about some of the laws of spiritual life.
In the first evening, you remember, we covered
the subject of the law of wholeheartedness, where
God says, if you seek me with all
your heart, you will find me.
And those who obey the laws get the
benefit of them.
On the second day, we considered the law
of humility.
God gives grace to the humble.
It's automatic, like water flowing down.
You don't have to pray for grace.
If you humble yourself, it automatically comes.
And if you don't humble yourself, if you
are proud, doesn't matter what you are proud
of, doesn't matter how many years you've been
a believer, the moment you become proud, God
becomes your enemy.
He opposes you.
That's a law.
It can't be changed.
It's like the law of gravity.
It operates without any respect of persons.
And those who submit to those laws get
the benefit of those laws.
And yesterday we saw the law of faith.
According to your faith, be it unto you.
Not according to your desire, not according to
God's desire.
Your desire may be very large.
God's desire also may be very great for
you.
But we don't get according to desire.
We get according to our faith.
And that's very very important.
It's a law in the New Testament.
And that's the reason why many many people
never get what God wants them to have,
and which they may also want to have.
Now, today I want to turn to another
law which is found in Galatians 6.
It's the law of reaping.
This is another law of the spiritual life,
and it works without any respect of persons,
uniformly, everywhere, at all times, in every country.
Galatians 6 and verse 7 to 10.
Do not be deceived.
God is not mocked.
Whatever a man sows, this he will also
reap.
For the one who sows to his own
flesh shall from the flesh reap corruption.
But the one who sows to the Spirit
shall from the Spirit reap eternal life.
And let us not lose heart in doing
good, for in due time we shall reap
if we don't grow weary.
So then, while we have opportunity, let us
do good to all men, and especially to
those who are of the household of faith.
So there is a law which, again, like
I said in this matter of humility and
pride, operates without any respect of persons.
The person who sows to the flesh may
call himself a believer.
It doesn't make a difference.
If he sows to the flesh, he reaps
corruption.
You know, sometimes we can think believers are
put in a particular pigeonhole, and these laws
don't operate for them.
Even if they are proud, God will not
oppose them.
Even if they sow to the flesh, they
will not reap corruption, because they are believers.
And we think that all these things are
for unbelievers.
And we think that if a believer is
a believer, he will automatically be sowing to
the Spirit.
It's not true.
You know from your own life that's not
true.
And we've seen in the lives of many,
many believers how they sow to the flesh,
and they reap corruption.
Now just like in the fields where a
farmer sows his seed, he does not get
a crop immediately.
He may sow a seed, and some seeds
take a few weeks, months.
If you are sowing, if you want coconuts
and mangoes, you've got to wait a few
years.
If you want rice and wheat, it may
be just a few months.
But all reaping takes time.
There is no immediate result.
You sow today, you can't get a crop
tomorrow.
It takes time.
It takes a long time.
And in spiritual things, it takes years.
But the reaping will definitely come.
That's certain.
It's a law.
And the other thing about reaping is, one
grain can come out with thirty, or sixty,
or a hundred.
You don't get just one grain.
You get much more than you sowed.
And that applies whether you are sowing to
the flesh, or sowing to the spirit.
This principle.
You don't get the harvest immediately.
And secondly, you get very much more than
you sow.
And this is the reason why many people
continue sowing to the flesh.
Because they think, well, nothing has happened so
far.
It's like a farmer sowing weeds.
Now, he's got to be a really mad
farmer to go around sowing weeds in his
garden.
But let's assume there is some mad farmer,
some believers are mad, they sow weeds, and
nothing happens.
Nothing happens the next day, nothing happens the
next month, nothing happens the next year.
So they continue sowing weeds.
Nothing happens for years.
But one day when the harvest comes, it's
a hundred times.
And it definitely comes.
That's for sure.
I want to show you a verse in
Ecclesiastes chapter 8, and verse 11.
I don't know how many of you are
familiar with this verse.
It says in Ecclesiastes 8 verse 11, Because
sentence or judgment or punishment against an evil
deed is not executed by God quickly, therefore
the hearts of men are given fully to
do evil.
Very true word.
The reason why men are sold out to
do evil is because the punishment does not
come immediately.
If punishment came immediately, there would be a
lot less sin in this world.
You know that?
You know people say, I can't control my
tongue.
I lose my temper so quickly.
But let's assume every time you got angry,
your tongue got a little paralyzed.
