Chapter 1

God’s Purpose For Man

God had a great purpose when He made man. When we turn to the first chapter in the Bible, we see how God made animals and man on the same day. Many of us know that man was created on the sixth day, but it was on the same day that He made the animals as well and there was a reason why God did that. He made the animals on the first part of the sixth day and then He made man on the second part of the sixth day (Genesis 1:24-25). The previous day, He made the birds and fish and all. There is quite a bit of a difference between birds and fishes and human beings. But when you look at the physical constitution of animals, there's a lot of similarity between animals and men. Both animals and men have eyes, legs, internal organs made of the same dust. But there is one significant difference and that is what makes the difference between animals and human beings. If we don't recognize that, then man sinks to the level of animals. That was the message which God was trying to convey to man by creating him on the same day as the animals. God made man and animals from the same dust and both have very similar internal organs and external limbs but yet with one significant difference; God breathed into man and man became a living soul. That's because God gave him a spirit. In 1 Thessalonians 5:23, we read that man is spirit, soul and body whereas an animal does not have a spirit. An animal has got a mind; it can think and has feelings. The dogs have got feelings just like human beings, but they don't have a spirit. God breathed into man and man got a part of Him which animals don't have. If man does not give prominence to that part of his being which animals don't have, he very soon sinks to the level of animals. That’s what we see in the world around us. When a person gives his life to Christ, God seeks to bring him back to that place where Adam was when he was created with the spirit having preeminence and the most important part in his life before sin came.

When sin came, man's spirit died. His contact with God died. When man's spirit is dead, he begins to live just like an animal because that most important part of his being is dead because of sin. Christ comes to revive that and to bring life into that spirit and that's what happens when a person is born again. When God puts His Holy Spirit within man, that innermost part of us gets revived and it becomes alive. It's like a resurrection and that's why Christians are commanded to be baptized because in baptism we're testifying that a resurrection has taken place within our spirit. Once the Spirit has become alive in us, we constantly find ourselves with a choice now to live by this spirit, this breath of God within us or to live according to the passions of this body of dust just like the animals. So, we find ourselves in between two pulls. We all know that there are desires and passions in this body that pull us downward to the things of earth all the time to do many things which lead us into sin, and which lead us even to destroy this wonderful body that God has created. At the same time, when Christ comes into us and we open our beings to God's Holy Spirit, we find another pull within us. If you are a true Christian, you have experienced that pull calling you to overcome these passions and to live for the things that are eternal and for the things of heaven and of God. No animal ever feels that pull.

So, we see here in Genesis 1 that when God created man, He said something. When He created all the other animals, He did not describe a purpose that He had for them in connection with Himself but when He was going to create man, He said these words in Genesis 1:26, “Let Us make man in our image.” Here is a statement of purpose before man is created. Whereas all the other bits of creation we read off from verse 3 onwards of Genesis 1 is just God speaking and bringing things to life. God spoke something and then the dry land appeared, and God said something else and the sun and the moon appeared. God said something then the fish and the birds appeared. Similar as for the animals, He did the same thing by saying, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures” (Genesis 1:24). But God did not say, “Let there be a man and let there be a woman” like He said for all the rest of creation. Man was to be special, more important than everything else that God had created because He was going to be made in the image of God which even the angels in heaven do not have that privilege. So, we read in Genesis 1:26 that God said, “Let Us make man in our image according to our likeness” and when man lives according to that and reflects God's image, he has authority. Think of the phrase used in verse 26, “Let them rule.” Man and woman were created by God to be kings and queens to rule over their passions, to rule over everything on this earth. They were to be kings but see what happens in Genesis Chapter 3 when man sins. He immediately becomes a slave. The king has descended to becoming a slave in a moment just by one act of disobedience.

Here is how Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden: there was the voice of God within his spirit saying that he should not take part of that tree that God had forbidden, but he didn't listen to that voice. He responded to the pull of the dust part of him. You and I also have a dust part of us and a spirit part of us; the spirit part is that which pulls us upward toward God and the dust part is that which pulls us downward to the things of earth. It's not that we can't use the things of earth because when God sent Adam and Eve into that garden, they were thousands of wonderful trees there and God is the one who had created Adam with a desire for food. Hunger is something that God is placed in the human body and the desire for food is not something evil or sinful. It is when it is used in a wrong way that it becomes sin.

God didn't say to Adam, “You shouldn't need anything, deny yourself and be an ascetic and fast” No, He said you can go in there and eat anything you want but here's something that you shouldn't eat. When Adam and Eve stood before that tree, they were faced with two options; the pull of the voice of God telling them to live by His standards and here was the pull of the body pulling them towards that very attractive fruit. In fact, it says in Genesis 3:6 that the woman saw something in the tree with her eyes. it was good for food and it was a delight to her eyes; the fruit of the tree appealed to her body. It’s good to keep this in mind because we live in a world where there are so many things that appeal to our senses, and there are things that God has created which we can enjoy, and that also things that God is forbidden. If we allow our senses to respond to things that God has forbidden, and we allow this dust part of us to pull us downward and we live for that and do not respond to the voice of conscience within us pulling us upward over a period of time we gradually become like the animals. You know when Jesus picked up a little child, He said that child was the closest thing to heaven on the face of the earth. When the disciples asked Him, who is the greatest in God's kingdom, He picked up a child and said this is the greatest one in God's kingdom. A little baby is perhaps the closest thing to heaven that we can see on the face of the earth. If you look into the eyes of a little baby, you see the purest eyes. They are purest thing that we can see on earth closest to heaven. But as that little child grows up and responds to the dust part of it, it gradually becomes more and more like an animal and unless that child responds to the call of Christ at some time in its life and allows God to revive its spirit, it'll just sink lower and lower. You see how many human beings around the world do some abominable things which even animals don't do.

So, when God created man, He breathed into him and his purpose was that man and woman should rule. Man should not be a slave. I want to say to you in Jesus name that God never intended you to be a slave. You are not meant to be a slave to guilt, to fear, to discouragement, to sin, to your passions, to the fear of men or any such thing. God wants you to be an overcomer; to rule over everything. The only way to do that is if you respond to the upward call of God all the time and ask for His power to deny the pull-downwards.

So, what was God's purpose when He created man? It says here to reflect His image. Man was supposed to be God's representative on earth and that's where he failed miserably. The apostle Paul uses the word “ambassador” in 2 Corinthians 5. We are ambassadors for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20). Now you know that an ambassador of a nation is representing that nation. The ambassador of Thailand will represent the country Thailand. The ambassador of Australia will represent the country Australia. An ambassador of Christ is to represent Christ by his conduct and his behavior. That’s what we see here in Genesis 1 when God said, “Let us make man in our image.” There were already millions and millions of angels that God had created but none of them could be His ambassadors; they could be His servants and they could do a lot of things that God told them to do. Those angels have some supernatural powers, but they cannot represent Him. In fact, in all of creation there was nothing that could represent God. It was finally when God made man that He had a representative. He finally had a man who could reflect what He was like. It’s because God made man with that in His image that man has the capacity to fellowship with God. There is a part inside us which will never be satisfied till it's occupied by God Himself and that's why man is restless. That is also why a lot of people commit suicide; they are frustrated. Even people who have a lot of money finally end up committing suicide. A lot of people think in this world that if you have plenty of money, all your problems are solved but there are so many cases of people who have made a lot of money finally commit suicide. Why? Because there is this, we can say a God-shaped vacuum inside us which cannot be satisfied with money or sex or any other earthly pleasure. You can have position, you can have honor, you can have wealth, you can have everything, but this can only be satisfied when the Creator who created man for Himself is given that rightful place within.

So, what was God's purpose for man? It was that man should be a ruler and that man should represent Him. He also said that man must be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28). God did not want just one representative representing Him on the earth; not just Adam and Eve but many others. He wanted them to have children who would also represent Him. So, when we see God's original purpose for man, we see how terribly man has failed. Even many who claim to be Christians and who say they have received Christ are not representing Him. We can ask ourselves. You and I can ask ourselves, are we representing Christ correctly? Do the people around us see something of what God is like? Unless we see this as the purpose of our life, we're not going to be able to fulfill it. We can't fulfill a purpose until we see what that purpose is. A lot of Christians haven't seen clearly what God's purpose is. They don't seem to recognize that when they sin or do something un-Christlike, they are failing God miserably and failing terribly in the purpose with which God has placed them on the earth. We're not here just to go to church services, study the Bible and increase in the knowledge of God and once in a week and go and sing and worship God. All that is good, but the ultimate purpose of all of that is that every single day of our life and every single moment of our lives, we're reflecting the nature of God.

Under the Old Testament, this was just not possible. it's only possible after the day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit has come in order to fulfill that original purpose which God had for man which was frustrated by the devil coming in and making Adam sin spoiling God's purpose and which was once again restored when Christ came and lifted men back up to the place where the original purpose could be fulfilled. So, if we were to draw a graph of God's purpose for man, it would be a straight line that God had in mind for Adam. It would be upward line because God's purpose for Adam was that he should grow into a knowledge of God, but very soon he fell. So, in that graph, you have a big dip downwards and from here Christ came to lift us back up to the original purpose of God for Adam. If you draw the original purpose of God as a straight graph line going upwards and right at the beginning, there's a serious dip because of man's fall. Now we're here at the bottom and when Christ saves us and gives as a new birth, we're brought back up to that line which God originally purposed for Adam. We are not to get stuck there, but we are to move along that original purpose by knowing Him and partaking of His nature.

Many Christians don't understand this and they think salvation is just being brought up from the pit up to this level and then remaining there forever and then they think perhaps God's purpose is now I must go around sharing this with other people and telling other people about Christ dying for our sins and get other people to come over there. All that is wonderful, but the whole purpose of God bringing us back up to that top of the straight line is to fulfill God's original purpose and if that's not being fulfilled then we can say a major part of the purpose of our redemption is not being fulfilled. If all that we receive is the forgiveness of our sins and the cleansing of our heart and the conscience from sin, then we haven't understood all of God's purpose. If you have a cup in your dining room and you wash it nicely and clean it, what's the purpose of cleaning and washing a cup. It's not for a decoration. We don't keep cups for decoration. A cup is meant to hold some liquid which we drink. It could be milk, it could be water, it could be a cup of coffee or tea, but the whole purpose of cleaning that cup is so that it can be filled with something. In the same way, the whole purpose of Christ's coming and bringing us back and cleansing our heart is so that He can finally bring us back to that place where the original purpose of God can be fulfilled in our life which is described here, “Let us make man in our image.” That's where Adam failed. Now Christ has brought me back to that place where I'm supposed to reflect the image of God. I’m supposed to be an ambassador of Jesus Christ. I'm supposed to show other people what Christ is like. If I see that is my calling, anytime I fail and slip up in that calling, I repent for failing God terribly. It’s a serious matter that I have failed God terribly and I need to come back to that original purpose and fulfill it.

So, as I said in the beginning, there are these two pulls; the pull downward because of our body made of dust, and the pull upward, which we all who are born again experience, the voice of the Spirit in our conscience lifting us up to the things of heaven. Here is where I need the power of the Holy Spirit if I'm to keep responding to this upward pull. Paul once said that he wanted to lay hold of that for which Christ had laid hold of him (Philippians 3:13). He knew that Christ had laid hold of him with a purpose. Now I want to tell you God's purpose for Paul was not just that he should save souls and build churches. God's purpose for Paul was that he might reflect God's image and he might be a ruler. From that position, he was to serve God by saving souls and building churches. When God created Adam, it's not because He needed a servant. No, He already had millions of Angels. He didn't say, “Well, we've got a garden here and we need somebody to look after that garden.” No. That's not why He created Adam. He created Adam to have fellowship with him. That's why as soon as He created Adam, the very first day that Adam existed was a holiday for him. It was a Sabbath, the seventh day for God but the first day for Adam and he had fellowship with God. God was trying to tell Adam that the most important thing I want in your life is fellowship. He was saying to Adam, “I want to fellowship with you and it's only then that you can reflect my nature.” It’s something like electricity. If you want a bulb to burn, it's got to be plugged into the socket and when man is in connection with God then God's nature comes through.

A man is like a bulb. We have the capacity to reflect God's nature but cannot produce that on our own. A bulb cannot burn on its own; it's got the capacity to burn and give a lot of light, but on its own it cannot give that light. It is only when it's plugged into a socket and the electric power flows in that it burns. This is a beautiful picture of the way God wanted Adam and Eve to live connected to Him with the life of God flowing into them and being manifested through them and that's where he failed. So, God's not asking us to overcome these passions on our own. Every one of us has desires pulling us down—what we call sin. God says, “Just be connected to Me. Allow My Spirit to come and fill your heart.” And then just like that bulb burns almost effortlessly, the Holy Spirit will be able to give us that power to live the type of life God wanted Adam to live, and that He wants you to live.

Chapter 2

God’s Provision For Man

In our last study, we were looking at the purpose with which God created man. We saw that man was created to reflect God's image and to be a ruler. He was created with a body made of dust but a spirit which could respond to God. Whether we fulfill the purpose with which God created us or not depends on which of these pulls we respond to. An animal responds only to the pull of his body; all its interested in is food, sleep, sex and perhaps take care of the little ones when they are born. When a man is interested only in food, sleep, sex and to take care of his family, such a man is not doing anything more than any animal does for its family. It's when a man responds to the Spirit, to the voice of God speaking in his conscience that he rises above the level of animals and lives as the son of God as God intended him to be. Why is it that so many Christians don't respond to the call of God in their life and to be what God wants them to be and to surrender their lives to Him? It's because they feel that if they do their own will and please themselves and respond just to the desires of the body, they can live a happier life. This is the great deception of Satan. He has portrayed God as someone who's come to spoil our lives like a spoilsport who doesn't want us to have any fun or enjoyment which is not true.

Jesus tried to remove that wrong image of God from the people in his time. Throughout history, one of Satan's greatest weapons has been to portray a wrong image of God before people so that they will not surrender their life to Him but will hold back. And if God can be portrayed as someone who's out to make your life unhappy or miserable then the devil has succeeded in preventing man from surrendering himself to such a God. Most Christians that I've met, and this is true even in people in other religions have a feeling that God is not someone you can be very friendly with. They feel God is not someone who's out to do you good, He's out to make your life miserable and this is a lie. When we are called to be ambassadors of Christ, part of our calling is to show forth this lie of the devil. God intends the very best for you; whenever He tells you not to do something, it’s for your good even though we may not realize it. A little one-year-old child or two-year-old child doesn't understand why you tell him not to play around with a snake or with a knife or with fire. We know that's harmful for that child. He doesn't know how to use a knife or a fire, they can hurt themselves. Do you think those little children understand it? They disobey and burn themselves in the fire or they cut themselves with a blade or a knife. Man is exactly like that. When God tells us not to do something, it is because He knows that particular thing will destroy us. There may be a temporary pleasure out of doing it but in the long run, it destroys us and that's why He tells us not to do something and that's why God told Adam in Genesis 2 not to eat from a particular tree.

Now there's more than one reason for that which we can look at. In one way, God was testing him. God was testing Adam to see whether he would respond to God. God can never make a man holy without that person choosing to be holy. God doesn't force us to be holy. He was not going to force Adam to be holy if he didn't want to be holy; Adam had to make that choice. So, if God had sent Adam into the Garden of Eden and said, “you do whatever you like, eat whatever you like. I'm not going to place any restrictions on you,” there would be no opportunity for Adam to make a choice. When he doesn't have to make a choice, he cannot be holy. It's when God gives us the opportunity to choose that we can become holy. What was the choice that confronted Adam? It is very similar to what we were considering in our last chapter. There was something God had created; a very beautiful tree with very beautiful fruit and that was on one side. On the other side was God Himself and His command not to take part of that. So, when Adam and Eve stood before that tree, they were standing between that which was created and the Creator. They had to make a choice: which do you want now? Do you want what's created or do you want God Himself? And you know what Adam chose — he chose what was created and that was the origin of sin in the human race. The devil tempted him just to choose that was just created. The devil didn't tempt Eve to kill her husband or slap him or any such thing or even be un-submissive to him, he just tempted her to choose that which was created over the Creator; he knew that that would be enough to destroy her. When she offered the fruit to Adam, he also faced that choice: shall I choose the one who created me, or shall I choose this lovely thing that He's created? Adam chose the lovely thing that was created, and he destroyed his life too. Now today every one of us face the same choice - there are many attractive things that God has created but some of those things are also forbidden.

For example, God has not given every woman for you to lust after or commit adultery with or to have sex with. He gives you a wife, but when you want something which God has forbidden, someone other than your wife, and you want to in a wrong way enjoy her sexually, you're choosing something created, and rejecting the commandment of God. It's exactly the same choice that Eve made when she chose something attractive God had created and rejected God. It could be money. Money is something very attractive God has created but He never intended that man should live for it or worship it or choose that above God. Do you know the number of people even among believers, preachers, pastors who have chosen money above God? There is a tremendous attractiveness in wealth. Why has God made it so attractive? Why did God make the tree of knowledge of good and evil so attractive? If all that God wanted was to prevent Adam from ever partaking of that tree, all He had to do was make the tree very ugly, repulsive, smelly, full of thorns or something like that and Adam and Eve would never have gone anywhere near it. But then they wouldn't have been tested. If something God has created is ugly and repulsive and smelly, the fact that you reject that and choose God doesn't prove anything. The test is when God makes something that is really attractive and your whole being rises up in response to that attraction and when you say “no” to that and you choose God, then you are on the pathway of holiness.

No man can be holy without his making the choice that I want my Creator more than what He created. You know even a man like Abraham had to make that choice 50 years after God first called him. When God first called him, this man was 75 years old and was living comfortably in his hometown of Ur of the Chaldeans (Genesis 12). God called him to leave that comfort and security and the enjoyment of the city he had grown up in. He had to leave house, lands and everything he had to follow the Lord. What was the choice Abraham had to make? All this attractive created things or God; what do you want? Abraham obeyed, that's why you read of him in the book. If he had not obeyed and had said like Eve, “No, I would rather choose this created thing than you,” you've never heard of Abraham. God would have chosen somebody else. 50 years after that, the Bible says in Genesis 22 that God tested him again. In fact, He tested him numerous times but always the test was a choice between what God had created and God Himself. We read in Genesis 13 of a time when there was a conflict between Abraham's servants and Lot’s servants. The conflict was over property and pasture for that sheep. Those are the things they valued in those days because their wealth was in cattle and sheep and they needed pasture. God was watching what is going to be the attitude that Lot is going to take in this situation and what's the attitude that Abraham is going to take. There you see how these two people responded in completely different ways. The choice before them was God or all this attractive thing that He's created. We read there that Lot lifted up his eyes and looked at Sodom which was a very attractive place and he chose that.

He wanted this attractive thing even though the people there were living in sin. It was well known that there were all types of sinful things that were going on there and here was Lot taking his family to go and live in that sinful surrounding. It was a place where he could make a lot of money, so he chose to go there. The result was that he lost his wife, his children and he almost lost his own life. Abraham on the other hand allowed Lot to choose first even though he was the senior of the two. Abraham essentially said, “I want God. God will choose for me; I will not choose for myself.” So, he told Lot, “You choose for yourself. If you go left, I’ll go to the right and if you got the right, I’ll go to the left.” The Bible says Lot chose for himself. What did he choose? Just like Eve and Adam, he chose that which was just created but Abraham chose God. And you know because he chose God he didn't lose out. God said, “Abraham, I've seen what you have chosen; you've chosen me and because you've done that, I will give you all this land including what Lot chose.” You know when you honor God and seek Him, you don't lose out even materially.

Jesus Himself said that; If you seek God first, His kingdom and His righteousness, even these earthly things that you need will be added to you at the right time and in the right quantity; not too much to destroy you and not too little to starve you but just the right amount. Whether it's money or comfort or house or anything. God provides everything but he wants us to choose Him. That's what He wanted Adam to do; that's what He created him for. Will you choose Me above everything created? That's what He expected from Abraham. Now I want to say to you dear friends that's what He's expecting from you. Every day of your life you're going to make a choice; you're going to make a choice between that which is created and the creator Himself. Was Adam going to lose out on something if He chose God? What does man look for? In young people as they grow up, they want a job, they want a home and they want a marriage partner. These are the main things young people look for as they grow up and get into their 20s. Think of Adam; did God make some provision for Adam in these three areas? He certainly did! We read there that before God made Adam, He had already made this beautiful garden as a home. God had made a wonderful home called the Garden of Eden and then He made men. What about employment? God had already planned an employment for Adam as the gardener in this garden. What about a marriage partner? God had already planned to create a woman to be his wife. Adam didn't even have to go to God and tell Him, “I need something here.” That's what we see right at the beginning of the Bible, that God knew Adam’s need and provided for it even before Adam asked Him. God provided a home for him; He provided a job for him and He provided a marriage partner for him.

God is a good God! He's just the same today and He provides for His children in exactly the same way today if we trust Him and what He provides is absolutely the best. The Bible says that when God wanted to provide a partner for Adam, He said, “I want to make someone suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18). I'll make him a helper suitable for him. That means something that exactly fits with his temperament and his nature, according to his need. I will create a wife who will be exactly suited for him. Now do you believe that God loves you just as much as He loved Adam. I believed that with all my heart. I believed that as a young man and I believe that God would in His great love for me provide me a wife who would be exactly suited for me, according to my temperament, my need, my ministry that God had planned for me etc. Now we've been married over 50 years and I can tell you that's absolutely true. God provided exactly what was right for me. If you honor God, you seek Him and choose the Creator above the created, and don't grab for yourself, you'll find that He does that for you as well. He will provide you a house, He’ll provides you a job, He'll provide you a partner exactly suited for you. You couldn't find a better one yourself: a better job or a better house or a better partner. So that's what we see here; God intends to provide man his needs. The Bible says my God will supply all your need. In Philippians 4:19, we read that my “God will supply all your need according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

He doesn't give us all that we want. Only a foolish father would give his children everything they asked for. You think it’s wise to give our children everything they asked for? That will destroy them. A wise father gives his children everything they need; he doesn't give them everything they ask for. God is a much wiser Father; He doesn't give us everything we ask for. A lot of prayers He doesn't grant them. His answer is “no”. Just like a good father many times has to tell its children, “Oh I'm sorry my son, my girl, I can't give you that. I won't permit that.” Everything that Adam needed, God had already made provision for before He created Him. That's the wonderful thing. It's not that He created him and then He said, “Hey, we got to look around for a place for him to stay and we got to look around and make a wife for him.” The wife that God had planned for Adam was planned before He created Adam. Eve was created later but she was planned even before because before God made Adam itself, He says, “Let Us make man in Our image and according to Our likeness.” Adam and Eve were planned before they were created. So, we see there that God had planned everything for Adam before He was created. It's a wonderful thing to believe that. Many a time, we face situations in life where we can wonder if God has made some provision for this particular situation that I'm facing right now. It’s wonderful to go back to Genesis and to see there that before a need arises, God has already made a plan for it.

It's a very wonderful thing to be a child of God. I found that for 58 years now. It's a very wonderful thing to be a child of God because God provides everything that we need, whether it is spiritual, physical or material. Every single person on earth should be a child of God. Why is it that people don't want this wonderful life? Because the devil has somehow portrayed before people that God is a hard, demanding taskmaster. Satan says to people, “Don't yield your life to God, you can be a much happier person if you live on your own.” That's a lie and I believe that's one of the things that we need to emphasize to Christians. It's a lie to imagine that you can live a better life out there on your own without consulting God about His will. The happiest Christians on earth are the ones who've decided I don't want to plan my own life. I want God to plan my life and I want to fulfill His will exactly. Now if you know God's nature as a loving Father who cares for you, you gladly say that. I can say that after 58 years. When I was 21 years old, I was gripped by the fact that God had a plan for my life. I began to think, and I say, “Is it possible for me with all my limited knowledge and my ignorance as a human being to make a better plan than my Creator has made for me?” You got to be off your head and crazy to think that’s true! Definitely God can make a better plan for our lives because He knows the whole future.

He knows all my temperaments, what I'm like and the dangers there are, and He plans the best for me. I cannot think of a better plan than that. Recognition of this fact is faith. Faith is to believe that God's wisdom is greater than yours. It's really not difficult to have faith. Is it difficult to believe that God's wisdom is superior to yours? Is it difficult to believe that God loves you so perfectly? Is it difficult to believe that He's Almighty and He can control all the factors in your life? Faith is just to believe that and that’s why I choose what You have planned rather than my own. That's what we need to learn from the first two or three chapters of the book of Genesis. Now the reason I'm beginning there is because I found that a lot of Christians, their problem arises from the fact that they don't understand God's purpose. They don't believe that God's plan is better than anything that they can make for themselves. They don't believe that God has made provision for every single need that can ever arise in their life. Did you hear what I said? Every single need that can ever arise in your entire life, there's some provision God has made to meet that need. That just excites me to know that! Whatever I may face in the future, I don't know what it is, I don't know what I'm going to face next week, next month, but I know one thing; whatever it is, God has made provision for it already. There's a very lovely word in Psalm 112 that reads like this, “How blessed is the man is who only wants to obey God (or fears the Lord), who greatly delights in His commandments and obey them.” One of the things it says in verse 7 of Psalm 112 is, “He is not afraid of bad news.”

Now as long as we live on this earth, sometimes we may get some news which doesn't sound right. Why are we not afraid? Because God has made provision for something to solve that problem. Isn’t that wonderful to live on earth like that; to say from now till the end of my life on earth, “I don't know what's going to come in my way. But I know one thing, whatever I face, God has made some provision for it.” I learned that from Genesis 2. God made provision for every need of Adam’s and to teach me right at the beginning of the Bible that He knows my need and He has made provision for it completely. So, let's get rid of this wrong concept of God that the devil's portrayed before people and let's recognize He wants the very best for you my friend. Surrender to Him and say Lord I want Your will for my life.

Chapter 3

Satan’s Tactics

In our last two studies, we were considering what God's purpose for man was when He first created him and how He made him different from the animals and how He had made provision for all his need. If we understand these basic concepts, we will open our whole being to let God have His way in us all the time in every area. It’s because we don't understand or accept or believe these clear teachings right in the beginning of scripture, we don't see them. The devil has blinded our eyes to them that we find our Christian life so unsatisfactory. The average born-again believer, if you were to ask him and if he were to give you an honest reply, he would admit that this Christian life is not satisfying. And yet God intends our life to be satisfying but it will never be satisfying until we believe that total surrender to God is the best for us.

Now we want to look at the origin of sin in the human race as it is described in the third chapter of Genesis. In those first few chapters of Genesis, we get certain basic concepts concerning a number of things in man's relationship with God which help us to know how it should be in our lives too. In Genesis 3 for example, we see a number of things related to temptation. If you look and meditate on this, I believe it can give us some insight into the tactics of Satan so that we are not deceived in the same way. Here we read that the first thing that the devil did was to come to Eve and make her question the Word of God. This is how he comes today too- is this really God's Word? Has God really said this? Is it necessary to do what God has said? Is it dangerous to disobey God? And the devil tries to take away that foundation from our lives of God's Word so that we're like the man who built his house on sand and it collapsed. That's what he did with Eve — he came and said, “Has God really said?” Through the centuries, the devil's always been questioning God's Word.

The Bible says faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ (Romans 10:17). So, if the devil succeeds in removing the word of Christ from underneath your life, you're not going to have any basis for faith at all. The opposite of faith is fear and that's why you find the world full of people with fear. Their life is built on sand and it crumbles. In this you see another thing and that is Satan is trying to tell Eve that it's not so serious if you disobey God. Satan was implying as it were that God is such a loving good God and He’s not going to let you suffer and be cast out just because you disobeyed Him once in one area. The devil says, “Oh no, God will ignore one disobedience; He is the God of love and even though He said you will die if you disobey and partake of this tree, you won't die. Don't worry.” Sin came when the woman decided to believe what the devil said rather than what God said. That is the origin of sin. This is what happens when we begin to believe what the devil says rather than what God says.

What are the things the devil says? He says, “sin is not serious. You will not be punished if you do wrong and there is no such thing as hell. There is no such thing as eternal death.” These are some of the lies which the devil's been feeding humanity with. “You surely shall not die”, he says in Genesis 3:4. Apply this to the Christian life today: what will happen to a Christian who lives according to his flesh? I'm talking about a born-again Christian who's not careful about his Christian life but who continues to live according to the desires of his flesh. In Romans 8, we read these words written to born-again believers. Is very clear because it says “brethren” in Romans 8:12; He's not talking to non-Christians. There He says, “Dear brethren, we are not under obligation to the flesh to live according to the flesh. If you live according to the flesh, you will surely die. But if through the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13). What is He saying to born-again believers? If you believers live according to the flesh, the desires and passions of the sinful nature in our body, you must die. This is just like God told Adam, “you will surely die if you eat of the tree.” And what did the devil come and tell Eve— you will not surely die. This is what is being preached to many believers by many preachers today. They say if you're born again, if you're once accepted Christ and you happen to live according to the flesh, you will not die. You are eternally secure. Isn't it the same language of the devil? Compare these two verses: God told Adam, “if you eat of this tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die.” God says today in Romans 8:13, “Brethren, if you live according to the flesh, you will surely die.” The devil took that word of God in Genesis and said you will not die. Today, the devil takes this word of God and says, “If you live according the flesh, you will not die because you accepted Christ once. How can you die? it is impossible.” Do you know the number of millions and millions of believers whom the devil has fooled by making them believe that once they've accepted Christ, it's not possible for them to die!

The Bible says in Luke 3:38, that Adam was a son of God. Adam was a son of God, but he died; he was eternally lost finally because he disobeyed. What about today when a son of God decides to live according to the flesh? Is God's Word in Romans 8:13 going to be fulfilled that you will surely die? It will! But the devil questions God's Word. The devil’s whole purpose is to deceive man and make him live in sin so that finally he spends eternity with the devil in hell. That's the devil’s aim. Paul once said in one of his letters in 2nd Corinthians 2:11, “We're not ignorant of Satan's schemes.” Satan has tactics and schemes and we must not be ignorant of them. We need not be ignorant to them if we read scripture because all his tactics are the same, he used once before. Here is one example; to make you question God's Word and just negate it or cancel it by saying it will not happen. So that's the first thing we can learn and take a warning from in Genesis 3. If you want to live as God wants you to live, you better accept God's Word exactly as it is written.

The second thing I want you to see here is when the devil communicated with Eve, he says to her something which implies that God doesn't really love you as you think He does. Satan implies that God doesn't really have your best in mind. He's trying to withhold something from you. Notice what it says in Genesis 3:5: Satan said, “God knows that in the day you eat from this, your eyes will be opened and you'll be like God knowing good and evil (and of course He doesn't want you to be like Him).” What a lie and it’s amazing how the devil succeeded in making Eve believe that. It's amazing to see how the devil succeeded today in making a lot of people believe a lie as if God is trying to withhold something that's good for you. How can that be? Did God create man in order to withhold from him? He need not have created him at all!

The whole purpose with which God created men was to bless him and to give him all that He had to make him partake of His nature and to make him rule over all of His creation, but the devil portrayed another picture of God. He portrayed God as a hard taskmaster and One who didn't love and One who's trying to withhold something from man and so he told man you better fend for yourself. You better take care of yourself because God is not going to care for you. What a lie! When God had created man with the very purpose of blessing and providing for him, the devil convinced him that that was not true. We find the same today. The devil is out there convincing believers that God doesn't really care for them, that's why He didn't grant them this request. He implies, “Why did God allow your child to die? Why did He allow that sickness to continue? That proves God doesn't love you.” And there are lots of believers who believe that and when they believe that, it leads to depression, discouragement, anger at God which also leads to sickness in the body and many other problems. If the devil can succeed in making you believe this lie that God doesn't love you, that God doesn't care for you, that God’s not going to provide all your need, he would have succeeded in making you take the first step towards sin. The first step to a defeated life is to believe that God doesn't love you.

The New Testament speaks a lot about faith. Faith is to believe that God loves me. That's more important than even not falling. When Peter was about to deny Jesus three times, the Lord warned him, “you're going to deny me three times Peter but I'm not praying that you won't deny me. That's probably needed to break your pride but I am praying that after you have denied me and you've let me down and the devil's got ahold of you and you reach the bottom, I want you to remember there that God still loves you. That's what I'm praying for you that your faith will not fail.” The Lord told Peter that He was praying that his faith will not fail meaning that when you come to the end of yourself, I want you to believe right there that God loves you still. He still loves you. That is faith; to believe that even though I've made a mess of my life, even though I've done something wrong, God still loves me. How much more when I'm trying to please Him. When we were sinners, He loved us. When we were His enemies, He loved us. How much more now that we're His children. One of the things we learned right from the beginning of man's creation and man's fall is that the aim of the devil is to make us doubt God's Word and to doubt God's love. If the devil succeeds in those two areas in your life, I want to tell you right now that you're doomed because you'll definitely fall. He doesn't lead us to fall straightaway. He removes our foundation and then we just fall on our own. We get discouraged and say, “if God doesn't love me, if He is not going to answer my prayer, what hope is there for me.” We get discouraged, then the devil leads us into more sin.

The other thing I want you to notice further down is the woman trusted her senses. She saw with her eyes that the tree was good for food. You know the other thing we need to learn from this passage is that we can't trust our senses. If you trust your senses, you'll be deceived, and you’ll go astray. You can't trust your senses. For example, if you trusted your senses, you would think that the sun goes around the earth because every day you see the sun rise and set in the west. If you trusted your senses, you'd say the sun is moving! It's not moving, it's an appearance. It's the earth revolving on its own axis that gives you the impression that that stationary sun is moving. God has put it there to teach us every day not to trust your senses. Don't trust what you see. The we know from geography that the Earth revolves around its own axis at a speed of about 1000 miles an hour and when we look down at the earth, we don't feel it moving at all. The earth looks very stable and stationary and yet the earth under your feet is revolving at 1600 km/hr. That's how fast the earth is spinning and yet you don't feel it. You can't trust your senses, that's the message that comes through from that. If you go by your senses, you'll be deceived. The woman saw; she went by her senses. It appears good to her, but it was not good for her. Look at the people who take alcohol and cigarettes and harmful drugs today. They look at it and they say that appears to be good for me, I get a kick out of it. It'll destroy your body. So that's the other thing that we see here.

When man falls like this, what did God expect from Adam and Eve? Just to trust Him. Believe that I love you even though you may not know the reason why I have forbidden you from eating this tree. It's very interesting to see that God never gave Adam and Eve a reason. If you obey after you get an explanation why you should obey, that's not really the obedience of faith. The highest form of obedience is the obedience of faith — that is the way for maximum spiritual growth. If you obey God because you know the reason, well that's good that you obey God but it's not the best form of obedience. In Romans chapter 1 and chapter 16, you read this expression: the obedience of faith. What is the opposite of the obedience of faith? Is the obedience of reason. That means I know why I need to do this therefore I do it. What if you don't know the reason, that's a higher level of obedience.

