This is a place for
rest, where we'll never feel alone.
And it's here, yes it's here, Lord is
here before your throne.
So I bow down before you and cry
at your feet and praise your name.
I am bathed in the light of your
glory.
And it's here, yes it's here, Lord
is here before your throne.
There are rivers of tears.
Lord is here before your throne.
So I fall down before you and cry
for you.
And I fall at your feet and praise
your name.
I am bathed in the light of your
glory.
And it's here, yes it's here, Lord is
here before your throne.
I want
to turn to a verse, first of all,
in Psalm 103.
As I've studied through the scriptures, I've discovered
that though there are two covenants, Old Covenant
and New Covenant, Law and Grace, there are
some people who lived in Old Testament times
who had a New Covenant spirit.
And there are lots of people living in
New Testament times who have an Old Testament
spirit.
That's a very sad thing.
Now it's amazing that before the New Covenant
was even established on the day of Pentecost,
after the death and resurrection of Christ, that
there were people before that who had that
spirit.
And those are the people who challenged me
the most.
I mean, praise God for people like Samson
who delivered the Israelites, but to tell you
quite frankly, he's not my example.
I'm not particularly interested in tearing lions to
pieces and killing 300 Philistines and things like
that.
There were other lions inside Samson he never
conquered.
You know that.
But I read here of another man, Psalm
103 verse 7.
It says here about Moses.
Now that man was a New Covenant man
in Old Testament times.
There were times in David's life when he
was another New Covenant man in Old Testament
times.
Not all the time.
There were certain expressions of Job in his
book which shows that that man understood something
of the New Covenant spirit.
And what it says here is, God made
known His ways to Moses, but His acts
or His external actions to the sons of
Israel.
God's ways are internal.
God's actions are external.
There were two types of people in the
wilderness.
The Israelites who saw God's actions and wanted
to see more and more of God's actions.
They want manna from heaven.
They want water from the rock.
They were not satisfied with manna.
They wanted meat and God gave them meat.
It was always external.
And they had a tremendous testimony.
Imagine if one of them got up here
in a meeting and began to tell you
about the miracles they saw for 40 years.
We'd sit with our mouths open.
Boy, we'd like to meet this man of
God who experienced miracles for 40 years.
And you read the Bible and you discover
God was angry with that chap for 40
years.
Do you believe that some people who have
actually seen miracles are not necessarily accepted by
God?
Jesus said Himself in Matthew 7, verse 22
to 24, Many, not one or two, many
will come to me in the last day
and say, Lord, didn't we do miracles in
your name?
And He'd say, get away from me.
It's your attitude to sin that I'm concerned
about, you workers of iniquity.
That should be something that should speak to
our hearts.
But you'll never find a man who lived
a holy life on earth who stands before
Jesus and Jesus says to him, Get away
from me, you who never did any miracles
on earth.
You got to live a holy life to
get into God's kingdom.
You don't have to do miracles.
Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord,
will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he
who, not he who does miracles, but he
who does the will of my Father in
heaven.
That's the important thing.
So, here we see, and I see there
are two types of Christians even today.
Like in this verse, those who are taken
up with God's external acts, like the sons
of Israel.
And those who are taken up with God's
ways, who want to know His ways.
That means the reason why God works in
the way He does.
That means people who want to get into
the heart of God and who are not
just concerned with external actions.
The world is full of people who want
to see God's external actions.
I mean, look at the prayers that most
people pray, Lord, do this for me, do
that for me.
And I believe 99.9% of the
prayers that are sent from earth to heaven,
even from believers, is concerning external things.
Lord, I need a house, or I need
some healing, or I need this, or I
need that, I need the other thing.
And I think, I don't know, because I
don't know what all prayers go to heaven,
but from my fellowship and meeting with believers
around the world, I've discovered that most people
are interested in God doing something for them
on the outside.
But very few are interested in understanding God's
ways.
They don't want to know God's heart.
Through the years, more so of late, I
find that I want to know God's heart.
And if that's your desire, you'll be a
new covenant person.
But if you're always taken up with the
external, you'll be an old covenant person.
You may be a good person, you may
go to heaven, but when you get there,
you'll be very disappointed and you'll have a
lot of regret about the way you lived
on earth if you were more taken up
with the external than the internal, if you're
more taken up with the action rather than
the motive and the spirit.
Because the person who's taken up with the
external, the things about God, he also finds
in his own life he's taken up with
the external.
You know, Jesus was always going to the
heart of the matter, to the root of
the problem.
How did he know that adultery consisted of
more than the physical act?
How did he know, as you read in
Matthew 5, that it consisted of lusting with
your eyes as well?
He didn't need a special revelation from heaven.
You know that?
You know, we can think that, oh, Jesus
came with a message from heaven.
Shall I show you that verse in the
Old Testament written by a man who lived
before Abraham?
If you haven't seen it, let me show
you.
In Job 31, verse 1.
And then you ask yourself, how did Job
know that?
What Jesus said 4,000 years later.
How did Job, who never had a Bible,
who never had any believers around him, who
was one lone godly man in the whole
world, how did he know, Job 31, verse
1, that he should not lust with his
eyes?
And Job lived even before there was a
commandment saying, thou shalt not commit adultery.
He probably lived in the midst of people
who were committing adultery.
Because he lived before the law.
And just in case you didn't know, Job
was the first book of the Bible written.
Because Genesis was written by Moses.
And Job is the only book in all
the 66 books of the Bible which has
no reference to Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob.
No, every other book has some connection with
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob except the book of
Job.
And that's because he lived before Abraham.
And if Moses wrote the book of Genesis,
then Job must be the first book of
the Bible.
And it's very interesting that God decided to
write a book for man, the first book
he chose to write was about one godly
man who understood his ways, and about one
godly man who suffered so much.
Godly men suffer.
Godly men are attacked by Satan.
