If you were an eye-witness of the operations of farm-servants on the barn-floor, you would there get an illustration of the way to get believers to stand.
I have seen them filling sacks with chaff, and I invariably observed that one person had to hold the sack all the time of its being filled; and, even when full, it could not stand alone, but had to be made to lean against the wall to get it to stand. But I noticed that if they took precisely the same sort of sack, and poured into it the well bolted corn, it stood by the weight of what it was receiving during the process of filling; and also, after it was full it stood upright of itself in the middle of the floor, just because it had been made strong to stand by the weight and solidity of the heavy grain which it contained.
And so the Christian who is filled with the good seed of the Word of God, and thereby filled with Christ, stands in the power of what he receives; whereas the hearer who is filled with the chaff of men's thoughts and opinions on God's truth, however quickly he may be filled to the dimensions of the other, will never be able to stand alone. There must be the solidity of the truth in Christ to insure stability.
If the preaching we are hearing does not so fill us with the heavy grain of God's Word, that we stand by the weight of it without a lean, we had better take heed what we hear and also how we hear.
" Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness. But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."
" To Him be glory both now and forever. Amen."