I believe I'm getting like Earl. I get a purpose and miss my purpose. I don't realize how much time I am taking up reading and exhorting you in the faith, but I just feel that I just need to do what God's laid on my soul. I'm wanting, I really wanted to go deep into the subject of a friend. I don't know that I'm gonna be able to do that this morning time and everything else. But Jesus is speaking here in verse number 14. Ye are my friends. If you do whatsoever, I commend you. Henceforth, I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth. But I have called you friends. You and I'll never know all that that word means. What a wonder word it is. 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 that's not the Calvinist's choice. And I ordain you that you should go and bring forth fruit, that your fruit should remain, that whatsoever she ask in the Father, in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you. I'm telling you, I'm ordering you, This is your marching orders. This is the way you need to live all the time. That you love one another. I was talking to Mrs. Turner just before the service. We was talking about, I think she mentioned somebody said they wouldn't forgive. And I said, well, we ought to tell a person that tells you that they'll never forgive. I says, we ought to look him right in the eye and say, neither will God forgive you. He says, you're going to. And I dealt with it last week. I know I dealt with it kind of extensively on Christians. Christians will forgive and love one another. They really will. They don't have a choice. You don't have a choice how you treat fellow Christians. You don't determine how close, how far away. God has determined it for you. He's saying, you love one another. That is a command. That's a mandate. That is a law. I'm not asking you to do it. I'm telling you, you're not going to be in my family unless you love the family. You forget this kind of philosophy of religion that you can have certain pets and certain people that you love and other people that, well, I believe they're Christian, but I just don't like them. I don't like blah, blah, blah, blah. He never said as long as they're just like you. He didn't say they had to please you. He didn't say you could have a certain mode or model, a type of a person that you could love, and the rest of them you can't. He says, you love them, that's an order. That is an order. And you break that order, you're sinning just like any other sin. You're as guilty as any wicked sin there is. You are ignoring me, you're denying the Lord Jesus Christ that bought you. He said, love one another. You learn to love one another. John, in 1 John goes on and says, you perfect it. You perfect it. It develops and it grows in you. And he shed his love abroad in your heart and you mature in it. And you grow in your love. It's part of the reason why he's saying, if ye do whatsoever, I command you. I had trouble with that, and I've wrote pages on it, but I won't preach all of it until much to this morning. But I thought, well, I'm just going to try and see. And I don't normally do this. I'm going to see what Matthew Henry had to say about that, if you do whatsoever I command you. And these are the words of Matthew Henry. Those only will be accounted Christ. That's belonging to Christ, or Christ faithful friends that approve themselves his of obedience servants for those that will not have him to reign over them shall be treated I didn't say this I would say it and I'll agree with him he said that will not have reign over them shall be treated as his enemies." That's strong language. That's sound language. That's reality. We aren't given the choice to do things as we want to do. It's one of the things this word, if, really bothers people. People that figure they've got a done religion. I Mean when I got saved it's done It's finished. I'm saved What he says act like it's bear the fruit if you don't bear the fruit you're lying you don't belong to him That's clear in verse when you start reading on down verse 2 and then again in verse 5 and all of them if a person doesn't bear fruit and How can they be attached to the vine, attached to the Lord Jesus Christ, and have no likeness of Him? They don't match His image. They don't live like He did on earth. He gave us a life, and twice in your Bible it says, walk even as He walked. That's the command. And He commands us here, He tells us all through this that He has that he wants us to love the brethren. He says in verse nine, he says, as the father hath loved me, so have I loved you. Do you ever think of, you know, it's so common these days, the world has made a different kind of meaning to the word love. But Jesus could say it. He could look right at him and say, I love you. You disciples know that. I've told you. I didn't hold it in. I wasn't ashamed of what I'm doing. I identified with you. And here I'm gonna identify with you as a friend that's closer. intimate, closer than a brother. He says, I've loved you and I've told you I've loved you. He gets down through there and he says, if you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love, even as I kept my father's commandments and abided in. Jesus saying these words, just like I abide in my father. And I obeyed my father's commands. This is Jesus speaking. This is Jesus speaking. He says, this is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Said