The Greatest Form of Love

Matthew 18:21-35; John 15:1-8

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome back. I am Chaffin Boyles, and this is Soldier for Christ Podcast, episode number 20, the Big 2. Oh. I'm actually kind of excited because this is a big milestone right now, episode 20. So thank you for being with me. If you've been with me for a long time, or if you've been with me as this is your first time, um, thank you for listening. I'm going, this is what we call the holy week now. So we are in the last time, the last week that Jesus Christ was doing his ministry before he went to the cross and before he resurrected, of course, on Easter Sunday. So I went last time into the Palm Sunday experience of Jesus. Today I'm going to go into one of the last parable, sermons, uh, teachings that Jesus gave his disciples actually before he was crucified. And this is an important, very important parable that as Christians, we have to really examine our lives to make sure that we are walking correctly with the Lord by faith, but not by sight, not by emotion. Um as I always say, one of the ways that you genuinely know that you are a true Christian, truly born again, and you are walking with the Lord is that your love in your life, your love will increase because your love and your forgiveness, forgiveness is a huge thing too. Overall, your love, your forgiveness increases, and your love of the world, I would say, the things of the world, um, the sins and the temptations, they begin to diminish. So your how the house of David goes up, the house of Saul goes down, as I like to say right there, an Old Testament uh adage. But the love of Jesus, when you become a Christian, it permeates in you, right? The Holy Spirit takes hold of you, takes over. Uh, he you are born again, you belong to Christ. So when you look at yourself, you can see how you have progressed as a Christian. And love is a wonderful thing. You know, we cannot live, human beings cannot live without love, we cannot live without hope, can't live without faith. Honestly, we have to hope and believe and trust in something. Um, we have to put our hope in Christ and our faith in Christ. Um, so when you look at your life, look at the way you respond to people. Um, look at the way you react to situations, especially to those who have hurt you, to have those who have injured you, have even done terrible things perhaps to you. It's difficult. It's very difficult to love your enemies. It's difficult to love people who have done bad things to you, of course. It takes, the truth be told, it takes a divine love, which is the love of Jesus Christ, that speaks through you and acts through you, that you were able to love really, I think, at all, because the Bible is very clear that God is love. Okay, He is light, He is love, He is life, He is truth. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, as we've mentioned over and over John 14. Um, so the parable I'm going to explain today, I want you to really examine, take it to heart. Um, think about it in relationship to your life. Um, because this, these kind of this, this, to me, every time I read it personally, I'm always convicted. And that's what the Bible does. You know, the Bible is not just a book, it is, it is the word of God. It is meant to speak directly to our hearts, our minds, right to our spirit, uh, that we can examine ourselves. It is good for reproof. It's doctrine, it's teaching us how we are living, ought to live like Christ commanded. Okay. And there's a difference between request and commands, okay. Um, God uh He He wants us to be obedient subjects. Let's just say that. He wants us to trust Him, obviously. That's how we obtain salvation is by faith and trust and obedience, okay, obeying Him. That's why we call Christ the Savior and the Lord, right? Because He is both in our life, or He has to be both. Um, so to be to be real, when you really are generally changed, your love, okay. The greatest of the Christian virtues is always love, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of those is always love. So we're gonna be in the gospel actually of Matthew today. I'm gonna start at Matthew 18, and we are gonna go. Uh I'm actually gonna start at verse 21. I'll give you some context. But let me pray first for you, real quickly, and then we'll go into this. Thank you, Christ, for a wonderful day. Uh, for all those who are listening, I pray that you bless them, give them favor and strength, increase their faith, and especially their love and their forgiveness, give them wisdom, give them prudence, uh, help them, Lord, with their difficulties, give them rest and peace, uh, give them strength and ability, Lord, to always be in your will and your word, wherever they are. