I have been thinking of God's people
missing their birthright, missing their inheritance, losing
a large portion of what Christ purchased for
us on the cross.
Forgiveness of sins is only like cleaning the
cup or cleaning the pipe, the channel.
I mean, we clean a cup at home
for a purpose, to fill it with something
useful.
We clear out a channel or a pipe
so that the water can flow.
So any Christian who is satisfied with the
fact that his sins have been forgiven, that's
great and that's all there is.
We can say the devil has robbed him
of his inheritance in Christ.
And some of them, not some of them,
but many of them, many Christians will discover
it only when they stand before Christ.
The whole purpose of prophetic preaching in the
church is to throw light on the schemes
of Satan, on the ways in which he
seeks to deceive God's people, rob God's people.
Jesus said the thief comes to steal, to
kill and to destroy.
He wants to rob us of our inheritance
because when we are robbed of our inheritance,
we don't have the power that God wants
us to have, then he can kill us
easily.
He can take away our weapons, take away
our power.
He can destroy our lives.
And when I see the very low standard
and state of affairs among so many Christians,
and even in our churches, so many families
have not come into the glory of a
new covenant life of peace and love, joy.
It really, I'll tell you, it makes me
angry at the devil and say, Lord, I
want to serve you more wholeheartedly.
I hope it makes you angry too, at
the devil.
Don't waste your time getting angry at human
beings.
That will accomplish nothing except serve the devil's
purposes.
If you want to get angry and all
of us got a lot of anger pent
up in our hearts, turn it all against
the devil.
Let loose at him with all the bullets
you have of anger.
I don't want to waste any bullet on
a human being of anger.
I'm angry at the devil because he's robbed
God's people.
He's robbed my brothers and sisters.
He's made their lives miserable.
He's made this world which God created such
a terrible place.
He's fooled people with false religions.
He's fooled Christians with a false Jesus.
He's deceived Christians into thinking something is the
Holy Spirit, which is not the Holy Spirit
at all, which doesn't make anybody holy.
I'm amazed that so many people swallow all
this.
And so, I'm concerned that we should, not
only me, but if you hear the truth,
you should lovingly share this with others who
are blinded.
If you can't share it in love, don't
share it.
If you're going to share the truth of
God in a critical, judgmental way, or in
a way to make people condemned, saying, why
aren't you doing this, or why aren't you,
that's not the way, then it's better to
keep quiet.
God never scolds anyone.
God never tells anybody, why aren't you doing
this, why aren't you doing that?
Preachers say that.
God never.
That's because so many preachers don't know God,
that they speak like that.
I know in the days when I knew
God so little, I spoke like that too.
I'm not here to throw stones at any
preacher.
I have sinned in that area myself, and
so I don't have any, I'm not qualified.
Jesus said, only one without sin can throw
a stone, and I can't.
But I've learned a lesson, and I can
share with other people.
Don't do that.
You know, you don't have to do the
stupid things I did in my younger days.
God never scolds anyone, and as a father,
we must correct our children, but not scold
them.
There's so much of deception in the world
today.
So much of missing out on what God
has offered for us in Christ.
So much of living under the old covenant.
The old covenant was given by God only
temporarily to show man that you can't make
it.
To show you your sin, and to show
man that no matter how hard you try,
you can't make it.
I hope all of us have learned that
lesson.
No matter how hard you try, you can't
come up to God's standard.
You cannot.
You may think, on the outside you may
do a lot of things that appear spiritual,
but God is interested in the inside.
David said in Psalm 51, Lord, you desire
truth in the innermost being.
That's where he wants truth.
And he couldn't get it from anybody in
the old covenant.
And he never expected it, because he gave
the law only to show man.
And 1500 years he kept Israel under the
law.
You know the sad thing is, even today,
2000 years later, Christians have still not learned
that lesson, you can't make it.
You'll never come up to God's standard, no
matter how hard you try.
And that's why you need to, first of
all, find deliverance and freedom from the guilt
of the past by perceiving Christ as your
savior and accepting his righteousness.
A lot of Christians know about forgiveness, but
they don't know about justification.
They don't know that the only way I
can stand before God, even if I'm forgiven,
I'm still not good enough.
So what if my past is forgiven?
What about all the corruption in your nature
and mine today?
How can I stand before God with all
that corruption, even if every sin I committed
in the past is forgiven?
That's why I need to be justified.
Justified means Christ clothes me in his righteousness,
puts his righteousness to my account, and God
looks at me, he doesn't see all the
filth.
Aren't you happy?
Aren't you happy that he doesn't see all
the corruption?
He sees me in Christ.
I rejoice in that, and I want you
to rejoice in it.
But more than that, I don't have to
live with this righteousness clothing me and inwardly
forever be corrupt.
The other part of the good news is
that God sends his Holy Spirit within to
while clothed in the righteousness of Christ, while
accepted by God, inwardly a tremendous transformation is
taking place, or should take place with the
Holy Spirit.