That's what you read in the first book
of the Bible.
But ultimately God brings his servants through that
trial and blesses them double.
What did Satan succeed in doing to Job?
Make him blessed double.
What did Satan succeed in doing to you
when he harasses you?
If you react in the right way, like
Job did.
Job said a lot of stupid things, but
he repented.
And when he repented, God immediately wiped out
the record of all those stupid things he
did.
You know, that's one of the wonderful things
I read in the book of Job.
If you read the book of Job, he
said things like, God, why have you made
me your target?
Why are you firing your arrows at me?
Haven't I done this?
Haven't I done all this good?
And a lot of things which...
But then once in a while he'd say
some good things too.
He says, even if he slays me, I'll
trust him.
I know my Redeemer lives.
He says, even if I die and rise
again, I will see him face to face
and things like that.
And one of those things he said here
to his God was, Lord, I made a
covenant with my eyes that I will never
look at a virgin.
I've got my wife.
And remember, Job was a grandfather.
He wasn't a young man.
Grandfathers need to make a covenant with their
eyes.
He had ten children.
We read in chapter one, they were all
living in their own homes.
They were not living with him.
And they used to have feasts in their
own homes and Job used to call them
to his house, pray for them.
He was a man who prayed for his
children even after they set up their own
homes.
He called them home.
Oh, in those days they respected their parents.
Very different from our day.
He called them, these ten married children of
his who come, I want to pray for
you fellas.
And at that age, he says, I'm quite
happy with my wife.
There was a new covenant man who lived
even before the old covenant was given.
What do these things teach us?
That it's not a question of which period
of time you live in.
Whether you lived 2,000 years before Christ
or 1,000 years before Christ like a
lot of people under the law or 2
,000 years after.
It's got to do with your heart.
Man looks at the outward appearance.
But God looks at the heart.
You can say, well I'm living in the
New Testament age where Christ has died and
risen again, the Holy Spirit has come.
And you may have none of those benefits
in your life.
And I've discovered that the vast majority of
people who live in our time, even as
believers, don't have a clue of what it
means to live in the blessing of the
new covenant.
That song we just sang.
I'm pressing on the upward wake.
For faith has caught the joyful sound.
The song of saints on higher ground.
I remember as a young Christian, once in
a while, once in a while, I would
meet a saint who seemed to be living
at a far higher plane than I was
living.
And a far higher plane than 99%
of the believers I've met were living.
And I got close to such people and
said, How did you get there?
I want to live there.
It was my longing from the time I
was a young man when I got converted.
I said, Lord, my heart's desire is to
live on higher ground.
And I'll tell you, it took me a
long time.
God tested me, but I was never happy.
I wasn't even happy with my ministry.
I said, Lord, I'll give up my ministry.
I'm not interested in preaching.
I want to live on higher ground.
I want to live the way the New
Testament says a disciple of Jesus must live.
And those were the days when I began
to be gripped by this verse in 1
John 2, 6 which says, He who says
he abides in Him, in Christ, must walk
as He walked.
Must live as He lived.
How many of us sitting here believe that
your calling as a Christian is first of
all to live as Jesus lived?
That challenged me.
Is it possible?
And every time I thought about it, the
devil said, No, it's not possible.
How in the world can you live as
Jesus lived?
He was Almighty God.
Who are you?
And I believed that argument for many, many
years, and that's why I was defeated.
Till one day, I read in the Scriptures
that He was made like me.
Not in one or two areas.
Hebrews 2, 17, if you've never seen it
before.
He was made like me in all things.
I mean, it's such a clear statement.
I'm sure I had read it.
I had read the Bible.
In fact, one of the first things I
decided when I was converted at the age
of 19 was to read through the whole
Bible.
And I read through the whole Bible in
six months.
You know, I'm absolutely amazed how so many
millions of people in the world today claim
to be disciples of Jesus Christ and say,
and there may be some sitting here like
that, who say, I believe the Bible is
the Word of God.
Perhaps all of you say that.
No.
How is it that so many people who
believe this is the only book in the
world which is the Word of God don't
spend hours studying it?
I just can't understand it.
That means you're telling a lie when you
believe this is the only book in the
Bible, only book in the world which is
God's Word.
When I believed that, I decided if this
is the only book in the whole world
which is what God has written, I'd better
get to know it.
And I've spent 45 years studying this book.
And I've come to know God's ways, not
just His external actions.
And when you come to know God's ways,
you come to know God.
When you see His external actions, maybe you
get blessed by God.
I mean, when you get manna from heaven,
you're blessed, sure.
You don't die of hunger.
Jesus said, God makes the sun to rise
on the good and the evil.
He sends the rain upon the righteous and
the unrighteous.
If you're a farmer, you need rain for
your crops.
You don't have to be a believer, you
know that, to get rain.
You don't even have to be a Christian.
What about atheist farmers on the earth?
Do they get rain on their fields?
Sure.
Do they get good crops too?
You know why?
Because God is a good God.
Jesus said that in Matthew chapter 5.
He makes the sun to rise on good
and evil people.
He makes the rain to fall on unrighteous
and righteous people, farmers.
So, if I get material blessings from God,
what does it prove according to that verse?
I must be either righteous or unrighteous, that's
all.
That's all it proves.
It doesn't prove anything more.
Don't think that, Oh, God blessed me materially,
so I must be a holy man.
Rubbish.
Go back to Matthew chapter 5 and see
what Jesus said there.
He makes the sun to rise on the
good and the evil.
Matthew 5.45 And that proves to me
that material blessings are no proof of God
being happy with you.
In fact, He was angry with those Israelites
for 40 years to whom He gave all
those material blessings.
Those for whom God does things externally.
He gave me a job, praise the Lord.
It doesn't prove anything.
It just proves God is a good God.
It does prove one thing.
God is a good God.