And next time you got angry, it got
paralyzed a little more.
I tell you, you'll get victory over anger
very quickly.
You think you can't get it.
Because punishment doesn't come immediately, hearts are fully
set to do evil.
What about young men who say, I can't
control my eyes, I just lust.
If every time you lusted, your eye became
a little blind.
And next time you lusted a little more
blind, finally you completely lost vision in one
eye.
I tell you, you'll have no problem in
that area.
Why do you continue?
Because the harvest takes a long time to
come.
Because sentence against an evil work is not
done immediately.
Every time you signed a false statement of
accounts, if your hand got a little paralyzed,
you'd never sign another false statement of accounts
again.
It's true in every area of our life.
You can think of any sin.
You think that you can't give it up.
I've met believers who say, oh, this habit
of smoking, I can't give up.
I mean, they claim to be believers.
And I think some of them are.
And then one day the doctor tells them
that your lungs are so bad, another cigarette
will reduce your life by six months.
And they suddenly get victory over smoking.
How is that?
The fear of death produced what the fear
of God could not produce.
That's it.
If a man could see the heart of
a, his heart, when he comes out as
a little baby, his heart would be red
and pink.
And then he starts smoking cigarettes and it
gets grayer and grayer and blacker and blacker.
If he could see it, he'd stop.
Now I want to apply that.
I don't believe cigarette smoking is the worst
sin.
I think it's bad, evil.
I think bitterness and jealousy are a million
times worse, just by the way.
But if he could only see how just
like cigarette smoking makes the lungs darker, darker,
every cigarette makes the lungs darker, darker, darker.
If you could only see how every time
you sin, your heart becomes blacker, blacker, blacker.
If only you could see it.
I tell you, you'd be much more careful
about sin.
But because the external symptoms of some of
these things take a long time coming, people
are careless.
Even in the matter of eating habits, you
know, people can be very careless with their
eating habits in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties,
and then when they get into their sixties,
after twenty, thirty years, they're beginning to reap
the consequences of eating such a lot of
ghee and butter and all types of enjoyable
foods without any self-control, and they begin
to reap the consequences of it after twenty,
thirty years.
But it's too late to do anything about
it because their blood vessels have thinned down
and all types of fat has accumulated in
their blood vessels.
It's just too late.
And so doctors have discovered that and wise
people begin to be careful when they're thirty.
Now, apply this to our spiritual life.
Is it possible that we have got habits
in our life, the results of which will
come out thirty years later?
And there are doctors who say the reverse
too, that if you have good eating habits
and good exercise habits when you're twenty, thirty,
forty, fifty, you're going to be healthy.
Can we apply the same spiritually too that
twenty, thirty years later you can reap the
benefits of sowing to the spirit?
It's true.
Much more true and much more important in
our spiritual life than it is in our
body.
When we sow to the flesh, we are
going to reap corruption one day or the
other.
Don't forget that.
We may go along a long time without
it, but one day it will come.
On earth there are courts, high courts and
supreme courts, and in a country you can't
go beyond the supreme court.
If they have passed a judgment, that's it.
And it's possible because of human frailty and
many other reasons for a man to escape
punishment even at the supreme court level.
It's possible for murderers to go free.
It's possible for crooks who have cheated the
country of millions of rupees to escape punishment.
But that doesn't mean they have escaped forever,
because there is another court coming, the judgment
seat of God, when all the books will
be open.
And if a man did not reap on
earth, he will reap a tremendous harvest when
he stands at the judgment seat of God.
Does that apply only to unbelievers?
What about believers?
Is there any judgment for believers?
Let me turn you to 2 Corinthians chapter
5.
He's talking about believers here in 2 Corinthians
5.
He's talking about, you know,
believers who leave the body and go to
be with the Lord, and therefore we have
as our ambition, whether we are at home
in heaven or absent from heaven on earth,
wherever we are, whether on heaven or on
earth, we have one ambition, to please God.
Why?
Because we must all appear before the judgment
seat of Christ.
Everyone, do you know that every single one
of us, you and I, are going to
appear before the judgment seat of Christ?
Why?
So that each one may be recompensed, that
means rewarded for good or bad, for the
deeds that he did when he was in
his body on earth, according to what he
has done, whether good or bad.
So it's not just a question of dying
and going to heaven and that's it.
No.
There is a judgment seat of Christ at
which every single one of us will stand.
