What's that? No, you can hang on to it. John chapter number 15 in your Bibles. We good? Amen. All right, John chapter 15. We'll look at the first five verses here, and then we're going to hit the ground running, whatever that means. But we're going to get into the message here. So, I am the vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit shaketh 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. Now, we could keep on going and go all the way down through this passage and continue on down through the illustration and so forth. However, this is going to be kind of a two-part message, one part this week and one part next time. We're just going to look at these first five verses, and we're going to focus in here on this matter of fruit. We're going to look here at abiding in the vine and What comes of that? All right, let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your word. We thank you, Lord, so much for the privilege of being here this evening. Lord, we thank you, Father, that you sent your son to die for us, Lord, that you've given us the opportunity to be born again, Lord. And we thank you, Father, that, Lord, that all those who are in the vine, who abide in you grow. and fruit is displayed. And Lord, we just pray, Father, tonight that you'd speak to each of our hearts. Lord, if there's something that anybody needs to get right, Lord, we pray, Father, that we would deal with those things. Lord, if there's anybody here that's not been born again, Lord, I pray, Father, tonight would be the night that they would come to know you as their Savior. Lord, we pray your blessing now as your word is preached. We pray, Father, that you'd be glorified in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. He says here, I am the true vine. We know that Jesus often, as we're going through the book of John, we know that as He's speaking, who is the audience here? Who's with Him? His disciples are with Him. These are His close followers. Now, of course, last week we did a Q&A, and part of the Q&A, one of the questions was about Judas and some of those things, right, and the whole situation there. you know, the relationship between the disciples and the Lord and all the things that they did and didn't do and shouldn't have done and all of those things. But we're looking here, he speaks to his disciples, letting them know that he is the true vine. And it says, and my father is the husbandman. In other words, the father is the one that is going to the father is going to be the one who is going to be doing the pruning and the keeping of the branches of the vine. So, as we go on here, understand sometimes we get this concept of branch and vine flipped around, and we think that the vine comes from the branch or something, but no, it's the branch that comes from the vine. The vine is the part of a of a vining plant, that is where the nutrients come from and all that. The branches are the pieces that come off of the main vine, right? And so when you have a Like, we've got a vine on the house next door to us that's growing. It's like this overtaking sort of, what is it? It's really, it's like it has engulfed half of the house. It literally has completely grown up on the one side and has taken off the, you know, hasn't taken off the siding, but it's completely covered the siding on that whole side from the eave all the way down to the ground. And on the front now, it's kind of creeping across and covering up the whole front. What's that? It'll work its way into the house. It's probably underneath the siding, too. That's how it gets a hold sometimes, but all the pieces that are coming off of the main vine are the branches, branches being those things that branch out from the source. In this case, we're talking here of a vine like a grapevine, and so, he's saying here that the branches ... I'm a little more experienced. We have a grapevine, I guess you'd say, outside of our kitchen window. We just kind of let it do what it's going to do, and just does what it's going to do. I mean, we sometimes go out and get grapes and things like that. It feeds the birds, yeah, pretty much. It feeds the outside wildlife, so we just let it do what it's going to do, and then sometimes, though, we kind of, for some reason, we care a little more about our ... no, For some reason, we care a little more about our roses. Well, some of them are bushes. Some of them are vines. We have a couple of them that are vine type. Am I saying that right? We have these two plants. One's a rose plant. and one is a, what's it called, a clematis on either side of our walkway as you walk up into the yard, and there's an arch trellis thing over the walkway, and these things crawl up, and they're like, I don't like you, and then they move away from each other. Actually, the clematis and the tree came together, and the clematis was wrapping around a tree limb and going, going up another way. It's just trying to get light, right? Because the tree's kind of shading it. And it's like, wait, where's the? Oh, OK. I'll follow that up there. But the vine there, whenever time comes, if there's not fruit coming on it, I'm usually like, what's up with these things? And I ask my wife. I'm like, why are these? What's going on? I asked her earlier. I said, are we going to have roses this year? Because there's nothing. and she told me they bloom in summer. And so me, as a husbandman, I would probably have just been like, you're not working. And I kind of don't mind the bush without the roses either, but because it kind of like blocks the dog from jumping the fence. There's like thorns and stuff and it keeps them away. So hopefully it didn't keep the other one from jumping the fence, but this one it does. But after they've bloomed, And after they've done, so the fruit of a rosebush would be what? Rosehips, right? That's technically the fruit, right? It flowers, and then you've got the little bud