Well, brothers and sisters, it's a great joy
for me to be here with you and
to share God's word with you.
28 years ago, I was in full-time
Christian work, but I came to a crisis
in my life.
It was a crisis related to reality.
I felt that what I was preaching was
not 100% true in my inner life.
I was projecting an image before others, which
is not really true.
What I mean by that is, I mean,
I was not living in secret sin or
anything like that.
I was thinking of things like, I would
say that the word of God says, Rejoice
in the Lord always, but I was not
rejoicing always.
If you rejoice six days of the week,
you're not rejoicing always.
Then we must be honest and say, Rejoice
in the Lord six days of the week.
That's what I mean by unreality.
And many other verses like that, Thanks be
to God who always leads us in triumph.
It was not true in my life.
And I said, Lord, I don't want to
be a hypocrite.
I discovered that Jesus hated hypocrisy more than
almost any other sin.
If you read the four gospels, you'll find
that he spoke more against hypocrisy than he
did against almost any other sin.
I know Jesus hated murder, adultery, theft, but
I don't see him speaking so much against
those sins.
We got a whole chapter against hypocrisy, Matthew
chapter 23.
I don't see a whole chapter against adultery
and murder.
Not that those are not sins, but the
preeminent sin among religious people in the synagogues
in Jesus' time was hypocrisy.
And the preeminent sin in the 21st century
among religious Christians is hypocrisy.
Presenting an image which is not true in
one's daily life.
Giving others an impression that we're on top
of the world when we may not be.
Well, anyway, that was my condition 28 years
ago.
And I said, Lord, if I'm not going
to change, I'm going to quit the ministry.
I'm not going to preach because if I
continue to preach, I'll just become a greater
hypocrite.
And if I continue that way, I'll just
go to hell.
And I don't want to go to hell.
I'd just rather keep quiet and at least
be honest.
And that's when the Lord met with me
and filled me with his Holy Spirit and
showed me more in the scriptures than I'd
ever understood before.
I'd already been a Christian, but by that
time for at least 14, 15 years, I
was born again and baptized and been a
Christian, born again Christian for 15 years.
And yet I never knew that there was
something more that scripture offered.
You know, Jesus said in John 10, 10,
I have come that you might have life
and that you might have it more abundantly.
There's a difference between life and abundant life.
And I think a lot of Christians have
only life.
Yeah, they're born again.
Their sins are forgiven.
They've managed to get a seat in heaven.
But is that all that Jesus came to
offer?
And that's the reason why the name of
Jesus is so dishonored among the heathen, because
of the way Christians live.
There was a, one of our old presidents
in India, the second president of the Indian
Republic was President Radhakrishnan, a man who respected
the Lord Jesus Christ a lot, though he
was not a Christian himself.
But he was a man who observed the
Christians in our country for many years.
And he made a statement, which has always
rung in my heart.
He said, you Christians make such extraordinary claims,
but you live such ordinary lives.
And when I looked at my life, I
said, that's true.
I mean, this is a non-Christian saying
it, but it's a true observation, that a
lot of Christians make such extraordinary claims in
their church meetings.
But when you look at the way they
live, they live ordinary lives.
They praise God in other tongues on Sunday
morning, and shouted their wives in their mother
tongue on Sunday afternoon.
Same Sunday afternoon.
Is the Holy Spirit only able to control
other tongues and not mother tongue?
Something is wrong.
Something is wrong there.
That's what I mean by unreality.
That's what I mean by making extraordinary claims
and living ordinary lives, just like all the
non-Christian and the heathen around us.
Do we really have something more than them
in our life?
I'm not talking about how loudly we worship
or how emotionally we sway to the music.
You just got to get a little drunk
to do that.
I remember I was speaking at a charismatic
convention 27 years ago in Bombay.
And I was sitting on the platform and
I saw a man there in the fifth
or sixth row, who was clapping and so
cheerful.
His face was bright and radiant and he
was clapping and singing louder than anybody else.
And I said, boy, I've got to go
and meet this man after the meeting.
He seems to be so spirit filled.
So I went down after the meeting and
by the time I came within about five
feet from him, I could smell the alcohol.
That's what made him so free.
And I realized that you don't need the
Holy Spirit to have that type of freedom.
But you do need the Holy Spirit to
overcome your temper, to control your tongue, to
rejoice seven days of the week, 24 hours
a day.
That's the meaning of always.
Well, anyway, the Lord met with me and
he changed my life.
And today I can say before God that
I only preach what God has worked in
my life.
I wouldn't dream of speaking anything else.
I want to hate hypocrisy like Jesus hated
it.
You know, the Old Testament, Moses gave the
Israelites ten commandments.