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Okay, so Matthew, this is just again chapter 18. I'll start at verse 21. And of course, let me give you a little context on this as we're getting into this. Okay, so one of one of Jesus' most outspoken disciples, Peter, I would also say he's probably the most emotional and very energetic, very enthusiastic guy, generally, right? Passionate guy. Um, he comes to Jesus because one thing that I can always tell that was on Peter's heart was the topic of forgiveness. Okay. Now you have to understand that forgiveness and love are always, they're always married together. Okay. Forgiveness and love are first big point. They they they coexist, they are married, they're always together. Okay. So Peter comes to Christ and he is trying to understand the topic of forgiveness. Okay. So what he what he asked Jesus, he just he just asked him flat out, like, how many times, you know, do I need to uh forgive somebody who hurts me? And he is very amazed with the answer that Jesus gives him. So let me let me go into this this just actually just read straight out from the Bible. It just says here 21 that Peter came to him and asked, Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times? That's a question he's asking the seven times. He asked, of course, he put up the number seven, because seven in the Bible is the number of completion. So Peter is thinking to himself, you know, seven would be like the highest number, obviously, that that I would forgive somebody, right? I mean, because at that point, it's probably hopeless to forgive somebody and they'd just be my permanent enemy. But Jesus says here in 22, he says, no, no, not seven times, Jesus replied, but 70 times seven. Okay. Now that that's kind of a we would call a play on words. What Christ is saying is that you always forgive, okay? It's like he's not saying not 490 times. He's saying always, every time, always, you have to you forgive constantly. It's it's it's a permanent situation. It does not matter what who's wronged you, you you forgive, period, okay? Um, and then Christ says this. He says this parable. This is a very, very critical parable, you understand. He says, Therefore, the kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date. His his ledger, okay, his his his uh he wanted to get right with uh all of his finances here. So he brings his account up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. In the process, Jesus says, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars, okay, owed him an incredible amount of money. He could not pay. So his master ordered that he would be sold, along with his wife and his children, and everything he owed to pay the debt. First thing you have to know about sin. Sin is, you can think of it as the debts that you inflict in your life. Um, it's like if if if let's just pretend if every sin you committed was one dollar, one dollar, how many sins do you, how many dollars do you think you owe God after all the sins you have ever committed in your entire life, after every thought, every action, and every word? Okay, it would be, I'm sure, for all of us, a sum that is so vast and horrible to even imagine that there's no way, even if we were a trillionaire, even if we were Elon Musk, we could pay that kind of thing. Because we sin pretty much every day, right? Like, I mean, we are sinners. That's the definition of what people are. So I want you to understand that the king here, the king is Jesus. Jesus is the king of kings. Okay, and this this whole situation is really like what happens when someone comes to Jesus and we know we're not in the right standing with him. Okay, we are in a bad way because we are great sinners. Okay, now and sin is interesting because what sin does, sin doesn't just hurt you. It hurts your wife, your children, it hurts everyone, it hurts your family, it hurts your friends, uh, it takes away your peace, it it cripples your money, it just it'll it'll break your health, it'll make you bitter and hateful. I mean, sin will, the wages of sin, the Bible's very clear, is death. The ultimate effect sin will have on your life is it will kill you. Okay, it'll make you miserable, kill you. So you have to be conscientious when it comes to sin. And in truth, you have to learn to hate sin. Okay. There are many kinds of sin. There are there are what I call carnal sins and spiritual sins. Let me break that down real quick, too, because carnal sins, I'm in I'm in the army, so carnal sins are very common with soldiers. Carnal sins are usually the physical kind of things uh the most, you know, frankly, most soldiers uh go after, like the lust of the flesh. The things that soldiers want of uh sex, uh sexual immorality, for example, impurity, um uh uh drunkenness, uh rage, uh the physical, the the carnal things are the fit, like carnal, your your physical things that you desire, okay, that you take in the wrong way, um, that will uh of course cripple and destroy your life. And those ones are