0:02 [music] I have often said that the easiest thing in the world for God to do is to bless somebody. To bless any of us sitting here, it's the easiest thing in the world for God 0:22 to do. But the most difficult thing for God to do is to keep a person humble after he has blessed him. Because blessing tends to make us proud. 0:40 When we are blessed as individuals, one mark of pride is we say, "Lord, I thank you that I'm not like other men. You've shown me things that other people haven't seen. You've brought me to a 0:57 life of victory other people don't have. We can be proud as a family. Lord, I thank you that I brought up my children well, unlike some of these other fellas. Look at them. Look at their children. 1:17 We can be proud as a church. Lord, I thank you that we're not like other churches. We're going the right way. We've got the new covenant pattern. And I don't know whether you hear, we don't say it openly, never because we'd lose our testimony if we 1:35 said it openly. And we have such a great ambition to have a reputation for humility that we'd never say it. [snorts] But um excuse me. 1:52 But we think like that in our hearts and um our thoughts sound as loud. Our thoughts sound as loud in heaven as our words do on earth. And so they hear it in heaven. 2:14 Lord, I thank you that I'm not like other men. I thank you. Our families, not like other families. I thank you. I brought up my children. Well, imagine how loud it sounds in heaven. And God resists the proud. And one mark of that resistance is 2:33 that our Christian life becomes very static. that we don't get more light on uncristlikeness in our life. We have already got light on some areas. Praise God for that. And we've got a pretty good testimony 2:52 as Christians, better than other Christians. But we remain there [snorts] and God is disappointed [snorts] because the path that God has ordained for man [snorts] is described in Proverbs in 3:12 chapter 4 and verse 18, [snorts] for individuals, for a family, and for a church. This is God's plan. Proverbs 4:18. [snorts] See, when we come to Christ, we 3:31 are forgiven and we are declared righteous. And here is describing the path of the righteous. It's like the light of dawn that shines brighter and brighter until the full day. New birth is like sunrise when the darkness has disappeared from 3:51 our life. Then God's will is that like the sun keeps rising without any backsliding continuously getting brighter, brighter, brighter, brighter, brighter. It doesn't stop for a single moment. Though we can't see it, there's never a moment 4:09 when you know in our sight anyway, the sun is not moving until it comes to that noonday position. And this is the only path that God has ordained for a righteous person. And a person who's not progressing like 4:27 that is not on the path of the righteous. He may have been on the path of the righteous up to a certain point and then sort of became a little satisfied, self-satisfied and proud that others hadn't got as far as he had. 4:45 And of course, he's thankful for God's blessing. And what he says is, "I thank you. You blessed me more than you blessed other people." So that's what I say. It's the most difficult thing for God to [snorts] keep a person humble after he's blessed him. 4:59 It's the easiest thing in the world for God to bless someone. But to keep him humble after he's blessed him, I personally believe it is the most difficult thing of all because we find so many people who just don't seem to be able to hold it in 5:16 humility who hold to hold God's blessing with a loneliness of mind that acknowledges that I have nothing that I did not receive. And that should be what characterizes our life. And I believe this is also the 5:35 mark of a person who is genuinely filled with the Holy Spirit. When a person is filled with the Holy Spirit, he not only has power, but there's an increase of that power. There's an increase of that glory. 5:54 We know that the glory of God was seen in Jesus Christ. [snorts] But I don't know whether we believe that we are to partake of that glory. We have to partake not only of his 6:12 righteousness but his glory. The Bible says that when Jesus the word became flesh and we beheld his glory full of grace and truth and from that fullness, let me read to you John chapter 1 and 6:30 verse 14. Sometimes we stop at verse 14, but it goes on. John 1:14, "The word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth, 6:47 and from his fullness." Verse 16, we receive grace upon grace upon grace upon grace, and sin shall not have dominion over you when you're under grace. So grace upon 7:04 grace upon grace upon grace is like more and more light and more and more conformity to the likeness of Christ. [snorts] And turn with me also to 2 Corinthians chapter 3. Here it speaks about the ministry of the 