’s still like that in many parts of the world today. Suffice to say, what I am trying to get to here, is the fact that the ‘harvest’ is a big deal – it’s a huge deal. If you live in a rural community, you already know that but it’s not something that’s necessarily that obvious to us city slickers.

So when the Apostle Paul writes to his dear friends in Philippi about this harvest of righteousness, he is saying something big. Philippians chapter 1, beginning at verse 9:

And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and the praise of God.

Interesting that he begins his point about this harvest of righteousness with a four letter word "love"! His prayer for his dear friends in Philippi is that their love would overflow more and more because it’s in this flood-tide of God’s love, which works its way out in our love for one another, that we gain the knowledge and develop the insight to know what God’s best is for us. And living out His best isn’t always the easiest thing to do, as we have seen over the course of these last few weeks.

Living out God’s best requires sacrifice and it hurts a lot of times but when our heart is soaked in God’s love; when lives are about overflowing more and more with the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ, then in that place, with that humility, with that surrender and sacrifice, we gain the knowledge of God and the insights of God which transform us into His image which help us to live out the righteousness we already have; the right standing we have with Him because of our faith in Jesus who died to pay for our sin and rose again to give us a brand new life; an abundant life; an eternal life.

And friends, that is the thing: the love of God at work in us, that produces what? It produces the harvest – big word that – the harvest of righteousness, which comes to us through Jesus and brings glory and praise and honour to God.

When Jesus was asked, "What’s the most important commandment of all?" He answered Luke chapter 10, verse 27:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbour as yourself.

Love is the most important thing of all. As Paul wrote some years on, in Romans chapter 13, verse 10:

Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

We have kind of been conditioned to believe that love is all about romance and feeling good and … well, sure, those are a couple of aspects of love but that’s not the sort of love that both of these passages talk about. The original Greek word for "love" here is "agape", which means "unconditional love" – faithful love that never ends and never fails – the sort of love that costs us a lot and often appears to deliver very little at the time.

It’s that sort of love and it doesn’t matter how talented or gifted we are, if we don’t have this sort of love, then in God’s eyes we are nothing but a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. Gifts and abilities and talents without this sacrificial faithful love, are completely worthless. That’s what it says in First Corinthians chapter 13.

Now I know in my own life there have been times that have been so trying and testing, when people have been difficult and unhelpful and hurtful – those times and those places never feel good and yet it is in those times and places that the Word of God has done its greatest work in me. I thank God that early on in my walk with Him, He established in me a pattern of regular Bible reading because it’s in those difficult periods that God’s Word has done His greatest and mightiest works in me.

And it’s still like that today. Friends, in the most difficult times of our lives we can experience this harvest of righteousness, or as it is written elsewhere in the Book of Hebrews, “the peaceful fruit of righteousness”, because as we persist in doing good; in honouring God; in living out the relationship and right standing – that righteousness, purchased for us by Jesus as He took the punishment of our sin on Himself on that cross – as we live that out we discover God Himself.

Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God.

Matthew chapter 5, verse 8.

And that, my friend, is exactly what happens. God draws us ever nearer to Him through the righteousness that He imparted to us through Jesus and the righteousness that He now brings to life in our new lives in Christ. The righteousness that we live out, little by little, He restores us back into His image through the trials of life. That’s the harvest – God Himself, and like every harvest, it’s a big deal. I mean really!

 

Where Do You Get It?

I hope that as we have been chatting today, it’s starting to sink in that it’s all about the harvest; it’s all about the fruit. God didn’t just send Jesus to save us from an eternity separated from Him, He also sent His Son to buy us a new life, here and now. Now I know so many people who believe in Jesus but aren’t growing into that new life.

I was speaking with someone recently who had been involved in a large survey across a major denomination of God’s church and one of the questions that people had been asked was whether, given their involvement in this church, they felt that they were growing spiritually. You know what? Only thirty percent answered "yes" – the rest, seventy percent, answered "no".

