If You Love Me, Keep My Commandments — Rolfe Barnard

He's 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 in the bargains. We're trying every way we know to help the people and to witness good confession.

Now this is Wednesday night, I'm very much surprised with the attendance. I thought we'd let the bottom drop out so it didn't come to that. Well, where are you folks from? Anybody from Jeff? Huh? Fine.

Well, good. And Friday and Saturday night they're running busloads over from Greenville, so we went in there, I didn't get a seat that night, and let the company have it. But we want you to keep working.

Some are coming, coming now, and many blessed my heart last night as they came to grip my hand and share a burden. The burdens are so heavy. Who was it that talked about the Christian life, did everybody happy?

The Christian Life as Daily Self-Denial

No, no, that isn't Christian life. Christian life's bearing burdens, isn't it? And they get heavier, heavier all along. In order to be a Christian, the Lord said you have to deny yourself. You have to die every day.

And as a cross, every day you run right smack up against it. You can't get around it. You have to pick it up and carry it. A Christian is the happiest, most miserable person on earth. He's happy in that he has a deep sense of peace in his soul.

He's miserable in that he makes such a poor return for the Lord's deeds and the way he lives and the fruit he bears. Now, that's the paradox. That's a big word. You old folks might not know what it means.

They're youngsters, they're killers. The paradox is things that don't go together, but here they are, miserable and happy. And then Christians get better and worse all the time. Their old nature gets worse.

The longer you're in this battle, the harder you fight. Your new nature gets better. And there's that conflict between the spirit and the flesh. Birth. Birth. Tomorrow night I'm going to try to speak on the subject, what kind of sinners does God save?

Now, he doesn't save all kinds, but the God who's saving everybody he can has clearly outlined in his word what kind of people he saves. And I hope you can come, those of you who are doing everything you know to entice men and women, boys and girls under the book, and preach and keep on.

And that's important. But the most important thing is having this week, as I'm showing, trying to do it with peers. As you witness, you'll do it with peers. I'm dead certain we ought not to talk to people unless we can do it with leading hearts.

They're in bad enough shape as it is, folks, without us butchering them worse. I'm dead certain if we can talk to the sinners, as a matter of fact, I'm afraid to tell you, it would just be better for the sinners.

I'm dead certain that it takes a lot of plow in your heart just to ask the plow in my heart. God says, break up the plow of the ground. He says, take the plow of the world and just carry on and sow all the people.

We say, oh, Lord, give us a burden. He says, get the burden and sow it. That's what he says. He says, Lord, carry us all the people. He says, carry on and sow the people. That's what he said to them. Now, if you leave some of the tender farmers down here in the Delta, let's say this February, sounds to me like it's spring.

When I was a boy on the farm, we always plowed up the ground. Didn't raise any crops that way. In the wintertime, out in Texas, we'd go with a big metal buster and we'd plow. And then later we'd go and have a laugh.

And then maybe if the wheat got too bad, we'd take a go-devil. You ever see a go-devil? You know what a go-devil is? Is that familiar down here? Well, these folks, you know. Anybody ain't never lived in Texas.

It's just ignorance, you know. You can't tell them. But we'd take a go-devil. Well, they had sharp knives. I was going to cut it, and then sometime we'd plow it again. And the farmers that did the most plowing and took the best care of their land, in the off-season were the folks that had the best crops when harvest time came.

And then in the spring of the year, after we'd plowed in the winter, we went in and we sowed. We sowed the... We planted. We planted corn. In Texas, we planted capricorn, federator, and maize, milo maize.

Too dry. Dad couldn't raise any corn like he do here much. And then we'd plant cotton. And for a little while, that seed would disappear. But there's a principle of life that a wheat seed will just stay a wheat seed until it falls into the ground and dies.

And then when it dies, it's born again. That's exactly what's got to happen to a human life. It's got to die and then be born again. If it don't, it'll stay alone. But you plant one little wheat seed, one little corn seed, a cotton 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, then the water comes and the sun shines, and you cultivate and fertilize. In the late summer of the fall of the year, these fields out here are bursting with white stuff you call cotton.