And this is where Satan has robbed so
many of God's people.
Let me turn in Romans chapter 8.
Romans chapter 8.
It says here in verse 3, what the
law could not do.
That is what the whole old covenant could
not do.
That means, what nobody before Jesus came could
experience.
We could put it like that.
What Moses could not experience.
What John the Baptist could not experience.
Who was the greatest person born after Jesus?
What nobody in the entire human race up
to the time of Jesus could experience.
What the law could not do, God did.
That's what he did, when he sent Jesus
in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as
an offering for sin, and condemned sin in
the flesh.
Why?
Why did he do all that?
Why did God condemn sin in the flesh
of Jesus when he hung on the cross?
All sin was condemned there, in the flesh
of Jesus.
He says in 2 Corinthians 5 verse 21,
God made him to be sin on the
cross, who knew no sin.
So that, so that, we might become the
righteousness of God, in Him.
Not some rotten righteousness that I have accomplished
by discipline and yoga, and controlling myself.
Paul says, I don't want the righteousness of
the law.
I don't want it.
It's rags.
I throw it away.
I want this glorious garment of the righteousness
of Christ.
And so that, verse 4, the requirement of
the law, might be fulfilled inside us now.
What is God's ultimate purpose?
Listen.
Here is God's ultimate purpose for you.
That that holy requirement He had, even in
old covenant times, for man, which could not
be fulfilled through the law, what the law
could not do, can now be fulfilled, not
on the outside.
No.
Not that which gives you a good testimony
before men.
But that it can be fulfilled inside you.
Inside who?
Inside us, who no longer walk according to
the flesh.
It doesn't work inside everybody.
We know that.
But it will be accomplished in every Christian,
who chooses, who makes a choice, to walk
according to the spirit, and not according to
the flesh.
In other words, who has decided, I'm going
to walk, I'm going to live my life,
according to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
And not according to the promptings of my
fleshly nature.
All of us know, we hear those promptings,
pretty regularly, in our life.
The promptings of the Holy Spirit, and the
promptings of the fleshly nature.
And if there's a cry in your heart,
and say, Lord, I want to live all
my life, according to the promptings of the
Holy Spirit.
You know what will happen?
Romans 8,4, Never forget this verse.
You live according to the promptings of the
Holy Spirit, not according to the promptings of
the flesh.
God's holy requirement, will be fulfilled inside you.
The Holy Spirit will work it in you.
He will write, He will put His law
into your mind, and write it into your
heart.
That's wonderful.
What is that holy requirement of the law?
Let me turn.
Now, we're going step by step, like doing
an arithmetic problem.
We understood what God's goal is.
This righteous requirement of the law, must be
fulfilled inside me, if I live by the
promptings of the Holy Spirit.
You know, the Bible is really very simple.
So many preachers have made it a very
complicated thing.
One of the charges God has given me,
in my ministry, is to remove the veil,
from the Scriptures.
That's over so many people.
The devil's put a veil on people.
And on top of the veil, the devil
has put so many preachers, that put another
veil on top of it, making it even
more difficult for people to understand.
But Jesus said that, the Bible can be
understood by babes.
He spoke in a way, that little children
can understand, if we read it simply.
And if we meditate on it, if we
take a little time, to think about it.
Matthew chapter 22.
You know, Jesus was asked once, the same
question.
Verse 36.
Matthew 22 verse 36.
Somebody came to him and said, Teacher, which
is the great commandment of the law?
And different people, have different understandings.
Even today, there are some people, who call
themselves Christians, who say the great commandment is
the fourth commandment.
That is, you must keep the Sabbath.
And that lady, who is the leader of
that group, said that, I think she had
a vision or something, where she saw the
Ten Commandments, and the light shining on the
fourth one.
And I think the Jews expected some answer
like that.
You know, that Jesus just said, Sabbath or
something like that.
But he didn't say that.
In fact, he didn't mention any of the
Ten Commandments.
But he said two things, which summed up
the whole Ten Commandments.
He said, I'll tell you.
The great commandment in the law is not
one, but two.
Two sides of a coin.
And I have to show you both sides.
First, you shall love the Lord your God.
Listen carefully.
This is the righteous requirement of the law,
which God wants to fulfill inside us.
If it's not fulfilled inside you, the devil
has robbed you.
He has deceived you.
The Holy Spirit is not working in you,
as he wants to, if this is not
being accomplished more and more.
It's not a question of evangelism.
It's not a question of preaching or even
attending meetings.
Lots of people who attend meetings are just
religious people.
Here is the righteous requirement of the law,
which God longs to be fulfilled inside every
one of us.
You shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart.
If I love God with all my heart,
how much place is there in my heart
to love my wife, my children, my house,
my job, my bank account, my money, my
property, my reputation, anything.
There is no place left in my heart
for these other things.
How is it then you love those other
things?
I'll tell you, because though you have given
some place to God in your heart, the
righteous requirement of the law to love God
with all your heart has not been fulfilled.