When God gave Adam a command saying, “don't eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” He never gave my reason. He never told him. God could have easily given 25 reasons why Adam shouldn't eat of it. He just said, “Don't eat it. if you eat it, you'll die,” but He never gave him a reason. Now today because God's given us the Holy Spirit, we know the reason. The essential difference between the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life is that in one, Adam could choose a life centered in himself. That means if I want to know what's good and what's evil, I don't have to go to God. I know it myself; I can consult my own reason and decide what's good and what's evil. That's the way of death. The other tree was the tree of life symbolizing God Himself in the power of His Holy Spirit.

If I choose to live by that tree, what I'm saying is, “Lord, I want to live in dependence on you every time. I want to know what's good and what's evil. I’m not going to trust my own reason. I’m going to come to you and say, ‘Lord is this good for me to do.’” It's a life of constant dependence upon God for wisdom, for life every day. The fact that I've got so many years of experience doesn't make a difference. Think of a branch in a tree, maybe it's had 50 years of experience bearing fruit, but it still needs to abide in the tree if it is to bear fruit now. So, it's constant dependence. That new branch has to abide in the tree to produce fruit as much as this other branch that has been producing fruit in it for 50 years. It doesn't make a difference how many years of experience you have. Jesus said, “Apart from me you cannot bear fruit. You can do nothing” (John 15:5). The tree of life symbolized a life of dependence upon God. That's the meaning of living by faith. It is the Lord telling me what is good or evil and it's a moment-by-moment revelation from God that keeps me from what He shows me is evil.

That's how Jesus lived and that's how God wants you and me to live. The other is the tree of knowledge of good and evil where I don't need to consult God at all and that's how all human beings in the world live. Do you think everybody in the world is living evil lives? No. A lot of people do a lot of good things, but they don't live in dependence upon God. God has not created us just to do good things. He's created us to be dependent on Him. He said go and live by that tree of life, not by the tree of knowledge and evil where you depend on yourself. There is a way that seems right to a man but the end of it leads to death (Proverbs 14:12, 16:25). Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean upon your own reason, your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, then He will direct your paths.” We see here in that verse that the enemy of faith is our reason. If I depend on my reason, I'm going to go astray and so it says trust in the Lord and don't lean upon your reason. Leaning upon reason is partaking of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. My reason tells me what's good, I do that. My reason tells me what's evil, I don't do that. I don't need to pray. I don't need to consult God about anything. When you live your Christian life without seeking the will of God as to what is good for you, you choose yourself what's good for you, you're living according the principle of good and evil which Adam chose and we've all got that infection.

I have expanded this passage in Genesis to show you how sin has come into the human race. It came by living according to our own reason. We ourselves deciding what's good for us. Now what is the obedience of faith? The devil said to Eve, “The reason why God is not allowing you to partake of this tree is because He knows that you'll be like Him and He doesn't want you to be like Him.” Supposing Eve had said in response, “Well, I don't know all the reasons but one thing I know is that God loves me and because He loves me, He cannot possibly withhold from me anything that's good for me. I can't understand why God has forbidden this, it looks as if God should give it to me, but He hasn’t, but I know God loves me and so even though I can't understand why He has forbidden it, I’m going to obey Him.” What a different story it would have been and what a different story it could be in your life when you face a situation that you can't understand and you say, “Well, I can't understand this. I don't have the explanation for it all, but I know God is a good God and His wisdom is greater than mine and I'll do what He says.” It can make all the difference in your life so let's learn from this passage and learn to live by dependence upon God for wisdom concerning what is good for us and what is evil.

Chapter 4

The Fall Of Man

In our previous studies, we've been looking at the early chapters of Genesis to try and understand something of God's original purpose for man and how man fell into sin and how the devil deceived them so that we can learn for our own life. God's purpose for us is the same as it was for Adam. Where Adam failed, we can fulfill that purpose. If we understand from the Scriptures how the devil tripped up Adam and Eve, we can learn lessons for ourselves. All Scripture is given so that the man of God may be perfect and so that we can know about the schemes of Satan. So, we continue our study in Genesis 3 about how man fell into sin and what was the result of that and how God wanted man to live by faith and dependence on Him rather than in dependence on oneself. Now what happened as soon as Adam sinned, and Eve sinned? The first thing they do is hide from each other and seek to hide from God. This is one of the results of sin; we want to hide. It says that they both hid among the trees of the garden. Can you imagine anything more stupid than that? To think you can go behind a tree and God won't see you. Sin makes man pretty foolish and here is one example of that — Adam trying to go hide behind the tree and think that he can hide from God.

The other thing is his making fig leaves. They both made fig leaves it says in verse 7 because they suddenly realized they were naked, and they were not willing to accept each other like that; they were ashamed now. Earlier on before sin came, it says in Genesis 2:25 that the man and his wife were naked, and they were not ashamed. Where there is no sin, there's no need to be ashamed. We see each other. Now apply this spiritually and that's the way I want to apply this wearing of fig leaves. Why did Adam and Eve wear fig leaves? Who are they hiding from? There were no others in the garden to see their nakedness. I mean we wouldn't mind being naked in the presence of animals. If there's a cat in your house, you wouldn't be ashamed to be naked in front of that cat. Who were they hiding from? Who were they covering themselves from with these fig leaves? From each other! Adam didn't want his wife to see his nakedness and she didn't want Adam to see her nakedness. It's amazing! Applying this spiritually, we see how man is trying to hide himself because of sin. There are parts in his life he doesn't want other people to see. We are ashamed to let other people see us as we really are because we fear that they will not accept us.

We hide from God because we think He will not accept us as we are, so we try to cover ourselves. That's the meaning of the fig leaves. The end result is all human beings go through life wearing a mask, pretending to be spiritual, pretending to be happy when inwardly things are very different. Pretending that everything is okay when everything is not okay because they fear that God will not accept them as they are. You know all the works that man does. This whole religion of works is symbolized in those fig leaves. When we try to do something to make up for our sin and our failure, that's the meaning of those fig leaves. I make some sacrifice for God, maybe I go on some pilgrimage, maybe I do a kind deed to others, maybe I give money to the beggars to earn my salvation, to earn forgiveness from God because I'm aware of a lot of wrong things I've done. These are the fig leaves that man has today to try and win his acceptance before God because he feels God will not accept him as he is. This is what Jesus came to disprove. He came to show man that God loved him so much that He would accept him just as he is. God doesn't want to leave man as he is. God loves us too much for that, He wants to accept us as we are and then change us, but we don't have to hide from God. We don't have to pretend that we are something and this is true even in marriage today. Husband and wife go around with a mask not being open with each other because they feel if my partner sees me as I really am and sees all the weaknesses in me, he won't accept me. She feels he won't accept me, so I've got to hide some parts of my life from my partner so that he accepts me. We have a desperate desire, a tremendous desire to be accepted and it's because we want to be accepted by our fellow human beings that we wear masks and we pretend.

What is the solution for all this? Jesus came to provide a solution for the entire failure of Adam and Eve which has come down to us today and the solution is to find acceptance before God. When we know that God has accepted us totally and we have become his children even though there are so many imperfections still in us, it solves this problem. He's accepted us and when we are sure of that, we are finished with seeking for acceptance from men. That's the answer! We seek for acceptance from men only because we're not sure that God's accepted us. I want to say to you my friend, when you're absolutely sure God's accepted you, you'll never again seek for acceptance before men. All of us human beings, we grow up insecure in our relationship with God and that's the root cause of so many sins. That's what produces competition even among believers. That's what produces jealousy when God seems to have blessed somebody with things that you don't have, and all this comes from an insecure relationship with God. Many are insecure because they are not sure that God is happy with them. A lot of preachers add to this by preaching a message that brings guilt upon people. Guilt is the way by which many cult leaders control people by making them feel guilty. When a person feels guilty, he is weak, and you can control and manipulate them. A lot of preaching today is to make people feel guilty. Why don't you do this, and fellow feels guilty and he does it.

This is what the Bible calls the dead work. It is not done out of love for the Lord. It's not done spontaneously; it is done under the pressure of guilt. I want to say to you that God doesn't want you to serve Him like that. He doesn't want you to do anything out of a sense of guilt. Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). He didn’t say, “If you feel guilty, keep My commandments.” The solution comes back to not hiding from God. Don't go behind trees or go behind anything but come straight before Him. That is what Adam should have done as soon as he sinned. He should have run up to God and say, “Oh God, I’m sorry. I slipped up. Please forgive me.” He would have discovered that God loves him and accepts him.

Now when Adam tried to hide from God, one of the results was that he begins to accuse his wife. When a man's relationship with God is broken, it immediately breaks his relationship with other people and that's why the Bible says we can test our relationship with God by our relationship with other people. I can imagine that I love God tremendously, but John says, “If you can't love a brother whom you can see, don't imagine that you can love a God whom you cannot see” (1 John 4:20). How can you love a God whom you cannot see when you can't love this brother whom you can see with your own eyes? That’s impossible. We see the same thing here. As soon as Adam’s relationship with the Lord was broken, his relationship with Eve was broken too. Their relationship was not only broken, but he also begins to accuse her. You see that there when the Lord came to Adam and asked him, “Where are you, Adam? Did you eat of the tree?” Adam replies, “I was naked, and I hid myself.” The Lord said, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat of the tree which I told you not to eat?” (Genesis 3:11). Now the answer to that question was “yes or no” and the answer in this particular case was just “yes.” All Adam had to say was “Yes Lord, I'm sorry I did that.” But notice Adam doesn't say that. Sin has corrupted him immediately. See how quickly sin does a work in a human being. He who loved his wife so intensely, who said earlier in Genesis 2:23 when he saw Eve, “This is what I’ve been waiting for. This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” This is part of me. He was so excited with his wife and rejoiced with his wife. As soon as one sin came in his life, his whole attitude to his wife changes. He turns to God and accuses his wife. God asked him, “Did you eat of that tree” to which he should have said, “Yes Lord.” He doesn't say that. He says, “Well Lord, this woman is the one who gave me this fruit to eat and remember, You are the one who gave this woman to me to be my wife.” He was implying that God was a bit to blame for giving him such a wife. This tendency to blame others for our fault, we see it in children. I did this mommy because he did that, or she did that. You see it began with Adam.

Now do you know the number of believers with this attitude. Now I can understand unbelievers have that nature. They've got it from Adam. Let's talk about those who claim to be born again. Do you find this attitude in yourself? How much of a salvation have you experienced then? Salvation is to be saved from all the wretched things that the devil put upon Adam and which has come into the human race. That is real salvation. Here is one of the wretched things that the devil put upon Adam as soon as he sinned and that is blame somebody else. He accused somebody else and found fault with somebody else. He found fault with God as to why He allowed that to happen in his life. Haven't you heard believers talking like that? That proves how little they have been saved. That proves that they don't even see that such an attitude is sin and it proves that perhaps they're not really born again at all. When we are born again, we're not perfect. It may take ages before we get anywhere near perfection. But one thing does happen when a person is really born again; he suddenly becomes sensitive to sin. He may not overcome sins for many years but when he slips up and falls, he knows it and he doesn't blame anybody else; he blames himself.

I believe one of the reasons why many Christians don't come to a life of victory over sin is because they have not taken the blame themselves. They blame somebody else and as long as we are blaming other people, you will never be free. It’s like that story of the king who went to a prison on his birthday to release all of the prisoners as a goodwill gesture. Before releasing them, he decided to go to the prison and talk to these people and find out why they were in there. So, he went to the first cell and asked the person why he was in jail. The prisoner said, “It’s not really my fault. I got accused falsely and I couldn't defend myself and here I am.” The King went to the second cell and that fellow had an excuse too. He said, “The criminal’s face looked like mine and they caught me instead.” Another prison said, “The judge had a prejudice against me.” Everybody had an excuse. They were all good people according in their own minds. They told the king they didn’t deserve to be here. When the king came to the last cell, the prisoner in that cell said, “I did wrong. I was bad and I did a lot of wrong things and that's why I got caught and I'm here. I deserve to be here.” Then the king told the jailer in a very sarcastic way with a sense of humor, “You seem to have a lot of good people here in this jail. A lot of people who have done nothing wrong and they're all here but there's the only one man who says he's bad. Now we don't want to keep this bad person in the midst of all these good people so let's release him. Let him go so he doesn't spoil all these good people.” So he released that man. Why was he released? The principle is because he acknowledged that he had failed. Adam could not. When the Lord asked Eve, “Did you do this?” She also does not take the blame but rather blames the serpent. Remember this—as long as you have this habit of blaming circumstances, blaming your upbringing, blaming your parents, blaming somebody else for your failure and not willing to take the blame yourself, you will never experience a full salvation.

In the 58 years that I've been a believer, I've met very few believers who have the habit of taking the blame themselves. I met numerous believers blaming other people instead of themselves. Think of the thief who hung on the cross next to Jesus Christ. What was it that took him into God's kingdom? It was just one thing; he took the blame for his sins. Crucifixion was the worst type of punishment that the Romans would give to anyone. It was reserved for the absolutely worst criminals for whom there was no hope. Other criminals would be given lesser punishment like been jailed for so many years, but the really bad ones were crucified. When these thieves were hanging on the cross, one of them turned to the Lord and said, “Save yourself and save us” (Luke 23:39). He was saying, “Save me, I don't deserve to be here. I have done a few bad things but certainly not crucifixion.” But the other thief said how can you speak like this. He said, “This man has done nothing wrong, but we are getting what we deserve for our deed” (Luke 23:41). You see how he was the opposite of Adam. Whereas the other thief was just like Adam because he wouldn’t take the blame. He didn’t believe that he deserve punishment. The repentant thief believed that he deserved to be crucified because he was such a terrible criminal. You know what happened to him? He went to paradise that day.

Paradise is made by God for those who've learned to take the blame themselves. Adam was kicked out of because he wouldn't take the blame. The thief went into paradise because he took the blame. You remember the story of the Pharisee and the Publican in Luke chapter 18. The Pharisee appeared as if there is nothing wrong with him. He said “I’m a good man. I’m not doing all the wrong things that other people do. He blames others. That fellow's an adulterer and that follow is the thief and that fellow is like this and look at this fellow praying over here; he's another cheat. But I do a lot of good things. I fast and I pray and I do all that.” There was another sinner standing there and he wouldn't even lift up his head to heaven. He said, “Oh God, I got nothing to say. I'm just a sinner. I'm 100% to blame, I don't blame my wife, I don't blame anybody else, it's me.” Jesus said that man went to his house justified just like the thief went to paradise. The other person who thought he was better than everybody else and looked down on others and trusted in himself that he was righteous got rejected. So that's one of the important lessons that we can learn from Genesis 3.

One more thing we can learn from there is the tremendous power of fellowship. I personally believe if Adam and Eve had stood together when the devil was talking to them and Adam replied to the devil as Eve's head, they would not have sinned. There is strength in unity. Two are better than one, it says in Ecclesiastes 4. If one falls, the other can pick him up. When the enemy comes, if two are together, they can resist him and overcome him. That's the other lesson we learned from Genesis 3. There's a value in fellowship. Seek to build fellowship with others because Jesus said, “When two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst” (Matthew 18:20). The presence of the Lord is mightily manifest, wherever two believers are united in spirit without anything in their hearts against each other. God can do amazing things through two believers who are united like that. That is why the devil fights against unity among believers. He says you got to wait till you agree on every little thing before you're united. That's not true. My unity with people is not based on some doctrinal agreement. It's based on a common love and loyalty to Jesus Christ our Lord and our Savior.

If Adam and Eve had been together, there they would not have fallen. When he was talking to Satan, Adam could have said “Hang on, don't you remember God told us we shouldn't eat from that tree.” If they had reminded one another, they could have protected themselves from the attack of Satan. Think of a husband and wife really seek to be one and to remind one another, to warn one another about Satan. What a fantastic power they'll be in that home, but the devil is determined to make sure it doesn't happen. So, we see here that that is how failure came and we notice here that the Lord cursed the serpent. He cursed the ground and He cursed the serpent, but He did not curse Adam and Eve. God made a provision for the failure of His children. That's a wonderful thing we learned there; God's tremendous care even where man had failed. Before He sent Adam and Eve out of the garden, He gave them one piece of good news. God made a provision for their salvation; the woman will give birth one day to a Son and He will crush the head of the serpent who deceived them. That’s what happened when Christ came so we can experience a salvation from all the effects of Adam's sin, but we can learn lessons from Genesis 3 that even where we have failed, if we are honest, God can lift us up from there. He’s made a provision for our failure before we failed because He knew that we would fail. What a wonderful salvation!

Chapter 5

Free Will And The Conscience

We want to continue looking at some of the foundational principles that we can learn from the early chapters of the Bible, particularly the first four chapters of Genesis. We want to understand what man’s basic problem is. That's what we've been considering over the last four chapters and in this chapter, we want to again look at some of those things that are hidden as it were and that the Spirit seeks to reveal to us which can help us to identify man's problem. Then we can look at what the solution that God has made to deal with our problem. We looked at God's purpose for man, His provision for him, Satan's tactics and the fall of man.

I want to say a few words today about free will. One of the greatest gifts that God gave to man was freedom of choice. God did not give that freedom of choice to the planets, the stars, the trees etc. They have no choice. The planets have been obeying God automatically for thousands of years. They have never disobeyed God even for a split second. If all that God wanted was obedience from man, God could have made man like those stars and planets without free will. He could have made man of flesh and blood but programmed inwardly like a robot. You know there are computerized robots today that can be programmed to do almost anything. God Almighty could have created man like a robot and programmed to obey Him exactly. He would never have gone anywhere near the tree of knowledge of good and evil because he was programmed not to go there like a computer that's programmed to do whatever we teach it to do.

In the same way, God could have made Adam and Eve like that and they would have obeyed 100% but God did not want just obedience. He's got obedience from the planets and the stars and the trees and the seeds that obeys God's laws in creation and many other things. For man, He wanted obedience that was voluntary. This is so important because without voluntary obedience there can be no holiness. God is holy and man can never be holy unless he chooses to obey. That's why free will is the most important requirement for a man to be holy and God never takes it away. When a man is born again and becomes a Christian, God doesn't take away his free will. When a man is filled with the Holy Spirit, God doesn't take away his free will. He still has complete control over himself. In fact, when a man is filled with the Holy Spirit, he has a better control over himself because the Bible says the fruit of the Spirit is self-control (Galatians 5:23). So, you got to view with suspicion anyone who says that when he got filled with the Spirit, he was thrown from one end of the room to the other or he couldn't stop speaking in tongues or he couldn't have any control over himself. That always makes me suspicious because I've seen in the scriptures that it's demons who take away a man's control over himself. Demon-possessed people have no control over themselves and I've personally seen many cases of demon-possessed people who have no control over themselves. The devil is out to control man. God doesn't want to control man like that to the point where He takes away his free will. The devil on the other hand seeks to take away man's free will. I’ve seen demon-possessed people who have no control over themselves and that's why you read in the Bible about demon possession, but you never read in the Bible about Holy Spirit possession. What you read in the Bible is Holy Spirit filling. What is the difference between filling and possession? The Holy Spirit fills, demons possess. Possess means total control and the demon-possessed person will not know what he's talking and what he's doing. They do all types of foolish things, but a man filled with the Holy Spirit is in complete 100% control of his faculties all the time.

It says in 1 Corinthians 14:32 that the spirit of the prophets is subject to the prophets. That's a very important verse. It that means if the Holy Spirit fills me and I exercise a gift of the Holy Spirit, I will have complete control over my faculties. It could be prophesying, it could be teaching, it could be speaking in tongues. Whatever it is, I have complete control over my faculties, and I can start and stop when I want to. The spirit of the prophets is subject to the prophets. Every gift of the Holy Spirit given to us if is for us to exercise according to our own choice. If God gives a man a gift of teaching, the man has control of when to use it. God has given me a gift of teaching. If you wake me up at 3 o'clock in the middle of the night and tell me to speak for one hour or 10 minutes, I can teach because the gift has been given to me and my spirit is subject to me. So free will is something God gave Adam and God needed Adam to make a choice in order to be holy.

That’s why when he sent him into the Garden of Eden, he didn't tell him to do whatever he likes. How would you know whether he's exercising his will on the side of God? So, God said, “There are 10,000 trees there or more than that but there's one tree I don't want you to take part off.” Now it's not a difficult command if you're permitted to do 10,000 things in a room but only one thing you should avoid. You can't say that's a difficult command; that's the easiest thing in the world. If God on the other hand, had told Adam, “There are 10,000 trees there. You shouldn't touch any of them. you're only permitted to eat of this one tree”, that would have been difficult, but it wasn't like that. God's commands are not burdensome. His commands are easy (1 John 5). It is the devil who tells us that God's commands are heavy and a burden. Jesus said, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:29-30). Take my yoke upon you because it's easy but the yoke of the devil is heavy. The yoke where you choose your own way in life is a heavy one. So, we see here that free will is something God never takes away till the end of your life. You can be the most Spirit-filled person on earth, and you have complete control of your faculties and you can choose till the end of your life whether you want to follow the Lord or not.

God is not going to hold you in such a way as if to say, “Well now, you have to go to heaven whether you like it or not. “Some people teach that once you’ve given your life to Christ, God holds you in such a way that you have no freedom now. You have to go to heaven whether you want to or not. They say once your saved, you are saved forever whether you like it or not. How could that be because that would mean that man's free will has been taken away. Now Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice and they follow Me, and I give them eternal life, and no one will pluck them out of My hand. My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all and no one is able to pluck them out of His hand” (John 10:27-29). We believe with all our heart that Jesus is Almighty, God the Father is Almighty and if we are in their hands, no power on earth and this universe can pluck us out of Jesus hands or the Father's hands. But we can jump out ourselves. That's the thing that makes us lose our salvation where we decide I don't want to follow the Lord anymore. Just like a man can divorce his wife, he can divorce Christ and say, “I’ve had it now. I don't want to go this way” and people have done that. Now if God were to take away a man's free will and possess a person like demons possess a person, then of course the man would never be lost. He'd be like a robot from that moment onwards and there are some people who teach something very similar to that by saying, “When a man accepts Christ, he becomes like a robot and he can never be lost again.” It's ridiculous. They are implying that a man filled with the Holy Spirit has no control over himself. There are all types of wrong teachings because people have not understood the importance of free will in holiness.

Now apply this to yourself. You have to choose whether you want to be holy or not. Like someone has said, “Every man is as holy as he wants to be.” You may not realize the truth of that statement but it's absolutely true. If you are not more holy today, the real reason is because you did not want to be more holy. You're not interested in more holiness than you actually have. If you were, you would be more holy. You would have made those choices in life that made you more holy, but you haven't made those choices because you're not interested in more holiness. Everything depends on choice and the decisions you make determine what you'll be 10 years later. For example, Jesus said in Luke 9:23, “If anyone hears my voice (if anyone wants to follow me), let him take up his cross daily.” Only then can he be My disciple. No one can be my disciple if he does not deny himself and take up his cross every day.” What does that mean? That means every day I'm faced with choices. In those choices, I have to say “no” to my own will and say “yes” to the will of God. That is what it means to deny myself and take up the cross. That means put my self-will to death and do the will of God. Now think of two people who are converted on the same day, going to the same church with the same opportunities and they attend the same meetings. 10 years later, you find one is way ahead of the other person spiritually even though they both attended the same number of meetings, attended the same church read the same Bible and had the same opportunities. Why? Because in those 10 years, in all the different situations that these two men faced and the choices they made, one brother denied himself frequently and chose the will of God. The other one was more careless and indulged himself more often. The result is the first brother is miles ahead of the other one spiritually even though they both started at the same point. What is it that made the difference? The choices they made. Free will determines how holy you're going to be. Free will is going to determine what your reward will be in heaven. Your choices are going to determine how close you'll be to Jesus in heaven. That is the greatest reward God offers to men.

So, we see the free will that God gave to Adam is a very precious gift. One of the greatest characteristics of God which I really appreciate and have learned to value is the fact that He allows me freedom to choose. Now when you are gripped by this, it produces a result in your life. We become like the God we worship. If the God you worship is unholy, you become unholy. If the God you worship is holy, you become holy. In Psalm 115:8, it says that a man who makes idols ends up becoming like him. Those who make idols become like them. We become like the God we worship. If the God I worship, the true God is one who gives me complete freedom to choose, it's going to make me like that in relation to my coworkers and those who work with me or under me. I will give them complete freedom. I will give my brothers in the church where I am an elder freedom to choose and I will not sort of sit on them and control them like the cults do. The people in the cults do that because they don't know the true God. They worship a false god and they may call him Jesus, but it is another Jesus. Anyone who seeks to control your life in any way has not understood the first thing about God. He's only understood the devil's way because demons possess. Cult leaders try to possess your mind and your emotions and your will, but godly men will give you the freedom that Almighty God Himself gives. This is such an important principle and if you don't understand it, you can be a prey to pastors and leaders and Christian leaders and preachers who want to control your life. Don't ever yield to them. That's the way of the devil. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 7:23, “You are bought with a price; do not become the slaves of men.” It’s very important to remember that.

The other great gift God is given to man is a conscience. This is a tremendous gift. Conscience is what tells us when we do something wrong immediately. Or when you're about to do something wrong, your conscience will tell you that's wrong and shouldn't be doing that. It is conscience that keeps us on the way of spiritual life. The conscience is compared with the eye. Jesus said if a man's eye is clear, his whole body is full of light. If you want to know what blindness is, just shut your eyes for 15 seconds. Blindness is a terrible thing to have. Because we have vision, the light that falls on objects outside comes into our brain and we can see objects and we can see people. If our eyes are spoiled by cataract, by blindness, by sickness, all that light stops coming in and we're not able to see anything. This is what happens when a man is careless with this conscience. All of us will recognize that eyesight is a very precious gift. We got two eyes even though one is good enough for a lot of things, but we don't want to lose even one eye. We want to use both eyes because we get three-dimensional vision with two eyes. Why then are so many people careless with their conscience? The conscience is to our spirit exactly what the eyes are to our body. Jesus said the lamp of the body is the eye. He said, “If your eyes are clear, your whole body will be full of light. Be careful that your eye does not become darkness” (Luke 11:34).

So how does this apply to our conscience? What do you do when you get a speck in your eye? Dust gets into your eyes sometimes and it irritates your eye. You eye keeps blinking frequently and even if you're doing some very important work, you'll stop it, go to a wash basin and wash off that dust. If you don't wash it off, gradually if dust keeps on accumulating in your eye, your can become blind. People with leprosy sometimes are not able to close their eyelids and if the eyelids remain open all the time, dust keeps accumulating there and they become blind. It's not the leprosy that causes the blindness, it is the dust accumulating on the eye and they are not able to close their eyelids because of leprosy having killed those the muscles that control the eyelids.

And so just like we are careful with our eyesight, we need to be careful our conscience. Think if for example, you have done something wrong. It's like dust on your conscience and you don't cleanse it away. Then you do another thing that's wrong, you allow dust to accumulate on your conscience over a period of time. It's just like allowing dust to accumulate on your eyes. Now what will happen? After some time, you will become spiritually blind. You won't be able to see. When you read the Bible, you won't get anything out of it. You won't be able to see the reality of God. You won't be able to see spiritual truths; you won't be able to get divine revelation to enable you to live life on this earth. You have many problems if you are not careful with your conscience to preserve it pure. That's why I recommend to people, just like we would do with our eyes as soon as your conscience convicts you of something, cleanse it away. Go to God in repentance and confess it and say, “Lord, I’m sorry, please forgive me. I did this.” Take the blame and don't put the blame on other people like Adam. Then the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin. The Bible says if we confess our sin, God is faithful and just and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). Conscience is a very important part of our spirit - the most important part of our being. You must preserve it just like you preserve your eyes.

Let me use one more illustration. The prick of conscience is like pain in our body. When a thorn pokes your foot, immediately you feel pain. That pain is a blessing because if you didn't feel that pain, the thorn would remain in your foot. You won't even know there's a thorn there. Your foot would get infected and it'll become full of pus and you wouldn't know it because you don't feel any pain and it's at the bottom side of your foot. Finally, your foot becomes gangrenous and has to be cut off. What is it that saves our feet from being cut off? Pain. Do you know that pain is one of the greatest blessings that God has given us in our body? Pain when you have a stomach ache. Supposing you have a repeated stomach ache. That would cause you concern. It may indicate there's something wrong with your body. That pain makes you go to the doctor and the doctor looks at your body confirms that you got a sickness and gives you medicine to cure your problem. But you detected the problem by pain. Now think if you did not have pain and something's wrong inside your body. You wouldn’t have a stomach ache. You think life is great because you never get some stomach aches and you never get headaches. But without pain, you don't feel it, but the damage is still taking place and your body's being destroyed but you don't feel it. Thank God for the gift of pain by which you feel things. If you didn't have it, your body would die very soon. Pain is what protects us from sickness. Now conscience is like that. When your conscience convicts you that you did that thing wrong, it’s painful. If you ignore it, you kill it. You kill it by rejecting it. After some time, you will not hear the voice of conscience anymore.

I'll illustrate that for you. Think of a two-year-old trying to tell a lie to his mother. His mother asked him, “Son, did you do this?” The little boy looks up and he says, “No mommy, I didn't do it,” but you can see in the way he says it that he is lying. All over his face, it's written “I am telling you a lie” because he's not very clever at concealing his lie. The way he says the lie itself gives it away because his conscience is convicting him that he did wrong. Now you see that same child after 20 years, he's told so many lies. By the time he is 25. he can tell you a lie with such a straight face that you'll believe it. He can tell you, “Oh I didn't know what you are talking about” in such a way that you believe this absolute lie. Men are good actors and you and I know how easy it is for us to act and tell a lie about something. How have we come to this place? Because we have killed the voice of conscience for many, many years and we have destroyed ourselves in the process. This is the reason why many people can never become spiritual because they've killed the voice of conscience in area after area after area. They have lusted and lusted sexually with their eyes and all types of forbidden ways till conscience has been killed and it is almost impossible for them to be pure now. But there is hope. If we open our beings to God's Holy Spirit, He can re-sensitize our conscience and make it little by little more and more sensitive over a period of time that we can once again become spiritual. This is the good news of the gospel and it's available for you to come to Jesus Christ and say, “Lord, I’m a sinner. Forgive me, cleanse me and fill me with your Spirit. He'll answer you.

Chapter 6

Grace And Faith

In the last couple of studies, we looked at some basic principles that the Word of God teaches about the way God made man and what God expects from man. In our last study, we saw the importance of free will and of listening to the promptings of conscience and not suppressing the voice of conscience. Now we have to face the reality of the fact that all human beings have sinned. The Bible says in Romans 3:23 that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. So, in God's eyes, it doesn't make a difference what religion you belong to. Think of a baby that's born into any religious family, whatever religion it is or an atheist family. You look at that baby, it looks like any other baby; there isn’t a difference. Now as those babies grow up and become little children and they're in a school, they all fight, they all quarrel, they all grab, they're all selfish, they all are proud and want to exalt themselves. Every characteristic of Adam's nature is found equally in all those children. What difference does it make that one belongs to one religion and another belongs to another? Maybe externally, there could be a difference; one child goes to a church, another goes to a temple, another goes to a mosque and another goes nowhere and watches television on Sunday morning. But wherever they may go on Sunday, when they come to school on Monday, they all behave just as selfishly as everybody else. So, the change is only external and even where their parents may teach them to be cultured and to say, “thank you” and “sorry”, it's all on the outside. They may teach them to be unselfish on the outside but there's no change of nature within. God treats all human beings on the same level. You're not a child of God because you're born into any particular religion. You have to choose yourself when you come to an age of understanding. That goes back to what we said in our last study about the importance of choice; you're not forced to become a child of God just because you were born into a Christian family. You have to make a personal choice that you want to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Savior. All human beings have sinned; every single person has committed numerous sins and has come short of God's standard.

It's like a vessel; whether the vessel has got one hole or a thousand holes, the water leaks out. After a little while there's no water in any of the vessels. The vessel may have one hole, ten holes or a thousand holes, the end result is that all the water leaks out. Sin is like that. The Bible says if you committed one sin or a thousand sins, you're guilty. It’s just like how one germ is enough to pollute something that has been sterilized in a surgical theater. The gloves and the equipment are all sterilized. You don't need a thousand germs to make it unsterile; one is enough. Sin is like that; one sin is enough to corrupt a person and make him unfit for God's presence. There's no difference as far as coming into God's presence is concerned. The man who's committed one sin and the man who's coming to the thousand sins are both unfit to come to God’s presence. That's why the Bible says all have come short of the glory of God; they've come short of God's perfect standard. God's perfect standard is 100% and the man who gets 99% fails and the man will get 0% also fails.

Once we recognize that, it's important to see that the first thing that God needed to do to restore man's fellowship with Him is to find some way to remove his guilt and to get his sins to be forgiven. God has to find a way to remove the guilt of all the things that man has done from his childhood. Now we need to see on what basis does God forgive us our sins. Some people say God is a loving God and therefore if I go to Him and say, “I’m sorry”, He should forgive me. The thing is God has got a dual responsibility not only as a loving Father but also as the Judge of the universe. The universe is established on certain laws. God is moral and upright; there are certain things God cannot do. For example, God cannot tell a lie and He cannot violate His Own principles of justice. One example of it would be if I have committed a crime for which the punishment is some large fine and if I am taken to court and if my own father is the judge there. However, much he may love me, he cannot let me go. Even if I say, “Dad, I'm really sorry for what I did and I'll never do it again”, he cannot let me go. If he does let me go, he'd lose his job. He'd be violating the principles of justice which he as a judge is supposed to uphold. Now our standard of justice is so small compared to God's infinite standard of justice. If a human judge cannot let the son whom he loves to go but has to punish him, how much more God. So, God can't let you go just because you say you're sorry just like the judge who is my dad can’t let me go in the court just because I say I'm sorry. I may be sincere, but I still need to be punished for the crime I committed.