there that's left over at the end. Those are the rosehips. Or is it the bud that's before the flowering part? It's before. The rosehip is after. Bud before, rosehip after. So the bud and the rosehip are not the same thing. Okay, I learned something else. So after that's happened, What do you usually do with the fruit? Well, most of us Americans just are like, they're done, and we just cut them and throw it away, right? Usually, but now rosehips are actually, if you ever get those chewable vitamin C tablets at the store, you'll notice that it says rosehips. You can actually make your own vitamin C supplement out of rosehips. You crush it up and, You got vitamin C, or you could just eat it as is, I guess. I don't know. Make tea out of it, right? Yeah. And I guess it would taste rosy. I don't know. I've never had rose hip tea. But anyways, getting to the point here, if you let the roses go, we have found, because we've done that some years, we just let them go. But we found that they don't always grow right. if you just let them do what they're going to do. It's interesting that God has made plants with, now some plants do just fine, and they grow like crazy, and God's made some plants that way, but there are a lot of what we would call domestic plants that require pruning. They require working, right? Every year, I go out and I cut branches off the trees. People think, well, you cut branches off the trees. I'm training the tree to do what I want it to do instead of whatever it's going to do, which is grow all over the place, right? And we've got a tree in our yard. It's a hybrid willow. And it would just grow. It would just do whatever it wants. Matter of fact, it would have branches like this across one another. We were out there, Amelia and I were out there, and I was cutting, snipping little branches off that were just, I mean, they were crossing, and these branches would eventually damage the tree. I'm like, tree, what is wrong with you? Why are you doing something that is going to hurt yourself? You know, your own growth is going to kill you, right? So it requires that somebody, a husbandman, does something to maintain it, right? So here, Jesus says, my father is the husband one. Now, the vine itself, the source, usually doesn't need a lot of work done to it. It's what branch of the vine, right? So, after the year is over, and it's fall, and all the leaves have fallen off, and we look at our rose bush or our rose vine, how far back do you cut? the dead stuff off, the vines off. How far back do you cut that? To the one with five leaves, which is usually about past all the dead stuff. And then, it grows back miraculously. We've cut bushes all the way to the ground, and whoop, up they come. And that tree I was talking about in the front yard, you can take a stick off of that and stick it in the ground. and that stick will die, and then a tree will sprout out of the dead stick. It's amazing. It's interesting how God makes these things, and he makes these analogies, and he says here, every branch that in me beareth not fruit, he taketh away. We would do that, too, wouldn't we? We see any sort of branch that's not doing its job. What are we going to do with it? We're going to purge it, right? Well, in this case, we're going to take it away. We're actually going to snip it off and remove it. Every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it. In other words, it's bearing fruit. He's going to cut it back to make sure that it bears more. If you ever have a fruit tree, Usually, and what somebody told me to do with our grapevine, which I did the first year, they said any year that your grapevine is going to bear grapes but not bear edible grapes, right? Because some year you have like sour grapes and sometimes they're just not developed yet or whatever. If you know that it's a year that they're not going to be edible or it's not quite mature enough to produce edible grapes, as soon as the grapes start to show up remove them, cut them off, because it allows the rest of the tree or the rest of the plant to flourish. Same thing if you have an apple tree or pear tree. It grows the first couple of times that it bears the fruit, the pear, the apple, or whatever. Ours does it about every other year, but the first time that it bears, you're supposed to go along that thing and take every single one off so that the tree focuses its energy on growing itself rather than growing the fruit that's not going to be useful this year. In a spiritual way, there's the similar concept of purging what may not be useful even though fruit is being born. Make sense? And the reason that they do that is so that it bears more fruit. Because when you purge that one, now, we did this one year. And if I kept track of which years were the years that our pear tree gives us good pears, then if I kept track of that, I would pull the pears on the opposite year. And the next year, they would be fuller pears, and they would be juicier pears, and the tree would produce more of them because it didn't have to use as much of the nutrients that's in the tree to produce the ones the year before because they were perched. But here we have this. He brings it back around. He says, now you are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me. I wanted to give you some instruction. Now we're going to do some more preaching type here. It says, 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. You see, he's saying here that you cannot bear fruit of yourself. If you're born again tonight, praise God, But as you try sometimes, you cannot bear fruit of yourself without abiding in Christ. Now, you might say, well, wait a minute. Abide in Christ? I thought I was abiding in Christ because I'm saved. Evidently here, saved people can try to produce on their own. because evidently we're connected, right? We're connected to the branch. We're saved, right? We're connected to the