And I want to say, I'm glad I'm here this morning. I thank God that he's given us another opportunity to come together. We're going to be in Matthew chapter number seven this morning. I'm going to finish working our way through this sermon on the Mount. And then I'm debating on trying to determine where I need to go after that. Now that I've got more of a. Regular schedule here filling in on the first Sundays, so we'll move. We'll finish this off probably here My doubt will do it this week, but or this month, but we'll probably have finished by next month I have to figure out where I'm gonna go from there I like it when God lets me takes there lets me just start working my way through a passage rather than trying to come up with one let one off lessons here and there is then like when you're doing something like today and You got triple duty. You got to come up with a lesson. You got to come up with two and two, two sermons. And sometimes that can get difficult. But when the, when the lessons already laid out, all you got to do is study it and refresh yourself makes a lot easier. So here we are, as we're closed, what he is doing here in chapter number seven, uh, and in a way, all the way back at verse number seven of this chapter, he started kind of closing out his sermon on the Mount. He's got, this is the kind of the conclusion of all the things that he's taught so far. And the main things that he's been teaching is, is that it never really was about the actual works themselves, but it was always about the heart of man that God was concerned with. And the reason is, is that we'll find later on in the gospels and on throughout the new Testament is the heart is what drives our actions. Uh, that is where, that is our motivations. That is where our thoughts come from. Uh, even the way that we talk and the things that we discuss, uh, the Bible will tell us that those are driven by what's in our heart. Um, I heard one, uh, commentator say it this way, uh, out of the bucket of the mouth, uh, you can know the depths of the heart and, uh, that there's a lot of truth in that because if God's given you a new heart, it'll change the way you talk and change what you want to talk about. And, uh, so that's what God has always been after. And what he's done for us as a child of God is that, uh, he didn't change our actions. He changed our heart. Right. He said, we are a new creature, right? So inside of me, uh, though you can't see it yet and someday you'll get to, and someday I'll get to see it with you as well. Uh, there is a new man with a new heart and he drives some of my actions. Now I'm going to confess that I deal with that old man too, just like you do. And, uh, some of the actions I may not be so proud about. We'll deal with that if we get down there, uh, here in this little passage. And so. Last time that we taught, a couple weeks ago, he went through that section about asking and receiving, or seeking and finding, and knocking be opened unto us. And we talked about that's not just prayer. I think that's about everything. And primarily, I think there's wisdom involved in that. And he closed it out with what we might call the golden rule in verse number 12. Therefore, all things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets. And remember that when Jesus, when it came down to Jesus had to answer the question, which is the greatest commandment of all, he didn't go down to the 10 commandments to find one and pick one out of the 10. Uh, he went and he gave us one that was that's in the old Testament's in the book of Deuteronomy there that thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and mind and soul and strength. And, uh, that right there will fulfill, uh, all of the tests, all of the, all of the old Testament. He said, there's a second one that's likened to it. Uh, and that is to love thy neighbor as thyself. And in them about, he said all the law and the prophets, we'd ever get to the place that we love God. And then we love, if we love God, like we ought to, then we'll love our neighbor. Like we ought to, you know, we won't have as much problem following the law. A couple of weeks, month ago, something like that. I preached that message about abounding love. Uh, most of our problems in our Christian life is a love problem. Uh, we don't love God like we ought to, and we don't love one another like we ought to. Now, a good thing is we can grow in that. And so now he comes in and he gives them a, in verses 13 and 14, a familiar passage here. Um, he gives them a little bit of direction. He says, enter ye in at the straight gate, for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat, because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life. and few there be that find it. Now, from this passage, we generally get that phrase, the straight and narrow, right? So I'm on the straight and narrow way. And that's kind of where it comes from is in here, but I want you to notice a couple things when we look at this is, first of all, the word straight there is not S-T-R-A-I-G-H-T. Generally, that's the way we think of it, right? The word S-T-R-A-I-G-H-T, it means something that has no curves