0:00 In the early church there was a lot of public reading of scripture. In fact, Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:13, "Until I can come give attention to the public reading 0:19 of scripture." Of course, one reason was they didn't have Bibles in those days, so there was a need for that. But Sandeep asked me if I would share with you today something of how 0:38 the Lord began the work in our in our church 40 years ago. In fact, 40 years ago exactly on the 17th of August, 1975 was the day where I was thrown out of a Baptist church for preaching the baptism in the Holy 0:57 Spirit. One of the best things that ever happened. And uh I and another brother, we didn't know what to do. So, we just decided the two of us, you know, we're praying together and the Lord filled us with the Holy Spirit. 1:14 And we decided to meet together in my home. Just two families and then later one or two others joined. That's how the work began. We had no intention of starting a church. I never felt I was qualified for it. 1:32 Uh I had tried once or twice before. And they all turned out to be Ishmaels that God rejected. So, I was convinced that I was not called to build a church. Somehow, you know, God has to take us 1:50 through failure first. I think the only person who walked this earth who did not have to go through failure was Jesus Christ. All the rest of us, somehow it is failure that humbles us. Sometimes repeated failure. Um to the point where we realize we can't 2:10 do it. We can't make it. Scripture is full of that. You know, it says about Moses that he felt at the age of 40, if you read in Acts 7. Stephen says Moses felt when he was 40 years old that God was calling him to deliver the Israelites. 2:28 And um the Israelites didn't recognize it. They told him, "Who made you a judge over us?" That's what one of them said. So, he fled into the wilderness because he had killed an Egyptian. And all that God did in those 40 years in the wilderness for 2:43 Moses was just to break that strength of self that he had before he could fulfill God's purpose. At the age of 40, he Stephen says he was 2:59 a man mighty in words and in deeds. Excuse me. Acts chapter 7 verse 22. Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians. 3:19 He was a man of power in words and deeds. You think such a man is definitely qualified to lead God's God's people out. Uh educated in all the learning of the greatest superpower of that day. It's like a man who studied at Harvard 3:36 or something. And a man of power in words means a very eloquent speaker. And in deeds. Excuse me. But he was not ready. 3:55 He needed to be broken. And I believe that is the lesson that anyone who wants to build the body of Christ, a local expression of the body of Christ, has to learn. The strength of self is to be broken. We are all far too 4:12 strong as children of Adam. Sometimes we don't realize our strength. And that's what God had to teach me through many, many years before he started the work. 4:28 And part of that education was through my trying to start a church and failing. And that was also necessary so that I was convinced that I could never start a church. 4:46 I wouldn't even attempt it. Um it's That lesson is not just there. You find it in um case of the apostles. I believe Peter was not fit to lead, to be the leader of the apostles on the day of Pentecost 5:04 until he had a very deep failure, like denying the Lord three times. That was his preparation for Pentecost. Because he was so full of himself, he felt if there was any man whom God would use on earth, it was him. He was chosen. The Lord had spoken to 5:21 him, "Blessed are you because Simon Flesh and blood is not revealed to you who I am." You know, when the Lord says words like this and we get revelation on things and it goes to our head. And it went to his head and he could 5:35 say, "Lord, even if all deny you, I won't deny you. I'm the man." And then he fell into a terrible sin. You know, Jesus said, "If you deny me before men, I will deny you before my father. He never said if you commit adultery 5:52 I'll deny you or if you commit murder I'll deny you, but if you deny me before men, I'll deny you. So what is the worst sin which will make the Lord deny us? Denying him. So to me as I see it, it was worse than Peter falling into adultery or murder 6:09 that he denied the Lord three times and he was he realized and he was so broken at the end of it that he was convinced, absolutely convinced like Moses was, I'm not the man. Moses was so convinced he said he pleaded with God, send somebody else, 6:24 send somebody else, I don't want till it says in Exodus 4 God got angry with him. In the same way Peter, it says in John 21 that he um said I'm going back to fishing. He wasn't just going for one day of fishing. He was telling his fellow 6:43 disciples, listen fellas, I've finished with being an apostle. I know I'm a failure. I cannot be an apostle. That's out of the question. But there's one thing I can do, I can fish. I can go back to fishing. And it says it were the Lord said to 6:57 him, really? Okay, go ahead and try. And he tries the whole night and he catches nothing. Again failure. They toiled all night and they caught nothing. Then the Lord came and said, okay, I'll fill your boat with fish. What do we learn from all these things 7:14 throughout scripture? Think of a man like Jacob who was always grabbing from the time he was born he was grabbing his brother's leg and later grabbed his birthright and he went to his uncle's house and grabbed one of his daughters and got two of them 7:27 and he was always grabbing. And God had a plan for that man but he could not fulfill that plan until he broke him. He dislocated his eye and there wasn't in days any way to fix it. 7:45 So, he had to walk with a staff. And you know, compared to the age of people those days, people lived up to the age of 175 and all that. Jacob was a young man compared to the length of life people lived in those days. Imagine a young 7:58 25-year-old man walking with a cane or a stick. Pretty humiliating. That's how God broke Jacob. And then that day he said, "Now, you are Israel." That's a lesson which very few have 8:16 learned. I've seen many, many Christian leaders in my life. I've been a believer now 56 years. And I've seen many, many Christian leaders and many preachers, but brokenness is a rare thing to find among And that's why God's work is limited. He 8:34 cannot do his work with someone who thinks, "I'm the one God will use." And I think that's the reason why in many places despite all the knowledge people have and maybe they're anointed with the spirit as well, 8:52 God cannot do all that he wants. He does a limited amount of work, not all that he wants. It's tremendous power that God can release through a broken man. And Israel became when Jacob became Israel, he became a prophet. He predicted the future of his 9:10 12 sons. You read in the end of Genesis. And even though he couldn't see properly, when Joseph brought his two children to his father Jacob to bless him and said, "Dad, put your right hand on 9:29 Manasseh." Jacob said, "No." He crossed his hand and said, "No. Ephraim, your younger son is going to be greater." How did he know that? He was in touch with God because he was a broken man. He could never have known God that way 9:45 if he had remained a grabber. See, we are all basically grabbers. His name was Jacob, meaning grabber. He liked to grab things, honor, position, recognition. We are so reluctant to just disappear so that Christ might be everything. 10:04 So, that's one of the lessons that God taught me through many, many years before he began working. He allows us to come up and then takes it away. He allowed Moses to come up to be a great leader. He said, "That's not what I want." 10:22 He tests us, you know, by ourselves. Cuz the Bible says, "You are only two masters." Jesus said that in Luke 16:13. The masters are God and money, not God and Satan. None of us would ever serve Satan and God 10:41 together. We wouldn't even think it's possible. But, a lot of believers think they can serve God and money. It's not possible. It's not even possible to give money 11:00 second place and serve. You got to make a choice. It's either or. Luke 16:13 says you got to hold on to one and despise the other. You can hold on to God so tight that 11:19 you don't care for money. And you will love the other to such an extent that you will hate money. Hate in the sense that you know, Jesus told us to hate our father, mother, brother, sister, wife, children to be disciples. 