And it proves that especially if you are
not following Him and He still gave you
a job or did good to you, He
must really be a good God.
And when I see the way God blesses
multitudes of unbelievers and people who hate God,
I say, God, you must be a good
God.
I mean, wouldn't you say that about a
man?
If you saw a man being good to
people who hated him and were trying to
kill him and he was going to do
good to them, wouldn't you say he's a
good man?
I can't understand how anybody in the world
can think God is not a good God.
God is a good God.
And the greatest proof of that is that
He does so much good to people who
don't care two hoots for Him, who are
evil, who are fighting against Him, and He
does good to them.
And I'm amazed how so many believers can't
believe that God is a good God, that
He loves them immensely.
Is there anybody here who's got any doubt
about that?
The Apostle Paul had to convince even Christians
in his day, saying in Romans 8.32,
He who did not spare His own son,
but gave Him up freely for us all,
how shall He not with Him also freely
give us all things?
Now, if you allowed your only son to
take tremendous risk to save somebody who was
drowning, and in the process your son lost
his life, wouldn't that be fantastic?
You love that person so much that you're
really willing to risk your son's life to
save that person.
And if that person who got saved from
drowning, through your son dying to save him,
had some doubt later on in life about
whether you loved him or not, that unbelief
would be the greatest sin of all.
And that's why unbelief is such a terrible
sin.
When we doubt God, when we doubt His
love, Jesus is always going to the heart
of the matter, to the root of the
problem.
That's why He kept saying to His disciples,
He's saying, The Old Testament said, Don't commit
murder.
But I say, Go to the heart of
the problem.
It's anger that causes murder.
And if you get rid of the root,
the fruit will never come out.
Just hit that tree at the root and
pull it out.
Do you think a man who's got victory
over anger is ever in danger of committing
murder?
That's impossible.
I mean, a rotten tree in your compound
may be producing rotten apples year after year
and you keep chopping it off, chopping it
off, chopping it off.
And you get tired of it until somebody
says, Why don't you get an axe and
get rid of the tree?
That's a better way.
When that is done, you can throw away
your scissors.
You don't need it anymore.
Right?
Because the tree's been pulled out by the
root.
When the Bible says that if you walk
according to the Spirit, you're free from the
law.
That's exactly what it means.
You can get rid of the scissors because
the Spirit has come into your life and
laid the axe to the root.
Now, the problem with a lot of people
is without the Holy Spirit coming and laying
the axe to the root, they have thrown
away the scissors.
And they are much worse than the fellows
who kept the scissors.
At least the guys who kept the scissors
cut off the bad fruit.
But these folks who say, We're under the
new covenant, they don't have the axe laid
to the root of their problem and they've
thrown away the scissors.
They're not under new covenant.
They're not under old covenant.
They are under no covenant.
And that's why you find so many...
I'm not talking about nominal Christians who are
not born again.
I'm not talking about those people in those
dead denominations out of which people have come
out and been born again.
I'm talking about born again people that I've
seen everywhere whose lives are much worse than
those Jewish people who lived under the law.
That's amazing.
Here's a man who lived before the law.
Job.
How many men, born again men are there
in the world?
I'm talking about born again, restricted to born
again Christians which is about 10% of
Christians are born again perhaps.
I'm only talking about that 10%.
How many of them, men, can honestly say
what Job said 4,000 years ago who
had never heard about Jesus Christ, never knew
anything about the Holy Spirit.
How many men today will say I made
a covenant with my eyes that I will
never look with lust at a woman.
I mean I'm not talking whether they got
victory over yet.
I'm saying how many of them are even
trying.
How many of them made a covenant Lord
I'm never going to do it.
They're not serious about their Christian life.
They're not worried about that inner attitude so
long as everything is okay on the outside.
See this is the difference between old covenant
and new covenant.
And if you're an external type of person
you're really living under the Old Testament.
That's what I want you to notice.
In the Old Testament everything was external.
The temple was out there.
You had to go to Jerusalem to meet
with God.
In the New Testament this is the temple
and God dwells inside here.
In the Old Testament the sacrifices were outside.
You could see the priest killing the ox
or the lamb.
In the New Testament the sacrifices are inside
and Jesus said don't let anybody see it.
When a godly man prays in secret he
doesn't talk about it.
When he fasts in secret he never talks
about it.
When he gives money to God in secret
or to the poor he never talks about
it.
But the fruit of all those sacrifices you
can see in his ministry.
You can see in his life.
You can see in the Christ-likeness of
character because the Bible says, Jesus said your
father who sees in secret will reward you
openly.
Other people will see.
But they won't see your sacrifices.
They won't see what all you suffered in
secret or what all you sacrificed in secret.
They'll see the result.
Here's another new covenant man in Old Testament
times.
Genesis chapter 22.
This is Abraham.
He was a new covenant person who lived
even before the law.
It's great to see these men.
Not everything they did was new covenant.
Abraham told lies.
And I don't want to follow him there.
You know, he lived before the Holy Spirit
was given.
So I can't say that I can follow
Abraham or David or Moses and everything.
Moses lost his temper.
But there were certain things in these men
that I can pick out and say, boy!
That's new covenant.
Like we saw about Moses.
He wasn't just taken up with the manna
and the quails and the water out of
the rock.
He got behind all that, got up into
the mountain alone with God, fasted and prayed,
got to know God's ways.
And because he had a hunger to know
God's ways, God revealed His ways to him.
And the Israelites who had only a hunger
to get some external miracles done for them,
that's what they got.
You get what you want.
If you're only interested in God giving you
physical healing, I tell you, you may get
that.
But you may still go to hell.
A lot of people whom Jesus healed in
His lifetime went to hell.
A lot of people whom Jesus healed in
His lifetime were the people who shouted, crucify
Him, crucify Him.
I'm amazed how that happened.
I can't believe that in that crowd there
was not a single person who was healed
by Jesus.