usually rather obvious. You know, lying, uh some people can be very good liars, but eventually your lies will catch up with you, okay. Sexual morality, um, no matter how we, you know, in society, how we try to change the rules, uh God's God's uh his standard for for sex is always the same. It's only a context of marriage, one man, one woman. That's it. Only. That's it. It's never changed, by the way. They never will change. Um same thing with with with gluttony or or or ray or or uh you know just or drunkenness or lewdness or a lack of self-control. I mean, those are very obvious sort of carnal sins. But spiritual sins, okay, sins that we can't really visibly see, um, those are sneaky things that I call sometimes the sin of the heart. And what I mean by that is those those kind of things are usually things that people that can look good, talk good, go to church, and act very religious can be completely infected with. The biggest one probably being pride. Okay, just thinking you're better than you yourself are like a god. You're better, you're like you're gonna live forever and you're just better than everybody. You're you see me, hear me, love me. The pride that you look down upon others, okay? Pride, by the way, just real quick, always leads to hatred in people's life. Bitterness and hatred and rage come from, stem from pride. Pride is, and actually, pride to God is the worst of all sins. Uh it's a number, it's there's seven things God truly hates, but pride, haughty eyes, is is the worst of those seven things. Uh, but it could also be greed. Uh the Bible says that greed is a form of idolatry, always desiring more, always wanting more worldly possession, worldly things, always wanting more and more to gain and so forth. God does not want us to gain the things of the world. He wants us to be concerned about the treasures of heaven, okay, the things that he wants to give us and so forth. Um, it could also be idolatry, it's also like creating idols, uh, worshiping things that are not God, uh, having secret sins and secret loves and things that are not, they're not good at all, worshiping celebrities, uh, worshiping uh, oh my gosh, just just worshiping a house, for example, worshiping a car, worshiping yourself, uh, worshiping a person, a thing. Um, idolatry is, and it's it's rampant, of course, everywhere. But these kinds of spiritual sins, um, they they now they affect everybody, okay, whether you realize it or not. So we all know we live in the flesh, we live in a body that we are constantly tempted with sin. Okay, every day. We have things that come against us. Um you might have a thought in your head, uh, you may have an angry thought, yeah. You may have somebody might hurt you, slight you, or whatever. Uh, even you're driving down the road, someone's cutting you off. Um, or or or you may get you may just be want, you might like, yeah, I'm not, I'm not happy with my life. I wish I was richer, I wish I had uh more thing, or I wish I was a bigger rank or more status or whatever and so forth, and just that the desire for more the lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, there's the things that I want that are not things of God, things of the world, we have to be very careful because if unchecked, those things can cloud and they can take over our heart and our mind, and we can make those things a sinner or the God of our life and not Jesus. Okay. So temptations come to us. If we if we flirt with temptation instead of pushing it away, okay, and if we if we we take it and we we buy the lie, because they are lies, um, we fall into sin. Okay. And this this parable is about this man. Again, you have to understand that he he is, let's just call him a great, huge sinner. Um, he is still a subject of the king, which means that the king knows him, which means that he is he is someone who belongs to Jesus, and he owns, he he owes Christ a great debt. And and this is rhetorical because we all owe Jesus a huge debt of sin, okay, that we cannot pay. So that's why it says here in 25, he could not pay his master. So his master ordered that he be sold along with his wife and his children, everything he owned, to pay the debt. But, 26, the man fell down before the master, okay, and he begged him and he said, Please be patient with me, and I will pay it all. Then his master was filled with pity for him and released him and forgave his debt. So I want you to see what Jesus does every time. He, this man, in all earnest, in all sincerity, got down and probably on his knees and was begging the king, begging Jesus, saying, Patient with me, please I will do whatever I can to pay it back, because the king knows he can't pay it back. But just fill with compassion for him, filled with love for him. Jesus says, You know what? I'm gonna forgive you. I'm gonna release you from this entire debt. By the blood of Jesus, we can be free.