11:36 It means it will mean nothing to you. Open it to your love for God. So, God has to make himself preeminent in our life. 11:52 So, and he'll test us in different ways. I remember in my own life, I mean, I share this only because I believe this is the way God leads all of us. It's not taking any credit to myself. I was 12:10 I joined the military academy in India, which is the equivalent of West Point here. Become a naval officer. I was 15. My goal I was a convert. My goal in life was to be an admiral of the admiral of the Indian Navy. But the year I was commissioned as an 12:28 officer was the same month that I got commissioned. I got converted. July '59 and and it was not just an ordinary conversion. It was a radical conversion. It was not just turning around 90°, 120°, 180. Because all my goals changed suddenly. I 12:48 said, "Lord, if you have given uh everything for me." Something like C. T. Studd, the great missionary to Africa once said that if Jesus Christ is God number one. And secondly, if he died for me then there is no sacrifice 13:06 that is too great for me to make for him. That's what made him the man he became and that's what made any godly man the man they the I mean, makes them accomplish what they did. Because they feel there's no sacrifice too great to make for Jesus Christ. If 13:23 he is God, like all Christians say and if he died for me, like all Christians say, but the third thing which CD starts and many Christians don't say, then there is no sacrifice that is too great for me to make for him. They don't go that far. They just 13:38 believe the first two statements. My conversion was radical and I'm very thankful for that because I gave up my ambition. I said, "Lord, I continue to work in the Navy. Sure. If you ever call me to leave my job, wonderful. If you leave, I leave, but 13:57 I continue to be here, but no, that's no longer my ambition. My ambition now is to be a overcomer and witness for Christ in the Navy. And uh that may bring you know, the resent I mean, a lot of my senior officers may resent that and 14:14 give me a bad report because I'm witnessing for Christ, etc. or refusing to do certain things which are against my conscience. I said, "Fine." And uh the Lord tested me along those ways and then finally one day he called 14:29 me to leave the job and I left it. And after that, Lord took me for about 9 years traveling around India. I'm really disappointed with all the mission stations and the churches I saw. And people who 14:49 claim to be disciples, sins like anger, dirty thoughts, murmuring and complaining and all were just accepted as normal among Christians. All people do that. Nobody wants to live the Christian life where the Bible says rejoice in the Lord always. That's 15:07 impossible. Well, and I said, "Lord, well, that's not the kind of Christianity I want." So, I was preaching and uh graduated my was ascending in 15:26 evangelical Christianity in India in the 1970s. I was being invited here, there, everywhere at deeper life convention in Australia, Europe. At that point the Lord said give it all up. I gave that up. 15:44 There were two points in my life where the Lord first of all asked me to give up that which is great in the world, my career. The second was in the years later the Lord asked me to give up greatness in the Christian world. 16:00 Be known and accepted as a great preacher around here and there. The Lord said give that to my church. I didn't know how to do it. So I said I'm willing to do anything but I didn't know how. The way the Lord did it 16:19 was filling me first of all filling me with the Holy Spirit. Loving me thrown out of this other Baptist church. One of the words a couple of verses that came to me at that time. First of all in Colossians chapter 1 and 16:37 verse I you read it this morning. Christ is the head of the body, the church. First born from the dead. That means the first one to rise from the dead permanently. 16:55 The purpose of that is that he himself might have first place in everything. When the Lord spoke that to my heart was It says it was God was saying to me, "My purpose is that Jesus Christ will have the first place in everything. 17:13 And if that is your aim also, you will have my power backing you to the end of your life. That means I must always give you Christ first place in everything. 17:30 My life. Means I must be a disciple. And this is the Christ I must preach to others. Teach people to give him first place in everything. And so, 17:50 as I studied scripture, I found that problem with a lot of Christians was a lot of evangelism was it was only leading people to conversion and not make them disciples. There are two parts of the great commission. One 18:09 is Mark 16, go and preach the gospel to every creature. The other is Matthew 28, make disciples of all nations. So, that was the part that's left out. So, when I looked at the conditions of discipleship, you see, when the Lord 18:28 told his apostles to make disciples, they didn't know what it meant because he only told them what it was a disciple. That's in Luke 14. This is the passage, you know, when we started our discipleship meeting, the first thing we studied was discipleship. 18:47 Used to meet about three, four times a week at our house. Few there were there. We studied discipleship. Took it seriously. Number one, it's it's basically what I just read earlier, that Christ might have the first place in 19:06 We saw three conditions of discipleship in Luke 14:26 and 33 and we tried to understand that. Number one, verse 26. If a man comes to me and does not hate his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, his own life, he 19:19 cannot be my disciple. It's an absolute condition. You can be a convert, go to heaven when you die, but I was not interested in gathering people who want to go to heaven when My commission from the Lord was go into every nation and make disciples. 19:35 In other words, if I gathered a church of four people or 400 people, I must seek to make every one of them, not most of them, every one of them, love Jesus more than father, mother, 19:51 brother, sister, wife, children, etc. That's how I understood hate. Hate in the sense that love for God, love for Christ was so great that that would almost be like hatred, like light and darkness. The way I pictured it was like at night 20:06 we see the stars. My love for my wife and children and father and mother and brothers, yeah, it is there, but it's like the light of the stars, very dim at night. And then when the sun rises in the morning, you don't even see the stars. They are 20:20 there. You don't see them. So, in other words, I still love my wife and my father and mother and mother, it's nonexistent as far as I'm concerned when Christ fills my horizon, the light of Christ fills my horizon. So, that's the way I 20:34 pictured it. That's hatred in this verse. Compared to love for Christ, it's your love for others is so little. You do love them, care for them. You don't hate any of them in that sense. But love for Christ fills your heart. 20:51 That's the first condition of discipleship. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your strength, all your mind. And the second is in verse 27. If you don't carry your cross and come after me, you cannot be my disciple. 21:07 That is something which he said in Luke 9:23 is something to be done daily. Take up the cross every single day and die to oneself. So, Christ must be preeminent in my life over relatives, friends, brothers, sisters. In other words, even my closest 21:25 co-workers in the church must not be more important to me than Jesus Christ. That's something which I've tried my best in 40 years preserve myself in because sometimes I've had to tell my closest co-workers, "I'm sorry, brother. I don't 21:43 agree with you." Oh, we got to put Christ preeminent here. And it sometimes can risk your losing your co-workers. So be it. Jesus turned to Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan." 22:03 You tell me to avoid the cross as a voice of Satan. Imagine speaking to your closest co-worker and risking losing him because you stand up for the truth. So, in all things Christ might have the preeminence. And the second is to take 22:16 up the cross means I die to myself. There's self is on the throne of our life. We don't realize that. To take up the cross every day means I refuse to let self be on the throne of my life. 22:34 See, everything in our when we are from the time we are born, we all everything revolves around me. Look at a child. His whole life is centered around him. He wants the best toys and the biggest piece of cake and the best chairs and 22:53 the best everything. And everything must What can I get out As he grows up, as we've all grown up, we're still thinking of what is best for me. I'm number one. What's best for me? When I get married, what's best for me? 23:11 And everything, what's best for me? What's best for me? Job, house, everything. My life is centered around myself. And then one day I hear the gospel. That Jesus can save me from hell. Oh, that's good. That's also for me. 23:25 And he can save me from hell. Somebody else tells me he can heal me. Great. It's another thing for me. Or somebody else preaches the prosperity gospel and says he can make me wealthy. Great. So, most Christians live a life 23:40 where they are still in the center. Everything revolves around them. And then they get Christ also to revolve around them. He's the one who will answer their prayer. He's the one who will take them to heaven. He's the one who will provide 23:53 their needs and do so many things for them, but they are the center. They have not understood the cross. They have not understood what it means to be crucified with Christ. And that's the thing the Lord began to reveal to me. 24:10 But even earlier, the Lord had shown it to me when I was first as a young 23-year-old, I was seeking for the baptism of the Holy Spirit way back in 1963. And um because I knew that though I studied the word, I didn't have power. 