7:23 Holy Spirit. The ministry of the Holy Spirit in 2 Corinthians 3:18 is described like this. He first shows us the glory of the Lord in the mirror of God's word and then it says transforms us into that same likeness 7:41 from glory to glory to glory to glory to glory to glory. The same as Proverbs 4:18. This is the Proverbs 4:18 of the New Testament. The path of the righteous is from glory to glory to glory to glory to glory till we are completely 7:56 transformed into the image of Christ. That's the full day pos noonday position. So the gospel is not just that we're going to be forgiven. [snorts] The gospel is that we are to partake of the glory of Jesus Christ. See 2 Thessalonians in 8:13 chapter 2. [snorts] 2 Thessalonians 2. Why did God call us? Verse 14. [snorts] You know these verses are verses we've read many times. But because we most of us read the Bible so 8:30 superficially, we don't get the benefit of it. It's like having a a check given to us and we don't encash it in the bank. So we remain povertystricken. Think of this check here. 2 Thessalonians 2:14. 8:49 It was for this that he called you through our gospel, not that our sins might be forgiven, that you may gain the same glory that Jesus Christ had. Have you heard that gospel? There is a gospel of the forgiveness of sins and of how we can go 9:08 to heaven. But this is another gospel. This is the full gospel. A lot of people speak about the full gospel as just Christ savior, healer, baptized in the Holy Spirit. That's not the full gospel. The full gospel is here that we can gain 9:23 the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Don't let Satan rob you of your inheritance. Don't let Satan blind your eyes to this gospel. How carefully have you read? You all know that verse which says that the god 9:42 of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving. It's a very well-known verse among most Christians. The god of this world that Satan has blinded the minds of the unbelieving. Now tell me what which gospel is he blinded their 9:57 minds from? Have you read carefully? Turn with me to 2 Corinthians 4 verse 4. You know, sometimes I feel that my calling as a teacher of God's word is only to get believers to read their 10:15 Bible slowly and carefully. That's all. And they'll get it because so many people have told me this in many places in the world. Brother Zach, I never even saw that till you showed it to us. I said, "It was always there. But you read your Bible 10:33 too fast. You're in a hurry. You don't stop to think. 2 Corinthians 4:4, "The God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving that they might not see the light of which gospel?" The 10:49 gospel of the glory of Christ, not the gospel of the forgiveness of sins. You have seen that. Has the god of the world blinded your minds to the gospel that you have to gain the glory of Jesus 11:08 Christ in your life? I never knew that for many years. I never heard anybody preach it. That's why for I wandered around as a born again Christian for 16 years. I had to discover a lot of these things myself by reading the Bible carefully. There 11:27 were times when I was to read the Bible in the morning and I would come to one verse planning to read a whole chapter or a paragraph and I would come to one verse and it was like coming before a stop sign, stoplight, red light. I had to stop. 11:46 I couldn't go forward. The red light was there. The Lord wanted me to just keep looking at that verse. And my whole morning meditation was on one verse. And the next day I'd say, "Okay, I got to move on now." But the red light was 12:01 still there. I was still on that verse. Have you ever had that type of morning quiet time with just one verse for two or three days? We must be sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit. 12:20 We have got sometimes what to call a file card mentality. That means, okay, I finished this. Now I got to go to the next one. I got to the next one. It's a file card mentality. You can't know God if you read the Bible like that. 12:37 You have to be I mean that's all right. In the early days, in the early days of my Christian life, I read through large sections of scripture because I wanted to know the whole Bible. And if I go stop one verse at a time, I'd probably 12:50 wouldn't even have finished by now. So in the early days, it's okay. But as you come to read, if you read through the Bible once and you've meditated and you know that you know the truth, you've been a Christian for say five or 10 13:02 years, you should start reading the Bible slowly. You're missing something. You're missing riches. Gaining the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's gripped my heart. I said, Lord, that's what I want. You already got forgiveness of sins. I want glory in 13:22 my life. More and more, more and more of