Thank you, you may be seated. Amen. We're in John chapter 15. John chapter 15 this evening. We're looking at the first six verses of this last time we were together. And tonight I will not get through verse 16. I'm always positive of that, alright? I say that and then it happens, so it's a miracle, alright? But I am excited about the verses we are looking at. Let's look at verse, let's read verses verses 7 and 8. And then we'll have a word of prayer and we'll jump into the text. John chapter 15 beginning in verse 7 it says, If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit. So shall ye be my disciples. Father, I pray that you'd open our hearts. Father, I pray that I'd only say those things that please thee. I pray that we would understand this passage. Father, the Holy Spirit would teach us. We're careful to give you all the praise and glory for what's accomplished. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. In the book, No Bad Dogs, by British dog trainer Barbara Woodhouse, she says, dogs understand love better than we do. She writes, in a dog's mind, a master, Or a mistress to love, honor, and obey is an absolute necessity. The love is dormant in the dog until brought into full bloom by an understanding owner. Thousands of dogs appear to love their owners. They welcome them home with enthusiastic wagging of the tail and jumping up. They follow them about their houses happily. And to the normal person seeing the dog, the affection is true and deep. But to the experienced dog trainer, this outward show is not enough. The truest test of love takes place when the dog has got the opportunity to go out on its own as soon as the door is left open by mistake and it goes off and often doesn't return home for hours. That dog loves only its home comforts and the attention it gets from its family. It doesn't truly love the master as they fondly think. True love in dogs is apparent when a door is left open and the dog still stays happily within earshot of its owner. For the owner must be the all and end all of the dog's life. The real test of our walk of faith isn't seen in our work or activity or even in our theological purity necessarily. It's found in this. When we have the opportunity to wander away, to disobey, to leave His presence, do we choose instead to stay close to Him? to abide in Christ to obey. And I think there is an element of truth there. I do believe that our theological purity is important. I don't believe that we will stay and abide if our theological purity is incorrect, right? But I understand what they're trying to set forth here. It's not the external actions alone that indicate our abiding. And many times, we want to talk about this and I'm getting ahead of myself, but sometimes we look at the actions of our lives and we say, well, there's fruit. Not necessarily. because there are actions that can be done in the arm of the flesh. Fruit is much deeper than just what is done on the outside. Now, if we are bearing true fruit, we will manifest actions that are godly. But it must go deeper than just the actions themselves. And so, we're looking at obedience. Now, if you remember what we talked about last time, when we think about bearing fruit, there's really three aspects that we have to Understand there are three conditions that have to be had or conditions that must be met to bear fruit in our lives as a Christian. We talked about these and so I'm circling the wagons a little bit just to bring us up to speed on these next few verses because we have not left the context of verses one through six at all. First, one must be in Christ. So we cannot and we will not bear fruit unless we are saved. That is a prerogative for fruit bearing is you must be connected to the vine. The branches do not create fruit of themselves. And so a branch that is not in Christ, a branch that does not have the life of Christ flowing in them, a branch that is not connected to the vine, will not, cannot, it's an impossibility, bear spiritual fruit. The next condition is the Father must purge him or her by the cleansing action of the Word. You're not going to bear fruit in the spiritual life without the husbandry of the Father, right? He is going to be intimately involved in your life. The Bible says, He which hath begun a good work in you will perform unto the day of Jesus Christ. We are on a journey to be conformed into the image of Jesus Christ, and our Father is passionate about doing that in our lives. He is the great husbandman. He is the one that is tenderly leading us as a shepherd is, all right? He is our great shepherd. And He is managing the vineyard, which is those that know Jesus Christ as their Savior. And so to produce fruit, you're gonna have to be purged, you're gonna have to be conformed, you're gonna have to be grown by the Father through the power of the Word of God. Now, Faith coming by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. I don't believe that stops at the moment of salvation. I believe that you get saved because of