Sure, let's all stand. God the Father and the Son and
the Spirit, three in one. In eternal ages past, made a
covenant sure and fast. God my father chose his own in
the person of his son and ordained that I should be one with him
eternally. God the Son agreed to come in
the flesh to bring me home. He would keep God's holy law
and retrieve me from the fall. Christ in love so willingly stood
as my great surety. For my price He offered blood
to appease the wrath of God. God the Spirit, heavenly dove,
promised to come down in love, bringing life and peace and grace
to the chosen, purchased race. He seeks the lost, heals the
lame, and He brings us to the Lamb. By His mighty sovereign
call, God's elect are gathered all. This poor sinner is secure,
for God's covenant will endure. It is sealed by God's own word. ? By his spirit and his blood
? ? Blessed holy covenant God ? ? I am yours by ties of blood
? ? Ties of grace and ties of love ? ? Hold me to my God above
? Please be seated. Good morning. Ties of grace and
ties of love hold me to my God above. Those ties cannot be broken. So thankful. Let's open our Bibles together
to Colossians chapter one. Colossians chapter one. Someone asked me recently how
I prepared messages. And I said, well, I try to preach
verse by verse through a book of the Bible. And then I got
to thinking about how we've been looking at the book of Colossians.
And I said, well, if I don't go verse by verse, I just go
word by word. So we're going to be looking
at verse six, the fruit of the gospel, the fruit of the gospel. Let's go to the Lord together
in prayer and ask his blessings. Our Heavenly Father, thank you
for those ties of grace and ties of love that hold us to thee.
Thank you for that eternal covenant of grace that was established
by you, my dear son, my sweet Holy Spirit. Were you as the
triune God determined to save a people and glorify yourself
through them. Lord, the hope that we have is
that you are faithful to all of your covenant promises. And
Lord, we thank you that you've given us the grace to believe
your word. And Lord, we hold to the hope
of knowing that you inhabit the praise of your people and that
you delight in their worship. And Lord, we pray this day that
you would be pleased once again to send your spirit and power
and to enable us to worship thee. Christ to be lifted up, Lord,
that you would visit us in your grace and in your power and demonstrate
to us your glory. We ask it in Christ's name, amen. Last Sunday, we looked at verse
four in Colossians chapter one. Since we heard of your faith
in Christ Jesus and your love for all the brethren, and we
saw how that faith and love are the evidences of grace. The Lord gives to his people
a trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for all their righteousness and
all their salvation, all their justification. He enables us
to look outside of ourselves and rest all the hope of our
salvation on the glorious person of his dear son and his accomplished work. He also, when he does save us,
puts into our hearts a love, love for all the brethren, love
for Christ, love for his word. This is a supernatural love. It is not something that we conjure
up or that we are able to manufacture. It's a work of grace in the heart
and yet it is a work of grace that he does in the hearts of
each one of his children. What glorious evidence. We love things that we had no
interest in before and in fact we hated and we hate things that
we once loved and this is the evidences of God's work of grace
in the heart. This morning I want us to look
at verse six. Wednesday night, by the way,
we considered the hope that the Lord has given us from verse
five and how it is unfortunate that we use the word hope in
our daily conversation to express something that may or may not
happen. We hope that this will happen, hope that that will happen,
but in the Bible, When the word hope is used, it's used to express
a joyful and sure anticipation of the fulfillment of God's promises. We hope in a living God who has
made precious promises to his children and a God who cannot
lie. And what great hope we have.
It's a sure hope. It's a confident hope. It's a
good hope, the Bible calls it. It is none other than the Lord
Jesus Christ, Christ in you, your hope of glory, who is the
anchor of our soul. He is our hope. Now we get to
verse six, which is come unto you as it is in all the world. This gospel is being proclaimed
throughout all the world. and bringeth forth fruit. The gospel brings forth fruit.