And the sins described in the Ten Commandments,
the sins related to man, man to man,
are about the same sins that any worldly
person would also call a sin.
Murder, adultery, theft, bearing false witness in court,
desiring somebody else's property or somebody else's wife.
These are sins that most worldly people, most
decent worldly people would also call sins.
But Jesus, when he came, he hardly ever
spoke about those things.
He hardly ever spoke about the Ten Commandments.
I once made a study of the Gospels
to see what were the sins that Jesus
spoke against the most.
And you know what I came up with?
Sins which are not listed in the Ten
Commandments at all.
Can you tell me offhand some of the
sins that Jesus spoke against the most?
Hypocrisy, pride, selfishness, inner impurity, inwardly impure,
unbelief.
Do worldly people consider any of these as
sins?
Hypocrisy, that's not considered a sin in the
world.
Pride, nobody considers that a sin.
Selfishness, people say everybody is selfish.
A lack of concern for other people.
Inner impurity, well everybody is inwardly impure.
Unbelief, nobody ever thinks of that as a
sin.
And yet these are the things that Jesus
spoke against the most.
Because Jesus came to deal with the root
of sin.
You know the law which Moses brought, we
can say was like an ointment that you
rub on the hand to prevent the sores
from coming out.
So every time a sore came out, you
rub the ointment and then the sore would
go.
But then it would come on this hand.
So you're thankful you have a tube of
ointment, you rub it there and then it
goes out from there and comes on your
leg.
And that's how people lived under the law.
They could never finish with sin.
Sin was always coming forth, sometime here, sometime
there, sometimes in the other place.
And you always needed the law to deal
with it.
But then Jesus came with grace.
And some people have the idea that grace
means, well it doesn't matter now if you
sin.
Because God sort of changed his mind about
all these things.
And now even if you sin, the blood
of Jesus is always there to cleanse you.
So the end result is that with this
false understanding of grace, a lot of Christians,
their standard of life has become lower than
the standard in the Old Testament.
It's true.
Some of the sins that you hear about
Christian leaders and well-known evangelists falling into,
can you imagine Elijah falling into such sins?
Or Moses?
Or John the Baptist?
Or Jeremiah?
Or Isaiah?
Or Ezekiel?
No.
Their standard of life was far higher than
the standard of life of the average Christian
preacher today.
Do you think those fellows are running after
money like a lot of today's preachers are
running after them?
How is it that Moses could lift those
Old Testament people to such a height through
the law, through the tube of ointment, and
Jesus, whom these preachers and other Christians are
supposed to be following, seems to have brought
people to such a low standard.
That's a cheap grace.
It is another Jesus.
It's not the Jesus of the New Testament.
The law came through Moses.
Grace came through Jesus Christ.
Which is meant to lift us higher, law
or grace?
Grace.
How much higher?
As much as Jesus is higher than Moses.
That's the answer.
If you have faith for that, you'll say,
Lord, I'm not going to rest satisfied with
this cheap Christianity, this third-rate useless grace
that is being preached in the world today.
I want the real thing.
How many of you would be happy with
a cheap counterfeit of some valuable product?
You'll want the real thing.
Nobody would be happy with a counterfeit diamond
or counterfeit gold.
A lot of Christians are going in for
a counterfeit gospel and for counterfeit grace.
They imagine that they are rich.
It's like a man who's got a string
of false diamonds and he thinks he's wealthy.
It's only glass.
It's not diamonds.
And if only our eyes would be open
to see that what we call grace is
not grace.
If it were grace, you know what would
happen?
Let me read to you in Romans chapter
6 and verse 14.
Sin shall not be master over you.
Sin shall not have dominion over you.
For you're not under law, but under grace.
So there's a question sometimes in a meeting
I say, even the six-year-old children
who can read English can answer this question.
Any six or seven-year-old child can
answer this question because the answer is in
this verse.
How do you know when you are under
grace?
Can you give me the answer from that
verse?
Sin shall not have dominion over you.
If sin has dominion over you, are you
under grace?
No.
That is a simple test in the word
of God.
Let God be true and every man a
liar.
My brothers and sisters, what I'm trying to
say to you is, I'm not trying to
condemn any of you.
God did not send his son into the
world to condemn the world and God has
not sent me here to condemn anyone.
What I'm trying to say to you is,
there is a life much higher and better
than you have experienced that the devil has
robbed you of.
Don't let him rob you any further.
A much higher life than you have experienced.
Don't be satisfied with a superficial Christianity which
looks nice on the outside.
You know, Jesus said, make the tree good,
then it will produce good fruit.
A bad tree cannot bring forth good fruit.
And Jesus came to lay the axe to
the root of the tree, to root it
out, to plant a new tree.
That's what he came.