hearing the Word of God, right? But I also believe the Word of God is inseparably linked to our development as a Christian, and especially in our fruit bearing. If you don't have spiritual fruit in your life, it may be because you are not connected to the Word of God like you should be as a Christian, right? We grow in proportion to the Word of God that we appropriate in our lives. Now, that's important to understand. I did not say we grow in proportion to the Word of God we read. I didn't say we grow in proportion to the Word of God we memorize. Hey, we've had classes in our school. I think of Bible quizzing. We had Bible quizzing where young people learned volumes of the Word of God and memory and have walked out these doors and lived a life of absolute repudiation and sin. The memorization of the Word of God alone is not what God is looking for. He's looking for the doers. Don't be just hearers of the Word. but doers of the Word of God, right? And so we grow in proportion to the amount of the Word of God that we appropriate in our lives. It's the Word of God that the Holy Spirit is empowered to use by the plan or design of the Father to grow us and to bring forth fruit. And we saw that last week when we were together in the first six verses and I just wanted to mention it again. The third thing is we must abide in Christ. Now being Being in Christ and abiding in Christ is two separate things. One is positional. One is your salvation. The other one is a practical aspect of our fellowship in Christ. Abiding is the responsibility of the believer. abiding, staying in fellowship with God is a responsibility that God, here through these verses, is communicating to you and I. How do we know that? Well, when we look at John 14, we see the grace of God. In John chapter 15, we see the responsibility of the Christian. And we see this by the significance of the pronouns in chapter 14 of me, And the pronoun in chapter 15 of ye, let me read some verses. For instance, John 14 in verse 1, let not your heart be troubled, ye believe in God, believe also in me. The aspect of chapter 14 is all about our position in Christ and his ability to save us and the realities of our salvation. John 14 and verse 6 it says no man coming to the father father, but by me again The emphasis is on what Christ is doing through his saving work All right, John chapter 14 and verse 7 if he had known me right again We see the reality of the spiritual life because of Christ John chapter 14 and verse 9 it says Have I been so long with you, yet hast thou not known me? Again, he's talking about who he was and what he was doing and the realities of the relationship that he was making available or had made available to them and would bring them into fuller knowledge of. But then we get into John chapter 15 and he says in verse 3, Now ye are clean, Through the word which I have spoken unto you. Again, we talked about the word of God and what it does in our lives. Verse 18, herein is my father glorified that ye bear much fruit. John 15 and verse nine, he says, continue ye. All right, we're gonna look at some of these. In John 15 and verse 14, ye are my friends, all right? And so the emphasis of chapter 15 is the responsibility of the Christian, all right? Now, this is where the rubber meets the road, all right? Why? Well, because abiding is the focus of chapter 15. Abiding is to focus. Three times we see it in verse 4. Let's look at verse 4. Abide in me, and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except ye abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in me. Three times in that verse we see the word abide. We see the word abide, now get this, follow along with me. We see it in verse 4. We understand it in verse 5. We see it in verse 6 in the idea of the consequences of not abiding. And we talked about that. It's not talking about lost people there. The context here is the disciples who are saved. Judas has left, right? The conversation. They're in the upper room. This is right before the Passion of Christ. This is the Paschal Discourse. And the idea of being burned, we believe, according to the context, is the idea of any work done that's not done through the power of the Holy Spirit, if you will, the life of the vine is wood, hay, and stubble and will be burned, all right? So he's talking about the works of the flesh versus the works of the Spirit that are a result of abiding in Christ. So we see the consequences in verse 6. The word abide is in verse 7. It's in verse 9. It's in verse 10. It's in verse 11 and verse 16. Now, you won't find the English word abide, but you'll find the Greek equivalent of that word in each of those verses. Now, when God mentions a word three times in one verse, and then we see it in verse 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, you're running out of fingers, all right? There's an emphasis here. And we must understand the significance of that emphasis. Can I stop and say this? What I'm teaching tonight, what we see in the pages of the, or what