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12th September 2024
ThursdayReflection
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"Jon Bloom shares"
serves as teacher/co-founder of Desiring God
"Pleasures Never Lie"
Why Sin Cannot Stay Hidden
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"Pleasures never lie" doesn't mean the things we find pleasurable are never deceitful.
It means that pleasure is the whistle-blower of the heart.
Pleasure is our heart's way of telling us where our treasure really lies.
When something evil gives us pleasure, we don't have a pleasure problem; we have a treasure problem.
The pleasure gauge is working as designed.
What's wrong is what our heart loves.
And pleasure is blowing the whistle.
We can lie with our lips about what we love.
But pleasures never lie.
And the thing about our pleasure-giving treasures, whether good or evil, is that we can't keep them hidden, at least not for long.
What we truly love can't help but work its way out of the unseen heart into the plain view of what we do and don't do, say and don't say.
This is why Jesus told us that when discerning whether a professing believer is true or false, we must examine their fruit.
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits.
This is a devastatingly simple assessment process.
We recognize who's true and who's false "by their fruits," what they do and don't do, what they say and don't say.
A thornbush can insist it's a vine, but if it bears no grapes, well. . . .
We can lie with our lips about what we love, but fruit trees never lie.
This is meant to be unnerving.
Faith, not fruit, is the instrument by which we are saved.
But faith is revealed by fruit. No fruit, no faith. Bad fruit, bad tree.
God sees faith in the heart.
But we can see only the fruit of faith.
That's why Jesus said, "You will recognize them by their fruits."
False brothers and sisters have been a heartbreaking scourge on the church since its very beginning, when Judas joined the band of disciples as a "devil" among saints.
When the net of the kingdom is cast into the sea of the world, it hauls in both good and bad fish, which must be separated later.
When the seed of the kingdom is sown into the field of the world, the enemy sows his own seed in the field, causing the devil's weeds to grow alongside God's wheat, and must be separated later.
That last parable in particular illustrates a difficult reality for us: it often takes a while until we can tell the difference between God's wheat and the devil's weeds.
The Greek word translated into English as weed in this parable is zizanion, which the original readers likely would have understood to be a particular weed called darnel.
Darnel has been known as wheat's "evil twin" for thousands of years because in seed form and early development it looks very much like wheat, but it's toxic to humans and so must be separated at harvest.
So when Jesus says, "You will recognize them by their fruits," he means we will recognize true and false brothers and sisters when they reach a certain level of maturity and their fruit (whether wheat or darnel) can be seen.
Judas, Ananias and Sapphira, and Simon the magician all looked like wheat to the disciples at first.
Until the toxic fruit of their falseness became visible.
Church discipline doesn't determine the nature of the tree; only God does that.
Paul clearly hopes the excommunication of an immoral Corinthian church member becomes a means of his repentance and salvation.
But since we can only assess a tree by its fruit, we must call it as we see it.
And if severe discipline results in repentance, proving the tree is good after all, we will overflow in joy.
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This is an edited version.
The full article, and Bible references, is avaiable on request
Scroll down for the continuation of this discussion.
'Jon Bloom'
serves as teacher and cofounder of Desiring God.
He is the author of four books, including Not by Sight and most recently True to His Word.
He and his wife have five children and make their home in the Twin Cities.
More
In testing the fruit quality of a person, we are very rarely expected to make such an assessment on our own.
That's dicey business, since we have such a tendency to minimize our log and magnify another's speck.
This assessment is meant to take place in the context of a church, where our limited perceptions and particular experiential and temperamental biases can be mitigated by a wider group led by mature, judicious elders.
We're also called to assess our own fruit quality.
But I would say that, just as we should not assess others' fruit in isolation, we should not assess our own in isolation.
Our pride distorts our self-assessments in both exalting and condemning ways.
The brothers and sisters who observe us most and know us best typically have a more judicious evaluation of us than we do.
We need their encouragement and exhortations to help us stay aware of sin's deceitfulness.
And our willingness to receive their observations and repent when necessary is a sign of a good tree - repentance is itself good fruit.
And fruit - consistent fruit over time - is what confirms the species of a tree.
Pleasures - consistent, controlling pleasures over time - never lie.
These pleasures always work their way out of our hearts into external pursuits - our words and deeds that reveal what we treasure.
Jesus calls these "fruits."
They are the only way the church or the world can tell a real Christian from a false one.
Which is why Jesus said,
"By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples" (John 15:8).
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