He came to root out this Adamic nature
that you and I have got.
This Adamic nature that is full of greed
and covetousness and lust and bitterness and jealousy
and anger and strife and the lust of
the eyes and the love of money and
the possessive habit to material things and the
selfishness and the covetousness and all the corruption
that comes with that.
He's come to lay the axe to the
root of that tree and cut it out
altogether.
Grace is like an antibiotic.
You know, when a person goes to the
doctor and says, doctor, I'm using this ointment
to get all the sores from me, but
I keep needing the ointment all the time.
And the doctor says, hey, I've got some
good news for you.
The scientists have now discovered an antibiotic that
will go, that if you take it for
a few weeks, it will go inside and
hit the root of the disease so that
these sores will stop coming on your body.
Won't you prefer that?
Then you can throw away the tube of
ointment.
That's what grace is supposed to be.
Grace is supposed to be not like the
law where you have to always keep rubbing
it to keep the sin from coming out,
but an antibiotic that hits the root of
that sickness inside so that it doesn't come
forth.
To hit the root of lust and the
root of greed and the root of selfishness
and everything so that sin has no opportunity
to come out because the root has been
hit.
And yet, many Christians that I have met,
and I know this was true in my
life too for many years, are like a
man who's got a bad tree, let's say
a bad apple tree in his compound.
But he wants everybody to think he's got
a good apple tree.
So what does he do?
He's got a sharp pair of scissors handy.
Whenever a bad fruit comes out, he quickly
cuts it off before anybody can see it.
And he goes to the market and buys
a whole lot of good apples and ties
it up here and there in this tree,
very cleverly.
And people who come to see him say,
boy, you've got a lovely apple.
Yeah, you say, I water it and I
take care of it.
And you know the whole thing is a
hoax.
Is your Christianity like that?
Are you tying things up on Sunday morning
or whenever you meet people?
That gracious, nice, Christ-like look and all
the other things to fool people that you're
a spiritual person.
It's an act.
You know the word hypocrite is not an
English word.
It's originally a Greek word.
If you look up any concordance, it'll tell
you.
Hypocrite is a Greek word, which means actor.
That's what it means.
And what Jesus, if you were to translate
that word into English, what Jesus told his
disciples, beware of hypocrisy.
What he was telling them was beware of
acting.
Don't be a hypocrite.
He was saying, don't be an actor.
You know what an actor is like.
Think of one of these Hollywood stars who's
acting like, say, Moses or John the Baptist
or something in a biblical movie.
On the stage, when he comes on the
stage, he's a holy man, you know, speaking
about repentance and God and all that.
But once the shooting, film shooting is over
for the day, he goes back to his
third wife and he has divorced the other
two and goes back to his drunkenness and
evil habits till the next morning shooting.
The next morning shooting is again John the
Baptist or Moses.
This is acting.
Acting means he's putting on a performance for
the show.
And Jesus said, don't be an actor.
Don't put on an act before other people.
God wants us to be true through and
through.
That's God's will.
And that is the message of the New
Testament that God can do it in our
lives.
It was not possible in the Old Testament.
You know, it says in Colossians and chapter
two.
Colossians chapter two, it says concerning the Old
Testament laws in verse 16, it speaks about
they had laws in the Old Testament about
food and drink and about the Sabbath day.
You know, they were told to keep one
day in seven for God.
And on the Sabbath day, they would come
to the temple and they would clap and
shout much louder than we shout and much
clap much better than we do and raise
their hands and blow the trumpets and use
all types of instruments.
You read in the Psalms about that.
They would dance and they would praise the
Lord.
You would when you watch them, you would
think they are the holiest people on the
earth.
But you wait till Sunday and you'll find
it's a different story.
Because Sabbath is over now.
Now Sabbath is over the next six days,
they could live as they liked at home,
fight with their neighbors and be greedy and
cheat in their businesses and do all types
of things till the next Saturday came.
On Saturday, they would again be holy once
again.
This is how it was in the Old
Testament.
One day in seven, they had to praise
the Lord and do all the right religious
things.
And then the other six days, they lived
just like all the other people in the
world live to make money and to enjoy
themselves and do everything that every worldly person
does.
And you know that a lot of Christians
are like that.
Only thing is not on Saturday, on Sunday,
they shift to the day, but there's not
much difference otherwise.
They come on Sunday and they'll praise the
Lord and clap and shout and play the
instruments and do everything else.
And then Monday onwards, they're like everybody else.
They fight and they quarrel, they're greedy, they're
selfish.
And they are watching all those filthy movies
on television and polluting their minds.
And with that pollution of the minds for
six days of the week, then seventh day,
they come and praise the Lord.
It's all an act.
We fool one another, but we don't fool
the devil.
