All right, you can return to
John chapter 14. In verse 15 of John chapter 14, our Lord says, if
you love me, you will obey what I command. or a stricter translation could
be, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. These words were spoken to the
disciples in the upper room where they had observed the Passover
meal, the one at which our Lord had established what we call
the Lord's table. In chapter 13, he had given them
an illustration of the ministry that they would conduct in the
future as he washed their feet. As the servants of God's household,
their job would not be to lord it over the people in the household. Rather, like servants, they would
wash the feet of God's people. And he did not mean literal foot
washing as some churches practice. I don't know if any in this area
do, but particularly in what you would call the rural or country
churches where I come from, and the more they tend towards a
Pentecostal type of religion, the more they believe that you
have three ordinances. The ordinance of baptism, the
ordinance of the Lord's table, and the ordinance of foot washing.
Because the Lord had said to the disciples, what I'm doing
to you, you are to do for your brethren. And so they, every
once in a while, and I don't know how often they practice
it, but people come to church and then everybody's supposed
to wash somebody else's feet. And I've always thought, I bet
you nobody shows up with dirty feet. Because that would be talked
about. Can you imagine, you know, you stick your gnarly feet out
there and whoever has to wash your feet is going to go around.
Good grief, I tell you. This is supposed to be a nice
light little service. I had to scrub. Nobody comes
with dirty feet to those things. But our Lord also said to them,
what I am doing you do not understand. Well, they understood he was
washing their feet. He knew that, or they knew that. What they didn't know was what
significance that had. And I'll say this, when I understood
that this was not simply a an illustration
that we should be humble-hearted towards one another. Because
our Lord humbled Himself, didn't He? He says He took off His robe,
you know, and men wore an undergarment under their robe in those days
because often their work required them to take their outer clothing
off to give them more freedom of movement. But then He would
have been dressed like a servant. And you know, it's exactly what
the book of Philippians says in chapter 2. He says, let this
mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in
very nature God and for whom it would not have been robbery
to be equal with God, he made himself of no reputation and
took the form of a servant. There's nothing wrong with looking
at our Lord's example of foot washing and taking it in the
general sense that we should be humble towards one another, willing
to serve one another. But there's something more involved
in this, and that the foot washing represents the removal of filth.
It is a picture of the forgiveness of sins by Jesus Christ. And this particular ministry
is for those who have already been washed clean in the sense
of a whole body wash. Because remember, he came to
Peter, and Peter said, you'll never wash my feet. And the Lord
says, if I don't wash your feet, you have no part in me. And Peter
said, well, then wash all of me. And the Lord says, you don't
have need. for a whole bath. You just need
that your feet be washed. And what that is indicating,
that as we walk through our lives as believers, and none of us
can avoid this, our feet get dirty. We continue to sin, don't we? I don't know about you, but I
haven't stopped. I'd like to, but I haven't. And
I know that sin whether it bears down on me in a sense of guilt
before God, or even if it just grieves me that I have done it. And I assume that any of you
believers, it's the same way with you. Your sin, as fun as
it looks before you do, it always It never pays. Sin never pays.
It never gives what it promises. And God's people come into the
assembly like this. They gather together. And they
may not show it. We've learned how to put on the
happy face for everybody when we're at church. But it may be
that our heart is broken inside. What am I supposed to do? Am
I supposed to stand back there at the doors of the foyer as
you come in, examine your feet, and point out the dirt? No, as
a servant of the church, as a servant of Christ, as a servant of God,
my job is to do the work of a servant in a household, which is wash
the feet of the guests. And through the preaching of
the gospel, that's what I always want to do for God's people.
I always want to be like the prophet Nathan was to David.
Once David confessed his sin, what did Nathan say? The Lord
has forgiven your sin. You will not die. I want that kind of message to
ring in the ears of all of God's people every time they come.
Somehow or another, I want to get that message across. You
who believe God, yes, you came in here with dirty feet. Let
me preach you. Let me take the water of the
Word and wash your feet and remind you once again, the blood of
Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin. Now, you know,
young men, as I once was, you know, we tend to be kind of like
we're going to build something. I mean, that's just the nature.
And I guess it's a good thing, young men, to never do anything.
You know, we think we're going to establish a business, or build
a household, or in the case of a minister like me, we're going
to build a ministry. And boy, what a tiresome job that is.