And everything recorded in our, everything done in
our life, which has been recorded in our
memory from the day we were born, like
a videotape constantly running, God just presses the
rewind button, it goes back to the day
we were born and the whole tape is
played back.
And we are going to be rewarded according
to what we did in our body, whether
good or bad.
You know, believers are so taken up with
the fact that our sins are all forgiven
and by grace and we are going to
heaven when we die, that they don't think
of these things.
It's almost as though these verses are not
in the Bible.
But they are very true.
When I was a young Christian, I read
a piece of poetry which said, when I
stand at the judgment seat of Christ and
he shows me his plan for me, the
plan of my life, the plan of my
life, the plan of my life, as it
might have been, if he had had his
way, and I see how I stopped him
here and I checked him there and I
would not yield my will, will there be
grief in my Saviour's eyes, grief, though he
loves me still.
And it goes on to say in that
poem how I stand there, stripped of everything
but his grace.
With my empty hands and my uncrowned head,
I shall bow sorrowful, ashamed that in the
one life God gave me on earth, I
did not show my gratitude for Jesus dying
for me on the cross.
I spoke empty words of praise and worship
to him in the meetings, but in daily
life I sowed to the flesh.
I sang in the meetings, Jesus I love
you, but I never heard his voice saying,
if you love me, keep my commandments.
It was only in the meetings that I
expressed my love, not in daily life.
And then I will see what a wonderful
life I could have lived on earth, if
I had not lived like other carnal believers
around me, if I had not followed bad
examples, if I had not followed bad role
models of Christian workers, if I had steadfastly
kept my eyes on Jesus and walked the
way he walked of self-denial and taking
up the cross, if I had followed the
examples of men like the Apostle Paul and
other godly men through the generations, how I
could stand that day with joy.
There will be such tremendous regret, sorrow, because
I can never live my life again.
God gives us one chance to prove our
life, our love for him, and the days
are slipping by.
We get one day at a time.
He doesn't force us, but he tells us,
what you sow, you will reap.
You have the choice now.
It's no use regretting at harvest time.
It's no use praying at harvest time.
Think of a man, a farmer who was
careless and who sowed nothing or who sowed
weeds at harvest time, and other people are
reaping a fantastic crop, tomatoes and potatoes, and
if he fasts and prays, nothing is going
to happen.
He is going to get weeds, plenty of
them, because it's a law.
You can't change it.
It's a law.
And it doesn't matter if that believer, if
that farmer was a believer.
If he sows weeds, he gets weeds.
That's how it is.
How will it be when you stand at
the judgment seat of Christ?
I have many times encouraged believers to have
a dress rehearsal for that final judgment seat.
You know what a dress rehearsal is?
If people are staging a drama, they have
many rehearsals, dress rehearsals, where they actually act
out the whole play and see if everything
is going smoothly before the final day when
they present the drama to the public.
In the same way, before we finally stand
at the judgment seat of Christ, we can
have a dress rehearsal now.
It's very easy.
Just sit down quietly sometime when you have
a little free time and shut your eyes
and imagine that Jesus has come and He
has set up His judgment seat and He
is calling the believers one by one and
finally He calls your name and you stand
before Him.
I am telling you how to have a
real dress rehearsal.
And you stand there and you imagine He
has called your name and the Lord says,
play the videotape of His life and on
the screen for everyone to see, from the
day you were born, your life is played
back.
And the years of sin which you confessed
and repented of, which are cleansed in the
blood of Christ, are blotted out, it's not
on the videotape, forgiven.
And you are thankful that the blood of
Jesus has cleansed you.
All that record of your unconverted life is
blotted out.
It's blank.
And then it starts from the day you
were born again.
And how you spent your days, it's going
to be seen.
How you spent your time, what you read,
what all thoughts you indulged in, how you
spent your money and how you spent the
Lord's money.
You know, there can be a difference.
People are very careful with their money, but
not so careful with the Lord's money.
It's another account.
It should actually be the other way around.
You should be more careful with the Lord's
money than with our money.
You should be careful with both.
How we spent our money, how we spent
the Lord's money, how we spent our time
and right through our life, how we treated
other people, whether we treated them the way
we wanted others to treat us, what we
sat in our homes and talked about other
people, all the gossip.
Jesus said, what you whisper in the ears
will be proclaimed in the housetops.
That's going to be on that day.
Every idle word you spoke, Jesus said, in
the day of judgment you have to give
an account.
