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by Charlie Wolcott

Last week, I wrote about how man was given dominion over the earth, but there is a second part of the first commands given to man: to be fruitful and multiply. Most of the teachings I have heard on this issue is basically to procreate – to have lots of kids and fill the earth. This is indeed part of it; God made the earth to be inhabited, and He gave the earth so many resources that even secular scientists think we could easily manage 10 billion people on this planet. With better resource management, we could manage even more than that.

God’s command was to be fruitful and multiply. The multiply part is pretty straight forward, but as I have been going through the gospel of Luke in my personal studies and listening to the teachings of my church’s teaching elder in our men’s meetings, I now understand what being “fruitful” mean in a far deeper way than ever before.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the issue of the home being a place of production rather than what it has become – a place of entertainment and consumption. Because I have lived so far away from my circles for most of my life that hardly anyone would want to come visit me, I am used to going out to others. As a result of that among other things, my home has primarily been a place of consumption. Work was “out there.” School was often “out there.” Even ministry was “out there.” Yet despite that, my parents have always had the mindset of “How can I make this home a place where we can be hospitable and host people?” I have learned from that mentality. When my parents moved to Michigan, I stayed in El Paso and moved to an apartment. I see this apartment as being a temporary place (for how long is up to God) but I have always wanted to be able to host a Bible study. For so long, I’ve had to go to some other place. As of writing this post, I am on the queue to host our men’s meeting.

But the key thing here is: how are we using our resources for the Kingdom of God? That includes our homes. My parents would service the bus for Jesus Chapel School, which my former church hosted at their building. The pastor would never have thought about using his own home for such things. I’m not blaming him, but that is a severe problem we’ve had in the American home and the church – the compartmentalization of church life, home life, work life, etc., when as Christians, everything should be viewed with God and the church as primary. (Check out this post, this post, and this post for more on that idea.) As result of this compartmentalization, “home” is reduced to a place to just eat, sleep, and consume with entertainment.

But our commandment is to be fruitful. The Biblical view of the home was that it was to be a place of production where everyone was involved; it was not merely for survival, but all life revolved around the home. “Church” wasn’t just meeting at the Temple. It was to be done at home with the father being the priest of the home. Today, we don’t have that view. We see church as “that building where we meet.” Many will say, “The church is the people, not the building,” and they are correct to say that, but how many people thinking that will say that about their own home? How is my home being used as productivity? I am examining myself on how I can be more fruitful and more productive.

My elder told me directly that one of the ways I have been productive is by writing daily devotionals, blog posts, and books. Even though I knew that, I needed to hear it. He’s been blessed by them and has been using some of my material in his sermons. I’ve been blessed by his teachings, too, and this mini-series has been a fruit of that. We are feeding off each other, which is what the church is supposed to do.

Being fruitful means you are producing works that feed others for the purposes of the Kingdom. The greatest American problem today is that we no longer think in terms of production but in terms of consumption. We are not thinking about producing fruit others can enjoy but what we can eat from others. The original American dream was to be a place of productivity. Today, it is a place of consumption. A society consumed by consumption will literally eat itself to death. The Communists were right. They never would be able to beat us in an outright war, nor did they need to. They just needed to feed us little doses of consumption and communism and we’d fall from the tree on our own. And they have nearly succeeded. Why? Because we left the moorings of Scripture. If we had maintained a Biblical worldview as a nation, not just in morality but in how the home was to operate, we’d never have fallen for these tactics.

What the Industrial Revolution and Evolution/Communism have done together is remove the father from the home. Even if he is part of the family, he is at work most of the time, not at home. He doesn’t make the main decisions anymore because he’s not there. Moms don’t have anything to do after “cleaning the house” which is part of the job, but not the primary job of the Proverbs 31 wife, so they seek something else to do, too. To be honest, feminism is right about their objections on the status of the home. But because they don’t know God, their solutions are even worse than the problems. And kids are at school, effectively raised by anyone except mom and dad. Productivity is no longer a thing to be considered or grasped in the context of a home. Being fruitful, being productive is not meant to be just “out there” where ultimately we are actually producing for someone else’s home. The socialists constantly object to greedy CEOs, and there is a legitimate complaint there. But they want to throw the baby out with the bath water and promote communism without dealing with the primary issue: consumption instead of productivity. Now, we are to be able to enjoy the fruit of our own labor. A workman is worthy of his hire.

Finally, Jesus said that branches that do not bear fruit will be cut down and burned. There are many debates about whether that is talking about believers and unbelievers, but keep in mind that Jesus frequently used His parables to distinguish true and false believers. The true believer who abides in Christ will bear fruit. It will be natural. A branch attached to the vine is going to produce fruit. But if there is no fruit, then there are only two options: the branch is not actually attached to the vine, or there is something blocking the nutrients from getting to the branch and it must be pruned. God is not taking couch-potatoes to heaven with Him. He is not going to take those who just consume and try to ride the works of others to spend eternity with. He is taking those who showcase Himself, those who bear His fruit, and those who are productive for His purposes to Heaven. I am not preaching works-based salvation here at all. But the strongest evidence that you have actually been born again is that you will produce fruit that only a born-again believer can produce.

How are we being fruitful? How are we being productive? Some of us are being fruitful; some are not. Where are the areas in our lives where we are not being fruitful? What can be done about that? One thing for sure is that we need to go back to what God has established and stop trying to do all these “new” things. God set His pattern, and He expects us to follow it. Let us go back, remember what He established, and go after that.

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