He sits back and has a good laugh.
And we don't fool God.
We're only fooling ourselves.
I want to say to you, my brother,
sister, you're only fooling yourself.
You're not fooling God.
You're not fooling the devil.
We need to wake up.
Don't let the devil make a fool of
you.
There is a life that God calls us
to, which is a life of reality, reality,
where this is what I prayed for.
I said, Lord, I want my outer life
to correspond with my inner life.
I want to be the same person when
I stand in the pulpit on Sunday, as
I am at home on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, every day of the week
in my office.
I want to be a Christian.
I want to behave like a Christian, not
only Sunday morning, but when I'm traveling on
the roads in India, where people don't obey
the rules of the road.
They irritate you in so many ways.
Okay.
I want to be a Christian there.
I want to be different.
I want my light to shine in the
darkness.
I want to be a Christian in my
place of work, in the way I handle
money, in everything.
I want reality.
Because Jesus hated hypocrisy more than anything else.
Number one sin he hated was hypocrisy.
And I say, Lord, I want that to
be the number one sin I hate as
well.
Acting.
I don't want any acting in my life.
I want to hate hypocrisy with all my
heart.
That's what Jesus hated.
And that's what I want to hate.
That is God's will.
And I believe that if we seek to
glorify God, this is where we will begin.
And it says here about the Sabbath day
in Colossians 2 17, that this was only
a shadow.
The Sabbath day was only a shadow of
the reality which was to come in Christ.
And the reality was this.
The Lord was saying, what you do now,
only one day of the week.
Rejoice and praise me in my presence.
I'm going to do a work in your
heart through the Holy Spirit.
That you'll be able to do that seven
days a week.
This is a shadow.
That will be the reality.
That is God's new covenant promise in Christ.
That it can be fulfilled in Christ.
What?
That which they could experience only for a
short time in the Old Testament.
And that's why you have promises.
I mean commands in the New Testament like
always giving thanks for everything.
Have you read that in Ephesians 5 20?
Always giving thanks for everything in the name
of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Philippians 4 4.
Rejoice always in the Lord.
In the Lord always.
Second Corinthians 2 14.
Thanks be to God who always leads us
in his triumph in Christ.
I read these verses and I said, Lord,
I mean this seems to have been the
Apostle Paul's experience.
He's not bluffing.
The Holy Spirit would not inspire him to
write a lie.
If he was not rejoicing always.
If he was not always being led in
triumph.
If he was not always living victoriously in
his life.
If he was not always giving thanks for
everything in all situations.
And yet I said, Lord, I don't seem
to be experiencing it.
That means I've missed something fundamental.
And before I leave this earth, I want
to experience it.
I want to experience that abundant life which
you came to give before I leave this
earth.
The Bible says God is a rewarder of
those who diligently seek him.
You know, the precious things are not found
in the surface.
I've heard here that in South Africa, you've
got to go some three, four, five kilometers
into the ground to get the gold.
That's it.
The precious things are always pretty deep.
And can you imagine the amount of effort
people must have made to dig a mine
five kilometers into the ground?
Why would anybody do that?
Because what you get when you take all
that effort is so valuable.
I wonder whether Christians would take that much
effort to seek after God.
To seek after God, to know his power
in their life.
I wonder.
You know, the Bible says, God says, you
will seek me and you find me when
you search for me with all your heart.
How much if you were walking in the
grass at night and you lose a five
cent coin?
How long would you look for it?
Would you spend the whole night looking for
that cheap coin?
But supposing during the day you accidentally misplaced
a hundred thousand dollars somewhere, you'd spend a
long time looking for that.
How do you seek for God?
You seek for God like a five cent
coin?
No.
Okay.
You look for a little bit.
If you find it, well and good.
If you don't find, doesn't matter.
I've got other more important things to do.
Well, then such people never find God.
God says, you will seek me and find
me when you search for me with all
your heart.
God wants to lead all his children into
an abundant life.
He doesn't want us to come together for
times of praise and worship and listening to
God's word as merely a time when we,
for a temporary period, we experience something wonderful
or heavenly and then we go back to
our homes and we can't solve our problems
and we can't overcome our impatience and our
temper and all those things.
See, that would be like the people who
go to the drinking saloon, to the bar.
You know, a lot of people who have
a lot of problems in their home and
difficult wives and who are facing very difficult
situations or some discouragement in their place of
work, they go to the bar and they
spend two hours in the bar and they
drink.
And for two hours, they forget all their
problems.
They drink with their friends and it's like
heaven for them.
But when they go home after that two
-hour drinking period, are any of their problems
solved?
No.
The same old messy situation is there at
work and at home with their children.
It doesn't change at all.