I'm always hesitant. The Bible speaks a lot of the
fruit of the gospel, and we're going to consider some of those
things this morning. And I'm always hesitant because
I fear that we might be led to look to our lives to see if there's
any, you know, in religion we did a lot of fruit inspecting.
and we would inspect one another's fruit to see if, you know, if
someone else was a believer. I would caution you and me against
that. When all is said and done, we
are yet unprofitable servants. when the Lord separates the sheep
from the goats in the day of judgment. You remember he says
unto the goats, I was hungry and you did not feed me and I
was naked and you did not clothe me. I was a stranger and you
did not take me in. And he's talking about the lack
of the gospel among the unbelieving world. They have nothing to clothe
the nakedness of man's sin with. They have nothing to feed him
with. They don't have the bread of
life. They don't have the gospel. They don't have a message that
will bring sinners into the fold. and uh and you remember the the
goats say well lord when did we see you like that and we didn't
do it because you know we've been what were they looking at
they were looking at the the material things that they had
been doing well we've been working out the soup kitchen we've been
You know, we've been working at the clothing closet, and,
you know, we've been clothing and feeding people all of our
lives, doing good works. They were looking to those things,
and the Lord says, depart from me, you workers of iniquity,
for I never knew you. We don't look to the things that
we do as the fruit of the gospel. Because the sheep, when the Lord
said to the sheep, i was hungry and you fed me and i was naked
and you clothed me and i was a stranger and you took me in
and i was in prison and you came and you visited me and what does
the child of god say to that uh to that word of of praise
he says lord when did we when did we see you that way when
you did it to the least of these my brethren you did it unto me
our participation in the gospel And we do this together. All
the people of God participate together in the preaching of
the gospel, which clothes the naked and feeds the hungry and
takes in the stranger and visits those who are in. You see, but
we don't take notice of that. We say when all things are done,
we're but unprofitable servants. The Lord's taking notice. And
certainly that is one of the fruits of the gospel. But here
the Lord tells us that there are fruits. So the warning, the
caution at the outset is that we become fruit inspectors to
try to determine whether or not we're saved. The evidence of salvation is
faith and love. Nevertheless, the gospel does
bring forth fruit. It does bring forth fruit. Look
at what is this fruit. Look what the Lord says in verse
six, which is coming to you as it has in all the world and bringeth
forth fruit as it doth also in you since the day you heard of
it and knew the grace of God in truth since the very day that
you heard the gospel as the gospel. And the Spirit of God convinced
you of the truth of the gospel. And you came and you bowed before
it and believed the gospel. Fruit began to be born from that
work of grace. What is the fruit? Well, we can't
speak of fruit without first considering the first fruits. You remember in the Old Testament
that the Lord commanded the children of Israel that they were to bring
the first fruits unto the Lord. They were to take the very first
vegetables that they harvested and bring them as an offering
unto the Lord. They were to take the first animal that was born and the
first child that was born for that matter, and dedicate it
unto the Lord. And this had two meanings. It
had the meaning of trusting that what the Lord provided in the
firstfruits, he will continue to provide all the way to the
harvest. And so we see this expression in our giving. You know, we don't
wait and see what's left over to give to the Lord. We give
to the Lord the first fruits, trusting that he will provide,
as he provided in the beginning, he will provide all the way through
the harvest. But the primary meaning of the first fruit is
found in 1 Corinthians chapter 15,
when it speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ in his resurrection in
verse 23, Christ, the first fruit, and afterwards, they that are
Christ at his coming. So the Lord speaks of the resurrection
of the Lord Jesus Christ as the first fruit. Here's the fruit
of the gospel. This is the primary fruit. Believing that when God raised
the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, that he is the first fruit
and the firstborn among many brethren, that just as God in
his power raised him from the dead, so all those for whom he
lived and died will be raised in him. Paul said, oh that I
might know the power of his resurrection. I need to be thoroughly convinced
by God that when Christ was raised from the dead, that he was raised
as the first fruit, and all those that are in him will be raised
just as God was faithful to give the first fruit, so he will be
faithful to bring about the full harvest, the full harvest of
his people. are contingent upon and dependent
upon the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ as the first
fruit. Isn't that glorious? That's the
fruit of the gospel. That's the work of grace in the
heart. Romans chapter 11, the Lord says,
if the first fruit be holy, speaking of Christ, the lump is also holy. And if the root be holy, so are
the branches. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
first fruit of our lives and the full harvest of God's grace
and bringing all of his people to glory through the resurrection
of Christ. You believe that? He is the first
fruit. This is the fruit that is produced
by God's Spirit in the hearts of God's people through faith. The Lord Jesus Christ is spoken
of as that tree of life that is on the both sides of the river
of life. The tree of life is on this side
of the river of life. One day we will cross that river
and we'll find the same tree of life on the other side of
the river. And on both sides of the river,
that tree of life produces its fruit 12 months out of the year. Each month it produces sufficient
fruit for that month. And the scripture goes on to
say, and its leaves are for the healing of the nations. This is the one is spoken of
in Psalm chapter 1, the blessed man who walks not after the counsel
of the ungodly. He's like a tree planted by rivers
of living water and he will produce his fruit in due season and his
leaf will not wither. This is the fruit of the gospel.