it again. Tells us that this is what the Christian is going to do. They're going to have a relationship filled with love. to where they're no longer like servants. Servants have to be just told what to do. And they don't know any more than that. He said, I'm not gonna call you servants anymore. He said, I'm gonna call you friends. I'm gonna build a more of a closer intimate relationship with you. I'm going to bring you in closer. I'm going to make it to where we'll get to a place where we'll always abide in one another. I have a lot of verses that I probably won't get to on friends. and the relationship of friendship, look at Proverbs 18, 24. We'll just deal with a couple of them, but I'll close. I'm faulted for taking time, and I wouldn't want you to miss your dinner. Proverbs 18 and verse 24. A man that hath friends must, he has to, show himself friendly. And there is a type of friendship, there is a friend, that sticketh closer than your own kin, than your brother. probably every one of you at some point or some of you've got a person that somehow, somehow you are closer to them than you are to a brother or a sister. You just, uh, I, I must admit, I must admit that I, Mike and I have a close, common, perfect, I say that, relationship of friendship. Just before I come down, I read a note he sent me. He said, Preacher, he says, I thank you for what you sent. He said, Preacher, he said, I love you. If I say that to somebody, a lot of them go to a dirty connotation about it. Jesus says it all the time. And he said, you need to say it. How do you know? How do you not know? How do you tell if other people care about you if they don't show it? If they don't tell it? I know we use it loosely. And so they made up that like, Joke about it. I told you once I loved you, and if I change my mind, I'll let you know. Ha, ha, ha. Jesus talks about abiding in his love. He tells us about how this love transforms into a relationship with one another. that she'd be friends. Friends trust one another. Friends confide in one another. I've talked to Mike. Him and I have talked about issues that I couldn't possibly say a lot of times across the pulpit. And I'm nothing wicked or dirty. I'm just saying some people don't understand a lot of meat of the word. I'm saying you can have a friend that sticketh closer than the brother. Look at Proverbs 17, 17. I'm just dealing with a couple of these. I'm not going to preach much on them this morning. Jesus wanted to call them friends. And verse 17, a friend loveth whenever the moods are right and people are treating you right. No. A true friend, a true friend never stops loving. A true friend loves all the time. You need to write that down and you need to write that in your mind. You need to understand, are you a friend? I had about four passages I wanted to say where the Bible says, About Abraham, it'll say, Abraham, my friend. Another one says, Abraham, a friend of God. I believe it says it over in Hebrews, that one does. Four times in the Bible says, calls Abraham a friend, my friend. Can you imagine God calling you my friend? I can trust you. I know that you'll always love me. I know that you'll always be faithful. I know that I'll always feel comfortable in your life. I'll abide in you. And so I'll always be, I'll always feel a contentment and a closeness, an intimacy of being with you. And I abide in you. And you abide in me. We'll have such a wonderful, friendly relationship. We can trust one another. We can confide in one another. We can show our love one for another. And know always, when you shut the devil's mouth, the demons of hell, they'll tell you time, nobody likes me, nobody loves me. But I could hear that voice not only from my Savior, through the Holy Ghost of God. Let's see, how does the Holy Spirit tell me on that? I think he wrote, must have had a song wrote. Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so. I remember working with my dad on one of the lowest streets in Albany, New York, the capital of New York, working the streets where the bums are, trying to get them into a mission, offer them a meal, but they had to listen to preaching before they get the meal. You know what the favorite song was? I'm talking about Doubter Doubters, trying to get a dollar off you. Something to get a booze or something. They didn't do that much on drugs. You know what their favorite song was? What a friend we have in Jesus. All our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege it is to carry everything to God in prayer. A friend, a friend that loveth at all times. Better go and get into arguments. I'm telling you, I can't, well, I can't tell you all, but I'm saying that we went through all kinds of circumstances, Mike and I, but we always loved one another. cared for one another, prayed for one another. We'd tell one another we loved them. Without shame, without reproach, without problems, without saying it just to say it. It was a reality. They're on our heart, they were close to us. We felt comfortable being able to tell them, just pour our problems out on them. They're born for a time of adversity, a time of hardship. That's what a friend's born for. He'll stick with you. He'll stay with you. He'll help you. He won't drop you. They're born for a time of adversity when you're down on the bottom. Things going wrong. You've got problems. God says, I'll give you a friend that