In this sermon, the preacher reflects on his own shortcomings and the importance of truly loving Jesus. He emphasizes the need to not just talk about loving Jesus, but to show it through obedience to His commandments. The preacher references several Bible verses, including John 14:15 and John 20:21, to support his message. He highlights four qualities of obedience that are found in every true lover of Christ, distinguishing them from others.

Be blessed with God, and what's in his soul, why, you need it. Now we're getting out these booklets not to make money, we don't make any money out of them, to help the people and to witness good confession. Now this event tonight, I'm very much surprised with the attendance, I thought we'd let the bomb drop out, cause it didn't come from anywhere. So we're waiting, anybody from Jeff, there's something to have it, but we want you to keep working. Some are coming, some are now, and many, bless my heart, last night, as they came to grip my hand and share a burden. The burdens are so heavy. Who was it talked about the Christian life, did everybody happy? No, no, that isn't Christian life, Christian life's bearing burdens, isn't it? And they get heavier, they're heavier all along. In order to be a Christian, the Lord said you have to deny yourself. You have to die every day. And with the cross, every day you run right, you can't get around it. Christian is the happiest, most miserable person. He's happy, he's miserable, such a poor return to the way he lives. It's a paradox. That's the paradox of things. Christians get better and worse. The old nature gets worse. The longer you're in this battle, the harder that conflict between the spirit and the burden. Tomorrow night I'm going to try to speak on the subject, what kind of sinner, that the God who's saving everybody he can, has clearly outlined in his words, what kind of teacher. And I hope you can come. Those of you who are doing everything you know, in Christ, men and women, boys and girls under the book, and preach and keep on. And that's important. This week, as I'm dead certain, we say, oh Lord, give us the Lord, carry us all to safety, to tell you himself. Now, if you have a big metal bus, take the plow, and carry it out, and then, well, these folks, you know, anybody never lived in such as this ignorance, you know. In the off season, the spring of the year, after this cloud in the winter, we went in and we sowed. And for a little while, that seed would disappear. It falls into the ground, and then when it dies, it's born again to human life. If you don't, it'll stay alone. But you plant one little wheat seed, one little corn seed, and after a while, it's dead, and then it comes up in a little shoot, and you cultivate it. And if the good Lord is good, and the water comes, and the sun shines, and you cultivate and fertilize it, in the late summer of the fall of the year, these fields out here bursting with white stuff you call cotton. And then you go in with a harvest. You farmers know I'm telling the truth. You let your land, in the middle of April, you just go in there and throw some cotton seed on it. Hadn't been plowed, hadn't been cultivated. You won't raise much of a crop. All of us like to harvest, but oh, we have to plow, and then we have to plant, and then we have to cultivate, if we have a harvest. And that's the way it is. For the work of the Lord, God's people must take the plan of the Lord of God and plant up their own hearts. Break up your own paradigm. That's what it says. If you don't break it up, nobody else will. If you do not keep your heart tender, nobody else will. And if you do not plant the good seed, nobody else will. If you do not water it, you're not going to have a harvest. We all want to win first, but we don't want to plow our hearts. And we don't want to plant the word in our souls. And we do not want the good graces of God's cultivation. And we are planting and plowing this week, as I trust you are. But we long to see the harvest. And I want to come tonight now, and I want you to listen to this preacher. I haven't any high-powered son tonight, but I want you to listen to him. You listen to him. I want to ask you the question that I have to ask myself every day of my life. I want to ask you this. You youngsters have been going to basketball games for two nights. You showed up tonight. You need to get it. You're on with God. I want to ask you this question. Do you love Jesus? In the 15th verse of the 14th chapter of John's Gospel, Jesus said, If ye love me, keep my commandment. There ain't a question this side of eternity. That's as important as that question. Do you love Jesus? My little children love him. Someone said to me today, Brother Preacher, is it wrong for me to take my little children, because they won't help me, and to teach them the book, and have prayer. There's danger in teaching little children to pray. I'm dead set against that, of course. I don't think you'll ever have much chance to win your child to the Lord if you teach him to pray like most parents do. By that I mean... But little children, the best they know, all they've heard about Jesus, they love him with all of their hearts. You ask a little child, pick up one of the little children here when you go home. If you've taught them the things of the book, if they've heard of Jesus, if they're used to hearing you pray, if they're in Sunday school, if the name of Jesus is one that they recognize, and if they've been taught something of his marvelous love, every last word, with all their wits