we see in the verses of chapter 15, is a truth that has been neglected today. What I'm preaching to you tonight, and it probably will turn into preaching, right? Modern Christianity repulses that. They don't want what I'm offering. They don't want what this passage is teaching and what God demands. They want a Christianity of position without practical responsibility. They want all the blessings and the benefits of their relationship, but they do not want to love Christ the way Christ demands to be loved. And what we see here in this passage is God takes a chapter and he's drawing the conclusion of, hey, this is what you are in me because of all that I'm about to do and all that I am. Now, this is what I demand of you if you love me. And we're gonna look at that tonight. Let me talk about a couple things. First of all, to abide in Christ, a Christian must be secure in their salvation, right? If you're not in your salvation, abide in Christ the way you should. This is one of the areas that I think is pivotal, it is paramount, it is fundamental in the life of a believer that you know, that you know, that you know, that you know you're saved. That your salvation is not based on your works, it's not based on your goodness, it's not based on the church, it's not based on your prayer, right? It's based on the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross, his death, burial, and resurrection, and your acceptance of that. And so it's important for us, if we're gonna abide in Christ, we have to first be secure in our salvation. Secondly, to abide in Christ, a Christian must operate in complete dependency on Him. Now, this is a learning process for the Christian. It means this, we cannot be self-sufficient. We can have no confidence in the flesh. Now, I'll tell you what we do. As we are immature in our faith, as we get saved and we're a new babe in Christ, we think this, well, I need God for the big things, right? Somebody asks us to do something in the church, you know, maybe you're asked to, you know, as a young believer, stand up and say a prayer, and you're like, I can't do that, right? I gotta pray about the prayer, right? Someone says, well, we want you to maybe stand up and give a testimony. Spend all day studying, praying, God you gotta help me, I can't do this, right? Big things, big things, right? Gotta make a major decision about work. You gotta make a major decision about where you're gonna live. These are big items, big things. Boy, we better hit our knees. But all the little mundane things of life, well I've got that. I don't need you on the big thing, God. I don't need you on the little things, God. All I need you is for the crisis management of my life, right? We treat God like a bottle of aspirin. When it hurts, we go take two pills, right? And that's immaturity in our Christian life. And if we're gonna abide in Christ, we have to learn that God desires for us to trust, rest, and depend on him for every single aspect of our lives. You say, well, what's too small? There's nothing too small for God. Nothing too small for God. And because there's nothing too small for God, there's nothing too big for God. Right? And so if we're gonna abide in Christ, there cannot be any self-sufficiency. We have to understand that our flesh cannot produce anything that pleases God. In fact, he tells us that, right? We were just looking at this, where he says there in verse number five, for without me ye can do nothing. This has to be an absolute fact in our mind and not just a theological premise. This has to be the glue. This has to be the equation of our life. This has to be the catalyst by which we operate where we understand that I cannot do anything that pleases God in my flesh. I can't do it. So I cannot rely on my flesh. The third thing, for a Christian to abide in Christ, a Christian must draw from the fullness of Christ. What does that mean? Well, it is not enough that I turn from myself, I must turn to Him. I must seek His presence. I must be occupied with His excellency. I must commune with Him. It's not enough that we just say no to ourselves or say no to sin, right? We have to say yes to His indwelling presence. We have to say yes to being filled and being controlled by the Holy Spirit. We have to not just say no. The Christian life is not just a... an aspect of spiritual masochism, right? It's not where we just beat ourselves up, right? Where we just, man, we're just, we're some spiritual form of internal monk, right? Where we just deny ourselves, right, of everything. That's not spirituality. That's not the Christian life. Yes, we must turn from self, we must turn from sin, but we must turn to Christ. We have to live and operate, and we have to do so by the control and the, a word would be like nudging, if you will, leading, that still small voice of the Holy Spirit, where the Holy Spirit says, hey, speak to that person. Or, no, you shouldn't say that. or here's what you should say, right? I mean, I hope all of us have had this aspect. Have you