branch. Now, don't misunderstand me here. Obviously, every picture and analogy in the Bible does break down. And here's the point where it breaks down. If you as a branch are removed because of lack of fruit, it's not saying that you've lost your salvation. What it's saying is you were removed from the planet, you're cut off, you're done because you stopped being useful to God. And I believe it's talking about born again people. This is what would be like the sin unto death, the fruit that's or the unfruitful servant, right? So what is this fruit? What is this fruit that a branch is to bear? Let's turn to Galatians chapter five. Galatians chapter five, and before we look at the fruit, we're gonna look at the opposite. We're gonna look at what we were and what we did before and what he says for us not to do anymore. Let's look at verse number 14. Galatians five. I'm actually looking to... We're actually gonna back up even further. Galatians five. Now we're going to start at the beginning of the chapter. Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Behold, I, Paul, say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to the whole law. Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law. ye are fallen from grace. This is those who say that they are, um, these are those that say that they're saved because of their works justified by the law. For we, through the spirit, wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Jesus Christ, there neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith, which worketh by love. ye did run well, who did hinder you that you should not obey the truth? This persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. I have confidence in you through the Lord that ye will be none otherwise minded, but he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be. And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, Do I yet suffer persecution? Then is the offense of the cross ceased? I would they were even cut off, which trouble you. For brethren, ye have been called unto liberty. Only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even this, that thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. Verse number 16, This I say then, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. Now let me say this from the perspective of John chapter 15. This I say then, this I say then, Abide in the vine that you fulfill, not the lust of the flesh. Abide in the vine. Walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh for the flesh lust against the spirit and the spirit lust and the spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary, the one to the other, so that you cannot do the things that you would. Got to walk in the spirit. This is extremely important. Now I want you guys, I want everybody to think very carefully about your walk tonight. I want you to consider what kind of fruit you are bearing. And actually, are you bearing fruit or are you bearing work? Are you bearing fruit or are you bearing lust? Right? And it's going to determine whether or not you abide in the vine or whether or not you're trying to nourish yourself and fulfill your own desires. I want you to think about that for a minute. These things that are listed ahead are going to define where you are in your walk with the Lord. They're going to define whether or not you're controlled by God or controlled by yourself. Verse number 18. If you be led of the spirit, you're not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest. In other words, they're seen, they're known. Which are these? Adultery. This is sexual relationship with someone that you're not married to. This is actually specifically with someone that you are or that either you're married or they're married or both of you are married, but you're not married to one another. Adultery. Fornication. This is premarital marriage relationships, premarital sex. Uncleanness. This has to do with an unclean mind, has to do with dirty thoughts. lasciviousness. This has to do with the three things before that with no bridal and with no restraint going after it like a sheep to the slaughter, going after it like a fool to the stocks. Remember the word of God in Proverbs says that by means of a horse woman, a man is brought to a piece of bread. These four things here are all relating to that physical lust of the flesh having to do with fornication. Number 20 here, verse number 20, idolatry. That's putting anything, anything, anything, anything before God. Anything at all. Having any desire that you'll say, anything that you'll say no to God about is an idol. God says, get rid of that, and you say, no, it's an idol. Witchcraft. Say, well, nobody performs witchcraft these days. Oh, yeah, people certainly do. People actively perform witchcraft. Disney? Yes, sir? Wanting something that's wrong or sin? You're not necessarily praying for it, but you are praying for it when you dwell upon it, and you look for situations, and you almost cast a spell. You have a sin that you're desiring, and you forget it's witchcraft. You project it, and you send it out in thoughts, and how you replace yourself. Yeah, certainly. Yeah. By the way, rebellion, the Bible says, is as the sin of witchcraft. rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. That's when you know authority, when you see authority, and you say, eh, not my problem, as the sin of witchcraft. Yes, that too. Yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You got to be careful how tied up you get into Hollywood, because Hollywood is full of witchcraft. Absolutely, positively full of witchcraft. And it's in churches, too, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Witchcraft is rampant these days. But we just like, oh, no, we don't do witchcraft. We're not witches. We're not witches. Let me see that phone there. Phone. The word here, witchcraft. Sorry, I'll pick back up here in a minute. Witchcraft. The