I am convinced that 99% of believers
don't believe that what I am saying is
true.
They think it's all fairy tales.
It's exactly like the devil told Eve, you
won't die, implying God is so good, nothing
will happen, don't worry, just eat it.
And she ate it and discovered that God
keeps His word and threw her out of
the garden.
God keeps His word, my brothers and sisters.
You know, you may have had mothers when
you were small who frightened you with stories
to make you eat your food, I'll give
you to the police or give you to
the beggar woman and things like that.
And as you grew up you discovered it
was all just to scare you.
And you think God is also like that.
That when God says, I'll do that, oh,
I heard these stories when I was a
little child.
My mother used to frighten me like that.
Now this preacher comes and frightens us saying
that we are going to give an account
in the day of judgment.
You think it's a tale?
Heaven and earth will pass away.
God's word will never pass away.
Your mother's stories may have been lies, but
not God's word.
I believe it.
And even the Apostle Paul says, therefore, because
this is true that we shall give an
account at the judgment seat of Christ, therefore
we have an, on our side he says
in verse 9 of 2 Corinthians 5, we
have an ambition to please only God.
And on, in terms of my ministry, he
says in verse 11, therefore, knowing the fear
of the Lord, we persuade men.
We try our best to persuade men.
But some won't be persuaded.
Some don't believe there's going to be a
harvest.
What to do?
Well, then we just leave them alone.
Take it seriously, my brothers and sisters.
I believe that every sermon I ever preached
in my life in the last 40 years
will come back in the videotape.
And in that day when you see, you
will not hear only the words.
It will be an amazing videotape which reveals
the motives of my heart as well, which
ordinary videotapes cannot record.
And you'll be able to see there the
motive with which every preacher preached, with which
every man prayed and sang solos and everything
else, whether they did it for their own
honor, whether they did it to make money,
whether they did it as a profession, or
whether they did it because they loved God
and loved people.
It will all be manifest.
1 Corinthians 4, 5 says the hidden things
of darkness will be manifest.
The secrets of men's hearts, the motives of
men's hearts will all be revealed.
And in that day we will discover who
was a real servant of the Lord and
who was not.
How many of you fear God?
How many of you want a rehearsal of
that judgment seat so that you are prepared
for that day?
Good schools have a model examination before the
final examination.
And the more model examinations you have, the
better the final examination becomes.
So I encourage believers to have many rehearsals
of that judgment day and see if there
is anything in your life which you need
to repent of and be cleansed of.
Now I agree that if you repent of
a sin even after you are born again,
that gets blotted out.
You say, well, thank God.
But what is the result?
It will be like years and years of
a blank videotape.
Nothing done for the Lord.
It's like a farmer who sowed nothing.
He also reaps nothing.
So the mere fact that my sins are
blotted out and my failures are blotted out
doesn't solve the problem.
Have I sown to the Spirit?
Now this applies on the other side too.
If we sow to the Spirit, we are
told in Galatians 6, we shall reap eternal
life.
Now many people know only of Romans 6
.23 which speaks of the gift of God
is eternal life.
I would encourage you to take a concordance
and read what the Bible says about eternal
life.
And you will find Romans 6.23 is
not the only verse.
1 Timothy 6.23 says that the Lord
is born again long, long ago to lay
hold of eternal life.
Fight the good fight.
Lay hold of eternal life.
Here it speaks about reaping eternal life if
you sow to the Spirit.
Why is it we love Romans 6.23?
Because we think of a gift.
Why don't we love Galatians 6.8 which
speaks about reaping eternal life?
You compare scripture with scripture if you want
the full truth.
If you take one scripture by itself, you
get a wrong teaching.
All the cults measure on one verse.
Take it out of its context.
Don't compare it with other scriptures and get
a doctrine.
The devil quoted one verse to Jesus.
Jesus quoted another verse and balanced it out.
So don't think of Romans 6.23 alone
when you think of eternal life.
Think of Galatians 6.8 as well and
then you get the full truth.
When we sow to the Spirit, that means
you respond to the promptings of the Spirit.
The Spirit speaks to us.
When God created man, He made one part
of him of the dust of the earth
and He breathed into him a spirit.
And when we are born again, we still
have that flesh that pulls us down but
we also have the Holy Spirit pulling us
up.
And in the moment of temptation, we hear
the voice of the flesh pulling us down
and the voice of the Spirit saying, don't
yield to that.