ever been talking, you can nod, right? You ever been talking to someone about a spiritual subject or a subject where you needed to actually give them some advice on a spiritual level, and all of a sudden, a verse you hadn't thought of in a while pops into your head, because you had memorized it or read it or heard it, and years gone by, and you start saying, well, the Bible says this. That's the Holy Spirit. Reaching in and taking the Word of God and applying it to the situation. That's not mystical, right? That's not spooky. That's supernatural. And when we are functioning according to the will of God and we are doing what God's called us to do and we're doing it by the Spirit and not by the flesh. Now listen. He's not gonna pull something out of you you didn't read, right? You say, well, I haven't read the Bible. What I do is I just put my hands on it. I expect God to know. That's not how that works, all right? That would be spooky, all right? That's not what we're saying here tonight. But what we are saying, if we're a student of the Word of God, and we're in the Word of God. It's amazing how the Spirit of God can bring recall to our hearts and He can use a verse and bring it to our consciousness that we have hidden in our hearts or read or studied or heard and we can be used of Him in that moment. Now this is the idea of drawing from the fullness of Christ. Now, let's look at verse seven and eight because it plugs right into what we're talking about here, right? Understanding the context, following still with this idea of abiding, right? We come to verse number seven, it says, if ye abide in me. All right, well, we just talked about that, all right? So we're not gonna go over that first statement. He says, and my words abide in you. All right, so verses 4 and 5, he exhorts us to abide. Verse 6, we see the consequences. Verse 7 and 8, we see the results of abiding. He says, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples. So what are the results? If we abide in him, if we actually are doing and we are fulfilling the responsibility that God is setting forth in verses 1 through 6, then here's what's going to happen. We're going to have answered prayer, we're going to glorify the Father, and we are going to be witnesses of discipleship. And we're going to bear much fruit. Now, sadly, when you begin to look at verse number 7, people will look at that latter part of the verse and think that it's a blank check for anything that our hearts would want. And that is a gross misrepresentation of the passage, right? And we're gonna look at that in a second. God's not saying this. God's not saying that if you have enough importunity, right? Everybody remember that old English word, the idea of importunity, right? It's just kinda like when your kids, you're trying to get some rest and they're like, dad, dad, can we ride the go-kart? No, give me 20 minutes. Three minutes later, has it been 20 minutes? No. Go away. Give me 20 minutes. And they keep filing. You know what you do? You get up and you start the go-kart because of the importunity of their asking, right? Right. Now, sometimes we have this idea, well, if I just mean it enough, and I just implore God enough, then He's gonna give me my heart's desire, and I'm gonna get it. Well, here's the problem. The problem is this. If our heart's desire is against the will of God, then we ask amiss, James tells us, to consume it upon our lust. I can tell you this. You can pray all the prayers you want about winning the lottery. God's not gonna give that to you. And if you do win it, it's not of God. It's of Satan, all right? All right? You can pray all you want about something that's sinful, All you want. And just remember this, Satan will offer you something that's good to rob you of something that's best. He will. And we live in this world today where what we think is this, is that if somehow I make it happen and I've prayed about it, it must be the blessing of God. You know what that is? That's flood theology. Right? That's flood theology. That's what Job's friends were guilty of. Right? They looked at Job and they said this. They said, well, you've experienced trials. You've experienced hardship. Therefore, you're wrong with God. Right? You're not right with Him. Because God only blesses those that are right with Him. And God wrote a whole book and put Job through an absolutely miserable situation to prove that God sometimes allows good people that are right with Him to go through hard times. And just because you have what looks like blessings and material wealth does not mean that God is absolutely okay with your life. That somehow He is validating the way you're living. We live in a world today that is just, we are turned upside down, that which is righteous, that which is profane is holy, and that which is holy is profane. We think this, well, we look at this minister down the road, and they're doing things in a certain way, and they go, well, they're growing, therefore God's happy with them. That's flood theology. That's flood theology. That is an inch deep and a mile wide. And this passage is teaching that, by the way. It's teaching the exposition or the exposing of that idea, right? And let's go on. Let's talk about why. Well, he says this. in 1st John chapter 5 verse 14 and this is the confidence that we have in Him that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. Alright, so you can't take verse number 7, rip it out of the context of the context of the Bible and how God works. 