Christ is the fruit of the gospel. His resurrection, his life, So the Lord's telling us that
when the gospel came from the very first day that you heard
it, there was fruit. The fruit is that we look to
the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ as the evidence
of our salvation. He was offered up for our offenses
and raised again because of our justification. And that when
Christ was raised from the dead, so the entire harvest of God's
husband will be raised in him. The second reference to fruit
that began at the very first day that we heard the gospel
is the fruit of our lips giving thanks unto God. Now I know very well that some
people are more verbal and more expressive than other people
are. Sometimes I envy those who are quiet because they get themselves
in a whole lot less trouble than those of us that speak too much.
But that having been said, all of God's people have the fruit
of their lips, giving thanks unto God. They express in some
way their thanksgiving for the work of grace that the Lord Jesus
has accomplished for them and in them. They express it in baptism. They express it in the way that
you're expressing it right now, when you hear the gospel. You
are saying in your heart, whether you ever verbalize it, yes, yes,
that is my hope. Yes, I am thankful for the finished
work of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am thankful that he was pleased
to translate me from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom
of his light. I'm thankful. that the Lord chose
me and that the Lord gave me an opportunity to hear the gospel
and then he called me out. I'm so thankful. That is the
fruit of our lips. Let me show you that in Luke
chapter six. Turn with me to Luke six. We're talking about the fruit
of the gospel. The Lord Jesus Christ being himself
the first fruit by his resurrection. And now we're looking at the
fruit of our lips expressing our thanksgiving to God for his
grace. Verse 43 of Luke chapter 6, here's
our Lord speaking, for a good tree bringeth forth, I'm sorry,
for a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit, neither
doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit, for every tree is
known by its own fruit. Now, if you don't know the, uh
the shape of the leaf on a tree you can certainly tell the the
nature of a tree by its fruit you can tell the difference between
an orange tree and an apple tree and a mango tree and an avocado
tree by the fruit that it bears and if you take If you take an
avocado off an avocado tree and tie it to a mango tree, it doesn't
make that mango tree an avocado tree. It doesn't work like that. Each tree produces, and we see
that in Genesis chapter one, in the third day of creation,
when the Lord made the vegetation, the scripture says, and every
tree after its own kind, which had its seed in its fruit. And yes, we see that in nature,
but we see that spiritually. Every tree, after its own kind,
which has its seed, and that's Christ, is seed in us, producing
the fruit. fruit of righteousness, and the
fruit of our lips. So for every tree, verse 44,
is known by its own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather
figs, nor of bramble bush gather they grapes. A good man out of
the good treasure in his heart bringeth forth that which is
good, And an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart
bringeth forth that which is evil, for of the abundance of
the heart his mouth speaketh. What say ye of Christ? Whose
son is he? You tell whether a tree is a
good tree or a bad tree by what comes out of the heart through
the lips concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, there's a
lot of things that come from our lips that ought not to come,
but when we speak of Christ, what do we say? Whose son is
he? And what did the Pharisee say?
Well, he's the son of David. Well, if he'd be the son of David,
then why did David say unto him, my Lord said unto, the Lord said
unto my Lord, sit thou here at my right hand until I may. He's
the son of God. He's God almighty. He's the fullness
of the Godhead bodily. As God, he is omnipotent. He's
sovereign. That's who he is. We don't believe
in a God who's got his hands tied. In another place the scripture
says, no man speaketh by the Spirit calleth Jesus accursed. No man speaking by the Spirit
of God calleth Jesus accursed. Now the word accursed in that
verse is the word anathema. And the word anathema means to
be judged without any hope of atonement or redemption. to be judged without any hope
of redemption. Now, there's another verse that
says that cursed is every man that hangeth upon a tree, that
the Lord Jesus Christ was cursed for us. And that's a different
word. It's not the word anathema. That
word means to be under the judgment of God. And so the Lord Jesus
Christ, when he hung on Calvary's cross, was under the judgment
of God and suffered the curse of God for the sins of his people. But he was not anathema. His
work, when he was cursed by God, accomplished the redemption of
his people. You see, to suggest in any way that the Lord Jesus
Christ died on Calvary's cross for someone who is not going
to be redeemed is to call him anathema. And that's exactly what the religious
world is doing. They're saying that Jesus died
for people who are going to end up in hell. And that is to call
the Lord Jesus Christ anathema. And no man by the Spirit will
say that. No man who knows the Spirit of
God could ever give a sympathetic ear, much less express a belief
in a God who died for someone who's going to be unredeemed. That is calling the Lord Jesus
Christ. A good tree cannot bring forth bad fruit, for out of the
heart the mouth speaks. So when we speak of Christ, we
don't speak of Him. This is our fruit that comes
from the very first day. On the very first day we heard
the gospel. We know that the Lord Jesus Christ is God and
that he accomplished everything that he came to do. This is the expression of our
thanksgiving to God. That he's not dependent upon
you or me for anything. That he did it all by himself.