24:26 And as I sought the Lord and I went to different churches and I was disappointed with all the emotionalism and fanaticism and noise. And I said, "This is not it. I'm not seeking for this." I'm glad that the Lord steered me 24:38 away from that. And showed me in scripture how when Jesus was baptized in water, that's when the Holy Spirit came upon him. And that baptism was symbolic of Jesus giving himself over to death. John the Baptist pushed him into the 24:55 water. It was Jesus saying, "I allow other people to push me down and kill me." And then God raised him up. And the spirit came upon him. That was a revelation. 25:15 That this is the way of the Holy Spirit's power. And the Lord said to me from that incident, this is 1963, "If you will choose the way of the cross, you will always have my power resting upon you. But the day you decide to move away from 25:34 the way of the cross, my power will depart." And as I moved around in Christendom, I've seen this is the message that's missing. Death to self, being crucified with Christ, 25:51 not just in the negative sense, so that his resurrection that God can raise me up and I can experience his resurrection power in my life. Resurrection is that which raises me from death. That means the death of grumbling and 26:06 complaining and lusting after women and love of money and bitterness and an unforgiving spirit and anger. It's only the power of resurrection that can lift me up from all this death that Satan has put upon the world. And that's been in my life from the time 26:23 I was a child. And I began to experience it. The Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is can work in me if I'm willing to die. And it's a choice I have to make every day. It's not like you get married once I decided I'm 26:43 married for life. I can decide once, but then I have to renew that every single day. Lord, I choose to die today. Which means if the spirit tells you to not 26:59 reply when somebody's angry with you. The Lord says, "Let me tie your tongue." You say, "Yes, Lord." And the Lord tells me, "Don't look in that direction or turn your eyes away or something that's not meant for Christians to look at." 27:14 Or don't read that magazine. You listen to the Holy Spirit. Switch off the computer. Sometimes it can be Okay, stop writing that Christian article. Spend a little time with me. Okay. 27:33 If I choose that way of the cross, every single time it's it's very difficult. I know times when I have uh you know, been writing a Christian article. I say, "This is a lot. I'm not watching pornography. I'm writing an article for a magazine." 27:47 Uh and the Lord says, "Leave that and spend a little time with me." I say, "Just hang on, Lord. Just uh I just finish this and come." I finish it in 10 15 minutes. I say, "Lord, now I'm ready." And I can't find him. Like the Song of Solomon, there's a 28:05 passage which says, "My bridegroom put his hand through the door and called me." I think it's in chapter five. And I said, the bride says, "But I've taken off my clothes. I'm going to bed now. I'm not going to How can I 28:20 get up now?" And then after a little later, she says there, "Okay, I decided finally to put on my clothes and open the door, but you know, he was gone. And I searched through the streets. I couldn't find him. I went to the daughters of Jerusalem, 28:40 "Where is my beloved?" And they couldn't help me. So, I've learned through the years when the spirit of God tells you to drop something, even if it's something you think is very important, he says, "Drop it. Spend a little time 28:53 with me." And I tend to wait. You'll find later on, when you want him, he's not there. Just to teach us, not that he forsakes us, but he teaches us that in all things he might have the preeminence. Do you want a life 29:13 where at the end of your life you stand before the Lord and you look back with no regret? Follow a simple rule. That in all things he might have the preeminence. Your life. So, that's what it means to put self to death every day. 29:29 Choose the way of death. Humble yourself. When you've done something wrong, humble yourself and ask forgiveness immediately. Don't wait. Your wife or husband hurt, immediately set it right. Or you find you've 29:48 For example, you're in financial matters, something is uh not black, but a bit gray, a gray area, avoid it. It's better not to deal with gray things. Rather deal with things that are 30:06 completely white. That's what I mean. Whereas other Christians may choose a lower way, it's not only that God will not be able to fulfill his purpose through them on earth, they'll have a lot of regret when they stand before the Lord finally. 30:24 The third condition, Luke 14:33, "If you don't give up all that you possess, you can't be my disciple." What does it mean to give up all that I possess? And the way the Lord explained it to me was like Abraham possessed Isaac. 30:39 Isaac was an becoming an idol in his heart replacing God. And that's why God told him in Genesis 22, "Take Isaac whom you love." That's how he called him. He didn't just say take Isaac. "Take your son Isaac whom you love 30:58 and offer him as a sacrifice." So, Abraham said, "Okay." And he took him sent him on a 3-day journey. So, he had 3 days to think about it. Is it worth such a serving such a God who asked me to kill my son?" And at the end of 3 days he says, "Yes, 31:13 it's worth it." And he takes Isaac up to the mountain and as he was about to put the knife through him the Lord says, "Stop. I was only testing you." He took Isaac back. From that day he never possessed him. He had him but he never possessed him. 31:29 And that's how the Lord showed me what possessing things means. I can have things on this earth but then I must not possess any of them. I can have a house. I can have a car. I can have anything on this earth, clothes. But I must not possess them. 31:47 I can go on a vacation but if it possesses it and say, "Oh, it was very important for me to have a vacation." You can't be a disciple. You can't be a disciple if you possess anything. But you can have them. In other words, 31:59 keep them in an open palm. Say, "Lord, you gave. If you want to take away, that's fine." In other words, I'm not possessive about anything. Some people think a vacation is a right. Or this thing is a right. Or that thing 32:11 is a right. Nothing is a right. The only thing I have a right to is to go to hell. And the Lord saved me from that. I'm telling you, you cannot build the local church as a body of Christ if you don't understand discipleship. 32:26 And this is the mistake so many people make. Is it You know, they come to the Lord and they are bargain. Is it cheap? How much is it going to cost? It's going to cost that much? Isn't there a cheaper way of doing it? Like people bargain in a shop. 32:37 They're bargaining with the Lord. Isn't there a cheaper way for you to use me? There isn't. It'll cost you everything. So, I believe, you know, this is the fundamental principle of building the local church. And that's what we concentrated on 32:55 teaching that again and again over a long period of time. Conditions of discipleship. And another passage that the Lord brought to my mind and that I shared with the our little fellowship those days was from Malachi. See, it's got to important to understand 33:14 where Malachi comes in Israel Israelite history. The Old Testament is 3/4 of the Bible. And it's written for our instruction. That the mistakes that Israel made are the same mistakes that Christians and churches make today. 33:31 So, if you want to, you know, wise man always learns from the mistakes of others. If you learn from the mistakes of others, you don't have to repeat them yourself. So, what did they do? We learn from them. What are the mistakes they made? Lord, I can make the 33:47 same mistakes. There are two great journeys in the Old Testament. Most Christians know only about one of them. The journey of Israel from Egypt to Canaan. That's important because that's a picture of our personal life. 34:07 You come out of Egypt through the blood of the lamb, baptized in the Red Sea, the cloud coming down, baptism in the Holy Spirit. But then, you're going to life of victory, land of Canaan, where you kill the giants of anger and bitterness and all the other 34:20 sins in our life. But instead of going in there, most Christians wander around the wilderness. Some for 40 years, some till the end of their lives. They perish in the wilderness like the Israelites. But then there was a generation that 34:32 went into Canaan occupied. That's a picture of personal life. That's one journey, Egypt to Canaan. And you can miss it and wander in the wilderness. That's the lesson there. The second journey, which is not so well known, 34:44 is Israel's journey from Babylon to Jerusalem. Which was The other one was in the days of Moses, 1,500 years before Christ. This one was 500 to 600 years before Christ. And it was not one great leader. There 35:03 were a number of people like Ezra, Haggai, Zechariah, Nehemiah, all did different functions. Symbolic of how it is in the body of Christ where different functions. Ezra taught the law and Haggai prophesied about putting the Lord first, 35:21 and Zechariah prophesied various visions about the temple, and Nehemiah came along and built the walls. Each had a different ministry. And that's how the movement came from Babylon to Jerusalem. That's a picture of the church. 