Be Fruitful and Multiply

Sermon from 03/06/2011

I am thinking of a Bible Verse and it is probably the most well known Bible verse in the world. It has probably been preached on more than any other verse. Of course, I am referring to John 3:16.  "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." It’s the first verse most Christians memorize, but there are still many people who don’t know it.

I want you particularly to pay attention to three key words in this verse, because these three words actually form the basis of everything we are going to be talking about today. The first is the word "God". The second is the word "loved" and the third is the word "world." If you want to know if God is a mission-minded God and if you want to know why we should to be a mission-minded church and if you want to know why every Christian should be a mission minded Christian, it is summed up in those three words.

          If we love God, then we will love what God loves and God loves the world. God loves everyone in this world whether they love Him back or not. God loved this world enough to give His Son for us, shouldn’t we also love this him enough to give ourselves for him? It was Jesus himself that gave us his words in the gospel of John 13:34-35

³⁴A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

 ³⁵By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

          But how is it that we can love one another? How is it that we can show people that we love one another? What can we do to show people how we love them? To this I say, bring them to Jesus. We can share the same gift with others that God shared with us. It is the gift of Salvation and eternal life.

The lesson I thought this past weekend to our Youth group strongly emphasized that we have an advantage over the people in the times of the Old Testament. We have about 6000 years (fall in 4004Bc flood in 2348bc)of history that we can look at, and more importantly, we have the Life and Teachings of Jesus. We can better understand the reasons certain events took place, and what it is the prophets wrote about, and even have a different outlook as to the meaning of certain verses.

If anyone follows my daily Facebook postings religiously, no pun intended, I am going to apologize to you now because a part of this was taken from a conversation I had on face book. But I take a section of scripture and post it on my Facebook wall almost every day. What I post is not random, it is a certain verse or combination of verses that for some reason call out to me and say “Hey, someone really needs to hear this today.” So I post it sometimes I get a response of “Thank you I really needed to hear that” or “Wow that is perfect”. But this time it was different, and it wasn’t anything I expecting. The verse I had posted ended up being for me and I didn’t even know it. And it was with the help of someone who considers herself a sinner that I came to realize this.

I wrote:

Genesis 9:1

¹And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.

My friend responded:

“Well I am definitely a fruit but I can no longer multiply”

 This response got the gears turning, and I realized that this is something a lot of people think of when they hear those words. They think that the Lord only means that we are to grow up, get married, and have children. But what about those people who the Lord choose to be childless, or what about the people who are past their child baring years? How can they be fruitful and multiply?

And right then is when I heard the voice of the Lord. He said “Tony, you do not have to have a child to multiply my family.” And boy did that hit me hard. Because almost every time I am up here I talk about you all as my Church Family. But I was wrong. You are more than that, so much more. You are not just my church family. We are all part of the same family, each and every one of us are his children. We are all HIS family. And everyone out there is his child and it is our duty to help them remember that. We can multiply by bringing others into his love and sharing his words with them. And we see this time and time again in the book of Acts. 100 here, 3000 there 4000 here, and this was done by men sharing the Lord’s love and teachings.

Does everyone remember Genesis 15:5 When God brings Abram outside of his tent and tells him to count the stars? Does everyone remember what God says will equal the number of stars? Almost everyone’s translation will be one of 3 things, 1.offspring, 2.descendants, 3.children. But let me tell you the rough translation of the Hebrew. (transliteration)

והוא הביא אותו מחוץ ואמר, עכשיו להסתכל השמים וספור הכוכבים, אם תוכל לספור אותם; ואמר לו, כך יהיה זרעך.

vhva hbya avtv mhvts vamr, 'ekshyv lhstkl hshmym vspvr hkvkbym, am tvkl lspvr avtm; vamr lv, kk yhyh zr'ek.

And he brought him outside and said, now look at the heavens and count the stars, if you are able to count them; and said he to him, so shall be your seed.

We are his seed and that just means so much more than offspring. Being his seed we have the chance to grow and bare his fruit. Which is a wonderful thing. Now continuing on with the seed theme, Jesus gives us the Parable of the Sower from the gospel Mark 4:3-8

 ³Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow:

 ⁴And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up.

 ⁵And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth:

 ⁶But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.

 ⁷And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit.

 ⁸And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some a hundred.

Not only are we his Seed, we are the seed that fell upon the good ground. And because we have his nurturing care and love we are called to grow, in life and in faith. And as we mature we are called to produce fruit.   Some times we just have to venture out off the path and into the thorns to help bring his seed to the fertile ground which is here, with us in Christ Jesus.

 Amen.