You know, that is the meaning of being
pure in heart.
The only man who is pure in heart
is the man who loves God with all
his heart.
Pure in heart is different from having a
clean conscience.
A clean conscience means you have confessed every
sin that you know and you cleanse.
You say, Lord, I'm sorry, you confessed to
God, you confessed to man.
But there are a lot of people who
have a clean conscience, who don't have a
pure heart.
You know that.
You can confess every sin and yet you
may love something other than God.
Well, you say, Brother Zach, aren't you supposed
to love your wife?
Sure.
And I'll tell you something, I've learned through
38 years of marriage that I can love
my wife far better and far more if
I love God with all my heart.
If I try to love my wife the
way all these cinemas teach and the way
romantic novels teach, I'd have been having problems
with her even today.
I'd have been fighting and quarreling even today,
occasionally, like all these people who follow the
cinemas do.
But when you love God with all your
heart and He fills your heart with love,
you'll love your wife in such a way
that you'll never raise your voice against her.
You'll never have a bitterness or a grudge
or a complaint against her any day, 365
days of the year.
That's the righteous requirement of the law.
It comes through not loving your wife but
by loving God with all your heart.
You see this, I'll give you an example.
Let me take an example.
If I'm the right hand and my wife
is the left hand, how does my right
hand love the left hand?
It's not by always hanging on together.
I don't have time to always be with
my wife.
I have to serve the Lord and I
have to go many places and she's not
with me.
This right hand loves my left hand through
the head.
That's how it loves.
This right hand knows this left hand is
part of the same body and it gets
hurt even if a mosquito bites.
This one does something about it.
Why?
Because it's connected to the head and through
the head loves.
So if this right hand is completely submissive
to the head, it doesn't have to love
the left hand.
It'll automatically love the left hand much better
than if you just connect these two hands
together by some type of wire or I
tell you, you'll love your wife much better
if you love Jesus with all your heart.
If you don't believe it, try it.
Try it from today and tell me a
year later if it doesn't work.
It will.
You'll love your children better.
You won't scold them so much but you'll
correct them.
You'll help them.
You'll encourage them.
Because you love God with all your heart.
You love the brothers and sisters in the
church.
Some of them who are difficult.
Does God love his difficult children?
Oh yes, he does.
Otherwise, where would we be?
Who are you thinking of?
Somebody else?
I'm thinking of myself.
I hope you're thinking of yourself and not
thinking of somebody else.
I know that brother over there and that
sister over there.
You see how our mind is.
God loves his difficult children.
He loves us and when we love him
with all our hearts, we love everyone.
I'll tell you that.
I've discovered that more and more and more.
The older I get, the more I see.
Not because it's written in 1 Corinthians 13,
because I've experienced it, love is the greatest.
Not even faith.
Today we have a preaching that tells you
faith is the greatest.
Almost every Christian television preacher is telling you
about faith, faith, faith, faith.
Yeah?
Faith is there.
Hope is there that one day Christ will
come and love, but love is the greatest.
I have no doubt in my mind about
it.
You can have faith for many things and
go to hell.
You know that?
You can receive many things from God.
No Christian ever received as much as those
Israelites received for 40 years in the wilderness.
Have you ever received bread dropping from heaven
into your house even one day of your
life?
Boy, imagine if that happened one day.
It went out and Jesus sent bread for
you.
It'll stink in one day by the way,
if you keep it for yourself.
You've got to share it with others.
But the point is that the Israelites received
that for 40 years.
God was not happy with them.
They went to hell.
They had supernatural healing, miracles, water coming out
of a rock, all types of things.
They went to hell.
You can have faith and you can have
miracles and go to hell.
But there'll never be a person in hell
who loved God with all his heart and
who loved others as himself.
That'll be impossible.
So Jesus said, the greatest commandment is love
God with all your heart and with all
your soul.
My mind is a part of my soul
and my personality.
And if my mind also, I want to
love God.
That's why, you know, when I see something
on television which my mind says, God, the
Lord won't love that.
I want to turn it off.
I want to turn away.
And if I'm sitting in somebody's house and
they're watching it, well, I'll want to go
to the bathroom or something like that and
excuse myself and say, sorry, it's time for
me to leave.
That's the best thing.
I'm not interested because I've got a mind
which for so many years in my foolishness,
I corrupted with sin.
At least the years that are left to
me.
I want to give it to God.
I want to use this mind to understand
the scriptures.
And I've tried to use my mind to
understand the scriptures for 45 years so that
I could use my mind to bless other
people.
To clear out the cobwebs in people's minds
about what God is like.
About the new covenant.
About Jesus.
About the glory of Jesus.
Why don't you use your mind for that?
Instead of watching filthy movies.
Instead of corrupting it with useless stuff that
you read.
I'll tell you honestly, my testimony, I'm not
trying to be humble.
I have studied this book, Bible, for 45
years.
I still feel I know so little.