35:39 You know, in the book of Revelation, you read about the false church, which is Babylon, and the true church, which is Jerusalem. Now, I'm going through all these things pretty quickly because you don't have time to refer to all these verses, but 35:52 when you get time, turn to Revelation 17 and 18 and study it. And you'll find Revelation 17 is the church involved with politics. You know, the woman, the harlot, rides on the beast. The beast is a political power. And the woman is 36:11 false church. They work together until the political power gets what it wants out of Christians and then throws it away. That's what Revelation 17 and you see it happening in the world around us. You see how Christians want to to 36:25 associated with people in political positions and think something great that if they are associated with such people. It's all Babylon. 100%. And the second aspect of Babylon in Revelation 18 is money. The merchants of the earth are all very 36:42 happy, you know. Think of what uh will happen if Christmas disappears. The merchants of the earth will be unhappy. So, 37:01 that is Babylon and this movement of Babylon to Jerusalem is very important. Because today Christendom is in a Babylonian captivity. Money, internal politics, and these are the things very important in many churches. Whereas Jerusalem in Babylon, by the 37:23 way, is called great 11 times in Revelation. And Jerusalem is called the holy city. There's the great city versus the holy city. The great church versus the holy church. That's basically it. And today you have these Another word for great is mega. Mega 37:38 church versus holy church. Jesus said the way to life is narrow and very few find it. How in the world can you build a mega church with very few people along the narrow way? It's impossible. It has to be the broad way where many 37:54 go that way. So, we got to understand all these things. So, in the book of Malachi, is after it's all over, you know, Zechariah is the last prophet there who brought was with the people coming back to build Jerusalem. But then a few years later, 38:11 maybe 150 years later or something, Israel again backslid. They lost all those values which they that generation had that came back from Jerusalem. This is another generation in Malachi's time who lost all those values. This has happened 38:31 again and again in Christendom. What started with the early apostles descended into Roman Catholicism and Babylon for hundreds and hundreds years, over a thousand years. Till the time of Martin Luther when again truth 38:49 was brought forth of the justifications by faith. But he didn't recover all the truth. For example, he never preached water baptism. Then there were the Anabaptists who preached about water baptism. And then there was more teaching on 39:04 holiness through John Wesley. And recovery of the gifts of the Holy Spirit for a hundred years ago. Since there's always been recovery of truth through the years. And in Malachi's time the Lord says Now, I just gave you the background of 39:22 it. Verse six and six, "A son honors his father and a servant his mother. If I am a father, where is my honor?" This is what the Lord taught us in the beginning what we needed to see 39:38 that in there was the decline of Israel was that they stopped honoring God. They stopped respecting God. See, uh a lack of respect for God's word 39:56 is what leads a lot of people astray. You know, when they um when people ask us "Why do you teach about women veiling their heads?" I said, "Because it says so in scripture." I don't It's because we respect God. I 40:14 mean, I have no great desire for it myself. But scripture says that 1 Corinthians 11 has two parts. One is about women wearing their heads and the other is when they pray and the other is about breaking of bread. I said, "How can I 40:29 take one half and leave the other?" And then I used to tell people, "Listen, if you modify scripture in one area and say like a lot of Bible scholars say, "That was for that particular time. Things are different today." Then you 40:43 must allow same-sex marriage as well because people will say, "Marriage between man and woman was for that time, not for today." How can you stop them from saying that? When you yourself have modified 1 Corinthians 11 saying that 40:56 was for the Corinthians of that time. I said, "Nobody will ever accuse me of that because I say I take the whole of the New Testament." Our mouth is shut if we have modified one part of the New Testament and says that was for that 41:11 time and that culture. Another person says, "Exactly. We can live in today without marriage certificates. That was for that time and that culture." And so many things, the door is opened for the devil to compromise, bring compromising the Christendom 41:30 by evangelical Christians who modify something. The safest thing is to respect God, honor his word exactly as it says, even if it means the number becomes few. The way to life is narrow, very few will find it. I've never been interested after the 41:46 Lord showed me that in numbers. I said, "No, Lord, quantity is your business. My job is quality control. That's all." The responsibility of an elder in the church is not to increase quantity, quality control. Every major 42:04 uh industry has quality control. Otherwise, it wouldn't survive. People won't have any respect for products produced by any company that has no quality control department. And that's the tragedy in the church today. There's no quality control 42:20 in the leadership. If I'm the master, where is my honor? And where is my respect? And then he says, you know, they knew that they had to bring sacrifices for their sin. But what they do What would they do? Verse six. You present the blind for sacrifice. 42:37 Isn't that evil? You present the lame and the sick. Malachi 1:8. Isn't that evil? In other words, when a man had to offer a bullock, they'd look for that lame bullock which is about to die. So, before it dies, let's offer it as a 42:51 sacrifice. Or they had some blind sheep which is a bit of a nuisance in any case. Okay, we'll offer this one. They were offering to the Lord that which cost them nothing. And the Lord said, "I wish there was at 43:08 least worse than at least one priest who would shut the gate and say, 'Don't bring these sacrifices here.'" But there was none. I'm not pleased with you. Verse 10. I believe that was what the Lord is saying to many churches, and that's what 43:26 we saw way back 40 years ago. I will not accept verse 10 an offering from you. Last part of verse 10. But and this is the words the Lord spoke to us at that time. From the rising of the sun He says, "Israel, you fellows think that you're 43:43 the only ones I'm going to use? I'm going to reject you." Do you know that that's happened to many, many groups in Christendom who thought, "We are the ones whom God will choose. We They We're the ones standing for the Lord." And they go over 43:57 a period of time, they become proud. That can happen to any group. Just because God used them at a particular time to restore a certain truth, whether it's Lutherans or the Salvation Army or anybody, you can get so proud 44:11 that we are the ones whom God has chosen. And God says, "I'm going to put you aside, set you aside." You Israel think that you're the ones I've chosen and you offer all these cheap sacrifices and you don't honor me. Well, I'm going to do something new. 44:29 From the east to the west, from the rising of the sun to the setting, verse 11, "My name is going to be great among all the other nations, not among you Israel." I'm going to reject you. And in every place, this is where I see a picture of 44:42 a local body of Christ. In every place, there's going to be an offering that is pure. Where somebody has quality control. A pure offering. That's the word the Lord spoke to us 40 years ago. 45:01 In every place, I want a pure offering. Because my name will then be great among the nations. And in the context here, a pure offering meant that which caused sacrifice. So, 45:22 we turned back and studied Genesis chapter 4, which is the beginning of human history. And saw how God accepted Abel but rejected Cain. And as we studied that, we saw the difference there. Why did God accept Abel 45:42 and reject Cain? Now, every single book I ever read explained that's because Abel offered blood, the blood of a lamb, and Cain's offering did not contain blood. Every