about them, and they've told them the truth, it's not under salvation, but they're telling the truth. They love Jesus. You can't find a little child that doesn't think well of Jesus, doesn't know much about him. But he loves everything he's heard about Jesus. Why is it, why is it that when men and women come to the men and women and youngsters grow up and the boys and girls, that instead of loving Jesus, they love pleasure? Instead of loving Jesus, they love something of desire? Oh, you never face a question quite so important as this question. Do you love Jesus? In the fourth chapter, the first epistle of John, John says, we love Jesus. Do we? He's writing to some Christians and placing himself among them. This old preacher who's now got long white flowing hair, I guess, and he lived to be an old man and in his old age he wrote this letter to the Christians. And he writes to them and calls them little children. Great big strong men, this apostle calls them little children, my little children. He loves them and he is his wisdom. And he says, you know something? We love him. We love him. Wonderful word. We love him now. Because he first loved us, didn't he? Didn't he? We love him because he first loved us. No person loves Jesus better in the Bible sense, not like there is a sense. They love him for what they know that they don't know much. And no person can say without knowledge unless it's been brought to his soul what Jesus did for him. Jesus first loved us and gave himself for us. And John says, that's the reason we love him. Now we live in the days when many people set out serving to some extent. But let's get this in our cause tonight. That the Lord Jesus will not accept any of your service unless it comes from the Lord to him. Now let's get that again. He will not take your money if you give it because you've got to. He will take it if you give it because you love him. He will not accept your service. You can teach a Sunday school class you do in the faith and he'll never recognize it unless you do it because you love him. Because you love him. But somebody says, well I don't love to give him money I won't do it. I don't. And we do him good. You're still in the faith. You're still in the faith against God. His law still makes you angry. You've not so been changed that you can say with power, I delight in thy law. The law of God is the will of God. Can you say tonight, I love him. Now I want to ask you this question. You've never seen Jesus. I've never seen him. I never have. I never expect to see him until he comes again. I have people tell me they've seen him. And they ask me what I think about him. I say, do not think. I do not think. I don't know nothing about that. People always come to me, they're going to have such and such a vision. What do you think about it? I don't think about it. That's between you and the Lord. But I've never seen him. With these eyes of mine, I've never seen him in the flesh. He hasn't been present in this whole world, in the flesh, for a man could see him for nearly 2,000 years. But here are some people, a long time after Jesus has died and been buried, and we believe, and where's the apostle John telling the truth? Do we love him? Now I'm fond of my church. I fight you about my church. I'm fond of my denomination. I love what you sing. I don't love my denomination. I'm fond of good singing. But I don't love good singing. You only love a person. Do you know that? We got a little old Pekingese dog somebody gave my little girl this summer. He's cute as a... He's a rabbit under water. Just cute as it may be. And boy, she rules the roost. And when I'm home, every night, I'm not there much, but boy, that dog and I have a time. We have a room. And the wife says she misses me. You can't keep anything out of her. The lady, she can jump, and she'll give her a piece of bread, and she goes and gets in the corner of the room and buries it like a dog would. And you have to clean out all the sofas every once in a while. She's buried something big for a while. She's a dog. And I just found her that little dog something big. I don't love that. You love a person. You love a person. Do you love Jesus? You've never seen him. Listen to me, sister. Do you love him? By Jesus, is he real to you? Is he real to you? Is he more real to you than your loved ones? Under God, folks, I'm asking you something, and if you don't face it and be able to answer it correctly, you're going to miss out at the judgment by faith, taking God at his word, sight unseen, with no evidence, except the plain, unvarnished testimony of this world. Have you laid hold of an unseen Savior? Have you come to love him? Have you come to love him? Can you say, I love him? I love him because he first loved me and purchased my salvation. Don't tell the straight. Do you love Jesus? Do you love Jesus? I read in the blessed book that, oh, I give all of my wealth to the poor and have not love. I've missed it. I've missed it! I read in the blessed book, listen to me, that the only way on earth that the unseen world can tell the truth is by faith, is by how you love one another. And I read in the book that if you say you love the Lord and do not love your brother, that you are a liar in the love of God's knowledge. Oh, the wicked tongues that are cutting at each other with the preachers fighting preachers and churches fighting churches. Oh, my God! It's a wonder to me that my blessed Lord can bring anybody to a saving faith in him. There's utmost terrible pain if you run about as I do, is the cursing and the