word witchcraft is the word pharmakia. Oh yeah, drug use. Witchcraft has to do with perverting reality with outside means, whether it's spells, whether it's herbs, whether it's any kind of drug, alcohol. What's that? Yeah, that's witchcraft. Occult. Yes, a lot of it. I mean, there might be something here and there you might find that's not, but for the most part, yes. Witchcraft. Hatred. Say, well, I don't hate anybody. Is there anybody that if their name's brought up, you feel bad? It upsets you when you think about a certain person? Is there any certain person when you think about that person, you're like, ugh. Nobody I know. Nobody you know. Well, wait a minute. How can you be upset about someone? Hey, hatred is wrong no matter who you're hating. Yeah, I know somebody's gonna say, well, you gotta hate the devil. Okay, I'll give you that one. But I think probably we should maybe just love God. The devil doesn't deserve any of your time in your head. I think the Bible says give not place to the devil. I think that might include hatred. Yeah. Oh yeah, if you can exalt him in any way, even if it's exalting him in hatred, he'd be happy for that. Variants, having to do with being at odds with people. Emulations, this emulations has to do with a friction style, like a one-upmanship, like a Jealousy, but emulations is kind of like, now emulations in some sense, in the neutral sense, the word emulate, or to emulate or have emulations, it has to do with some sort of competition, right? And in some ways, it has to do with, it actually has, it's not just competition, it has to do with being like someone else. Like if you want to emulate someone, it's you're trying to be like them. Emulations has to do with trying to be like somebody, but taking the edge over. Like, I'm, oh, you've done this? Well, I've done that and this. Right now it's okay to excel, but if you're only excelling for the purpose of being better than someone else, that's not right. It's not good. Yeah, sure. Or sometimes they don't make it better. They just copy it. Um, wrath. The wrath of man, even if you don't think it's wrath, the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God ever. What about righteous indignation? Settle down. Settle down. You're not capable of that. The Lord is, but you're not because you don't have control over your flesh. Unfortunately, strife. By the way, you'll notice that some of these things are kind of grouped to a certain degree, right? Strife. Strife has to do with, again, like a friction. Strife, right? Stirring up of strife. Strife is where there's trouble, right? There's trouble, there's friction between you and someone else. Seditions, that has to do with not only having rebellion, but trying to spread rebellion among other people. That's what sedition is. Sedition has to do with trying to raise up rebellion against an authority. That's seditions. Heresies. Y'all know what that is, right? False doctrine, heresy. False doctrines. Envyings. You desire to have someone else's things and position You want what they have and you resent them for it. Murders. That's obvious, right? Yeah, absolutely. He hated his brother as a murderer. Being angry with your brother without a cause is murder. He says, what else? Drunkenness. And revelings, revelings like party, riotous living, right? Revelings is where you get excited about the three things that the world loves, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. That's revelings. Oh, and just in case we missed yours, and such like. But let me tell you something here. These works, are not the works of God's people. Notice what it says next. Of the which I tell you before, as I have told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, there's a list like this over in 1 Corinthians, right? It says the same thing, should not inherit the kingdom of God. And then it goes on to say, and such were some of you, but you're washed, you're cleansed, right? That stuff ought to be, absolutely should be before your salvation. Now, hopefully there's not very much of it back there, but if there is any of that in your life, it ought to be back before your salvation, before you got saved. because that's not the kind of stuff that saved people are involved in. Let's read it again. Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like. Of the witch I tell you before, as I've told you, in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." This is kind of serious, I would say, maybe just a little bit serious. And we live in a day that people call themselves Christians, and they think it's normal to run around and carouse and have marital relationships with people they're not married to. And we live in a day that people call themselves Christians, and they like to have hatred toward other people constantly. They like to pick fights with people. They like to have emulation and strife. We live in a day of people that love to enjoy partying and drunkenness. And we live in a day, and they call themselves Christians, and we live in a day when people just like to grab a hold of any one of these things and just have fun with it. Let me say, that's not the kind of stuff that comes off the branches that are abiding in the vine. In fact, the word of God says it ought not to be once named among you as becoming saints. Many of these things, these aren't the kind of things that ought to be. That's not the fruit that the vine bears. That's the kind of stuff that isn't even attached. That's a different tree altogether. That's a tree of iniquity. That's a tree of, I'll do what I want no matter what you say. That's not a child of God. Now you say, well, is it possible maybe somebody just backslid or something? Not my problem. I'm just telling you what the word of God says. I love you and if you're not saved, get saved. And I'll rejoice with you about it. Even if it means that you have been lying about your salvation