Bible school in the world teaches that. 46:01 But one of the things I decided, because I never went to Bible school was I'd say, "Lord, I want to learn from the Holy Spirit because all these people may be wrong." And I discovered they were wrong. And I didn't discover wrong through some 46:15 special revelation. I don't believe in special revelations. It's all rubbish. I believe in revelation that comes through reading scripture exactly and carefully. That's all. That's all. That's the only type of revelation I want. 46:29 Not extra-scriptural revelations. That's rubbish. I believe scripture is complete, but if you don't read it carefully, you don't understand it. Let me show you. Genesis chapter 4, it says I mean, if you read carefully, you see 46:46 the difference. If you heard me before, you know it. Genesis 4:3, read it, Cain brought an offering to the Lord. Because he was a farmer, he couldn't bring sheep. He brought grain. That's probably all right. This is not a 47:03 sin offering. It was a thanksgiving offering. And a thanksgiving offering could be just grain. Even in Leviticus, it teaches that. There's no need for blood. Abel, on his blood, brought the firstlings of his flock. Do you notice the different difference 47:18 there? Cain brought an a n offering. Abel brought the best. So, I see there are Christians who bring an offering to God. And there are other Christians who bring the best of their life to God, and there's a 47:36 world of difference. And so, the Lord accepted not his offering. Note, read carefully verse 4. It's not says many Christians teach like this. 95% of Christians teach like this. The Lord accepted Abel's offering, therefore 47:52 he accepted Abel. Rubbish. The Lord accepted Abel and therefore his offering verse 4. It did It's not that the Lord rejected Cain's offering. It says the Lord had no regard for Cain verse 5 and therefore no 48:10 regard for his offering. You see how careless reading of scripture gives you a completely wrong theology. You're not accepted because of your offering. You bring an offering to God and the Lord may not accept it. Even if it's a good one. 48:27 Even if it has blood in the offering. Jesus said that. You come with your offering to the Lord Matthew chapter 5 and you realize that you got angry with your brother and you haven't asked forgiveness from him. What did the Lord say? 48:39 Leave your offering there. Go and set that right. He will not accept your offer. Why? Because he doesn't accept you. We have made so much of the offering. Oh, the blood of Jesus, the blood of Jesus. He looks at your heart. A lot of people 48:54 who claim the blood of Jesus God does not accept them. Because they haven't set something right with somebody. It's when Zacchaeus told the Lord Read that in Luke chapter 19. Lord, I'm going to set everything right with the people I cheated. I'll give 49:14 back four times. I calculate the interest, give back four times. Some people I don't know what their where their address is so I can't return it. I can't keep that money. I'll give it to the poor. He settled his account completely and 49:24 Jesus said, This day salvation has come to this house. When he set things right, the Lord accepted Zacchaeus and therefore accepted his offer. So we learn something there. That Abel brought the best. God accepted him. 49:44 It had nothing to do with blood. He was a a person who looked after sheep. He brought sheep. Cain, if he had brought the best, he would have been accepted too, without any blood. Cuz he was a farmer. God didn't expect him to bring cattle. 50:01 But he didn't bring the best. So, I see this as two types of Christians, and we see them in the world today also. There are Christians who might call minimum Christians. They always think, "What is the minimum I have to do to get to heaven? 50:17 What is the minimum amount of money I have to give to the Lord to keep him happy and to keep the church happy? What's the minimum amount of service I must do for God?" And what about the rest of your money and your time and your energy? Of 50:30 course, for myself. That's Cain. Whereas, then the others I want to call the maximum Christians, like Abel. Cuz their attitude is, "Lord, I've only got one life on this earth. You gave everything up for me. Christ loved the church and gave himself for 50:44 it. How can I make the maximum How can you get the maximum out of me in my one life?" The minimum Christian is, "How can I get the maximum out of God for myself and give him the minimum?" And the maximum Christian is the one who 51:02 says, "How can God get the maximum out of me in my one earthly life before I leave?" They're two completely different types of Christians. They both plead the blood of Jesus for forgiveness. But there's a fundamental difference in 51:17 their attitude, and there's a fundamental difference in the way God looks at them. The Lord has regard for one, and he has no regard for the other. I'm not saying he'll send them to hell, but to tell you honestly, I'm not 51:27 interested in going to heaven. I'm interested in pleasing Jesus before I get there. To me, heaven is Jesus. Not the golden streets and all that stuff. It's Jesus himself, the presence of Jesus. And when I meet him, I want to have 51:43 lived a life that pleased him completely where he got the maximum out of the one life he gave me. And I said, "Lord, that's the only type of Christian I want to build. I'm not sure that I'll succeed with everyone I preach to, but that's one of 51:59 That's going to be my goal, and I'm never going to lower that quality control standard anywhere." And I see here the beginning of Babylon and Jerusalem. Cain and Abel. That's how 52:19 human history begins in Genesis 4. Three chapters from the beginning of the Bible. And three chapters from the end of the Bible, three, four chapters from the end of the Bible, you read about Babylon and Jerusalem. It's the maximum Christian and the 52:33 minimum Christian. You know where you are. I I can't judge anybody because I don't know anybody's private life. But I can certainly judge myself. And it's one of the things I I wanted all four of my sons to live for God and 52:49 honor him and follow him. So, as he brought them up, and as I understood these principles, I knew that the most important thing for them is not to be great in the world. And the most important thing was to be people for whom the Lord had regard. 53:04 So, my prayer for my four sons was "Lord, at least once in their life, at least once in their life, they must make a choice where they lose money because they chose God. Significant amount of money, not five or 53:24 ten dollars, but a significant amount of money in some situation because they chose to honor God. Because that would mean something. It's like Abel making this one offering that cost him a lot. I know 53:44 it happened to me when I quit the Navy because it was my ambition and and goal in life. And I find it's good for us to ask ourselves, "What has it cost you in choosing God?" I 54:06 have spoken to many people who I was visiting Arabian Gulf once. A lot of Indians go there to make more money. Nothing wrong in that. When I said to them, "Do you know that the Bible says, 'Whatever you do, do for the glory of God.'" 54:25 1 Corinthians 10:31, "Even if you eat or drink." And I said, "How many of you can honestly say that you came here seeking the glory of God?" You can't say that. You came here to make money. There's nothing wrong in that. 54:44 But be honest about it. God loves honest people. And say, "Lord, I was in those days I didn't have light. I Oh, Lord, I'll tell you honestly, I came here only to make money. But I love you. At least now I got some light. 55:00 I want to live for you from now on." So, I said, "Don't go back from the Gulf to India. No, no, no, you can be here. God wants witnesses here also. But be honest. It's like, you know, supposing a young couple planning to get married 55:15 have sex before marriage. Then after they get married, do they have to confess that they had premarital sex? Of course, it was a sin. They can't say, "Well, anyway, we got married." No. You got to confess. You may have got 55:29 married now, but it was sin what you did out there. You got to confess it. I'm not saying give up your marriage because of that. Stay married, but confess your sin. So, I told those people in Dubai, I said stay here and that's okay, you don't 55:41 have to go back to India, but confess that you came here not for the glory of God, you came here to make money. Confess that and now stay here and glorify God. But if I don't confess that sin, cover it up and pretend that you're 55:51 seeing the glory of God, God will see you as an outright liar. God loves honesty. There's a a little article which I wrote in one of my books called 16 things I learned. All right, it's on the YouTube as well. 56:11 Some things I've learned in 50 years of being a Christian. And number one in that was God loves honest people. I want to say to you my dear brothers and sisters, if you want God to use you, be absolutely ruthlessly honest with 56:24 yourself. Be ruthlessly honest. And