He healed so many thousands of people in
His lifetime.
But they forgot all about it.
Because they were taken up with the externals.
But there were a few who wanted to
know God's ways, even in Jesus' lifetime.
Very few.
And those are the ones Jesus prayed for.
Can you imagine a man spending...
a person like Jesus, who had such a
perfect life and a perfect ministry, and at
the end of the ministry He's only got
eleven people about whom He can present to
His Father.
Eleven.
You read in John 17, Father, I'm praying
for these eleven.
Would you say that man has a successful
ministry who spent all his life producing eleven
people?
We wouldn't think that today, right?
But those eleven people turned the world upside
down.
They were much better than eleven million of
today's believers who can't even turn their own
life upside down, leave alone the rest of
the world.
It's a quality of person Jesus produced.
You know, I have felt, Lord...
I've been in the ministry now forty years.
And I'll tell you something.
It's difficult to produce one person like those
apostles.
That's my testimony.
Maybe it's my failure.
But it's not easy.
The best believers I find today are so
selfish, so proud.
They don't know how to fast.
They don't know how to pray.
They don't know how to live utterly for
God.
There's a lot of activity in their life.
But there's not much overcoming sin in secret.
They don't know what it is to be
filled to the Holy Spirit.
They get into theological arguments and doctrinal controversies
over the baptism in the Holy Spirit instead
of saying, God, I'm a dry person.
That's what I...
You know, I heard about all these controversies
about baptism in the Holy Spirit.
One group saying this, another group saying that.
I said, Lord, I don't know what these
groups are saying, but I know I'm dry.
And I need rivers of living water flowing
out of my life.
And I don't care for this theology or
that theology.
I want God.
I want the fire of the Holy Spirit
in my life.
And I tell you, God met with me.
My whole ministry changed when God baptized me
in the Holy Spirit and fire.
And I'm not a Pentecostal or a charismatic,
by the way.
That's not for certain groups of people.
What was Peter?
He was a Christian.
Period.
And that's what I want to be till
the end of my life.
Abraham, Genesis 22.
Now, this person is now 125 years old.
50 years earlier, God had tested him first.
When he was 75 years old, with his
wife 65 years old, retired, living a comfortable
life.
And God said, Pull up everything and move
on from here.
And he obeyed.
How many people who are 75 years old
who built their house and decided to settle
in one place for the rest of their
life would be willing to let God pull
them out and say, Go on.
I've got to take you out.
And they asked God, Where are you leading
me?
He said, No, I'm not going to tell
you.
He said, Sure, Lord, I'll follow you.
That was a test.
And it was an even greater test for
Sarah just to follow her husband.
50 years later, after God has tested him
in many areas, he tests him again.
You think God's finished with you?
I find a lot of young people, they
think, Well, after 2-3 years of God
testing me, I'm ready to serve the Lord.
I want to tell you something.
50 years from now, you'll still be tested.
If you want to go to a still
higher plane.
Lord, lift me up.
I've been walking with you 50 years, God.
You've lifted me up in so many levels.
I'm still crying.
I want to scale the utmost height.
What a verse!
I don't know whether it hit you when
you sang that last verse.
I want to scale the utmost height.
I remember as a young man, I prayed
this prayer.
And I prayed it in different times.
I said, Lord Jesus, as much as it
is humanly possible for a human being like
me to experience everything that you experienced in
your earthly life, I want it.
And a few years ago, when some religious
Christians took me to court, exposing their own
doctrines, etc.
I walked into court for the first time
in my life, about 5 years ago.
The Lord said, You remember that prayer you
prayed?
Everything that Jesus experienced, I wanted to experience.
Well, I wasn't exactly asking for this.
But once I heard that, boy, that was
a spring in my step as I went
to the court that day.
I said, I see the footsteps of Jesus
here.
Hallelujah, praise the Lord.
He was taken to court by religious people
on false charges.
Boy, this is an answer to prayer.
The next thing is only martyrdom.
In the Living Bible, there is a wonderful
translation of Proverbs 14, 14, which says, The
godly man's life is exciting.
That's really how it has been for me
since I've come to know the Lord's ways.
And not just in taking up his external
actions.
I want to encourage all of you, if
you want to live a godly life, if
you want to scale the utmost height, if
you want to go to a higher plane,
be more interested in understanding God's ways, rather
than the external actions.
The spirit.
Because a person who wants to know the
inner heart of God more than his external
actions, will become an inner person himself.
You see, Christians can be divided into two
categories of people.
Those who are taken up with the externals,
and those who are taken up with the
internals.
As I said, the Old Testament, everything was
external.
In the New Testament, everything is internal.
In other words, it's not that we don't
do anything external.
We do a lot of things externally.
For example, we have a meeting like this,
we serve, we help others, we do a
lot of external things.
But, please understand this difference between law and
grace.
Old covenant, New covenant.
In the law, it was only the external.
Under grace, it had to come from the
inside.
That's the difference.
Jesus said, John 7, 38, He who believes
in me, out from his innermost being, will
flow rivers of living water.
Got it?
Where is it going to flow from?
It's not just the rivers of living water.
The point is, where is it going to
flow from?
From his innermost being.
Whereas in the Old Testament, you read in
verses like Judges 6, I think it's verse
34, it says, The Spirit of God clothed
Gideon.
You know, the shirt of mine.
You know, this is not part of my
inner being.
This is external.
I can take it off in a moment.
And I can put another shirt.
And in the Old Testament, people could be
like that.
The Spirit of God came upon them just,
it was external.
It was not from the innermost being.
The Spirit of God clothed Gideon.
Judges 6, 34.
That means it was his dress, which he
could take off.
Like Samson would put on that dress and
go and kill a lion.
And when he met Delilah, he'd take it
off and wear some other dress.
It was a double life.
And when a Christian lives like that, he
comes to church.