1st John 5 verse 14 says if we ask according to His will. So how do we know that something is according to His will? Well we gotta go back and we have to look at the conditions for the answered prayer. What are the conditions for the response, right? What are the responses? Answered prayer, glorification of the Father, and witness of discipleship. So what are those conditions? First, he says, if you abide in me. Not only must the heart be occupied with Christ, but the life must be regulated by the scriptures. He says, if you abide in me and my words abide, remain is the idea, right, continue in you. So that means this, that means that they're one and the same. That means that you cannot claim to be abiding in Christ if the word of God is not abiding in you. Now what's interesting here is it's not the word of God, almost like in a blanket approach generalization. He gives it to us here in the plural. If my words, almost as though we have taken it apart piece by piece, principle by principle, precept by precept. Here's what he's saying. He's saying this, that if the word of God is abiding in us, if we are functioning and living by the word of God, right? If we have allowed our lives to be dictated by the scriptures, Right? Sola Scriptura. Now, this is what we say. It's what we preach, right? We think about, we're Baptists. Why are we Baptists? Well, the Bible is the only authority, is what we say. Right? And we say that. That's on our creed. That's in our Constitution. But do we live that way? Here's the thing. You cannot claim, this is what he's saying. He is linking our fruit. Now, get this. and our fellowship to our following of his word. Let me put it this way. If you're not following his word, I don't care what emotions you have, I don't care what experience you have, you are not in fellowship with him. There's only one path of fellowship that Christ walks, and that's in agreement with and in obedience to his word. He does not walk down the path of fellowship when it's a path of rebellion and disobedience. If I regard iniquity in my heart, what's the Bible say? The Lord will not hear me. You know what that means? Let's boil that down, right? Let's dissect that a little bit. That means this, that we have a whole Sector of religion and I say religion not in a positive way. We have a whole sector of Christian religion today That is not following the Word of God What does that mean? That means there's no fellowship with Christ period That means every church that has a woman preacher There's no fellowship with Christ Right? That means this. That means any principle you want to walk down, right, where it's not obedience to this book, that means there's no, absolutely no fellowship with Christ. Now, they're saved. We're not talking about position. Maybe they're saved. We're not talking about position. We're talking about the responsibility of obedience and Christ's pleasure in them. We're talking about his blessing. We're talking about answers to prayer. You know what that means? This is what that means. It is incumbent upon me to know the scriptures. It's important for me to know what God has said. Right? What do we say? Ignorance of the law is not an excuse, right? Right? You can't look at the game warden and say, well, I just didn't know. He's like, well, you're just going to, now you're going to know. You're just going to get a ticket. You can't look at the police officer and say, well, I just didn't know. It doesn't matter. And remember this, there's coming a day where we're going to stand before Jesus Christ. And let me tell you what the measure, what is the standard going to be? What's the ruler? That everyone's going to be measured, both individually as well as what we see as corporate Christianity. All of it will be measured against this book. This is the standard. Really what we're doing is we have an open book test. Remember those? Right? I used to hate those. You know why? Because when the teachers did open book tests, they asked questions you couldn't. It wasn't yes or no. Right? It wasn't multiple choice. Open book tests were just huge. I just knew it was going to take forever. You know, I'd rather just do a normal test. Right? But life is an open book test. And when we get to Jesus Christ in the Bema seat, remember, we're not talking about positionally. We're not talking about salvation here. We're talking about fellowship. We're talking about Christ looking at us and saying, well done, or saying you're saved, yet so is by fire, right? When we stand before Jesus Christ, what