And that we have nothing but thanksgiving and praise and worship
to express unto him. A corrupt tree cannot bring forth
good fruit. A corrupt tree, you listen to
a corrupt tree speak and you'll find out what their fruit is.
You just, you listen to them tell you what they think of Jesus
Christ and what he did and who he is, and you will find their
fruit to be corrupt. But a good tree brings forth
good fruit. The fruit of our lips. The fruit of our hope, the Lord
Jesus Christ. Oh, what think ye of Christ? Was he successful? Does he reign
sovereign over the sons of men and the armies of heaven? Does
he do whatsoever he wills? Can no man stay his hand? Yes. Yes. I believe that Jesus Christ
is the son of God. A good tree bringeth forth good
fruit, and it cannot bring forth corrupt fruit. And a corrupt
tree cannot bring forth good fruit, for out of the abundance
of the heart, the mouth speaks. What say ye of Christ? Isn't
that glorious? The Lord put that word in your
mouth. The Lord gave you the grace to speak the truth about
him, to know who he is, and to not tolerate any suggestion of
him being anathema, being under the curse of God without redemption. Thirdly, Galatians chapter 5,
and this brings us back to last Sunday's message, the fruit of
the spirit. Now, I want you to notice in
that passage that I think it's verse 23. Is that where it starts?
The fruit of the spirit is love. Notice that the word fruit is
singular. Proper understanding of that
verse is that the fruit of the Spirit of God. This is the good
tree that bringeth forth good fruit and brings forth after
its own kind because its seed is in its fruit. The fruit, singular,
of the Spirit is love. Love. Love for Christ. Love for His
gospel. Love for His Word. Love for his
people, this is the fruit of the Spirit. And when the love
of Christ is put in the heart, it bringeth forth peace and longsuffering
and gentleness and goodness and faith and meekness and temperance. This is what the love of God
does in the heart. It's the fruit of the Spirit. Turn with me to James chapter
5. James chapter 3, I'm sorry. James
chapter 3. Now there are certainly times when
we are disquieted and we live with two natures and our old
man raises his ugly head and causes us to to not be long-suffering
and to not be peaceful and but the Spirit of God is quick it's
quick to convince us of that and to correct us of that it's
the it's the we saw we saw Wednesday night the Spirit of God is the
is the earnest of our salvation, the down payment. If we have
not the Spirit of God, we're none of His. So the Spirit of
God is the one who brings this fruit. And if we have the Spirit
of God, this is His corrective work. through the love of Christ constraineth
us and causes us to rejoice in the Lord and to wait upon the
Lord. Look at James chapter 3. I begin reading in verse 11. Doth a fountain send forth at
the same place sweet water and bitter? Can the fig tree, my
brethren, bear olive berries, either a vine fig? So can no
fountain yield both saltwater and fresh. Who is a wise man
and endued with knowledge among you? Let him show out of a good
conversation his works with meekness and wisdom. But if you have bitter
envying and strife in your hearts, glory not and lie not against
the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from
above, but is earthly, sensual, and devilish. For where envy
and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work." Envy and
strife. What do we envy? Vainglory. Someone's not giving us the credit
we think we deserve. and that causes strife. And God
says that's earthly, that's fleshly, that's devilish, not coming from
God. But, For where envy and in strife
is, there is confusion everywhere. Verse 17, but the wisdom that
is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy
to be entreated, full of mercy and of good fruits, without partiality,
without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness
is sown in peace of them that make peace. The fruit of righteousness. It's the fruit of the Spirit.