Oh, I'm going to church now.
I got to put on the right shirt.
And he acts spiritual there.
And then he goes home and takes it
off and he's a normal self at home.
That's Old Testament.
And a new covenant person does not live
a double life.
Anyone who's living a double life here, I
tell you, I don't care what you believe,
you believe in another Jesus.
Not the Jesus of the Bible.
You haven't understood the new covenant at all.
In the new covenant, there is no double
life.
When Ananias and Sapphira tried to live that
double life, God killed them.
And that's because they made the big mistake
of joining a church, which is on fire
for God.
If you want to live a double life,
don't join a church, which is on fire
for God.
Now, Ananias and Sapphira had been in Corinth,
which is a half-hearted church of compromisers.
There had probably been elders in that church.
It depends which church you belong to.
I remember somebody asked me, why doesn't God
do things like He did those days in
slaying Ananias and Sapphira?
I said, there hardly be anybody alive if
God did that today.
That's the thing.
Very few people are interested in that inner
life.
You know the story of Mary and Martha?
A classic example of new covenant and old
covenant.
You know that story in Luke 10, verse
38 to 42?
I'm just rushing through those verses for lack
of time.
You read it if you make a note
of it.
If you know the story, it's okay.
Martha, as soon as Jesus came, she was
busy.
She went to the kitchen and began to
prepare food for Jesus and His disciples.
Now, do you think that's a good action
to prepare food for Jesus and His disciples?
To unselfishly forget about yourself and go and
work hard to make food for other people.
That is one of the most unselfish actions
I can ever think of.
Where you're thinking of serving Jesus' disciples.
And there were 13 people she had to
cook meals for.
But yet, when she came before the Lord,
the Lord said to her in Luke 10,
verse 42, Martha, you're worried about a lot
of things.
To paraphrase it, unimportant things.
Mary, whom you're complaining about.
You know, Martha's complaint was tell Mary to
come and help me.
She's just sitting there like a lazy woman
listening to you.
And Jesus said, No, that's more important.
How many people believe that it's more important
to listen to God than to do something
for Him?
Martha was doing something for the Lord.
And Mary was just sitting, listening.
You know, I think I have met more
Christians than all of you sitting here.
And I'll tell you, I have met very
few in my life in any part of
the world who believe that it's what Jesus
said in Luke 10, verse 42.
One thing is needful.
And that is to listen to me more
than going out and doing unselfishly a lot
of work for me.
You find it's all these people who are
trying to do work for the Lord unselfishly,
whose lives are so shallow.
They're defeated by sin in their homes.
But they're doing a lot of activity.
Plenty of it.
Today Christendom is full of activity.
And you can distinguish these Marthas by one
mark.
When they come together, they always talk about
what they're doing for the Lord.
How many dishes they've prepared for the Lord.
What they're doing here and what they're doing
there.
And how many people came to the Lord
here and how many people came to the
Lord there.
And what they're doing here and what they're
doing there.
And then the Marys, when they come together,
you know what they're talking about?
This is what the Lord said to me.
This is where the Lord gave me light
on myself.
I find it's pretty easy too.
It's not that the Marys do nothing.
I find in the long run, the Marys
accomplish much more from an eternal standpoint than
the Marthas do.
Statistics wise, the Marthas have got huge structures
there built of wood, hay and straw.
And the Marys have got small little vessels
of gold, silver and precious stones.
And the final day, the Bible says in
1 Corinthians 3, verse 13 to 15, God
is going to take all this and put
it in the fire and you'll know which
is going to last forever.
It's the person who is concerned with that
inner walk with God that everything came out
of their inner life.
I'll give you another example.
In the Old Testament, God commanded people to
type.
Give 10% of...
It wasn't money by the way.
Just by the way, in case some pastor
tries to fool you in this.
I want to tell you that the Old
Testament, they were not asked to give money
primarily because they were not businessmen.
They were not working in factories.
They were not getting a monthly salary.
They were farmers.
Every Israelite was a farmer.
There were no factories there.
It was not an industrialized nation.
All that's in the last 200 years.
This is way back 3,000 years ago
nearly.
They were farmers.
That 10% meant from their fields.
And that's why Jesus said, you fellows are
so careful even about the little bill and
come in your way and take 10%.
It's all great.
But the point in the Old Testament was
it had to be a percentage.
It was quantity.
Is that exactly 10% of your crops?
In the New Testament, the Bible says in
2 Corinthians 9, God loves a cheerful giver.
You see how suddenly the emphasis has shifted
from quantity to quality.
Not 10%, but cheerfully.
It's not how many things you've done for
the Lord, but what has it come out
of?
Has it come from inside?
It's not a question of how much you
gave, but did you give it cheerfully?
I love to tell that story of the
little girl who went to Sunday school and
her mother had given her $1 to put
in the offering box and $0.25 to
go and buy some candy on the way
home.
And when she came home, the mommy asked
her, did you put the $1 into the
offering?
And she said, well, mommy, I really wanted
to put the $1 in.
But just as we were going to put
the offering, the Sunday school teacher said, God
loves a cheerful giver.
And I felt I could give the $0
.25 more cheerfully than I could give the
$1.
So I just obeyed the Sunday school teacher
and put $0.25 in, bought candy for
$1 on the way home.
Do you know that she was really a
new covenant person?
Do you think God wanted her to reluctantly,
grudgingly, complainingly put that $1 in and say,
oh, this demanding God, I wish I could
keep that $1.
You know, God was happy with that little
girl.
I don't know if anybody understands that.
Don't let these covetous pastors fool you.
We're interested in your money.
I know I come from a country where
lots of people think that Christianity is all
about money.
And that's why we decided when we started
25 years ago that in all of our
churches we would never take an offering.
And we've never done that in 29 years.
We have 40 churches.
We've never taken an offering on a single
Sunday or weekday for 29 years.