And what do they look forward to?
They look forward to going to the bar
again, another two hours with my friends.
And I feel that sometimes Christians go for
a time of praise and worship exactly like
that.
They don't go to the bar, they go
to the praise and worship session.
For two hours, we are in heaven, we
are with our friends and we forget all
our earthly problems and when we go back,
we behave exactly the same way.
Our problems are still there, nothing has changed.
Is that Christianity?
No, it isn't.
And we can say, oh, I long to
go back to my praise and worship session.
That's just like that man longs to go
back to the bar.
Jesus Christ has come to change our life,
not just give us a temporary kick like,
you know, taking a drug, like these people
who take cocaine and things like that.
For a few hours, they have a high
and then when they come down to reality,
they find nothing has changed in the world
around them.
I want to ask you, is that your
experience?
That you come to a meeting and you
get a kick?
And then after some time and the effect
of it wears out, you find that you're
just the same person?
That's not the will of God.
The Holy Spirit has come to change us
permanently, not to make us rejoice for a
few hours every week, but always.
Not to keep us pure for a few
hours every week, but always.
In Philippians chapter two, it says.
Think of this word.
I want to share a number of verses
like this.
I could show you Philippians 2, 14.
Do all things, all things without grumbling or
disputing.
Do you know that that's the standard in
the New Testament?
See, these were verses which are never found
in the Old Testament.
You go to the Old Testament, you'll never
find a verse which says rejoice in the
Lord always.
They could not do it in the Old
Testament.
You know why?
They could not be filled with the Holy
Spirit.
The Holy Spirit could not dwell in anybody's
heart in the Old Testament.
And when the Holy Spirit cannot fill a
person's heart, he cannot rejoice in the Lord
always.
He may be able to rejoice in the
Lord once a week.
Like those Jews did, and like a lot
of Christians do.
So I seriously question whether these Christians who
rejoice for one day in a week are
filled with the Holy Spirit or not.
I doubt it very much.
They have an emotional experience, but they're not
really filled with the Holy Spirit.
If they were, they would be rejoicing in
the Lord always.
Because their experience seems to be exactly like
the experience of a lot of people in
the Old Testament.
Sabbath day they came, and they had a
wonderful time.
But the rest of the week, they grumbled,
and they complained, and they fought.
And that's Old Testament life.
And yet the New Testament has these wonderful,
challenging words like the ones I quoted.
Always giving thanks for everything.
No matter what happens, to always give thanks
for everything.
Because the New Testament Christian believes that God
is on the throne.
That Satan was defeated on the cross.
That my sins are cleansed in the blood
of Jesus Christ.
That even if I don't have all the
things which I ask God for, He knows
what is good for me.
And He gives me what He knows is
best for me.
And He makes everything work together for my
good.
That's why we can give thanks always for
all things.
In all circumstances.
In every situation.
Paul says in Romans chapter 8, in all
these things, we are more than conquered through
Him who loved us.
How many Christians are there, even among those
who claim to be filled with the Spirit,
who can say in all things, we are
more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
These were the verses that challenged me.
And I said, Lord, I want them.
I want them.
I want the fulfillment of these verses in
my life.
That I can say like Paul, in all
these things, I'm more than a conqueror through
Him who loved me.
That the experience of being filled with the
Holy Spirit is not just something that temporarily
gives me an emotional high, but something that
fulfills these verses all the time, every day.
So I see that the Old Testament was
one day in seven, and the New Testament
is seven days in seven.
What they could experience only once in a
while, we can experience all the time.
That is one of the fundamental differences, the
Old and the New Testament.
The other thing is, what the Old Testament
could only do externally, the New Testament can
do inwardly.
That is the wonderful thing.
You know, the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit
came upon people externally, gave them power to
do so many things on the outside.
But it could not help them inside at
all.
And if your experience of the Spirit only
makes you do things outwardly, clap your hands,
smile, be cheerful, but does not deal with,
say, the problem of lust in your heart.
I don't want to disappoint you, but I
want to tell you the truth.
Yours is an Old Testament experience.
In the New Testament, God writes his laws
upon our heart.
You know, in the Old Testament, people like
Samson had an experience of the Holy Spirit
which could tear a lion into pieces.
Wouldn't that be a wonderful thing to experience?
I don't think so.
Let me ask you, who is more powerful,
a lion or Delilah?
You know the answer.
Samson could tear a lion into pieces, but
Delilah tore him to pieces.
Why?
Because he did not have the Holy Spirit
within.
The Spirit came upon him on the outside.
He could do some things on the outside.
And whenever my experience of the Holy Spirit
is only something that produces external manifestations, but
does not change, bring purity into my heart.
Into my thought life.
Into my eyes.