you can trust. Somebody you can confide in. Somebody you can pray with. Somebody love you that I don't care what you're going through. I don't care what mistakes maybe you've made. You ever make a mistake? I make them. Misjudge on some people I think, you know, that I could trust. And you can't. You never did that. I'm saying to you, here's somebody that is particularly designed by God in birth. Born, notice what the word says. It says a friend, love of at all times, and a brother is born, born. Designed, made, created by God. When you're going through hard times, you can lean on them. You can trust them. They'll help you. They'll lift you up. They won't drop you like others do. They won't join in the crowd that tries to condemn you and find your faults. They'll love at all times. And they'll lift you up. They're born for times of adversity. I'm saying they're ones that'll stay with you regardless. Jesus, I'll close. He said, I want you to be a friend. And he told the disciples, I'll make you friends. That's not somebody just a servant. He said, a servant, all they get is a few orders. They do what they're told, they're just ordered around. But you're going to be closer. I'm going to pull that up another step closer. I'm going to make you a friend. I love it, and I don't have time to go through all the times it calls Moses and Abraham a friend of God. What a privilege. It is for a person to have that assurance in their heart that God can tell them things. Trust them with it. If a preacher told all these C's and O's, I sat here last night talking and I told Told Aaron, I said, I'll tell you the truth, and I really feel this about myself. I said, I've seen too much. I wish I'd never seen. I've heard too much. It's hard to get away with. It's hard to just throw it away. It's hard just to leave it out. You wish you went through parts of life just on a different course almost. So many things you run into and things, but if you, what's that song? Count your blessings. Boy, God's been good to me. He's brought some good people by me. I can look out that door just about the very exact spot. I remember Brother Williamson getting out of the car. I can tell you the two preachers that just attacked him, told lies on him. He got out of that car and right there, about 10 feet out from the door, he jumped out of that car. He liked to crush me. He grabbed me, you know how big he is, and he's bawling and crying, he's preaching, they're telling lies of me, they're telling lies, preacher! And he's hugging me and hugging me and screaming. Brother Williamson was my friend. He was a friend. I could tell you preachers that come I remember Travis Clayton tell me, preacher, you don't know what they've said to me because I've come to your church. But he said, I love you and I'm going to come. Born for a time of adversity. I thank God for him. I thank God for him. Have a friend. What a friend. Shall we stand? I wanted to deal with all the examples, all the examples that a person should bear, should be said of them rightly, the characteristics of a person that's a friend, that's a real friend, is carried out in this passage. Amen. Connie, you tell him. He's wanting to hear. If you'll tell him, you'll never go back in that lifestyle again. God will help you. God will heal you. Heal your mind and soul and spirit. Give you something worth living for. Something worth dying for. You've heard it, you know the Bible. I pray in Jesus' name, you found grace in the eyes of the Lord. You poured out there, you stay as long as you need. You be honest with God, you be honest with Him. Mean what you say, live what you say. He'll be your friend. Regardless of what other people say, regardless of what the demons of hell say to you, Jesus will be your friend! IF! Right here it says, if he will do whatsoever, I command you. That's the condition. That's the condition. He made that condition. Amen. Amen. Anybody else? You can change that whole part of your life that just makes you feel unloved to where you know you're loved by God. Can you imagine that? Know that you're loved by God. It won't matter what other people think of you. It won't matter, it won't matter. It's just know Jesus loves me, this I know. All through the Bible it tells me so. Greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for a friend. Oh my soul, oh my soul. Are you ready? Are you sure? Are you looking for His coming? Do you try? Do you try to be clean, pure, holy? You try. Father, in Jesus' name, I pray for Connie. I pray she'll get it settled today and be done. Finished. Finished with that old life. Raise up to live a new life in the Lord Jesus Christ. Walk with you, live for you. I don't care what people say. As far as the Lord Jesus is concerned, I know, shall be whiter than snow. He'll wash us. He'll wash us inside out. And I pray, Lord, that she'd know it without a doubt in her heart when she raises off this floor. I pray for others in here. They're battling in their mind, and pride holds them in their seat. And they know there's something missing in their soul. And I pray they'd get it settled before the sun sets tonight. Pray, watch over us. Help us to believe the Bible, to walk in the light, to live for you. I thank you for the help. Thank you for the wisdom. Thank you for your kindness. Thank you for your mercy. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen and amen. Thank you.