unknown 15:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

So understand this. Understand this is the man who has been freed. He has been released from his debt. He is now able to live the life that the king, the Christ, wants him to live. But this is what happens, 28. But when the man left the king, immediately when he left him, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars. Okay. He grabbed him by the throats and demanded instant payments. His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. He said, Be patient with me and I will pay it, he pleaded. But his creditor would not wait, and he had the man arrested and put into prison until his debt could be paid in full. Now, isn't that ironic, right? Isn't this quite a twist of the story here that this man who was released of this massive debt immediately went to someone who owed him a very small debt, grabbed him by the throat. You know, he's very hateful and angry, and just attacked him. And he said, Hey, you will pay me, you will pay me. And the man said, I can't, I don't have the money. He said, But I will, I will work and I will do whatever I can. And the man said, No. I mean, he threw him into a prison cell. Okay. Um, and what Christ is talking about here, he's talking about a man who had no love or forgiveness against someone obviously he should have been loving and forgiving towards. He had just received the mercy and the love and the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, literally. And he extended no love and no kindness and no mercy to this man that owed him a small debt. So this is by every definition what we call a hypocrite.

unknown 17:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

The biggest problem that Christ had with the religious leaders of his time, and franken religious leaders even know our time, is that they live by hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is, this is the little the little definition of the word, is knowing what you ought to do and doing the exact opposite of what you know you should do. Okay. You know the truth. You know that Jesus is King. You know that Jesus' blood paid your penalty of sin. You know you have been released and pardoned, and you know that you ought to, because Christ commands you to forgive, to love, to show grace and mercy, because God has told us specifically to do that. Okay. Um being a Christian sets you free of so many things in your life. It sets you free of I mean, just so much anger and bitterness and drama. Okay. Um, the world is always going to have problems. Always. Okay. But life is, as I mentioned to you a million times, life is a test. It's a test of your faith and your obedience. God intentionally, time after time, will put situations in your life where there will be someone who may owe you things, there may be someone who may be challenging, there might be somebody who may be just an enemy coming against you. And God wants to know how are you going to respond to this situation right here? Okay. How are you going to respond when something is not fair in your life? How are you going to respond when you come against a giant, something that is so big and powerful that you can't beat them on your own strength right there? How are you going to respond when people mistreat you? Okay. How are you going to respond to the difficult circumstances in life? Because life is difficult for everybody. But Christ will judge you on how you are obedient. Okay. Obedient to Him. Faith and obedience, they tie together. Okay. Faith, the result of faith, let me just say it this way: the result of faith is always obeying God. The result of a genuine faith is obedience. The result of a genuine faith is fruits being produced, the spiritual fruits we talked about, which is love, joy, patience, goodness, kindness, and self-control. They're always the results of a genuine faith. Okay. But now this is what we we we look at this guy, and we can obviously see that his faith, his loyalty, his commitment to Christ was not real. Why? Because instead of acting with forgiveness, he acted with hatred and he threw this man in jail. John says that we are not truly born again if we live with hatred in our hearts. And hatred is a, I think C. S. Lewis describes it the best. Hatred is like burning down your own house to try to get rid of a rat. Hatred will destroy you every time.

unknown 21:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

So this man, instead of doing the right thing, instead of forgiving the debt against him, he acted completely the wrong way and threw this poor man into a debtor's prison and tell her the debt could be paid. But 31, it says here, but when some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset, and they went to the king and they told him everything that had happened. And the king called the man that he had forgiven, and he said to him, You evil servant, I forgave you of that tremendous debt. Because you pleaded with me. Shouldn't you have mercy on your fellow servant just as I had mercy on you? And the angry king sent the man to a prison to be tortured until he had paid the entire debt. That is what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your hearts.