we have done in our life and how we did it will be measured against the authority of this book. You're not gonna be able to look at Christ and say, wait, I got goosebumps every time I did it. I felt really good about it. And I got like 60 likes on Facebook because I said it. That's not gonna hold water. It's not gonna measure up. It's either obedience or disobedience, right? There's no foot on either side. Here Jesus Christ is drawing a very very distinct line Between our fruit-bearing as a Christian and our obedience to the Word of God That means this that someone can look like they're having fruit But if they're not in obedience, it's not spiritual fruit Because if they're in disobedience they are not abiding in Christ It is impossible We continue. He says this, you shall ask what you will. Now, here's what we have to ask in that statement. What would such a person ask? A person who's abiding in Christ and a person who has the Word of God permeating their life, the authority of their life, they're allowing the Word of God to dwell in them richly, right? That kind of person, what are they going to ask? Well, that kind of person is not going to ask to consume things upon their lust. They're going to ask according to the will of God. Because the Word of God is going to so constrain them And the Word of God is going to so govern them and guide them that they're going to ask according to the will of God. And if a person is abiding in Christ and the Word of God and obeying the Word of God, then they're going to be desiring the will of God and they're going to be asking requests that are within the will of God which fulfills 1 John chapter 5 and verse 14. And what is it going to be? Well, they're going to get those requests answered. You see, fruit is Christ-like affections, dispositions, graces, as well as the works in which we display. Remember, the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, right? What does he say here? He gives it to us in verse number seven. He says this. He says, you shall ask what you will, and it shall be done unto you. Answered prayers as a result now. This is what we have to be careful with you careful that it's not all external fruit, right? It's not what we put on the vine right think about the idea of a fruit here. Don't get beyond the illustration If If you saw like one of your friends walk out to their garden and just start hanging plastic fruit on their plants, you'd be like, that guy's a little off, right? There's no value there, right? They can put all the plastic fruit they want all over their garden, but it's not fruit. It doesn't work that way. You can't go and you can't put fruit on the vine, right? Where does the fruit come from? Well it doesn't really even come from the branch. The fruit is a product of the vine. It's that living source, if you will, that produces that fruit, right? And what we have to be careful to understand is this, is that it's not just the outward actions, because this is what someone would say, and when I say outward actions, I'm talking about the outward actions of service, right? Because someone would say, well, I've gotten older, and I can't do what I used to do. Boy, I can't come and help with the chairs, and I can't come and do this, or I can't drive late at night because I can't see. And what we think is this, well, because I'm older, I can't produce the fruit that I used to. But that's not the essence of it. Now, I believe that when we are abiding in Christ and we're obeying the scriptures, we're gonna be producing much fruit and there's gonna be, there will be, that will be manifested in outward service. But that's not the only sector of which we see fruit. There is an internal type fruit, right? And this is the fruit of the Spirit. This is our affection for Christ. This is, we can always bear these kinds of fruits. It doesn't matter how old you are, you can grab the horns of the altar and you can see God answer prayers, and that is spiritual fruit. And so it's not about necessarily the outward action of service, but many times we think, well, there's the fruit, right? And we say that, I mean, and I'm not knocking that. Here's what we do, we see a young Christian, they get saved, man, they get baptized, they go on fire for God, and man, they're here every service, boy, they're jumping in both feet, and they're doing, doing, doing, doing, right? And that is great, and I think that's a natural product of wanting to serve the Lord, and those things are wonderful, right? But here's what we can't, we can't substitute just the doing, doing, doing for, the being, being, being, right? It has to come from the vine. And if it's coming from the vine and it's genuine fruit, spiritual fruit, then age is no limit to God being able to bear much fruit in your life. Four relationships seen within these verses. First, life in Christ is salvation. Life with Christ is fellowship. Life by Christ is fruit bearing. And life for Christ is service. He continues on and he says this, we see the progression, all