And every time you respond to the voice
of the Spirit and you ask God for
grace to obey the voice of the Spirit,
you are sowing to the Spirit and you
will reap eternal life.
It says in 2 Timothy 2, let me
read you this verse.
In verse 6 and 7, the hard-working
farmer should be the first to receive his
share of the crops.
You would all agree.
If you have ten farmers, who should receive
the first share of the crops?
The most hard-working among them.
And who should get it last or nothing?
The lazy farmer.
Verse 7, he says, consider what I have
just said and the Lord will give you
understanding in everything.
Think about this.
The hard-working farmer should get his first
share of the crops.
Paul tells Timothy, think about this.
And he tells him further down in verse
15, therefore, be diligent like that hard-working
farmer to present yourself approved to God as
a workman who does not need to be
ashamed, handling the word of truth accurately.
If you want to know how to handle
God's word accurately, it says here you got
to be diligent.
God never blesses laziness.
God told Adam, by the sweat of your
brow you will earn your bread.
He's never encouraged laziness right from the first
day.
The hard-working farmer gets the best share
of the crops.
Because he's sowing to the Spirit, because he's
diligent, God rewards him.
Hebrews 11.6 in the King James Version,
it says, God is a rewarder of those
who diligently seek Him.
Diligence, persistence.
That's how we come to know God.
That's how we come to know His word.
It says in Proverbs 25 and verse 2,
it is the glory of God to conceal
a matter, but it's the glory of kings
to search out that matter which God has
concealed.
And that refers to scripture.
There are many things that are concealed in
scripture.
In fact what you see on the surface
of scripture are the less valuable things.
The really valuable things are concealed.
It's like the earth.
What you see on the surface of the
earth is mud and grass.
If you go to the depths of the
earth you get gold and diamonds and precious
things.
It's the same way with the word.
There are many things you get on the
surface, but there are many more valuable things
you get deep down.
And it's the glory of God to conceal
these things.
And if you're a king, in Christ you're
a king, it's the glory of a king
to search it out.
And thereby God tests who is diligent to
study it.
Jesus knew the scriptures by the age of
twelve.
And He never had a Bible at home.
There were no printed Bibles those days.
All He could hear was when He went
to school and on the Sabbath day in
the synagogue, but He listened so carefully that
by the age of twelve He knew the
scriptures.
And the result was that when Satan quoted
scriptures to Him and when He was tempted
by Satan, He had a verse for every
temptation.
He could say it's written.
I believe there is an answer in this
book to every problem we can ever face
in life.
That's what I've discovered in forty years.
And if you know where to find it.
And that can come only by diligence.
I thank God that He drove me to
the scriptures early in life.
And I want to say to those of
you who are unmarried, this is the time
to study the word.
You won't have as much time when you're
married.
Do you want to be diligent to present
yourself?
Do you want to present yourself as a
workman approved to God?
Then be diligent.
Don't waste your days.
Don't waste your time.
Carry a New Testament with you wherever you
go.
Those hours that you spend in bus stops
where everybody is looking around here and there,
you can spend reading the scriptures.
Those hours you waste in government offices waiting
to see somebody, you can study the scriptures.
The hours you spend traveling in a train,
you can read the scriptures.
You can read the scriptures anywhere.
There are many, many places, there are many,
many bits of time we can get here
and there where we can read and meditate
on God's word.
And when God sees you got a hunger,
He reveals those things He has concealed because
He sees you are a king who wants
to search it out.
It's a great sorrow to me that there
are so many people in Christendom today who
have so much spare time and who don't
spend it studying the scriptures.
It's possible that God wanted to have many
prophets in this country.
I believe that, that God loves India, and
it cannot be possible that for a land
of one thousand million people that God would
have no prophets.
That's impossible.
There's a verse in the Psalms which says
that it's when God doesn't love, when God
forsakes a people, that there is, He doesn't
send them a prophet.
It's somewhere here in Psalm 75 or 76
somewhere.
I don't remember where it is right now.
But there is no prophet in our midst,
He says.
God loves India.
God planned to have prophets, but many of
them have fallen away, marrying the wrong person,
or going after money, or not studying the
word and getting to know God.
It's possible that some of you, God may
have a plan to make you His mouthpiece
in this land in the days to come,
but you can never be that.
That plan of God will not be automatically
fulfilled in your life if you are not
diligent to accurately divide the word, to study
the word.
It only comes by diligence.
