M-G: 6.15.25 // Hauling Fruit For Jesus

Have you ever struggled with understanding the Bible at times? Peter, in his day, even had challenges understanding the Apostle Paul (2 Pet 3:15-16). Nonetheless, Peter did not mishandle the Scriptures like the false teachers of his day by twisting and contorting the truth of the Word.

False teachers wrestle with Scripture because the Word of God is spiritual in nature and requires spiritual discernment that only comes with spiritual regeneration (1 Cor 2:14, the word natural is the same Greek word for sensual or worldly-minded in Jude 19, not having the Spirit. In other words, not born again or from above, Jn 3:3). They are like blind men groping around trying to understand what they cannot see (2 Cor 4:4. Spiritual blindness here is voluntary, note unbelieving).

When we open up our Bibles, we often forget that there was a vast gulf between the infinite mind of God and our finite thinking as sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. God in His infinite wisdom bridged that immense distance through a providential process called the inspiration of God (NKJV) or God-breathed (2 Tim 3:16-17, LSB) 

From a human point of view, the Word of God is an unexplainable miracle like any other miracle we read about in the Bible. For example, how do we explain Jesus taking some clay dirt in his hand, adding some sanctified spittle to it, applying the paste to the eyes (assuming the eyelids), and a man born blind can see after washing off the paste in a pool of water!?

When we pick up our Bible, what we hold in our hands is also a miraculous work of God. I subscribe to the verbal plenary view of the inspiration of Scripture (2 Tim 3:16) and believe that not a single word of Scripture originated with man, was suggested by man, or willed by man (2 Pet 1:20-21). The miraculous nature of the God-breathed process known as inspiration (2 Tim 3:16) is realized as God worked through holy human writers who faithfully and flawlessly wrote word by word without error what was revealed to them.

Though they were moved or borne along by the Holy Spirit like a sailing vessel, God amazingly allowed and superintended their personalities, thought processes, and vocabulary to produce a 100 percent authentic, authoritative, trustworthy, and error-free written revelation of God to mankind. This God-breathed process of inspiration spanned fifteen centuries, three continents, and involved three languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek) along with forty writers of various backgrounds.

The original manuscripts are deemed God-breathed, not translations. Nonetheless, I believe the Bible is the supreme and final authority in all matters of faith and practice. How Yahweh performed this God-breathed miracle remains as unexplainable as the spittle and clay restoring the sight of a man born blind (Jn 9). You take it by faith or not at all. This over-simplification will satisfy many but not all.  

Lest we forget, the Word of God is our only offensive weapon (concerning the armor of God) against our arch enemy (cf. Eph 6:17b). How do we fight the good fight of faith if our scabbard or sheath is bare? Our hubris is thinking that our flesh is strong enough to face the foe…

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Heb 4:12). Flesh and blood cannot do that.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places (Eph 6:12). Is it any wonder why so many believers live a defeated life?

I am reminded of the words between the rich man in Hades and Abraham in Paradise (cf. Lk 23:43; 2 Cor 12:4); the suffering rich man wanted Abraham to dispatch Lazarus, a former beggar, who had died and gone to Paradise, to his five brothers to warn them of this place of conscious torment. Well, that didn’t happen. What the rich man did hear from Abraham was how vital the role of the Word of God played in instructing all peoples of the earth for the need of salvation (Lk 16:31)! Obviously, it is too late for the rich man and his five brothers, but not for those who are physically alive and without Christ.

Abraham went on to say that if the rich man’s brothers chose not to believe Moses and the Prophets (the OT proper, the rest of Scripture essentially), they would not believe what Lazarus had to say, though he came back from the dead to talk to them (Lk 16:27-31). The greater authority is the Word of God, not paranormal activities. Nothing against Lazarus, the beggar, but the real authority lies with the Word of the Creator God.

This illustrates the importance of preachers in sync with the teaching of the Word of God in their preaching. Recall the Jewish leadership wanted to kill another Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, freshly resurrected from the grave (Jn 12:10-11)! The words of Abraham to this rich man in Hades and for us who are reading this story are spot on.

Though there is only one human race, not races, among Homo sapiens, there is a great spiritual divide: those who have the Holy Spirit living within them and those who do not. The former folks represent the saved, and the latter folks constitute the unsaved. Apart from the Holy Spirit, the Scriptures remain merely as literature written by men for secular critics to argue and debate over while living out their lives without ever submitting to the absolute authority of the Word of God by receiving Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Their moral and ethical compass and worldview are not sourced in the Scriptures.

Unfortunately, many believers have trouble with being an effective witness for God to an unbelieving world due to having a love problem with Jesus; their rule of life is not the Word of God, as with the unbelievers!

He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him (Jn 14:21, emphasis mine).

Faith without works [fruit] is dead, right? Giving visibility or illustrating true faith through our lifestyle to the world around us is not only a supernatural expression of having a new nature, but also essential in authenticating our faith to a lost and dying world. A faith without fruit is a faith unseen, a nothing burger (Jas 2:26).

Have you ever asked yourself this question: “Is my lifestyle patterned after the teaching of Scripture as a child of God?” The fruit or the lack thereof will distinguish whether or not the Holy Spirit lives within you (cf. Gal 5:22-23; Jas 2:17-18, 20, 26). If we claim to be an apple tree, there should be apples hanging from our boughs, yes? Barren boughs are a bad sign, folks (cf. Mt 7:15-20; Lk 6:43-44)…

God the Father sent Jesus (Jn 3:17; 6:38; 17:3, 21). He came; He lived; He died, and on the third day He came out from the tomb alive! For the next forty days, He ministered to others until His ascension back to glory, from which He came, to be with God the Father. The Scriptures give testimony to all of this. The truth of the matter is, if you do not believe the Scriptures, you will die in your sins and wind up where the rich man who didn’t know the Lord, who is currently residing in torment for nearly 2000 years now, with eternity still to go. It does not have to end that way. Jesus offers eternal life over eternal death. Receiving Him or rejecting Him is your call. The rich man made the wrong call…

…God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son (1 Jn 5:11).

He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have that life (1 Jn 5:12).

We know, to some extent, what the lost world is losing out on, but I wonder how many believers are robbing themselves of Divine blessings due to disobedience fueled by the willful ignorance of the Scriptures? The Word-driven life along the road less traveled (Faith Hwy) is the only way to see the world as it really is and seek opportunities to glorify God in our journey and be blessed for it (cf. Psa 1:1-3).

We might call it something like Hauling Fruit for Jesus or Fruit Haulers for Jesus and spreading the Word! I cannot think of a better way to glorify the Lord than when we bear His kind of fruit for Him because those who learn the Word, love the Word, and live the Word make for better haulers! <><