FRUITS OF THE RESURRECTION

Zechariah 2:1-3:10; Revelation 12:18-13:18; Psalm 141:1-10; Proverbs 30:18-20

“The Lord says, ‘Shout and rejoice, O beautiful Jerusalem, for I am coming to live among you. Many nations will join themselves to the Lord on that day, and they, too, will be my people. I will live among you, and you will know that the Lord of Heaven’s Armies sent me to you.’”

‘Then the beast was allowed to speak great blasphemies against God. And he was given authority to do whatever he wanted for forty-two months. And he spoke terrible words of blasphemy against God, slandering his name and his dwelling—that is, those who dwell in heaven. And the beast was allowed to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And he was given authority to rule over every tribe and people and language and nation. And all the people who belong to this world worshiped the beast. They are the ones whose names were not written in the Book of Life before the world was made—the Book that belongs to the Lamb who was slaughtered.”

“O Lord, I am calling to you. Please hurry! Listen when I cry to you for help! Accept my prayer as incense offered to you, and my upraised hands as an evening offering. Take control of what I say, O Lord, and guard my lips. Don’t let me drift toward evil or take part in acts of wickedness. Don’t let me share in the delicacies of those who do wrong.”

“There are three things that amaze me—no, four things that I don’t understand: how an eagle glides through the sky, how a snake slithers on a rock, how a ship navigates the ocean, how a man loves a woman.”

Maranatha! Satan may have been cast down to earth for a season, but the Lord is coming! We are not without hope. Indeed, the hope that is within us is greater than the fear Satan would put there. It is the hope of redemption and regeneration. Things will not always be as they are. For a time, we all must be tested; that much is clear. But those who remain steadfastly grounded in the Lord will prevail. We cannot do it on our own, but praise God, in Christ, we are more than conquerors. We are to be bold examples, fruits of the Resurrection drawing all men back to the Garden of God.

I’m not sure where that metaphor came from. It surprised me even as I typed it, because I had never thought of Christians in quite that way before. But it works, and it’s encouraging. In the fruit of His adopted sons and daughters, the Lord is doing a new thing. He is bringing beauty and nourishment into a parched and starving world. He is providing seeds for a new generation, a new Kingdom. He is recreating, even as Satan is busy destroying. The fact that He so far has stayed His hands from a complete makeover does not in any way mean the Creator has stopped creating altogether. There is still hope because there is still life, new life and resurrected, recreated life.

It remains for us to determine the quality and substance of our lives (our fruit), and that, in turn, always resolves around what we actually choose to do with them. Actions matter; indeed, they are a divine imperative. Christ commanded, “Go!” We are to invest ourselves, even as the Lord invested Himself in us. Perhaps the best analogy is the parable of the talents. Metaphorically, the wicked servant did nothing more than bury his life in the ground, waiting on the Master’s return, afraid of losing that which he had been given. The other servants took some chances, invested in life and were able to present the Master with more than He’d given them. This is not necessarily as easy to do as it sounds. Paul is clear that we will be battling against dark powers far beyond our imagination as we try to spread our unique brand of life to a hurting and dying world. But we will not be working alone, either. Do not miss that in the talents parable. The first and second servants may have thought they were investing themselves independently, but in the end, the harvest all came back to the Master. It is easy to get discouraged when we think ourselves in a ministry of one. But we are all fruits of the same Vine, and the seeds we plant will grow similar fruit. If we are in Christ, we are never alone for long. As His fruit, we are nourished even as we nourish and encourage others.

High in the Guatemalan mountains, native peoples live in a small settlement called Uspantan. The government has been exceptionally hard on these individuals, driving them out of the lush valleys and accessible places until they have almost nowhere else to go and no good way to get there. As a result, their access to medical care historically was almost nonexistent, and inbreeding gave rise to all sorts of genetic weaknesses and other medical problems. The rate of infant death, for example, was exceedingly high. Several years ago, I joined a medical mission team in those mountains, serving with my wife on the kitchen team. In such primitive conditions, nothing was easy. The doctors in surgery sometimes faced insurmountable odds, and the losses depressed them. All the stress and uncertainty put a tremendous load on our pastor. At times, he was completely overwhelmed. A baby died. A team member took ill and had to be evacuated. Toward the end of a particularly trying day, our pastor walked up to a mother waiting on the results of surgery on her young son. Both people were emotionally and physically drained, and neither could communicate well with the other. In broken words and motions, our pastor asked if he could pray with and for the mother and her son. He was a bit offended when she politely declined…, until she reached out to take his arm as he turned away. Without a word, she put her hand atop his head and gently pushed him into a kneeling position. Then, even in the midst of her own pain and uncertainty, she took time to pray for the pastor. After that simple yet exceedingly profound experience, our pastor was pretty much good for the rest of the week. He had been the beneficiary of one person’s investment of themselves in him in the name of Christ, and he received new life as a result.

Satan would like us to believe we have lost his war of attrition. He wants to blind us to the hope of our Lord’s return. Most important, he wants us to think we have nothing left to give, because he knows when we get to that point, we are pretty much out of defenses. But we are never to forget we are part of a larger Vine. We are fruits of the Resurrection, because Jesus has invested Himself in each of us. He willingly gave us His own Body so that He could more perfectly live and be multiplied in us. This is a grand and glorious thing! We are vulnerable to Satan only to the extent we do not intentionally and proactively claim the Power the Spirit would give us to fight against Lucifer’s schemes together.