And if you are diligent, then this word
will not only provide you the answers to
your problems, but will make you rich to
help others wherever you go.
And God will be able to speak His
word through your mouth, if your mind is
saturated with His word.
It's true, if you think of a businessman's
mind, it's saturated with ways to make money.
His mind is working day and night in
that way, that he can immediately think of
so many things.
And many times when I have seen such
businessmen, I have said, Lord, that man worships
money, and I worship the true God.
His worship of money should not be more
zealous and more devoted than my worship of
the true God.
I hope the zeal of businessmen to make
money challenges you to serve God diligently.
When we are diligent, persevering, hardworking, disciplined, diligence
involves discipline.
It means cutting out unnecessary things.
I mentioned earlier that we are not under
law.
We don't live by rules and regulations.
But what's happened to many Christians is that
in throwing away all laws, they have become
indisciplined.
They have no discipline in their life.
They are not disciplined in eating, they are
not disciplined in studying the word, they are
not disciplined in their conversation, they have no
discipline in their tongue, they just say, I'm
forgiven, I'm filled with the Spirit, I'm going
to heaven.
You cannot become a holy man if you
are not disciplined.
The Bible says, God has given us, 2
Timothy 1.7, the spirit of discipline.
Jesus was a disciplined person.
He got up early morning and got alone
with the Father.
He who never sinned.
He was disciplined in his life.
He cared for people and spent time with
them.
He was disciplined.
In every area, Paul was a disciplined man.
He kept his body under subjection.
That's how he became the mighty apostle that
he became.
He sowed to the Spirit and reaped eternal
life.
Today we have a generation of Christians who
are indisciplined, lazy and want these shortcuts to
spiritual success.
Go to some meeting, get an experience, get
thrown down, start laughing and imagine that everything
is going to go well.
There is no shortcut.
There is no experience that will guarantee that
you will become spiritual.
An experience can start you off.
It's like the ignition that starts a scooter
or a car.
Good, but you got to keep going.
That engine has to keep firing and firing
and firing and firing and firing continuously for
that vehicle to move forward.
You know that?
That spark plug doesn't just start once and
that's it.
It has to keep on firing continuously to
keep going.
And that's what many Christians have been deceived
into believing is not true.
Satan is a master at urging believers to
have instant holiness, instant sanctification, instant power.
Because we live in a world of instant
coffee and instant tea.
It's not like the old days where it
took so long, instant noodles and instant this
and instant that, and we carried over into
the Christian life, think that we're going to
become instant prophets and instant preachers.
It's not like that.
In the Christian life there is no instant.
It's the way of the farmer.
You sow and sow and water and over
a period of years there is fruit.
Think of what it says in James concerning
Elijah.
It says, Elijah was a man of like
passions, like us, James chapter 5, and he
prayed earnestly that it might not rain.
And it didn't rain for three and a
half years.
And he prayed again.
And we know from 1 Kings 18, he
prayed and he sent his servant, do you
see any rain, any cloud?
No.
He prayed again, sent his servant again.
No.
He prayed and prayed.
And it says he prayed seven times.
He would have prayed seventy times if he
hadn't seen the cloud.
He prayed until the rain fell and the
earth produced fruit.
Do you know that once when Elijah went
before God and said, Lord, I alone am
left, in 1 Kings chapter 19, when he
was discouraged, do you know what God told
him?
Elijah, I have got seven thousand people in
Israel who have not bowed the knee to
Baal.
Well, thank God there were seven thousand people
in Israel who were not idolaters, who still
believed in Jehovah.
You read in 1 Kings chapter 18 about
one of those men who was a man
called Obadiah, not the prophet, another man.
But he was a manager in Ahab's palace.
These seven thousand people were not idol worshippers,
but they were compromisers.
But on Mount Carmel, all those seven thousand
people could not bring the fire down.
There was only one man who could bring
the fire down.
There was only one man who could turn
Israel to God, not those seven thousand people.
And it's the same in Christendom today.
There may be seven thousand people who say
they speak in tongues and go for meetings
and praise and worship and all that, but
they cannot bring the fire of God down.
For that you need an Elijah.
For that you need a John the Baptist.
For that you need a man who is
disciplined to live before God's face, who has
secret dealings with God, and who is diligent,
who cleanses out from his life everything that
displeases God, and who sows to the Spirit
day after day after day, gets to know
God, faithful in trials, faithful not to murmur
or complain, faithful to be content with the
material provisions that God gives him, faithful with
the money he uses, his money and the
Lord's money, faithful with the way he spends
his time.