And you look at the people, and you try to see what's wrong,
and then you try to fix it. And there's nothing that I've
ever tried to fix that I didn't make worse. At least not to my
memory. I can't think of anything I've
tried to fix that I didn't make it worse. And when I discovered, oh, what
a relief. What a relief. Making the people behave right
is not my job. Yes, it's my job to show what
is right from the scriptures, but it's not my heart, not my
part, not my job to go snooping around in your life. And if I
see something out of order, come knocking on your door and give
you a sharp rebuke and say, here's what you need to do. My job,
my primary job as a pastor, a shepherd, an under shepherd over a small
bit of the Lord's flock. to come here every Sunday and
remind you your sins are forgiven. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,
says the Lord. Tell her that her sins are forgiven. I like that. Judas is already left to carry
out his wicked deed. The Lord Jesus has already told
them that He was going away and that they would not be able to
follow Him where He was going. And when Peter heard that boast,
he said he'd follow the Lord even unto death. And the Lord said, Will you? Will you really? And told Peter
that before the rooster signaled the beginning of tomorrow, He
would deny the Lord three times. But in the face of such confusing
and bewildering statements, the Lord says in verse 1 of chapter
14, Do not let your hearts be troubled. Chapter 14, verse 1. And I want
you to think here, what tenderness our Lord displays here. How much
He knows us. He knew that the things he had
said, and one of the things he had
said was that one of them was going to betray him. And then they'd heard him say
to Judas, whatever you've got in mind to do, go do it quickly. They're confused. And he said,
I'm leaving and you can't follow me. And the Lord says, when the
Lord says that, Peter says, no, Lord, you know, wherever you
go, you know, as that hymn goes, where you lead me, I will follow,
you know, and we make those boasts. The Lord said, no, Peter. And you know, I'm sure that when
Peter said that, he fully intended to do that. But the Lord did not need Peter
to lay down his life for him. Peter needed the Lord to lay
down his life for Peter. And in preparation to prepare
Peter for the ministry that he would be given, the Lord said this before the
rooster crows three times, You will deny me three times. Can you imagine how that crushed
Peter? Everything else our Lord had
ever said came true. But what does the Lord say? The
next words out of the Lord's mouth, don't let your heart be
troubled. Don't be troubled about my departure.
Don't trouble yourself with Judah's departure. Don't trouble yourselves
about concerns over your failures. Let not your heart be troubled. Why? He says, you believe God? You trust God? Trust me. Our Lord is cluing them in on
who He is. No one, no mere man Not even
like the man Christ Jesus would have the right to say, you trust
God, and in the same breath say, now trust me, unless that man
is also God. Now I might say to you from time
to time, trust me. Trust me. But I don't mean it. in the same sense I would mean
it if I said, trust God. You can trust God completely.
Me, God agreed me on a curve, a pretty curvy one too. I'll try to do right by you.
I will try to preach what is truth. I will try to manage the
affairs of this congregation as a congregation. to the best
of my wisdom and ability to know what is right. But I realized
I got limitations. So if any time I said trust me,
I certainly don't mean you trust in God, trust me. No. Our Lord said trust in God, trust
also in me, and The indication was, you trust
in God, trust me the same way. And nobody but God could say
that. I don't know that they caught
on to that. You know, our Lord said several times in the scriptures,
I'm telling you this now, I'm talking to you this way now so
that later you'll understand what I mean. But what tenderness here our
Lord says, instead of allowing them to wallow in their trouble
and confusion, He says, don't let your heart be troubled. And
think of this, at this present time, His soul was troubled over
much deeper things, much more horrible things in His future
than these disciples would be thinking of. Their heart troubles
were real and legitimate. They were confused, and their
expectations of the continued presence of the Lord Jesus had
just been swept away. But in Mark, in chapters 8 and
9, Jesus had told his disciples that he would die at the hands
of the religious leaders, and in John 12, He got more specific,
saying that he would be lifted up, indicating the means by which
they would kill him. Crucifixion. And he had said, my heart, my soul is exceedingly
sorrowful. But what shall I say? Father,
deliver me from this hour. It is for this hour that I came
into the world. So I'm thinking here, yes, the
disciples are troubled. And if I'd been among them, I
would have been among the troubled. I wouldn't have been sitting
there saying, oh, OK, everything's good. No, I would have been wondering,
what does he mean by all this? What does he mean he's going
away and we can't go where he's going? Of course, if they'd known
where he's going, they'd have said, yeah, we don't want to
go there. At least not the first part of it. But while they were troubled,
he was troubled more. He was so deeply troubled, he
could barely face what lay ahead for him in the next few hours.