We keep a box at the back and
say those who want to give can give
because if you put a...
if you stick an offering bag in front
of somebody he's compelled to give at least
for the sake of decency because people are
looking at him from either side, you know.
And we don't want that.
We say it's there at the back and
if you don't have anything to give don't
give.
It doesn't matter.
God loves a cheerful giver.
And we've got a verse put on that
box that's there at the back.
You know what the verse says?
Not give and it shall be given to
you but first be reconciled to your brother
and then give.
So that we're actually stopping the person from
giving because he suddenly realizes somebody's got a
grudge against him.
I find that God's not so interested in
your money.
He owns all the silver and the gold
in the world.
Why in the world would He be interested
in your little few cents?
It's not that.
He's interested in your heart.
God's interested in the inside.
It doesn't mean we don't have to give
but it's a question of whether it comes
from the heart or not.
Everything.
That's what we see here in Genesis 22.
God tested Abraham.
God's testing us all the time.
He's not testing how much we give.
He's testing how we give.
He's not testing what we do.
How we do.
You know you just heard Dale and Karen
sing here.
I've heard a lot of people sing solos.
But I tell you this is my honest
testimony.
I have never in my life heard anyone
sing like them.
I'm not saying that lightly.
Because first of all I can understand the
words.
In a lot of today's music I don't
know what the fellow is saying.
Maybe Christian music but I can't understand what
they're saying.
And secondly do you see the modest, humble
spirit there?
I tell you it's a blessing.
It's a spirit.
If you want to learn how to sing
learn something from that.
God is interested in the inside.
It's a spirit that matters more to Him
than all the songs we sing, all the
sermons we preach and all the things we
do.
It's the inside.
That's what we see in Abraham's life.
He's testing us.
God tested Abraham by speaking to him one
night.
And even Sarah didn't hear it.
Don't we have that type of experience?
For example, right now God may be saying
something to your heart and the person sitting
next to you, maybe your wife, doesn't know
what God is saying to you.
Right?
We always have that experience in an anointed
meeting.
And you don't realize that when God says
something to you in a meeting and nobody
else heard it, that's when God tests you.
Now if God were to call out your
name publicly from heaven right now and say,
Hey you!
Tom, Dick or Harry or whatever it is.
Do this!
You'd better do it otherwise you'd lose your
testimony before all the others who know you.
Right?
But when God says something to you secretly,
you don't have to do it.
You don't lose your testimony because nobody ever
knows what God said to you.
That's how it was with Abraham.
God spoke to him in the middle of
the night saying, Abraham, God wanted to make
sure nobody else was listening.
That's why God's given us all a private
area in our life, our thought life.
He can speak to you right now without
the person sitting next to you knowing what
God is saying to you.
He spoke to Abraham.
Sarah was sleeping next to her.
She didn't have a clue what God was
saying to Abraham.
Abraham woke up and said, What's it God?
Take your son.
Offer him up in the land of Moriah
in one of the mountains.
I'm going to tell you.
I want you to notice two things here.
Genesis 22.2. God didn't tell him when
to do it.
He could do it next year.
He could do it ten years later.
And He didn't tell him to do this
just around the corner.
Moriah was three days journey.
Imagine having to drive three days in your
car.
The point is three days journey, not distance.
When we talk of distance in those days
and distance today, we don't get the idea.
Three days journey.
What was God testing him about?
A number of things.
First of all, when you get up in
the morning, let's see whether you're going to
do what I say.
And secondly, let's see whether you'll do it
immediately or whether you'll pray about it and
think about it.
I know God said it, but let's think
about it.
You know, people read something in God's word
and say, yeah, I see it in Scripture,
but I'm still praying about it.
You don't have to pray about something if
it's already in Scripture, brother.
Those are all silly excuses for people who
actually want to disobey God.
And I've seen one thing through the years.
Those who are very sluggish in their obedience
early on in their Christian life are sluggish
all the way to the end.
Those who are quick to obey God as
soon as they hear, I found they're usually
quick all the way to the end.
I decided when I was a young Christian
that if I was doubtful about God's will,
then I could wait.
That's permitted.
Very often we are doubtful.
Does God want me to do this or
that?
Those are areas which are not written in
Scripture.
Does God want me to marry this one
or that one?
I don't know.
Or go to this place or that place?
I don't know.
For that, I may have to wait.
Sometimes wait for years.
That's okay.
But if something's written in Scripture, I don't
have to wait for a single second.
Unless I haven't understood it.
That's also possible.
And I say, I haven't understood this, Lord.
Can you just explain it to me?
That's okay.
But God tests us when He tells us
something and nobody else has heard what He
said to us.
Supposing you left it with your eyes and
God said, That was adultery.
And you say, Well, nobody saw me.
So what?
God was testing you.
That thing you did was not righteous.
Your handling of money there was not righteous.
It's not according to the law of the
land.
You cheated on your taxes there.
Or something like that.
You say, Well, they can never catch me.
There's no evidence.
Those are all for unbelievers.
Those type of arguments.
A man who wants to go to a
higher plane doesn't have such arguments.
He says, Lord, I want to do what's
right before you.
That's the first thing.
God tested Abraham.
I want to see whether you'll obey me
even when you have a good testimony even
though you disobey me.
Abraham got up next morning and acted as
if nothing happened.
He would still maintain his testimony as a
man of God.
You read in the previous chapters people recognize
him as a man of God.
And a lot of people standing in the
pulpits today who through the years maybe got
a testimony as godly men.
But at some point in their life I
know wonderful men of God were mightily used
by God at one time.
And then their heads got swollen because God
used them.
And they began to think that they were
special favorites of God.
Let me tell you, God doesn't have any
special favorites.
He deals with you as you are right
now not as you were 10 years ago
or even yesterday.
And they got swollen headed thinking that they
were special favorites of God and began to
inwardly backslide.
