Fruit Inspection: Mixed Fruit
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Focus: Jesus must be Lord of your tongue as well as Lord of your heart for you to be truly set free.
Tainted Taste Buds
Mixed Fruit
Heavenly Fruit
Tainted Taste Buds
Taming the tongue is the key to setting so much of the direction of our lives.
James 3:1-6a ESV
“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness.
God clearly says that what comes out of our mouths helps steer the direction of our lives - whether it be what fills our hearts, captures our thinking or defines our relationships.
Proverbs 12:14 ESV
“From the fruit of his mouth a man is satisfied with good, and the work of a man's hand comes back to him.”
This is why it was an imperative to the apostle Paul that we learn to take captive every thought to run it through the grid of and make it obedient to Christ.
2 Corinthians 10:3-5 ESV
“For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,”
During the middle stages of the Covid pandemic, it was reported that in 8 of 10 individuals, the temporary loss of smell and taste was an indicator that you had been infected, even if you didn’t realize it.
Our loose tongues reveal symptoms showing us what is actually in our hearts.
I love it when scientific discoveries confirm what God has already been saying for generations in his Word.
Annie Wright, a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT) made reference to an old Cherokee parable:
“An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.
“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.
“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”
He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.” – First People’s Two Wolves Legend”
This sounds much like what Paul had already spoken about in the battle between the flesh and Spirit in Galatians 5.
Annie when on to report:
“…What neuroscience and magnetic resonance imaging have been able to show us in the last several decades is astonishing: the brain is “plastic.”
What this means is that far from our brains being “fixed” and “rigid” – a thought popularized by famed Harvard psychologist William James in his landmark 1890 text The Principles of Psychology – we have the capacity to change and grow our brains by creating new neural pathways throughout our life.
One of the most popular studies on this was done on, of all populations, London taxi cab drivers which showed that, in the course of learning the voluminous amount of complex information and geography continuously required for their jobs, the grey matter in their brains literally grew.
…A neural pathway is a connection between a number of neurons (nerve cells) in different parts of the brain which are connected by and communicate with synapses. The more those certain neurons fire and communicate, the stronger the neural pathway becomes.”
“As a thought travels through your brain, neurons fire together in distinctive ways based on the specific information being handled, and those patterns of neural activity actually change your neural structure.”
– How Your Thoughts Change Your Brain, Cells, and Genes
-Annie Wright LMFT
The connection between our hearts, our thoughts and our lips can not be underestimated in the Kingdom of God.
“The terrible, tragic fallacy of the last hundred years has been to think that all man's troubles are due to his environment, and that to change the man you have nothing to do but change his environment. That is a tragic fallacy. It overlooks the fact that it was in Paradise that man fell.”
-Martyn Lloyd-Jones
This is why God continually had his servants say that we had to not just develop new habits, but be made new creations by the power of the Holy Spirit (II Corinthians 5:17) and have ongoing, transformed minds by the washing of God’s word (Romans 12:1,2).
As Jesus said many centuries before,
Matthew 12:33-37 ESV
“"Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned."”
Let’s go a little further.
Mixed Fruit
The mixed fruit off of our lips reveal the two worlds in which we are trying to live.
James 3:6b-12
“The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.”
Annie Wright made mention of thoughts and then speech to which people regularly bow:
“I married the wrong guy – her husband/boyfriend is a way better catch. I just settled.”
“There’s no way I can get a promotion, he only favors the men on the team. I can’t get ahead because I’m a woman in tech.”
“The kind of people I’m interested in dating don’t go for someone with my body type. What’s the point of trying to date anyway?”
“Good things happen to other people. Not to me.”
“Every thought you have causes neurochemical changes, some temporary and some lasting. For instance, when people consciously practice gratitude, they get a surge of rewarding neurotransmitters, like dopamine, and experience a general alerting and brightening of the mind, probably correlated with more of the neurochemical norepinephrine.” – How Your Thoughts Change Your Brain, Cells, and Genes
“So, if you have been bombarding your cells with peptides from negative thoughts, you are literally programming your cells to receive more of the same negative peptides in the future. What’s even worse is that you’re lessening the number of receptors of positive peptides on the cells, making yourself more inclined towards negativity.”
– How Your Thoughts Change Your Brain, Cells, and Genes”
What are the negative words that are habitually coming off of your mouth creating godless (without Jesus at the center) patterns and relationships for you?
Heavenly Fruit
The wisdom that comes from God allows the realities of heaven to invade our earthly state.
James 3:13-18 ESV
“Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”
If by the evaluation of our speech, we see there are ungodly things in our hearts, we should not boast about it, ignore it or take it lightly.
We do not want to affirm or empower demonic lies or influences in our lives.
Instead, we need to choose to sow new seed with our lips so that a new harvest will be produced.
It is a harvest of righteousness by those striving to make peace - peace with God and one another.
Through repentance from our sin and faith in Jesus’ supernatural work, God’s Spirit moves on and literally transforms our natural state.
The cross and the altar provide a new pathway:
Isaiah 6:5-8 ESV
“And I said: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!" Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for." And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Then I said, "Here I am! Send me."”
When we are transformed by Jesus’ grace, we have the power, the discipline and the Word to go out and bring good news (the gospel) to the world stuck in sin and death.
We are commissioned to be reconciling agents - bringing people back into healed relationships with God and one another through the cross - the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Second City Church - Pastor Rollan Fisher