The Lord tells us in Philippians
chapter one, when Paul is praying for the church at Philippi, he
says, I pray that you'd be filled with the fruit of righteousness,
which is by Jesus Christ unto the glory of God the Father.
This fruit is not something that we manufacture. We're not, we're
not taping plastic oranges onto our tree to make people think
that we're an orange tree. This has to come from the root
of the matter. This has to come from the sap
of the tree. It has to come from the tree
itself. And the Lord said, I am the vine
and you are the branches. And except the vine abide, the
branch abide in the vine, it can bear no fruit. It can bear
no fruit. Without me, you can do nothing.
And just as you prune a tree and prune a vine in order to
make it more fruitful, so the Lord said, my father is the husband
and then he prunes that vine. Yeah, I've noticed we have several
different types of fruit trees in our yard and I've noticed
some years they're more prolific than others and And the only
thing I can figure is the Lord has designed it that way because
when a tree is full of fruit, all the energy in that tree is
going to the fruit. And if it produced fruit every
year, the tree never grow. And so every other year, it seems
like the fruit is less so that the energy can go to the tree
and to the roots and strengthen that tree so the next year it
can bear more fruit. Isn't that the way it is in our
lives? You know, sometimes the Lord
limits the amount of fruit. Sometimes he does some pretty
serious pruning. Sometimes there's cold weather
where all the sap of the tree goes into the roots in order
to strengthen the roots. But God's providing for that
tree so that it can bring forth more fruit, more fruit. Hebrews calls it chastisement
and correction. And And he says it's not pleasant
for the season that we're going through it, but in the end it
produces the fruit of righteousness. That's what the Lord's doing.
He's going to bear fruit from His people. They will bear His fruit. He's going to do a work of grace
in them. As I began this message, I want
to caution us about doing too close of a fruit inspection in
our lives to determine our salvation. Nevertheless, if we be in Christ,
we are a new creature. Old things are passed away and
all things have become new. God does do work. It changes
a man's life. Look at Saul of Tarsus breathing
out threatenings against the gospel and against the Lord and
arresting believers and having them jailed and even put to death. And the Lord arrests him on the
road to Damascus and sends him a man by the name of Ananias
to pray for him. And now that man who was doing
everything he could to destroy the gospel is being used of God. to preach the gospel and write
the majority of the New Testament. Look at Onesimus, that runaway
slave who was unprofitable to Philemon and goes to Rome. And now Paul sends him back and
he says, this is our brother and he's profitable, not just
for you, but for me as well. And though he stole from you
at one time, he's not going to do that anymore. Not going to
do that anymore. God's done a work of grace for
him. the Philippian jailer. He had
just beaten to the edge of their life Paul and Silas and chained
them to a wall and obviously felt no remorse for what he had
done. He was a hardened Roman soldier
commissioned by Rome to punish prisoners and that's what he
did. And now The Lord does a work of grace in his heart and he
takes the very men that he had beaten almost to death and brings
them home and heals their wounds and his whole family is saved. Zacchaeus, a greedy tax collector,
looking just for what he could get. And now the Lord calls him
down out of that tree and says to him, I must go to the house
this day and makes him generous with all that he has. God doesn't
work. God doesn't work. It produces
fruit. Changes everything in our lives. Everything's changes.
Everything. This is the fruit that begins
from the first day that we hear the gospel. Paul speaks of the
church being the fruit of the gospel and new believers being
the fruit of his ministry and how we hope and pray for that.
That the Lord will take the scattering of the seed and cause it to fall
on fertile ground and that it will germinate and produce life
and ultimately produce fruit. That seed that falls into the
wayside soil or falls into the hedge row and choked out by thorns. What is consistent about all
those three seeds? They don't produce fruit. They
don't produce fruit. One of them falls on the rock.
One of them falls on the pathways. One of them falls in the thorn
bushes. And they don't produce fruit
but the one that falls on the fertile soil. Fruit. fruit of righteousness, the fruit
of the lips, fruit of grace. That's what we hope for. The Lord said, say not that there
are yet four months unto harvest, for I say unto you that the that
the fields are already white unto harvest. How we pray and
hope every time we preach Christ, somebody will hear Somebody will
be given by God's grace, his spirit, and want to express their
thanksgiving, the fruit of their lips in the accomplished work
of his resurrection. Verse six of our text, Colossians
1, which has come unto you, as it is in all the world and bringeth
forth fruit as it doth also in you since the day you heard of
it and knew the grace of God in truth. All right, let's take a break. Thank you.