It happened to me 30 years ago when
I was a well-known preacher.
And God tested me to see whether I'd
continue that way.
And I got so fed up I said,
Lord, I'm going to quit the ministry.
I will not preach anymore because I'm not
living what I'm preaching.
And if you don't do something in my
life to make everything I speak to come
out of my private personal life that's not
100% true I'm never going to preach
again.
That's when God filled me with the Holy
Spirit and turned my life around.
So I want to say this, that it's
very easy for a man to build up
a reputation and then inwardly disobey a lot
of things that God's saying to him to
set right.
And there you discover he's a man who's
only interested in his outward testimony.
He's not interested in the inside.
But what did Abraham do?
It says, early in the morning he got
up verse 3 and he went.
He obeyed immediately.
And he didn't tell people about this tremendous
sacrifice he was going to make.
That's the other wonderful thing about him.
He walked all the way three days.
It says on the third day, verse 4
he reached Moriah.
He didn't say, does it matter to you
where I offer my son?
I mean, why travel all this journey up
there?
There was a reason.
Many years later, about a thousand years later,
in the very spot where Abraham offered his
son.
That was the place where God built the
temple in Jerusalem.
You read that in 2nd Chronicles 3 verse
1 That was the very spot God had
prepared a spot in Jerusalem.
It wasn't called Jerusalem those days.
Where he was going to build this temple
and he wanted Abraham to take his son
there and offer his sacrifice because he said,
my house is going to be built in
a place where people are obedient.
In a place where people are obedient and
secret.
Where people make secret sacrifices.
Do you know that's where the house of
God is built even today?
Where people like Abraham obey God in secret.
And they are rewarded openly.
So that's why God told him to go
those 3 days journey.
Abraham didn't know all that.
Abraham didn't know this very spot on which
I'm going to offer my son.
One day God's going to build this temple
and the glory of God will come upon
it.
He didn't know all that.
And a lot of things you don't know.
The reason why God asked you to do
something which is a bit inconvenient for you
right now is because there's a glory that's
to come on that at a future time.
And you try to use your reason and
say it doesn't matter if I do it
this way or that way.
It does matter.
When God tells you to do it one
way that's the only way you can do
it.
And Abraham did it.
He went there.
And then when he got there he told
all his servants you hang around here.
You're not going to come up with me.
He was going to make a tremendous sacrifice
the greatest sacrifice he had ever made in
his whole life.
And he did not want a single person
to watch him.
You know that's what I mean by a
new covenant man who's going to make a
tremendous sacrifice for God and he doesn't want
a soul to know about it.
Are you like that?
Have you ever made a tremendous sacrifice to
God and not a soul knows about it.
Not even your wife.
Your left hand didn't know what your right
hand did.
Do you know the meaning of that verse?
That your wife shouldn't know the sacrifices you've
made.
That's the meaning of that verse.
Have you ever done something like that where
there are a lot of sacrifices we can't
prevent other people from knowing.
If you're fasting for example your wife will
know about it.
How many sacrifices have you made in your
life which not a soul knows about till
today.
That is a new covenant person.
Abraham he told his servants you wait here
and verse 5 he told all his young
men stay here I and do you know
what he said?
He didn't say well fellas I'm going to
make a great sacrifice before God now.
None of all that.
He said I'm going to worship God that's
all.
I will come back don't worry.
Not a clue they didn't have a clue
what he was going to do.
What a way to live.
That you've made all these fantastic sacrifices in
secret and people look at you and say
well he's no different from anybody else.
You've really concealed from all those people those
sacrifices you've made.
That's how Abraham was.
And up there in the mountain alone with
God nobody else watching him.
He said God it's only you and me
here.
And I'm going to prove to you that
I love you more than anything on this
earth.
This is the darling of my heart.
I don't love anyone on earth more than
him.
I'll give him up to you.
That's the area where God is testing all
of us.
And the person who passes that test is
not in danger of going back under the
law.
There was an old saint who lived many
thousands of years ago a Christian who said
You know you don't really need any rules
other than this.
Love God with all your heart and then
you can do whatever you like.
Try that.
Make sure you do the first part.
Love God with all your heart and do
whatever you like.
You know why?
That's safe.
Because when a man loves God with all
his heart more than money more than his
life more than everything a thousand things in
the world he'll never do.
He cannot do.
Because he loves God with all his heart.
And he doesn't judge people by rules.
You know the trouble with the Pharisees was
always this.
They were not seeing whether a person loved
God.
They were seeing does he wash his hands
like we wash our hands.
You know the Pharisees had this rule about
it wasn't in any law of Moses because
we all need to wash our hands as
a hygienic practice.
But they had this special law of washing
it up to the elbows and they do
it for so many minutes.
That was a ritual.
And when they didn't see Jesus doing that
they questioned him.
You know legalists are like that.
They would even question Jesus.
They were always questioning Jesus.
How can you allow this sinful woman to
wash your feet?
They were always trying to catch him.
What does he think about this?
What does he think about that?
I've met people like that who question me
about what do you think about this?
What do you think about that?
And I know they are exactly like those
Pharisees who want to catch Jesus.
They want to try and catch me in
some statement.
It's amazing.
You know you can have a hang up
on something.
I remember once I was with a group
of people who believed that a man should
never shave his beard.
And I was the only one there with
a shaven face sitting in the midst of
all these people in that church who had
beards.
And one of them tried to embarrass me
over lunchtime and said, Brother Zach, did God
make a mistake in giving you hair on
your face?
Or did you make a mistake in shaving
it off?
Cutting it off?
I said, Lord, I've got to get a
quick answer now.
I said, Did God make a mistake brother
in giving you nails or did you make
a mistake in cutting them off?
And he was silent.
He was embarrassed.
I changed the subject because I didn't want
to lose a friend.
I didn't want to push him to a
corner.