One of the things I recently got, I
don't usually buy things for myself, but I
got something recently which has helped me.
Somebody gave it to me.
Something which I could, where I can put
a headphone on and keep on listening to
the Bible.
Wherever I go.
So, sometimes I have to make long journeys.
Couple of days I had to make a
long two and a half hour road journey
from where I was to the airport.
And I finished the Gospel of Matthew.
And boy, did I get revelation.
For the first time.
I got revelation on certain things.
This is after reading it for 45 years.
You're missing something.
Love God with all your mind.
Okay, I'll give you one of those revelations
I got.
Right in the first chapter of Matthew.
You know, it's something that blessed my heart
and I say, Lord, I want to try
and practice this more and more.
You know, in Matthew chapter 1, it says
about Joseph discovering that Mary had a child.
But he didn't know it was by the
Holy Spirit.
He thought she had been unfaithful and become
pregnant.
And so Joseph, it says in verse 19,
was a righteous man and didn't want to
disgrace her.
I want to tell you what I've said
many times before, the mark of a righteous
man.
The first mark of a righteous man mentioned
in the New Testament is that he does
not want to disgrace other people.
He does not want to expose the sins
of other people.
He wants to cover the sins of other
people.
If you're like that, you're a righteous man.
If you want to go around exposing the
sins of your wife, your husband, other people
in the church, you are a thoroughly unrighteous
person.
He was a righteous man.
He was under the old covenant, but he
still had grace or he still had an
understanding of God to not disgrace her, but
to send her away secretly.
He said, let me just hide the whole
thing.
Let her get married to somebody else.
I won't tell anything about the stories I
know about her.
How happy Joseph must have been that he
did that.
Because later on when he discovered the truth,
how terrible he would have felt if he
had gone around telling stories about Mary before
that.
Have you ever felt terrible about telling some
story about somebody and later on discovering it
was not at all true?
How much better it would have been if
you had just kept quiet?
At least learn a lesson for the future.
But, you know, I mean, I had already
seen that before, but what struck me was
this other part.
In the New Living Translation, it says while
he was thinking about this, he went to
sleep and God spoke to him in a
dream.
And I thought, Lord, before I go to
sleep, let me also be thinking about how
to do good to somebody.
What a way to go to sleep.
God may speak to you in a dream
if you go to sleep like that.
So many people before they go to bed
they are thinking about how they are going
to fight with someone, how they are going
to answer someone who is going to argue
with them and how they are going to
teach that other fellow a lesson and how
they are going to make a little more
money here.
Listen, okay, even if you spend your whole
day doing that, just before you go to
sleep, think about how can I do some
good to someone?
While he was thinking about these things, he
went to sleep and God spoke to him.
That I discovered after 45 years of reading
the Bible.
And just to show you a taste, to
encourage you to study the scriptures.
There is a lot in here.
You don't need great knowledge of anything.
You just need to read carefully and stop
and think.
But there is so much in it.
To love God with all our heart, with
all our mind is what God wants to
accomplish in us.
And it also says in Matthew 22 in
that passage that Jesus this is you should
love God with all your heart, with all
your soul and with all your mind.
This is the first commandment.
And the second is like that.
You must love your neighbor as yourself.
Whatever you don't want other people to do
to you, don't do to other people.
Whatever you want other people to do to
you, do to other people.
That's what Jesus said.
It's the golden rule in Luke chapter 7.
Treat others the way you want to be
treated.
Whenever you are thinking of treating someone in
a certain way, think yourself, would you like
to be treated like that?
When you attempted to yell at the maid
servant in your home, before doing that, just
stop a moment.
At least from now onwards.
And ask yourself, would you want your boss
to yell at you like that?
Correct you, yes.
I certainly want, if I'm working in an
office, I'd like my boss to correct me
if I'm doing something wrong, but I don't
want him to yell at me as if
I'm a good for nothing useless person.
Treat other people the way you want God
to treat you.
See, these are laws in scripture.
Honor your father and mother and it'll go
well with you.
And we should be a testimony to that
at the end of our life.
My father and mother lived to a ripe
old age.
One was 80 and one was 90 before
they passed away.
But I can honestly say before God I
honored them.
I didn't always agree with them.
After I left their home, I did as
the Lord led me.
But I honored them until the end of
their lives.
And I want to say today to you,
it's gone well with me.
It has.
We had a young maid servant who worked
in our home for many years and God's
my witness and I always try to treat
her the way I wanted God to treat
me.
Sure.
Did good as far as possible, even after
she got married.
Because that's the way I wanted God to
treat me and I want to testify today.
God's been very good to me.
I've treated God's children.
Tried my best to help them.
In many ways, God's dealt very well with
my own children.
It's a law.
Treat others the way you want to be
treated by God.
The way you want to be treated.
It's a simple law.
Do you know how much you miss in
life?
Do you know why there are so many
problems in your life?
Because you treat other people so badly.
I mean, it's the most foolish thing to
do.