The good news is that there's something else that my dad as a judge could do and still uphold the principles of justice. Let's say the punishment for my crime is a million rupees. My father who is the judge writes the verdict of a million rupees fine or you go to jail if you are unable to pay it. Now it looks to me as though my dad is being very hard on me, but he isn’t. He is just upholding the principles of justice which he has to do as a judge. That's what God has to do - but once he is convicted me and declared the fine that I have to pay, he can step down from that chair take off his judge’s robes and come to me as my father, take out his own personal checkbook and sign a check for a million rupees and give it to me to pay the fine. You see what he's done; he has upheld the principles of justice and nobody can accuse him of showing any partiality to me. He has fined me the highest penalty that the law demanded, and I can't accuse him of saying he doesn't love me because he paid the penalty himself. What a huge price he paid in order that I might be free. That makes me love him tremendously.

Now this is what God has really done. He says the wages of sin is death. That's the punishment you deserve. Not just physical death. Physical death is only one part of all that God calls death. Man is spirit, soul and body and everything dies; it's being cut off and separated from God for eternity. That's what death means, and the Lord has to punish us with that punishment the law demands. The amazing thing is that God then came down in the form of man and be known as Jesus Christ and took that punishment on Himself. Not only physical death on the cross but when He died on the cross, He was forsaken by His Father for 3 hours and He took that spiritual punishment too - now I can be free. This is the basis of God's forgiveness and this is why the message of the Christian gospel is so unique because of these two things.

How do we know that God accepted the sacrifice of His Son on the cross? One proof is that after Jesus was buried, on the third day He rose from the dead. That was the proof that God gave to man by raising His Son from the dead that He has accepted that sacrifice. If Christ had not risen from the dead, then we would have no proof that God the Father had accepted that sacrifice. The fact that God raised Him from the dead after three days is the clearest proof that God's accepted His sacrifice. The basis of God's forgiveness is the unique message of the Christian gospel. Two things; one is that Christ died for our sins on the cross and second is that He rose up from the dead after three days. The Christian faith is founded on these two unchangeable facts and in these two areas, Christ is unique. There is no religion in the world where any leader has ever even claimed to die for the sins of the world. There have been many religions and many religious leaders in the world but none of them have ever claimed to be dying for the sins of the world. Secondly, none of them ever rose from the dead. When they died, that was it and they never came out of the grave. Death is man's greatest enemy. No one has ever been able to conquer it. So that is why we believe that this is the true gospel and the good news because of these two very important facts.

The Christian faith is not a religion of do good, be kind, don't harm anybody, don't tell lies. That's not the foundation of the Christian life. The foundation of the Christian life is that Christ died for our sins and He rose again from the dead. A building is got a foundation and the superstructure; we need both to complete a building. The superstructure is the many teachings of Jesus, which maybe other religious leaders also say, like don't harm anybody, do to others as you would want them to do to you, speak the truth, be humble, respect others etc. There are many good things that the Bible teaches but that is in the superstructure; don't confuse the superstructure with the foundation. You can have windows and doors in a superstructure, but you don't have them in the foundation. The foundation is made of something completely different from what you see in the superstructure and that is the mistake that so many people make when they say all religions lead to one God. Is that really true? In which religion did somebody die for my sins and to take away the punishment of my sin? My biggest problem is that I'm guilty before God and how can I get rid of this guilt? In which religion did someone rise from the dead and prove that he was indeed who he claimed to be; God manifest in the flesh? Only Jesus made that claim and proved it. That's why Jesus says in John 14:6, “I am the way; no one comes to the Father but by me.” It's a pretty bold claim but that is the truth. People say that we are narrow-minded when we say something like that. Well, that's not my opinion. If it's my opinion, you can reject it. These are the exact words of Jesus in John 14:6: “I am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the Father but through me.” No one can come to God the Father except through Jesus Christ.

Doesn't that sound very narrow, but it is the truth. The truth is narrow minded. Being broad minded is not necessarily an indication of truthfulness. For example, 2+2 = 4; that's pretty narrow-minded. Somebody may say why can't we be a little more broad-minded and accept 4.1 also. Why not allow a little on the other side also and say 2+2 = 3.9 according to another person? Someone says 2+2 = 3; why not be broad-minded and accept that as well. Somebody else has 2+2 = 100, be broad-minded and accept that is well. Can you imagine the confusion there will be in everything on earth if he began to be broad-minded about even a simple thing like addition? Truth is very narrow-minded; 2+2 is not even 4.00001, it 4. There's no other answer. It's something like that when Jesus said, “I’m the truth, I’m the way, no one comes to the Father but by me.” Why? because no one else died for the sins of the world and no one else was raised from the dead proving thereby that He was who He claimed to be; the Son of God.

This is the basis on which God forgives us. God can be just now, He can be righteous just like my father can be righteous in telling me you don't have to go to jail, just take this check and go and pay your fine. But there is one thing I have to do. It's a gift, I don't have to work to get that check from my dad to pay my fine, I don't have to spend a single day in jail, I don't have to earn one cent of that, but I do need to do one thing. I need to receive what my father gives me. The check that my father gives me, I have to receive it and say thank you. We can say that my father giving me the check to pay my fine is a picture of grace and my stretching my hand to take the check from his hand is a picture of faith. When the Bible says by grace through faith you're saved, this is what it means. In Ephesians 2:8, both these wonderful words are brought together: “By grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works so that no one should boast.”

Our salvation is by grace through faith. “By grace”, is my father giving me the check for me to pay the fine, and “through faith” is me receiving the check from my dad and saying thank you and paying the fine to the law of God and then I'm free. Everything in the Christian life is “by grace, through faith”. It's not just at the beginning of my Christian life. Our entire Christian life, we are to live, “by grace, through faith”. That means God is constantly offering us whatever we need. There’s a verse in 2nd Corinthians 12 which says, “My grace is sufficient for you.” The Lord told this to Paul when he was facing a particular problem and the problem wasn't removed. God could have removed it, but He did not remove it. It was a sickness that Paul, most probably had. He prayed three times that God would heal him, and he was not healed. The greatest apostle in the Christian Church was not healed. He who had even raised the dead, healed the sick and cast out demons was not healed himself. Why did God not heal him? Because Paul was in danger of becoming proud and pride is worse than any sickness you can ever have. If you become proud, God will have to resist you. That's a law; God resists the proud gives grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5-6, James 4:6-7). Paul was in tremendous danger of being proud because he had been used so much by the Lord. Paul had planted churches, raised the dead, cast out demons, written scripture and even been taken up to the third heaven. He had seen and heard unspeakable things and therefore was in great danger of spiritual pride. The best way God could keep him humble was by allowing him to have this sickness permanently till the end of his life.

Paul calls the sickness a gift of God; that's what he says there in 2nd Corinthians 12:7, was given to me means, it was a gift. When he realized the reason why God allowed him to have this thorn in the flesh, this messenger of Satan to harass and trouble him all the time, he was content with it (2 Corinthians 12:10). Paul said, “I am content with weakness, with the way people insult me, with persecutions, with difficulties because these make me weak and, in my weakness, I can experience God’s grace.” My grace is sufficient for you means in every situation in life, every trial you face, every temptation, God will give you enough grace to overcome it. The promise of God is that His check is enough to pay the bill; whatever the amount is. But we need to do something if we are to pay the bill. Our Dad is giving us the check and we have to receive it and say, “Thank you.” That is faith. The Christian life is a series of trials, tests, struggles and in every one of those situations, God says, “My grace is enough for you.” Every day, there is a check to pay the bill for the day. God’s grace is sufficient according to our present need. We're not going to be able to live on this earth without facing needs. God allows us to face numerous needs, but the purpose of them all is to drive us to Himself so that we come to Him and say, “Lord, this is my bill; give me a check. I need some grace for this particular problem.” God never refuses when we acknowledge our need in humility. Only a humble person will acknowledge his need. A proud person says, “I don't need God. I can handle all that myself.” A humble person comes to God and says, “God, I can't handle this this. This bill is too much for me. You got to pay it for me.” Lord says, “Sure; here is a free gift.” I then take it with thanks.

The promises of God in Scripture are meant to give us His grace. So many wonderful promises but none of them will be mine unless I take them. Unless I cash those checks, I won’t receive the grace He intends to give to me. For example, if someone sends you a check and all you do is frame it up and hang it up on the wall, you get nothing. But if you sign your name on the reverse and give it into the bank, you get the entire amount of money. That's exactly how God seeks to deal with us. He offers us His promises but those promises being in the Bible or hanging in our wall don't help us. We’ve got to take those promises to the bank of heaven and say in Jesus name, “I’m cashing this with my Amen.” Then I can receive everything beginning with forgiveness.

Everything is based on Christ having died for us on the cross and through His death, having purchased for us every single spiritual blessing in heaven; there is no curse for us now. Galatians 3:13 says, “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law having become a curse for us.” Why did He become a curse for us? So that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come upon us Gentiles. God blessed Abraham four thousand years ago and promised to bless him and make him a blessing to all the families of the earth. Now it says here that blessing is today for everybody. It's not just for that one man. It's for you, it's for everybody and this is why it says here in Galatians 3:14 that God gives us the Holy Spirit. Through the Holy Spirit, I can receive all of God's blessings. Ephesians 1:3 says, “He's blessed me with every blessing of the Holy Spirit in the heavenly places in Christ.” I can take it all, and through me, those blessings can flow out to others. It all begins with forgiveness. God cleans the cup, fills it up with this blessing that I can pour it out to others. What a wonderful salvation and it's open to all regardless of your religion. We got to humble ourselves and accept the gift from the Lord Jesus Christ and thank Him.

Chapter 7

Two Types Of Sins

We've been looking in these past sessions on some foundational principles that we are trying to learn from the first chapters of the Bible. The Bible is the only book in the entire world that's written by Almighty God through men. Many Christians claim to believe that but if they really believed it, they would study it. They would try to understand what God is saying to them. It's inconsistent for a Christian to say that there is only one book in the whole world inspired by God and then not spend time trying to understand it or study it. God has written the Scriptures in a special way and it's not written like any other book. The Bible says in Proverbs 25:1 that is the glory of God to conceal a matter and it's the glory of Kings to search out the matter. God in His glory has concealed a number of truths and divine revelation within the pages of Scripture and if you are a king in Christ, it is your glory to search them out and find them. There are certain truths that you can find on the surface of the Bible just like there are certain things you can find on the surface of the earth. But the most valuable things on the earth are not found on the surface, they are found deep down in mines like gold, diamonds etc.

It's the same with Scripture. Men sometimes have to dig 10,000 feet into the ground to get some of those treasures out, but people are willing to take the pains to do that to get a diamond or a gold out of there. Why aren't Christian's more eager to dig into God's Word to find out what God is hidden here. It's because there's an inconsistency in their life. They say they believe this is God's Word, but they don't treat it as such. It is not enough to study this book like we study some book on history or chemistry. For understanding this book, what we need is not a clever mind, but a pure heart. That's why Jesus said in Matthew 11:25, “I thank You Father that You have hidden these things from the clever and the intelligent and revealed them to babes.” Is there any book in the world that only babes can understand, and clever people can't understand? Only one and that's the Bible. What do babes have which clever and intelligent people don't have? A pure heart! Clever, intelligent people have a high IQ, but the heart may not be pure. In those words of Jesus, we discover that God's revelations are given to those whose hearts are pure. It is your heart condition that is more important than your head condition when you come to the scriptures.

We’ve been trying to look into the depths of some of these passages of Scripture to try and find these treasures that God has given us. First of all, we saw what God's purpose for man was, the provision He makes for all our needs, Satan's tactics to try and trip man up. We also saw and the fall of man where he began to accuse his wife and his fellowship with God was broken and his fellowship with man was broken. We want to look a little more at Genesis 3 and 4. We see something significant here in Genesis 3; we read that when God came and met Adam and asked him about his sin, Adam did not confess his sin except indirectly blamed his wife and the wife blamed the serpent. We find the word “cursed” coming twice. God's punishment was a curse, but the curse was not upon Adam and Eve. It's very important for us to notice that when Adam and Eve sinned, God did not curse them. God cursed the serpent, and that is the serpent who was possessed by the devil. God was cursing the devil there and the serpent in whom the devil came in (Genesis 3:14).

He says, “cursed are you more than all the cattle and every beast of the field” and the second curse was on the ground” (Genesis 3:17). Now it's very interesting that the Lord said to Adam, “you have listened to the voice of your wife,” which was wrong on Adam’s part. God had made him the head of his wife and instead of being the head of his wife and encouraging his wife to obey God, he allowed his wife who was standing next to him to listen to the devil and obey him. A husband has the responsibility as the head of the home, and as God's appointed representative in the home, to make sure that the devil doesn't take over the house. You shouldn't allow your children or your wife to let the devil run the house. If you're the head of your house, God expects you to fulfill your divine responsibility and ensure that as God's representative in your house, the devil has no place in it. He told Adam that because you've listened to the voice of your wife and you also ate from the tree which I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed. Now strictly speaking, we would think that God would punish him and say “you are cursed because of your sin” but He doesn't say it. God doesn't curse the woman and He doesn't curse the man; He cursed the ground. We see that the devil was cursed and the ground was cursed, but man was not cursed. Man was only told that he would have to work very hard now in future. He will have to perspire, thorns and thistles would come forth in the ground, the animals would become wild and he would not find it easy to get his bread from the ground. The wife would also have painful labor in giving birth (Genesis 3:16). Another thing we see here is that God did not curse at Adam, but He actually give them a promise that He will provide a solution for their failure. That's a wonderful thing we see about God and it's very important for us to know something about God's character Here. The devil comes to condemn us, to discourage us, to make us feel useless, rotten, good-for-nothing but God never speaks to us like that. If you hear a voice in your heart saying you're useless, you're good for nothing, you'll never be able to make it in life and that you are hopeless, you can be 100% sure that, that is not the voice of God, but the voice of the devil. The devil is always interested in discouraging you, scolding you, blaming you, and very often compelling you to act.

God is not like that. You can distinguish the voice of God and the voice of the devil. God doesn't condemn, He convicts. There's a difference between conviction and condemnation. God did not come to Adam tell him he was useless and good for nothing. God told him specifically what his sin was in that he listened to the voice of his wife and ate of the tree that He commanded them not to eat off. God did not stop there, but also provided a solution for this problem. If your little son was doing arithmetic and he did not know how to solve a particular problem, what do you do? If you're a bad father, you'll turn around to your son and say you're good for nothing, you're useless, nothing good will ever come out of you and call him some bad names. But if you're a good father, you won't just ignore his mistake and let it go. You'll show him exactly where he made mistake and show him how to correct the problem. That's the way you distinguish a good father from a bad one. It is also the way you distinguish the voice of God and the voice of the devil. The voice of the devil is always condemnatory, accusatory, blaming us and saying nothing good will come out of us. But when God came to Adam, He told him specifically what he had done wrong and then also He told the serpent that one day his head would be crushed by a seed that came out of the woman. That's referring to Christ (Genesis 3:15). It’s very interesting also to see that God speaks about the solution before He speaks to the woman and the man about their sin. Otherwise, they'd have been so discouraged. Isn't that so wonderful to see that the solution is mentioned first and then God speaks to the woman and convicts her and tells her about how she's going to be punished for her sin and then tells the man how he's going to be punished for his sin. It's very interesting to see God's way; He does not scold us; He doesn't discourage us, and this is a great example for fathers. It's like God coming and saying, “listen Adam and Eve, I've provided a solution for this problem. My Son is going to come and crush the head of this devil, but I have to deal with both of you and this is what you did wrong and therefore you're going to be punished.” God told both Adam and Eve what they did wrong and how they were going to be punished, but neither of them was cursed.

Now when you come to the next chapter, we find Cain, the first child born to Adam and Eve is cursed by God (Genesis 4:11). Do you see the difference? Why didn’t He say those words to Adam and Eve? Why did He say that to Cain? What was Cain’s sin which made it worse than the sin that Adam and Eve committed? It was so much worse that God in one case cursed the ground and the serpent but, in this case, He curses the person himself. It’s very important to see the sin in Genesis 3 and the sin in Genesis 4. We can learn something for ourselves and understand God’s principles by looking at the difference between these two types of sins. Why are we talking so much about sin? Because all the problems that have come in the world are basically due to sin. For example, there are a lot of people preaching today about material financial prosperity. They say a poor man needs material prosperity first and that God will make you prosperous. Then there are a lot of people who speak about physical healing and that is the most important thing a sick person needs. But do you know what the cause of all this financial distress and sickness is? it's ultimately at the root a sin issue. If you merely cut off the fruit and don't deal with the root, you're not going to solve the problem. Maybe you solve two problems of health and poverty but there are 101 other problems that come from this root of sin. That is why the Bible does not begin with telling us how sickness and poverty came into the world but how sin came into the world. Those are the first chapters of the Old Testament and in the first chapter of the New Testament, we find the solution in the first promise in the New Testament.

The angel tells Joseph in Matthew 1:21, “You shall call His name Jesus because He will save His people from their sins.” So, the name Jesus means One who’s come to save us from our sins. Not from poverty and disease first of all, but to deal with the root like John the Baptist said in Matthew 3 that the axe is laid to the root. Jesus didn’t come with a pair of scissors to cut off the problems of poverty and sickness, He come with an axe to deal with the root of the problem which is right down at the bottom of the tree and that is sin. That’s why we need to see the origin of sin because from that root has come all of man’s problems, all the fights and quarrels and divorces and wars and famines and earthquakes and every wretched thing that you can think of on this earth. What is the root cause? Man’s sin, and if that is not dealt with in your life, you can have a temporary solution to certain problems, but end up eternally separated from God. It's true that God blesses us physically, materially but if you only deal with those things and you haven't dealt with the root. It doesn't really solve your problem basically and you can still be blessed in these ways and be eternally separated from God in hell. You can be blessed with prosperity and health and still go to hell but you if you're saved from sin you can never go to hell even if you're poor and even if you're sick. Elijah was sick and died of the sickness that he was sick off (2 Kings 13). The great prophet went to heaven because he had dealt with sin in his life.

And so, we see here two types of sins in Genesis 3 and Genesis 4. We need to try and understand the difference between the two so that we can see why one is more serious than the other. The difference is this; when Eve sinned, she hurt only herself. Her contact with God was gone, her body began to decay, her spirit died, and her soul became dark. When Adam sinned, he also sinned against himself, his spirit died, the mind became dark and his body started to decay and contact with God was gone. That is the Genesis 3 type of sin; sins where you hurt only yourself. For example, you get drunk or you're a drug addict or you smoke cigarettes, or you watch pornographic movies, you hurt yourself. In those acts, you are not hurting anyone else. As a result of those acts, you may go and hurt others but the act itself only hurts you. On the other hand, there are other sins and that's the type we read in Genesis 4 where you hurt somebody else. Cain was jealous of his brother Abel and did something to harm him. These are two types of sins. Let me make it clear once again. The Genesis 3 sin is where you hurt only yourself. Genesis 4 sins are where you hurt other people. It says here that Cain was angry with Abel. God tried to warn him by telling him to be careful because sin was crouching the door of his heart, but he had to master it (Genesis 4:7). Do you know that way back in the beginning as soon as man sinned in Genesis 3, the very next words almost in Genesis 4 from God is you must conquer sin? In the New Testament in Romans 6:14, it says sin shall not be master over you because you're not under law but under grace. That was God's desire described in Genesis 4:7.

Do you know what's God's desire is for you my friend? That you should master sin. That you should conquer it and that's not a New Testament message, it's in Genesis 4:7. You must master it; sin is crouching at your door waiting to possess you like a tiger sitting outside your door. Its desire is to have you, but you must master it. Of course, under the Old Covenant, they could not master it because the Holy Spirit had not come to dwell within man. It is impossible to master sin till the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within man and that happened only on the day of Pentecost. That's when grace came through Jesus Christ that enables us to overcome but the desire to overcome is described by God way back there in Genesis 4:7. Cain didn't listen to the warning. He didn't respond and he got angry and anger was seen on his face. You know man's heart is very often visible on his face. The first question the Lord asks Cain is why are you angry? Why is your face fallen? (Genesis 4:6). Why is your face dark? Why isn't it bright. If your heart is clear, your face will be bright, but something is wrong. You've got a wrong attitude towards your brother and the Lord said be careful because if you don't watch this, it is going to go from bad to worse.

It was already bad because of Cain’s heart attitude towards Abel. It was going to get worse if he didn’t deal with it because sin wants to master him. Cain didn’t listen and went and killed Abel and the Lord asked him again where his brother was. Listen to the way he responded to God. Cain said, “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” He goes and tells a lie to God and God says the voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. When you hurt somebody, that injury is crying out to God. Now we know that blood is not able to speak. If your blood spills on the ground, the blood cannot speak in language that man can hear but the blood can speak in a language that God can hear. That’s what we read here in Genesis 4. We read in verse 10, the Lord says to Cain, “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.” When Cain smashed Abel's head and all his blood spilled on the ground, that blood was crying out to God saying, “God, take vengeance on me. I'm an innocent man. I'm a righteous man and this man has come and hurt me. I never did anything to him, he came and hurt me.” Do you know that when you hurt somebody in some way, whether you spill his blood or not, that injury cries out to God? The injured person may be very merciful and forgive you, but he can only forgive you in the horizontal direction. He can’t forgive that vertical dimension of your sin against God. When you hurt somebody, there are two dimensions to your sin; one is vertical where you sin against Almighty God. Every sin is against God but here, you’ve also sinned against your brother. When Adam sinned, there was only a vertical dimension to that sin. Adam and Eve sinned against God, but Cain’s sin consisted of a vertical dimension against his brother and a horizontal direction against God. That is why a man whom you have hurt in some way may forgive you, but he can only forgive that horizontal dimension. The vertical dimension you still have to answer for by personal repentance.

When Jesus died on the cross, He forgave that horizontal dimension to those who crucified Him saying, “Father, forgive them for they don't know what they do.“ (Luke 23:34) But they still had to answer to God for that vertical dimension and one day they'll be pulled up at the judgment seat of God for what they did to Christ; that part is not dealt with because they didn't repent. So, we see here the Lord cursed Cain. It’s a much more serious thing to commit a sin where you injure somebody else in some way. Now let me ask you a question; if you know a Christian who gets drunk or who's a drug addict, would that shock you more or than a brother who backed bites against another person or tells bad stories about somebody else? Now generally speaking, I found that Christians are more horrified if they heard a brother was a drug addict then if they heard some brothers speaking evil about another behind their back. This is because most believers do that in any case. But which is the Genesis 3 sin, and which is the Genesis 4 sin? If you're a drug addict, you're harming yourself and that's a sin, but it's Genesis 3 type of sin where you hurt only yourself. When you speak evil about somebody else, you are hurting another person and are robbing him of his reputation. You are hurting him just like Cain hurt Abel; that is more serious. Since a lot people haven’t studied the Bible, they don't think of gossiping and backbiting and evil speaking as sin. They don't think of accusation as sin, they don't think of taking people to court as a sin, they don't think of anything that hurts another person as a sin. Believers are tremendously guilty of committing sins where they hurt others. I tell you; the drug addict is a thousand times better than you who backbites and gossips and speak evils of others.

There's a curse on those who harm others and that's the reason a lot of believers don't grow spiritually because they have sinned against somebody else and they keep on doing it. They think murder and adultery are serious against others. Absolutely right but many Christians don't think of evil speaking and hurting other people in that way as a serious thing. So, let's try and understand the seriousness of sins whereby we hurt other people. What is the result? Cain was cursed and he became a wanderer. The Lord told him you are going to be a wanderer; you're going to be a lonely person. Those who live in sin, there's a spiritual loneliness in their life. They're lonely because God is not with them, Godly people are not with them. They may have friends at the same time; there are gangs of murderers who are friends with each other but there will be a loneliness in the sense that God is not with them and godly people are not with them. We also see that Cain's children went astray from God. Just like Cain became a murderer, one of his descendants became a murder and they drifted away from God (Geneses 4:23). So, there are tremendous consequences when this curse of God comes upon a person. So, let's keep this in mind; sins where we harm ourselves are serious but as not as serious as sins that we harm other people. Jesus came to deliver us from both; let's seek for deliverance from both.

Chapter 8

True Repentance

God's grace is sufficient for our every need. God has promised for His children in 1 Corinthians 10:13 that He will never allow us to be tempted or tested beyond our ability to bear but with every trial or temptation, He will make a way to escape so that we can endure it. First of all, why does God allow trial and temptation to come into our life? It's something like our subjecting our physical muscles to resistance to make our muscles strong. All muscles in the human body are strengthened or developed through being subject to resistance. When people lift weights, or when they run or use expandable springs or any such thing, the principle is to subject your muscles to resistance and as a result the muscles become strong. If you don't subject your muscles to resistance, you'll never become strong, you just become fat. Eating food by itself does not make a person strong, it just makes them fat and there's a world of difference between a fat person and a strong person. Now apply this spiritually; getting a lot of Bible knowledge just makes you spiritually fat and fat people are actually weaker than thin people. A lot of people with a lot of Bible knowledge are pretty weak spiritually, they still lose their temper, they still lust with their eyes and commit many other sins despite all their Bible knowledge. Are they strong? Certainly not. They are fat but God allows us to face trial and temptation so that we can become strong and He has promised us that He will never allow us to be tested beyond our ability to bear. That's a wonderful promise. That means if I face a particular trial coming into my life, I need never say to myself, “Oh no, this is too much for me.” Nothing is too much for me. it's within my ability to bear it. if I don't believe that then I'm accusing God of having less sense than an ordinary school teacher and I'll tell you why.

If a student is studying in the fifth standard, the school teacher in this class will not give him and a seventh standard question paper. That school teacher has got wisdom to give that child a fifth standard question paper because that teacher knows that this student is not capable of answering a seventh standard question paper. It’s the same with trial. God will not allow you to face a seventh standard trial if you are in the fifth standard right now. Therefore, when you face a trial, if you say this is too much for me, you're actually accusing God of having less sense than a school teacher. It is the devil who makes you think like that because the moment you think like that you've already failed. You’ve programmed yourself for failure by saying this is too much for me. No trial is too much for you if you're a child of God. God determines what type of question paper you get, and He will only give you something according to the level of your spiritual development in life. Now this is a great comfort for me.

Supposing for example, the devil has got some massive temptation lined up for me to face tomorrow which is too much for me. I'm not strong enough to bear it but the devil's got to get permission from God before he sends that temptation into my life and he asks God, “Can I send this temptation to Zac.” God says, “No, I'm not going to let you do it because he's not strong enough to face it.” Then after a month, the devil says, “Can I send it to him now.” God says, “No, he's still not strong enough.” Maybe after a year, God says to him, “Now you can tempt Zac with that temptation, he's strong enough now. He's developed in the last one year and now he's strong enough to face it.” That's when the temptation will come to me and by the power of the Holy Spirit, I can overcome it. It's like when I get to the 7th standard then I get the 7 standard question paper. I won't get it in the 5th standard; this is a tremendous comfort for me to know because this applies all the way through life right up to the end of my life or till Christ comes again. I will never get a question paper that's too tough. That means every temptation I face can be overcome because none of it will be too strong for me. There are students who got a 100% in mathematics in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th standard because they work hard every year but if you had given him a 7th standard question paper when he was in the 5th standard, he would not have gotten a 100%; he'd have probably got 25% or 30%. It's possible for us to get victory over sin all the time just because of this one promise in 1 Corinthians 10:13, “God will not allow you to be tested beyond your ability.” We must believe that! You can never overcome if you don’t believe that. You can never overcome without that faith. God is faithful to do what He says in 1 Corinthians 10:13. God is faithful, and His promise is faithful not to allow you to be tempted beyond your ability to bear.

The Bible speaks about repentance and faith as the two things necessary for us to receive all that the gospel offers. Jesus preached repentance and faith, Peter preached repentance and faith and the Apostle Paul brings them all together in Acts 20:21 when He's talking to the elders in Ephesus. He says I've been preaching to you for 3 years and what have I preached to you for all these 3 years? I have solemnly testified to everybody that they must repent towards God and have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. These are two things that God has joined together, repentance and faith and the Bible says what God has joined together, no one should separate. Now when you combine two atoms of hydrogen with one atom of oxygen, you get water. When you separate it, it is no longer water. You put one atom of sodium with one atom of chlorine, you get sodium chloride which is common salt. You separate them, it’s not common salt, it is sodium and chloride. Repentance and faith are the only appropriate response to the gospel of Jesus Christ. You separate them, it's no longer the correct response to the gospel of Jesus Christ. It will not produce the result that the gospel is supposed to produce.

Unfortunately, a lot of preaching today emphasizes only faith; It’s like saying we need oxygen in water and neglecting the hydrogen. We need oxygen but we need hydrogen too. You need to have two atoms of hydrogen with one atom of oxygen and then you get water. If you keep on emphasizing oxygen, what you get is oxygen not water. If you keep on emphasizing faith, you're not going to get a correct response to the gospel and people will not experience what the gospel offers, and this is the tragedy in Christendom today. Many people are not experiencing the wonderful blessings and privileges of the gospel because preachers have separated what God has joined together. Repentance is not a very popular message to preach because it's dealing with sin and so people emphasize faith because that sounds more positive. Repentance sounds a bit negative and preachers like to preach something positive, but you need the positive and the negative just like in electricity. You can't have just a positive, you need a positive end and a negative end for the current to flow. You can't have all positive because no current will flow that way. It's the same way with repentance; it is a negative (turning away from sin) and faith is the positive (putting our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ). If you don't have both, you cannot experience the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We can say that a lot of Christians today do not have a proper experience of the gospel, that's why their lives are so unsatisfying. Most Christians will admit if you ask them honestly that they are not satisfied with their Christian experience. And that’s because they've been fed with an incomplete message; they’ve been taught faith without being taught repentance. Repentance is the primary step before you can come to faith. Repentance means turning away from everything other than God to God Himself. One of the clearest definitions of it is found in 1 Thessalonians 9: You turned to God from idols. Notice there you turn to God from idols. What is an idol? The clearest definition of an idol is something that takes the place that God should have in your life. It’s not just an object of wood and stone, those are external idols are more easily identified and it’s much easier to get rid of anything external. It is the idols inside the heart that are more difficult to get rid of. There's a verse in the Old Testament (Ezekiel 14:3) where the Lord told the nation of Israel through one of his prophets about the idols in their hearts. Ezekiel was a prophet to the backslidden Israelites in the land of Babylon. They were sent to Babylon because of their sin and the Lord said to Ezekiel saying, “Listen to me Son of man; these men have set up their idols in their hearts. Should I be consulted by them? Am I going to answer these fellows who got idols in their hearts?” So, you find that an idol is not something that you just have outside of you. He goes on to say in Ezekiel 14:4, “Therefore speak to them and tell them, ‘For any man who sets up his idol in his heart and then comes to the prophet, I the Lord will be brought to give him an answer in view of the multitude of his idols.’”

The Israelites had many idols in their hearts and it's the same with Christians today. Anything that takes the place of God in your life; it could be your business, your house, your girlfriend, it could be a boy, it could be your bank account, stocks and shares etc. Anything that takes a place of God in your life and if you want to find out what is taking the place of God in your life, ask yourself what is it that you think about the most when you have some free time. Now when we go to work, whether it's in an office or a factory or anywhere you have to concentrate on your work out of necessity to earn your living. A student going to school or college is to concentrate on their studies and that is the right thing to do. But when you have finished with your school or college or office work and you are free to think about whatever you like, what do you think about? Most of the time, that is your idol. It could be sports, music etc. Some of these legitimate idols are much more serious than the illegitimate ones because they don't look like idols. So, repentance means turning away from everything that's coming between me and God. We are turning our back on everything that comes between us and God. The word repentance means a change of mind and one of the best ways to describe it is the military about-turn where a person turns around 180 degrees from his old position. My old way of life was following after sin, I turn away from that, put my back to sin and anything that took the place of God in my life and put my front to God. If you haven't done that, your repentance is only partial. You may have turned your back on certain things but not on everything. Then your repentance is partial, and your experience of the gospel will also be partial. For example, if I want to travel from Bangalore to Bombay, I turned my back on Bangalore. If instead of turning a 180 towards Bombay, I turn say 135 degrees, I'll end up in Goa, not in Bombay. A lot of Christians end up where they're not supposed to end up because they didn't turn around from sin 180 degrees. They did turn but not fully. This is the reason why many people don't progress in their Christian life. That repentance is not total, they have not turned from everything they know to be sin in their life.

Let me tell you something more about repentance. Repentance is not something you do once for all when you're beginning your Christian life it's a continuous attitude of turning from every known sin because as we grow in the Christian life, we will discover newer and newer sins which earlier on we did not think were sins. That's been my discovery over the last 30 years. I have been constantly discovering sin in my life. What do I mean by sin? In the Bible there are many definitions of sin. Let me list a couple of them: Sin is lawlessness (1 John 3:4). Violating the command of God or doing something that you know in your conscience is wrong. That's a sin of commission; a sin that you commit. Another type of sin which many people don't think about is the sin of omission. That means something you are supposed to do but you didn't do. That's described in James 4:17, “The one who knows the right thing to do but does not do it, it's sin.” In the story of the Good Samaritan, the Levite and the priests who walk by the beaten man on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho committed a sin of omission. What was their sins? They didn't kick the man, they didn't spit on him, they didn't call him any bad words, they just ignored him and walked on the other side. They sinned the sin of omission. If they had kicked him and called him bad names, that would have been a sin of commission. They did not do what they were supposed to do to the helpless man.

Do you know the number of sins of omission that you have done in your life that you've never even thought of? Normally speaking, we confess only sins that we commit. Lord I did this wrong thing, I did that wrong thing, I did that other wrong thing. Can you think of a time when you have confessed something like this to the Lord,” Lord, I should have helped him, but I didn't do it? I should have spoken a kind word there, but I didn't speak it. Forgive me Lord. I should have prayed there, but I didn't pray. I should have sought some fellowship with you in the scriptures, but I didn't seek it.” There are many sins of omission and when we come into the presence of God, we get light on them. When we get light on these things, we can turn from it. The closer and closer and closer we come to God, the more and more we get light on what is sin and what is not sin. As we discover new areas of sin in our life, we turn from that and then next year, I get light on something more that is sin in my life, and I turn from that. If I'm walking with the Lord, my whole life will be one of repentance. I'm turning and turning from the new things I'm discovering to be sin in my life.

So, what is the clear definition of sin? Here we saw two of them: violating the law and going beyond the line God is drawn. The other is not coming up to the mark and not doing what I should have done. Now let me turn to what is the best definition of sin altogether that I found in the scriptures. In Romans 3:23, it says, “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Sin is coming short of God's glory. That means God's standard is 100% and I come below that for anything and at any time then I'm sinning. What is the definition of the glory of God? In John 1:14, it says that we beheld the glory of God in Jesus Christ, full of grace and truth. The glory of God was seen in the earthly life of Jesus Christ. As I look at the earthly life of Jesus Christ, I see what holiness is. Anything less than that and anything contrary to that spirit is coming short of the glory of God and that is sin. So now we get a very helpful definition of sin: anything un-Christlike in my life is sin. The Holy Spirit will show my un-Christlike areas and attitudes in my life. As He shows me, I see it, and I turn from it. I say, “Lord, I want to be like you.” That is repentance. It’s not reaching the goal. It may take me 10 years to be like Him, but I've begun. I’ve turned around and I say. “Lord Jesus, I want to turn to you.” That's repentance and then our faith becomes useful to join together and we progress in the Christian life.