grace and truth, more and more likeness to Christ in area after area after area. When Paul wrote to Timothy, and you remember in one Timothy, Timothy was 13:37 already maybe 45 years old and had been with Paul for maybe 27 years. I think Paul got a hold of him when he was 19 or 20. maybe 25 years he's been with Paul. And you know what Paul tells him? You know, Timothy was in Ephesus and he was 13:55 way ahead of all the others spiritually. Paul calls him in Philippians 2. I have nobody like Timothy. He says he's the most wholehearted. He's so utterly committed to the cause of Christ. I have no one like him who's concerned about the things of Christ, 14:10 who doesn't seek his own, genuinely concerned about the welfare of others. And you think, how much more can a man like this progress? In Philippians 2, Paul gives a certificate inspired by the Holy Spirit. Paul, Philippians 2:19-21, he says, "I 14:27 have no one like Timothy who's genuinely concerned about the welfare of others and seeking Christ's interests and never seeking his own." such a person who had reached such a height of partaking of God's glory. Paul writes to him a few years later after 14:47 that in 1 Timothy 4 [snorts] he says take verse 15 1 Timothy 4:15 take pains with these things that I'm telling you be absorbed in them 15:04 so that your progress from where you are you're already way above everybody else in Ephesus but from that point where you're miles ahead of everybody else that your progress over there at that 15:20 height will be noticed by others. That means even if you're way ahead of everybody in your church spiritually, they should be able to see in you. They should say, "Boy, 15:40 I see more grace in Timothy now. I see more wisdom and passion and zeal, and I see a fire in Timothy that I never saw a year ago." The progress is evident to all. That's 15:57 the way of the righteous. We must not be satisfied with, "Yeah, he's a good brother. He's got a good testimony. That is the great danger we face when we have made progress and we are already ahead of other believers and our family 16:17 has got a very good testimony. I want to say brothers, you who have a good testimony, you who have a good family testimony or a church testimony, you are in danger of stagnating. I've seen it happen again and again and stagnating is a very dangerous state in 16:36 the Christian life. If you're not moving forward, you're going to go backward. There is no such thing as standing still in the Christian life. So, how are we to make progress? This is the thing that we need to understand more than anything else. 16:52 And through the years as I have observed believers and searched my own heart and studied the scriptures, I've come to see that the secret is in the words of Jesus when he said uh I was anointed to preach the gospel to 17:14 the poor. You seen that? Not to everybody. Luke 4:18. God has anointed me to preach the gospel particularly to the poor. And he's not talking about material poverty. 17:32 He's talking about those who are poor in spirit. He anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. Because if that referred to material poverty, then all of us are ruled out. There's no 17:52 poor person here in this building. But the gospel is preached to those who are poor in spirit. And it says in James chapter 2, listen my beloved brethren, verse 5, has not God chosen the poor of this world to 18:09 be rich in faith. And if I'm not materially poor, I can be poor in spirit and be rich in faith. [snorts] With many of us, I mean, we can't avoid the fact that God has blessed us in some material 18:28 way. We don't have to suddenly forsake all and become hermits in order to progress spiritually. But we can be poor in spirit. And then it says here if you you can be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom. 18:45 So if you turn to Matthew chapter 5, you find that when Jesus was speaking the sermon on the mount, he began with this as the very first biatitude. Blessed are the poor in spirit, 19:03 happy or to be envied, as the amplified Bible says, are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And if you can manage it, if you can manage it, it's not easy, but if you can manage it 19:20 to remain poor in spirit at all times, no matter how much God has blessed you, no matter how much God has used you, no matter how no matter how much God has blessed your family or your church, I want to say to you, the entire kingdom 19:35 of heaven is yours. But the devil's determined that you're not going to get any more of the kingdom of heaven than you already got. He's a thief, remember? So, he'll con he make you constantly compare yourself with others. 