or bends, right? We call it straight. Can't find too many of those things around, but every now and then, you run across something. Most everything in this world's got an imperfection in it, doesn't it? But when God sets something up, now He can make something straight if He wanted to. But that's not the word that's used here. The word that's used here is S-T-R-A-I-T. Now, what that word means is not something without curves or bends, but it means something that is narrow or hemmed in. And you say, well, wait a minute, if we read it this way, where he God's that he's being redundant, he says, enter in, he calls one way the straight gate and the narrow way. And the other one, he says the wide gate and the broad way. So he's just being kind of redundant as he does that, but he's not, not quite. And we'll see that here in just a minute. So. If we look at the wide gate, first of all, what we recognize is that is a gate that's open that many people can pass through at one time, right? The idea is that of entering into a city. We don't necessarily have that in this day and age. We don't build walled cities anymore. When we go to Charleston, we don't have to stop and wait for somebody to open up the gate for us to go in, though traffic sometimes feels like that, right? Uh, and by the way, Charleston traffic, getting up, isn't anything compared to other places. So, but we don't build walled cities, so we don't have to pass through a gate to enter into them. But in the day when Jesus is speaking, that they would have been very familiar with this. In fact, the city of Jerusalem that many of them would be familiar with, they would go to regularly that in order to get into that city, you had to pass through the gates. And if you wanted to make. good time on going there, right? You go to the, to the widest gate where the most people can pass through at the same time. Because otherwise, if you go to a smaller gate, what's it going to do? It's going to create a line. And so what he is dealing with, he is, he is, when he talks about this gate, it's something that's open that many are passing through at the same time, but notice the way that leads to the gate. He says it's broad. Now, in our language, we use the word broad and wide interchangeably, right? They would be synonyms for one another. And we'd say, well, you know, he could have called this the broad gate and the wide way. Well, when you get down into the Greek a little bit here, and I am by no means a Greek scholar. I deal basically with what I learned from my lexicon and a little bit of extra study and commentators that helped me with this. The word, what we call broad here, isn't necessarily describing the width of the way, or the road or the path, we may think about it. But rather, it has the idea of a well-traveled, well-known path. Now, if you've got well-traveled, well-known paths, they do tend to widen out as you go, right? Many people will drive it and they'll broaden out. Think about it this way, back in the day, it used to be about a two-day affair, maybe about 100 years or more ago, to go to Charleston, right? because you were taking sled roads or wagon trails or whatever the case may be. And even whether many remember it or not, there used to be a ferry to get across the river there in Charleston. Come down to the end of where Corridor G is now, and there was a ferry down there, and you'd take it across the river down in that area. And imagine that that road got worn a little bit. People knew it. But then it graduated into what was 119, and that was, by the way, before my time as well. When you go out 119, or no, 214, sorry. You go out 214, and you can get to Charleston, and that was a two-lane road. I'd say that was a little better than the old wagon trails, though it may have been put in where the wagon trails used to be. I don't know if that's the case or not. but it's a little bit better traveling. And then by the time we get to where we are now, we have 119 or Corridor G as we know it, right? And now, man, we can really go. That's a well-traveled area, right? Four lanes going and coming, or two lanes going and coming each direction there. That's a well-known, well-traveled path. Right. And so we would call that the broad way. Now you say, well, you just described something that gets wider as it goes. Well, you know, it does, but it's because it's well traveled. It's well known. It's a thoroughfare is what he's saying. Meaning that the, the, the path, the broad way that leads to that wide gate is one that many know. And it's the easiest to find. But now when we come to the other one, we have the straight gate and the narrow way. You say, well, there's two synonyms again. Well, not exactly. So he says that this gate, first of all, is straight, and we could use our word narrow there. It's a small passage. You're not going to be putting many people through it. One commentator likens these two different gates to the opposite ends of a funnel, right? One side of a funnel you can put a whole lot in there, and a little bit comes out at a time. On the other side, I don't know that I want to try to pour into that side, right? Because you're going to miss