that's when we judge ourselves, be ruthlessly honest. Whenever I preach, I always go home and judge myself 56:43 about my preaching. I say, Lord, I want to preach like Jesus did. I want to press on to that perfection in my personal life. I want to think like Jesus did. I want to look at money the way Jesus looked at money. I want to handle money 56:59 the way Jesus handled money. That means he never wasted money and I don't want to waste money. He was always careful with everything and I want to look at women the way Jesus looked at women, purity. I want to value the scriptures like Jesus valued 57:15 the scriptures. In everything. And that's the way you can improve in every area. That's the way any preacher can improve his preaching. I believe a lot of preachers would have preached a hundred times better if they had judged themselves after every sermon 57:29 they preached. But they're so conceited that they think, "Oh, I preached. Okay." Did you really? Did you preach like Jesus preached? No, well, then you're not okay. And if every brother or sister who shares the word would judge themselves after they do it 57:45 every single time. I've done it hundreds of times. I said, "Lord, I will never be satisfied till the day comes when I'm preaching exactly like you preached." Same motive, same attitude, same emphasis, same subject, etc. 58:02 So, what I want to say is if you really let the light of the Lord shine in like that to us and we judge ourselves, God will show us where we value something else more than him. Maybe the honor of men. Or something. Then we can't build local 58:20 church. We can't build Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a holy city. The holy city means everything there is for the glory of God. We read in Revelation 21, I saw Jerusalem uh Revelation chapter 21, 58:39 coming down out of heaven as a bride adorned for the husband. And it says in verse 11, "Having the glory of God." There was no glory of man there. In everything Christ had the preeminence. You know, God doesn't use extraordinary 58:57 people to do his work. He uses very ordinary people. And you may be a very ordinary brother or sister, and God can do an extraordinary work through you if you say, "Lord, I've decided from now on that in everything in my life Christ 59:14 will have the preeminence." Everything. Christ will have the preeminence. I will not seek to draw anybody to myself. I will always draw people to Christ. I remember one passage of scripture that came home to me like that once in 59:30 John chapter 10. You know, you can read scripture and you get light on it sometimes. There's more than one meaning to one verse of scripture. Uh you know, that Old Testament verse in Hosea 11, which says, "Out of Egypt I have 59:48 called my son." So, referring to Israel coming out of Egypt. The Holy Spirit quotes it in Matthew chapter 2 about Jesus being brought up back from Egypt as a baby. I said, "Wow, scripture has got such a depth of meaning." 1:00:00 That Hosea never thought of that as referring to Jesus as a baby going to Egypt. But the Holy Spirit uses it that way. So, listen to this verse. John chapter 10, verse 8. All who came before me are thieves and robbers. What do you understand from that? 1:00:21 We can think of all the false teachers, but the way I saw it was all who come before me in the sense of in front of me are thieves and robbers. Before can mean two things, you know, in terms of time or in terms of space. 1:00:38 All who come before me, I stand in front of Jesus to draw people to myself in preaching to draw attention to myself. You don't have to be a preacher to do that. You're a thief and a robber. That's what I say, "Lord, if I ever stand before 1:00:57 you, in front of you, before me, before him, to get people to admire me, or to get people to think what a wonderful message I preached, I'm a thief and a robber." I've said that to myself many times. I said, "I never want to be a thief and a 1:01:14 robber in my life." I'm trying to tell you some of the principles the Lord taught us about building the church. These are some of the important principles. Coming to this principle of sacrifice which Malachi denounced, you fellows are 1:01:28 bringing the sick and the weak and Another verse that the Lord spoke very strongly to my heart was from 2 Samuel chapter 24. These are some of the lessons we learned right at the beginning as we sought to build a church. 1:01:43 2 Samuel 24:24 when David is asked to offer a offering in the threshing floor of one of his servants, Araunah. And he came said, "Araunah, I want to buy your threshing floor." Araunah said, "My king, you're not going to buy anything from me. I'll give it to 1:02:01 you as a gift. Please take it. Take the threshing floor, take my oxen, take the wood." And the Lord said, "I will and David said, "I will not accept it free." See, that goes against human nature because all human beings love to get 1:02:15 something free. Everyone. If there are books on the table, if there are some of them are free, if you don't want them, you take them. They're free. That's human nature. And we like to get everything free. 1:02:35 Christianity in India has been ruined by a lot of missionaries who came and gave everything free. Good-hearted but didn't produce good Christians. They were They were Christians who wanted everything free. And they spent all their life wanting 1:02:50 everything free. I live in India and I've seen it. But David said, "I will not take it free. I will surely buy it for a price because if I take it free from you and give an offering to God, what do you think it cost me? Nothing. 1:03:08 I will never offer to God that which cost me nothing." And that's the verse the Lord spoke to me 52 years ago. You must never in your life offer to me that which cost you nothing. I said, "Okay. I want to live by that. That means I'll preach when I'm sick. 1:03:27 I'll go to the meetings when it's raining heavily. Got to cost me something. I'll go anywhere the Lord tells me, however inconvenient. If I have to work without pay, if I have to take a few days leave without pay because I've got to do something for the 1:03:43 Lord, sure, do it. I will not offer to the Lord that which cost me nothing. You know, if you one day when you stand before the Lord, we all stand before the Lord and we will see the inner life of all the great men of God whom we have admired and read 1:04:02 about, I believe we will discover that in their hidden life, in their private life which they never made public too much, there were secret sacrifices which cost them a lot, and the Lord saw that. You know what Jesus said? 1:04:20 When you do something in secret, your father who sees in secret will reward you openly. Three times it comes in Matthew 6. When you pray, do it secretly. When you give, give secretly. When you fast, do it secretly. Three times he 1:04:35 says, "Your father who sees in secret will reward you openly." Our father is seeing in secret all our hidden sacrifices or lack of sacrifice. All our 1:04:54 doing things to impress people. And all the little things we do to honor him, the big things we do to honor him. And the sacrifices that we never talk about. The price we have paid in certain areas 1:05:13 in order to serve the Lord. God honors such people. He will honor you tremendously. And I believe that every man of God in the history of Christianity whom God has used to do something are people who made tremendous sacrifices 1:05:30 but have never talked about it. Can you tell me the sacrifices that Jesus made in the first 30 years of his life? We don't know anything. He never talked about it. But that was the reason why the Father was so well pleased with him. He hadn't 1:05:43 done any miracles in those 30 years. He never preached any sermons. He never healed any sick person, never cast out a demon, and yet the Father said, "I'm well pleased with you." What was he well pleased with? Jesus wasn't offering sick lambs 1:05:59 and blind oxen. He was never offering in those 30 years to his Father that which cost him nothing. He had to deny himself in something in order to go and study the word of God so that he knew it to the age of 12. 1:06:17 The reason why so many Christians are ignorant of the scriptures is because they spend more time with not sinful things, legitimate TV programs, legitimate sports events. Nothing wrong in that. I'm not I don't mind sitting 1:06:34 and watching sports myself. Uh if I've not neglected the Bible. But I remember in my younger days I spent all my time spare time studying the scriptures. Yeah, I'd go for picnics and things like that, but it was not me getting to me. 1:06:52 The major thing was to know the scripture. And if you think that God is going to use you to fulfill his purpose or to build a local church and you have no interest in studying the word, I'll tell you it will not happen. 