right, of the passage. In verse two, there's fruit, and then there's more fruit. Now in verse eight, we're gonna see much fruit. Look what it says there in verse eight. It says, herein is my Father, oh, I've run out of time. Herein is my Father glorified, right? That you bear much fruit. When we do not bear fruit in our lives, it is dishonoring to God. It's dishonoring. This is really where we have to parse this. This is where we have to divide this. We have to realize this, is that it doesn't matter that the edifice on the outside, if we are not producing spiritual fruit in our lives, right? If it's not being produced, I should say it that way. If it's not being produced, then there is a problem spiritually. And it's not honorable. It's dishonorable. It's not glorifying God. It's the opposite of glorifying God. He says, here it is my father glorified, that you bear much fruit. That's what God desires in our hearts and lives, much fruit. And then he says, so shall you be my disciples. Continuance in the word is not a condition of discipleship. but an evidence of it. It's an evidence of it. When the world looks at us and they see in our lives spiritual fruit being born, they see answers to prayer, they see us abiding, they see us obeying, they see us doing so, not in the fickleness of this world's concepts of Christianity, but in a steadfast, long-suffering way. in a measure that is supernatural, when we can love those that hate us, when we can turn the other cheek, when we can rule our mouths, right, not say everything we think, when we have, when we love others, which this passage is gonna tie right into loving Christ and loving others, when we can do these things, right, they're gonna step back and they're gonna glorify God. What does it mean to glorify God? We use that term a lot. When you boil down the etymology of the word glorified, it has the idea to add weight to. And you got to remember, you got to remember like back in this period of time when it came to money, right, there was a standard. and there was a scale. And so someone would walk up with precious metals and they would add, they would put their precious metals or their coins. But just because they had a coin didn't necessarily mean that that coin was of the same denomination of value as another coin that was the same type of coin. It was measured. And so what would happen is, whoever was the proprietor, whoever was doing this transaction, they would have what was considered the standard. They would put it on one side of the scale and they measure whatever valuable it was on the other side, right? And this is why God says He loves a just weight, a righteous weight. What they would do is they would drill out the bottom of those standards And they would fill them with a substance that was heavier than the original, and then they'd cover them back. So when they were putting that weight on one side, they were getting more value than they were supposed to. That was deceitful. It was dishonest, right? They were ripping people off. God says he loves a just weight, right? And the idea was this, that if you have the standard on this side, and you add value to the other side, it becomes weighty, right? It becomes more valuable. The more weight you add, the more valuable it becomes. And that's the idea of us glorifying God. What are we doing? We're living in such a way that we add weight in the minds of other people to the value of the God of heaven. That they look at us, and they see our obedience, and they see our abiding, and they see how we live, and they say God must be valuable to them. Well, maybe God's not just some curse word, or maybe He's not just some religious thing. Maybe He's real. Because, boy, they're living like He's real. And what have we done? We've glorified God. We've added weight. to the mind of man, to the value of God. Now, obviously, when Jesus Christ appears, before the millennial reign, there will be a lot of weight added in the minds of the lost. In fact, so much so, they'll bow the knee, right? And they'll confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. But I end with this. It's an evidence of discipleship. Can I say this, just because you're saved doesn't mean you're a disciple. Just because you're saved doesn't mean that you are following Christ. There's a lot of people who are saved. It'd be like saying this, just because you're an American doesn't mean you're in the military. Right? Just because you know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior does not mean that you have chosen to abide in Him and to obey the Word of God. But when you abide and you obey and the results of those two things begin to manifest, answers to prayer and the glorification of God, what will be known to all as an evidence is that you are a disciple of Christ. Father, I pray that you'll take this passage, use it in our hearts and lives. I pray that you would help us to understand the importance of these verses. We ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.