But who is he thinking about? His disciples should have been
surrounding him saying, Lord, you've got a tough road to go. And they should have been praying
for Him. They should have been praying with Him. They should
have been saying, Lord, God has promised you'll be successful.
They should have been lifting Him up. They weren't doing any
of that. They didn't understand. And they were occupied with their
own troubles. But our Lord, who is facing the
worst troubles that any human being has ever faced up to that
time, and the worst they'll ever face since that human beings
would ever face since then. Worse, he lays aside his own
concerns and says to them, don't let your heart be troubled. Our Lord is ever the burden bearer
to his people. So rather than lean on them as
he bears the inestimable burden of the things that lay ahead
of him, he calls on them to lean on him. You know, if someone didn't know
anything else about the Lord Jesus, that alone should make
them stand in great respect of him. As the hour of his greatest trial
approaches, he still calls on his disciples, lean on me, trust
in me. He tells them while it's true
that he's going away, his going away is for the purpose of preparing
a place for them in his father's household. They don't know how
that has to be done. They don't know the soul-grinding
experience that he must go through to prepare that place. But that's why he's leaving,
and he assures them of this. He says, and if I go and prepare
If I go away to prepare a place for you, I will come again and
receive you unto Myself, that where I am, there ye may be also."
You know, probably in all the Scriptures you cannot find a
clearer declaration that all for whom Christ died shall be
saved. He didn't say, if I go to prepare
a place for you, and you believe in Me, and make a decision for
Jesus, and walk the straight and narrow, I will come back
and receive you to Myself. He says, if I prepare a place
for you, I'll come back and get you. You know, people, I've heard
free will preachers, they want to talk about empty mansions
in heaven. Jesus went and prepared these
mansions, but the people wouldn't accept Him. And so there they
stand empty. Really? He said, if I go prepare a place
for you, I'm coming back to get you. I'm going to take you to
that place so that you and I will be together forever. Our plea is not that we believed.
Our confidence is not that on some certain day, hearing some
certain message, we decided to let Jesus save us. Our confidence
is this. He died. I suppose I could look it up
and I'm sure it comes from a hymn, but I don't know how many times
in the six years that I was a member at 13th Street Baptist Church,
I can't remember how many times it was I heard Henry say, this
is my hope, this is my plea, that when he died, he died for
me. Now if you go around telling
everybody that Christ died for them, Well then, you cannot make
your hope and your plea that Christ died for you, because
it's going to end up that a lot of people Christ died for are
going to go to hell. But friend, that can't happen.
The Lord will not allow that to happen. Now it's in this context that
the Lord says, if you love Me, you'll keep My commandments.
The first thing we should do is verify just exactly what is
said here. The way that it's written in
the Greek of the New Testament, it can be taken several ways. It could be considered a command.
And this is the way the King James Version handles it. If
you love me, keep my commandments. Now the reason you can take it
that way is that in most languages, including Greek and the Hebrew
of the Old Testament, and actually in our language, commands can
be given simply by using the future tense. Now think of the
Ten Commandments. Not a one of them says, you must. Every one of them is just a statement
that says, you shall not murder. Well, that sounds like a prediction,
not a command. Well, it's just one of the characteristics
of most languages, that you can issue a command simply by using
the future tense. And that's what the Lord has
done here. That is, it says, if you love me, You will keep
my commandments, or because it's a simple future statement, you
could turn that into a command. If you love me, keep my commandments. Either way works. To show you how we use that in
our language, if one of our children steps out of line, we might say,
you are grounded for a week. You will come home directly from
school. You will go to your room. You
will not take your cell phone. You will leave your computer
turned off. These are all just statements about the future,
but they are understood as commands. I believe that our translation
probably gets it right, but we're going to be free to use it both
ways, because both ways are true. It's a good exhortation. You
say you love me? If you love me, keep my commandments. And it's also true this way.