and running in these things and all that, I'm happy to rejoice with you for getting saved. Amen. But the fruit of the spirit though, this is the happy stuff. This is the good stuff. The fruit of the spirit. This is the stuff, by the way, notice it says the fruit of the spirit, not the fruit of me. It's the fruit of the spirit. Remember in John chapter 15, that he said that the branch cannot bear fruit of itself. You see, if the branch tries to bear fruit of itself, that's the stuff it's doing. That's what the branch can produce all on its own. It can produce all these works of the flesh, because the branch is fleshly, if it's trying to do that on its own. That's the kind of stuff. That's what we produce, but the fruit of the spirit is love. It's not some perverted worldly love. This is true love, looking out for God's best interest in every person around you. to be for yourself. The fruit of the spirit is joy. You know what all these other things cause? Hangovers, guilt, and regret. Mm-hmm, right. They don't produce joy. There's pleasure in sin for a season. But guess what? Payday's coming, and the wages of sin is death. But the fruit of the spirit is joy. Be excited about what God's doing. Not just us being excited, like we've worked up some excitement, but we have deep joy because we have, oh, the next one, peace with God. Peace with God. We love God. And so we keep his commandments. We love God and we love others. We have that joy. By the way, you can't produce these things. These aren't things you can do. This is the fruit of the spirit. These are things that you observe happening in your life because the spirit of God is in control. These aren't things that, oh, I got to work on loving better. Oh, you can try, but you're failing. You don't fail. The spirit of God produces love. He said, I need to be happier in life. I need to have more joy. No, joy only comes from the Spirit of God. By the way, the only way that joy can be full is when you're walking in the light. T is in the light, right? That's what he says in 1 John 1. But if you walk in the light, as he is in the light, right? He says, these things write I unto you that you may have fellowship with him, right? These things write I unto you that your joy may be full. And how do we have fullness of joy? Only by the fellowship with him. only by the spirit of God. And we have that. And by the way, it's not only joy, but it's joy, unspeakable and full of glory. Amen. Amen. Oh, the half has never yet been told. Amen. Peace. You know how much peace there is when there's not guilt. That's right. Life's peaceful. Long-suffering, that one's hard sometimes. To suffer long, to have difficulty coming upon us, and to live with it. Not endure like, oh, wonder when this is gonna be over. Long-suffering has to do with, it doesn't shake you. It happens. You suffer long. with peace and joy in the midst of suffering. This has to do with, and people say, well, that word there, it means patience. It doesn't exactly mean patience. Long suffering is pretty well descriptive of itself. Long suffering. That means you suffer long. By the way, the word suffer doesn't always mean that you're being punished. Sometimes it means that you're allowing something to happen, right? So like Jesus said, suffer the little children to come into me. It didn't mean make them suffer as they come to me. Didn't mean break some glass as they're walking over. He meant allow them to come, right? Come unto me, right? So long suffering means that sometimes you have to allow things that you don't like for a while, or allow things that aren't maybe your, ideal situation, right? We suffer long. By the way, this is for the spirit. So as we find ourselves becoming impatient with the time frame that we have to suffer, that's our flesh, that's us. Sometimes that means we need to back up and we need to get some things right with God so that we can handle that so that the Spirit of God and the fruit of the Spirit of God shows up in our life and we can suffer long instead of being short fused or trying to hurry to stuff that we need to wait for. Gentleness. Oh man, it's supposed to be rough. David said, thy gentleness hath made me great. Gentleness. Jesus said to learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in spirit. Gentle, means we're not rough and harsh and mean. And when we are, guess what? Can't say you're full of spirit, because the fruit of the spirit's not showing up in that area. Then what happens? Goodness, goodness, as opposed to evilness, right? Goodness, it's good things, right? A desire for, oh, I hate to say it this way, positivity, right? Goodness, right? It's you're just, you're hoping the best, regardless of what's up, right? Good, goodness. And that's what's coming from you, right? You look at the opposite of that and oftentimes you're going to see what, that everybody's always looking at the worst thing in everything, right? Oh man, this is going on and this and that and so on. Well, it could be worse. Well, at least you got an attitude that it could be worse and it's not as bad as it could be, but it ought to be that, hey, life's good. Life's good, you know, life's good even when life's bad. What, what? If you're full of the spirit, if you're filled with the spirit of God and the fruit of the spirit is showing up in your life, bad things you recognize are for your good. Say, well, why would this, why, you know, why this bad thing? Remember the Bible says that God works all things together for good to them that love God. I think all things probably means. more than just a little couple of few things. I think it probably means more than just the things that you think are positive good things. I think it means all things. I think it means your sicknesses. I think it means your loss. I think it means your difficulty. I think it means whether you're poor or whether you're destitute or whether you've got