It's a counterfeit.
It's either a counterfeit or an Old Testament
experience.
It's not what the New Testament promises.
And that's what I want to say, that
the devil is cheating believers left, right and
center.
He's telling them, I'll make you rich.
That's an Old Testament promise.
The Old Testament is there.
You go to the Old Testament, it promises
to make you rich.
It promises to give you many children.
It promises to bless your barns.
It promises to bless all those things.
But it does not promise in the Old
Testament that you can get victory over lust
in your heart.
It does not promise in the Old Testament
that you can get victory over murmuring and
grumbling and complaining and shouting at your wife
and shouting at your husband.
There's no such promise in the Old Testament.
It only promises to make you rich financially
and prosper your business and things like that.
I tell you honestly, I'm not interested in
those things.
I'm interested in overcoming sin.
Do you know the first promise in the
New Testament?
The very first promise in the New Testament?
You shall call his name Jesus, Matthew 1,
21.
He's not going to make us people rich.
He's going to save us people from their
sins.
How many of you believe honestly that to
be saved from sin in your heart is
a million times more important than making money?
When you believe that, God will give it
to you.
But if you think that making money is
more important than being saved from sin, you
get it.
You seek and you shall find.
People go to India and look for tigers
and they find tigers because they go looking
for the place where the tigers are in
the forest.
You seek and you will find.
You look for an Old Testament promise, you'll
get it.
You look for a New Testament promise which
says sin will not rule over you and
you get that.
It depends what we seek.
If you're happy with the spirit coming upon
you and doing things for you externally, that's
all you'll have.
But if you want that New Testament experience
which they experienced on the day of Pentecost,
that inner life, that inner abundant life of
overcoming, you can have that.
It's not somehow struggling to survive.
It's a life where we are not afraid
of the devil.
It's a life where the devil flees from
us.
The Bible says resist the devil and he'll
flee from you.
The Bible says the God of peace will
crush Satan under your feet.
When you lose your temper at anybody, tell
me where is the devil?
You tell me.
Is he sitting on your head or is
he under your feet?
You know the answer.
He's certainly not under your feet when you
lose your temper.
He's sitting on your head.
Is that the type of life that God
has called his children to?
So what if you're a millionaire and the
devil is sitting on your head?
I'd rather be a poor man with the
devil under my feet.
I'll tell you that any day.
It's a question of what you value.
If you're satisfied with your substandard, defeated Christian
life, you'll never get anything more than that.
If you're satisfied with material things, you'll never
get anything more than that.
The Bible says that God is such a
good God.
He makes the sun to rise in the
good and the evil.
He makes the rain to fall on the
righteous and the unrighteous.
That's in Matthew chapter 5.
I'm just quoting scripture.
Jesus himself said that he makes the sun
to rise in the good and the evil,
makes the rain to fall on the righteous
and the unrighteous.
In other words, here is a godless, here
is a God-fearing farmer who plows the
field and sows the seed and God sends
the sun and the rain on his farm.
And next door to him is an atheist,
godless farmer who doesn't care who's for God.
And God sends the sun and rain on
him too.
So material blessings come to good and evil
people.
Do you know what you have to be
to get God's material blessings?
The sun and the rain and all those
blessings.
You have to either be good or evil,
that's all.
Do you qualify?
Then you'll get it.
But if you want inner purity, that's another
thing.
That's the real wealth of eternity.
The Bible says we brought nothing into this
world, 1 Timothy 6.
Therefore, we can take nothing out.
Have you noticed that?
There's a therefore.
And that's what a lot of people haven't
realized.
The reason why we can take nothing out
is because we brought nothing in.
Have you ever checked a dead man's pockets
to see if there's any money inside there?
There isn't.
He may be dressed in a suit and
a tie and all, but if you look
in his pockets, there's nothing there.
He can't take anything out.
You know why he can't take anything out?
Because it says in 1 Timothy 6, because,
verse 7, because we brought nothing into the
world, therefore we cannot take anything out.
You know the meaning of that?
When you and I came into the world,
we came without a stitch of clothing.
No money, nothing.
All that we earned on earth was a
loan God gave us.
So here you are, my child, use this,
use it wisely.
It's only a loan, whether you earn $10
,000 a month or $200 a month, it's
a loan.
When you leave this earth, you'll have to
leave it behind.
It's only for a period.
It's like if you take your little child
to somebody's house.
Supposing you take your little four-year-old
child to somebody's house and those people are
good enough to let your child play with
little cars and toys and all that.
And like little children sometimes do, your child
takes some of those little toy cars and
all puts it into his pocket when others
are not looking.
But a good mother, when they leave the
house, will check his child's pockets to see
if there's anything in the pocket.
