BE FRUITFUL! 

Pastor Tayo Adeyemi

Senior Pastor of New Wine Church

  Sunday 2 January 2011

Foundation Scriptures: Genesis 1: 26-28

We start the year 2011, our year of Dominion with a new series, in which we will develop an understanding of our dominion mandate and thereby, become all that God has purposed us to be.

When God created man, He created him with a mandate. There was no need to wonder or guess what we were supposed to do or be on the earth. God had made it very clear, spelling it out in no uncertain terms. I call this the Dominion Mandate.  

Dominion Mandate

Mandate is defined as an official or authoritative instruction and is derived from the Latin word “mandatum” which means something commanded or something given into the hand of another. With this understanding therefore we can see that when God created man, He declared His intention. There was no uncertainty, ambiguity or room for misunderstanding or assumption. He said “Let us make man”....and “let them have dominion.”

I want you to notice three things about Genesis 1: 20: Firstly God declared His intention to make man. Secondly, God declared “Let us make man in our image”, namely man will look and function like Him. When you look in the mirror you see your reflection or image and so when you smile, frown or raise your hand, your image does likewise. Thirdly, God declared that man will have dominion. Essentially, God declared His intention in verse 26 and then in verse 27 He went ahead and carried out His intention. He did what He said He would do. From this, I want you to understand that whenever God declares anything concerning you, He will do it. All the promises that God made concerning you He has not forgotten. Those promises have not vanished into thin air – He will bring them to pass. God cannot lie. He will not alter what has gone out of His mouth.

“BE FRUITFUL”

In Genesis 2: 7 we see that God breathed the breath of life into man. In that one moment of impartation, God deposited into man everything that man needed to have dominion. Adam was a complete blank slate, there was no precedent, no example to follow, no parents to teach him what our parents taught us, no culture or customs and no instructions to receive. God had to programme this man for life and did so by speaking words. These words were critical as they would shape Adam’s destiny. The first word that God spoke to Adam was “BE”, not “do” or “have” but “BE.”

God said “Be fruitful”. To be fruitful means to bear fruit. It means to grow, increase, blossom and produce. God didn’t start by telling Adam to pray, worship or love Him. All of those things are important and I am not undermining them but the fact remains that they were not God’s primary expectation. His number one expectation of man was to “Be Fruitful” – this was a demand on potential and an instruction rather than a suggestion reflecting God’s intention that we bear fruit. This means that the number one way in which to displease God is to be unfruitful. You will note that Jesus was always very severe when He encountered anything that was unfruitful – whether a fig tree that failed to bear fruit or a servant who would not use his talent or a vineyard that would not produce grapes. God hates unfruitfulness.

We don’t want to displease God and therefore we must ask ourselves: “What exactly did God mean when He said “Be fruitful”? Throughout scripture, you will find many different expressions of fruitfulness – Let’s look at five of these: 1. Fruit of the womb: Children. (Psalm 127: 3) – This is the most basic form of fruitfulness,  for which no special kind of talent is required. 2.  Fruit of the mind: Ideas. (Jeremiah 6: 19) In today’s language, this is called a “brainchild”. 3.   Fruit of the mouth: Words. (Proverbs 18: 20-21)  Words can be productive or destructive. Remember that Jesus said that we will give account for any idle (useless, barren or inactive) words that we speak (Matt 12: 36) and therefore, this year I challenge you to determine that you will refuse to speak idle or destructive words. 4.  Fruit of the hands: Work: (Proverbs 31: 30-31); and 5.  Fruit of the Spirit: Character (Galatians 5: 22-23). So, in order to be fruitful, your womb (and your loins) must produce, your mind must produce, your mouth must produce, your hand must produce and your spirit must produce. God expects you to be fruitful in all of these areas of your life. This is how to have dominion.

When God made Adam, he didn’t give him a bed, soap or toothpaste or a knife, He just said “be fruitful”.  Adam had to engage his mind and find ways to extract everything he needed from his environment. If you look closely, by Genesis 4, only seven generation after Adam, amazing things had been achieved. They had found ways to make tents and raise livestock, they had manufactured musical instruments and crafted implements of iron and bronze. How, you may wonder did they achieve so much in such a short period of time? Without having gone to school, how did they learn the concept of music and how did they learn to craft a harp, attaching each string at a different tension in order to create different notes? Job 32: 8 gives us an insight telling us “But there is a spirit in man and the breath of the Almighty gives him understanding.”For this reason, a lack of education can never be an excuse for not being fruitful.

“There can be no fruit without seed!”

You may remember that the Law of First Mention is a principle by which the first mention of a concept in the bible sets the tone for how we may understand the concept throughout the rest of scripture. The concept of fruitfulness is first mentioned in Genesis 1:11 where God says “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”. Even the trees were expected to be fruitful!

The very first time that fruitfulness is mentioned in scripture, it is mentioned in connection with seed. There can be no fruit without seed; there can be no fruitfulness without seed: The seed of a man or sperm produces the fruit of the womb. Information or inspiration to which you expose your mind produces the fruit of the mind. The words that you store in your heart produce the fruit of your mouth. Your hard work, enterprise and industry produce the fruit of your hands and the Word of God that dwells within you produces the fruit of the spirit.

Now I want you to notice that the seed produces the fruit, yet the seed is hidden inside the fruit. For example if you have oranges and refuse to show me how to make oranges because you want to continue to sell oranges to me, if I understand that every fruit has seed in it and that the seed will produce the fruit, all I need to do is buy one orange from you. In buying that orange my goal is not just to eat it but to gather the seeds inside the orange and plant them. If I just eat the orange, I am a consumer but if I plant the seeds, I have become a producer. The same principle applies as much to smart-phones as it does to oranges. In the world of technology, this is called reverse engineering and is exactly how China became industrialised and is now the second largest economy in the world.

“Before God said ‘be satisfied’, He said ‘Be Fruitful’ ”

Don’t ever forget that within everything that is produced, there is a seed. God will not tell anything to be fruitful if it does not carry a seed within it; the very fact that He told you to be fruitful means that you have seed within you. So what is seed? Seed is potential, seed is undeveloped capacity; what you are capable of becoming that you haven’t yet become. Seed is a CEO who is currently a receptionist or a king who is currently a shepherd boy; or a blockbuster movie that is currently a sketchy story in a notebook or a multi-chain business currently operating out of a garage.

Here’s the thing about seed, because it is much smaller than fruit, and doesn’t look or taste as nice as fruit, there is a danger of despising it. But to do so would be a terrible and costly mistake as seed is powerful, life-giving and enduring. Seed produces whereas fruit satisfies. Before God said “be satisfied” (Genesis 2: 16) He said “be fruitful”. If the truth be told, most of our prayers and ambitions centre around being satisfied. In 2011 however, I want to challenge you to change your focus and centre your prayers and attention on being fruitful and determine to discover the various kinds of seed that God has deposited within you and then go and put them to work. I will know if you have been fruitful when you come and show me something with your name on it. When a couple have a baby they give it a name, likewise when people make cars or furniture. Before this year is over, something must have your name on it; a company, a book, a poem, a store, a song...

Remember, in your loins there is seed, in your mind there is seed, in your mouth there is seed, in your hands there is seed and in your spirit there is seed. I challenge you therefore, not to ignore your dominion mandate and go forth and be fruitful!