more than you get in there. You can't put a whole lot in at a time, right? Well, it's the kind of the same concept of the wide gates and the straight gate. And so we use this word straight, even in today's language, when we talk about different passages, there's one that I can think of off the top of my head, we call the Straits of Gibraltar, right? Everybody heard of that? You say, what is that? Well, that's the entrance into the Mediterranean Sea. And what it is, it's a narrow passage. Not very many people can, very many ships can pass through there at the same time. In fact, it's hemmed in on both sides. It's just, you pass through that. That's where we get that idea of that rock of Gibraltar, right, I guess there somewhere in the sea. But it's just a narrow way to enter into that area. And that's the concept behind this gate. It is a narrow gate that few can walk in. I picture, I don't know that this is the case, but I picture single file. Maybe that's not exactly what's in there, but regardless, that's the point. But the way that leads to it is narrow. Now, when we look at that, we say, well, that makes sense that you've got a narrow path leading to a narrow gate, but the word narrow here, again, in the Greek, doesn't necessarily refer to the width of the path. It actually refers to a path that is similar to the gate. It's a path that's hedged in, is the idea that's there. It's one that's not easily found, is the concept there. It has nothing to do with how straight it is as far as its direction. It can be curved and winded. But it's one that's more difficult to find. It's one that once you get into it, it's more difficult, by the way, to get out of it. It's hedged in. It's a narrow passage and you're not going to be walking through there. And that's why we have the concept there of the wide gate and the broad way. It says many there be which go in there at, because if you have these two paths set before us, let's say for example, that we wanted to go over to route 34 from here. Route 60, sorry, between Route 34 and St. Albans from here. Well, you know there's two different ways, right? Actually, there's multiple ways. Now, the most common way that most of us would travel would be what? Go out Fall Creek, go to St. Albans, pick up 60 and go. Why? Because that's the well-traveled path. Go up Trace Creek right here. By the way, you got multiple exits from there too. You'll end up in the same place if you know the way. Now, why do we go the other one? Well, it's a little easier to drive, right? The path is more well-traveled. I'm not going to say it's smoother because, well, we all know that. But it's more well-traveled. We're more familiar with it, right? And most people will look at it and look at a map unless they're driving by their GPS. It's funny how many people that we have a farm out on top of Ridge that actually runs basically parallel to Garrett's Bend Road in a way. And it's always amazed me how many people driving out through there will stop and say, can I get to Taze Valley from here? Well, the answer is yes. You go on out that ridge, drop down over into Turkey Creek, work your way out of Turkey Creek over to Route 34, and you're on your way. I tell them the best thing they can do is turn around, go back down, and go out Route 3 to Hamlin, because they're going to get there quicker. So GPS will lead us in the wrong direction. Sometimes it doesn't travel. They always take the well-traveled paths. Regardless, if we're looking at that, most people will look for a path that's well-known. and they'll travel that one versus the one that may not be as known, may not be the right way to get them where they need to be. And that's, I believe, what Jesus has in mind here. Because he's trying to get them to understand that the concept that they've known all down through the time that Israel has been a nation is they've focused on their works and their actions. As a means to gaining salvation, right? Or a means of getting to God. Now we understand there was a law that was always given and they were to follow that law. I don't want to take away from that, but the truth of the matter is none of them had ever obeyed the law. The new Testament makes that clear. No man has kept the law. Nobody has ever done it. But they had always had this, what had developed their way of thinking of the direction they would go. And everybody was going that way. And here comes this man by the name of Jesus, who is trying to get across to them that it's never been about your actions and your works that would lead you there. It's always been about what was in your heart. And we can find examples of that back in the old Testament. Uh, let's think about a man by the name of David, right? I mean, we look at David and I can come up with some actions that David did that if you were to ask my opinion of him, nope, that ain't going to work for him. Those actions. Well, what, what he committed adultery and murder. He broke the law of God when he numbered the people and didn't do it right, and caused a bunch of people to die over that. And those are just the things that are recorded in the Bible. There are many other things, yet God