And when she finds those little cars and
all that the boy has put into his
pocket, she'll take it out and say, son,
when we came to this house, we brought
nothing here.
So when we go, we'll have to take
nothing out.
So that's what God says.
Son, daughter, when you came to this world,
you brought nothing here.
When you leave, you can't take anything out.
You were allowed to play with these things
while you were here, but now you're going.
But there is one thing God will permit
you to take when you leave this earth,
only one thing.
That's your character, because that's your permanent possession.
That's your permanent possession for eternity.
If you have learned to love your enemies
while you're on earth, you can take that
with you.
If you have learned to forgive those who
hurt you, if you have learned to bless
those who curse you, if you have learned
to do good to evil people, if you
have learned to keep your mind pure in
a filthy world, if you have learned to
turn your eyes away from filth and impurity,
and if you have learned to keep your
mind pure, that's your character.
You can take it with you.
That's the only thing that has got eternal
worth.
And that's what the Holy Spirit is seeking
to accomplish in us.
And that's why when some filthy image comes
on your television screen and the Holy Spirit
says, turn that off or change the channel,
He doesn't force you.
He won't force you.
You need not turn it off.
You need not change the channel.
But the Holy Spirit will tell you, you're
a hypocrite when you stand on Sunday morning
and sing, Oh, holy God.
What holy God?
You don't believe He's holy when you're watching
television.
It's all hypocrisy.
It's all acting.
That's how the devil has made fools of
today's Christians and they don't even realize it.
You think because they've got money and God's
blessed them.
You know what the devil told Jesus?
I'll give you all this.
Everything.
He showed him all the riches of the
world and said, I'll give it to you.
Because I have the power to give it
to whom I like.
Just bow down and worship me.
Jesus said, no, I'm a worshipper.
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, Him
only.
Dear brothers and sisters, we're living in days
of tremendous deception.
I don't believe that I will convince everybody.
The greatest prophets could not convince everybody.
Jesus himself could not convince everybody.
But Jesus did say, he who has ears
to hear, let him hear.
That in the midst of many who were
satisfied with their defeated substandard life, there would
be some who would seek after God, after
genuine godliness, after inner reality.
And the Lord looked for them, for such
people 2,000 years ago, and he looks
for such people today.
The eyes of the Lord move to and
fro throughout the earth.
It moves to and fro throughout this congregation
this evening.
To look for even one or two or
three who are seeking for reality, who are
fed up with hypocrisy, fed up with unreality,
fed up with superficiality, fed up with the
impurity of their lives, fed up with the
double standards with which they live, and who
are not satisfied with wealth or health, but
who are longing for purity, who want to
respond to the call of God who says,
be holy because I am holy, says the
Lord.
You don't need any other argument.
Be holy, says the Lord, because I am
holy.
As he, your father, who has called you
is holy, so be holy in all manner
of conversation.
And that's the reason why he's given us
the Holy Spirit.
Have you ever wondered why Almighty God, in
his great wisdom, when he gave a name
to the third person of the Trinity, called
him the Holy Spirit?
Why didn't he call him the noisy spirit?
Because the primary characteristic of the spirit would
not be noise, but holiness.
That's why.
Otherwise, it could have been father, son, and
noisy spirit.
It's not.
It's father, son, and Holy Spirit.
And I'm amazed that a lot of Christians
who claim to be filled with the Holy
Spirit are not holy.
I say, what spirit is it then?
I know when God baptized me in the
Holy Spirit, I spoke in tongues.
I've spoken in tongues for 27 years.
I praise God for it.
But I tell you, that was not the
biggest thing.
The biggest thing that happened was God made
my heart pure.
He began to write his laws in my
heart and mind.
That's what changed.
I got a spirit of praise in my
life.
That's true.
But there was a spirit of praise in
my heart.
That's what happened.
And I'm concerned when I see the devil
cheating God's people of what Jesus Christ bought
for them on the cross.
I want to say to you, my brothers
and sisters, Jesus Christ has bought for you
a far better life than you are experiencing
right now.
Don't let the devil cheat you of it.
Don't let the devil cheat you with rejoicing
one day in seven, when Jesus says you
can rejoice seven days in seven.
Don't let him cheat you.
Don't let the devil give you only one
seventh of what God wants you to have.
Or something substandard.
God wants you to have the real thing.
The real diamond.
Not a counterfeit.
Not something to hang around your neck like
these artificial diamonds to impress other people that
you're a very wealthy woman.
Do you want the real thing or just
to impress other people?
There are a lot of people who go
around with artificial pearls and artificial diamonds.
What do they wear it for?
Just to impress others.
Is your Christianity like that?
Or are you interested in real wealth?
Real spiritual wealth.
The nature of God himself.