unknown 22:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

That's pretty, pretty strong language there, isn't it? Yeah. So, okay, so Jesus here is saying that the king, of course, God knows everything we do and everything we say, even before we do it. He he disciplined, he brought this servant back to him. And he said, a very rhetorical question. He just said, Hey, I had mercy on you. I forgave you of that tremendous debt. Why? Why would you not have mercy on your brother? Why would you not act with loving kindness and forgiveness with your own brother that I just extended to you? You don't want, as Jonathan was pointing out, you don't want to ever fall into the hands of an angry God. God's justice is bad. Um, his discipline can be hard too. In this case, the the the king disciplined, he disciplined this man. Um the Bible is very clear that God disciplines the ones he loves. If you sometimes feel in your life that you are just spinning your wheels, let's say, or that God's heavy hand is upon you, that you are frustrated and you are weighed down, I'll say that. And then you feel you don't feel the sense of peace and the sense of joy, the sense of love and purpose in your life. You have to examine, are you being disciplined by the Lord? Is is God sometimes God will simply just slow you down or even just stop you completely, and He will, and He will, and He will not move you, okay? He will not get you for I would call the next level, the next chapter, the next point of your life, until you have figured out what He is trying to teach you. So as David says, the steps of a good man are ordered by God. Okay, He God knows what it takes to make you like Himself. And you can't skip God's steps, by the way. And you can't shortcut God, and you can't fool God. Very important you know that. You cannot fool God. Okay. This guy, I imagine, when he came to the king, he was pretty terrified right there because he said, the king said, You're gonna be uh put into prison, you're gonna be tortured until you paid your debt right there. This says, this is what the my father will do if you refuse to forgive. Now, this is why Christ, this is why forgiveness to God is is critical. It's it's it's so important. Forgiveness is the highest form of love. And you can't just say with words, I forgive you. You can't just make a show that I forgive you. Okay. Christ says you have to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart. What does that mean? It means it has to be a genuine spiritual that I don't wake up every day hating your guts. I don't wake up every day wanting your demise. I don't wake up every day wishing ill and terrible upon you, right? They're cursing you and under my breath. Even if nobody sees me, I don't wake up every day with this incredible rage and anger against you. Okay. I now let me let me kind of break down what is what is forgiveness? Like what is that? Um forgiveness is this just let me just summarize this. Forgiveness is when you decide from your heart, from your mind, all of your whole being, really, you decide to drop a matter completely. Just like if you're holding on, let's say you're holding on to a ball, a baseball in your hand, you just you drop it. You don't try to even hold on to a thread or a string of that base, you don't try to hold on to a even a tiny little part of it, you drop the whole thing. You let it go. You completely let it go. Um, even when it creeps back into your mind, you you don't even entertain the thought, you say, like, nope, I let it go. I drop it. It is now in God's hands. You're saying to yourself, I am not gonna execute justice or vengeance or revenge. I'm going to let God in his sovereignty, he is gonna take care of whoever that is. I'm gonna let it go. I'm gonna completely let it go. That is an act of divine love, right there. Okay, so it Christ is the only one that can help you really truly let let matters go. Okay, because hear me real good. God's judgment and justice, they are reserved, those are things reserved for God alone. And and believe me when I say that God's justice and judgment are pretty severe. They're pretty pretty bad. We're gonna get back in Revelation, we're gonna talk about what God's justice and judgment look like. And when we stand before the king one day in heaven and we give an account of our life and everything we've done, uh we don't want to be in the hands of an angry God. Okay, because God's justice and judgment are very permanent. They're not just like a slap on the wrist kind of thing, you know, it's like uh it's a very extremely eternal, permanent situation here. So you may often wonder, and I've had a lot of people ask me this, like, you know, doesn't God care about justice? Doesn't he, doesn't he, what about all these bad, evil people in the world, and how can they get away with all these terrible things? And why doesn't anybody seem to care? Because oftentimes, yeah, we in the world, um, there may not seem like a lot of justice. Sometimes evil and sometimes evil people get away with a lot of things, and sometimes even people, evil people even prosper. Okay, people that have no love and no care for God at all. But hear me real good. Uh, just because they prosper for a tiny season on this earth, um the moment that God decides to end their life, and the reason that God allows us to go for a long time is that he's very patient with us. Uh my opinion about death has always been the same. People die for one of two reasons. They die one, because they have completed the task and the purpose that God has given them to do on this earth and they are being welcomed home. Or two, God's his grace and his forgiveness, they they they run out. And Jesus decides that, okay, if you're not going to receive my forgiveness, if you have refused my forgiveness, now you're going to receive my justice.