1:07:05 You've got to give yourself to the study of the scriptures. And for that you have to sacrifice many things. Paul once said, "All things are lawful for me, but all things are not profitable." That comes back to what I said about the 1:07:20 minimum Christian and the maximum Christian. That's 1 Corinthians 6:12. "All things are lawful." That doesn't mean adultery was lawful. What he meant was he had already come to victory over sin. Then now that I've got victory over sin, 1:07:32 many things are lawful for me, but I still don't do all those lawful things because among the 100 lawful things, maybe only 10 are profitable. And if I spend my time doing 100 lawful things saying, "There's nothing wrong 1:07:43 with this. There's nothing sinful about this. There's nothing wrong with this. This is okay. God won't be object to this." Paul would have been a useless Christian. But among the 100 lawful things, he picked up 10 profitable things. He said, 1:07:55 "I don't have time for all the others." He became the man he became. Think what Christianity would have been if one man was not there. Paul. God's greatest work has always been done 1:08:14 by individuals who were wholehearted, who stood out till the end without compromise. But he wasn't a man who was always right. He was an absolute failure for the first 30 years of his life. He had messed up his life. But he learned. 1:08:36 He was so sorry about the way he messed up his life. I want to tell you if any of you have messed up your life, you can use that for profit. Cuz I made a lot of mistakes in my life and I slipped up and sinned and all that 1:08:49 and I said, "Lord, I'm sorry." And the Lord said, "You can make something out of that." You can turn that garbage into gold. How? By having such a tremendous sorrow and repentance like Paul says in 2 1:09:07 Corinthians 7. What a lot of good has come out of your zeal, your repentance because of the wrong you did. Likewise with Paul when he realized, "Lord, I've messed up 30 years of my life. I can't get that back, but I want to do 1:09:23 something about the future." And he lived wholeheartedly. That is the way, you know, we can have such a tremendous repentance for our past failure that you'll turn out better than those people who never had big failures. 1:09:38 Cuz they feel, "Well, I was brought up in a good family and I've lived a fairly decent life so far. I haven't done anything seriously wrong." And you find the other guy who's messed up his life much more than you accomplishes a lot more for God because 1:09:51 he's he's so sorrowful, he's so repentant that he runs faster. In Galatians 1, he says, Paul says in Galatians 1:10, "If I were trying to please men, I would 1:10:08 not be a bondservant of Christ." That's another thing the Lord spoke to us right from the beginning. I had it written on a little plaque and it was in my front living room. 25 years I kept it there looking at it all the time. 1:10:24 "If I seek to please men, I cannot be the servant of Christ." It drilled so much in my head now. If you seek to please one human being in any area, I can tell you in Jesus name, you can 1:10:41 never be the servant of Jesus Christ. You can do something else. Maybe be a businessman or even the president of a country, you can't be the servant of Christ. If you want to be a servant of Christ, you got to decide right at the outset, 1:10:57 "I'm not here to please any human being. I'm not here to please my wife, she may get offended, it's fine. I'm not here to please my husband, I'm not I love them, but I'm going to stand for Christ. And I find I'll tell you this from my 40 1:11:08 years of experience in building the church that even now I have to take that stand in relation to my close co-workers. I will not seek to please any man. And the Lord tells me, are you going to keep quiet on that? Just because the guy's a good friend of 1:11:24 yours? I will not seek to please him. I will not be partial. That's why a lot of people get offended with things I say. I say, that's fine. If I seek to please men, I cannot be a servant one servant of Christ. My dear brothers and sisters, 1:11:39 choose this way. Determine at least today that from now on you'll be a servant of Christ. And he goes on to say something here. I my former manner of life, verse 13, I persecuted church. He had such a regret about the way he tried to destroy it. 1:11:59 Imagine a man who tried to destroy the church, verse 13. The one whom the greatest apostle was the man who once tried to destroy the church. That sorrow made him run faster than anybody else. That's what I mean by getting gold out 1:12:17 of a garbage of your failures. He got gold out of his garbage. If at all, what a wicked man I was. But, verse 15, he who had set me apart from my mother's 1:12:34 womb. There's something about that, you know. Maybe he was converted only when he was 30, but God had his eye on him from his mother's womb. I believe that about myself. It's true about you as well if you can believe it. 1:12:53 I believe it because scripture says that. That when I was born, God had a plan for my life. I never realized it fully. I wasn't converted till I was 19 and a half and really I think of the last 40 years especially 1:13:12 building the church is the most important part of my life. I never understood that till I was 35. But it was decided It was decided by God when I was came out of my mother's womb. Do you know that every one of you that the day you came out of your 1:13:29 mother's womb, or however many years ago that was, God made a plan for your life. Like me and like others, like Paul, a lot of those years maybe messed up seeking earthly things and with 1:13:47 false religious zeal and so many other things. But I hope that time comes like it came in Paul's life when he called me through his grace to reveal, verse 16, his son in me. That's what happened to me. 1:14:08 A day came when I s- Jesus Christ was revealed in me. You remember what the Jesus told Peter blessed are you, Simon Jonah, when he said, "Thou art the Christ." He said, "Blessed are you because your cleverness did not teach you this. 1:14:27 My father in heaven revealed this to you. And on this rock of revelation, the revealed Christ, I will build my church. And the gates of hell will not prevail against it." That is the rock. Peter is not the rock. It's that the revelation of a revealed 1:14:44 of Christ. Flesh and blood, my father has revealed this to you, not flesh and blood. On this rock of revelation, Christ that has been revealed in us, I will build my church. And that's what happened to me. A time came in my life, and I was about 1:15:01 35, when I saw in my heart Jesus revealed by the Father as one who came to Earth exactly like me. Tempted exactly like me and never sinned. 1:15:19 It changed my life. I mean, I seen him earlier as one who died for my sins on the cross, but when he was revealed in me that it was possible for me to live a life free from conscious sin. Then I realized why Paul could say, 1:15:41 "Rejoice in the Lord always." I began to see it's possible to live a life where I rejoice 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When it says, "Do all things without grumbling and complaining," I said, "What a wonderful life. I can come to 1:15:57 Jesus do everything without grumbling complaining. I can live that life." And I often thought about I used to often have bad moods. I said, "Jesus never had a bad mood once." He never, at no time of any day, any time, morning, noon, or night, did he 1:16:12 was he in a bad mood. This Christ was revealed in me. And I said, "Lord, I believe I have faith it can be like that for me." And I'll tell you honestly, it has become like that for a number of years now. This is the only church I want to build. 1:16:32 I have no interest in gathering a whole lot of people who want to go to heaven. So, turn another verse that we read just now, Colossians 1 a little while ago. I don't know whether you noticed it. 1:16:50 Colossians 1 Paul says, This is quality control. Paul was not given the job of gathering a lot of people. He was He was given the job of quality control. Colossians 1:28, "We proclaim him, admonishing every man." He was not 1:17:08 afraid of rebuking and speaking strongly, correcting people. He was not interested in getting a name as a gentle, gracious preacher. No. He was not interested in that. He was interested in something else. So, he would admonish people, teach 1:17:21 every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete and perfect in Christ. That was his goal. You ask Paul, Paul, you got 100 people in that church there in Ephesus or Corinth, what's your goal? 1:17:41 My goal is to present every one of them complete in Christ, perfect in Christ, that they will see the Christ that I saw in my heart. And to this end, I labor. It wasn't easy. Striving, but according to the mighty power of His 1:17:59 Holy Spirit which works within me. I believe this, that if a person really wants to build a local church where he is, and he says, "Lord, this is my goal. I want to build a church where I I want to make every man perfect in Christ." 