Chapter 9

Repentance From All Sins

In our last study, we were looking at what repentance really means. It is a turning around, a change of mind concerning sin. Our former attitude toward sin was that we loved it and indulged in it and did it. Now, we've decided to turn from it. We're not saying we have overcome; we're just saying we've changed our attitude towards it. For example, if you have a problem with your anger, the repentance doesn't mean that you'll never get angry again, but it does mean that you don't want to get angry again. It means you don't want to lust with your eyes again. It doesn't mean you’ve got victory. There's a lot of difference between repentance and victory over sin. Repentance is the first step towards victory, but it is not victory. We have to persist in going a certain way. That constant choosing makes us strong. That's why we need to have continuous repentance. In Revelation 2 and 3, the Lord speaks to the elders of seven churches. Now these are the leaders and yet five of those leaders and churches were so much in sin that the Lord told them to take His words seriously and repent. That means to turn from the wrong that He had pointed out to them. There were things in their life that were not glorifying to God. The Lord Jesus pointed it out to them, and they were to turn from it.

The Lord told them to repent and those are messages to Christians. Those are the last messages of Jesus to the church in Revelation. So, what is the last message of Jesus to His church in the book of Revelation? Repent and be an overcomer. That's the first message He preached in Matthew 4 and He began His ministry and it's the last message that He gives to the church in Revelation 2 and 3. Repent and Turn. How is it such an important subject is hardly ever spoken of in the Christian Church today? The message of repentance is missing; we have today another gospel, a gospel without repentance and that's a false gospel. It's a counterfeit gospel which encourages you to believe without repentance. A gospel without repentance is a counterfeit gospel. In fact, some theologians have gone as far as to say that man cannot repent because he's so corrupt that he's not able to repent. Did God make a mistake then in urging people to repent? Did Jesus make a mistake when He told those elders to repent? Did Peter make a mistake when he told the unbelievers in the day of Pentecost to repent? No, he didn’t. Don't you believe all these theologians who will lead you astray from the Bible. Jesus said you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. The truth is that which will set you free from the power of sin. Remember that if something does not set you free from the power of sin, however good it may sound, it’s not the truth of the gospel.

Remember this - that God never asks us to turn away from something that's good for us. God is a good God and everything He wants to give us is for our good. If He asks us to give up something, it's something which is bad for us. Think of an earthly father; what does he tell his children to give up? He'll never tell his children to give up something that's good for them. He’ll never tell them to stop eating good food, He'll never tell them to stop going to school. No, he may tell them to give up their bad friendships and certain bad habits. A good father would never ask his children to give up something which is good for them, only that which is bad. What is God, who's a much better father, going to tell us? He will tell us to turn from things that can harm us, things that can hinder us from developing to our full potential as human beings. If you want to see the full potential to which God wanted a human being to rise up to and live, you see it in the earthly life of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the example of how God wants you and me to live. When we see Christ as our example, we cry out to the Lord to be like Him. We want to turn and follow Him. That is to repent from everything that I discover in my life which is not like that. I want to live by the principles that Jesus lived by and I want to turn from everything that is contrary to the principles of Jesus’ life - that is repentance.

As we walk with the Lord, we get more and more light on what we need to turn away from and as we turn away. We can receive from God — that is faith. Repentance is turning around; faith is receiving from God all that God has for us. That's how we are to begin our Christian life and that's how we are to keep on growing in the Christian life because as I said repentance is something continuous because as long as there is something un-Christlike in you, you need to repent. And we all have to acknowledge that none of us have become perfectly like Christ yet. If that's the case, then we all need to keep on repenting. This is the meaning of 1 John 3:2 in relation to the second coming of Christ. It speaks here about a certain hope that we have. Now for many Christians, if you ask them what the blessed hope is, they would say it is that Christ will come back. But that's not all; that's only a half of it. Notice what it says in 1 John 3:2, “We know that when Christ appears, we shall be like Him.” Notice two things here: He appears, and we shall be like Him. It says in the next verse that this is the hope. There are two parts to this hope: one is that Christ will return, and the second half of that hope is I'll be like Him when He returns. Did you know that? It is ignorance of the truth that prevents us from freedom. The truth is the blessed hope that Christ will come back, and I will be like Him.

Now it says in 1 John 3:3, if this is the hope you really have then you will purify yourself just as Jesus is pure. In other words, you'll purify yourself until you reach the standard of His holiness. We saw in our last study that the clearest definition of sin is anything un-Christlike that you can see in your life. God only asks us to deal with conscious sin. I told you that repentance is something to be continuous in our life. Let me illustrate this: 90% of our inner life, we cannot see. We have wrong attitudes which we are ignorant of. We have things in our life which are against God's will, but we are ignorant of all those things, so we can label as unconscious sin. 90% of our life, we don't see. What we see is only 10% and, in that area, when we sin, we can say that is conscious sin. The rest of the 90%, we do it unconsciously. When the Bible speaks about victory over sin, it is only in that 10% area where we have light. It is impossible to get victory over unconscious sin until it becomes conscious. How can I overcome something which I don't even know is wrong in my life? I cannot, so we need to distinguish between these two things; conscious sin and unconscious sin. This is also why it's so wrong to judge other people. If you know only 10% of your own life, how much do you think you know about other people whom you see once in a while? Probably less than 1%! Do you see the foolishness there of knowing 1% of a person's life and passing a judgement on him? That would be something like a judge being given a hundred pages of documents on a very important case and he reads the just the first page and passes a judgement. Such a judge should be thrown out from the bench and yet that's what many Christians are doing. You don't know more than 1% of anybody's life. Have you judged people? Well, you've judged people whose life you know 1%. You've just seen the first of a hundred pages of his life and you pass the judgement. That shows what an evil wicked person you are. So, it's best to stop judging other people but there's one person about whom you know at least 10% and that's yourself so you can start with judging yourself. 1 Peter 4:17 implies that when you judge yourself, that is the proof that you are a part of God's house. It says there, “Judgment must begin at the household of God and if it begins with us first, what's going to be the condition of those who do not obey the gospel.” (1 Peter 4:17).

To use an illustration, if you put a cube of ice in a glass of orange juice, you can see only 10% of that piece of ice which is the part that is above the surface. 90% of that cube of ice is below the surface. Now if you take a knife and you slice off that top 10% of that cube of ice and throw it away, what will happen to the cube of ice? A little bit of the 90% underneath will come up. 10% of that 90% will come up above the surface. Now you take a knife and slice that also, some more will come up. That is how God gives us light on areas of our life that are initially hidden. If I deal with the areas of my life that I know are wrong, then God will give me life on the areas of my life where I don't have any understanding of what is Christlike. That is spiritual growth. It is this cube of ice getting smaller and smaller and smaller. Nobody has ever got rid of the cube of ice fully on this earth. Nobody's ever become completely Christlike on this earth; not even the Apostle Paul. But I'm sure the cube of ice in his life had become pretty thin as he had responded to whatever light God gave him. In Acts 24:16, he says, “I do my best to keep my conscience absolutely clear with God and with man.” It was one of the great secrets of his life. As he got light on some new area, he repented of it and sought cleansing. Constant repentance is the way of spiritual growth.

The other thing I want to say about repentance is that repentance should primarily deal with inward sin. One big difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament is this- the Old Testament emphasized everything external whereas the New Testament emphasizes everything internal. For example, in the Old Testament, the sacrifices were external on the altar. In the New Testament, the sacrifices are internal or inward. In the Old Testament, the temple was outside in Jerusalem. In the New Testament, the temple is inside; God lives in our body. Our body is the temple of God (1 Cor 6:19). In the Old Testament, the ten commandments dealt primarily with sin which was on the outside. In the New Testament, Jesus spoke about the sin which is on the inside (Matthew 5 and 6). That's one of the big differences between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. In the Old Covenant, they were holy on the outside. In the New Covenant, God wants us to be holy on the inside. Out of the Ten Commandments in the Old Covenant, nine of them dealt with the outside. It's all listed in Exodus 20:

1. We are not to have any other gods.

2. We're not to make idols

3. We are not to take the Lord's name in vain.

4. We'll keep the Sabbath day holy

5. Honor your father and mother

6. Don't murder

7. Don't commit adultery

8. Don't steal

9. Don’t bear false witness against your neighbor.

10. You shall not desire your neighbor’s wife.

The 9th commandment doesn't say don't tell a lie. There's no commandment in the Old Testament like that, it was too high a standard. Their standard was not to tell a lie under oath in court and bear false witness against their neighbor. A lie is a sin, but they couldn't get victory over it in the Old Covenant. It's a sad thing that many Christians don’t get victory over it.

Notice all these nine commandments were relating to the external life but when it came to the tenth one, it was internal. God put one commandment right at the end to test how many people would be sincere and honest. That commandment said you shall not desire your neighbor's wife. It is not talking about grabbing your neighbor's wife. No, you're not touching her, you're just sitting in your home and thinking about her and desiring something that belongs to your neighbor that's not yours. It could be your neighbor's wife, it could be a neighbor's house, it could be your neighbor's daughter. Every woman on this earth is either your neighbor's wife or your neighbor's daughter. The Bible says you're not to lust after a woman that's not your wife. Here is the command which no man could keep: You shall not lust. Nobody could keep it. The Apostle Paul in one place says according to the righteousness in the law, I was blameless ( Philippians 3 ) but the same man says in (Romans 7) that when it came to the last commandment saying, “thou shalt not covet or thou shalt not lust”, I found all types of lusting and coveting in my heart. He was just being honest. That's the difference between Paul and many Christians. Paul was absolutely honest. He said, “I found all types of coveting in my heart and I couldn't overcome it.” (Romans 7:8). He cried out, ‘Oh wretched man that I am’” (Romans 7:24).

Why did God put that tenth commandment there which He knew that nobody could keep? Because He wanted to see whether people would be proud like the Pharisee after they had kept only nine commandments and say, “Lord, I thank you I'm not like other men” or whether they'd be humble like Paul and say, “Lord, I just am NOT able to keep this tenth Commandment. I’m lusting and coveting and lusting and coveting all the time. Oh, wretched man that I am. Who shall set me free.” It's quite a different spirit from the spirit of the Pharisee, and these are the ones whom God sees crying out in defeat of the tenth commandment, whom the Lord will lead into something higher, which is the New Covenant - a life of victory over sin. So that's the reason why the tenth commandment was kept there. Remember when the Lord spoke to the rich young ruler, He told him only about the commandments up to the ninth commandment. He never told him the tenth one. The first four commandments in The Ten Commandments dealt with God. The remaining six dealt with man. Jesus took the ones dealing with man and just listed five of them: don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't bear false witness and honor your father and mother (Mark 10:19). The ruler said, “I’ve kept all of these” and then the Lord spoke about the tenth one. He told the rich young ruler to go and sell everything that he had. Give it to the poor and then come and follow me. Then we discovered that he didn't want to keep the tenth commandment.

So, the Lord kept the tenth commandment there to test people's sincerity and honesty. Paul was sincere and honest and admitted that he couldn’t keep it. Paul cried out, “Wretched man that I am. Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through the Lord Jesus.” He goes on to describe in Romans 8 how the law of the spirit of life set him free from the law of sin and death. So as Paul got light, he repented. As he discovered some new area of lust in his heart, he confessed it to God and cried out for deliverance from that sin. Wherever God sees a person sincerely acknowledging a sin and taking it seriously and wanting to be free from it, crying out to God for grace to be protected, he gets victory. Such a person gets the power of the Holy Spirit to be an overcomer. True repentance leads to an overcoming life. It says about Jesus in Hebrews 4:15 that He who never sinned was still tempted as we are in every point. How did He overcome sin? He is an example for us. Hebrews 5:7 says, He cried out with loud cries and tears and prayed to the Father to save Him from death which is to save Him from spiritual death and sin, and He was heard. His prayers were heard because of His godly fear. That is the way for us too. Jesus never sinned because He was so serious about fighting temptation and praying with loud crying in tears. If we pray in the same way and cry out to God, we will experience the same victory that He experienced. If you are defeated, it's because we haven't taken sin seriously. May God help us all.

Chapter 10

God’s Two-Fold Provision

We’ve been looking at the principles that are taught in the early chapters of the Bible concerning God's purpose for man and how God wants man to respond to Him. We saw how sin originated, the basis on which God forgives us our sin — through the death of Christ on the cross our guilt is removed. Unfortunately for many Christians that is all that they know— that their guilt has been taken away by Christ's death on the cross. Removal of guilt is like the cleaning of a cup. Now in your dining table when you clean a cup and put it there, it's not meant to be a decoration. You clean the cup in order to fill it with something to drink. So why does God cleanse our heart? It's not just to keep it clean. No, our heart is like a vessel that needs to be filled or like a channel through which when it is clean, God can pass on the water of life to other people. So that is why God's provision for our salvation not only deals with the guilt of our past but also the future. There's grace sufficient for our need in the past and there's grace sufficient for us to be able to bless other people in the future as well. Our problem is basically twofold. One, we have this guilt of many years and years in which we have lived in sin and then even if God forgives us, we have another problem of a nature that we have inherited from our parents all the way from Adam which keeps on producing sin. How are we supposed to deal with that?

If the gospel which is the good news of Christ only deals with problem number one and does not deal with problem number two, it's not really good news at all. It would be partial good news but it's not fully good news. I've heard the story that in a certain lunatic asylum when they want to find out if a person has come to his senses, they give him a very simple test. They send him into a room with a bucket and a mop and in that room. The tap is open and the water is flowing in the room. They then asked him to mop the room and make it dry. Now if he starts using the mop to wipe the floor dry without closing the tap, then they know he has not come to his senses yet because a man who's got some sense will close the tap and then mop the floor. Otherwise, he'll never finish because the more he mops the floor, the more water is flowing from the tap.

Now this is the experience of many Christians. They sin, they ask Christ to cleanse them from their sin, but sin is continuously flowing from their lives. They sin some more, and this tap is constantly putting out sin and there they are in an endless job of trying to mop it all up confessing it and asking the Lord to forgive them and cleanse them again. And they go through this endless cycle of committing the same old sins and not overcoming. This is not good news at all. God has not given us only this one part of the good news. This second part of the good news is what the devil has hidden from the minds of many Christians. The Bible says we have forgiveness of sins through the riches of His grace. That's the first thing that the grace of God does for us.

We read in Ephesians 1:7 that we have forgiveness of our sins according to the riches of God's grace. But there's something more that the grace of God does for us. In Romans 6:14, it says now that you have come under grace, sin which ruled your life till now will not rule your life any more. So, my second problem is also dealt with by the grace of God. Now in the Old Testament when people did not have grace, they could not experience this until Christ came. We read in John 1:17 that Moses only brought the law, but Jesus Christ came with grace. Grace is God's supernatural power that deals with the guilt of our past and enables us to overcome this sinful nature that we are all born with. This is God's double provision for our double problem. What does He expect from us? To receive His grace! When someone gives us a gift, we have to accept it and take it. If your father gave you a check to pay your fine in the court and you don't receive it, you're not going to be free. You have to receive it. God gives us something, we have to receive it. He gives us forgiveness; we say thank you Lord and we take it. He gives us power and we have to receive it in the same way. Forgiveness and power are the two gifts that God gives us.

On the day of Pentecost when Peter was preaching the first gospel sermon, he preached about Christ lifted up and a lot of people who are convicted in their heart (Acts 2:37) .They said to Peter and the others, “Brethren, what shall we do” and Peter said, “repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ and you will receive two gifts: forgiveness of your sins and a gift of the Holy Spirit.” One is pardon and the other is power. We need both If you have to live the Christian life the way God wants us to live it. Not just pardon and not just power because you can’t get power before you get pardon. Let's just think of that for a moment. When I come to Christ and I acknowledge my sin and that's all God asks me to do. Acknowledge your sin. Only acknowledge your sin, that's all. You can't do anything about it. Christ has already paid for it. When I acknowledge my sin, God not only cleanses me but does something else that’s wonderful. There is something wonderful in the way God deals with our past; there is a word in the New Testament called justification. A lot of Christians haven't understood the meaning of that.

When the Bible says in Romans 3:24 that God justifies us, we are justified as a gift by His grace. The grace of God forgives us as we saw that in Ephesians 1 and we are justified by His grace. Now justification is more than forgiveness. Forgiveness means God looks at all the wrong things I have done and in His great mercy, He doesn’t hold it against me. That itself is wonderful. I'm extremely happy that I'm forgiven, though I've got to hang my head in shame because I'm a forgiven criminal. Justification is even more than. When God forgives me, it means He has blotted out your past. Hebrews 8:12 says, “I will not remember your sins anymore.” They're all gone, and from now on God is going to look at us as though we have never committed a sin in our whole life. Think of that for a second. Almighty God, the pure holy God in whose presence angels tremble and they're afraid says He will look at me as though I've never committed a sin in my whole life. That's absolutely exciting that I can stand before a holy God just as if I'd never sinned in my whole life.

Can you imagine if you had actually never sinned in your whole life? How you would feel? Wouldn't you have a tremendous boldness to stand before God? Wouldn't you have a tremendous boldness to confront Satan and say, “Satan, you can't touch me. I’ve never sinned in my whole life there is no sin there's no spot in me.” It would give us tremendous boldness. We feel so inferior and insecure and weak because of the memory of sin in the past. All of us feel insecure and weak and guilty because of the memory of many things that we have done in the past which we know are wrong. It robs us of our boldness when we even try to share the gospel with others until we know the truth of being justified freely by His grace. Romans 3:24 which means God looks at me as though I had never sinned in my life. Romans 5:9 says it's because I'm justified by the blood of Jesus Christ. The blood that Jesus shed on the cross is a complete atonement to God for all my sin so if I were to use a picture language, that blood cleanses out my entire past life so thoroughly that when I look back there's nothing there; it's a pure life.

So justification means God says, “This guy is not a criminal, he's a righteous man.” Forgiveness means “This guy's a criminal but I've forgiven him.” Now which would you prefer? To be known as a criminal but you've been forgiven or to be known as a righteous man who's not a criminal at all. We would all prefer the later that is what justification does. Let me repeat again. Forgiveness means God looks at me and says you're a criminal, but you're forgiven completely. Justification means God declares me righteous and say this person is not a criminal; he is a righteous man. Think of the difference that makes in my attitude that Almighty God now doesn't call me a forgiven criminal, He calls me a righteous man and says this person has never sinned in his whole life. That is the mighty power of the blood of Jesus Christ cleansing my past. There's no virtue in saying, “Oh Lord but I'm such a sinner.” To keep saying that you're a sinner when God has blotted it all out through the blood of Christ is to insult God. That's not humility, that's unbelief.

When God says something, if I say the same thing as God says, then that's faith. But if I don't say the same thing that God says then that’s unbelief, not humility. When God declares you righteous and you say no, I’m such an unrighteous person; that's not humility, that's insulting God and I'm not going to do it. Personally, I’m just going to accept the fact that God has declared me to be righteous. He's dealt with my past completely; so thoroughly that He's not only forgiven me, He’s justified me. Now if you believe that and you accept these truths mentioned in Romans 3:24 and Romans 5:9, you will feel so confident when you stand before your Father. You won't always feel that God looks at you as though He’s angry with you. You won’t feel as though you are never good enough for Him and He won't accept you as you are. When you feel that way, the result is you don't accept other people as they are also. Many husbands find fault with their wives. Many wives find fault with their husbands. It's all because they have not understood what it means to be justified freely. When God declares me as though I've never sinned in my life, it becomes very easy for me to look at other people and be merciful to them for all their faults. The lack of mercy that's found in many a Christian is because they themselves have not understood what it is to be justified freely by God's grace. If you don't believe it, start trusting God for these promises. Take by faith what God is offering as a gift. Justification is as a gift, but it'll never be yours till you receive it (Romans 3:24).

We are justified by faith; through faith; through the blood of Christ, (Romans 5:1) and by grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:24). What God gives by grace, I need to take by faith and accept that I'm declared righteous. I’m standing before God as if I've never sinned in my life and I can face the devil and say he has got no power over me. God looks at me as one who has never sinned my whole life; God delights in me. That is the tremendous power of the blood of Christ having taken care of my past. I need to emphasize this because this is the problem with so many believers; they never seem to get rid of the guilt of the past. The devil keeps on harassing them because they don't understand justification. If it’s not a clearly laid foundation in your life and you start trying to build your Christian life, your house is going to shake and one day it'll collapse. Nobody taught me this clearly when I got converted. I wish somebody had taught me. The result was my Christian life was shaky till I went to God's Word and found these things out for myself. God has declared me righteous and I am free from the guilt of the past. I don't have to remember any of the thousands of things I did wrong in my past life, and you don't have to either. There I laid a foundation and when that foundation was laid, I could start building my Christian life. In construction, we start building after we have laid the foundation. We don't build before the foundation is complete and if you have not got the foundation of justification clear in your life and you try to build your Christian life, you will collapse. That's the reason why you tend to fall down. So once the foundation is laid, we can go to the next step. The next step is our second problem which is the lack of power to overcome this nature of ours and for that God gives us the mighty power of His Holy Spirit.

In the Old Testament, people could not receive the Holy Spirit to live inside them. Why? Because their hearts were not clean, and the Holy Spirit can never come and live in an unclean heart. He could come upon people and equip them to do certain jobs for Him like Samson. He could give Samson power to kill hundreds of Philistines single-handedly, He could give people power to preach, power to heal the sick and power to do a lot of external things. Many Old Testament prophets and others had power, but He could not live inside and make a person pure till Jesus Christ came and died for the sins of the world. That provided the means by which a man's heart could be pure then the Holy Spirit could come and live inside. That's the significance of the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out. That could not happen before Christ died on the cross. Calvary had to precede Pentecost. So, when Christ died on the cross, that made provision for my sins to be cleansed and my heart could be clean. Now the Holy Spirit can come and dwell there and give me this power to live the Christian life the way it should be lived. Now you know many of us who are sincere Christians may have tried and tried to overcome sin in our life. Trying to overcome sin is like a big struggle. We try and try and then for some time we are victorious and then we give up. It's too much of a problem. Imagine if you had not known anything about electricity and you see a ceiling fan and they tell you that when this fan rotates, you can get some breeze and it can make the room cool. So, you tie a rope to that one of the blades of that fan and you keep turning it and turning it and you get some breeze but how long can you go on like that? You get tired after some time and you give up. This is the experience of many Christians; they try and try to live this Christian life and they have to admit they failed.

This is what it means to live under the law. Under the law, it was turning the fan on your own and struggling. After some time, you'd give up because you're just tired and exhausted but then somebody sees you and says, “Hey, that's not the way the fan is supposed to run. Put on the switch and let the electricity flow.” When the electricity flows, you don't need a rope; the power comes in to the fan and it goes around, and you never get tired. It can run for a long time by the flow of electricity. Until electricity was discovered, people couldn't have fans running like that. When you don't understand grace, you cannot experience this power. You're trying to live the Christian life like a man tying a rope to the blade and you naturally get tired. Soon enough, you give up and you keep doing those sinful things which you're not supposed to do. But once you understand that God's way is to give you the power of His Holy Spirit, it's exactly like electricity and you suddenly get a power.

Let’s take another illustration. A bulb can never burn by itself. It has the capacity to give light, but it can’t give light till electricity comes in. That's a picture of man; man has got the capacity like a bulb to reflect the image of God, but he doesn't have the power. When the Holy Spirit comes in, it's exactly like electricity coming into a light and it burns. How much effort does a light bulb need to have in order to burn? If it just submits to the electricity coming in, it burns effortlessly. Christian life is something like that; you allow the Holy Spirit to come and fill you to give you grace, and it solves this problem of your other nature seeking to drag you down into sin. So, this is God's dual provision for our dual problem for our past failure; forgiveness and justification.

For our evil nature which the Bible calls the flesh, the corrupt nature that we have inherited from Adam, God has given us the power of His Holy Spirit to fight against the flesh. There is one difference between the bulb and us. The bulb doesn't have a choice of its own; it's just a lifeless object. It’s a lifeless thing that electricity goes in and it just submits there and the light burns, but in our case, we have to make a choice. If we don't make a choice, we're not going to be able to have this flow continuously. That's why we need to make a choice every day. Lord, I want this power to flow into me. It could be in different situations where I have to make a choice. Yes, I want God's power to flow into me to overcome this problem. Do you find it difficult, for example because of your corrupt nature to forgive somebody who hurt you? That's a big problem for many Christians; they find it very difficult to forgive others. It’s exactly like you're finding it difficult to keep turning that fan with your hand. Naturally you find it difficult, but if God can give you the electric power to run that fan, would you be willing to receive that? If God is willing to give you the supernatural love for a man who hurt you, are you willing to receive it to forgive that person? If you're willing for that, you can receive. Everything depends on your willingness. Do you want to be forgiven of your past? God's willing to forgive you. Do you want power to overcome this corrupt nature that you got from Adam? God's willing to give it to you. You must be willing to receive. All you have to say is, “Lord, forgive me my sin and please fill me with your Holy Spirit. I want to live a life that pleases you.” That is how God makes a provision for man's dual problem.

Chapter 11

God Is A God Of Love

We have been looking at certain foundational principles in God's relationship with man. We must remember that the Bible teaches that God is perfect love. We cannot even understand on earth what that type of love means. It's way beyond the highest expression of love that this world can think of. When God wants to compare his love for man with a human illustration in Isaiah 49:15, He compares it with the love of a mother for a newborn child. There are a lot of things that we call love on earth. For example, the love between boy and a girl has influenced our thinking. A lot our thinking is influenced by what we have read in romantic stories or by the cinema but that is not the greatest expression of love on the face of the earth. A boy or a girl will not be willing to sacrifice for each other what a mother is willing to sacrifice for her newborn child. When God speaks about His love, He speaks about His love as the love of a mother for a newborn child, especially when it is first born. A mother's love for that baby is intense even though the mother knows that this baby is going to be very demanding in terms of time and she will have to make a lot of sacrifices for the baby. She's still willing to do it and that is only a small picture of the tremendous love that God has for man. If we don't understand this, we will get a wrong concept of God and a wrong concept of the true Christian faith.

Almost all religions in the world proclaim a God who is like a strict judge. Many people think of God as a severe judge or a policeman who's out to catch them for some wrong thing that they did. But the true revelation of God in the Bible, and particularly that which came through Jesus Christ when He came to this earth, is one of a God who loves us intensely. Jesus constantly tried to explain to His disciples that God was a Father, one who cared for His children, much more than the best earthly father cared for his child. Jesus used this expression in Matthew 7, “If you, being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask Him.” Jesus said that the best earthly father was evil compared to God. That's the meaning of that statement in Matthew 7. You, being evil means, the best earthly father you can think of compared to God, is evil. It doesn't mean that that a father is evil, but in comparison to God, he is. It's something like the light of the star compared to the light of the sun is almost like darkness. That's why when the sun rises in the sky, the stars disappear. They don't disappear really, the lights are there but the light of the sun is so bright, it blots out the light of the stars and it almost becomes like darkness. That's what Jesus meant when He said that the best earthly father's love would disappear and become darkness compared to the love of God. This is foundational to our coming into any relationship with God. Many Christians because they don't have this clear understanding of God's love in their heart, end up with insecurity, fear, sense of guilt, a feeling that God is always telling them you're not good enough and this leads to relationship problems with others in families and with other Christians and others in the world. The root cause of all these problems is a lack of understanding of what the New Testament reveals so clearly that God loves us intensely. Everything that God has planned for us and everything that God teaches in His word must be understood in the light of His love. Otherwise, we'll get it all wrong when He tells us to give up sin. It's because He loves us. It is just like a father would tell his children not to go to certain places that are dangerous, not to indulge in certain activities that are harmful, not to associate with certain people who would cause problems for them. But if a child doesn't trust his father, which is very often the case with a lot of teenagers, then they go and do those things that their parents have forbidden them from doing and reap the consequences. They get into a lot of problems and that's what we see in the human race as well.

Men all over the world disobey God's Word and His commandments thinking they know better. That's the cause of all the problems there are in the world. So, when God tells us to turn in repentance, it is for our good. When He tells us to trust Him that He will lead us in the path that is best for us, that's for our good. Faith means a dependence upon God and a confidence in Him. I’m saying to God, “Lord, I trust you completely. I can depend on you 100%. I have confidence in you.” Faith is also a leaning upon God for strength and power to live this Christian life. We could describe faith like this: the leaning of the human personality upon God in total confidence in His almighty power, His perfect wisdom and His perfect love for us. That is what faith is. It is confidence in Him, and leaning upon Him, just like Jesus said of a branch abiding in a tree. A branch abides in a tree and as a result of that abiding, the sap of the tree flows into the branch and produces fruit.

This is the only way in which God expects us to do good or anything. There are a lot of things that God asks us to do which we may not have the strength to do. For example, the Bible says that we must forgive everybody. Now there may be someone who's done you such tremendous harm beyond what I can think of that you find it very difficult to forgive him. Well what does God expect you to do then? You don't have to struggle and struggle to try and forgive him. You need to go to God and say, “God, just like the branch cannot produce fruit except it abides in the tree, I find myself unable to forgive this person even though I want to but if I abide in you just like the sap flows into the branch, the power of your Holy Spirit can flow into me. The same Spirit that was in Jesus Christ when He hung upon the cross and forgave people who did the worst possible thing that any man could do to another person. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing.” He said it from His heart. He loved them. This same Spirit, when it flows into my heart is going to produce exactly the same attitude. So true Christianity is not trying to live up to a certain standard. The Bible says that in the Old Testament period when God was dealing with the nation of Israel, He gave them Ten Commandments and certain laws.

That entire period of fifteen hundred years described in the Old Testament is called a period of the law. During that period, this supply of power to obey God's commandments was not given. Man was left to fend for himself. He had to do God's commandments with his own ability, and he could keep these external commandments like not worshipping idols, honoring father and mother, keeping the Sabbath, not murdering, not committing adultery etc. Some of these things man was capable of keeping even without any supernatural power. There are many people in the world who are atheists and are very upright in all these matters of external morality but when it came to the inner life, they are unable to keep it. The last commandment was you shall not lust. When it came to that commandment, Paul says in Romans 7 that he just couldn't keep it. He could keep all the other nine, but he couldn't keep this one. The purpose with which God gave the law was to teach man over a period of 1,500 years that you can never keep my commandments up to my standards with your own ability. You'll be able to keep them externally and live a good moral life, but I require truth in the inward parts. There is a lovely verse in Psalm 51 where David says, “Lord, you require truth in the innermost being.” God is not interested in our merely having a moral life. If you show love to a person on the outside and you hate him in your heart, that doesn't measure up to God's standards.

God wants your love to flow from within and this was just not possible in the Old Testament because man did not have the power. One of the things that came as a result of Christ's death and resurrection was that when He went up to heaven after His resurrection, He sent the Holy Spirit to the earth to come and live within us to give us this power so that we can live according to the standards of God. That is why in this New Testament period from Acts 2 from the day of Pentecost onwards, Christians now have the power if they will open themselves up to that power to be able to keep all of God's commandments from within which was impossible even for the greatest men in Old Testament times. Once when Jesus was talking about John the Baptist to his own disciples, He said in Matthew 11:11 that the greatest man ever born of women thus far (from the time of Adam to Christ) was John the Baptist. And He also added that the least person in this new kingdom of the kingdom of heaven is going to be greater than even John the Baptist. In other words, now a new era is beginning in which man will be able to rise much higher than the greatest men in the Old Covenant (the entire period from Adam to Christ). We need to recognize this. That we have the potential and the ability and the resources to rise higher than any who lived prior to Christ's coming to earth. This is unique. This is what the Bible calls a New Covenant.

Now a lot of Christians don't know about this because the devil has blinded their eyes and so a lot of Christians lived just according to the standards of the Old Covenant. In fact, they live even lower than the level of Old Covenant people. Think of some of the godly men who lived in Old Testament times like Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist and all these people. Can you say that Christians live at a higher standard than them? No, because they have not understood what the New Covenant can lead them into. God does not only give us forgiveness for our sins as we considered earlier. He also gives us strength to overcome sin in our life. Strength to do every single thing that He commanded. God is on our side against our passions which are sinful, against the lusts in our flesh, against the devil, against everything that will prevent us from becoming the type of person He wants us to become. God has got a plan for your life. He wants to make you like His Son Jesus Christ in your character and it is to fulfill that purpose in your life that He has sent the Holy Spirit. But like we considered in an earlier study, God doesn't force anyone into anything. He will do in your life and my life only up to the measure that we yield to Him. You know if you can think of your heart like a huge hotel building with many floors and a thousand rooms in it. You're looking at this building from a distance at night and you see light in one room. You can say there is light in that hotel but it's only in one room. Many people when they receive Christ into their life it's like that, they've allowed Him to occupy one room in their life. Think of every one of those hotel rooms are lit up with light then you can say the whole hotel is full of light otherwise if it's only one room that's lit up. You can say that there is light in that hotel but it's only in one room, so this is the difference between just receiving Christ into your life to forgive your sins and allowing Him to fill you with His Holy Spirit.

When you receive Christ into your life, ask Him to forgive your sins, you can say that Christ is there, the light of the world is dwelling in you. What you're saying is right, but you're not filled with light, you're not filled with the Holy Spirit. For that, you have to open up every door of every room for Him to occupy, then He will fill the whole being, your whole inner personality with His Holy Spirit and you will be what the Bible refers to in Acts of the Apostles about certain people full of the Spirit. You may have read that expression when you go through the Acts of the Apostles; certain men were full of the Spirit. This is what it means - there are people who out of gratitude surrendered to the Lord every area of their life and the result was the Holy Spirit filled every area that they surrendered to Him. The Holy Spirit will not enter an area of your life which you don't surrender to Him and you will continue to have problems in your life in every area that's un-surrendered. Every area that you don't surrender to the Holy Spirit; to Jesus Christ, will be an area of darkness, and that will be an area of your life over which the devil will have some power. It's much better to yield it all to Christ; your finances, your business, your house, your family, your children, everything. He can take much better care of all these things than you can. Why is it then most Christians don't surrender everything; though they do open up one room in their heart to Christ?