calls him what? A man after God's own heart. And it reminds us that God's looking on the heart. In fact, that's what God told Samuel when he went down there to anoint him, right? When Samuel went down there that his oldest brother showed up, I guess was a kingly looking feller, right? I don't, the Bible doesn't tell us a whole lot about him, but I guess that Samuel, that was a kingly looking feller. And God said, nope, that's not it. It's not about that. He was looking for this little ruddy old scrawny boy because he had a right heart. And that's always been the case. That path has always been there in the Bible. It's been all the way through the Old Testament. Except very few people that we have recorded traveled it. Because they went for the broad way. They went through the well-known way. Even as we read through the old Testament, Mark's been teaching about the divided kingdom, right? How difficult was it for them to get that nation on the right track of following God? because they had gotten into this habit of going down this well beaten path of following all these idols and a following of all these other gods and to try to get them off that onto the right way was difficult because they were going to go the path that everybody else was that follow the herd mentality, right? Now what God was trying to tell them is that was never the right way in the first place. It was always this other way. that may not have been as well known. Now that's the concept that's behind that. Now, how does that apply in our life? Because if you're here this morning and you've saved, you've already started down this way, right? Because this is the way that leads leads to everlasting life. And that's if you're saved, that's what you've got. You, you skip the Broadway, you've went this route. But in this day and age, we have the same problem, do we not? If you go and ask most people in the world today, if they're gonna go to heaven, what's their answer? That they think so, and then they start listing all the things that they've done. They've been a good person, they've done this, they've done that, why? Because that is the well-known traveled path. In fact, some of the more popular, quote, Christian organizations, I'm not gonna call them church, churches, That's basically what they teach. And it's become the well-worn path, but the Bible tells us that that path will lead to destruction. And we know that it does. And that's by the way, while we ought not get discouraged when we come into our churches that still teach doctrine and still teach the truth. And we see the smaller numbers because it said few, there'll be that go in there at. I don't get me wrong. I'd love to see the house full this morning. Because that means more people that can hear the gospel and we can show them the right, hopefully show them the narrow road. But then we think about this as well, applying it to our lives as a Christian after we're saved. Because now we're walking the path, right? We're on our way down and there are forks in the road, right? I said, it's not a path that's absent of curves and windings and bends. because that's not the word straight or narrow that's being used here. And so our life, even after we're saved, has lots of bends, right? Lots of places where we've gotta come to a decision. Now, think about these two paths the way they're described here as a broad, well-known way versus a narrow, hedged-in way when it comes to the choices that we have to make. How often are we tempted to go what looks like the normal route? How often are we tempted to walk the path that seems the easiest? You know, the broad way oftentimes is the easiest path. It's the well-traveled, the well-known, the well-worn. It's going out Fall Creek to get to St. Albans versus going up through Trace Creek. Can I say God's way isn't always going to be the road with no obstacles? The direction that God leads us in life, the path is not guaranteed to not have obstacles. In fact, if I understand the scriptures, right, I think it's guaranteed to have obstacles in the way to overcome that hardships and trials will come back. The Bible makes that clear. Now does sometimes does he give us an easy path? Okay, yeah, sometimes he does. But I found more often than not that the path that I needed to go with God wasn't the one that I would have chosen. It was the narrow way that I needed to travel. And it looked difficult. Most people's advice would be go the other way. But God takes us down the road that he has us to go. And so he's trying to teach these people here that what he's been showing them throughout these last two chapters and leading into this one is the route that God has chosen is not what they've known all along. Because think about what he's taught so far. He's taught things like blessed are the meek, right? He's taught things like if you're angry with your brother without a cause, you've committed murder. If you look upon a woman or or even I guess a man with lust that you've committed adultery already in your heart. These were foreign things, things they would have never dreamed. He's trying to get them to understand they never understood the actual path and