Don't you want it to go well in
your life?
I want it to go well in my
life.
I want it to go well with my
children.
There's so many wonderful promises in the New
Testament that we can claim.
If you love your neighbor as yourself, I
tell you it's the best thing for you.
It's the best thing for your children and
grandchildren.
The seed of the righteous person is blessed.
If you want it to go well with
your children and their children, be a righteous
person.
God's given me so many promises.
Let me just show you some of the
promises God's given me concerning my own children,
which I've just claimed, you know.
I mean, you can claim it too.
It's in Scripture.
This Bible is not written just for me.
It's for you.
But we don't, we miss something when we
don't claim it.
Here's a verse that God gave my wife
and me before we even, I mean, right
before we had any children.
It says here in Isaiah Isaiah 54 and
verse 13.
All your sons will be taught of the
Lord, or as the meaning in the margin
says, will be disciples of the Lord and
the well-being of your sons will be
great.
I mean, years before we had any sons.
Long before we had any sons, days before
that, the Lord gave that to my wife
separately and to me.
And we said, Lord, we just claim it.
In the Message Bible it says, all your
children will have God for their teacher.
What a mentor for your children.
Then there was another one and that's in
Isaiah 59.
Now, I'm just saying this so that these
checks are in your name as well.
Take it to the bank of heaven and
cash it.
Isaiah 59 and verse 21.
As for me, this is my covenant with
them.
My spirit that I have placed upon you
and the words that I've given you to
speak, they are not going to leave your
mouth nor the mouth of your children nor
the mouth of your grandchildren.
You will keep repeating these words and it
will never stop.
It will go on from generation to generation.
Boy, I tell you with all my heart,
I don't mind if all my children are
poor.
God is my witness.
The Spirit of God will be upon them
and they will speak God's word.
They will be the richest people in the
world.
That's what I wish for my children, grandchildren.
I don't desire anything else because I've known
from my own life that money is not
everything.
Sure, makes no difference to me whether I
have much or little.
I'm just as happy when I had little
as I am today.
Another verse.
Isaiah 61 and verse 9.
I'm reading in the message translation.
Isaiah 61 and verse 9.
The middle of that verse it says, Your
descendants will become well known all over.
Your children in foreign countries will be recognized
at once as the people whom I have
blessed.
It's amazing how specific God's promises can be.
You can go to God and say, Lord,
I just go to the Lord and say,
Lord, I don't want just my life to
be blessed.
I want rivers of living water to flow
out from me, first of all, in my
own home to my children, grandchildren, to my
people in my home church and then to
other churches.
I can't do it.
God told Abraham, I will bless you.
I will make you a blessing.
Then you'll be a blessing to others.
No matter how hard I try, I can't
be a blessing to anybody.
I can't even be a blessing to my
children.
But if I open myself up to God
and say, Lord, I give you my word.
I want to treat other people the way
I want you to treat me.
Will you make a covenant with God today?
If not for any other reason, at least
for the selfish reason that you want your
children and grandchildren to be blessed.
I mean, that's not the best reason.
The best reason is that you want to
glorify God.
But if you can't do it for any
other reason, do it because you want it
to go well with you.
And you want it to go well with
your family.
Treat other people, at least from today, the
way you want God to treat you.
Let God write that law into your heart
that every time you speak to people and
every time you have to deal with people,
you're going to say, I want to, in
your heart, I want to treat you the
way God treats me.
God's been tremendously good to you.
I want to be exceptionally good to you.
I don't want to be miserly and tight
-fisted towards you.
I want to be large-hearted because God's
been large-hearted towards me.
Jesus told his disciples once, why should you
freely give to others?
Because you have freely received.
Freely you have received, he said in Matthew
chapter 10.
Freely give.
The tragedy with so many Christians is they
will acknowledge they have received freely what they
don't deserve.
But they don't give.
They become tight-fisted.
They keep things to themselves and it stagnates.
Have you seen a lake where the water
comes in, rain falls, falls, falls, falls, falls,
falls, and there's no outlet for that lake.
And you can't drink the water of that
lake.
It's weeds and rubbish.
Because it's just receiving, receiving, receiving, receiving, receiving.
And next year it'll be receiving, and receiving,
and receiving.
And it'll be filthy and filthy.
You won't even want to go swim in
that lake.
There are some Christians like that.
They receive, receive, receive, receive.
They never give anything to anyone.
They stink.
And then there are others.
Have you seen a river?
How is it people can even drink from
a river?
Because when you stand in front of a
flowing river, every second, every second, the water
in front of you is fresh.
It's new.
It wasn't the water that was there five
seconds ago.
That's gone.
It's gone.
It got something and it passed it on.
It got something from the snow in the
mountains.
Well, I got so much.
Let me pass it on to others.
Think of the millions of people who get
blessed through a river.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Simple devotion to Christ is what leads us
into this type of love.
We read in 2nd Corinthians in chapter 11.