sarcasm and the slander and the thinking that I don't do in our churches. One church fighting another, one denomination sneering at another, one so-called brother a sickening judgment on the other. Oh, listen to me! God says, that's no good if a man says, and you read it in the fourth chapter of 1 John, if a man loves not his brother, the love of God is not his. And that simply means that a man that can't love his brother doesn't love Christ. Do I love Jesus? Do I love Jesus? Not do I profess the notion, but do I love him? Not do the world The world can't tell you you're a disciple of Christ because you remember the Baptist church. The world can't tell us that in the 13th chapter of John, you read it. By this shall all know that you're my disciples and it's your love and there's nothing that makes people lovable except to realize your kinship with them in Christ Jesus. That's the God's truth, my friend. If I do, he says keep my commandment. And I want tonight, very quickly, to come to this question. How can I tell whether I love Jesus or not? Now the question's not how can I tell whether you love Jesus or not. I can't tell whether you love Jesus. I can't tell that. I want to be delivered if I can. So may I ever thank you that this old hunk of flesh, this old boy ruined before, has ever had one second of time that he could sit in judgment on anybody else. Oh, that's God's business. There's nothing to do with this. I don't mean I'm to tolerate sin. That means that I can't look into anybody's eyes. And if I could, I wouldn't be smart enough to know what's in there. This is a question that'll be left unanswered until it's too late, unless you face it and face its crash for yourself. This is a question the pastor can't answer for us. But this is a question that the preacher must face himself with. But the preacher's too mean. You see, I've got to answer to God in two ways. I've got to answer him to have the sinner save the grace. And then I've got to answer as the preacher called the preacher. The sheriff of this county has got to answer to God, not only for himself, but for his office, you see. He's appointed a God. The governor of this state's two people. He has to answer to the judgment of God, not only for his personal life, but for his conduct as governor. President Eisenhower's two people. He's got to answer to God with the judgment for himself and for how he conducts the office. Quote, the powers that be are ordained of God and they are sent to God and Christian to the present. Listen, while God has got to answer to us, the governor or not, personally, he faces the test and finds out if the Bible can help it and show him whether or not he, individually, as a sinner, can live for eternity, safely believed in the grace of God, whether or not I love Jesus. And then in the capacity of the preacher, I must pass it upon people who hear me. Oh, how can you tell whether you love Jesus or not. And the scripture comes right quick and says here's how it says, if I mind it, I obey it. If I obey it. Now, let's not say I love him, I don't. If you love me, keep my commandments. If you love me, keep my commandments. In John, chapter 14, let me read some more verses. Verse 21, these verses, you can't take your penknife and cut them out. Let me read them to you. He, my Lord, is talking. He that hath my commandments. You hear that? There are 256 of them in the New Testament alone. 256 of them. 256 of them. He that hath my commandments. And keep this. Keep this. Not spoke that at once in a while. But you boys and girls in those schools, that's the present tense. Participle. It means keeps on. He that hath my commandments. And keep this too. Watch out. Here it is. That loveth me. That settles it, don't it? I've either got to explain that already. I've got to call Jesus around. Or I've got to come and say, Ralph Barnes, this will get it down out of the clouds. It's all right to talk now. But talking's over now. The fellow that hath his commandments. Not the fellow that joins the church. Oh no. Not the fellow that professes to love Jesus. Oh no. Not the fellow that says he's a preacher. Oh no. Not the evangelist. Oh no. Not the deacon. Oh no. Not the sunscreen teacher. Oh no! But the fellow that keeps his commandments. That's the fellow that loves Jesus. Ralph Barnes, you want to find out whether you love Jesus or not? All right. Are you keeping his commandments? Are you keeping his commandments? All right. I'm distressed about you folks. I mentioned it once before. You don't bring a Bible. Why don't you bring your Bible? There are 256 commandments in the New Testament. If you don't keep them, you don't love Jesus. How you going to keep them if you don't study them? I'm telling you folks, we're down to brass tacks now. I didn't write the Bible. But I must press this upon you. Do it lovingly. If I have to do it with my own heart and repeat it, that nobody on God's earth can face it for you except you. And nobody on earth can actually face you. And this is between you and God. He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me. And he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father. And I'll love him and will manifest myself unto him. And then in verse 24, he that loveth me not keepeth not my faith. He shall make the flesh and faith and good men doth bow to faith. That's not faith. You don't pay attention to what the Lord says. You don't pay attention to what the Lord says. He don't keep his faith. He doesn't look at us and find out what we are. He doesn't try to map out his life and see