19:54 It's the most foolish thing you can ever do. If you can think of the most idiotic, most stupid thing that a Christian can do, it is to compare himself with others. If you can think of the most foolish, stupid thing that any Christian family 20:12 can do, it's compare their family with other people's families. And the most foolish and stupid thing that any church can do is to compare themselves with some other church and congratulate themselves. It's very difficult to be poor in 20:26 spirit. I see the poverty of spirit. I I see the kingdom of heaven as a huge palace full of many rooms with wealth, spiritual wealth, glory and glory and more and more grace and glory in the 20:45 different rooms. And there is one master key that will open any door in this kingdom of heaven that you can possess that wealth. You can go from room to room to room and open it and become spiritually wealthy. And that master key is poverty 21:03 of spirit. It's because of lack of poverty of spirit that husbands and wives can't fellowship with each other. That is the number one reason for conflict, for jealousy, for strife, for 21:22 competition between believers. If we say the most important need for fellowship is love, one person will say well I try to love him but he's he doesn't love me. That's 21:39 the problem. Where do you go from there? Or if you say the most important need in the for fellowship is in a husband wife or in a church is humility. One person could say I'm our inner man is being renewed day by day. 21:56 glory to glory, day by day. So when we read verses like this, nothing like this was possible in the Old Testament, nobody right up to John the Baptist, nobody could experience this. That's why Jesus said the least person in the kingdom of heaven goes 22:11 further ahead than John the Baptist. We have such a privilege that we can have an inner transformation of our life day by day by day in such a way that other people can even see it like Paul told Timothy that other people see your 22:24 progress. We must not be satisfied with anything less than this, dear brothers and sisters. And the secret is to be aware of your own need all the time. To live in a constant judgment of ourselves and never to judge others. 22:44 I had this little statement written in front of my table for 25 years. The happiest people in the world are those who always judge themselves and never judge others. That song we sang earlier this day was I think a song I wrote more than 25 years 23:02 ago when that through truth gripped me. Lord, help me judge myself each day to walk this new and living way. I want to be more like you. So if we choose to go this way, what will 23:19 happen is our fellowship with our wives and husbands at home will become more and more glorious. There will not be this pointing of the finger. There will not be this I told you so. 23:36 There will not be a dis inward despising even if somebody is wrong or doesn't have the light you have. There'll be a mutual respect. Imagine a home like that where imagine a home like that where you have children growing up, 23:55 seeing father and mother growing in this inward likeness to Christ with mutual respect and judging themselves and not anyone else and sitting around the table and not criticizing all the other brothers and all the other churches. Can 24:13 you imagine what it'll do to your children as they grow up in such an atmosphere? It'll be the closest thing to heaven on earth. And I want to tell you, my brothers and sisters, that is the greatest inheritance you can give your children 24:28 worth more than millions of dollars to give them this inheritance. The atmosphere of heaven, glory to glory. And imagine when such people come together in a church, 24:45 it'll be indescribable the glory that's they can partake of there. And that's God's will for every single one of us. Let me just show you one Peter chapter 4 and verse 17. 25:02 Which I've often said is the mark of the household of God. The church is called the family of God. And here it says in 1 Peter 4:1 17, how to determine whether a church is the family of God or 25:20 the household of God. 1 Peter 4:17 says, "Judgment begins in the household of God, and it begins with us first." In the world, the children of Adam 25:41 put themselves first in every area. Me first, everybody else after me. That's how the all the children of Adam are. except in judgment. When it comes to judging, they put others first. 26:01 I'm ready to judge everybody else. But when it comes to everything else in the world, me first. In the church, we reverse that order and say we put others first in everything. We esteem others as more important than ourselves. But 26:20 when it comes to judgment, us first. It begins with us first. If it's like that with you, you're part of the family of God. That's the mark, as I see it anyway. That's what I got out of that verse. That's the mark of God's family. 