what he's going to present to him through the rest of this ministry, through the rest of this chapter for the nation of Israel is gonna seem strange, it's gonna seem out of the way, it's gonna be unfamiliar, and by the way, it leads him straight to a cross. Because they don't want to go that route. And so he lays this out. Now verse 15, he starts in on a different topic. He says, all right, I've laid out, there are two paths. And so now he comes beware of false prophets. Why would he put that right after this? Well, the false prophets are going to point us down the wrong path. Are they not? They do that today. They do that. I mean, 2000 years later and this thing hasn't changed. Actually, I go all the way back to the beginning to the garden of Eden. It's never changed. It's always been the same thing. God just, all this stuff just takes on new forms. But what Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes, I'm finding is more is true more and more that there's no new thing under the sun. He says, beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. And I want us to take note of that because in this day and age, that's important for us. Just because somebody shows up looking like a child of God, acting like a child of God, and given the circumstances we're in in this church, not having a pastor, it's highly important that we recognize what's on the outside is not what we're looking for. So why is that? Well, that's what Jesus has been teaching all along. Because he said, they look right on the outside, they come into you in sheep's clothing, they blend in. He says, but inwardly they are ravening wolves, which means they're hungry. They're there to devour the sheep. That's what he describes them as. They're going to destroy the herd. And that's why it's important for us in this day and age to be careful who it is that we allow to teach and preach. I was always, uh, amazed to watch pastor Homer as he guarded his pulpit. By the way, I always thought it a privilege, the fact that he allowed me in it. Uh, and it's even still today. And I, I'm glad that we've got things set up now that we've got a pulpit committee though, that, that will guard this pulpit. I'm still amazed that they let me in it, but anyway, but it's important. I've always, I've thought this down through the years that any church that allow me to stand in their, in their pulpit or any pastor that allow me to stand in their pulpit is a privilege because it's something to be guarded because there are a whole lot of. People out there, I say it that a ways, it's supposed to be men out there, but in this day and age, it's men and women. There are a lot of them out there that will come in with the sole idea of winning us over, thinking that to make us believe that they are one of, that they are one of us when inwardly they're here to destroy. And that's always the caution, by the way, that we look at. And it's like that throughout, not just in our church, but it's in our daily lives as well. We have to be careful what we allow in. Not everything that calls itself Christian is Christian. Um, and we need to be clear about that. It may present well, but ultimately it's there to destroy us. That's why I say it will, the most important thing we can do is always go back to this because this is right. Everything else should be measured by this, that if it lines up, then all right. And so he warns them to be, be alert. Now the question is, is if they look like sheep, but actually are wolves, how are you going to know that? How are you going to know? Right. I always pictured whenever I read this, I can't help but go back to the thing or think of the old, uh, uh, Looney Tunes cartoons, right? Where he had the Wolf put on that, literally put on that sheep's costume, be walking around. I mean, that's an absolute picture of this. Somehow that dog always knew, even though we couldn't see. Fortunately, we don't have to deal with it that way. God gives us some ways to recognize them. He says, you shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? So what he tells them is, is you've got to inspect their fruit, right? Which by the way, remember what this chapter started out with chapter seven, verse number one, judge not that you be not judged. Well, if we take that the way the world intended it, that's got a contradiction right there because he just told us to judge the fruit, right? We're supposed to be fruit inspectors. He says, so every tree, or he says, you're asked the question, do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? Now I've gathered, I've never gathered figs, okay? I don't even know what a fig tree looks like. I don't even know that they grow in West Virginia. But I know some things about grapes. I got a grapevine there behind the house. Used to be all kinds of, my Uncle Ralph used to have multiple grapevines. I'm not gonna try to figure out why he had them way back before he was saved, because I got a pretty good suspicion of what it was. And I'm not gonna bring that up, because I don't know. Does he know my Uncle Ralph before he was saved? After he was saved, he was a different fellow. But anyway, there used to be grape