But that showed me the things that people
are taken up with.
It's just an example.
It's probably an extreme example.
In your case, it may not be such
an extreme example.
It may be some other little gnat, mosquito.
Jesus said, You Pharisees, you strain out mosquitoes
and you swallow camels.
He was a master of exaggeration and sarcasm.
And I want to follow Jesus.
You know, some people tell me, brothers, you
exaggerate sometimes.
I say, I'm just following Jesus.
To make, drive home a point.
What does it mean by swallowing a camel?
Can anybody humanly swallow a camel?
Can anybody have a log inside his eye?
Do you know who made those statements?
He said in Matthew 23, You strain at
a mosquito.
Here's your cup of tea and you see
a mosquito.
Oh, I don't like mosquitoes.
Strain it out.
And there's a camel inside there.
You swallow it.
Now, do you know what that means?
It means, in modern language, you major on
minors.
Do you know the meaning of majoring on
minors?
There are small commandments, there are big commandments
in scripture.
Jesus himself said that in Matthew 5.
I think it's verse 19.
Where he said, If you don't obey the
least of these commandments and you teach other
people not to obey the least of these
commandments, you'll be called the least in the
kingdom of heaven.
You won't go to hell.
You'll go to heaven, alright.
But you'll be the least there.
But he who teaches other people to obey
the least will be the greatest.
Now the point is this.
If you strain at those small commandments and
you ignore the big ones, that's exactly what
it is.
You go to Matthew 5.19 and you
say, I'm interested in obeying the small commandments.
Good.
But make sure you obey the big ones
too.
Otherwise, you can say, Hey, doesn't it say
in the Bible, you take a microscope and
says, doesn't it say in this verse like
this?
And you say, I'm one of those who
keep the small commandments so I'm great in
the kingdom of heaven.
Not necessarily.
You may be a Pharisee who also kept
the small commandments but ignored the big ones.
He said, You fellas, you type, mince and
dill and come in and you can't have
compassion on a fellow who's got a withered
hand whom I'm coming to heal and you
don't want him to be healed because it's
a Sabbath day.
What about if your donkey fell into a
ditch on the Sabbath day?
Would you pull him out or not?
Jesus really put people on the spot.
He says, You're so narrow minded.
You strain at small mosquitoes and you're swallowing
camels.
Abraham was tested.
He said, Lord, I love you more than
anything else.
That is the greatest commandment.
You know, once people came to Jesus and
said, What is the greatest commandment?
They wanted to test him because a lot
of people in Israel thought the greatest commandment
was the Sabbath.
You've got to keep the Sabbath.
There are a lot of Christians today who
feel like that.
The greatest thing is to keep the seventh
day holy.
Garbage.
Somebody asked me, What should we do on
the Lord's day?
You've got to please the Lord.
I've got seven Lord's days a week, I
said.
Not just one.
Which is the Lord's day for you?
Is Monday not the Lord's day?
This is the day the Lord has made?
Which day?
Only Sunday?
As far as I'm concerned, He's made seven
days for me.
Every day is the Lord's day.
Which day am I permitted to be unholy?
Which day am I permitted to sin?
Which is the day which is not the
Lord's day?
Which is my day?
If it's not the Lord's day, it's my
day.
I don't have any.
In the Old Testament, they did have the
Sabbath, I know.
But, every day is the Lord's day.
But, they expected Jesus to say something else
and to catch him in that.
And Jesus said, You know, they were trying
to look through the ten commandments.
Which is he going to pick up?
Adultery?
Sabbath?
Honoring father and mother?
Whichever you picked up, they would say, but
it also says this.
So, he fooled all of them.
He said, I'll tell you which is the
greatest.
Love God with all your heart.
Which commandment is that?
And he said, that's not all.
There's another one linked to it.
You can't have one without the other.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
That includes all ten.
And he said, that's the greatest thing.
And he was talking about something inward there.
He wasn't talking about washing the hands or
these external things.
There are a lot of external things.
God himself commanded it.
Sure, he said, when you offer a sacrifice,
you must do it like this, do it
like this.
But there was more to the law than
just that.
The law was primarily inward.
And God showed his ways to those who
hungered after that.
To know the truth.
We'll stop there.
Spar heads in prayer.
Lord, help us to understand your ways.
So many are taken up with the external.
Help us to know your ways, we pray.
In Jesus name, Amen.
I want to tell you about a little
booklet that we kept out there.
Is it out there?
See, this is actually an article.
It's probably found in one or two of
my books as well.
It's called, God Needs Men.
And on all the books and articles and
things that I've ever written in my whole
life, this, I would say, is the closest
to what I felt was something God gave
me directly.
And recently, God put a burden on my
heart.
This is written in 1986.
Just one time, God put me in a
hospital bed for about 10 days and told
me what to write.
And recently, God put a burden on my
heart to try and get this booklet out
to Christian leaders, pastors, in different countries, those
who know in English.
So, just to make sure you don't pick
up something unnecessarily, we put a price on
it.
Only 10 cents.
But, more than the 10 cents, if you
have a burden for somebody, maybe a pastor,
maybe a leader, maybe someone who claims to
be a Christian, who you feel needs to
hear...
This is talking about the deeper life, not
the way of salvation.
It's not for unbelievers.
The type of man God wants him to
be, I would encourage you to take maybe
5 or 10 copies and don't give them
out.
If you can't give them out with prayer,
maybe with a personal letter, in an envelope,
or personally.
And, you never know what result can come
from that with 10 cents, but with a
lot of prayer behind it.
So, today, I want to request you not
to take more than 10 copies.
If there's more left over tomorrow, you can
take just so that others get an opportunity
too.
But, I'm really burdened that a lot of
people in Christian leadership don't understand, don't have
a clue about the type of man they
should be if they are going to serve
God.
That's the reason why this burden is on
my heart.