Fruit With Seeds In It

Last week, for a bible study on "How To Produce Spiritual Fruit", I decided to do a visual illustration. The illustration was supposed to have a large serving of fruit on one side, and a few small seeds (taken from that fresh platter of fruit) on the other. My intention was to then ask the question "Which would you rather have? The large plate of fresh, ready to be eaten, fruit? Or a few small gnarly looking seeds?"

I was very excited about my little visual demonstration and thought that it would be a great way of contrasting the spiritual life of "sowing and reaping" vs. the wordly mindset which demands immediate, worry free, gratification.

This was to be my launching pad into our bible study on how God produces the Fruit of His Spirit in our lives. It was perfect! All except for one small problem. As I began to rummage through my fridge looking for the most delectable fruit I could find; I discovered that "worry free" living was about to become my biggest problem!

It would seem that in our effort to relieve ourselves from all manner of toil and labor, we have rid ourselves of virtually all seed bearing fruit! That's right!! I could not do my illustration because I could not find any fruit in my house that still had seeds in it!!!

I was left stranded without any seeds for my illustration. But alas, my morning was not a total disaster. The couple that we meet with was very accommodating and when I had to resort to asking them to "imagine that there are fruit seeds in my other hand" they were more than willing to oblige. In the end the illustration and the study was a great success. However, since that morning I have been troubled by my new seedless fruit revelation.

Do you know that the first command that God gave us was to "be fruitful and multiply"? His desire was for us to use the seed we had been given to produce more seed bearing offspring! But it gets even better! God did more than simply command us to be fruitful, He followed up that command by giving us another command regarding what we should eat.

Any guesses on what we were supposed to eat?

"And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food." Genesis 1:28-29 (ESV)

So not only are we supposed to use our seed to produce more seedlings, we are supposed to only eat fruit that has seeds in it!

God is a God of growth, multiplication and dominion. His universe is continuing to grow. His humanity continues to multiply, and He is determined to have dominion over everything in heaven and on earth. God loves things that produce seed, because seed allows us to produce a greater harvest.  I can just imagine God crying out from the heavens "Go BIG or Go Home!"

There is no greater demonstration of this reality then Jesus. The Word made flesh. 

"As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it" - Isaiah 55:10-11 

Do you know that the literal translation of "empty" or "void" means "not without fruit". God's word will not fail in producing the fruit that He intends it to produce. In God's mind there is not such thing as seedless fruit. 

God is so committed to bearing fruit that He declares in John 15; "any branch that does not bare fruit will be cut off and thrown into the fire". God loves fruit, and God's fruit ALWAYS has seeds in it. Why does it have seeds? Because without seeds it's only good for food, and God wants more than simply for us to fill our own faces. His desire is for us to learn how to grow a harvest so that all may be satisfied through His provision.

"Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness" - 2 Corinthians 9:10

Seed for sowing and not just bread for food; that my friends is the true prosperity gospel! The multiplication of God is directed at our seed, not our bread. It is multiplied for the sower, not the eater.

Beloved, if we grind all of our grain into food we will have nothing left to sow, and we will have no harvest of righteousness. And if we eat of "seedless" things then we are going to be left without a harvest of any kind.

What are those seedless things? I would suggest that they are the things that do not flow out of the Spirit. They are the lusts of the flesh and the desires of our selfish nature. Lust, greed, anger, selfish ambition, vain conceit, sexual immorality, drunkenness and idolatry. (Galatians 5) But the fruit of the Spirit (which can only be produced by the Spirit) is grown when we sow the seed of the Spirit into our lives by obeying the Word of God. God's word is our spiritual seed and required for producing a harvest of righteousness.

Beloved, God loves fruit; and God requires that we bear fruit. He also requires that all the fruit we consume have seed in it, otherwise it is not fit for being eaten by His most precious creatures; you and I.

After all of this study on "seed" and "fruit" it causes me think more carefully about what I am spending my life upon. And as Isaiah wrote: "Why spend money on what is not food."

So until next time...Be fruitful and multiply!

Jon