Do you know the Bible says in 2nd
Peter chapter 1 that the greatest promise of
all, the greatest gift that God can give
us, the most wonderful thing that God can
ever give us.
Please listen.
2nd Peter 1 verse 4.
God has given us precious and magnificent promises.
We all agree there are wonderful, precious and
magnificent promises in the scriptures and the purpose
of all these promises is not primarily to
make us healthy or wealthy.
It is to make us partake of God's
own nature.
Do you know what that means?
I was born with Adam's nature.
It was easy for me to fight.
Isn't it easy for our little children to
fight?
To tell lies?
To be selfish?
To grab toys for themselves?
All children are the same.
I was the same and you were the
same.
Because we had Adam's nature.
It was easy to lust.
It was easy to tell lies.
It was easy to be angry.
Why?
Because I had nature.
It's easy for a pig to be dirty.
You think it's difficult for a pig to
be dirty?
It's the easiest thing in the world for
a pig to be dirty.
So easy.
Soon as it's born.
This is God's nature.
As soon as we are born, we've got
a nature which teaches us to sin.
Every child, whatever religion, to tell lies.
Do any of you teach your children to
tell lies?
Do you teach your children to fight?
No.
It's nature.
It comes forth.
And here is the wonderful promise.
That just like I had Adam's nature, the
Holy Spirit can give me God's nature.
It'll be easy for me to be pure.
It'll be easy for me to tell the
truth.
It'll be easy for me to be patient.
It'll be easy for me to love my
enemies.
It'll be easy for me to overcome sin.
If I partake of God's nature.
It's nature.
Isn't it easy for a cat to keep
itself clean?
Yes or no?
Yes.
It's so easy.
What's it that makes the difference between a
cat and a pig?
Nature.
A lot of Christians are like pigs who
are trying their best to be clean.
Deep within they love to be dirty.
But that'll spoil my testimony.
So I have to be clean.
That's not Christianity.
Christianity is where God gives us his nature.
That's the abundant life.
And that, the precious and magnificent promises are
that we might have this nature.
And for years I didn't understand it.
I couldn't experience it.
And I realized I couldn't experience it because
I didn't value it.
Because God says you will seek me and
find me when you search for me with
all your heart.
And I thank God a time came in
my life and I said, Lord, I want
this more than anything else in the world.
I don't want money.
I don't want honor.
I don't care what people think about me.
I don't want a ministry even.
I want divine nature.
You go to God like that and tell
him that you want that more than anything
else in the world.
And I tell you in Jesus name, you'll
get it.
He'll give it to you.
He is no respecter of persons.
He will give you what you've never experienced.
That's the whole purpose of these wonderful promises.
Let's come to him in faith.
I love that question that Jesus asked the
blind men when they came to him for
healing.
He asked them a question.
He said, Do you believe that I can
do this for you?
Not do you believe you can produce this
yourself?
Do you believe I can do this for
you?
And they said, Yes, Lord, we believe.
I believe it's the same question the Lord
is asking us today.
Do you believe that I can do something
in you and give you a new nature?
Because it's promised in his word.
The precious and magnificent promises are designed so
that we can partake of his nature.
Not imitate him.
It's not a pig trying to imitate a
cat.
No, no, no.
It's a change of nature from within.
A nature that does not want to hate
others, does not want to be jealous of
others, does not want to murmur and complain,
just like the first nature I got wanted
to murmur and complain and fight and quarrel
and be jealous and everything else that God
can give me another nature.
That is Christianity.
Life under the law, however, was the old
nature struggling, struggling, struggling, struggling to live according
to God's standards and always failing.
That's life under the law.
Life under grace is where we partake of
God's nature.
Let's open ourselves to that.
Now, the wonderful thing about all this, my
dear brothers and sisters, is it doesn't matter
if you didn't understand what you heard this
evening.
Understanding is not necessary.
If you got a hunger and thirst for
this life, that's more important than whether you
understood everything.
Jesus said, if anyone is thirsty, let him
come to me.
If you believe that he can do this
for you.
Are you willing to break free from the
traditions of men?
Are you willing to break free from the
opinions of your friends?
Are you willing to walk alone with God?
It may be a lonely path, but it'll
be a happy path.
Are you seeking popularity?
Are you seeking victory?
Heavenly Father, I pray for those who are
hungering here this evening, who are dissatisfied with
their defeated life and who, I believe, have
faith that you can lead them to something
higher.
You will grant them their...
Lord Jesus, be glorified.
These dear brothers and sisters whom you have
placed in this land to be your witnesses,
not just in words, but by life.
I pray that they will be like lights
shining for you in the darkness in this
country.
Bless them, fill them with the Holy Spirit.
We ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.