2nd Corinthians chapter 11.
What is Paul's concern for his flock in
Corinth?
He says, I'm jealous for you.
2nd Corinthians 11 verse 2.
Because I promised your hand in marriage to
Christ.
I betrothed you to Christ.
And I want to present you one day
as a pure virgin to her husband.
Paul was a man who took his ministry
seriously.
He knew that he had to present every
one of those people as a pure virgin
to Christ and he was so concerned that
they were not pure.
They were fooling around with the world.
And he says, I'm afraid that like the
serpent deceived Eve by his cleverness, your mind
will be led astray.
You'll be lured away from simple pure devotion
to Christ.
When do you go astray?
When you have lost your simple pure devotion
to Christ.
Oh, you don't have to do serious things.
When you have lost that fervent love for
Jesus, you've already gone astray my brother.
You didn't know that?
You didn't know you had fallen?
The Lord told the leader, the elder of
the church in Ephesus in Revelation 2.4
You've left your first love.
You had it once but you just left
it.
And remember from where you have fallen.
Is that a fall?
That's what he says there in Revelation 2
.5 Remember from where you have fallen to
lose your first love, to leave your first
love for Christ is the greatest fall you
can have so bad that the Lord says,
I'll take over the anointing from you if
you don't repent.
Many of us may repent when we lost
our temper, lost it with our eyes, hurt
somebody with words, did something but when was
the last time you repented because you said,
Lord Jesus I've lost my love for you.
Have you ever wept on your pillow at
night and said, Lord I've stopped loving you
like I did before.
I've done it.
I do it often.
I said to me that's the most important
thing.
I don't care for preaching.
I'll tell you honestly, God's my witness.
I don't care for preaching.
That's just an overflow of my love for
Christ.
It's love for Jesus that burns in my
heart.
That's how I was when the Lord saved
me 47 years ago and that's where I
want to be till today.
I want to evaluate my life not by
ministry, not by books or tapes or CDs
or outreach.
The Lord told me years ago, don't ever
evaluate your life by the success in your
ministry.
Evaluate your life by your love for me.
I've kept that before me.
It's possible to have a very successful ministry
and to have a great outreach and to
lose your love for Jesus.
You read that in Revelation chapter 2, that
leader in Ephesus, the church in Ephesus had
a wide ministry.
Boy, they were reaching people.
You read in Acts chapter 19, they were
reaching all over that area.
They'd lost their love for Christ a little
later.
What's the use of all that outreach?
I say, Lord, I don't care for outreach.
I want to love you.
If there is any outreach, it must be
just an overflow of my love for you.
If I was to anoint my head with
oil, my cup runs over.
But that comes out of my following the
Lord as my shepherd.
So, keep that in mind.
We go astray when simple devotion to Jesus
is gone.
That's gone.
You've gone on to something else, something good.
But it's not simple devotion to Christ.
Does that happen to you?
The reason why you can't love other people
is because you don't love Jesus with all
your heart.
The reason why we love money is because
we don't love Jesus with all our heart.
The reason why the world looks so attractive
is because we don't love Jesus with all
our heart.
The reason why television programs are more interesting
than the Bible, you want to know?
Because you don't love Jesus with all your
heart.
I'll tell you honestly, everything changes, the whole
focus changes when you see the glory of
Jesus and you start loving Him with all
your heart.
You say, Lord, that's the way I want
to love you.
And when we love Him like that, love
will come in our hearts for unlovely people.
You know, the Lord said in Matthew chapter
5, how we were to love, and that's
been a challenge to me.
I mean, the way we are even supposed
to love unbelievers.
Jesus said in verse 43, Matthew 5, 43,
you have heard that it was said you
shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies.
And I love the message translation here.
I'm telling you to love your enemies, let
your enemies bring out the best in you,
not the worst.
Let your enemies bring out the best in
you, not the worst.
When someone gives you a hard time, respond
with the energies of prayer for him.
For then you are working out of your
true selves, your God-created self.
This is what God does.
He gives his best, the sun to warm,
the rain to nourish.
He gives his best to everyone, regardless whether
they are good or bad, nice or nasty.
If all you do is love those who
love you, what reward can you have for
that?
Anybody can do that.
If you simply say hello to those who
greet you, do you expect a medal for
that?
Any run-of-the-mill sinner can do
that.
But what I'm saying is, grow up!
Grow up!
You're subjects of the kingdom of God.
Now live like that.
I like that.
You know, I was thinking the other day
how good God is.
He allows terrorists to live a long life.
You and I wouldn't do that, would we?
When terrorists get married, they get children.
We would make their wives barren.
I know a lot of things I would
do if I were in God's place, which
God doesn't do.
I thank God I'm not in his place.
But it's taught me something of the goodness
of God.
Lazy.
I mean, you can't tolerate some little problem
with some brother in the church?
Boy!
Imagine loving a terrorist!
I say, Lord, I want to love like
you love.
I really want.
I know that everything else is hollow.