And then you go into the harvest. But you can't have a harvest without some flowers. You farmers know I'm telling the truth. You let your land just lay, let it lay out. Well, about the middle of April, whenever you plant down here, go in that land, 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. 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 plow of the Word of God and plant up their own harvest. 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 love it, you're not going to have a harvest. We all want to win sows, but we don't want to plow a harvest.

And we don't want to plant the Word in ourselves. And we do not want the good graces of God's cultivation. 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, this preacher.

Loving Jesus Rather Than Merely Professing Love

I haven't any high-powered sermon tonight, but I want you to listen to me. You listen to me. 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 wrong with God. You can't serve two guys. I'm going 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 may be 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 and hope they won't hurt them 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 now.

By that I mean, we'll have children. But little children, the best they'll know, are already heard about Jesus. They love him with all of their heart. 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, and they tell him the truth.

It's not under salvation, but they tell him 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 Jesus. About Jesus. But when men and women come to the men and women, and youngsters grow up in the bars and clubs, instead of loving Jesus, they love pleasure.

Instead of loving Jesus, they love something of desire. That's so important, is this question. Do you love Jesus? Do you love Jesus? In the fourth chapter, the first epistle of John, John says, we love him.

Do we? He's writing to some Christians, and placing himself among them. This old preacher 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, marvelous children. He loves them. And he is his wisdom. And he says, you know something?

We love him. Because he first, Lord God, he first, no person loves Jesus, then, in the Bible says, not like there is a child. They love him. For what they know, they don't know much. And no man can say with God, it's been brought to his soul, what Jesus did for him.

Jesus first loved us, and gave himself, and God 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 cause you got to. He'll take it if you give it cause you love it. He will not accept your service. You can teach a Sunday school class, you'll do it in the face, 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. I won't do him good. You're still in the faith. You're still in rebellion against God. His law still makes you angry.

You've not so been changed that you can say, well Paul, 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, Brother Barney, I 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. I don't know nothing about that. 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 who tell us that Jesus has died and been buried, and I believe has been raised from the dead and gone back to be with the Father.

And where is the apostle John telling the truth about him and giving that testimony for him? And that whole church made a profanity in desperation. I'm fond of my church. I fight you about my church. I'm fond of my denomination.

I love what you stand for, but I don't love my church. 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 rabbit under water. Just keeps eating me. And boy, she rules the roost. And when I'm home, every night, I'm not there much, but boy, 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. She gives 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 deep for a while. And I just found her that little dog's up deep. I don't love that little dog. 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 faith, 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 that 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 book, have you laid hand on an unseen Savior made of yours? And did you come to love him?

Have you come to love him? Can you say, I love him because he first loved me and purchased my salvation on Calvary Street? 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 I live, that's to unsee God, 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 alive in the love of God's knowledge.

And all the wicked tongues that are cutting at each other with the pictures, fighting pictures, 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.

And that most terrible thing, if you run about as I do, is the killing, and the narcissism, and the slander, and the sinking down of sin. In our churches, one church fights another, one denomination sneering at another, one so-called brother or sickening person on the other.

Listen to me! God says, a snow, a snow girl, if a man says, 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 you? The world can't tell you the sacrifice because you remember the Baptist church. The world can't tell us that in the 15th chapter of John you read it, by this shall all know that you are my disciples and that you love one another.

That you love one another. 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. Do I love Jesus? Do I love Jesus? Do I love Jesus?

Testing Love for Christ by Obedience

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 you. I can't tell whether you love Jesus. Yes, boss. I can't tell that. 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 of wonder before, has ever had one second of time when he could sit in judgment on anybody else.

Oh, that's God's business. And that's no fool's business. That don't mean I'm to tolerate sinning. That means that I can't look into anybody's heart. 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 it squarely 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 priest. The sheriff of this county has got to answer to God.

