If you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn to the book of John, chapter 15. Book of John, chapter 15. We certainly are thankful to be here this morning. Glad for everyone in attendance and these young people coming to be with us. We're certainly glad we could all come and be in the house of the Lord together. I trust you've been praying for me. I appreciate your prayers very much. even though it's been prayed this morning. I told Brother Buddy I could just take his Sunday school notes and probably preach the message this morning. It seems like it's been that way for the last several weeks. The Lord knows what He's doing, so I'm not going to try to steer Him in any way, just be submissive to Him, let Him use me. So you pray for me this morning. John chapter 15. Before we begin, let's bow. Heavenly Father, it's good to be in Your house. We're thankful so much for our blessings. We're thankful for your love and your mercy that you bestowed upon us. We're thankful that we could gather here together to worship you. Lord, I pray you'd help us that we could truly worship you, not just go through the motions, not just do all the things that we're very familiar with, but dear Lord, everything that we do, we would do it heartily as unto you, not unto men, but to you. And I pray, dear Lord, that we would worship you from the depths of our heart and spirit and truth, And I pray that you would work among us, that you would deal with our hearts and convict us and help us to see a need to be better, help us to see a need to grow in Christ. I pray for those that are lost, that they'd see a need to trust you, even this very hour. That if you deal with their heart, that they would give up, surrender, and trust you as their Savior. I pray you'd bless Clear Branch. We thank you so much for this church, what it means to this community, what it means to my family. And I pray that You'd help us to honor You in it, through it, that we would work to do Your will. We would always be about our Father's business. I pray, Lord, that You would bless the sick and the suffering. You heard the many requests this morning. There's a lot of people across the land with a heavy heart today. I pray that You would bless as only You can. And Lord, especially for the one that's sin sick, that they could give up and trust You in Jesus' name. Amen. John chapter 15. Before I begin, I want you to understand, whenever you think about Jesus, He is life. He is the way, the truth, and the life. And let's look at it like that this morning. Jesus is the life. If someone is lost, they need to trust Jesus because they are dead in sins and trespasses. And once that they are saved, they have new life in Christ. Once we are saved, Anything apart from Christ, anything we do in our lives that's apart from Christ or not done with Christ receiving the glory, the Bible says it's vanity and vexation of spirit. Go back and look at your book of Ecclesiastes. to fear God and keep His commandments. This is the whole duty of man. It's the conclusion of the whole matter. Everything's been said and done. What's been done through Christ, that's what's going to matter. All things were created by Him and through Him. We all understand this. So if we're going to live life as a Christian, we're going to do it through Christ. Anything apart from that is not really going to matter in the end. We're going to be judged for every little jot and tittle. We're going to be judged for even a cup of water. We're going to be judged for every idle word that is said. And so we have to look at Christ, and the more that we can look to Him, the better we'll be in this life. John 15, verse 1. I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, He taketh away. And every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit. For without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered. Men gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned. 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. As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you. Continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You're my friends, if you do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth, but I have called you friends. For all things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you. You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain, that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. These things I command you, that you love one another. If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love His own. But because you're not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." We'll cease reading with these verses this morning. We have a vacuum cleaner at our house. Most of you would. We probably got one here. We do at the church. And the one there at the house is a very powerful vacuum cleaner. We need that because our house has almost white carpet, and so you need a good vacuum cleaner. And it does the job. It gets the dust out, and my wife, she uses it very often. She's constantly going with it, and I'll track stuff through the carpet, and it'll be dirty, and she'll come through, and she'll run that vacuum over it, and it'll be white again. So it does its job. But right now, Brother Mike, it's parked at the house. And it's not whole vacuuming. It's not doing that. It's not doing that on its own. And the reason it's not doing anything right now is because it's disconnected. You know, I've seen it stretched to its limit before. I've seen her, she'll pull that thing and that cord will be stretched out as far as it'll go with it. Sometimes it comes unconnected, or more often than not, I'll walk by and just unplug it just for meanness. But whenever it's disconnected, you can't do anything, can you? You know, it was dead in itself, and that's what I'm trying to get across this morning. It's dead in itself. It can do anything until it's reconnected. And so, that's what I want to try to preach for just a moment this morning, is a life connected. In no way does this thought apply to the soul. As far as losing our salvation, we're not going to do that. Our soul is sealed and kept by the power of God. But as a child of God, life has a purpose. And that purpose is for us to do the will of the Father. To do God's will. To love one another. That's what God wants out of us. He wants us to love one another. Now, we can always dispute what love is, and I believe we have to look at it from a biblical point of view. Love is not always sunshine and roses, is it? Sometimes love is, well, it's always to tell the truth. To tell the truth in love. Sometimes love is rebuke, you know, with love. We have to do those things. Whenever you stop and you say, well, what is love? Love is doing what's right. Love