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Now the first thing for us to
notice about our Lord's words is that commandments are not
contrary to the gospel. When God is pleased to deliver
us from the bondage of works religion, we might tend to resist
any kind of commandment. particularly if the ones who
had preached to us in the past used the commandments to bring
you under a sense of bondage again under fear. What a miserable
life that is. It says, do this, do this, do
this. And people say, OK, I'm going
to try to do this. But no matter how much they do,
and I've noticed this about legalistic religion, no matter how well
you do, legalistic religion will find a way to tell you it's not
good enough. And you know, here's the thing,
they're right. Because no matter how well you
do, It won't be good enough. The crack of the whip and the
chafe of the harness are too fresh for us. And anything that
sounds like the commandments that were once used to bring
us into bondage make us resist tolerating anything that sounds
like those old commandments. but there is no bondage in our
Lord's commands. Not for the believer there isn't. There's no burdensome toil in
the Lord's commands. He calls on no others but those
who love him and would love to keep His commands,
and that love takes the burden from the command. For example, say you go to the maternity ward
at the hospital. And you see a woman, and she's
dressed in scrubs. She works in the, where they
keep the babies, you know? And she goes in there, and she
picks out one of those babies, and holds it, and sticks a bottle
in its mouth, and the baby starts to eat, and when the baby's done,
she puts it down, goes on to the next one. And when her shift
is done, she goes home. Even if the baby's crying. Why? Well, she's there, and I
don't want to take away, I realize there are nurses, and bless their
heart, they're angels. They love what they're doing.
But understand, they're doing it to get paid, too. But in walks
another woman, she isn't wearing scrubs. She might still be wearing
one of those hospital gowns, because she's the one that gave
birth to that baby just the day before. And she goes in there,
and she picks up that child. And she feeds it. And if the
child is still a little fussy, keeps working with it, figuring
out what's wrong, why isn't this baby happy, why isn't this baby
satisfied, checking it over. And so long as she is able, she
will care for and tend to that baby. You don't have to put a
clock on it. Why? Love. Love. It's amazing what love makes
people do. It's amazing what love enables
people to do. People think they're coming to
the end of their rope. They think they can't do anymore. And yet, their love for those
that need their care enables them to do things they never
would have thought possible. The commands of the world are
burdensome. In 1 John 5, the Lord said, everyone
who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone
who loves the Father loves his child as well. This is how we
know that we love the children of God, by loving God and carrying
out His commands. This is love for God, to obey
His commands, and His commands, listen to this, are not burdensome. They aren't. The Lord said, Come
unto me, all you who are wore out, weary, and heavy laden, carrying
heavy burdens. You come to me, I will give you
rest. Now, I know this, you cannot
A person comes to you, and he's been carrying around a heavy
burden, and he's just at the end of himself, and he's staggering
under the load, and you say, come to me and I'll give you
rest. You cannot give him rest by adding to the load. The only way you can give him
any kind of rest is to increase his strength, or as our Lord
says, take my yoke upon you and learn of me, in which He said
here, Hook up with me, I'll carry the load. I'll carry it. The commands of the world are
burdensome. The world commands us to do things we do not want
to do. It always sets before us a standard
to reach. And if we reach that standard,
it will raise the standard. It dazzles our eyes with riches,
then makes us slaves to riches, reaching always for more. I'm
not exempting myself. Someone asked, and I believed,
I think it was John D. Rockefeller. This was the original
one, way back. He said, how much is enough?
And he said, just a little bit more. Doesn't matter how much we get,
the world puts on us the pressure to reach for more. And we weary ourselves in the
pursuit of it. And we let the world take more
and more of our time and energy. And this has ill effects for
us in all situations, but all how it affects the child of God
when they get into that trap. And it begins to encroach upon
their opportunities and their strength
and energy to worship the Lord. The world does the same thing
with fame and reputation and power and all those things. I don't know if it works, but
I've seen this picture before. You know, if they wanted a mule,
you know, like to run maybe a cane press. You know, they go round
and round and round all day. They would strap a stick to its
head that went out, you know, a couple of feet ahead of him
and then dangle a carrot there. And, of course, the mule wants
the carrot, so he steps forward to get that carrot. Of course,
as soon as he steps forward, the carrot keeps moving with
him, and he'll go all day long, around and around and around,
trying to catch that carrot. Oh, the commands of the world
are burdensome. The commands of the religious
world are relentlessly burdened. Rules are always increased. Nearly
every religious group keeps adding to the list of rules, keeps adding
to the restrictions, keeps making it harder and harder and harder
to meet the standard and find any kind of rest for the soul,
any opportunity to just sit down and go... I saw the bulletin of a local
church here one time, and I mean, you know, we fill ours with articles
because I think that's good and helpful to us. Theirs was full
of a week of scheduled events. Here's one of the things, if
a church, if most churches ever gave their people an opportunity
to rest, they'd start losing members. You've got to keep them
busy. You've got to keep them involved.