Not only for himself, but for his office, you see. He's appointed as God. The governor of this state is two people. He has to answer for judgment to God. Not only for his personal life, but for his conduct as governor.

President Eisenhower is 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 owned to God and they're subject to God. And Christians of the present.

Listen, while God has got to answer to us whether or not personally he faces the test and finds out if the Bible can help it and serve these with the grace of God whether or not our Lord Jesus. And then in the capacity of the priest I must pass it upon people who hear me.

How can you tell whether you love Jesus or not? And the Scripture comes right quick and says yes, I confess. If I mind it, if I obey it, I love it. If I obey it, I love it. Now if I say a word and I don't say anything, put it from my end.

If you love me, keep my commandment. If you love me, keep my commandment. 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.

My Lord is talking He that hath my commandments. Hear that? There are 256 of them in the New Testament alone. 256 of them. 256 of them. He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, keepeth not spoke of it once in a while, but you boys and girls go through, that's the present tense participle.

It means keeps on. He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me. That tells it not. I've either got to explain that away, I've got to call Jesus alive, or I've got to come and say, Rothbaum, this will get it down out of the clouds.

It's all right to talk now, but the talking's over now. The fellow that hath his commandments and keeps them, that's the fellow that loveth Jesus. Not the fellow that joins the church, oh no. Not the fellow that professes to Lord 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 preacher, oh no! But the fellow that keeps his commandments, that's the fellow that loveth Jesus.

Rothbaum, do 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 read them. How are 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, but I press it upon you. 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 does not displace. That's not faith. You can't think what the Lord says. You can't think what the Lord says.

He don't keep his faith. He doesn't look around to find out what they are. He doesn't try to map out his life and see whether this thing is what the Lord says do, or whether it says don't do this. He says, well, I'm saved.

I'm not on God's earth, but he saved me from it. Still doing as he pleases. Is God's this better? And he says, I don't think there's no harm with this than anything else, but I know our Father done got sent to us to tell you how to do, but he just comes first.

And it doesn't say that he chose him to do love Jesus. It says he that keeps Jesus command must love them. And it doesn't say that the fellow that don't love Jesus proves it, but not mine, and our Father, that he serves the power of Jesus, but not keeping his faith.

He doesn't get around there just to look at this crap. I would have got religion down out of the clouds. If you love me, if you do keep my commandments, and if you do love me, you will keep my commandments.

Perfect Heart Obedience and the Struggle of Sanctification

Now let me help you something. When I get to this place, even though I've been over a hundred times, I just have to have to have some relief. There's one you need a fellow that doesn't perfectly keep his commandments, isn't saved.

Listen. Is that 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 paper.

And then I'll read the scripture. Obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ, listen to me, has to be perfect in our hearts. In other words, obedience, not hiding 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 and the Lord too. You cannot be obedient to the Lord and somebody else too. In your heart, you must be perfect and absolute.

If you don't, you do not know Him. You've missed Him, and you're still headed for what the Bible calls hell. But now, 100 hard obedience. That means that your mind must be absolutely perfect. You must be of obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, I'm down to preaching tonight, therefore. Listen to me. Just go into church on Sunday and take it in the world or in the world. It will find you. You're just as lost as you can be. You're no more about the grace of God than you can be.

You're trying to serve two worlds. You're trying to serve two gods. And God says, you can't do it. I love Jesus by keeping His commandments. He's done 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 Rothbard 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, but you don't survive?

Are you perfect? No! But God looks at my heart. 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 but isn't conscious of the fact that he's making a mighty poor act of trying to mind the Lord.

But he's trying, he's trying. Oh, listen to Brother Barnett. From the beginning of how God dealt with me and with the law and the gospel, he looks to the motive, looks to the motive. Be absolutely sold out to obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ.

But my service will not be a hundred percent. Is there a person here who dares to stand up and say, Brother Barnett, I've always served you perfectly as I wanted to. Can you? Can you? Can you? 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 that can stand up and tell the truth that's the first.