26:40 And it's also the mark of those who believe in the second coming of Jesus Christ. Now, if I were to ask you, how many of you have the hope of the second coming of Christ? I think all of us would raise our hands. Yeah, I have the 26:51 hope of the second coming of Christ. Just hang on. Let's read in 1 John chapter 3 and verse 2 and 3 so that we are more scriptural. 1 John chapter 3 and verse 2. It says, "Now we are the children of God." That I think almost all of us here say we are 27:08 born again and we are the children of God. But it has not yet appeared what we will become because God has a plan for us. We're not going to remain in this condition because when he appears we will be like 27:27 him. That's what we're going to become. We're going to be completely like Christ and we shall see him as he is. And then it says here is the test of whether this is your hope. Everyone who has this hope will keep on purifying himself 27:45 until he reaches Christ's standard of purity. Now you know whether you have the hope of the second coming of Christ or not. If you really have this hope that when he will come and I will be like him, it says here, I will keep on 28:00 purifying myself until I have reached his standard of purity. And none of us have reached there yet. This is what the Bible calls a new and living way into the most holy place where we have fellowship with God. Where 28:18 our life is one of going from one degree of glory to another. And that is God's will for every single one of us. And imagine that we can reach this standard that Paul reached. We know Paul reached it because he wrote it under the 28:32 inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And he couldn't be telling a lie. He says our inner man is being renewed every single day. Imagine we can get there. You know when Jesus 28:51 rose up from the dead, he appeared to his disciples in John chapter 20. The first time he appeared to his disciples immediately after the resurrection. John chapter 20, there's something he told them. He said in John 20 21, "Peace be to you. 29:14 As the father sent me, so I'm sending you." And one of the main purposes with which the father sent Jesus to earth was to show the world what the father was like. says in John 1:18, "No one has seen God 29:33 at any time, but the only begotten son of God has explained the father to us." He didn't explain the father with some theology like he told Philillip in John 14. If you have seen me, you have seen the father. You don't need to see the 29:51 father. If you seen the way I live, you saw me wash your feet just now, that's the father. You saw me put your my hand around the lepers. That's the father. You saw me whip the money changers out of the temple. That's the father. You 30:05 speak saw me speak tenderly to the adulteress. That's the father. You saw me call the Pharisees a generation of vipers. That's the father. If you have seen me and heard me, you've seen the father. Grace and truth, the kindness 30:20 and the severity of God. And if that was his calling, if you have seen me, you have seen the father. And you link that with what he said here. As the father sent me, so send you. I see my calling as to go to people and say, 30:37 if you have seen me, you've seen what Jesus is like. At least a little bit of it. And next year, you see a little more of what Jesus is like in my life. If that's not happening, we're not fulfilling our ministry. 30:56 However better we may be than other believers or our family better than other families or our church better than other churches. That's not the thing. 2 Corinthians 10:12 says, "Those who compare themselves with other people are 31:13 foolish." It's foolish to compare ourselves with others. And then he said, you know, as the father sent me, I send you. And you know, that's impossible to represent Christ like that. So he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. Now 31:32 you'll be able to do it." That's the next verse. So when we when the Lord sees in us a longing to manifest his glory more and more, he'll breathe on us too. Fill us with his spirit again and again 31:52 and again so that we can manifest Christ to others. Never never be satisfied with anything less than this. Blessed are the poor in spirit. The entire kingdom of heaven is theirs. May that be true in our life. He who has 32:10 ears to hear, let him hear. Let's bow our heads before God. Heavenly Father, you've called us with a calling which is way above what most Christians 32:27 understand or even have heard of. Thank you for giving us light and revelation on your word. We pray Lord that we will all of us will be more open to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. 32:45 More open to recognize our total importance to manifest the life of Jesus. that we cry out to you for the power of your spirit every day. Give us that cry in our heart, Lord. We 33:03 pray in Jesus name. Amen.