is doing what God would do. And so, to bear much fruit, that is the Christian life, that's what we're supposed to be about, that Christian fruit, bear much fruit. And you know, that was told in Sunday school, and so I'm not going to go back through that this morning. But too many Christians are trying to live life disconnected. I find myself sometimes, and I'm not connected like I should be. I'm drifting off. I'm getting away from the Lord, and I have to notice that and understand that. And as God would open my eyes, that I would come back to Him. That vacuum at the house is good for nothing on its own. I tell you what, Brad O'Neill is good for nothing on his own. And as much as we like to pat ourselves on the back and think highly of ourselves, we are nothing without Him. Jesus said, have no confidence in the flesh. None. We can't have confidence in ourselves. You know, I thought about the ties that we do have. You know, we have family connections and sometimes those family connections get severed. And sometimes a person is unable to abide even in their family connections. And that's a very sad thing when it comes that way. It's not of God. That's not what God intended. And yet, when it happens, people suffer in that area. You know, you see kids that have to go without their parents, maybe, and they suffer in that area. They've been disconnected. or you see, you know, other ways, a husband and a wife that would split and they're disconnected and that family thing has been severed and they suffer in that area. There's many that may leave the community and, you know, you grow up in a community and you're well established and you're connected in that community and then you get to a point, you leave that community and you're not connected like you once were and it won't be long before you come back and you almost feel like an outsider. And that's just the way it is. You didn't keep your connections there, I think, by these phones that everybody has. Myself included. And I tell you, when you lose a call, well, we immediately, I tell you what, that ceasefire, they can't do anything right, or whoever it may be. Or if we, our phone dies on us. All of a sudden, we have lost connection with the world. If you want to see somebody with it, Watch your phone. Go dead. And for the most part in this world, all of a sudden we just wither up. We don't know what to do because our phone is disconnected. You know, Jesus told us of His way and He said, this is the way that your joy will be full. Think about that. God, Brother Richard is telling us that I want you to have a life that you will have joy and that joy will be full. And He says, if you want that, then you abide in Me. You stay connected. Abide in Him. How can we do that? Well, He tells us here in verse 10, you know, by His Word. Keep His commandments and your joy shall be full. We can look in Scripture, well, how do I stay connected with the Lord? He says, you know, that we're to do that through His body, through the church. You know, whenever we get saved and then we become part of the church, we are very well connected with the Lord. He says, bone of His bone, flesh of His flesh. You know, we get to be a part of the body, whether it be an eye, whether it be a nose, or whatever the case may be. We are connected with something that is very special, that is the body of Christ. And I think about, even if we went on in verse 14, it says here that through His will that we remain connected with Him. So I'm asking you this morning, are you living life connected to the Savior? Now, when I say that, are you really connected? Buddy mentioned just going through the motions this morning. Sometimes that's what we do. But are we really and truly living connected to him? Just to go back and mention the vacuum cleaner one more time, we purposely disconnected that thing. We don't leave it plugged up at the house. It's not running. We don't expect it to be there doing things while we're gone. So we disconnect that vacuum cleaner, we park it, and it probably serves as a clothes hanger or something like that until we get ready for it again. But that's a vacuum. But how many of us, that we disconnect from the Savior until we need Him again? You heard the old story about using God like a spare tire to take and put Him up until we need Him. And then when we need Him, well, are we glad He's there? Let's go find Him and let's pull it out and let's use Him until we're through. And then let's put Him back up and let's leave Him stored away until we need Him again. How many of us are really living like that? Christ is there if I need Him. God is there if I need Him. But until then, just let Him kind of do His thing and I'll do my thing. Do you... This morning, do you... The things that you do in life, do you focus it around Christ? You know, we go to church. Do we come and we're really connected with the Lord or are we disconnected? Think about that just a minute. You know, many times you may jump in the car and come to church and you've got your mind on other things. You're not really focused on what you need to be focused on. We're probably all guilty of that sometime. One time or another. You know, I want to stress that this morning. connected with the Lord. You need Christ in the small things, don't you? Sometimes we may not think we do. I've got this. I can handle this. But I'm going to tell you, we need Christ even in the smallest of matters. We need Christ in the smallest of things. It's those little foxes that spoil the balance. Many times we think, well, I've got the small things, and don't sweat the small stuff. I've got those things. We need him whenever it's the barred axe head that pops off. You know, I mentioned that last week, I believe it was, but he lashes out and he's falling a tree, or these men are, and the axe head breaks off and it goes into the water, and he turns around, the last master, what shall we do, for it was barred. He panicked about that for a little bit and, you know, worried about it. But what do we do? Well, let's just look to the Lord, even with the smallest of matters. I'm going to tell you this morning, we'd all be better off if we'd stay connected with the Lord. Look over at Joshua chapter 7. Joshua 7, verse 6. It says, "...And Joshua ran his clothes and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord, until they even tied he and the elders of Israel and put dust on their heads." Joshua said, Alas, O Lord God, wherefore hast thou at all brought this people over Jordan to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us? Would to God we had been content and dwelt on the other side of Jordan. O Lord, what shall I say when Israel turn their backs before their enemies? For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it and shall environ us round and cut off our name from the earth. And what will that do unto thy great name?" Don't you notice what Josh was doing here? God, why have you done this to us? God, why have you allowed this? God, why has things went awry? Why is it that things have messed up so bad? Why did you allow this and what is that gonna do to your name? Listen to what God said in verse 10. And the Lord said unto Joshua, Get thee up, wherefore lies this upon thy face? Israel has sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them. For they have even taken the accursed thing, and have also stolen and dissembled also. And they have put it even among their own stuff. Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they were accursed. Neither will I be with you anymore except you destroy the accursed from among you." I tell you what, God's people were connected when they went down to Jericho. When they went to Jericho, they were looking to the Lord. This is new. We're going into a land that we don't know anything about. God has brought us this far. God has opened up the Jordan River for us. We walked through on dry land. God, we've acknowledged You. We're looking to You, whatever. You say that's what we're going to do." And God gave them specific instructions how to take Jericho. They were connected. But all of a sudden, sin creeps into the camp. You look at Joshua and you don't find him looking to God. He's looking to now his men, his elders, his generals. You don't find where he's looking to God as to what he needs to do and how he needs to do it. They come up with their own plan. This is how we're going to take AI. I believe with all my heart, if they had just went to the Lord, talked to God about this, I believe God would have said, well, first thing you need to do is get sin out of the camp. And they could have spared all these lives that were lost, but instead they did things their way. I have found, Brother Jake, that even though God has called me to preach, and even though I want to serve Him with all my heart, there's still a little bit of Brad O'Neill that is stubborn. And there's still a part of me that I want to do things my way, and I want to handle things my way, and every time that I do, I make a mess. God's people were connected when they went down to Jericho, but again, they had tuned in to every word that God said to them. Now we're going to do things on our own. This battle with AI, it's nowhere near the Battle of Jericho. This is just a little village. This is a great walled city. And so we went into this walled city and we didn't have any trouble. The walls fell and we walked in and we just took over. Surely we're not going to have any problem with this little village over here, these Amorites. We're not going to have any trouble. All of a sudden, their sense of power shifted. Our power is with God. We need God to take Jericho. But wait, we've got power on our own over here. We can handle this. We have no power on our own, do we? This morning, it's easy to get disconnected. It's easy to forget where our great strength lies. It's easy to want to take things into our own hands until we see how insufficient we are without Him. If you're hit and you're lost, I want you to understand something. You may feel like, I'm going to get this, I'm going to figure it out, I'm going to do it on my own. Whenever I finally get it, I will know that I have done what I needed to do. I'm going to tell you something, when it comes to salvation, you have no power. Completely disconnected, you have no power. The power of God unto salvation is Jesus Christ. He is the power of God unto salvation. If you're going to get saved, it will be through believing in Jesus Christ as your Savior. Once that we're saved, if we think that somehow now that we're saved, we can just handle things all by ourselves, we're good to go now. God, thank you for saving me, but now I'm going to handle things on my own. We're leaving our power source. Brother Buddy, the definition of abide, you mentioned it this morning, but abide, what does it mean to continue? To continue in Christ? To take up our cross and follow Him? That sounds like a bad life, Brother Brad, to have to take up my cross and follow the Lord. That sounds like I'm going to have to suffer. to abide in Him, to continue in Christ, that means that everybody that sees me, they're going to see me as a Christian. And boy, they're going to think bad of me. Well, the Lord said they hated Him. There's going to be a part of the world that hates us too, brother Richard. There's just no way around it. If we're going to live like God wants us to, then there's going to be a part of the world that hates us. He said those that would accept Him, they're going to accept us. But those that wouldn't accept Him, they're not going to accept us either. We shouldn't be surprised by that. You say, well that sounds like a bad life. I want to make a good life for myself. Luke 9 verse 24. This is one of the verses in Scripture that just means so much to me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it. But whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. That's Luke 9 verse 24. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, same shall save it." To surrender our lives, surrender our will, and to follow Christ, it may sound like you're throwing your life away. What you're doing is you're willingly laying it down. And I'm going to follow Christ. And when we do that, that's when we find a life worth living. That's when we find joy. And he said, this is when you find joy abundantly. The prodigal son, he wandered away from home. He was kind of a type of God, maybe a rebellious child of God that wanders away. He gets way away from the Father now. He gets way off in a strange land and he gets to a point where he is so down He is looking into the hog trough. Somebody said, that's the bottom of the barrel. I don't know if it is or not. He didn't eat out of it. He would have filled his belly, but he didn't. To my knowledge, I don't know if he tasted, the Bible don't tell us, but you think you hit the bottom of the barrel, I'm going to tell you, you can still go lower. More often than not, we can still drop further. if we want to, if we're willing to. But the beautiful thing about that story is, as Bob said, he come to himself. He went back where he left his father. That's a beautiful picture of repentance. Whenever we get off out away from God, we wander away from Him to turn back to Him. to come to yourself and return to your power supply. Christ makes life worth living. This morning, I want to encourage us as His people, let's continue in Christ, to abide in Him so that we can bear much fruit.