vines all around over there. They had three or four of them up on the bank. There's one behind my garage, been there since before we moved in. It still produces grapes every year, not a whole lot, and I don't even know how to take care of it. Basically, I keep it mowed, keep mowed around it, and we'd eat through it, and it just does its thing every year. And there used to be several others, white grapes and different things around. So I know a little bit about gathering them. I don't know about cultivating, but I know about gathering them. And I do know this, that on those grape vines, there are no thorns. Right? And so if I go to pick something that looks like a grape and I get stuck by a thorn, I'm not sure I want to eat that, right? And it just makes sense. We don't go out to the briars, now we go out there to look for blackberries, but we don't go out there to look for grapes, do we? We know when we go to a particular plant what to expect from it. Go to an apple tree, I expect there to be apples on it. I'm not looking for strawberries growing on the apple tree. This just makes sense. And so it literally comes down to being that simple at this level, is what kind of fruit are we expecting? Now, the Bible will tell us what we ought to be looking for, right? It mentions over in the book of Philippians about fruits of righteousness. Over in the book of Hebrews, it talks about the fruits of holiness. But over in Galatians, down in chapter number five, I think we get the best description of the fruit we ought to be looking at. Galatians chapter five, verse 22, it says, but the fruit of the Spirit, by the way, it's singular. It says, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, Long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance against such there is no law. These are the things that are to be produced in the life of a child of God. Now, do we produce all of them all the time? No, probably not. We're not perfect. I get that. But I bet you if you start looking around, you can find little bits and pieces of some of this. These are the things we're supposed to be looking for. But now, I do want you to notice there are multiple attributes that are there, but it's still one fruit, right? But that's true of all fruit. Think about an apple, right? An apple has a stem. It has its outer skin appealing. It has the good stuff, the white stuff inside. It's got that structure that makes up the core. And then inside that, there are what? Seeds. They even have multiple pieces to them, don't they? They got a shell on the outside. They've got a little embryo or a little plant that starts to grow in there. I don't remember what the exact name of it is. And then they've got the white stuff for that plant to even start growing with, right? And so all of these things have multiple components to them, but they all make up an apple, right? Now, you ever find a tree that produces a stem and a peel, but not the rest? I've never seen that yet. Or one that's just got a bunch of seeds hanging on it. Now when it produces an apple, it produces all of it, right? And by the way, that's what the Christian life, that's why it's one fruit. That's what the Christian life ought to be producing. It ought to be producing all of these things. Now, they're not going to come out looking all the time like they ought to, right? And we know that's true because let's think about, let's go back to our example of an apple. Everybody can picture, I'll assume in your mind, what the perfect image of an apple is, right? I mean, we've seen the pictures. And if you go and buy some, a picture of an apple, or you go and buy some, some wax fruit or something like that, man, it will look exactly what you think an apple is supposed to look like, right? Have you ever seen one of them hanging on a tree? I've picked quite a few apples in my day. Unfortunately, I don't do that anymore. I've never seen one on the tree that looked like the picture. They got flaws, bugs, worms, different things in there. Why? Well, because the trees aren't perfect, right? they're not going to produce that perfect image. And by the way, that's what we're doing. Our fruit may not look like it's supposed to, but I will say this, all of those apples that I picked contained all of the parts to it, though they may not have been shaped ideally. So when we look at it, we're not necessarily looking at the fruit on how picture perfect it is, but more so on what it contains, right? What we're expecting it to give us. Now, back to the example here, if I go up to a grapevine and I find blackberries growing on it, that's not what I'm expecting to find. It's going to look a little different. I'm going to be suspicious, right? Because that's what they said, do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? So, we're to be inspecting the fruit, does it have what we expect it to have? And as I said, sometimes our fruit isn't all that great. Notice what it says here in verse 17, it says, even so, every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. So he draws them to understand The reason that we examine the fruit is because it'll tell us what's in the tree. Now, if you've got