It's because they feel that God is a spoilsport. They feel that God will not allow them to enjoy life. That God will make life miserable for them or that God will expect them to do certain things which they may not want to do; which are not good for them. That's why I said right at the beginning, we need to be very clear in our understanding that God is a God of perfect love. He will never ask us to do anything which is not for our very best. Not just for our good but for our very best. In fact, the Bible says that God makes everything around us work together in order to accomplish the very best for us. It says in Romans 8:28 that God works all things for our very best to those who love God and who are called according to His purpose. That is externally in our circumstances, inwardly He works in us through the Holy Spirit to do the very best for us within. So here we have a wonderful situation where the Holy Spirit is working within us to do what is the very best for us and working outside of us also; God the Father is working through His sovereignty; working everything for our very best. A Christian is a very blessed person. There is no situation in his life, if he has surrendered everything to God, where he needs ever worry that things won't work out as God has planned. God may take his children through some difficult path. Sure, don't we want our children to become tough and strong? We don't want our children to have an easy way through life because they won't be fit to face the world. God also allows His children to go through difficult paths, but it's all planned in love. Once we understand that, we will not hesitate to surrender everything to Christ. Now we hear a lot of preachers telling Christians to surrender everything to Christ and a lot of Christians hear that and agree with it. They nod and say that's right, but they don't surrender all because they're not so sure whether it's going to work out for the very best if they surrender everything to Christ. That's why it's very important for us to be gripped by what Jesus tried to emphasize to his disciples that their heavenly Father was interested in the very best for them. He used so many illustrations to explain this great truth. He said they never need have any fear because the Father who feeds the birds would feed them. The one who clothes the grass of the field would clothe them and take care of all their needs. There's a wonderful promise in Philippians 4:19 which says my God will supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. That means God doesn't give us everything we want. Thank God He doesn't do that. His love is the love of a father who desires the very best for his children and a good father will not give his children everything they want but he will give us children everything they need and that is how God is.

The promise in Philippians 4:19 is God will supply all your need. Think of that. The pictures that we've considered of God is a very compassionate mother and a very loving father. A combination of both as a parent interested in the very best for their child. A true child of God, one who surrendered everything to Christ is the most blessed man on the face of the earth. And it is this blessedness that the devil wants to deprive you of by warning you and telling you not to surrender this part of your life or not to surrender that part of your life, and that's the part of your life which is going to be under the control of Satan. That’s the area where he's going to have power and that's the area of your life that's going to cause problems for you forever. So isn't it wonderful to be able to give all like it says in Romans 12:1. I beseech you brethren, Paul says in view of all the mercies of God, present your bodies a living sacrifice to God which is your reasonable service (spiritual service) of worship. It means the least that you can do to express your gratitude to God for all that He has done for you is to surrender your body to him and say, “Lord, I want you to fulfill your plan in this body.” Proverbs 3:6 says in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths. That means in every single area of my life, if I say Lord, I want to acknowledge you. You are going to be Lord of my life in every single area. I want you to guide me and lead me, then He will ensure that everything works out for the very best, in every single area of your life. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.

Chapter 12

The Power Of God’s Word

We want to look at the importance of the word of God in our Christian life. Right from the very first chapter of the Bible, you find the importance of God's word. The Bible is essentially God’s word detailing His purpose for man. In the very first chapter, we read of God speaking many words and the spoken words of God immediately bearing fruit. When He said, “Let there be light”, there was light immediately (Genesis 1:3). When God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters below from the waters above”, it came about that the heavens were created (Genesis 1:6-7). When He said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear”, it was so (Genesis 1:9). Like that you find this earth that had been ruined by sin due to Satan’s fall between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 was now being remade by God. This remaking was being done through His spoken word and through the operation of the Holy Spirit (Genesis 1:2). So right from the first chapter of the Bible, you find the power of God's spoken word and that's why it's so important for us to open our beings to God's spoken word, which we have in the Bible. When you come to the last chapter of the Bible in the book of Revelation, again you find a tremendous importance given to the word of God. It speaks about our attitude to the words of this book; particularly referring to Revelation but it applies to the whole Bible as well. The Holy Spirit warns us not to add or subtract from His words (Revelation 22:18-19). Those who add to God’s word will find added to them the plagues written in this book and those who subtract from it will find God take away their part from the tree of life. So we find a tremendous importance given to God’s word in the first and last chapter of the Bible.

In the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ, we find that one of the earliest instances in His life shows how seriously He took the word of God. We read in Luke 2.46 that at the age of twelve, He was in the temple sitting and talking with all the scholars and discussing the word of God with them. He was sitting there in the midst of all the teachers of the law and listening to them and asking questions from God’s word. Right from the beginning, the very picture you have of Jesus as a young boy is centered on the word of God. It goes on to say that all those who heard Him were amazed at His understanding of the word and the answers He gave (Luke 2:47). Jesus Christ from His childhood was a very careful student of the Bible, which was just the Old Testament in those days. We must also remember He never had a written bounded Bible like we do in our homes. In those days, there were very few copies of the Old Testament written on parchments and very expensive to own, so usually only the synagogues will have them. The children would be taught in the schools and there they would have an opportunity to hear the word of God and that’s all the opportunity Jesus had in all those twelve years. Jesus got to know the Scriptures by listening very carefully and absorbing it during those limited opportunities. No doubt He also continued that practice all through His life. Furthermore, we also see the importance He gives to God’s word at the beginning of His ministry. As soon as His baptism is over, He goes into the wilderness to fast and pray for forty days and at the end of that period, the devil comes to tempt Him. This was all part of God’s plan for His Son on earth. How did Jesus overcome the different temptations of the devil? Without getting into an argument with the devil, He quotes the word of God. This is the answer for you and me in our battle against the devil.

In the first temptation, Satan recognized that Jesus was hungry after not eating for 40 days. Seeing this, he tempts Jesus to turn the stones into bread. Jesus replied by quoting from the word of God in Deuteronomy 8:3 which says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but every word that proceeds from God’s mouth.” In other words, if I miss something of what God wants to speak to me, in that measure I’m not going to have the fullness of life that God wants me to have. This is one reason why many Christians have shallow lives—they do not know their privilege as Christians. They live in fear, insecurity, are defeated by sin; there is so much confusion in their homes with their children going astray. The reason is because many Christians do not take the study of God’s word seriously and are not receiving His word regularly. In fact, Jesus compared God’s word to food. We need food in order to be strong and for our life to continue on this earth. In the same way, we need to live by the word of God to be spiritually fit and healthy. When the devil saw that Jesus was a person who would quote God’s word, he decides to quote God’s word out of context to lead Jesus astray. He tells Jesus to jump out of the pinnacle of the temple by quoting Psalm 91:11-12. Jesus counteracts by quoting God’s word in saying “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test” (Deuteronomy 6:16). The lesson here for us is that we need to know the scriptures accurately because the devil may tempt us by taking a verse of scripture out of its context. Christendom in 2000 years is full of examples of cults and groups who produce all types of strange teaching through taking a verse out of context and building a doctrine and a denomination around that wrong doctrine. They don’t realize it is the devil who is quoting that verse to them. The whole truth of God is not only found in the phrase it is written but it is also written. In other words, we’ve got to compare scripture with scripture in order to understand the whole counsel of God.

We need to study the Scriptures carefully if we want to make progress spiritually. In 2 Timothy 3:16, we read that all scripture is inspired (or breathed) by God. There is something special about the 66 books that make up the Bible. These are not just words, but God breathed words. When God made Adam, He took some mud and made the shape of him, but man did not come to life until He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). Adam got the breath of God in him and became alive just like Jesus breathed on His disciples after the resurrection and told them to receive the Holy Spirit. According to 2 Timothy 3:16, God’s word is also something He has breathed into—there is life in these words if we allow the Holy Spirit to reveal it to us. The words in the scripture are not just stories and empty words; if there is a promise in Scripture for us, then there is a tremendous power in that word because God doesn’t lie. In fact, in Hebrews 4:12, it says there that “God’s word is living and active and shaper than any two-edged sword and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart”. The word of God is like a searchlight scanning into the depths of heart. Just like a medical device can scan our bodies and tell us what’s wrong with us, God’s word goes with into the depths of our heart and shows the areas where we are wrong. Therefore, a person who constantly exposes himself to the light of God’s word is going to discover a whole lot of things in his life that needs to be set right, and God will strengthen him in that area.

2 Timothy 3:16 goes on to say that Scripture, which is inspired by God, is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. God uses His word to correct, teach, train and lead us in the paths of righteousness with the ultimate goal that we as men and women will be perfectly equipped for everything that God wants us to do. We’ll be adequate, strong and capable for every work the Lord has for us. Just as God’s word is like food, it is also like a sword in our conflict with Satan. The greatest example is Jesus Himself—In the three temptations described in Matthew 4:1-11, we find that He used no other weapon except the written word of God. If we know the written word of God, we can drive Satan away every time he comes to us with any temptation. If on the other hand, you don’t know the word of God, you will be helpless against the devil. In Ephesians 6:17, we are told that God’s word is the sword of the Spirit. It is the sword of the Spirit with which we can fight Satan. In those days, a soldier would never go to battle without a sword since it is one of the most important parts of their equipment to attack. All the others equipment described such as the breastplate, helmet and shoes are all for defense. So, God’s word is the sword of the Spirit that can drive Satan away. Jesus had a particular word for each temptation to fight the devil. How did He get that word? It was not because He was God. Remember that when Jesus came to earth, He voluntarily gave up the abilities He had of God (Philippians 2:6-7). He was still God in His personality and He was sinless, but He gave up the resources God has. For example, when Jesus was on earth, He didn’t even know the date of His second coming. Why? Because while He was on earth as a man, He gave up that resource of knowing everything so that He could be like us and be an example for us. When He came to earth, there was nothing in His mind of God’s word just like every baby is born into the world doesn’t have any data of God’s word in their mind. That baby will have to acquire knowledge as he grows up by reading or hearing God’s word. So Jesus filled His mind with God’s word through the years on earth and from that database of many verses that He had stored in His mind, the Holy Spirit could pick out one which was appropriate for the first temptation and another one which was appropriate for the second temptation and another one which was appropriate for the third temptation. Now this is exactly what the Holy Spirit wants to do for us in every circumstance we face. In the 47 years as a born-again believer, I have experienced and found that in so many different complicated situation and difficulties, the Holy Spirit picks out a Scripture and gives it to me. Where does He pick it out from? He gets it from His word in the Bible that I have stored in my mind as I’ve read through the years. We build a database of Scripture in our mind as we read it and because our memory isn’t perfect, we need to read it again and again to refresh our memory.

The other reason why it is good to reread the Scriptures is, that from the very same verse, God may give us something new. I found this many times reading the same verse for the 20th or 50th time, I see something new there. Books that contain man’s word like a chemistry book are limited. You study and understand a topic and then you move on to a higher standard. God's word on the other hand is like an unending well — a spring of water that never ceases. As we read and mediate on God’s word, the Holy Spirit will take, at the appropriate time, the right word from all that we have stored in our mind and give it to us, and it will be exactly suited for our need in that situation. Now many Christians never experienced this in their whole life because they don't study God's word carefully.

In Psalm 1, David writes how blessed is the man who mediates and delights in the law of the Lord. In those days, there was just the Old Testament Scriptures, which contained the Law of Moses (the first five books of the Bible) and other books that were before David’s time. It says you are blessed if you not only read but delights and mediates on God’s words day and night. In the synagogues, such a person would listen to it and then mediate on it throughout the day. Such a person will be like a tree planted by the streams of water, which always yields fruit in its season and whose leaf never withers and whatever he does will prosper. What a beautiful picture of a tree that never dries and is always green! It is a picture of freshness and this verse teaches us that the way to freshness is by mediating on scripture, and I have found that through the years the more I mediate on God’s word, my life is fresh, and I am never dry. God gives me a word not only to help me overcome temptation like Jesus, but He gives me a word to give to other people when they face trials and temptations. It’s not just because I’m a preacher. You may never stand up in the pulpit and speak for some length of time because that’s a gift, but He may give you a word to speak to somebody who is in need. It may be just one sentence perhaps from scripture or to write a verse of scripture to someone who is facing a particular problem. The Holy Spirit can pick out a word from all that you stored in your database and pick out the right word not only for yourself but for other people as well. It is a tremendous blessing of being fresh yourself and giving fruit for others to be blessed by. A tree does not produce fruit for itself but for others. This is exactly what God wants to do for us every day of the year, but we have to work with Him and mediate on His word. God wants us to open our being to read His word and meditate on it. We can use His word to fight the devil as a sword, to feed on it as our spiritual food and to drink of it like the tree sap sucks in the water from the river and is always fresh. The river here is God's word, which flows into this tree through the roots and keeps that tree fresh all the time and produces fruit through the sap in its branches so that other people can be blessed.

In Jeremiah 23.20, we also read that God's word is like a fire and hammer that shatters a rock. He speaks there of false prophets who prophesy falsely in His name. He says the difference between the words of a true prophet and a false is like the difference between chaff and wheat. God’s word is like a fire and a hammer producing results when used. It can destroy and break whatever that is hindering our progress. Like a fire, it keeps us burning in our devotion to Jesus Christ. There are many pictures like this used of God's word in the Bible to show us its tremendous power to refresh us, to feed us, to give us the ability to fight Satan, to produce fruit through us to bless other people and also to keep us on fire in our devotion to Christ. It is also used as a hammer to break every rock or mountain that stands in our way so that we can go through to fulfill God's purpose for our lives. God's Will is that you fulfill His plan for your life and for that you need the word of God.

Chapter 13

How Satan Became Satan

We want to look at the origin of evil in a universe created by God. There would have been no evil in this universe if God had not given freedom of will to any of His created beings. The planets for example are incapable of doing evil. The trees that grow automatically according to God's laws are incapable of doing evil. But then the planets and trees are incapable of doing any moral good either because they have no moral nature. If God had made the universe full of created beings without freedom of choice, then there would be no good or evil in the universe and it would have been pretty boring. Imagine a universe where it's just the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and just a lot of planets and stars and galaxies floating around in space. It would be like a billionaire who’s got a lot of property but no children or workers, just machines doing everything. God in his great wisdom created beings with freedom of will. Long before He created the first man and woman, He created millions of angels. The man and woman whom He created were superior to the angels in the sense that they had the ability to be able to receive God's nature and manifest His image. We don't know too many details about the angels, but we do know they have freedom of choice and they are created to be servants to do God's will as He commands them.

One of the angels —whom we don’t know his name since it’s not clearly mentioned though - he's commonly known as Lucifer. Lucifer means a shining being, but that was not his actual name. We do know that he was the leader of the angels. He was the one who led the angels in their worship of God and very soon he decided that he wanted people to worship Him. He was the highest created being in the universe leading the angels in the worship of God but because he had freedom of choice he could choose to obey or disobey God. He was tremendously gifted as God had given him numerous abilities and gifts more than what man has and this made him puffed up. He was puffed up because of his wisdom, intelligence, his beauty and his position. We first read of the devil in Genesis 3, when he comes to tempt Adam and Eve. That doesn’t mean he started to exist from nothing there. He was obviously created because there is nothing in this universe that is not created. God the Father, the Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit existed from all eternity. God created everything else including the all the angels. Satan’s fall is not described in the early chapters of Genesis because the Bible was written to describe man's history. This is why Genesis begins with man’s history and not the devil. God revealed this truth about Satan and how he became the devil to two of his prophets later on in Ezekiel and Isaiah (Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14). There are certain lessons we can learn for ourselves when we examine how this perfect angel became a devil.

In Ezekiel 28:11-19, we read of the ruler of Tyre. Satan is the ruler of all the heathen kings of the earth and so he was the real ruler behind the human ruler of Tyre. Here, we see God speaking at times to the human ruler of Tyre and at times to Satan who indwelt him. This is similar to what we do when dealing with a demon-possessed person - at times we speak to the person and at times to the demon possessing him. God says to the king of Tyre that he had the seal of perfection, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty and he was in the Garden of Eden. Obviously, no king of Tyre was ever in Eden and no human king had a seal of perfection and perfect in beauty, so he was referring to the devil that indwelt him. What we learn here is that this angel was in the original Garden of Eden (verse 13). This was the Eden that existed before the destruction of the earth mentioned in Genesis 1:2 and is different from the re-created Eden that we read of in Genesis 3. We read in Genesis 1:2 that the earth was "formless" ("tohu" - Hebrew). But we read in Isaiah 45:18 that the Lord "did not create the earth as a waste place" ("tohu" - Hebrew). Since God's word clearly states here that the earth was not created "tohu", it must therefore have become "tohu" in Genesis 1:2. God never creates anything imperfect, or in evolutionary stages. The earth was not created as a shapeless mass at first and then perfected by God, as some say. God makes everything perfect as soon as He creates anything (James 1:17). The earth was created perfect. To believe that God first created a shapeless mass that was dark and ugly and then made it beautiful over a period of time is to believe in the evolution of the earth. That type of "evolutionary theory" is as wrong as any other theory of evolution!

So in the original garden of Eden, between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, there was the head of the angels, perfect in beauty, anointed, placed on the holy mountain of God, blameless in every way from the day he was created until unrighteousness was found in him and he sinned (Ezekiel 28:12-16). As a result of his sin, he was cast down from the mountain of God. The reason for his sin was because his heart was lifted up and he became proud because of his beauty and wisdom. So here we see that the first sin that raised its ugly head in this beautiful universe God created was pride. Pride is the root of all other sins that came later in the universe and it is the root of every sin. Whenever you give a person freedom of choice, there is always the possibility that the person can become proud or commit any other crime. Free will means a person has the freedom of choice to either obey or disobey God.

Isaiah 14 is another passage of scripture that deal with Satan. There we read about certain other details that are not mentioned in Ezekiel. In Isaiah 14:12, he is called the star of the morning, the son of the dawn. This is probably where the Latin word Lucifer comes from. He said in his heart that he will ascend to heaven and raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly. He goes on to say He will make himself like the Most High (Isaiah 14:14). He wanted to become like God and exalt himself above even God. That’s why he was cast down and he will finally end up in the lake of fire (Rev 20:10). Sin came to the universe because a created being was not satisfied with the position God had given him. There is a boundary God had drawn around him and he wanted to go outside that boundary. Along with pride, it was discontentment with the position he had and wanted something more. Pride and discontentment can turn an angel into a devil in a moment and it can ruin a person even today in exactly the same way. Why was he discontent? He was unhappy with the boundary God had drawn around him although it was a huge boundary because all the angles were subjected to him, as he was the head of the angels. He had beauty, wisdom, the anointing, position and he was still discontent even with the tremendous amount of things God had given him. What we learned here is that discontentment can also make a beautiful angel into a devil in a moment. If you are proud or discontented with what God has given you, you are in danger of falling.

We find human beings all over the world discontent with what they have, their financial resources, their looks, their houses, their wife, husband, job etc. The world is full of discontented people and that’s the reason why they are so miserable; they have got this character of the devil all over them even though God has blessed them in so many ways. They are unhappy with something or the other and that’s what makes angels into devils, and good men like devils. Pride and discontentment ruined this beautiful angel and can ruin you. When he said I’m going to exalt myself above the throne of God, immediately God pushed him right down. This is the law of God and we see this in the New Testament that God lifts up those who humble themselves and push down those who exalt themselves (1 Peter 5:5-6). The first example of that was Lucifer, the head of the angels.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the other hand brought salvation to us through humility. What a contrast! We see Jesus Christ, the Son of God giving up that position of equality of God and coming to earth as man and becoming an ordinary person, Even after humbling Himself to become a man, He humbled Himself even more by being a servant to everybody. In the gospels, we see Him even washing His disciples’ feet. It was because of His humility that God exalted Him to the highest position in the universe. It was not because He was the Son of God; though He had every right for that position. It was because as a man, Jesus Christ humbled Himself and took the low place (Philippians 2:5-11). So here we have the operation of two spirits— one is the spirit of Satan that's always trying to go up and God keeps pushing it down, and the other is the spirit of Jesus Christ that is always seeking to go down and God exalts that spirit. Now every human being in the world is influenced by one of these spirits. Christendom is full of people who are influenced by one of these spirits. If every Christian went the way of Jesus in humbling themselves, every Christian will be spiritual, and every Church will be a spiritual Church. Every single problem that has come in every Christian’s life, in every family, in every home, in every church, has its root and origin in pride — wanting to lift oneself up.

We see that same thing with Adam and Eve. God drew a boundary around Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and said every tree here you can eat from; all except one. They had a lot of trees to choose from and only one tree not to eat from. God gave them a huge boundary, which even consisted of the best tree in the garden. The had the opportunity to eat from the tree of life yet they were discontent with the boundary God drew around them and went for the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We see that same sin of discontentment that ruined the devil is that same sin that made man a sinner. This is another reason why grumbling and complaining is so serious; because it is an expression of discontentment. You can call yourself a born-again Christian, but if you are discontent with what God has given you, you are going to be like the devil in your character and behavior. And if you continue like that, you are going to end up with the devil for all eternity.

The other poison Satan infected Adam and Eve was pride. Adam and Eve were proud to think that they could defy God and escape without facing the consequences God had told them. They were shaking their fist at God as to say we are going to eat of this tree even if you don’t approve. It is like the arrogance some children show to their parents and when they do exactly what they have been told not to do. We could also say rebellion against authority led to their downfall. Lucifer did not want any authority over him and rebelled against the only authority he had over him and so did Adam and Eve.

It is so important to teach our children to submit to authority because if they don’t learn that lesson, the poison of the devil is going to destroy them all through life. Parents should teach their children to listen to them because it is very serious thing when a child does not listen to their father and mother at home. If it is not corrected earlier on, they will grow up to disobey their teachers at school and their bosses at work when they grow up. This is why is it important to recognize these sins that made an angel into the devil. Pride, discontentment and rebellion against authority are three of the more serious sins. This is why when Jesus came; He did exactly the opposite by humbling Himself throughout His 33 years on earth. He was always content with His lot in life. When He had no place to lay His head during the 3-1/2 years of ministry, He never had a complaint (John 8:1). When everyone went to their house, Jesus went to the Mount of Olives and slept there. Jesus was a man with no complaints; He was content to live in a very poor home, submitting to the imperfect parents (Luke 2:51). Lucifer could not submit to the perfect authority of God whereas Jesus could submit to the imperfect authority of His parents. Salvation came by Jesus countering every one of these evil that the devil brought into the universe. If you want to follow Jesus, you have to follow Him in these areas. Humble yourself in every situation, be content with what God has given and every situation submit to the legitimate authority over you. That is the way to follow in the footsteps of Christ. Every other way contrary to that will make you like the devil.

Chapter 14

Salvation From Sin

Today we want to look at the work of salvation that Jesus came to accomplish. We've considered man's fall into sin and we have seen how God has allowed the devil to exist and how he became the devil. We want to see something about the work of salvation. First of all, let's look at Matthew 1:21 for the first promise in the New Testament and it says here that “You shall call His name Jesus because He will save His people from their sins”. So, the meaning of the name Jesus is one who saves people from their sins. Now this is very important for us to recognize right at the outset because many people today are preaching about Jesus doing a lot of other things. Now, it's true that the Lord does many things for His people. He blesses us materially, physically and does so many other things but the great danger I find today in a lot of Christian preaching is that the emphasis has shifted from that which is major to that which is minor. The end result of that is that Christians are not experiencing the full blessing of what Christ primarily came for and did for them on the cross.

What exactly did Jesus do for us on the cross? Why did He die on the cross and why was He raised up from the dead? It was not to bless us with material things and to heal our sicknesses as if those were the greatest problems we have. Now if those were man's greatest problems, certainly the Lord would deal with those primarily, but in the very first promise in the New Testament, we read that you will call His name Jesus because He is going to save His people from their sins. Sin as we have seen is man's biggest problem and Jesus came to save us from the biggest problem and when the biggest problem was solved, those other problems take care of themselves. In the Old Testament, we see an example of this where David confronted Goliath, the giant of the Philistines. David there is the picture of Christ who is called the Son of David and Goliath there we could say is a picture of Satan, or is a picture of sin.

In 1 Samuel 17:51, we read that when Goliath was defeated, the Philistines fled when they saw that their champion was dead. When their champion was defeated, all the Philistines ran away. When the major problem was taken care of, the minor problems were solved. On the other hand, if David had concentrated on fighting the smaller Philistines and not Goliath, the problem would not have been solved. Goliath would still have been hale and hearty, defying the Israelites even though the smaller Philistines would have been killed. The problem would not have been solved. That's a picture of how if you look at man's problems and deal with the minor ones first, the major one still stands there like a Goliath. Sin is the root cause of all the other problems, and it has to be dealt with first. We could say that if man has some sickness within his body and which manifests itself in sores on his skin you can give him a tube of ointment that deals with the sore on the affected part of the body. But once he begins to treat that part of his skin and gets rid of the sore, it will manifest itself on another part of his body. He gets rid of the sore on his hands, but it comes back on his legs. Then one day the doctor tells him there's a new antibiotic that's been discovered. You take this antibiotic internally and it will deal with the root of the problem inside your body. Now with the antibiotic dealing with the root cause, the other things are taken care of automatically you won't get any sores.

Sin is actually like that and the salvation of Christ is like an antibiotic that deals with the root of man's problem within and not with the minor things outside. It is not like an ointment to remove the sores, but like an antibiotic that goes inside and deals with the root problem so that these other minor problems get solved automatically. Sin is man's root problem that's why the very first promise in the New Testament says, “You shall call his name Jesus because he's going to save His people from their sins”. There is a difference between being saved from sin and having our sin forgiven. All believers — if they are really born again — have their sins forgiven but you can't say that they have been saved from their sin. For example, if I get angry that's a sin. If I lust with my eyes or I’m bitter against somebody, that's a sin. I can confess these sins to God and say “Lord, I'm sorry I got angry, I’m sorry that I lusted with my eyes, I’m sorry that I got bitter, please forgive me.” I’m forgiven but I'm not saved because tomorrow if I go and do the same things again, how can I say I'm saved? I'm still inside the prison of sin because I have not been rescued or delivered. The promise is that “You shall call His name Jesus because He will save his people from their sins”. We can't save ourselves from the penalty of sin, we cannot save ourselves from the power of sin and we cannot save ourselves from the presence of sin. Everything has to be done by Christ and when He died upon the cross, He saved us from the penalty of sin. Even more than that, He also made a way when He died for us to be delivered from the power of sin. If this is also not preached, we can say that half the gospel is not preached. The gospel has two parts to it and both are included in the first promise in the New Testament. We can see them combined in the words of Jesus to the woman caught in adultery.

In John 8:3, we read that there was a woman caught in the terrible sin of adultery and she was brought before Jesus for a verdict. Jesus told the Pharisees who wanted to stone her saying “He who is without sin, throw the first stone” All her accusers went away and then Jesus looks at this woman and says, “Where are they? Did no one condemn you?” She replies by saying “No one, Lord”. Jesus that tells her the gospel in verse 12 when He says “I do not condemn you, either. Go and sin no more.” In this statement we see the two parts of the gospel. The first part is that I do not condemn you and the second part is “Go and sin no more”. That is exactly what the Lord tells us today because He died on the cross for us so we can receive the forgiveness. He also tells us He can save us from our sins, so we don’t keep falling into it. It’s like two sides of the same coin. If you get a coin with only one side printed it's a counterfeit; you need both.

Therefore, when it says in Matthew 1:21 that Jesus has come to save us from our sins, it is to save us from the power of sin in our day-to-day life and one day when he comes back in glory, He will save us from the very presence of sin. So, salvation of sin consists of three tenses: past, present and future tense. In the past, He saved us from the penalty of sin if you received Christ as your Savior. In the present, He wants to save you from the power of sin every day and then one day in the future He will save you from the presence of sin. So, it's very important to see that the Gospel message is primarily dealing with the root problem and unfortunately in today's preaching, the preachers have got taken up with the results the symptoms of the sickness rather than the sickness itself and that's foolish. A man can have tuberculosis and one of the symptoms of that may be fever in the evenings. If the doctor just gives him some medicine to take care of his fever, it wouldn’t cure his tuberculosis, but only deal with the fever symptom. No doubt, he gets a relief from the fever, but the disease is not healed.

It is exactly the same approach that many take with sin. Sin can make a man sick or he can be in some financial difficulty and you deal only with the sickness and the financial difficulty, the real problem of sin still remains. it's like giving a man treatment for his headache when his real sickness is tuberculosis and so the same problem remains. The man still lives in sin but maybe he's healed of a sickness or his financial problem, but it does not solve the root cause of the problem and if he's not saved from sin no matter how much he is blessed with physical healing or material prosperity he finally goes to hell separated from God. We have to be very careful of this counterfeit gospel being preached today in many places, which does not deal with the root problem of sin. Jesus came to save us from our sins. Let me repeat, Jesus came not just to forgive us but also to save us from our sins. Let me use an illustration. Supposing I have a five-year-old boy at home, and I tell say to him “Son, don't go outside the gate because the road crew are digging the road there and there's a deep pit there and if you go there, you'll fall into that pit”. He disobeys me and goes near there to watch these men and when they go away after working, he falls into the pit. From the inside of the pit, he cries out and I go there and say what happened son? He says, “Dad, I'm sorry I disobeyed you and here I am at the bottom of this pit. Please forgive me” I say to him “Okay son, you're forgiven. Goodbye”. Have I forgiven him? I certainly have forgiven him for disobeying me. Have I saved him? No, he's still in the pit! Is that all Jesus has come to do for us? That we keep going to him saying I’m sorry and having our sins forgiven with no help to overcome? That would be a very poor gospel. The gospel means good news! Would my son think it is good news if I have forgiven him for his disobedience but left him in the pit? Certainly not! That is not good news, that's bad news for him. The good news of the gospel is that I not only forgive him, but I reach out and pull him out of the pit and save him. We must remember that Christ came to save us from our sins and that was not possible in the Old Testament.

There was not a single person in the Old Testament who could say “Lord, thank you for saving me from my sins”. The Old Testament did not go so far to give the promise of salvation from sin; it only had the forgiveness of sins as we read in Psalm 103. David says in Psalm 103 that Lord pardons all your iniquities, heals all your diseases and he redeems your life from hell. David in the Old Testament experienced forgiveness from all his sins. He also says in Psalm 32 “How blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven; whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity.” Forgiveness of sins is mentioned a number of times in the Old Testament as something that they actually experienced a thousand years before Christ came but not a single one of those people could ever say “Thank you Lord for saving me from my sin.” They were forgiven like I forgave my son who's lying in that pit, but I didn't save him. That was the Old Covenant and the mark of people living under the Old Covenant is their sins are forgiven but they are still in the pit and they're not saved from their sins. This is why the New Covenant is so glorious because Jesus not only forgives us but also saves us from the very thing that held us as slaves. In 2 Corinthians 3, the Apostle Paul writes about the glory of the New Covenant compared to the Old Covenant. It says there that the Old Covenant was a ministry of condemnation, but the New Covenant ministry is one of righteousness (2 Cor 3:9). There is a greater glory in the New Covenant ministry than in the Old Covenant ministry because the preaching of the law in the Old Covenant only resulted in condemnation even though their sins were forgiven. The more they heard the law, the more they felt condemned that they couldn't keep it. They couldn't come up to God's standard, so all the preaching only condemned them. When we preach today in a way that people feel condemned, we are actually preaching in the spirit of the Old Covenant. Under the New Covenant, it's a ministry of actual righteousness. Righteousness is the opposite of sin. When we are saved from sin, we come to a righteous life and that is what the New Covenant offers. That is what Jesus Christ has come to offer us— a salvation from sin.

Think of wonderful promises like this: The Lord is able to keep you from falling (Jude 24). It doesn't say you can keep yourself from falling. You can't and you don't have the ability to forgive your own sin or to be saved from your sin. None of us have that, but if you allow the Lord and receive Him, He will forgive us, and He will save us by keeping us from falling. This is another life altogether. Let me show you another verse that shows us the distinctive New Covenant promises. In Romans 8:2, it speaks of the law of the Holy Spirit as different from the Law of Moses. The Law of Moses was the Ten Commandments in addition to others, which consisted of a lot of rules. For example, you shall do this, and shall not do this. People tried to keep it, but they couldn't keep it entirely and they felt condemned. Here in contrast to the Law of Moses is the law of the Holy Spirit, and the law of the Holy Spirit is described as not a list of commandments but a life in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:2). This law is great and when I receive this life, it sets me free from the law of sin and death. There is another law called the law of sin and death, which is just like the law of gravity. The law of gravity keeps pulling people down and down. Even the Bible operates under the law of gravity. If I hold a book in my hand, the moment I let it go, the law of gravity pulls it down and it falls. Since there is life in my body, if I allow this life to hold this book up then we can say the law of life in my body has set this book free from the law of gravity. Now do you see how this is a picture of what is described in Romans 8:2. The law of life in my body has set this book free from the law of gravity so that this book is not falling down because I am keeping it from falling. Now think of the book as a picture of you; the law of sin just keeps on working in your life and keeps on pulling you down you just go down. You can't stay up without sinning even a moment. Some of those things are serious and some of those sins we don’t even know. We commit sin consciously, but they are many others sins which we commit unconsciously. But if I allow the life of Jesus to come into me, it can keep me from falling. The life of Christ Jesus will set me free from the law of sin and death. That is the law of the Holy Spirit and it wasn't possible for a man to experience that under the Old Covenant. Under the Old Covenant, the Holy Spirit did operate on certain people, but it is only on the outside. It could work in a Samson to make him kill a lion, but it could not help him to overcome the lion of lust inside His body. Samson was defeated by the lion of lust inside his body even though he could tear a physical lion to pieces. Which is stronger, that physical roaring lion that comes out of the forest or the lion of lust within a heart? We are terrified of a physical lion. If you were in the forest and a lion came jumping at you, you'd be scared, and I'd be scared. Why are we not so scared when the lion of lust comes up? It's actually much more dangerous and much more powerful. A physical lion can't send you to hell, it can only send you to the grave. The lion of lust within you can send you to hell. In the Old Testament, there was no way by which a man could be saved from the lion of lust. The Holy Spirit could give a man power to tear an external lion to pieces but because the Holy Spirit could not live inside man in Old Testament times, they could not overcome internally. The Holy Spirit could only operate on a man on the outside and help him to be free externally. He gave certain people power externally to do various things in the Old Testament. We read of the Spirit coming upon people and clothing them. Just like I wear a shirt, the Holy Spirit clothed people on the outside.