And over years of sowing in that type
of faithfulness, God picks up one Elijah.
The other seven thousand people, their testimony is
negative.
We did not bow the knee to Bea.
A lot of Christians, their testimony is only
negative.
I don't go to the cinema, I don't
drink, I don't smoke, I don't dance, I
don't fool around with girls, I don't gamble,
I don't watch dirty television programs, I don't
read pornography, and I don't bow the knee
to Bea, I don't do all these things.
What do you do?
Well, I sleep, I get up, I eat,
I go and earn my living.
What do you do for God?
We will discover in the final day that
many missionaries have sacrificed so much to
serve the Lord, and it will not be
counted in terms of the number of people
they brought to the Lord.
Their reward will be according to their sacrifice,
years of sacrifice.
I have often thought, in many places where
I have gone and seen a harvest, I
have been reminded of what the Lord had
said to His disciples, I sent you to
reap where you did not labor, other people
labored.
In many parts of Tamil Nadu, where we
have seen great harvests, I think of missionaries
who came hundred years ago, two hundred, one
hundred and fifty years ago, who labored there
under such difficult circumstances and conditions, labored.
Their reward is going to be very much
greater, even though they didn't see much result.
They sowed and sowed and sowed to the
Spirit.
I remember hearing of a young couple who
went to China more than fifty years ago,
before the Communists took over.
A young couple from the United States who
asked to be posted in some remote area
near Tibet, where the Gospel had never gone,
and they went there and worked for seven
years and never saw one soul converted.
Then they got a little baby girl born
to them and that little baby girl learned
little choruses in the local language and went
around sharing that with others, and others like
that, those other Tibetan children, learned these choruses
and they got one family converted.
After another fourteen years, they got eight souls.
Twenty-one years for eight souls.
And then one day, the father discovered a
patch on the daughter's hand, took the long
journey by road to Shanghai, to the coast,
took her to the doctor and found that
she had got leprosy, and she had to
be sent on the ship back to the
United States with the mother for treatment, and
he did not go back.
Another brother met him at that time and
said, Why aren't you also going back?
He said, There are eight souls there.
It will be difficult for them to stand
true to the Lord.
I have to go back.
If some new person goes there, it will
take a long, it will take years before
they have confidence in him.
It wasn't easy, but he went back.
One day when we stand before the Lord,
we will hear many such stories.
So many believers, who have so little, have
given so much.
And so many other believers, who have so
much, have given so little.
I keep challenged.
I challenge myself by reminding myself of these
missionary stories I have read, and I hang
my head in shame, and I say, Lord,
I have done nothing.
Help me to use the remaining years of
my life to do something for You, to
show my love for You.
Help me to sow to the Spirit, not
to waste my time, not to waste my
life, not to waste my money.
As long as You give me health, Lord
help me to serve You in the way
You want me to, without compromise, without lowering
your standards, and never offering to You that
which costs me nothing.
That's what David said.
That's sowing to the Spirit.
Sacrifice.
David said in 2 Samuel 24, 24, I
will never offer to God that which costs
me nothing.
This is true Christianity.
Don't get taken up with all these things
going on these days, people having exciting experiences
and all.
This is all a calligraphy.
The real thing is what these men of
God through the years have experienced.
There is hardly a book written nowadays which
I can read by Christians.
Most of them are shallow, empty.
I go back to the books written fifty,
sixty years ago, godly men, or at least
thirty, forty years ago.
All these modern western Christian writers are shallow,
hollow, empty.
Don't waste your time reading them.
Read the missionary biographies of godly men who
experienced genuine a walk in the Spirit, and
that will lead you to spend your life
in a worthwhile way.
Dear brothers and sisters, remember this law of
reaping.
What you sow, you will reap.
Let's not get discouraged.
Let's press on, following the footsteps of people
like Paul who suffered so much, and one
day we will reap, if we don't give
up.
Let's pray.
It's easy in a moment like this to
respond emotionally, but you must respond with your
will.
You must choose to say, Lord, I want
to follow you.
I want to give my whole life to
live for you and to serve you in
such a way that I have no regret
when I see you face to face.
By and by we will see him face
to face, and we will wish we had
given him more of our lives.
Heavenly Father, help us to live in the
light of that final day even now.
We ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.