what it is he's saying. And he says, I don't think there's no harm in this or anything else, but I know my Father done got sent to me, so you have to love me. And it doesn't say that he that does not love my Father has chosen to do love Jesus. Oh, my soul, there's no way on God's earth that I can't love you. Now, we done got religion down out of the clouds. If you do keep my commandments, and if you do love me, you will keep mine. Now, let me help you some. When I get to this place, even though I've been over a hundred times, I just have to, have to have some relief. Well, darling, you need a fellow that doesn't perfectly keep his commandments. Isn't that so? If that's so, we better face it. But is it so? Now, I want to help you just a little bit, not to encourage you to sin, but to encourage you to strive. And the answer for it is found in this text, and then I'll read the Scripture. Our obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ, listen to me, has to be perfect in our hearts. In other words, our hearts' obedience must be absolute, absolute! There can be no dividing your love. You cannot love the Lord and praise Him, too. You cannot love the Lord and the world, too. He said so. You cannot love the Lord and sin, too. You cannot mind somebody else in the Lord, too. You cannot be obedient to the Lord and somebody else, too, in your heart. You must be perfect and absolute one hundred percent. You do not know it. You haven't missed it, and you're still headed for what the Bible calls it. But now wait a minute. This Scripture demands absolute, one hundred percent high obedience. That means that your moral place must be absolutely perfect. That everything you do, you must do it in the direction of obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I'm down preaching tonight, dear folks. Listen to me. Just go into church on Sunday and take it in the world or in the world. You'll find you're just as lost as you can be. You'll know more about the grace of God than you can. You're trying to serve two worlds. You're trying to serve two gods. And God says, you can't do it. You can't do it. And I know I love Jesus by keeping his commandments. And I must keep them perfectly and absolutely as far as my heart desires. But when it comes to the actual translation of what I want to do, into what I actually do, let me tell you this, that everything you touch is in person. And none of your service is personal. And none of your obedience is personal. Listen, if God Almighty judges Ralph Barnard by what he is, I'm a goner. But thank God he don't. He judges me by what I want to be. Now, listen to me. What do you want to be? What do you want to be? Do you want to be perfect? If you don't, you're wrong. Are you perfect? No. But God looks at our hearts. In my heart, my obedience is perfect. Or it's nothing. It's nothing. But when I come to translate it, it's so relative. And I've never met a person who knows Jesus that isn't conscious of the fact that he's making a mighty poor act of trying to mind the Lord. Oh, listen to Brother Barnard. From the beginning of how God dealt with me and with the law and the gospel, he looks to the motive. Oh, my own heart must be absolutely so. To obedience to the Lord. But my service will not be 100%. Is there a person here who dares to stand up and say, Brother Barnard, I've always served you perfectly. But if you didn't want to, you lost. Let me go at it another way. If you are not striving to be perfect before God, you are not saved. Now, I know that's so, folks. But there's nobody here. In the 20th chapter of John, the Lord Jesus has been crucified and buried. Those that have hid out, they've killed the leader and the disciples expect him. They'll come to arrest them, kill them. And they're up in an upper room. And the Lord Jesus comes through a locked door with his resurrected body. And he breathed on them the Holy Ghost. Then he said in verse 22, and here it is. And when he had said this, no, verse 21, then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you. Watch it now. As my Father has sent me, even so send I you. Now, listen. We've had a lot of commotion lately about the new revision of the Bible. Don't let any of you get the idea now that the King James Version is perfect. I like it a whole lot better than this new one, as far as I'm concerned. But the English language is the poorest language in the world. It's the hardest language in the world to express oneself. That's the reason that Almighty God calls the New Testament to be written in Greek. And Greek is the richest language in the world. A Greek philosopher could talk for three hours on one subject and never use the same word twice and be perfectly understood. The people know what he's talking about. The English language. And so when we come to reading our Bibles, translating our English, we have to so we can read it. But the preacher's supposed to be able to do it. And he makes no apology. And here's a verse that's helped me. By going back to the language that the Bible was originally written in and men have done their best to translate it. Here's how it's helped me. Listen to me. Listen to me. My Lord said, As my Father hath sent me. That word sent comes from a Greek word. And Jesus says, in the force of that word, I perfectly represent my Father. And he does. He no longer ever could say, I do always the same. He said, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. But then he said, Just like my Father sent me to punish even some sin, I you. That word sins. Another word entirely