The distinctive blessing of the New Testament is that the Holy Spirit can now come inside and fill me and control every part of my being and give me power within to kill the lions inside of anger, lust, bitterness and every other wretched lion. So that what Samson did to lions on the outside, I can do the lions on the inside. Jesus never killed any external lion, but He overcame every temptation that He ever faced, and He tells us to follow Him in this way. This is the message of the New Testament; Jesus came to save us from our sins. Many of us may have problems with sickness, financial difficulties, difficulties in the home and many other difficulties but remember this, every problem arises out of the root problem of sin. If the root problem of sin is dealt with, we can hope for a solution to many of these other problems. We may not get cured of every sickness. They are many reasons why God allows sickness to still existing on earth - I don't have time to mention all of them right now but when the root problem of sin is solved, many other problems in our life will disappear. Concentrate on the root problem by letting the Holy Spirit deal with thing within our hearts. In other words, when you slip up inside take it seriously. Don't just take it seriously only when you slip up on the outside. Whenever you slip up on the inside with your thoughts, attitudes towards others go to the Lord and confess it and ask Him to free you from that sin. If I take sin inside seriously, the Lord will help me to be free from the root of sin within. On the other hand, if the Lord sees that I'm only interested in avoiding sin on the outside because I don't want to lose my testimony before others, He will not be able to help me. If I’m quite happy that other people see that I'm a holy person but it doesn't matter if I'm filthy inside, then the Lord sees I'm not interested in real holiness. I’m only interested in just having an appearance of holiness before people and you never get free from sin within. You've got to show God that you're really serious about being delivered from sin within. If you are really serious about getting rid of this disease within, the only way you can prove that to God is when you sin in secret in your thoughts, your attitudes, you cry out to God and say “Lord, forgive me. Nobody saw me there, but I sinned against You, I want to be free.” If God sees that attitude, I can guarantee that you will come to experience deliverance from this bit of sin very quickly.

Chapter 15

Jesus Our Forerunner

We've been looking at the fact that Jesus came to save us from our sin and not just to forgive us our sins. He wants to lead us beyond forgiveness to salvation. We saw in our last study that salvation actually has got three tenses – past, present, and future. We have to be saved from the penalty of our sin because of all the sins we have committed in our life. The next thing is to be saved in the present tense from the power of sin and in the future when Christ comes again, we will be saved from the very presence of sin. God has made provision for this as I said in our last study by giving us His Holy Spirit who can now live within us and give us the power to overcome. More than that, our God has given us His own Son not only to die for us as our substitute on the cross but also to be an example for us as we look at His life on earth. There is a title of Jesus which is not very well-known among Christians. Majority of us know Jesus as Savior, Good Shepherd, the Way, the Truth and the Light, the light of the world, the door, the resurrection and the life, the bread of life etc., but many don’t know His title as a Forerunner.

This title is found in the book of Hebrews which is the one book that describes the humanity of Jesus Christ more than any other book in the New Testament. This is one reason why the devil won't want you to read Hebrews too much. I found that Hebrews is not a very popular book with many believers and that's not surprising because the devil knows if you read and study it, you will come to a life of victory and he doesn't want you to get victory. The book of Hebrews which emphasizes the humanity of Christ and it doesn't take away from His deity. Whenever we speak about the humanity of Christ, we have to be very careful to emphasize the fact that we are not denying that He is God. The writer to the Hebrews was given a burden from the Holy Spirit to emphasize the fact that Jesus was a man 100% and therefore he begins in the first chapter by emphasizing that Jesus was 100% God. In fact, there's hardly a book in the New Testament that emphasizes the deity of Christ as much as the first chapter of Hebrews because he wants to move on from there to show that Jesus was not only 100% God, but He was also 100% man. When Jesus was living on earth, He was 100% God and a 100% man, but most people could not recognize that He was God. They thought He was just another man and they found it difficult to acknowledge that He was a 100% God except a few people like Peter who got revelation on that from the Father that this person was not just a man, He was God Almighty - the second person of the Trinity.

Many Christians accept Jesus Christ as God; there are some strange cults that don't accept him as God, but the majority of Christians accept him as God. The problem today is the reverse of what it was in the days when Jesus was on earth. Today the problem is that many Christians can't accept the fact that he was a 100% man, which for them is a heresy. Supposing someone believed that Jesus was 100% man but not 100% God. Would you call that heresy? Sure, it is a heresy. What about the other way around? Supposing a person says I believe Jesus Christ 100% God, but He was not 100% man. That is as much of a heresy as believing He wasn’t completely God. What does it mean for Jesus to be 100% man? It doesn't mean that Jesus was sinful because God didn’t create man with sin. Jesus was completely like us, made like his brothers in all things as it says in Hebrews 2:17. He was tempted like us in all things, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). He was completely separate from sin; He was pure and Holy and undefiled; He was born Holy because He was born of the Holy Spirit. He was a man like us in every way, tempted like us in every way because He voluntarily chose not to use His resources as God when He was on earth therefore, He could be an example for us. In Hebrews 6:20, He is called our forerunner which means someone who runs in front of us in exactly the same track that we have to run. If He ran on another track, He would not be our forerunner but because He ran in the same track we have to run in, He is called our forerunner. Later on, in Hebrews 12:1-2, we are told to run this race looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter or the author and finisher of our faith. So how can we look at Jesus and run this race if He is not running in front of us. If He hasn't run the same race in front of us, we cannot look at Him and run if He’s running somewhere else on some other track. This is what it means to believe that He was 100% human. He had to face the same temptations that you and I face, and He had no more resources than you and I have because He was made like His brothers in all things. Only then could He become our high priest (Hebrews 2:17).

So, what does this mean in practical terms? You see, we make an excuse for our sin by saying we're only human as if being human means we have to sin. If we are without the power of the Holy Spirit, then that's right; we will keep on sinning forever and ever and ever. But Jesus was also human; how did He not sin then? Immediately you begin to think it was because He was God. Now the question arises when He was on earth did, He use His resources as God. If He did, then of course He cannot be an example for us completely and He cannot say to any of us, “Follow Me”. I'll say, “Lord, I can't follow You. You were God and I'm a man.” Yet Jesus kept on telling people to follow Him and Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Follow me as I follow Christ.” Paul was following Christ and in Philippians 3:17, he says, “make me an example and make others an example who are following Christ.” He says, “follow our example; we are following Christ.” It is possible for us to follow Christ because Christ was human just exactly like us except that there was no sin in Him. He was tempted exactly like us; He felt the pull of temptation that you and I feel; if He did not feel the pull of temptation then you cannot say He was tempted. If there is no pull, there is no temptation.

The meaning of temptation is a pull downwards of sin. When Jesus walked on the water in Matthew 14 on the Sea of Galilee, did He feel the law of gravity pulling Him down like we all feel? Or do you believe that since He is God, He doesn't feel the pull of gravity? If that were the case, then there's no miracle in His walking on the water. That’s not a miracle at all; Almighty God walking on the water. He can fly across the water, that's no miracle. It's a miracle because Jesus was 100% man and felt the pull of gravity and overcame it and walked on the water and then told Peter, “If you look at Me, you can also experience this miracle” and Peter walked on the water. Jesus was a man like us and felt the pull, this time not of the law of gravity, but the law of sin and death. He felt that pulled of temptation and did not sin. if He had sinned, it would have led Him to death, but He didn't sin. He felt the pull and He overcame it. You know many people degrade Jesus by saying He didn't feel any pull. Well then, it's not a great thing if He faced temptation. For example, when the devil told Him to turn stones to bread, was it possible for Jesus to turn stones to bread or not? If you say it was possible then you're actually saying it was possible for Him to sin, but He didn’t. If it was impossible for Him to turn the stones into bread, then there's no temptation. Temptation exists only if there is a possibility of committing sin. Without such a possibility, temptation isn’t there. When the devil told Jesus to jump from the temple, was it possible for Jesus to jump? What do you think? I say yes, He could certainly have jumped but he didn’t. If He had jumped, He would have sinned, and He would have died but He didn’t. We need to see that Jesus faced temptation and He wasn't play-acting. In drama, a person can act as though he's being tempted. Don’t accuse Jesus of acting as though He was being tempted and not really being tempted. it's an insult and a lot of Christians insult Christ by saying He was not really tempted like us. Then what was He doing? Play-acting?

We must honor Christ by saying He was no play actor. He faced temptation really and overcame it. Now the devil doesn't want you to know that because if you know it, you'll get victory over sin and he doesn't want you to get victory over sin. He wants you to be defeated all your life. I know in my own life, after I was born again for 16 years, I was defeated. After I was born again and baptized in water, baptized in the Holy Spirit, I was defeated by sin just like a lot of other Christians. I was no different and yet I saw in the Word of God that if I came under grace, sin would not have power over me (Romans 6:14). How did sin have power over me then? Because I did not understand what it meant to come under God's grace. I knew God's grace in terms of forgiveness of sins, but I never knew the experience of a further level of grace where sin would not have dominion over me (Romans 6:14). My excuse always was that I'm human but the day I saw that Jesus was like me and He came in the flesh like me, He was tempted like me. The day I saw that, two things happen in my life; I had no more excuse for my sin. Till then, my excuses were that Jesus was God. Now I couldn't say that because though He was God, He didn't use the resources of God. That’s what I saw when it says in Philippians 2:5 that He emptied Himself. What did He empty Himself off when He came to this earth? He did not empty Himself of His deity because He was God Almighty. God cannot ever cease being God. Jesus accepted worship; He forgave people's sins, but He did empty Himself of the resources of deity. For example, God knows everything but Jesus when He lived on earth refused to use that power. He could have used it, but He didn't use it. He emptied Himself; that's why He did not know whether there was fruit on a fig tree. He had to come there just like other human beings have to come near a tree to find out it has fruit.

He also did not know that date of His own second coming to the earth. He says that in the Gospel of Mark; the Son of Man does not know, only the Father knows the day. Why was that? Because He had limited Himself. Now He knows the date because He’s back up in heaven but when He was on earth, He limited Himself. God is never tired. Psalm 121 says God never slumbers or sleeps but Jesus slept in the boat because He had limited Himself. He did not use that resource of God who never slumbers or sleeps. If He had not limited Himself, He could not be our example because we have so many limitations. Secondly if He had used resources that I have no access to gain, He could not be my example. To be my example, He had to use only those resources which I also have access to- that is the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s all He used to overcome sin and He offers that same resource to us fully. Two things happened to me as I said. One was that I had no more excuse for sin because I could not say, “Oh I'm human so I have to sin.” Jesus was one human who did not sin. The second thing that happened to me was I had faith that if one human could do it so can I.

Let me use an illustration. Supposing there was some island somewhere in this earth where the people who lived there had been cut off from the rest of civilization from the beginning of the human race or whenever people went to that island. In the middle of that island there's a river but nobody ever has learned to swim on that island and generation after generation nobody has learned to swim, and everybody feels if you get into the water, you'll drown because man's body is heavier than water. When you get into the water, you'll sink, and they've seen people sink and they say it is impossible to float on water. So, generation after generation, nobody gets into the water because they are afraid of drowning. Now one man comes from the civilized world and tells them you can swim across the river. They reply to him by saying it’s impossible to float on the water because your body is heavier than water. He tells them if you make a little effort, you can swim, and they ask him to show them. He jumps in the river and swims across to the other side and they are absolutely amazed. They think perhaps his body is of a different type than theirs and they examine him and confirm that he has the same body they do. Now they get the faith that they can also overcome gravity and swim because they saw one man do it. That’s what happened to me when I saw that Jesus was tempted like me and did not sin. The law of sin and temptation pulled Him down, but He did not yield, He overcame. When I saw this man swim as it were without sinking, it gave me faith that I can also overcome. That’s the faith the devil doesn't want you to have because you'll be an overcomer. Do you think the devil wants you to be an overcomer? No, he wants you to be defeated like you've been defeated all your life.

How many Christians can stand up and testify that God has given them the grace to get victory over their anger, the lust of their eyes, over bitterness, over jealousy etc. They are so rare. You'd be lucky if you find one believer in a thousand who can testify to that. Why? Because the devil has blinded them to the truth that Jesus became like them and was tempted like them. He’s blinded you to that truth, but you need not be blind anymore. Let me use another illustration. Supposing an angel from heaven came to earth to teach you how to swim in a swimming pool and he flies across the swimming pool with his wings and says follow me. What will you say to him? You'll say, “I can't follow you angel. I can admire you, but I can't follow you because you're not subject to the law of gravity that I'm subject to. If you want to teach me to swim, get rid of your wings and take a body like mine.” If the angel takes a body like mine and gets rid of his wings, then he can jump into the pool and teach me to swim and say, “Follow me.” Otherwise, he can only say, “Admire me.” So, if Jesus was not like us, all He can say to us, “Admire how I overcome sin, but you can't follow me because you are not like me.” But He never said that. Jesus is our Forerunner, the author and finisher of our faith. Let us run the race looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).

Illustrations help us to understand this truth more clearly. Now I want to use one more illustration. Think if a very rich billionaire from some Western country comes to India to help the poor people who live in the slums of India to teach them how to live without getting into debt with the limited amount of money they earn every month. He wants to teach them how to keep their little huts in the slum clean with a limited amount of money they earn. This man is a billionaire and he's got a credit card. He can go to any ATM machine and draw thousands of dollars if he wants but he comes here, and he tells these people in the slum I will work just like you. I will be carrying bricks or whatever it is in some construction site and earning a thousand rupees a month. I will not earn more than you. I will be just like you and I will build a little hut here just like you built, and I will show you how I can live with keeping the hut clean and not get into debt and live a clean life here. They watch him and if he secretly goes to some ATM machine every now and then and puts in his credit card and draws money, he will be cheating. When they see that, they say, “Hey, you can do that because you're a billionaire. You got a credit card. We don't have that.” But he says, “No, I'll never go to an ATM machine. I got a credit card with a billion dollars, but I won't use it. I refuse to use my resources in the country I come from and I will limit myself only to the resources you have.”

Now he is true to his word. He never uses his credit card; he lives and works and earns just like anybody else in that slum. Such a man can say to the others, follow me. He cannot say, “follow me” if he keeps using his credit card now and then. Jesus came to earth just like this man. This man was a billionaire when he was living in the slum. That didn't change. He had billions in his bank account back in the United States or wherever he came from, but he didn't live as a billionaire in India. He didn't use this credit card here. That is a picture of how Jesus came to this earth. He never used his heavenly credit card - His resources as God though He was God. He lived using the resources we are offered and so He could say to us, “Follow me.” When we see this wonderful truth, we come to a godly life. It says in 1 Timothy 3:16 that God was manifest in the flesh. That is the secret of godliness. The secret of godliness is that He came and was pure in His spirit. How can a man live in this flesh and be pure in his spirit? Jesus demonstrated how. So, it's possible for us to live a life of victory even though we have this flesh because the power of the Holy Spirit is greater than the power of the flesh.

You know in the Old Testament, there was a time when the children of Israel reached the borders of the land of Canaan and the Lord said, “Go into the land and occupy the land”, but they looked at the giants and they said, “No, we can't overcome. These people are so mighty and so powerful.” The Lord told them to can go in and they said, “No that's not possible.”

Only two people, Joshua and Caleb said we can do it and they are the only ones who went in. Was it because their muscles were stronger? No, they trusted in God. That's why they possessed the land. You can look at some sin in your life and the devil says you can never overcome that. It's like a giant in your life. Now it's a question of whether you follow the Israelites and say, “We can't overcome these giants; they'll always rule us” or whether you follow Joshua and Caleb’s example and say, “We can overcome.” That’s the message of the Bible. You can be an overcomer. You don't have to be defeated. Jesus was an overcomer, He lived on earth and demonstrated how we can overcome but if you don't follow His example in the way He sought to live an overcoming life, you'll never get there. Notice for example in Hebrews 5:7, what it says about Jesus. In the days when He was on this earth in the flesh, it says He prayed with loud crying and tears. This is not referring to the one day when He was in Gethsemane. No, in the days of His flesh means in the days when He lived on this earth for 33-1/2 years. What did He do? He prayed with loud crying and tears to be saved from death. Now there are two types of death the Bible speaks of the New Testament; physical death and spiritual death. Which of these two deaths was Jesus praying to be saved from? Certainly not physical death. Even the martyrs didn't pray to be saved from that. The only death Jesus was afraid of and didn't want was spiritual death. He prayed, “Father, don't let spiritual death touch Me. Let there be no smell of spiritual death in me.” In other words, there should be no smell of sin in my life. When I'm tempted, I must come out of temptation without even the smell of sin or spiritual death and He was heard. The Bible says He was heard which proves it was not physical death because He died of physical death, not spiritual. So, we see that Jesus overcame by crying out to the Father. He recognized that His flesh was weak and so He cried out for help from the Holy Spirit and He overcame. You can overcome - if you will trust in the Lord and cry out for salvation from the power of sin like that.

Chapter 16

Why Satan Was Not Destroyed

In our last study, we were looking at how Satan became Satan and how he was cast down from God's presence because of rebellion, pride and discontentment. It was when that happened that the earth became like it is described in Genesis 1:2 which was originally created perfect in Genesis 1:1. Everything God creates is perfect in the beginning. God created the heaven and earth as it says in Genesis 1:1. The next words say the earth was formless without shape, empty and dark. God never creates anything shapeless, empty and dark so it's very clear that it became like that and it was because of Satan's fall. We know when Adam fell, there were so many results of that on the perfect earth in which he lived. For example, the animals became wild. Similarly, the earth became formless without shape, empty and dark when Satan fell. The earth and heaven were probably created long ago. It could be even millions of years before Adam, but we don't know. Adam himself existed probably only six thousand years ago but the earth itself, the heaven and earth were created long before that. We don't know how many years were there between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 but when Satan fell, the earth became like that.

Now we could ask ourselves a question as to why God didn’t destroy Satan at that point so that he would cease to exist. As far as we know, when Satan fell and was cast down, a number of the angels also apparently joined him in that rebellion against God. We don't know the exact details about this, but we could get a little picture of this without being dogmatic about it when we read in Revelation 12 that the great red dragon, the devil swept away one-third of all the stars of heaven (Revelation 12:4). In the book of Job, the angels are called stars. In symbolic language, when the dragon sweeps away one-third of the stars down from heaven, it's referring probably to the angels who joined him in his rebellion and who are today the demons that are roaming around the earth and that sometimes possess human beings. Now it's very important to know that the devil was not cast down to earth. He was cast down from the third heaven, the immediate presence of God. In 2 Corinthians 12, we read of three heavens. Paul says he was caught up to the third heaven. In the Psalms, we read of the heavens being the work of God's fingers and that refers to the visible universe. So that's the first heaven and God's throne is in the third heaven. There must be a second heaven in between and we presume that is where the devil was cast down because we read in the book of Job that he could talk to God from there. He couldn't go back to the third heaven, but from the second heaven he could speak to God. He is called also in Ephesians 6, the principalities and powers in the heavenly places. We read in Ephesians 6:12 about the devil and his demons and he is called the prince of the power of the air and his dwelling is said to be in the heavenly places. Obviously not in the third heaven, but it must be in the second heaven and there we are in spiritual conflict with him. When we seek to commune with God, it's through the second heaven and there's a lot of resistance to prayer and praise. So here we see that the devil is being cast out to the second heaven and in the book of Revelation, we read of a time when he's thrown down from the second heaven to the earth in Revelation 12 and then finally from the earth in Revelation 22 to the bottomless pit for a thousand years and then pulled out of the bottomless pit and cast into the lake of fire in Revelation 20. So that's just by the way, the history of the geographical location of Satan. When people say that Satan is in hell, it's not true. He is never in hell; he was cast down from the third heaven to the second heaven. One day, he will be cast down from there to the earth and one day from the earth to a bottomless pit and then pulled out of the bottomless pit and thrown into the lake of fire where hell will also be cast into one day. That's just a brief history of Satan.

Why did God not destroy Satan and the demons who rebelled right at the outset? Now we don't understand fully all the reasons why God does many things and we must be humble enough to acknowledge that our limited understanding and our mind is incapable of answering many questions about life on this earth. Why do babies get AIDS? Why is there so much poverty? Why is there so much injustice? Why do poor innocent girls get raped all over the world? Why does God allow evil dictators to live so long? Why has God allowed so many false religions to lead people astray? Why has God allowed cults to come up to separate children from parents and make life miserable for so many? There are thousands of questions to which we don't know the full answer and the reason for that is that our mind has got a very limited capacity. God's wisdom is like an ocean and you can't pour an ocean into a cup. A cup can contain only a little bit of the water in the ocean and so our mind can contain only a little bit of God's wisdom. Everything that we need to know concerning life on earth and how to live a godly life has clearly been revealed by God but beyond that there are so many questions concerning which we don't know the final answer. This is one of those things we don't know the complete answer as to why God didn't destroy the devil. One thing we know is God allows everything to take place for the good of the maximum number of people to fulfill His purposes so there must have been some way in which God decided that now that the devil has rebelled, He is going to use this rebellious person to fulfill His purposes. There is a greater glory when God uses a rebel and an enemy to fulfill His purposes then when He uses a submissive son of His.

There is a lovely verse quoted in Romans 9 which is actually a quotation from Exodus. In Romans 9:17, it says, “The scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose, I raised you up to demonstrate my power in you that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.’” Now one would have thought that God would have said that to somebody like Moses but here we read that these are words that the Lord told Pharaoh. It is a quotation from Exodus 9:16 where the Lord told Pharaoh, “You have rebelled against me. You are proud you're exactly like the devil and I'm going to use you to manifest My power.” Whatever Pharaoh did, God turned the tables on him and protected the Israelites who were slaves in Egypt and so there’s a glory that comes to God when His enemy accomplishes His purposes. So that's the reason why God has allowed Satan to exist. I'll give you one example of that from the New Testament where we read of the Apostle Paul who had such tremendous revelations. He was caught up to the third heaven and there was a great danger that he would become proud of his accomplishments. He had done a great work for God on the earth and he had all these revelations and to protect him from pride, God allowed the devil to trouble Paul in some way by giving him a thorn in the flesh which Paul himself calls a messenger of Satan. Now if the devil were not there, who would give Paul that thorn in the flesh and did that thorn in the flesh accomplish something good? it certainly did! It was a messenger of Satan meant to trouble Paul and that would make Paul cling to God and would keep him humble and dependent on God. So, you see there in 2 Corinthians 12 a way in which we could say God used Satan to keep His servant Paul humble which is a very good thing. God gives his grace only to the humble and He resists the proud. If Paul become proud, God would have had to resist him, but Paul remained humble because of the messenger of Satan. Satan troubled him with a thorn in the flesh, so Paul remained humble. This is an example of how God used the devil to keep Paul humble. We have another example in the book of Job where God allowed Satan to harass Job by destroying all his property, killing his children and nagging him through his wife irritating him and even through three preachers. The devil used so many agents to trouble Job. It wasn't just the loss of property and children. Notice in Job 2, the devil used Job’s wife to harass him and then throughout that book, the devil used at least three preachers to irritate Job and accuse him and charge him with so many things which are not true. The devil is an accuser and he sometimes use preachers to accuse others but through it all, we can say it was like a fire in which Job was put in and he came out of it a pure a man. He came out a humbler man because Job also had the same problem that Paul was in danger of. Job was such an upright, righteous man and he was a rich man. He also brought up all his ten children in a very good way that he became proud. We know whenever a man accomplishes something like that and he's better than the people around him, he tends to be proud and Job was proud of his righteousness. God wanted Job to become more perfect and one requirement that he needed was humility. He needed humility and the only way to bring Job to humility was by allowing Satan to trouble him and harass him just like God allowed Satan to trouble Paul to make him humble. So Job was harassed by the devil in so many ways and the end result was that by the end of the book, you find Job is still a righteous man and still a perfect man but in addition he gets another quality in his character which he didn't have when he started out and that was humility. He says in Job 40:4, “I am insignificant” and then he says in chapter 42, “I repent, and I’ll never open my mouth again. Lord, I put my hand on my mouth because I'm a nobody.” Who accomplished that work in Job? the devil. There we have examples of how God allows the devil to harass, trouble, irritate and thereby makes His servants better.

We find that even the temptations the devil uses to bring to God’s children makes them stronger. Even Jesus was tempted by Satan and through those temptations, God proves and tests us to see whether we qualify for His service. The Bible says in the last days, there is going to be a flood of deceiving spirits that are going to come upon this earth. Now God could stop them, but He doesn’t. Why doesn't He stop these deceiving spirits from coming into the midst of the church and in the midst of the world? Because it's through these deceiving spirits that God is going to test many people including His own children to see what they are really seeking for. Think of the story in the Garden of Eden. God could have stopped Satan from coming into that garden very easily, but He didn't because Satan came in. When Adam and Eve were tested, it was Satan who came and invited Eve to take part of that forbidden tree. If he were not there, it's possible that Adam and Eve may have just gone past it but because Satan came through the snake and put certain suggestions into Eve's mind and made her doubt God's love. That's what made her finally fall and eat of that tree. God didn’t stop Satan because He wanted Adam and Eve to be tested because man cannot be holy without being tested and choosing God above created thing.

We can only go by scripture, but here are some examples that show us that God uses Satan to accomplish His purposes and He turns the tables on Satan. We see examples of that throughout Scripture. For example, when Joseph was ill-treated by his own brothers and they wanted to sell him off to Egypt. They were inspired by the devil without a doubt to sell him to these Ishmaelite traders and send him off to Egypt so they will never see him again. That was the work of the devil. The devil doesn't know the future, so he doesn't know what he's doing when he sends Joseph to Egypt. He doesn't realize that that is only accomplishing God's purpose because God wanted Joseph to be the ruler in Egypt next to Pharaoh, but He uses the devil to use Joseph's brothers to send him to Egypt. Another interesting part of the story is when Joseph goes to Egypt and works in the house of a man called Potiphar. The devil uses Potiphar’s wife to tempt Joseph and Joseph refuses to yield and thereby he manifests his integrity. He is tested and he overcomes, and he becomes stronger. Every time you pass a test, you become stronger. Joseph became stronger when the devil tempted him every day through Potiphar’s wife. He refused to yield, and he became a strong person and then the devil accused Joseph falsely through Potiphar's wife. She told a lie to her husband and the devil succeeds in putting Joseph in a jail. It's there in the jail that he meets Pharaoh's butler and thus gets an opportunity to come before Pharaoh. He wouldn't have met Pharaoh's butler if he hadn't gone to that jail. Who put him in the jail? The devil. What did it accomplish? God's purposes. He finally got contact with Pharaoh's butler and through that to Pharaoh and became the second ruler in Egypt. Whatever the devil did to Joseph, whether it's through his brothers or through that evil woman, Potiphar's wife, it only succeeded in fulfilling God's purpose. We can say in that example that God turned the tables on Satan.

You see another example in the book of Esther where Satan inspires a man called Haman and his wife to kill all the Jews and to turn against Mordecai who is one of the prominent Jews. As you read that story, you find how God turned the tables on Satan. Haman made a huge gallow which is more than 70 feet high in order to hang Mordecai. You only need a gallows ten feet high to hang a man. Why did he make one 70 feet high? What a nuisance it must have been to build such a huge gallow, the height of a seven-story building. He wanted the whole nation to see this guy hanging here to humiliate him. At the end of the story, you find Haman himself is hanging on it. What a classic example of the God turning the tables on the devil. God is glorified when His people see how all the efforts of Satan are frustrated. We find that again and again. The Bible is full of stories from Genesis to Revelation of how God uses Satan to fulfill His purposes and how God turns the tables upon Satan and frustrates his purposes and even more after Jesus died on the cross of Calvary. Satan has been defeated completely on the cross. Satan’s armor has been taken away and he has got no power over any of us (Colossians 2:15). We see here that now our position is even more blessed than Joseph, Job and Mordecai. We come to the position that Jesus was in— one of total triumph when Satan was defeated on the cross. We read in Colossians 2:15 that God took away from Satan all his armor when Christ died on the cross. One of the most important truths that we need to recognize is that Satan was defeated completely on the cross of Calvary when Jesus died. Just like all Christians know that Christ died to take away all our sins on the cross but even more, it is also equally true that He took away Satan's armor on the cross so that Satan has no weapons to fight against us now.

That's why today the Bible says in James 4:7 to submit to God and resist the devil and he will flee from you. There is no such verse in the Old Testament. No matter how much you submitted to God in the Old Testament, you couldn't resist the devil and make him flee. That’s why God never gave such a command to His people. People could resist the Philistines and make them flee or resist the Moabites, the Amorites, or the Hittites and make them flee but they could not make the devil flee in the Old Testament. Now that Jesus Christ has defeated Satan on the cross, we are commanded to resist the devil in the name of Jesus Christ, and he will flee. Now many Christians have a picture of themselves running away from the devil and somehow escaping his grip. This is not the picture that we see in the New Testament. In the New Testament, we see the devil running away from us and that's the picture that we need to have in our mind always. This is the position of the born-again believer; one of victory and one of authority. Satan has to obey a command given to him in the name of Jesus Christ. Every demon has to obey a command given in the name of Jesus Christ because they've all been defeated on the cross of Calvary. Every demon has been defeated and that's why the Apostles or even any believer today can command a demon-possessed person in the name of Jesus to leave and the demon has to leave the person. This applies to anybody who is possessed, it's not a question of how spiritual you are. It's a question of whether you use the authority of the name of Jesus Christ or not. It's like you can have ten massive trucks coming down a road and one little policeman stands up and holds his hand and all those ten trucks stop. That policeman represents the authority of the state. He may be a small man, but it doesn't make a difference. It is in the authority that God has given us through Jesus Christ over Satan and over all his power and it's important for us to exercise it. We need not live in fear of the devil anymore. The devil can try so many things. Through the years, he's sought to harass Christians in so many ways but he's a defeated foe and everything that he does; whether persecution or deception or anything is only going to further God's purposes for man. The Bible says the devil comes like a lion trying to harass and frighten and persecute Christians. Most of the time, he doesn't succeed because persecution leads to the church flourishing and numbers increasing, and believers becoming more spiritual. He also comes as a serpent deceiving and there very often, he succeeds but even that we can be overcome because whether persecution or deception, the devil's power and authority have been taken away from him completely on the cross and we must take our stand on that always. Jesus Christ defeated Satan on the cross and he has no authority over us anymore.

Chapter 17

Transformation

In the well-known Sermon on the Mount which we read in Matthew 5-7, Jesus concluded with these words in Matthew 7:15. He spoke about the gate that led to life being small and the way that led to life being narrow. A gate is something you enter in a moment and the way is something that we have to walk right through our life but at the end of the way is our destination. We considered in our last study about God having predestined us not to go to heaven but to become like Jesus Christ. Predestination means a destination determined beforehand. It's like when you get into a train or a plane, your ticket shows you your destination. You have a destination marked on your ticket and the train or the plane may make many stops on the way and some of those places may be interesting places along the way, but you still don't get out because you have a destination you want to reach. Anyone who gets onto a train or a plane would be very eager to reach his destination very soon. We can see that in the impatience in passengers when a train or plane is delayed. Why is that? Everybody wants to get to their destination as soon as possible and if everybody could afford traveling by plane, we would all travel by plane because you get to your destination much quicker.

It’s very rare to find Christians who are very eager to get to their destination of becoming like Christ quickly. That possibly indicates that they don't know what their destination is, which is true of many Christians. If you ask most Christians, I would say 99% of them would probably tell you that their destination is heaven and yet there's not a verse in scripture that makes such a statement. The destination determined by God is likeness to Christ. Heaven is a byproduct of that. It's not a physical geographical place that God is interested in taking us to, but a transformed character. That's what God is taking us to and if we haven't seen this, we haven't seen the goal of the Christian life. It also means we haven't seen the full purpose with which Christ came to earth. He did not come as many Christians think to save us from hell and to take us to heaven like many preachers preach. He came to save us from sin and all of Adam's nature describes sin. He came to make us holy which is to make us like Himself. We saw that in an earlier study, the first promise in the New Testament is, “His name shall be called Jesus because He will save His people not from Hell, not from sickness, not from poverty, but from sin.” The Christian gospel has turned from that first promise in Matthew 1:21 into something which looks good like salvation from hell, salvation from sickness, salvation from poverty etc. Salvation from being illiterate perhaps, salvation from being ignorant and many other things but the true gospel is that Jesus came to save us from sin and to make us like Himself.

Our starting point was in sin and we come to Christ through the narrow gate which is to be born again to become a new creature in Christ. You can't enter into the way without going through the gate. Jesus said that He is the door in John 10:7. He said if anyone tries to enter by climbing up some other way is a thief and a robber (John 10:1). He says in John 10:9, “I am the door. If anyone enters through Me, he'll be saved, and he will come in go in and out and find pasture”. If anyone tries to come some other way or tries to join the way without going through the door, he's going to be disqualified. You can't enter a marathon race somewhere along the way. You got to start it at the starting line. You can run along with the marathon runners on the road if you want but when you reach the end, you'll be disqualified because you never came to the starting line. The Christian life has got a starting point like every race. The Christian life is called a race in Hebrews 12:1-2 and that starting point is not being born into a Christian family nor is it being baptized or christened in water. It is being born again like Jesus told Nicodemus who was a bishop. Even a bishop needs to be born again. He told Nicodemus in John 3 that unless you're born again, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.

The new birth is becoming a new creature where Christ cuts us off from that Adamic tree and grafts us into Himself. That is the new birth where we are grafted into Christ. This represents us coming through the gate, but there is a long way that leads to our final destination of becoming totally like Christ. That long narrow way is called a way of sanctification— becoming more and more like Christ and being separated more and more from this Adamic nature which we carry around with us. The Bible calls it the flesh and that is just another word for our Adamic nature which makes us behave like all the other unbelievers in the world. Christ came to deliver us from that and to save us from sin and to make us like Himself. The way He does it is through the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, He gave the people a law to try and live according to, but nobody could make it. They could keep some of the commandments but not all of them. and even if they did keep all the commands, it was still only external. They couldn't do anything about the corrupt nature within their own hearts no matter how much they tried. Paul, who was one of the finest of the people in Israel, a God-fearing man who said, according to the righteousness in the law, he was absolutely blameless (Philippians 3:6). That means according to the external requirements of the law, he had kept everything just like the rich young ruler who came to Jesus (Mark 10:20). When Jesus told him the commandments, he said I've kept all of them for my youth and Jesus didn't challenge that. There were many God-fearing people in Jesus time among the Jewish people who had kept all the commandments externally. They had kept the law and according to the righteous requirement of the law, they were absolutely without blame, but they did not have an atom of God's nature, it was all external refinement.