You've got to have this promotion, this program, this exciting thing
to do. And that keeps them coming and
keeps them working. And then there's the commands
of our flesh, and they're horribly burdensome. The flesh exerts
such great power over us because the flesh is us. It tempts us
with all manner of pleasures, many if not most of which are
not appropriate to the people of God. But when we obey the
flesh, it never gives us what we hoped for. Second thing to notice about
our Lord's words is the connection between loving Him and keeping
His commandments. Whether it should be translated
as our translation says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Or if we take it like the King
James and some of the older translations take it, if you love me, keep
my commandments. Either way, keeping His commandments
is based on loving Him. Loving Him. Our Lord did not
say, if you want to escape hell, keep my commandments. He did
not say, if you want to go to heaven and get one of those mansions
I spoke about, keep my commandments. If you want to advance in your
Christian walk and become a super-Christian, Keep my commandments. If you
want to earn extra rewards in heaven, keep my commandments. If you want me to be especially
pleased with you, keep my commandments. Instead, he said this, if you
love me, keep my commandments. Can I say this? If you don't
love Him, it would be a waste of time for you to keep His commandments. Then you'd just be one more religious
person in the world trying to earn his blessings, and those
commandments would become such a burden to you. This big if removes any motivation
that can provide a platform for pride. If you love me, keep my commandments. Why do we love him? In the book
of 1 John it says, we love him because he first loved us. So
if we love him, we can't even take credit for our love. Much
less could we take credit for any obedience that arises from
our love. If you love me. Now, about this
fact, there can be no doubt or confusion. We may wonder whether
we trust him. But we cannot be in doubt as
to whether we love him. John Newton famously wrote, "'Tis
a point I long to know, and oft it gives me anxious thought.
Do I love the Lord or no? Am I his or am I not?" Now, if
John Newton had just left it there, we'd have said, John,
I would. You know whether or not you love
the Lord. You go and read the rest of the poem, you find out
why He said that. If I loved Him, would I act like
this? If I loved Him, would prayer
be difficult to do? If I loved Him, you know, just
things that He sees in His life that seem to run contrary to
loving Him, loving Christ. But at the end, He says, I humbly answer, yes. Oh, what a horrible failure on
the part of Peter. Denied the Lord three times.
I say a horrible fall. You know, all the other disciples
forsook him and fled. They just didn't stick around
long enough to get challenged about whether they knew him.
Peter was close to the Lord. He was right there where the
Lord was being tried and being abused. And somebody came up
and said, weren't you one of his disciples? All the others
had fled and nobody ever even asked, weren't you one of his
disciples? They would have denied him too. Nonetheless, can you
imagine how Peter felt? Oh my, to deny someone like that. And after the resurrection, on
one occasion when our Lord met with His disciples, He took Peter
aside and three times He asked Peter, do you love me? And each
time Peter said yes. And it says when the Lord asked
him the third time, it really grieved Peter that He asked him
three times. And I don't think it was just
the fact that it was three times. He knew why it was three times
that He was asked. He denied the Lord three times.
So the Lord asked him three times. And you know what Peter said?
I love this. He said, Lord, you know all things and you know
that I love you. Love does not preclude failure. But isn't it interesting that
the Lord did not seek to lay a burden on Peter? but took Peter
to the heart of the matter. Peter, do you love me? Yeah. Well, let's just forget that
denial business then, okay? You fell down. But here you are. When you denied me, I knew you
loved me. I knew it then, I know it now.
The one who didn't know it for sure was Peter. But here's the
thing about love. One way to prove love is to deny
it, to put it in question. Love won't tolerate that. Tell a parent, you don't love
your children. Some of them, it may be true.
But I'll tell you, you say that to a parent that loves their
child, they might say, look, I know I don't always treat them
right. All that I should have or all that I could have for
Him, didn't always know what to do, but let me tell you this,
I do love them. And don't you ever suggest I
don't. That's the nature of love. Oftentimes, our actions toward
the Lord certainly seem to contradict any claim to love Him. Love cannot be denied. It's stronger than the grave. It burns like a blazing fire.