1:18:13 You'll have to strive. You'll have to sacrifice. You'll have to give up many things, but it'll be according to His mighty power that works in us. So many people are seeking for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I believe in all the gifts of the Holy 1:18:27 Spirit. But, it's a power that works in me to make people complete in Christ. So, the goal of other people is to show others what a great healer I am or make money or something like that. Let me turn you now to say 1:18:47 Second Chronicles in chapter 3. You remember how David said those beautiful words in the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, "I will not offer to the Lord that which cost me nothing." God noted that place. "My servant said these words in this 1:19:09 particular place. I will not offer to God that which cost me nothing." The same spirit as Abel. So, in Second Chronicles 3:1, God told Solomon through David, "Build my house in this place where David spoke these words in the threshing floor of Ornan the 1:19:28 Jebusite." Second Chronicles 3:1. What does that teach us? It teaches us that God is building his house only where people make that have that attitude of sacrifice. So, these are some of the things that the Lord began to speak to us in the 1:19:41 early days. And people came and went. As the numbers increased, it became more and more difficult to preserve that family spirit and to preserve that emphasis on discipleship. And now with our church in Bangalore 1:20:02 about 500 people including children, I can't say everybody there is a disciple. Cuz so many children have grown up. Some people say this is a good church and they bring their relatives and we don't turn anybody away. Him that cometh to me I'll never cast 1:20:16 out. But we realize we're never going to change the message of discipleship. And always there will be a core in the midst of the church. I've discovered through the through the years that you cannot have a perfect church. 1:20:31 Only perfect church will be in heaven. But, you got to make sure that the people on the fringes, who are half-hearted, the minimum type of Christians, remain on the fringes. They never get any part in the church. They can 1:20:46 clean, vacuum the floor, and uh arrange the chairs, and uh cook the food, and do all the other type of jobs, but they can never get spiritual authority in the church. Spiritual authority in the church must always be in the hands of the maximum 1:21:00 type of Christians. That's the only way to do it. There's a kind of core of people who are wholehearted, radical, who want Jesus to be like the sun, and everything else is like the stars that disappear, who have decided to take up the cross 1:21:15 every day. That's the only way to preserve the church in the last days. So, I'm not discouraged when everybody in the church is not perfect. I can understand the struggle Paul had when he saw the church he planted in Corinth having 1:21:31 so many problems. And I don't believe that we should look at the church in Corinth and say, "Oh, well, they were all living in adultery, so we can have that type of thing happening today." No. I think if Paul had a cell phone, or if 1:21:43 he had email, and things like that, things would have been much better in Corinth. So, I don't equate myself. We have a lot more facilities today. I'll tell you why, because we've had problems coming up in our church, not as serious as those, 1:21:55 but I know immediately I can phone up somebody, or they phone me up. Or I can email someone. And I can ask a brother to go there very next day and sort out that problem. Or I can take a flight and go there the next day. 1:22:07 Paul didn't have these facilities. So, I I don't say, "Well, if Paul's church ended up like that in Corinth, so ours." Not at all. He didn't have the resources we have. I mean, we can calculate with a computer things that Albert Einstein could not do 1:22:22 it, because he didn't couldn't do it, because he had a he didn't have a computer. So, we have resources today in it which I mean spiritually that we can make use of. We have the internet. We can reach so many people in the uttermost parts of 1:22:34 the earth. So, our goal is always to present every man perfect in Christ. I want to say one last thing. You know, India is a country with tremendous amount of poverty. There are beggars all over the place. Poverty-stricken people, lepers and 1:22:51 everything else. And in a country like ours, it's very, very easy for a sincere Christian to gradually move unconsciously into social service. Where helping the poor in the name of Christ becomes a major thing. And we had to battle with this and we 1:23:13 made a few mistakes in the beginning because we tried to help people financially in different ways and then we found that poor people love to come join a church like that. Because they'll get some benefits and money and 1:23:27 you have church growth and you become a mega church in no time. But we didn't want that type of mega church. I even asked the Lord once. I said, "Lord, why don't you give me the gift of healing?" You know, I prayed for the 1:23:39 gift of healing many, many times. But I've never been given that gift. I mean, I've done what the Bible says elders should pray for the sick and seen a few people healed. But not the gift of healing. He's given me a gift of teaching. I'm not trying to 1:23:54 be humble. I know what I what gift I have and what I don't have. And I said, "Lord, why don't you give give give this to me? I think of the number of people I could bring to Christ if I just had the gift of healing from 1:24:04 you and people would see the mighty power of Jesus." Yeah, it would look like that, but yet that doesn't seem to be the way be the way. And what the Lord showed me was that if I had that gift, a genuine gift, and I told the Lord, "Oh Lord, I will never 1:24:18 make money out of it. I'll never take an offering. I'll never ask anybody for money if I pray for them. And also, I will go to the poorest people in the villages and pray for them. The rich people can go to hospitals. I will go and pray for the poor. I even 1:24:29 said that. But still, the Lord never gave it to me. And the Lord said, "If you had this genuine gift, do you know the number of people who come crowding to your church regularly? Who come crowding to your house? The number of phone calls you'll get 1:24:49 from morning till night. You'll never be able to make disciples." I understood that. I said, "Okay." His ways are better than mine. He He understands the situation better. But poverty is such a sickness, such a big thing in India. 1:25:08 And we realized we still had to concentrate on making disciples. And we decided we're not going to get sidetracked. Jesus did not gather all the blind Bartimaeuses and make a house for them and look after them. That's not what he 1:25:19 did. He made disciples. He didn't make a colony for lepers and take care of all those. He never did that. It's a good thing to do. I have a great respect for a lady called Mother Teresa, who you've probably heard of in Calcutta. I think she'll be way ahead of 1:25:33 me in heaven. I have no doubt about that. She was a God-fearing woman. Though Roman Catholic, but God doesn't test our doctrines. He sees our heart. So, I don't I don't go to Mother Teresa to learn doctrine from her. She can't 1:25:45 teach me that. But I see her compassion, and I say, "Well, God called her to do that job in India to help the poor in the way we're God bless her." But that's not my calling. Paul did not spend his time trying to eliminate slavery. 1:25:57 No, even slavery. He said, "Masters, don't liberate your slaves. Just treat them kindly." Cuz he he was sensitive. God's time has not come for these things. If I concentrate on all these social issues, uh all the injustices in the world, 1:26:15 I'll never be able to build a church. How wise Paul was. I see the foolishness of a lot of Christians today who major on solving problems of social injustice. They never build a church. And that's one thing the Lord has 1:26:27 steered us clear from. The Bible says, "Let us do good to all men." Galatians 6:10, "but especially to the household of faith." And so we decided that we would help the poor within the church. And we have spent millions millions of 1:26:41 rupees helping the poor believers in our churches. Helping them to build meeting halls, helping them with medical facility, I mean surgery and medical treatment, helping the children every year to for children to pay their school fees and 1:26:59 that's the type of thing to within the church. And I say once we deal with the household of faith, we have hardly any money left to care for the rest of the world. That's one area where the Lord protected us from going astray. 1:27:11 So, that's just a 101 on building the church. God bless you all. Thank you. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, help us to honor you 1:27:32 in the one earthly life you've given each of us. We know you have a Each of us has a part in building your body. Help us to know that and fulfill it wherever we have wherever you have placed us. We want to fulfill your will 1:27:43 to your will. Accomplish your purposes before we leave this earth so that at the end of our life we can say I fought a good fight, I finished my course, and I kept the faith. Help us, we pray. In Jesus' name. Amen.