in the Greek. And it means, You will not be perfect. You will not represent me. I ain't as smart as I used to be. I ain't as cocky as I used to be. Listen to me. Life will knock some... But about all I do, girl. When I'm by myself and I'm by myself alone. I got too many burdens to be around many people. No! They crush me too much. But listen to me. There is a veil in this town. The poor efforts and terrible mistakes I've made. Time to serve my Lord. And about all I do say, Lord, give me one more chance. Now, I will do a better job for you. I've held hundreds upon the backs of hundreds of meetings for 20 years. Most of them would have been all I should have had to preach. Oh, God. Give me another chance. Bless the Lord. The Lord said, Ralph, you haven't done as good a job of representing me as I have representing the Father. But Ralph, do you love me? Yeah. Do you love me? Peter, you've denied me. You've sworn you never knew me. Peter, do you? Do you love me, Peter? Oh, that's what we have to come back to. If that dies, you're gone. You young folks start out and you're going to conquer the world. You find out after you've been battling it quite a while, it's still there rocking along and going on behaving. And the one thing that'll keep you do you love me? If you'd have served him like you wanted to. Our heart's obedience is if you do not want to please him in everything you do, you're just as lost as you can be. All of this sinful way people live now, that's all can't be perfect. They're just lost. All of this business of saying, I don't see any harm in all that. Nobody asks you what you saw. Let's let the Lord tell us. I ain't got nothing to tell you. And you haven't got nothing to know. But if you love Jesus, you seek to find out what he says about you. What does he say about you? I'll bet you in the 256 commandments my Lord gave his people in the New Testament, I'll bet you you can find an answer for every problem. I'll bet you it'll solve everything about your social life, your religious life, your business life, and everything. There's a person that doesn't keep them perfectly in gear. And sincerely, as it's translated into action, doesn't know Jesus. How can you know, Ross, that you love Jesus? By your obedience to him. All of our talking's no good. Our obedience is what counts. And there are four things the Scripture says that are true of a Christian and not true of anybody else. There are certain qualities of obedience which are found in every lover of Christ. And they're not found in anybody else. Let me quickly give you this. Every lover of Christ, I'd have to take hundreds of Scriptures to quote to you. I'm just telling you I know what I'm talking about. Now you believe me. Every lover of Christ keeps his commandments implicitly. Now that's a big word. He just keeps them because Jesus said to him. You don't need any other reason. You don't need any other reason. Jesus said it. Unfaithful. I think that's too stiff. I think God's no faithful person. I don't think that's right. I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that. My opinion is different. But to say the person says Jesus said it, I'll tackle it. The second place, every lover of Christ keeps Christ's commandments impartially. He don't try to keep some of them. He tries to keep all of them. He'll not do if you say, well I believe I'll do what Jesus said. Yeah, but fool on this. That's the way unfaithful people do. Oh, a lot of church people do that way, but I'm not talking about that. Ninety-five percent of our church people are lost in you. Listen to me. He'll not do to say, I'll keep this. I'll not keep this. The Lord didn't say, he that hath my commandments and keeps the ones, he taketh their lives and ignores the rest and loveth me. No, no. In the third place, every lover of Christ seeks to keep Christ's commandments carefully. It's not a burden to mind the Lord if you love him, if you love him. I'm not very old, but I'm old enough now that I'm learning some things that my mother and father used to tell me and I didn't think they knew what they were talking about. I don't get any kick much out of anybody giving me something. Boy, I sure love to give my little girl something. Make her a wife, or have her come put my arms, her arms around me. Every lover of Christ seeks to keep his commandments. Not as slaves, but as people that love him. Every lover of Christ seeks to keep his commandments perseveringly. That doesn't mean they just keep on. Just keep on! Keep on! Keep on! Seeking to please him, and to obey him, and to mind him! Now folks, this is something Frost Barnard has to answer. Frost, is it a burden to you to obey the Lord? If you don't love somebody, is it a burden? Why, I've seen mothers that have gone in when I was a pastor and sit by the bedside of a child week in and week out, but not enough sleep to keep it. And the wonderful folks made a profession, ran pretty well for a while, and played out. But the scriptures teach that he that endures to the end shall be saved. Do you love me in this day? When we're sad, and there's no hunger for books, no seeking to find His will. In this day of masturbation, and little perception, my God, it's the only way I can know! By obedience to him. I ask you, do you love him? You don't love him? You don't love him? Until you walk down the house of Holy Spirit and then walk to see what an utter sinner you are. Been brought to say amen to your own condemnation. Been brought to see that you're not only headed for hell, but you just have to do what you do.