Jesus said, “You have cleaned the outside of the cup, but the inside is dirty, and you don't care about that.” Christ came to clean the inside. When the inside is clean, the outside automatically takes care of itself. It's like when the disease is hit at the root with an antibiotic, the external manifestation of that disease disappears. Whatever that disease, whether it's in the form of a fever or a sore or anything, when the root of it is hit with an antibiotic inside our system, the manifestation goes. Jesus came with an axe to the root. That's what John the Baptist said. He didn't come with a pair of scissors to snip off all the bad fruit that's coming from our lives. Many people's Christianity is just snipping off the bad fruit; looking nice before people, behaving in a nice, cultured, civilized way. There's a lot of difference between true Christianity and civilization. Jesus didn't just come to make us nice people, He came to transform us and make us new creatures; completely new within, not just refined. There is a lot of difference between a refined, well behaved dog and a little baby who may not be refined or cultured and may mess up the floor. There's a world of difference there. That baby has the potential to become a man. The dog, no matter how much you refine will never be a human being. In the same way, this old creation, the old man that we were in Adam — that is the way we are all born. Any amount of refinement, cultural improvement can never change that person into a son of God. It's like saying you can try as hard as you like, you can't make a dog into a human being. You can make it behave very well, obey very well but it will not become a human being. You can take a child of Adam and teach it everything under the sun, make him religious but he will not become a child of God. That has to be a supernatural work within, where God brings this person to experience a spiritual birth within. That is called the narrow gate. Many people don't come through this gate, they try to get into the narrow way around the side. They jump over the wall like Jesus said and they will be disqualified at the end because you cannot enter this way except through the gate. Once you come through the gate, the other mistake a lot of Christians make is they all congregate at the gate. There's a big crowd of Christians, millions of them crowding around the gate when they should be walking the way towards their destination and that is where we need to yield to the Holy Spirit every single day of our life.

In 1 John 3:2, we read that when Christ comes, we will be like Him. We would reach our destination. The last part of the verse says, “we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He is.” The next verse goes on to say that this is the hope of the Christian. Again, if you were to ask Christians what your hope is, 99% of them would reply, “My hope is that Christ coming again.” But that's only half of the whole. The other half is that when He comes again, we will become like Him. That's very important and in the next verse it says everyone who has this hope - not just the blessed hope of Christ's returning but also the hope of being like Him will purify himself (1 John 3:3). If you have this hope, then during your entire earthly life, you'll be purifying yourself just as God is pure. Now a lot of Christians because they haven't read the Bible carefully, the only purification they know of is God cleansing them through the blood of Jesus Christ. The Bible speaks about two types of cleansing. One is what God does and the other is what we do ourselves. 1 John 1:7 says, “The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.” That's God's work. 1 John 1:9 says, “He is faithful to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” That also is God's work, but 1 John 3:3 is speaking about us cleansing ourselves. You read that also in 2 Corinthians 7:1 where we are told that having such wonderful promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness or defilement of flesh and spirit. Cleanse ourselves! The same thing we read in 2 Timothy 2:2, “If a man cleanses himself, he will be a vessel unto honor”. In these verses, you find two types of cleansing: what God does and what we got to do ourselves. God can be trusted to do His part if we fulfill the conditions. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, forgive our sin, blotted out and never to remember it anymore (1 John 1:9, Hebrews 8:12). He also justifies us by the blood of Christ (Romans 5:9). That means He declare us righteous and God will do that for us. But what does this cleansing ourselves mean? This is the narrow way, this is the way of sanctification, this is the way of transformation into the likeness of Christ and it is progressive. The baptism in the Holy Spirit is a crisis. It's like entering through a gate but it must be something which must be renewed all the time. We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit continuously. Ephesians 5:18 speaks to those who are already baptized in the Holy Spirit and says be being filled with the Spirit or be being immersed in the Holy Spirit. Baptism just means immersion. We stand under the waterfall of the Spirit falling from heaven. I'm drenched, baptized in the Spirit but I need to live under that waterfall continuously to experience this fullness of the Spirit.

As my own capacity in my heart increases to experience more and more of the fullness of the Spirit in my life, thereby being conformed more and more into the likeness of Christ. I cannot change myself into the likeness of Christ. It is the Holy Spirit's job to make me like Christ, but I need to cooperate with Him by cleansing myself. That means when the Holy Spirit points out something in me which is displeasing to Christ, I get rid of it. He's not going to get rid of it for me. For example, if you're watching a television program which has got some impurity in it, some immorality, some scene which is defiling your mind, the Holy Spirit is not going to use the remote to change the channel. No. He wants you to do that. He will tell you this is not something that Christ would watch, but if you want to see that dirty movie, that's up to you, but you're not going to walk the narrow way and become like Christ if you continue watching that. You have to use the remote to change the channel. That's just one example.

You could be on the internet in a computer and you could be tempted to go to a site which is sexually provocative. The Holy Spirit won't stop you from clicking the mouse to go there. He will tell you that you shouldn't go there by prompting you in your spirit, but you have to cleanse yourself. You have to refuse the temptation to sin in that moment. You have to say; “Lord I'm going to get rid of that habit from my life.” The Holy Spirit is testing you in all these situations to see whether you really want to be like Christ or not and when He sees that you're really serious about wanting to be like Christ, He will transform you. Let's understand this clearly. Let me repeat it. You cannot conform yourself into the likeness of Christ. You cannot produce the divine nature no matter how much you try. You try for a million years; you cannot produce even a little bit of the divine nature. The divine nature is something God has to give you and impart to you, communicate to you but you got to remove the blockage in the channel which prevents Him from communicating that nature to you. You got to get rid of that which is hindering God from giving you His nature. So that is the meaning of cleansing ourselves. I get rid of from my life that which the Holy Spirit tells me to get rid of, not what people say. That's why I don't tell people to get rid of this and get rid of that, I will only suggest to them: Hey, this is harmful for you and there are certain things which a person may take time to see. For example, I may not wear any jewelry or ornaments. My wife and I don't wear it, but I will not tell another person to do that because they may not have light on this. These are not sinful things, there are things like this which I personally have a conviction of, and I don't want to do it. Paul once said in 1 Corinthian 6:12 that even among all the lawful things, he will not be mastered by them. There were lawful things that he wouldn’t do. A really spiritual man does not only get rid of sinful things, he also gets rid of certain things that are lawful because they are a hindrance to his goal. In 1 Corinthians 9:24, Paul says about an athlete running a race to win. There are a lot of lawful things an athlete can eat but if he eats all of them, he'll never win the prize. He has got to discipline himself in what he eats and what he doesn't eat. An athlete can lawfully sleep till 9 o'clock in the morning but if he doesn't get up early morning to go for a run, he's unlikely to win the medal. There are a lot of lawful things that an athlete gives up for the sake of getting a medal in the Olympic Games. In the same way, when we speak about cleansing ourselves, it is not just from things that are sinful, it's from things which don't help me to win the crown and to press on and become like Christ. It may be lawful, and I don't judge another person who does those things, or uses those things, but I have decided not to use them, or to give them up, because I want to reach my goal sooner. When the Holy Spirit sees that we are serious about this, He will give us more and more grace to partake of the divine nature, and He does this by changing our way of thinking.

We looked at this verse in Philippians 2:5 which says, “Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus.” In Romans 12, we read these words concerning the mind. It's very important to see the power of the mind, the function of the mind in the Christian life. Romans 12:2 says, “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Transformation takes place by the renewing of our mind. Conformity to the world also takes place within our mind. We got to read that verse like this: Don't think like the world thinks in your mind, don't let the world squeeze you into its shape and mold. That's one paraphrase of that verse. Allow the Holy Spirit to change your way of thinking so that you begin to think like Christ thinks. You look at people, things, circumstances the way Christ looks at them. We see here this takes place in our mind first of all. In other words, the Holy Spirit wants to change my way of thinking because before you can change my character, you have to change my mind. That's why the mind is so important. We must allow the Holy Spirit freedom to change our way of thinking, to change our value system. For example, in the world, money is considered perhaps the most important thing along with honor, position, power, popularity, pleasure and comfort. These are things which are considered of worth and very important in different degrees; worth giving up many things for in order to get them. Most people spend their life in the pursuit of these things. But Jesus Christ did not spend His life in the pursuit of money or pleasure or power or comfort or ease or any such thing. He spent His life in the pursuit of doing the will of His Father and in that pursuit, He had to give up some of these things. In one place, it says that He didn't even have time to eat food. Now is there anything wrong in eating food? No, but He didn't have time for it because there was something more important, more pressing that He wanted to do. You find that the serious Christians, the one who wants his mind to be conformed to the likeness of Christ will have a different set of priorities to the worldly person or the worldly Christian who is trying to get the best of both worlds.

Most Christians I've met, are trying to get the best of both worlds and they've got their feet in two boats, and they never get anywhere. One boat going in one direction, the other boat going in a different direction and they've got their feet in two boats, and they never get anywhere; whereas Jesus Christ was completely set on doing the will of His Father. In Jesus’s earthly life, we find that the Father showed us how He wants man to live. If you want to know how He wanted Adam to live, here's the answer— the way Jesus lived on the earth. Not in the physical circumstances of the Garden of Eden, or Nazareth or in your case, it may be Chennai or Trivandrum or Delhi wherever. It doesn't matter. The physical location, circumstances are unimportant. It's not a question of whether you travel by a scooter or a car or you walk like Jesus did. That's not the point. It's a question of a value system. What are the things that Jesus values? If the Holy Spirit can make me get Jesus’s value system, I'll become a spiritual man. So that's the meaning of the renewing of our mind where my mind begins to think like Jesus. My values in my mind are the values Jesus had in His life, and therefore I gradually become like Him. In the same way, worldliness is also in the mind. A lot of people among Christians think that worldliness is in the way you dress. A woman may be dressed very immodestly. The worldliness is not in a dress, it's in her mind. It's that way of thinking she has in her mind which makes her dress in an immodest way. You can change a dress, but you won't stop her from being worldly just like that. You can dress up a dog in a suit and tie, but it is still a dog; it doesn't change anything. You can compel a woman to dress modestly, it doesn't change her way of thinking. Worldliness is in the mind just like sanctification begins in the mind. It's very important for us to understand this. Then we will open our beings and open our minds, especially to allow the Holy Spirit through God's Word, as we read it, to show us the nature of God and conform us to that likeness. This should be your goal.

Chapter 18

The Humanity Of Jesus Christ

We have been considering in these sessions what God's purpose for man really was when He created man. Progressively, we been looking at God's purpose, God’s provision and now that man has fallen, how God made a way for man to be restored to that original purpose by sending Christ, giving us the Holy Spirit to dwell within. I have repeatedly stressed how a lot of people are missing out on God's provision. Jesus said you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. If we don't know the truth, we will remain in bondage. That is the condition of many Christians. Because they are ignorant, they are bound. I could say Jesus is implying if you remain ignorant of the truth, you will remain in slavery and bound but if you know the truth, the truth will set you free. It will set you free from sin and free from all the hang-ups you have in your personality because of tragedies you faced in your childhood or problems caused to you by others. You can be set free from everything. There is not a single problem in your life that God cannot solve. There is no hangover from the past that God cannot deal with. This is the wonderful message of the gospel. it doesn't matter what your background is, where you came from, how you were brought up. God can solve everything and make you a glorious Christian and make you like Christ increasingly if you are willing.

Jesus once used these words in Matthew 11:29; He said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart.” Now in an earlier study, we saw the exhortation in Philippians 2:5 saying, “Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” Have this attitude in you which is in Christ. Now Jesus is saying the same thing here. Learn from me, He says. Not just from a book. Do you know one big difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament is this; that in the Old Testament, they only had a book. No man could stand up in the Old Testament and say follow me, look at me, learn from me. But in the New Testament, we don't only have a book, we have a person. The person of Jesus Christ, dead and risen; and the Holy Spirit to show us what Christ is like and to make us like Him. Now which do you think is easier; to learn swimming on a blackboard or to learn swimming by a person jumping into the river and showing you what to do. You know the answer. From a book, you can have all the theory of swimming explained there, but you never learn it. You still go and jump in the river and you will drown. But if you have a person who's got into the river and says see what I'm doing and follow me, it is so much easier. That is one of the big differences between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. The Old Covenant, they had the book of the law. In the New Covenant, we have the word, not written down but the Word made flesh. When we look at the written word, our purpose is through the written word of Scripture to see the Living Word, Jesus Christ Himself. He says, “Take my yoke upon you and learn of Me.” How can I learn from Christ? It's not like you study chemistry or physics sitting in a classroom and listening to a lecture. You can learn chemistry, mathematics, physics every subject in the world, you can learn by sitting in a classroom, but you can't learn swimming sitting in a classroom. You can't learn horse riding sitting in a classroom. You can't learn to drive a car sitting in a classroom. That needs hands-on experience and to become like Christ, to learn from Christ, you need experience in daily life. For that He says, “Take My yoke upon you.” Now in our villages, everybody knows what a yoke is. The fields are plowed with two oxen plowing together with a yoke upon their necks and they pull the plough together and that's how the field is plowed. When one of those bullocks dies and they get a new bullock; who doesn't know head or tail about plowing, and doesn't know how to plow a straight furrow, they yoke that new junior bullock with an experienced senior bullock. The senior bullock tells the junior bullock, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. Just walk at the pace I'm walking. Walk in the direction I'm walking, and, in a few weeks, you’ll be able to plow a straight furrow; you'd have learned from me.” It's not a vocal communication like, do this or do that. It a hands-on experience and so when Jesus says take my yoke upon you, He's saying come into a partnership with me, into a fellowship with me and let me teach you something. Learn from me, from My life, from the way I live, look at my earthly life.

How do I take this yoke? First of all, submit to the authority of Christ completely. In the Old Testament, to be under the yoke meant to be under someone's authority. We read in the Old Testament of the yoke of the king of Babylon. The Israelites came under that yoke. Now Jesus invites us to a very pleasant yoke because later on Matthew 11, He says, My yoke is easy, it's very kind and pleasant type of yoke. It's not a heavy yoke like the yoke of the king of Babylon on the Israelites. No, it's an easy, pleasant yoke and my load is light. The Lord does not force us to do something. Anything forced, if you do it even if it's a good thing, becomes a dead work. In the Old Testament, they only had good works and evil works. In the New Testament, you read about good works, evil works and dead works (Hebrews 6:1). In Hebrews 9:14, you read about dead works and it says we got to repent of dead works. We must have dead works cleansed in the blood of Christ. What are dead works? In a very simple way, dead works are good works done with the wrong motive. I could preach. Is that a good work? Sure, but if I preach for money, it's a dead work. I can sing a song in a church, but if it's sung in order to get some honor for myself, it's a dead work. I can give money for God's work that's a good thing. But if I give that money because I want to get some honor for myself or I want my name to be published somewhere, it's a dead work immediately. My good work has become a dead work. Sinful works are already dead, but the great tragedy is where good works become dead works.

You read about that even in the Old Testament. In the book of Exodus, the Lord spoke to Moses concerning the dress of Aaron. One of the things He said was that Aaron has got to have a plate on his forehead saying, “Holy to the Lord” and the purpose of that was to take away the sin there is in the Holy things that Israel consecrates (Exodus 28:38). There is sin in the Holy things and that is dead works. The meaning here is we don't just mechanically do something written in scripture because it will be a dead work. You can take a verse of scripture and mechanically obey it and force other people to obey it mechanically according to the letter of the law. 2 Corinthians 3:6 says the letter kills. You can follow the letter of Scripture and it will kill. You can take that letter of Scripture and preach it to other people in your church, it'll kill them. That's not the way to learn. The way to learn is to take the yoke of Jesus upon us and to learn from Him, to look at His example. In 2 Corinthians 3:6, after it says that the letter kills, it says in contrast that the Holy Spirit gives life. How does the Holy Spirit give life? By showing us when we read scripture, not a verse or a commandment, but the glory of Jesus Christ. In other words, when I look at Scripture, I have to see Jesus there. With an unveiled face, I look into this mirror of God’s word and what do I see there? I see the glory of Jesus Christ there and little by little, the Holy Spirit changes me into that likeness (2 Corinthians 3:18). The whole purpose with which God has given us the scriptures is not just for us to follow the letter of the law. It will make you a Pharisee. The Pharisees who killed Jesus Christ were people who followed the letter of the law and they kept on trying to fault with people. They would catch a woman in adultery and go to the letter of the law and want to stone her to death. Jesus would set her free because they didn’t understand the heart of God. They kept the letter of the law and they wanted to punish and kill people whereas God was always interested in redeeming people. If God sees a man in sin, He wants to save that man. When the Pharisees saw a man in sin, they were considering which verse to use to put him out of the church. You find there are people like that even today. When they see a person in sin, they want to find which verse is there to condemn him but when God sees a man in sin, He wants to see how He can save him. So that’s an example of how the letter kills but the Spirit gives life. You go to the letter of the law and you’ll find a verse to hit somebody on the head with, whereas if you go the Holy Spirit, He’ll show you the glory of Jesus there. If you want life, you’ve got to see Jesus right through Scripture and say, “Lord, help me understand Your nature!”

He says to us, “Learn from me, take my yoke upon you and learn from me.” We are to look at the humility of Jesus Christ. The world can see the glory of God in creation, the stars, the planets and all the wonders there are in the universe. To the disciple of Jesus, the glory of God is not seen in creation primarily, but in the character and person of Jesus Christ in His humility and in the way He lived on this earth. When we think of the very fact that He did not consider equality with God as something to hold on to and grasped, but came down and became a man, that in itself is a tremendous step in humility! Just picture this; if you as a dignified human being want to help a worm, a wretched worm crawling on the ground and you love that worm so much because it doesn’t know how to conduct itself. If you go down as a man, that worm will be terrified. So, you become a worm in order to communicate to that worm and lead it to a higher life. This is a picture of what Jesus Christ did. The difference between God and man is much greater than the difference between man and a little worm that crawls on the ground. For us to become a worm would be a tremendous step in humility if we wanted to help that worm. For God to become a man is a million times greater step in humility. If we don't see that, we have not seen the glory of Jesus Christ. This is why I'm against all these people who say that Jesus was a great prophet or a philosopher a religious leader. No, He was not. He was the Son of God who came in human form. He was God manifest in the flesh. He was not just one of the many incarnations of God. No, He was the only incarnation of God on the face of this earth. If you say anything other than that, you robbed Him of His glory. He was God manifest in the flesh and there we see His humility in the very fact that He became a man. Even if He came to earth as an emperor to rule this earth, that would have been humility. For God Almighty to come to this earth as an emperor would have been a fantastic step down but the wonderful thing is that when He came to earth, He did not choose to be an emperor.

The wise men who came hearing of the birth of Jesus looked for Him in the wrong place. They followed the star and when they came to Jerusalem, decided not to follow the star anymore because they reasoned that the king of the Jews should be born in a palace. (Matthew 2:1-2). They stopped following the star and that's where those wise men became foolish and they went to the palace to find where the king of the Jews was born and the people in the palace did not have a clue that the king of the Jews was even born. These people from way down in the east came looking for Him and the people who had the Bible they didn't even know the King of the Jews was born. Then King Herod goes to the chief priests and scribes to inquire of them where the Messiah was to be born. They tell him He is going to be born in Bethlehem according to the book of Micah, but they couldn't care less about going to Bethlehem. So, the wise men came out and what did they do? They became wise again and they followed the star. When they followed the star, they get the surprise of their life that this One who was the King of the Jews is in a little house. They didn't come in time for the birth. If they had come in time for the birth, they would have seen Him in a stable with the cows and the donkeys. They came a little late. Perhaps they were held up because they stopped following the star and deviated to Herod's Palace instead of going straight to Bethlehem. If you had come to Bethlehem, they'd have seen that wonderful sight of the Son of God born in a stable, but they missed that. By the time they came, He’d moved out of the stable and was living in a house. It says they came and saw Him in the house but what I want to say is that even when He came to earth, He further humbled Himself. How much did He humble Himself there? Not just a little bit. I mean if He was born in a middle-class family that itself would have been humility. If He had been born in a servant's home that would have been even a greater humility but think of this; He was born in a cowshed. In my entire life I have never heard of anyone who was so poor that his child was born in a cowshed with the cows and donkeys. I don't know if there was any human being on the face of the earth who was so poor that his mother could deliver Him only in a cowshed. That's where the Lord Jesus Christ is unique. Why did He go from the highest place in heaven to the lowest place on earth in a cowshed with donkeys? Because He wanted to save people. He came underneath everybody in order to lift everybody up. How can you lift people up if you don't go underneath them? You can't sit on top of them as a ruler and expect to lift them up. You can give orders to them if you sit as a ruler but if you want to lift them up, you got to go underneath them. He was determined to go underneath every single human being that ever lived and that's why He was born in a cowshed. The lowest possible place to be born in, He was born there and there we see His humility. Now the wonderful thing is that this was not accidental. You may have been born at home or in a hospital, but you never had a choice in where you were to be born. You didn't choose the country you are to be born in or the family you are to be born in because you were just conceived in your mother's womb and depending on your parent’s social status, that's where you were born. You could have been born in an air-conditioned room in a hospital or in a room in a house. You didn't choose where to be born. There was only one person who was born on this earth who chose where He wanted to be born and that was Jesus Christ our Lord because He planned His birth from heaven.

He planned His birth for thousands of years. The seed of the woman was promised in Genesis 3:15. From the time that promised was given there are 4,000 years but He knew about that birth even before. Supposing you were to plan your own birth on earth. Which family would you choose? Which town would you choose? Which place would you choose to be born? Would you choose a place like Nazareth which Nathaniel said, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth”? It had such a bad reputation. Would you choose a town with a bad reputation to be born in? Would you choose a poor carpenter's family to be born in or would you choose some rich man's home? Where would you choose to be born? Would you choose a despised slave nation like Israel which was under the Romans? And which location would you choose? Would you choose a cowshed? Jesus deliberately chose all these places, and not only that, you see his humility in His genealogy mentioned in Matthew 1. Generally speaking, when the Jewish people wrote their genealogies, they never mentioned any women's names. It was a male-dominated society. In this genealogy of Jesus which goes all the way up to Joseph who's the husband of Mary, His mother, we read the names of four women and three of them are in the physical ancestry of Jesus Christ. The first one is Tamar (Matthew 1:3) who produced a son called Perez, and the interesting thing there, if you read way back in Genesis 38, this woman Tamar was actually Judah’s daughter-in-law. It was incest in the family— father-in-law and daughter-in-law had sex and they had a child and that child's name was Perez. Jesus from heaven chooses that line to come through. Would you like to choose a line for your ancestry which involves incest? Would you even want that, or would you avoid it completely? He could have avoided it and chosen a pure line, but He chose that. The second woman mentioned here is Rahab (Matthew 1:5). Rahab was the most well-known prostitute in Jericho. She was not even a Jewish person, she belonged to the land of Jericho, probably of a Canaanite family. She was a prostitute who earned her money by selling her body for sex. Would you want everybody to know that your grandmother was a prostitute in the city? Would you choose such a line if you had the choice and even if it was, would you put it on the first page of your biography? This is the very first page of Jesus’s biography. The third woman mentioned here is Ruth. Ruth is called here the wife of Boaz and Ruth was a Moabite. That means she descended from Moab. Moab was one of the sons of Lot born through his incest with his own daughter. Here's another line of incest. The fourth woman was Bathsheba (Matthew 1:6) who David committed adultery with. She was not in the physical ancestry of Mary but was in the physical ancestry of Joseph. It's very interesting that all these four women were involved with some type of sexual deviation and sin in their ancestry. Ruth through her ancestor Moab, Rahab directly, Tamar directly and Bathsheba directly. Why did Jesus choose such a line saturated with sinful people? Because He came to save sinners. He wanted people to know that He had identified Himself with a sinful line. There is no sin in Him, but He identified Himself totally with a terribly sinful line so that He could save people who have been involved in incest, in adultery, who've been prostitutes, it doesn't matter who. He came to save sinners and in order to save sinners, He didn't care what people thought about Him. His humility was so total. He identified Himself completely with the human race. There we see His tremendous Humility, and there when we compare our own pride, it's so foolish. May God help us to learn something from the humility of Jesus. If the Holy Spirit is to make us like Jesus, He must bring us to the place where we don't despise sinners. We recognize that we are sinners ourselves and we are willing to identify with them even if you are free from sin in order to save them from their wretched condition. There we see the glory of Jesus’ humility. The Holy Spirit wants to make you like that.

Chapter 19

Likeness To Christ

Today, we want to look at the reason why God sent His Son to this earth. It is more than merely to die for our sins even though that was our primary need. Jesus Himself said in John 6:38 the purpose with which He came from heaven in these words, “I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will but the will of Him who sent Me.” It's quite an amazing statement when you come to think of it because when Jesus was in heaven from all eternity as the second person of the Trinity, there was no conflict between His will and His Father's will. In heaven for eternal ages, He could say I do My own will because it is the same as My Father's will. But the moment He came to earth and became like us, and if He had to be like us, then He had to have a free will. All human beings have a free will. Our children have a free will; they can disobey us if they want. If Jesus was not to be a robot; and we know He was not; then He had to have a free will.

Jesus had the freedom of choice because He came as a human being. We saw earlier that Jesus was 100% God and 100% man. It is the 100%-man aspect of His personality which is a problem to most; both God and man in the same one person; He wasn't two persons. It's this part which is not sufficiently understood or emphasized or even accepted by many born-again Christians. They think they degrade Jesus by emphasizing His humanity. Actually, they degrade Him by not emphasizing His humanity. They think that if we say He was just like us, we make Him sinful. No, man was not created sinful and there was no sin in Jesus at all, but He was like us and therefore He had a will. If He was to please His Father as a man, then He had to say no to His own will and that's what He says here, “I have come from heaven not to do My will but the will of Him who sent Me.” This is a verse in His own words which proves His humanity and we should be proud and delighted by the fact that He became one like us. Jesus once described His coming to earth and being a man by comparing it with the ladder that Jacob saw ascending up to heaven. He said that in John 1:51 to Nathaniel, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you shall see the heavens open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” He was referring to the dream that Jacob had way back in the Old Testament where he saw a ladder going from earth to heaven and the angels of God descending and ascending on that ladder. Jesus applies this to Himself; He is that ladder. He is the Son of Man who connects heaven to earth, and the point is, if the last rung of that ladder did not touch the earth, it could not connect us to heaven. He did not come and stay a little bit above us; He came all the way down. The bottom of the ladder touched the earth. He was like us and therefore He denied His own will, and that's what encourages us to believe that we can follow Him too. In the Father's will for Jesus on earth, He was not only to be our substitute; our Savior dying on the cross, but He was also to be our example, as we considered in our last study. We are called not only to believe in Him for our salvation and for the forgiveness of our sins, but also to follow Him, and that's what He asked us to do constantly.

There is a very lovely verse in Philippians 2:5 most Christians are familiar with. It says, “Have this attitude in yourself which was in Christ Jesus or let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus, who although He existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of men.” We see very clearly that He emptied Himself of those rights and resources He had as God when He came to earth; though in His Person, He continued to be God. Now because He was a man like us on this earth, the Word of God challenges us to have the same mind that He had, and to have the same attitude towards people, circumstances, material things, towards trial, temptation; towards everything. The secret of true Christianity is in this verse; if you want to be a disciple of Jesus, this is what you need to do. Allow your mind to be transformed into the likeness of the mind of Christ. Now this was not possible in the Old Testament times, for one reason, that the Holy Spirit did not dwell within man. You know the most significant event that took place after the resurrection of Christ and Christ going to heaven, is the coming of the Holy Spirit. That's as important as the coming of Jesus Christ to earth. A lot of Christians appreciate the fact that Christ came to earth, but they haven't sufficiently understood the implications and the blessing of the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit coming to us as well. Why did He come to earth? He occasionally visited people in the Old Testament but now He came to indwell people, to come within, to make this body His temple. This is the true temple of God now. When I receive Christ into my life and open my being to His Holy Spirit, He makes my body the house of God. In the Old Testament, the house of God was in Jerusalem as a physical building. Today there is no physical building which is the house of God. 1 Corinthians 3:16 and 1 Corinthians 6:19 teach that this body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and He has come inside the body to give us the strength to control the passions in our body, and also to renew our mind. What does that mean? Our mind has a certain way of thinking, we have a certain value system in our mind and that value system was acquired as we grew up from childhood, from our surroundings, from people and from the Adamic nature that we were all born with. That's what makes all human beings, (whatever religion they may call themselves), selfish, proud, often jealous of others, lovers of money, lovers of pleasure, comfort, seeking one's own and numerous things which are characteristic of the entire human race irrespective of religion. The purpose of God is that when Christ comes into our life, and we open our beings to be filled with the Holy Spirit; not just to receive the forgiveness that Christ offers us on the cross, but beyond that when we open our beings to allow the Holy Spirit to control us, what will happen is, He will change our way of thinking. He will change our value system; He will make us think more like how Jesus thought in His earthly days as a man.

Do you think that is happening with most Christians? Unfortunately, not. How many Christians do you find who are serious about looking at things the way Jesus looked at them? How many Christians are seeking with all their heart, even if they don't attain it, at least seeking with all their heart to climb this mountain with the power of the Holy Spirit; to look at people and things and circumstances the way Jesus looked at them. That is the meaning of this commandment. This is not a suggestion. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, Paul says in Philippians 2:5, “You must have the mind of Christ, you must have the same attitude that Jesus had.” That means we are to look at people the way Jesus looked at people. We must look at women the way Jesus looked at women with purity. We must look at material things the way Jesus looked at them; not in a covetous, greedy way, seeking to grab as much as possible for ourselves but being content with what God has given us and when we have more than enough for ourselves, to use it to bless other people who are needy. Jesus didn't grab all the money that people gave Him and keep it all for Himself. No, He would give to the poor. You read that in John 13:29, He Himself was so poor that He had no place to lay His head, but whenever people gave Him some money, He gave to the poor, as well as to those around who were needy. At the same time, we read in the same verse John 13:29 that He bought what was needed. There is nothing wrong in using our money to buy what we need but very often we have to say that most Christians have not changed their attitude to money because they have not allowed the Holy Spirit to renew their way of thinking.

Transformation into the likeness of Christ is God's goal for us. In Romans 8:29, we read a word called predestined. The subject of predestination has been discussed by so many Bible scholars and they have different interpretations and there are people who talk about some human beings being predestined to go to hell and some human beings being predestined to go to heaven. I don't know where they get all these ideas from. Certainly not from the Bible because there's not a single verse in the Bible that says anybody was predestined to go to heaven or hell. The word predestination in the Bible is not connected with heaven or hell. That is not the destination God has predetermined for us. Predestination means, the destination was determined beforehand. God has determined the destination for us who are His children, and I want to say to you, and this may surprise you; it is not heaven. Where is it then? That destination is according to Romans 8:29 is conformity to the likeness of Jesus Christ. It says here He predestined them; those whom He called and chose, whom He knew beforehand. When it says He foreknew them that means He knew beforehand that certain people would respond to the call of Christ, so He made a plan for them before they were even born. I mean He knew who all would respond to the call of Christ before He created the world. That's why He could put their names in the book of life. He knew who all would endure faithfully till the end trusting Christ. Their names were put in the book of life and He prepared a destination for them which is what the Bible calls predestination and that destination is total conformity to the likeness of Christ.

If you ask me what God’s ultimate plan for me is and what is my predestination, I am very clear in my own mind that in my personality, I will be totally like Jesus Christ; in my attitude to people, to material things, to serving others and in everything else. That is a far greater goal than going to heaven. Desire to go to heaven can be a very selfish desire. The desire to escape hell can be a very selfish desire. Even a fool doesn't want to go to hell. Nobody wants to go there, only a man who doesn't understand what hell is, or is off his head would talk lightly about hell. Apart from that, no sensible person would want to go there, not even a fool. But to choose heaven doesn't mean you're a spiritual person. Would you choose a mansion or a hut to live in? If you choose a mansion, it doesn't mean you're spiritual. So, It can be a very selfish desire to choose heaven. The goal is not heaven or hell; it is conformity to Jesus Christ and that process starts right now. As soon as Christ comes into our life and the Holy Spirit fills us, God begins the work in us. That work is called sanctification and the word sanctification means being separated from everything un-Christlike and everything Adamic. We have got a lot of the nature of Adam within us and that nature is basically selfish and proud. We think only about ourselves and we look down on others as though they are beneath us. When Jesus came to earth, He never did anything like that. He never looked down on any human being; the lowest beggar was just as important to him as King Herod or Pilate or anyone. All were equal like all human beings are equal before God and He never thought only of Himself. The very fact that He came to earth shows that He was totally unselfish. Why did He come to earth from heaven? It was not to get anything for Himself. We may do Christian service or social-service to get some satisfaction for ourselves that we're doing something for God. Jesus didn't come to earth to get some satisfaction that He was doing something for His Father. He came with the purely unselfish loving motive of bringing us to where He is, taking us out of the pit that we are in, and bringing us to where He is to enjoy everything He enjoyed.

His desire was that we should enjoy what He has. That is total unselfishness; a good mother and father will want their children to enjoy what they're enjoying and to enjoy even more. The most unselfish manifestation of love that we see on the face of this earth is the mother's love for her little child. She is willing to sacrifice so much so that her child may be comfortable. This is the purest form of love you can see on this earth. Multiply a mother’s love by a million and you understand God's love; it's totally unselfish. Christ came to earth to change us. We cannot change ourselves; it is impossible. No matter how much we try, we may, on the surface appear to be, or pretend to be kind, and unselfish, because we get honor and a good reputation for that. But getting a reputation for ourselves while our nature hasn’t changed isn’t Christianity. Christianity is where our inner life is changed; where we are the same within. When Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life”, what did He mean by the word truth? The opposite of truth is lie. What He meant was there is no lie in Me; I'm not pretending, I'm not acting out something on the outside which I'm not inside. Truth means reality and Jesus was saying I'm real. Christians must be real; you must appear to be on the outside what you are genuinely inside.

Now in the beginning that's not true. We are all hypocrites, actors and pretenders. The Adamic nature that we have inherited from childhood has taught us to pretend, to act, to do what other people will accept. Christ came to change us on the inside, and when we see that as the destination that God Himself has planned for us, we can be pretty sure that He will do everything to take us to that destination. We read in Romans 8:28 that God makes everything around us to work together for our good. That good is mentioned in the next verse; to make us like Christ. God has a goal in His dealings with us and that goal is to conform us to the likeness of Christ completely. All the events and circumstances, and things that happen around us, are planned by God to bring us to that goal, where we become like Christ. God is very serious about this and He's determined to bring us there at any cost. If we also cooperate with Him, we'll get there pretty quickly, but if we don't cooperate with Him, He is certainly not going to drag us, because God respects a man's free will. The clearest proof of that is, if a person wants to go to hell, God Almighty doesn't stop him. Isn't that amazing; that every day there are millions of people dying in sin going to an eternal hell separated from God and God doesn't stop them. If they want to go there, they're welcome to go there. Why is that? Even though God knows it’s terrible for them if they choose to go there, He will not interfere. He will not force man to come into His presence; He won't catch a man by the neck and say you got to come to heaven. He gives us freedom of choice even after we have received Christ as our Savior and the Holy Spirit has come in, He still respects our freedom of choice.