So here I am, rabbiting on about a new life, the fruit of righteousness, the harvest of righteousness but you have to ask yourself, if that’s what God’s Word says; if that’s what God promises, where do you get it? How do you and I reap the harvest and become part of the thirty percent, rather that the seventy percent who don’t?

My favourite Psalm, well, it’s hard to have just one favourite Psalm, isn’t it? But my FAVOURITE Psalm is Psalm number 1. Have a listen with me because it’s about growing fruit, Psalm 1, verse 1. If you have a Bible, come there with me:

Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked or take the path that sinners tread or sit in the seat of scoffers but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams, which yield their fruit in season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.

I love this because it’s a piece of wisdom on how to bear fruit. It’s a piece of wisdom on how to succeed - not in the world’s sense, but in God’s sense. It’s a piece of wisdom to stop us from withering under the heat and pressures of life. What’s the Psalmist saying? Let’s get a grip! Keep living out your old life; this life of sin and it ain’t going to work out so well.

In the second part of the Psalm which we haven’t read so far, it says exactly that. But you want to be happy and blessed? Then don’t do that old stuff. Don’t go and “follow the advice of the wicked or take the path that sinners tread or sit in the seat of scoffers” – don’t do that! Instead, delight yourself in the Word of God. Meditate on what God has to say, day and night.

And when you do that, you know what it’s like? It’s like a tree being planted right next to a waterway. In fact, the word that used there for "streams of water" literally means "an irrigation channel" – a stream of water that’s deliberately been put there to help the tree to grow good fruit. It’s like planting yourself next to one of those.

Meditate on what God has to say, day and night and you are going to flourish – you are going to bear fruit; you are not going to wither and die when it gets too hot out there. The Word of God is like clean, living, fresh water – drink that in. Be planted right next to that and you won’t be able to help it. You are just going to bear fruit in season.

The Apostle Paul reiterates that in his letter to the Colossians in the New Testament. Colossians chapter 1, beginning at verse 9. He says this:

For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.

Do you see that? Fruit is linked to knowledge: knowing God, knowing His truth, knowing Him deeply. And it only comes through the Word of God, drinking it in; letting the fresh, living water of His Spirit and His Word fill us, so that we grow – not like the majority of Christians who aren’t growing – that we grow and bear fruit for God’s glory. It only happens when we grow in our knowledge of God.

It does not happen when we wander out there in the wilderness; when we are happy to follow the advice of the wicked or take the path the sinner treads or sit in the seat of scoffers. Do you see what an anathema that is to God? Do you see how opposite that is to the knowledge of God?

Whenever the Bible talks about knowing God, be it in the Old Testament or the New Testament, whenever it talks about that, it doesn’t talk about head knowledge, it talks about knowing God; the fruit is linked to knowing God. The fruit comes from putting our roots deep down in that living water – the Spirit of God and the Word of God – and drinking that in.

That’s what happens when we grow in our knowledge of God – we bear fruit. Not academic knowledge, not head knowledge, not dry knowledge, not the sort of knowledge that helps you pass an exam – it’s a relational knowledge; a deep intimate life knowledge of God that causes us to bear fruit, friend and that’s where we get it. Not by working harder, not by trying to fulfil a whole bunch of rules, not by anything else, except developing a dynamic relationship with Jesus and we do that through His Spirit and His Word.

That’s where we get the fruit. That’s where we get the harvest of righteousness. And that’s why some people are growing spiritually and bearing fruit and others aren’t because some have a deep relationship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit and His Word and others don’t. It’s pretty simple really. It’s not rocket science.

And the choice there ... the choice is for each one of us. Friend, so many Christians go to church; they listen to the sermon, they come home and they never think about it, they never open their Bible and they wonder why their lives aren’t bearing fruit.

Friend, the choice is for each one of us. It’s up to me in my life and let me be really clear; it’s up to you in your life.