Apple And Oranges Series

INTRODUCTION

• SLIDE #1

• When you plant an apple tree, you do not hope that it produces a few oranges do you? You are not hoping for a mix of oranges and apples are you?

• When I see an apple tree, I see apple pies and apple turnovers!

• Oh, wait, I should not see that any longer!

• Last year when Robyn and I visited the grandkids we took them to a very nice apple orchard.

• I noticed that all the apple trees were producing apples? Is that not strange?

• Have you ever walked under an apple tree and see a bunch of oranges lying under it?

• All I saw was apples lying in the ground under all the trees, not an orange in sight!

• Another thing I noticed was that is was pretty easy to tell which apples on the ground came from which trees, because the apples do not fall far from the tree. T

• They do not launch themselves 50 feet away from their tree from which they came from.

• Can you imagine the baby apple telling the momma apple tree, “When I grow up I am going to get far away from here, only to eventually drop straight to the ground under the tree. What a bummer.

• As we live our lives, after a while it becomes evident which tree we fell off of.

• There are only two trees in the orchard of life, the tree of God or the tree of the devil. We can all become a part of the tree of God if we want to.

• Just claiming that we are from the tree of God does not make us a part of that tree. We can say we are an apple all we want, but if we have the look, smell, taste, and feel of an orange, we are not an apple. We are not an orange.

• Last week we finished the message by seeing that everyone who has their hope fixed on Jesus and what He will do for us will purify themselves.

• God wants to take us from being oranges to becoming apples

• When you are born again, things change.

• Today we are going to examine at three principles that will help us to grow to be more Christ-like, three principles we need to understand so that we can purify ourselves for Jesus!

• Let’s begin with 1 John 3:4-6, and 9.

• SLIDE #2

• 1 John 3:4–6,9 (HCSB) — 4 Everyone who commits sin also breaks the law; sin is the breaking of law. 5 You know that He was revealed so that He might take away sins, and there is no sin in Him. 6 Everyone who remains in Him does not sin; everyone who sins has not seen Him or known Him. 9 Everyone who has been born of God does not sin, because His seed remains in him; he is not able to sin, because he has been born of God.

• SLIDE #3

SERMON

I. Oranges cannot come from apple trees.

Habitual sin and the child of God are incompatible.

• Verse four equates sin to breaking God’s Law, or in some translations it is called lawlessness.

• Sin is missing the mark. It is as though God put a target out there for us to hit, and we keep missing it.

• The “COMMITS” sin could be better translated “PRACTICES” as it is in many English translations.

• The word COMMITS is not a one-time action, but rather it is a prolonged commitment to doing something.

• We are not speaking of committing a sin or even struggling with sin, we are speaking of a lifestyle of sinning.

• It is a habitual way of life, a willful act by the guilty party.

• Breaking the Law is a purposeful disregard for God’s law.

• John is covering this ground because the Gnostics of his day were defending immoral lifestyles so they could live a life of debauchery in order to demonstrate that the spirit was not affected or touched by physical behavior.

• We do the same thing today, but for a different reason. Some people just want live under the allusion that they are free to do whatever they chose to do.

• A little girl was riding in the car with her father. She decided to stand up in the front seat. Her father commanded her to sit down and put on the seat belt, but she declined.

• He told her a second time, and again she refused. “If you don’t sit down immediately, I’ll pull over to the side of the road and spank you!” Dad finally said, and at this the little girl obeyed. But in a few minutes she said quietly, “Daddy, I’m still standing up inside.”