unknown 29:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

And I often ask my soldiers, uh, would you rather have God's forgiveness in your life, knowing that you have to forgive all the people that you that ever hurt you, or would you rather have God's justice in your life, even if you could seek justice on others? And that's almost a rhetorical question because nearly everybody always says to me, you know, sir, I'd always rather have God's forgiveness. You know, I don't want to take on God's justice. Even Jesus before the cross, when he was, when he was praying at the Garden of Semite, he prayed very earnestly with big, even with drops of blood. And he said, Father, he said, if there's, he said, I know you can do all things. If there's any other way that this cup, your, your cup of your, your, your, is like he was talking about your justice, your wrath, if there's any other way, uh, that this cup can be removed from me, but not my will, he says, that your will be done. Because Christ knew how awful, how terrible the wrath and the justice of God is, this father is. And believe me, uh, you know, I I wouldn't, I honestly don't want even just pick like a really bad, like an Adolf Hitler. I mean, he's a real bad guy, of course. But um the thought even of anyone going to hell for an eternity is daunting, to say the least. It's it's it's really awful. Okay, so we all have to stand before Jesus Christ. We all give an account to our life. And one of the ways that he will judge us, truly judge us, that just like this king judging the servant here, is he will judge us on did you forgive your brothers and sisters from your hearts? Did you love others like I loved you? The highest commandment of God is to love the Lord you God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength, but also to love your neighbor, which is your brothers and sisters, everyone on the planet, like you love yourself. Those Christ says that that is the sum of all the law and the prophet. That's the highest command God can give you. And God does give you. Okay, and again, it's not a request, it's a command that God gives you. So I imagine that Peter was a little bit shaken by that right there, because he was he was expecting Jesus to say something probably aligned of like, you know, yeah, you forgive a few times, and if the person's not getting it, then you go ahead and you can exact your revenge or your justice. But that's not what he said. He says you have to always forgive from the full measure of your heart, deep from your heart. You have to let the matter go right there. Um, let me end with this. This is I'm gonna I'm gonna go into the gospel of John as we continue on this holy week here. Um I'm gonna go to John 15, and I'm gonna end this here because this is important that we also know and understand how to remain with Jesus. So, John 15, Jesus says here, John 15, I'm gonna start with verse 1. He says, I am the true grapevine, and my father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that does not produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit, so they will produce even more. You have been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. Now, this is critical. This this correlates perfectly to the parable Jesus just said right here. So Christ says, and I love this parable because this is all about agriculture. He says, like I you have to think of like a big grape vine. He says, I am a big vine. My father is like the guy that controls the whole vineyard. He's the gardener. Okay, he planted everything, he controls everything. And he says, and you all are branches that come out of me. You are the branches coming from the big vine. He says, You won't produce any fruit unless you remain in me. And he says that my father, and that's very interesting. He says, My father, he will prune those that are bearing fruit, that they will produce more fruit. What does that mean? That means that Christ, his father, specifically, will discipline, constantly purify, constantly grow us, constantly put people in our life to challenges, constantly put things in difficult circumstances that give us the opportunity, the test and the opportunity to for love and forgive. That's this this, or and he'll also slow us down and re and correct us and discipline because he doesn't, he is, God is not satisfied with us being fruitless branches. He wants us to produce the number one, the most amazing piece of fruit, which is love primarily. Love. Okay. God is a God that wants a return on his investment. He wants us to constantly produce good things. He wants us to preach, to teach, to fulfill the Great Commission with actions first and then words. Okay. Action being love being the greatest, okay, being the greatest. Now he says here, if you remain in me, that that's remaining in me, that's faithfulness. That is just simply that I am remaining committed, 100% loyal, ride or die. I belong to Jesus. My faith is in God and Christ alone. Says, you remain in me, and he says, Christ says, I'll always remain in you. Christ will never leave you or forsake you. He says, I will remain in you, and you will produce much fruit. Okay. You cannot produce anything, not you cannot produce a single good thing in your life without Jesus. In fact, every good thing you ever get in your life will come from God, will come from Jesus. Very important, you can't shortcut God. Ever. Um, you don't want to be a