So the Lord says, if you love Me, keep My commandments. Now, what
are the commandments of the Lord? Maybe I should have got here
quicker, but we'll go through them. I don't think they take
a whole lot of explanation. Look at John chapter 13, verse
34. A new command I give you, love
one another. As I have loved you, so you must
love one another. By this, all men will know that
you are my disciples if you love one another. Boy, wouldn't it have been easier
if the Lord had said, by this the whole world will know you're
my disciples if you read 10 chapters of the Bible every day. If you
pray an hour every day. If you give your 10% plus a little
more to the church, the world will know you're my disciple. Those of us that do not believe
we are under the law given on Mount Sinai, often they say,
well, then you just believe you can do anything you want. You
believe you can just go out there and kill people. You believe
you can go out and commit adultery. No, we don't believe those things,
because none of those things could come under the category
of love. We've been given a much higher
law than the law given to a bunch of rebellious people. We have
been reconciled to God. We've been made to love Him.
And we love the things He loves. Our grief, our burden in this
world is not that we must do what He said. Our grief and our
burden is we can't get it done. Our burden is not in the keeping.
Our burden is in the failing. A fellow confronted Walter Groover. He's with the Lord now, but he
was a missionary in Mexico for 50, 60 years. He preached a message
of grace, and a guy came up to him afterwards and said, if I
believed that, I'd sin all I want to. Walter wisely looked at him
and said, I already sin more than I want to, if you love me. And let me ask you this. Isn't
love the easier path? I've found that. I've found in
my life that it's easier to forgive than hold a grudge. That doesn't
mean that I always forgive. Boy, you know, when we hold a
grudge, we're carrying the weight of that grudge around with us. Love said, just forget it. Just
forget it. Yeah, but they did me wrong,
and I deserve to be vindicated. Yeah, that may all be true, but
do you realize how much that vindication is going to cost
you? And is that a price you want to pay? Here's an easier
way. Just love that person and forgive them. They're so demanding. Just love
them. Love them. But their personality,
it grates on me. You ever think of what our personality
does to the Lord? Love them. Love's the easy way. When we love, we don't have to
be judge. When we love, we do not have to cut people off. I tell you, when I hear about
religious people cutting off loved ones because of their religion,
I can understand them if they said, we can't worship with you
anymore. I understand that. But to cut
off natural affection that ought to be between loved ones? There's nothing in the Scripture
that says we have to do that. We're called on to love. In Matthew
5, verse 16, it says, in the same way, let your light shine
before men. There's another command of the
Lord. Now, what is our light? Well, he goes on to say, let
your light so shine before men that they may see your good works
and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Say, yeah, my light
is my good works. No, it's not. Your light is the
gospel. And we go out and we preach the
gospel. Now, we're going to do good works. That's going to happen. But if
we're out there declaring the gospel, when people see our good
works, they don't attribute them to us, they attribute them to
our God. Don't be ashamed of your God.
The hymn says, I'm not ashamed to own my Lord or to defend His
cause. We shouldn't be ashamed to tell
people whom we love. In Matthew 6, 35, it says, do
not worry about your life. These are the commands of our
Lord. Don't worry about your life. Anybody here that did not worry
about their life this past week? I'm not holding my hand up because
I didn't worry. I'm just giving you examples.
Okay, I got no hands. Good thing I'm not giving an
invitation. Boy, we do, but our Lord says,
don't worry about your life. Why? Don't worry about what you're
going to wear. Don't worry about what you're
going to eat. And this is talking about just being consumed with
that. And it's so easy to think, that's what we've got to pay
attention to, and we get so wrapped up in assuring that we have food
for today, and for the next day, and for the foreseeable future,
and got ourselves hedged about in case there's a recession,
and all that. We get so wrapped up in that,
we forget this. Our Lord went on to say, your
Father knows you have need of those things. Do you think God doesn't know
what you need? And do you think for a minute
He's going to let you go without what you need? Now, He may reduce
what you have, but you know what that means? That means you have
more than is good for you. I am a firm believer in this.
Every child of God has all that can be good for him, right down
to the penny. The Lord never deprives His people
of one good thing. That is one thing that would
be good for them. And He gives it to them in the greatest measure
that would be for their good. I'm like everybody else. I wish
I had more. But I know why I don't have more.
More would hurt me. The psalmist said, don't let
me be poor. Don't let me be rich. Lest in
my poverty, I curse you. Or in my riches, I forget you. If you love me, keep my commandments. Love one another. Let your light
so shine. Don't worry. Say, wow, I would really like
to do that. See, it's not a burden. It's the sin that's the burden, not the goodness. Do you love the Lord? You know
the answer to that. Do you love the Lord? Keep His
commandments. Walk according to His instruction. Not because you have to. Not
even simply as some kind of obligated show of gratitude. But because
you love Him. And nothing Nothing means more
to you than pleasing Him.