But unless you're trying to be, you miss Christ. You do not know indifference. You're still lost. There's one verse of Scripture that helped Old Ralph Barnett. It's in the 20th chapter of John. The Lord Jesus then crucified and buried and raised from the dead.

And the disciples have hid out. They've killed the leader and the disciples expect him to come to rest them, kill them. And thereupon in an upper room and the Lord Jesus comes through a locked door with his resurrected body and he speaks to them and somewhat scares them.

And he says, Let peace be unto you. And he breathed on them the Holy Ghost. And 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 hath sent me even so send I you. 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 Bible translated into English, we'll have to so we can read. We can't read the Greek. But the preacher is 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 the 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 things which please His Father.

He said, He that hath seen me, but then He said, that word sends another word entirely in the Greek. And it means, I send you out to represent you. Oh, that helps 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 of that out of you. But about all I do now, when I'm by myself, when I'm by myself a lot, and about all I do say, Lord, give me one more chance.

Hundreds upon the backs of hundreds of meetings for twenty. Would have been all I should have had to preach. Oh, give me another chance, Lord. The Lord said, well, you haven't done as good a job of representing me as I have representing the Father.

But, Ralph, do you love me? Yes. Do you love me? You've denied me. You've sworn you never knew me. Peter, do you love me? Do you? Do you love me, Peter? That dies. You're gone. 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, going on and on. And the one thing that'll keep you, keep you, do you love me? Brother, if you'd have served him like you wanted to, it would have been a lot better, wouldn't it?

Our heart's obedience is perfect. If it isn't, we're lost. I can tell you now, I know a few things. 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, my friend. 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'd seek to find out what he says about these things. See? What does he say about them? 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 else you'll do. And it says here that 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, Ralph, that you love Jesus? By your obedience to him. There's no good. Our obedience is what counts. Our obedience. And there are four things that Scripture says that are true of the Christian and not true of anybody else.

Four Qualities of True Obedience

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 get into it. 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. You don't need any other reason.

You don't need any other reason. Jesus said it. Okay. So what must reason have? All anything. I'm afraid that's it. I think that's too stiff. I believe God's no sprinkle bush. I don't believe that's right.

I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that. My opinion is different. The same 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 for you to say, well, I believe I'll do what Jesus says. Yeah, but four only. That's the way unsaved people do. A whole lot of church people do that way, but I'm not talking about that.

Ninety-five percent of our church people are lost, and you know it. Listen to me. He'll not do to say, I'll keep this. I'll not keep this. The Christian. The Lord didn't say he that hath my commandments and keeps the ones he particularly likes and ignores the rest out 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 learned some things that my mother and father used to tell me and I didn't think knew what they were talking about.

I don't get much out of anybody giving me something. Oh, I sure love to give my little girl something. Make her old eyes look out. Have her come put my arms around my neck and thank me and kiss me. It's a pleasure.

It's a pleasure to try to please somebody you love. It's a privilege. It's not an awful duty. Every lover of Christ seeks to keep his commandments carefully. Not as slave-driven but as people that love him.

Every lover of Christ seeks to keep his commandments perseveringly. That doesn't mean they just keep off. Just keep off! Keep off! Keep off! To please him. To obey him. And to mind him. Is it a burden to you to obey the Lord?

If it is, you're lost. You don't love somebody if it's a burden. You know that? Why, I've seen mothers that have gone in when I was a pastor sit by the bedside of the child week in and week out but not enough sleep to keep a cat alive.

Wasn't any burden to them, brother. They loved that child. What the fellow 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.

Just keep off. Do you love me in this day when we say that no hunger for books, no seeking to find it will in this day for such a my God obedience to him. I ask you, do you love him? You don't love him unless he's real to you.

You don't love him until you walk down the house of Holy Spirit conviction. Been brought 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 deserve to go there.

Been brought to see that God's coming and what it has to do with you.