severed vine. That's a faithless vine right there. You can't come to Christ with just an emotional connection or just a knowledge. You have to be faithful to come with genuine faith. He says here, yes, I am the vine, and you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them will produce much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into the pile to be burned. That if you remain in me, and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted. When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father right here. Most people never believe this verse, but I love this verse. Christ says, if you remain in me and my words remain, you may ask for whatever anything you want, it will be granted. When you truly know how to remain in Jesus, and your faith is like a rock, even though what you request can, when it comes right from a true godly heart, it will be granted. Um, Christian, genuine, uh the good the genuine Christians I've met have never asked for things to gratify their flesh or their sinful nature. They ask, it's it's kind of like let me let me let me explain like how King David. So it's interesting because David had a son named Solomon. God actually asked both David and Solomon, what do you want from me? What do you desire from me? Tell me something I can give to you. Now, Solomon gave a pretty good answer. He said, You know, Lord, I want the thing I desire, I want is wisdom. I want wisdom. And God actually was pleased with that answer, and he gave Solomon the greatest of all wisdom, and he was the wisest man that arguably ever lived, right? But it's curious because David did not ask for wisdom. David said, only thing I want, Jesus, is just you. I just want to be in your house. I just want to be in your temple. I want to, I want to have fellowship with you, I just want to be in your courts. It says better is one day that one single day, David said, is better than your courts than thousands elsewhere. I just want to remain, I want to be as close to you and remain with you all the days of my life. Now, Solomon was a good man, but he he started to slide away from God at the end of his life. David remained faithful and loyal and loving and just remained in Christ to the very end. And he produced so much fruit in his life. Okay. I want you to be and pray like David. By the way, God granted David more than he could ever, ever, what he ever thought possible. A boy that from complete obscurity, a boy that had absolutely nothing, uh, became the greatest king of all of Israel, and arguably probably the greatest king of the history of the world because of his great love for God. He didn't desire to be a great king. He didn't desire great wealth or lots of horses or a great palace or any of those things. He didn't desire, God just granted the things to him anyway because he loved God. So when you have the right desires, the godly desires, Christ says they will be granted. He will be granted. If you have the heart of David just says, you know, all I want, Jesus, is you. I don't want, I don't, I don't need all the all the diamonds in Africa, I don't need all the money, dollars in America, I don't need all the power of the Caesars and so forth. I don't need, I just want you. If that is your heart, it will that God will grant you. He will make people like you, he'll make favor happen, he will make things happen. And you cannot, you cannot have any other way except through the incredible love and grace of God. So as I close today, um, and as we go next time we'll go into the to our Easter um podcast, as I always say, examine your heart, examine your love, your forgiveness especially. Okay. Look at your enemies, look at your family, look at your brothers, your sisters, look at your sons, your daughters, look at your mother, your father, look at your stepfather, stepmother, look at your nieces and nephews and cousins, and look, look at you, and look at your co-workers and look at all the people that God has put in your life. You gotta put them there, by the way, and ask yourself: do I love my brothers and sisters? Do I love them? And have I forgiven them from my heart? Not just words. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you that kind of love and forgiveness, and it will be granted, by the way. If you ask that, Christ says right here, it will be granted to you. Let me pray for you. Thank you, Lord, for this day. Again, thank you, Christ, for loving us so much. Thank you for teaching us, Lord, that it's not just seven times we forgive, it's it's it's forever, it's permanent. And it's not a request, it's a command, Lord. You you told us that this is your standard. Fill us with the Holy Spirit, Lord. I ask you to bless everyone listening to this podcast, that they will remain in you. You are the great vine, and we are only the branches that produce your fruit. Lord, help us to love all those, especially those who've hurt us. Lord, help us to give grace and mercy. Help us, Lord, to constantly be walking with you by faith, by trusting, by believing, and by, Lord, complete obedience of doing your will. We thank you, Christ, because you died for us, and by your blood we can be forgiven. Our huge debt was paid because of what you did on the cross. Give us the power to love the Holy Spirit this week and forevermore. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you, guys, and I will see you all next time for our Easter Sunday. Bye bye.