Love is the currency of heaven.
You better exchange your earthly currency for that
before you, you know, migrate and go there.
If you do, please have the currency of
heaven.
The church is supposed to be a little
pocket, you know, like of heaven on earth.
It's like, if you go to Delhi, you'll
see a building called the Embassy of the
United States of America.
And people who live there belong to the
United States.
They live according to the laws of the
United States.
But it's a little representation of the United
States in a country like India.
So, what's our church supposed to be?
An embassy of the Kingdom of God here
in Bangalore.
I hope you're behaving like that.
And not behaving like all the other people
in Bangalore.
The Embassy of the Kingdom of God.
The Bible says that, 2 Corinthians 5.20.
We are ambassadors.
The thing is, in that embassy, there's only
one ambassador.
We've got a few hundred ambassadors here.
But it's no use just putting a badge
and saying ambassador.
You've got to live like one.
An ambassador of Jesus Christ.
A representative of Jesus Christ.
To love people.
And that can only come if we love
God with all our heart.
And that love for Jesus, I was thinking
about that, you know.
There are two ways in which I have
discovered that my love for Jesus can increase
in all these years of my life.
There are two things I meditate on very
frequently.
Only two, really.
One is how much he loved me.
It says in 1 John chapter 4 and
verse 19 we love him because he first
loved us.
1 John 4 verse 19 and it says
here we love not just love him, which
means we love other people.
Not because they love us.
The verse in the world is we love
other people because they love us.
The verse in the Bible is we love
other people because God loved us.
You see the difference?
We love because he loved us.
You ask me why do you love me,
Brother Jack?
Because God loved me.
It's not because you're such a great guy.
But it's because God loved me.
That's all.
You may not be a great guy.
You may have harmed me in some way.
You may have spoken against me.
It doesn't make a difference.
I love you because God loves me.
It's got nothing to do with how you
treat me.
It's got nothing to do with how you
speak about me behind my back.
God loves me.
I love because he first loved me.
You stick to that and you'll be a
Christian.
You change that verse to we love you
because you love me, you're out in the
world again.
Then you're not an ambassador for Christ.
No.
We love because he first loved us.
And so the first thing I need to
meditate on is, which I've done through all
these more than 45 years is how much
Jesus loved me.
I meditated, meditated, meditated on the cross.
How much he, I mean not just in
the early days.
It was just the physical suffering that I
understood on the cross.
But as I meditated, meditated, meditated trying to
understand how much he loved me, the Lord
opened my eyes to see more and more
that his physical death was not enough.
You know, I was thinking if some non
-Christian asks me, someone who studied the Bible,
Mr. Poonen, what is the punishment for your
sin?
And I say, my punishment, no, supposing he
asks me, how is your sin forgiven?
I say, Christ died for me on the
cross.
Oh, he died for you on the cross?
Physically?
What is the punishment for your sin?
Is physical death the punishment for your sin?
I say, no.
I have to be separated and forsaken by
God for eternity.
And he says, really?
Then did Jesus suffer that on the cross
or only physical death?
Then my eyes were opened to see that
the cup with Jesus prayed in Gethsemane, Lord,
Father, please take this away from me.
That cup was not physical death.
Physical death is part of the punishment for
sin.
But it's not all.
Adam died the moment he ate that tree.
Not physically.
Physically he died 930 years later.
But spiritually, he was cut off from God
immediately.
In the day you eat, you will die.
And he died.
That's the punishment Jesus bore on the cross.
He made him to be sinned.
When Jesus hung on the cross in three
hours, he cried, My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me?
It's the only time in his life he
called his father God.
He never called his father God in all
eternity.
All the days of his life, but once
for me, he hung on the cross as
my substitute bearing my punishment, paying my debt.
Paying a debt that I could never pay.
And he paid it.
And because he was an eternal being unlike
me who is a finite being, in three
hours, he faced the concentrated punishment of what
all human beings would suffer in hell for
eternity.
You know, concentrated.
Not just me suffering in hell for eternity,
but all human beings suffering in hell for
eternity take all of that punishment and concentrate
it put on Jesus in three hours on
the cross.
I tell you, that really opened my eyes.
Then I understood his struggle in Gethsemane when
he said, Father, take this cup away from
me.
I don't want to break my fellowship with
you.
I don't mind physical death.
I'll go through that a thousand times.
But my fellowship with you, which you and
I have had for eternity, you may not
want to lose that.
It's like somebody wrenching off your head.
The Bible says the head of Christ was
his father.
1 Corinthians 11.
To have your head wrenched off.
Oh, Father, I don't want that.
See, we don't understand that.
Physical suffering means so much to us.
We weep when we see movies like The
Passion of Christ or some other film about
Jesus because we live so much in the
physical world.
Physical suffering is the biggest thing for us.
Physical sickness is what we want healing from
more than from sin.
The physical world means so much to us.
That's why the physical suffering of Jesus, we
think so much of.