an apple tree in your orchard and it's always producing rotten apples and bad apples, what's the problem? Well, there's something wrong with the tree. It may have disease in it, right? It may be dying and it's not producing what it's supposed to produce. But if you're getting the apples out of your orchard that you're off of that tree in your orchard that you're expecting to get, and they're, they're good. They're you're getting what you need out of them. Well, you know, that tree is healthy, right? So the fruit tells you what's going on with the tree. I mean, and so it comes back to our lives, our actions. As I started this out with display what's in our heart. and we can start examining and seeing whether we're looking at a sheep, maybe a wolf in sheep's clothing, right? Ultimately, it will out, right? Now, I will say this, a tree can begin to get some corruption in it and produce a little bit of good and evil, right? And that's where it's difficult for us to tell because we've all got corruption in us already. I was born with it, right? I mentioned early on, I said, I got the old man and I got the new man in me. The new man will produce good fruit. The old man will produce corrupt fruit. And that's why sometimes what I'm doing, it may have a little bit of good in it, but then there might be a little bit of corrupt in it too. Uh, I will advise you to take your pocket knife and cut off the part of the apple that's bruised and rotten and throw it away and keep what's good, right? Because that's what I'm going to, that's, that's just the way that we are as humans. And that's why it is difficult sometimes to spot, right? Because somebody who knows how to act the part and play the part may produce fruit that looks right. And maybe it does contain some of the things that it's supposed to. But ultimately, if that tree's starting to get some corruption in it, there'll come a day where you'll know it, right? Well, number one, it'll fall down. If you let it go long enough, right? It'll die. And so that's why he's telling us to look at that, because it'll begin to reveal. Eventually, it will reveal what's in your heart, if you'll just watch. And for us, it doesn't take us very long to reveal it, right? I mean, we're creatures of the old man or of habit, right? The old man in there, he will show it. And if somebody that's not saved, somebody that's not a child of God, that actually is a wolf in sheep's clothing, it'll be hard for them to go against their actual nature. It will come out. And that's what he's making it through. But now he also makes something very clear in verse 19 he says, every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits you shall know them. So he said, he says this, there's an ultimate end for those that that are corrupt. And that is for them to be cast in the fire. And that, that is the ultimate, he uses this passage, this same concept over and over again of things that are corrupt or things that are, are not what is expected that don't bring forth fruit, um, of being cast into the fire. In fact, if we do what I'm thinking about doing after I finished, this is looking at the parables of the, uh, the seven parables of the kingdom of God or kingdom of heaven. That's here in this book. One of the parables talks about the wheat and the tares, right? And ultimately, in the end, they're separated out in the tares, which don't produce good fruit. They produce something, but it's not the wheat that you want to make the flour with. Ultimately, it's gathered together in what? It's cast into the fire. Well, the same thing here. The tree that's corrupt is ultimately gathered together and cast into the fire. Now I thank God that for us, we've got that new man that one of these days, the corrupt part of us will not be cast into the fire, but it'll be changed as well. Right? That's what happens whenever the resurrection comes is that old corrupt nature. God's going to change it. Right? And by the way, what, what better picture can you find of that? Right? When you talk about a resurrection of a, of a corrupt nature of somebody that's been buried in Atlanta, I know that this isn't necessarily the most pleasant thing to think about, but then laying there and corrupted and rotten, maybe there's not much left in there. And I don't even, I've been around and accidentally dug into some old graves of animals here and there in different places. And it is not pleasant. I mean, bad. but God is able to change that because that's what we are. So he'll change the corrupt part of us into what it needs to be, but those that are corrupt through and through, he says they'll be cast into the fire. He says, wherefore by their fruits you shall know them. And so he's got these people to understand what they're looking for and what they're to be aware of that's going to lead them down the wrong path. And that's what we need to be doing as well. Now he says here in verses 21 and 22 and 23, he deals with what's going to happen someday with, for those wolves and sheep's clothing. And we'll pick that up next month and probably finish this out. We'll talk about that little section and then the wise man and the foolish man.