everything you need. I think all things means every circumstance of your life. Now, that doesn't mean that God's making those things happen to you. Most of the time, it's your fault, right? We bring it on ourselves, right? Cause and effect. But in those circumstances, in those things, he works them together, sometimes more than one thing at a time, for good. The next verse tells us that it is so that you can be conformed to the image of his son. so that you can be more like Jesus. Goodness. Faith. Sometimes we like to take things into our own hands, right? We don't like to trust God. We like to say, well, I have to, well, you fill in the blank. We say it all the time. I have to. Well, maybe you do, but you could also trust God. By the way, trusting God doesn't mean that you say, Okay, God, I trust you're gonna take care of me. Your word says you're gonna take care of me. I'm gonna seek first your kingdom. I'm gonna read your Bible all day long, every day, and do nothing else. And you're gonna take care of me, because your word says, seek first the kingdom and your righteousness, and all these things should be added unto me. I think he kind of missed a few other things that the rest of his word might have said, like, you know, about diligence and all that kind of thing and consider the ant thou sluggard and all that, you know, those are kind of, you know, some important things to think about. But just because we do doesn't mean we can't trust. Right? In fact, the Word of God says, the just shall live It says that we live by faith and we walk by faith. Well, I think that means that not only do we trust God and believe, but we put that trust and belief into action and we walk by faith, right? It's kind of like, you know, the fellow that prayed for rain because there was a drought and his daughter went and got his umbrella as he was getting ready to leave and says, And he's like, what, what do you give me this for? It's not raining. She said, well, didn't you pray for rain? What do you expect? You ask God for something. You probably ought to prepare for it because he's going to do it. At least if you believe, if you asked in faith, why would you, why would you ask God to do something and then just expect him not to do it? By the way, most of the time when that's the case, it's because you're asking God to do something that you know is not His will. So faith, meekness, meekness. Through the Spirit is meekness. Know what that means? It means, and you know, we like to say strength under control. I just say it's under control. Whether it's strength, weakness, whatever it is, it's under control. And meekness and temperance go together. And that has to do with you being, and by the way, whose fruit was this again? Spirit's. Well, that would mean that you're under his control. This is produced by him. Therefore, when you're picked at, right, and you say you better quit it, you better quit it, but you suffer long. And because you're meek, and you suffer long, that you better quit it never ends. Then go on for years. And you say, I don't appreciate that, but not my problem to deal with you. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, right? He'll take care of it. Lord will take care of it. I'll just trust in him by faith. I'll be gentle, good, meek, and suffer long, and temperate. Because the spirit is in control, not me. Right? How do we know when we're in control? We blow up on everybody, right? trying to wake some people up. We blow up! I didn't work. Man, sleeps like a rock. When we're in control, guess what? We're not. You just think you are. You think you're in control. You think you got it all figured out. But guess what? Your attitude and your actions prove you wrong every moment. because you can't even control simple things. You know what? That's OK, because we're not supposed to be in control. We're supposed to let him be in control. Temperance has to do with going through the fire and becoming stronger because of it. Oftentimes, it's something I say often, and people look at me strange, like, what? I say a temper. is a wonderful thing to have. It is. It is great to have a temper. It is bad when you lose your temper. Temperance is having a temper. It's having a temperament that is unbreakable. Means that no matter what comes upon you, no matter what stress, no matter what fire, no matter what pain, no matter what anguish, no matter what comes upon you, you won't break. That comes from the Holy Spirit. Temperance means that no matter what happens, when I say break, I mean snap, whatever you want to call it, fly off the handle, lose your temper, blow up, whatever word, whatever phrase you want to use there to describe whatever it is. Because people say, oh, I didn't lose my temper. I just slipped up. You lost your temper. Temper was broken. And the reason the temper was broken is because you haven't been tempered enough. The only way to be tempered enough is to go back into the fire and long and suffer long. The only way to be tempered enough is to allow yourself to be put into a situation where you're tested and make sure that you get out before you break. By the way, you can't do that. You can't walk into a situation to be tested and then plan to step out before you blow up. Because this matter of temperance is God's job. He's the one that tempers you. So when you're getting close to that end of that, you say, Lord, I'm supposed to be under the control of your spirit. I'm supposed to be producing the fruit of the spirit. I don't want to live after the flesh. Help me, Lord. I can't do it. You know, I have found that there is much more victory. Almost out of battery, so we got to finish up. I have found that there is much more victory. over any sin that you're talking about, when you realize that you cannot be victorious, but he can. Abide in the vine, and you will bring forth much fruit. Do it on your own, and you'll fail. Let's pray.