What about this fellowship with the Father?
Fellowship with the Father means so little to
most believers.
Because they can break fellowship so easily and
forget about it for days on end.
Jesus wouldn't want even fellowship to be broken
even for a second.
Think of a husband and wife who have
a quarrel and don't talk to each other
for two days.
Two days!
No fellowship with the Father.
They may pray.
Religious people pray.
All religions pray.
They may pray, but there is no fellowship
with the Father if your fellowship with your
wife is broken.
The Bible says that in 1 Peter 3
7.
Your father will not hear you.
Your prayers will be hindered.
But they can carry on.
Okay.
Let her humble herself and come and ask
my forgiveness.
I am the head of this home.
Fellowship with God means nothing to 99%
of believers.
No wonder they cannot understand in a million
years they won't understand what Jesus suffered on
the cross.
But then fellowship in the Father becomes more
precious to you than physical health.
I tell you, I want to be in
that place where fellowship with my Heavenly Father
means much more to me than even physical
health.
Then we will understand a little bit of
what Jesus suffered on the cross.
That's when I began to understand it.
When the Spirit meant more to me than
physical suffering.
When break of fellowship with the Father was
painful, then God opened my eyes to see
what Jesus went through on the cross.
You see, you can hear me.
I say, oh, that is a great revelation.
I've heard people say to me this after
meeting where I shared this.
Brother Jack, I never thought of that.
You know, they've got something now to talk
to other people about or preach to somebody
else.
They're not.
They're still living in the mind.
It's a new thought.
An exciting thought.
It wasn't a thought for Jesus.
It wasn't a thought for me.
It was something painful he went through.
And when fellowship with the Father means so
much to you that you'll never allow even
one moment of anything to break that fellowship.
If you hurt somebody, you go and ask
forgiveness immediately, whether your wife or anybody, because
you want your fellowship with the Father.
When it means like that to you, you
will really value what Jesus suffered on the
cross.
When I saw that, I said, Lord, I
see now in the Garden of Gethsemane.
I imagine a conversation like this.
The Father is saying, OK, you don't have
to drink the cup.
You can come up to heaven because you
haven't sinned.
But all those people will die.
I thought of myself.
The Father telling Jesus that Zach Poonen will
go to hell.
The Lord thought of that.
OK.
Then I'll go to the cross for his
sake.
What am I going to give in return
to Jesus for that?
Go to a few meetings.
Give out a few tracts.
Give a little money in the box.
Shame on me.
I say, Lord, all of my life is
yours.
I don't want anything for myself on this
earth.
I want everything for you.
All I have is yours.
It'll never be mine.
Live for you.
Die for you.
Yeah, that's what increased my love for the
Lord.
It's preserved it through all these years.
The second thing which increased my love for
the Lord is the knowledge of how much
I've been forgiven.
Jesus said in that story of a man
who was forgiven 500.
Another person was forgiven 50.
But who was, who will, who will love
more?
The one who was forgiven more, and Jesus
said in Luke chapter 7, the one who
is forgiven much loves much.
Verse 47.
But the one who's forgiven little, loves little.
Anybody here who's been forgiven little?
Nobody?
I've been forgiven much.
I'm amazed that the Apostle Paul, who lived
according to the righteousness of the law, blameless
all his life, never committed adultery, never committed
murder, never bore false witness, never dishonored his
father and mother, did all that according to
the righteousness of the law, blameless, says about
himself, I am the chief of sinners.
How can a man who lived such an
upright life consider himself the chief of sinners?
We think chief of sinners is some murderer,
adulterer, debaucherer, who's molested so many women and
done all types of things.
No, no, no, no, no.
The one who says that is the man
who lived one of the most upright lives
in Judaism.
It's got nothing to do with all these
external sins.
It's got to do with how much you
see the holiness of God and how much
you see you have violated that holiness in
your thoughts, in your heart.
And Paul saw it.
I've seen it.
There are times in my life I say
before God, I've seen and said, Lord, I
am the greatest sinner on the face of
the earth.
It's a question of how close you are
to God.
If you're not close to God, you'll think
a lot of other people are rotten sinners.
The devil thinks so.
Maybe you think so too, because the closer
you are to the devil, the more you
accuse other people and think they are horrible.
But the closer you get to God, the
more you feel how terrible, like the publican,
Lord, be merciful to me, the sinner.
And I think of how much he forgave
me.
All the wretched sins of my life, he
forgave me, forgave me, forgave me.
He who is forgiven much loves much.
Don't ever say the Lord forgave you much
if you can't love much.
Don't ever say the Lord loves you if
you can't love him.
Ask the Holy Spirit to fill you, to
show you the glory of Jesus and to
love others as he loved us.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, help us not to forget what
we have heard, that the seed which the
Holy Spirit has sown will be watered, bring
forth fruit.
I want to encourage you, brothers and sisters,
water the seed, let it bring forth fruit
for eternity in all of your lives.
In Jesus' name, Amen.