He tells us if you want to reach this destination of becoming like Christ, you're welcome but if you don't want to reach there, I'm not going to force you. That’s the reason why millions of born-again believers do not seem to grow spiritually into the likeness of Christ. They are still selfish, proud, jealous, angry and bitter even after 20, 30 years of being born again. There's hardly any difference between these so-called born-again Christians and those who are atheists. Sometimes those atheists behave much better. What is the reason? One reason could be these people have not been genuinely born again. They probably have just gone through a formula taught to them by some preacher to say these magic words: Lord Jesus come into my heart like some type of mantra which they thought would change them. There was no sincerity in their heart, there was no repentance, there was no turning from sin, there was no recognition of what Christ had done for them and the price He had paid for them and so they respond in a selfish way because they want to go to heaven. They are threatened that they'll go to hell if they don't believe and so they believe.

That's one category of persons and the other is those who may have been genuinely born-again but have not understood that God has made provision for them to have their whole mind controlled by the Holy Spirit so that they can be transformed into the likeness of Christ. The power of the Holy Spirit is like electricity; we're like bulbs. It's only when the electricity flows into the bulb that the light shines. Otherwise, it has the capacity to shine, but it doesn't shine. God's desire is that we open our being; He's not telling us to shine on our own. No, He knows we can't do it. He's telling us to open our beings to His power, the power of His Holy Spirit. The Christian life is really very simple. it's actually very exciting because He doesn't expect us to do anything on our own. “Open your being,” God says to you, “by the power of my Holy Spirit I will change you.” The responsibility to change us is God’s. The destination determined is by Him, and He works out things through our circumstances, and He works inside us to make us like Christ. When you have a command saying have this attitude which is in Christ, He is the one who is willing to produce that in us if we are willing to change. Isn't that a wonderful message? It takes the responsibility off us completely to be transformed. All we need to do is to be willing. Are you willing? It's all God wants from you. Tell Him that.

Chapter 20

Holiness Of Jesus

We have been looking at the fact that God our Father sent His Son in human form to die for our sins and also to be an example for us. The reason why I find it necessary to emphasize the fact of this being an example is because in evangelical Christendom, the fact of Jesus being our Savior and dying for our sins on the cross is emphasized widely but the other side of truth that He is our example is hardly emphasized. It's very rare to find evangelical Christian preachers preaching much about it and explaining in practical terms what it actually means. Among liberal Christians, there is an emphasis on the humanity of Christ which leads them to talk about improving social conditions and helping the poor etc. in practical ways on this earth but not in terms of character of the individual Christian which is what the New Testament emphasizes. The New Testament doesn't tell us how to deliver people from oppressive dictators or how to teach them to dig better wells or grow better crops or even about setting up schools and hospitals. All these are good, but that's not what the New Testament speaks about. When the New Testament speaks about following Jesus, it's not about delivering people from dictatorships or teaching them to dig better wells or grow better crops but transforming them into the likeness of Christ in character individually. It begins with the individual, not with society in general and here is where there has been a tremendous lack of emphasis in evangelical Christendom and partly because most preachers are not willing to pay the price to follow Jesus in their personal life and to walk the way of humility, purity, love and compassion that He walked and therefore they don't have the moral authority to speak about His character. In a day and age where many people are seeking for position and titles and honor in Christendom, here was Jesus who lived without any titles; He told people don't let anybody call you rabbi, father, leader because you are all brothers and you're all servants. That's what He said, but it's so rare to find in Christendom people who want to follow Jesus in this area. That's part of his humility, He never wanted to exalt Himself above any other human being; He was down at their level. He made Himself like His brethren in all things. The first principle of successful Christian ministry is to become like the people you minister to and if you want to be a successful and useful servant of God the way Jesus was, the first principle is to become like the others. Don't seek in any way to exalt yourself above the others. Don't seek a title, honor, position or anything above the others. People may respect you as a very godly man, but you make sure that you don't exalt yourself by anything above them, in any way. Live at their level and seek to be like them. I believe that Jesus dressed like the people around Him and His whole conduct was just like everybody else's in terms of the way He lived. But in the midst of such a world, He lived in purity and a spirit which was completely the opposite of that of everybody else in the world.

Now we want to look today at His purity. We have seen His humility and now we want to see something about His Holiness. The holiness of Jesus was not something He automatically had without a battle. If it were so then there would be nothing great about it. You know the difference between an earned doctorate and an honorary doctorate. An honorary doctorate you don't study for, you just get it. A doctorate, you work hard for it and get a degree. Was the holiness of Jesus something given to Him on a platter for which He had to do nothing; He just took it? Certainly, your holiness and mine is not like that; we are tempted so severely. We face such severe temptations that it's difficult for a Christian to live even one day without sinning in thought or word or deed or attitude or motive. You and I have to confess that; temptation is so strong and so pressing on every side and we are so weak that we slip and fall every day consciously and much more unconsciously. Very often we are aware of a fall only after we have fallen; after we had that wrong attitude for a moment towards somebody else. Now a thought itself may not be sin because it could only be a temptation flashed into your mind by the devil, but if you reject it immediately that's not sin. Let me clarify that so that people don't get into condemnation. You need to distinguish between temptation and sin. Temptation is a thought flashed into your mind by the devil. The devil flashed the thought into Jesus’ mind; turn the stones into bread. He said no. He didn't sin even though that thought came into His mind. A thought that comes into your mind is like someone speaking a word to you. You don’t sin by having heard something that someone told you. So when your flesh (or the devil) puts a sinful thought into your mind, you have not sinned thereby. Reject it immediately.

You must distinguish between temptation and sin. It is when your mind agrees to that thought that is flashed into your mind that you sin. it's like a man and a woman joining together; a conception takes place and a child is born. See James 1:15. So whenever you are tempted, you should immediately ask God for grace to help you reject it – and then reject it. “Let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may find grace to help in time of need (that is, when we are tempted)” (Heb.4:16). If your mind does not agree to that temptation, there is no sin. 10,000 thoughts may flash through your mind, but if you reject them all, you don't sin at all.

Jesus was tempted like us with thoughts flashed into His mind, but He refused at every point. Every honest Christian will admit it is difficult to even live one single day— morning till night without sinning in thoughts. Maybe in words and actions, we can control ourselves, but it is almost impossible to not sin in thoughts, attitudes and motives. This is because we're so weak and when we see how easy it is to sin in these areas then we see what a miracle it was that Jesus lived 33-1/2 years without sinning once in any area. Now if you say that He lived like that because He had a holiness which was given to Him and it was impossible for Him to sin then and of course, He is no example for us because you and I don't have that type of thing. Then He can never say to any of us, “Follow Me.” He has to say to us, “Admire Me.” He has to say to us; “You fellows can never follow Me, don't even attempt because you won't be able to do it”. But you will never be able to read a verse like this in Scripture!

In 1 Peter 2:21, Peter says, “Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps who committed no sin nor was any deceit found in His mouth.” Did you read those verses together? He has given you an example to follow in His steps who committed no sin. As you look at the steps of Jesus, there was never a step into some sinful area; it was always holiness, humility, love and never did He step into some area that was sinful. He says you must follow in His steps who never committed a sin. Now if Peter were preaching that today, most evangelical Christians would turn around and call him a heretic and a false teacher for teaching such things, but they don't know what to do when it's written in their Bible. They can't call this heresy; they say this is the Word of God, but they don't take it seriously. I'm sure many of you who listen to me have never taken this seriously in your life because immediately the devil tells you that is impossible. What God says is possible, you say it's impossible. With men, it is impossible; it’s absolutely impossible, but with God, Jesus said all things are possible. It's like the disciples once came to Jesus and said who then can be saved. He said with men it is impossible, but with God all things are possible (Matthew 19:26). So, we need to see that Jesus was tempted like us. Hebrews 4:15 clearly says He was tempted like us in all things and that is why He can sympathize with our struggles and our weakness. He knows our weakness when we are tempted. It doesn't mean that He condones our sin. There's not a single verse anywhere in the Bible that says God condones our sin. He sympathized with us; He recognizes our weakness, but He doesn't condone our sin. He's been tempted like us, but He was without sin and therefore it says in the next verse we can also draw near and get the same grace that He received from His Father to overcome sin. Romans 6:14 says sin shall not have dominion over you because you are under grace. If the grace of God is upon me, I cannot sin. That grace keeps me from sinning. Without grace, it's impossible. It's like when the electricity is flowing through the bulb, it shines but if the electricity stops, it stops shining immediately. When grace departs from my life, I fall into sin immediately but as long as grace is there, it's like the electricity flowing and the bulb shining. It's not some great credit to the bulb, it's because of the flow of electricity which is continuous and if the flow of grace comes upon me and it does come upon everyone who humbles himself, sin cannot rule over me; it is impossible. I mean if I can keep a book held up like against the law of gravity so that it doesn't fall, do you think Jesus cannot keep holding me up so that I don't fall into sin? Of course, He can, if I trust Him. Everything is dependent on faith. If you don't believe that Jesus can do that for you, then of course He won't be able to do it for you.

A blind man once came to Jesus and said, “Lord, I want my eyes to be open” and Jesus asked him, “Do you believe I can do this for you?” Supposing he said, “Oh I'm not so sure”, he wouldn't have been healed or supposing he said “Well, I think you can open one eye”, he would have got only one eye open because Jesus said, “According to your faith, be it unto you” . Not according to my faith but according to your faith. If you come to Jesus and say, “Lord, can you forgive my sins.” He says, “Do you believe I can do this for you” You say, “Yes Lord, I believe you can forgive my sins.” According to your faith, be it unto you; You're forgiven immediately. Now you go to Him and say, “Lord, Can you give me victory over sin” and the Lord says, “Do you believe I can do this for you.” You say “Well, I'm not so sure. I'm sure you can forgive me but I'm not so sure whether you can give me victory over sin.” The Lord says, “According to your faith, be it unto you.” You'll never get victory over sin because it's according to your faith. Do you believe I can do this for you? Not do you believe that you can do it yourself; that of course the answer is always no. But do you believe the Lord can do this for you. Do you believe the Lord can keep you from falling like it says in the book of Jude 24? You say, “No Lord, I don't believe you can keep me from falling.” According to your faith, be it unto you; you'll keep on falling every day of your life, even fifty years from now. The reason why most Christians have not experienced the promise of God is because they do not believe.

They believe for all types of other things which are not written in scripture like getting a better house or a better car or something like that but the most important thing you need in your life is not a better house or a better car, it's freedom from sin, from anger and from lust and from telling lies and from all the other wretched things that are defiling you and corrupting you and making you useless in God's service and could one day take you to hell. You can go to heaven living in a small house and riding a bicycle and you can go to hell with a big house and a big car. So those are not the things we should be pursuing; those are added bonuses that God throws in. Our main aim in life must be to pursue His righteousness. Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness first, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). That means seek to be holy and don't seek after material things; these are the things God will add to you as He sees fit and as He sees you need it. We have a Christendom today that has stopped seeking God's kingdom and His righteousness and is seeking after all these other things; exactly what Jesus told them not to seek for and there are preachers who teach them to seek that. These are false prophets and there are plenty of them in Christendom today.

When we turn to Luke 2, you see there some amazing words. Do you know who was the first human being upon whom the grace of God rested? The answer is Jesus. When He came as a human being, He gave up those resources He had as God, though He was God Himself. He lived as a human being and human beings need grace and so we read in Luke 2:40, these amazing words about Jesus right from the time He was a child. It says the grace of God was upon Him and Romans 6:14 says when the grace of God is upon someone, He gets victory over sin. In Luke 2:40, when it says the grace of God was upon Jesus, it kept Him from sinning all through His life. That's how He overcame sin and we need to see that. The trouble with a lot of Christians is that they've already formed an opinion in their mind concerning what's right. Every group of Christians has an inherited tradition from what they have learned from their pastors and leaders in their churches and they are unwilling to change it. They read a verse and they pour it into their preconceived theology; the result is they live defeated lives constantly. If you want to be free, you must be willing to let God break those traditions and teach you the truth. The truth will set you free and the truth is that because Jesus was tempted in all points as we are and did not sin (Hebrews 4:15). There the next verse (v16), says let us also go and get this same grace to help us in the time of our need from the throne of grace. Which grace? The same grace that Jesus received. Did He receive grace? Well it says here from the time He was a child; the grace of God was upon Him and up to the time of His death. We read in Hebrews 2:9 that it was by the grace of God that He tasted death. He could not have gone to the cross if the grace of God did not help Him to go there. From childhood we read in Luke 2:40 to his death in Hebrews 2:9, what was it that carried Jesus through? Grace!

Grace is not God's unmerited favor (as some people teach). That is an unscriptural definition. Unmerited favor is something that every human being on earth gets – even godless people and terrorists get it. God gives everyone food, health, children and other material and physical blessings – all of which are undeserved by anyone. God showers such blessings on all types of people – and it is all unmerited.  But that is not grace. The Jewish people in Old Testament times also got unmerited favor. But John 1:17 says that grace became available to man only after Christ came to earth. Jesus Christ was the first person who experienced grace (See Luke 2:40). Because the grace of God was upon Him, He could overcome sin. On the day of Pentecost the Spirit of grace was poured out – that all of us can receive.

Jesus had to be an example for us in holiness. Holiness means freedom from sin and it is impossible to come to that life without grace. We need to know the distinction between mercy and grace. In Hebrews 4:15, we saw that wonderful verse which says Jesus was tempted in all points exactly like us, but He did not sin. Therefore, what shall we do? Is that just something we are to admire and say, “Oh, that's wonderful that He did not sin. Oh, it's wonderful that He came in our flesh.” No, it's not just something to be admired. There must be a result from that; there must be something which we do because of that and that's what it says in the next verse with the phrase “Therefore”.

Therefore, what shall we do? We shall also go to the throne of grace and when we go to the throne of grace, we receive mercy first of all. All of us need mercy but Jesus never needed mercy. Mercy refers to forgiveness for our past failures; we've all failed so badly that we need forgiveness and that's called mercy. There's plenty verses of about mercy in the Old Testament; the mercy of the Lord endures forever, His mercy is from generation to generation etc. but you never find in the Old Testament that God gave grace to people, He give them mercy. Today we can get the same mercy because we have fallen so many times, but God wants to give us something more than mercy and that is grace. Grace is God's power to help us in that time of need (Hebrews 4:16). Our time of need is when we are tempted to fall and that is a thousand times worse than poverty or physical sickness. We're tempted to fall and at that time we need grace to help us to stand. Let us go to the throne of grace and get it just like Jesus prayed and got from the Father, we can also go to the Father and get grace.

To use an illustration, we can picture ourselves like mountain climbers, climbing up a mountain and say in one place you slip and you're about to fall. You're hanging on by your fingers but you're too proud to ask for help and you slip and you fall and you break your bones and you're lying at the bottom and then you ask for help and the ambulance comes along picks you up takes you to the hospital; that's mercy. That is help after you have fallen coming to forgive your sin, to cleanse you and restore you to fellowship with God. Although it’s good that you ask for help, its second best. The best is while you're hanging there by your fingers about the slip and fall, you cry out to God for grace. You cry out saying, “Lord, I'm weak, I acknowledge my weakness. I need help, please come and help me now.” Then you find amazingly that grace lifts you up and puts you on top of that rock from which you are about to slip and fall. Then you don't need the ambulance because you didn't fall. That is grace to help us in our time of need. Now this is not just a beautiful illustration, it's practical and real.

If you don't believe that, you can try it out next time. Do this next time when you are tempted. Instead of being proud and saying I can resist that on my own and I can manage on that on my own, humble yourself and say, “I can't manage on my own. I'm not able to get victory; this temptation is too strong for me.” Whatever your temptation is, and you know what it is in your life. Will you humble yourself and go to God and say, “Lord, this is too strong for me. I cannot get victory, but I believe you can help me to overcome it. I'm coming to your throne of grace. Please forgive me for all the years when I've fallen into this sin but now, I have learnt the secret, I'm going to come to you and ask you for grace before I fall. When I'm slipping and I find the pressure too much, I'm going to ask you Lord to give me grace.” For example, let's take a practical case; supposing you're being tempted to get angry or you're tempted to watch pornography or some dirty thoughts and you find you're slipping and about to fall from the cliff. Ask God, say “Lord, will you give me grace right now that I can stand and don't fall.” You will be amazed to find how a power comes to lift you up and make you stand on the rock without falling. God helps you so that you don't fall; that is the will of God for you and me. I want to say to you that Jesus received help from His Father because He cried out with loud crying and tears (Hebrews 5:7). God helped Him to stand and He can help us as well. He says to us, “Follow Me.”

Chapter 21

Jesus’s Attitude To Money

We have been looking at the earthly life of Jesus Christ our Lord as our example. God sent Him to earth not only to die for our sins but to demonstrate to man how God wants man to live. He came to earth to show that and primarily, He showed it by His life of humility. We have been looking at the fact that He was also tempted like us in all points and overcame every temptation that man can ever face. The earthly life of Jesus was something in which the Father allowed Him to face all types of difficult circumstances in situations in which He was exposed to every single temptation that human beings would ever face. He did not face all the circumstances we face; that would be impossible but in different circumstances, He faced the same temptations that we faced. For example, temptations to irritability, to anger, bitterness, to jealousy, to the love of money, sexual temptation and every single thing that we are tempted by. He was tempted and He overcame and that is why the Bible says that He can sympathize with us. Right from the beginning of time, Satan has always told man that God's commands are difficult to obey, if not impossible. The earthly life of Christ was a proof that every command of God can be obeyed. Now if Jesus proved that in His person as God, then it would not disprove the devil's lie; it would only confirm it by saying, “Well only someone who is God can keep those commandments and live up to those standards but an ordinary man with the resources he has can never live up to those standards.”

A lot of Christians believe that Jesus Christ did not overcome as a man but as God and they don't realize that they're just endorsing the devil's lie that God's commands are impossible for man to obey. If you read the scriptures carefully and you come to it with an unprejudiced mind, you will see the scripture is very clear that Christ was tempted like us in every point and yet never sinned thereby proving that the devil is a liar when he says God's commands are impossible to keep. Every command of God can be kept by the grace that He supplies to us as men. That is the testimony that we need to see in the earthly life of Jesus Christ by which we can have faith. When the Bible says in Hebrews 12:2 that Jesus is the author and finisher (or perfecter) of our faith, it is by looking at Jesus that we find that faith coming in to us that we too can live the type of life He lived. In our earthly life, we considered once before that God made man of the dust of the ground and breathed into him the breath of life. So, he has two pulls; one downward and one upward. When Jesus came to earth in a human body, He felt that downward pull, but He never yielded to it. For example, material things attracted Him. If they did not attract Him like they attract us, then He could not have been tempted like us. A lot of our temptations come through material things around us. In fact, the very first temptation that is mentioned in relation to Jesus at the end of the 40 days in the wilderness concerns material things. He was tempted throughout the 40 days but at the end of it, He faced three temptations. The first concerns material things— food for the body and what we see there is that He was hungry just like any man would be hungry after fasting for 40 days but He would not yield to the downward pull of His body if the Father did not give Him permission to use that God given power to turn stones into bread. Jesus would never use a God given power for personal benefit and here even though His body demanded it, He said “No”. His attitude to material things is an example for us because so many of our temptations come in this realm of the pulls that come upon our body.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:25-27 that is possible for even someone like him who preached such a high standard of God's Word to run in the race meaning preach and encourage others and yet be disqualified if he doesn't keep the rules of the race. He says there are people who compete in races and get disqualified at the end because they haven't kept the rules and he's speaking particularly about the passions in the body. A person can do so many things for the Lord; he can be very active and do a lot of Christian work but if he does not overcome the desires within his body, it says he will be disqualified. Let me read to you 1 Corinthians 9:25: “Everyone who competes in (athletic) games exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we are imperishable. Therefore, I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.” Paul made his body his slave by telling it what it should do, and he does not yield to its demands as to what it should do. Otherwise, if a person does not make his body and the bodily passions his slave, even if he preaches to others, he will be finally disqualified. It's a very high standard that God expects from those who preach his word and that is why it is important that those who preach the word and of course all Christians need to keep their bodily passions under control, and that also relates to their attitude to material things like money. The Lord Jesus said very clearly in Luke 16 about the dangers of loving money. He said in Luke 16:13, that no servant can serve two masters. Our holiness is tested very practically when it comes to our attitude to material things and the desires of our body. The Bible says everything in the world, the desires in the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father. The lust of the eyes is paraphrased in one translation as the desire to buy everything that we see. Don't you find that desire is there in the human body to buy whatever we see. We think we need it even if we don’t. Jesus said you can't serve two masters. Now we would think the two masters are God and the devil, but that's not what He says here in Luke 16:13. He says the two masters are God and Mammon. He was saying you must choose whom you want to serve, you can't love both. You got to hate one to love the other. You got to despise one to hold on to the other. What He means is if you love money, you hate God. Have you ever heard anyone say that? Jesus said it in Luke 16:13 and that’s the meaning. If you are clinging and holding on and attached to money and earthly things, you're actually despising God whereas if you cling on to God, you won't hold on to money so tightly. If you love God with all your heart, you won't be attached to money; that's the point here.

There are only two masters and when Jesus came to earth, He recognized that. It's very important for us to understand how Jesus handled money first as a carpenter and then as a full-time worker. The Lord Jesus had to be an example for us in both these areas because most Christians are actually in secular work and then there are Christians who are in full-time work and Christ is an example to both. Look first at His example as a as a carpenter; He worked up to the age of 30 earning His living. He had four younger brothers and at least two younger sisters and a mother. Joseph was probably dead by that time since we don't hear of him which means Jesus as the eldest son had the responsibility for these seven other members in His eight-member family. Maybe the other brothers worked too but Jesus was the elder brother and He had to work as a carpenter to earn His living and support that family. Obviously, He had to learn the discipline as a carpenter to keep family expenses within the limits of what He could earn. His aim as a carpenter was certainly not to be the richest carpenter in Nazareth; I'm sure He would do many acts of kindness and goodness to poor people and widows, and probably make things freely for some of them so that He wouldn't take money from some who couldn't afford it. You can imagine that if He did His business like that, He was certainly not going to be the richest carpenter of Nazareth. Being the richest carpenter wasn’t His goal. His job was a means of earning a living. God gives us a job as a means of earning a living. Jesus didn't have ambitions to be well-known as a carpenter or any such thing. A wholehearted disciple of Jesus uses his profession as a means of earning a living to support Himself and His family and I'm absolutely sure that He steered clear of debt. He didn't want to expand this business by borrowing money. There are many things that we can learn from the earthly life of Jesus from his attitude towards his work. The Bible says in Romans 13:8, “owe nothing to anyone.” We are to not be in debt to anybody. If borrowing is necessitated in a certain situation, then owe no man anything means that as soon as possible, clear that debt. There may be situations where you need to borrow money in an emergency. The Bible doesn't say don't get into debt, but it says owe no man anything, meaning that as soon as possible, clear it; don't live owing people anything.

Jesus also taught in relation to money to render to Caesar what is Caesar's and render to God what is God’s. In other words, don’t ever hold back from the government money that's due to the government. Caesar is the government or any other human being. We're not to cheat the government of taxes and we're not to cheat any human being of money that rightfully belongs to them. We're not to borrow money and then give that to God. No, Jesus said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and give to God what is God’s.” This is part of righteousness and holiness. It’s so important for us to have a clear attitude in this area of money if we want to be genuinely holy because a lot of Christians who appear to have an interest in holiness in many other areas, when it comes to the area of mammon and material things, they fail completely. That’s the area where our holiness is very often tested and particularly as a Christian worker. When Jesus Christ was in full-time work for three and a half years, He was tested in money even more because now He was not earning and was dependent on others. Now in the New Testament, we read about two ways in which Christian workers supported themselves. One demonstrated by the Apostle Paul who because his job was a tentmaker, he could carry his needle around everywhere and stitch dents and earn a living and support himself. He didn’t do that everywhere and we read that the church in Philippi would support him financially and he would receive it, but in a number of other places like Ephesus and Thessalonica and Corinth, He never took any money from the people he served. Paul didn't live by a rule, he lived by being sensitive to the Holy Spirit to see whether it was appropriate or wrong to take in this situation and in many cases he wouldn’t and supported himself. Then there are others like Peter who were fishermen. They couldn't carry their boats everywhere or fish everywhere. They were supported financially by believers and Jesus was this like that - He was a carpenter and He was supported by people who gave Him gifts. In Luke 8:2-3, It says some of the those who followed Jesus where women. Among them were some rich women like Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna and many others who were contributing to their support out of their private means. So, there were numerous people who were supporting Jesus’ band of twelve apostles and Himself and other people in the team financially. For example, Herod’s steward must have been earning quite a big salary and he probably give large sums of money to his wife. That's why they needed a treasurer and that's why Judas Iscariot carried a bag with him where all this money that people were giving for Jesus’ ministry was kept. Now there are a number of things that we can see from the attitude that Jesus had towards this money, and it's very important for all those who are in full-time Christian work, if they really say they're following Jesus’ example in this area, because God has given us an example on earth of how a man should live who is in full-time Christian work. He's given us an example in Jesus earning His living as a carpenter in how a man should live in a secular job, and He’s given us an example again in Christ as a full-time worker in how a Christian worker should live in relation to money. Jesus never received a salary from anyone. He never offered a salary to His disciples. He never mentioned His needs to anyone. He had a Father in heaven, and He would tell His needs only to His Father. He never encouraged His disciples to advertise their financial needs; that would be insulting their Father in heaven. They were to trust their Father to provide their needs.

We never find anywhere in the New Testament anyone asking people to support them in the ministry. Paul was very eager to urge people to support others who were in need and that's right. Jesus Himself urged people to give money to the poor. But in relation to themselves, they've trusted their Heavenly Father to take care of them. This is the New Testament way. Christianity has unfortunately lowered those standards. John 13:27 gives us an indication in the way in which Jesus used money. When Judas Iscariot was going to betray the Lord, nobody knew at the table what Jesus meant when Jesus told him, “What you do, do quickly.” It says none of those who were sitting there at the table knew why Jesus said this and some of them who were sitting there were supposing that because Judas had the money box, Jesus was telling him to buy the things we have need off for the feasts or give something to the poor. Two things; buy the things we need or give to the poor. So there in those two statements, we have Jesus telling us what His attitude to material things was. What are we supposed to use the money for that we earn or that we receive as gifts from others? Buy what we need; there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. We don't have to be hermits or sannyasis living in the forest. How shall we determine what we need? There is an area where each person must be faithful before God and we are not to judge other people. We know that people live at different standards of living and we are not called to decide what another person needs. The world is unfortunately full of Christians who judge other people for their standard of living. Jesus never did that and anyone who does that is following Satan, the accuser of the brethren rather than Jesus Christ. You need to judge yourself to see whether you are spending your money for what you need. Another person may decide he needs a car or two cars or even three in some countries. It's none of my business to judge them; you don't know their situation. One person may decide he needs a three-bedroom house, another person may say a one-bedroom house is enough for them. That is their business; the Bible says don't be a busybody in other people's matters (1 Timothy 5:14; 2 Thessalonians 2:11). You have to decide yourself what you need. Spend your money in buying what you need. There could be numerous things that we need for making life easier. For example, there are many gadgets available nowadays for making life easier at home and there are many advantages in having them at home because it saves time. You can spend more time in studying the word and in prayer and helping other people if you have those gadgets rather than if you do them all by hand like people used to do in the olden days. So, is that gadget a necessity? That's for that person to decide. You need to decide for yourself. If we follow the simple rule, I’m going to decide for myself only what I need and I'm never going to judge another person whether what he has bought is needed or not, you will be saved from a lot of problems and you will probably grow much more spiritually too.

The second thing is giving something to the poor. Now Jesus himself was so poor that He had no place to lay His head. In fact, in one place it says that everybody went to his own house, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives because He didn't have any house to go to in Judea (John 7:53). He had a home in Capernaum, but He didn't have anyone in that area and so He went to the Mount of Olives and slept there overnight under the trees. That's why He said the Son of Man has no place to lay His head. Even the foxes have got holes and the birds have nests. So even though He was so poor, yet out of what He got, He gave to people who were poorer than Him. For example, blind Bartimaeus was probably poorer than Him. There were people in Jewish society who were poorer than even Jesus. A lot of people who think they're very poor don't realize that there are other people in the church who are much poorer than them. All these people who just wait for somebody to give them gifts and handout because they think they're so poor, they're not following Jesus at all. So, you see a tremendous example here in the fact that even though He was poor, He had a concern for the poor. We also see that Jesus Christ was faithful in this area of money and was not attached to it. In John 12, Judas Iscariot said concerning Mary of Bethany pouring out the perfume that it could have been sold and given to the poor. It says that he was a thief and he used to take the money which is in the box and pilfer it (John 12:6). He used to steal that money. Now Jesus knew very well that Judas Iscariot was stealing the money, but it didn't disturb Him. He just left that with His Father and that's wonderful to be able to have that type of detachment from money that we're not going to fight with people over money. If somebody steals it, we will be more careful next time. If somebody stole your money, we don't go fighting with people over it. We find this detached attitude in Jesus Christ towards material things and that's a very important area for all of us if we are to follow the Lord. We are to be careful in the use of material things, but we're not to be attached to material things. This is what it means to be a disciple. This is what Jesus meant when He said if anyone wants to be My disciple like Me, he's got to forsake his possessive attitude towards material things. That's the meaning of Luke 14:33. He must not possess them. He can have them, but he must not possess them. We can have many things in the world but once we possess them, we can no longer be His disciples. May God help us to have that attitude.

Chapter 22

Examples Of Humility

We were considering in our last study how God has given us His Son as an example for us to follow in the area of humility. Sin came into the universe originally through the pride of Lucifer who became Satan and salvation came through the opposite of that through Jesus humbling Himself. Now we may not realize how important pride and humility are, but the Bible does not say that God is opposed to the adulterers, or the murderers or the thieves or those who are jealous or liars, but it does say God opposes the proud. If there's one group of people on earth whom God opposes the maximum, it is those who are proud, and you see that in the attitude of Jesus to people whom He met on the earth. You'll never find Him condemning the woman caught in adultery. He said to her, “I don't condemn you go and sin no more.” There was a man at the pool of Bethesda who had sinned and as a result became sick and lame for 38 years. Jesus didn't condemn him, he healed him and said to him in John 5:14 later on, “Don't sin anymore because otherwise something worse will happen to you than what happened now,” but he didn't condemn him.

There was a thief on the cross who had probably been a murderer and a dacoit and thief for so many years. Jesus didn't condemn him, He said, “Sure, I’ll take you to paradise today because I see you've repented (paraphrase).” Here is another case of a woman in Samaria who was divorced five times and who was now living with a man, not even married to him. What would you do with such a woman? Would you ever think that God could use such a woman and yet what you read in John 4 is that Jesus sat patiently with this woman and talked to her about worshipping God. He won her heart and I'm sure He drew her away from that life of sin by showing sympathy and compassion for her which she never experienced from anybody else in Samaria. Why do you think she came to draw water at noon? Nobody in villages goes to draw water at noon; the women go to the well early in the morning because they need water for the whole day. At noon, nobody goes there, and Jesus was all alone at the well at noontime prompted by the Holy Spirit to sit there. This woman comes along at noon because she had been the butt of endless ridicule by all people in Samaria that she did not want to go to the well when all the other women were there. She wanted to go when nobody was there, and she was surprised to find Jesus. Jesus never condemned her but encouraged her and drew her away from her life of sin and sent her back into the city of Samaria to bring about the greatest revival that's described in the gospels through the ministry of anyone other than Jesus. None of the apostles could produce such a revival as this five-time divorced woman produced in the city of Samaria. So many people came to Jesus and said they believed in Him and it says there they believed in Him because of the testimony of this woman.

This is how Jesus was; He never condemned any of these people but now look at the way He spoke about the proud Pharisees. The Pharisees were the people who when they went to pray, they would look down others who they felt were not as good as them, like many Christians today who look down on people in other denominations, and look down at other believers who they think are not as spiritual as they are because they've got some understanding of some experience which those other Christians don't have. Christendom is filled with such arrogant, conceited snobs who call themselves Christians who are actually closer to the devil than they are to Jesus Christ because of their pride. In the days of Jesus, such people were called Pharisees (self-righteous, proud, and looking down on others) and Jesus had the strongest words of rebuke for them. He called them a generation of vipers, snakes, full of dead men's bones covered over with a beautiful tomb. He said, “You're like a person who's got a cup all clean on the outside but dirty inside.” He said, “How will you escape the damnation of hell?” Jesus spoke such words to people who are religious, who went to the synagogue every Saturday, who knew their Bibles, prayed, fasted, tithed, but they had one big serious problem and that was the sin of pride. God opposes the proud, but He gives grace to the humble. Pride and humility are very serious. Humility is the ground from which all the other virtues of Christ can grow. Have you noticed in Galatians 5:22 - 23, where the fruit of the Spirit is described, humility is not even mentioned there. Isn't that surprising? The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control. Humility is not mention there at all because humility is the ground on which this fruit grows. Grace is like the rain that falls on this ground to produce the fruit of the Spirit. You can't get that rain of grace unless you are humble. God gives grace only to the humble. This is so important because this primary message of the New Covenant is that we can overcome sin. Jesus came into the world to save people from their sins. Why is it then the vast majority of Christians are still defeated by sin? Why is it the vast majority of Christians, if they're honest, they'll tell you they're still defeated by anger, they still lust with their eyes, they are occasionally jealous, they still love money. Many of them are bitter and they have bad moods and they're discouraged and condemn themselves and all types of things. Why is that? I will give you the answer in one sentence; they do not receive grace. They have received grace for forgiveness of sins, but they stop there. The rain is not falling on the ground and so the fruit is not being produced. The rain is not falling on the ground because God gives us grace only to the humble and there's some pride in the lives of these Christians that is preventing them from getting grace. Perhaps, they look down on other people. So, you see that humility is very important; it’s fundamental and it's very easy to be proud. One of the easiest things in our life is to be puffed up, to be proud of something God has given us, or God has done for us. Maybe God's given you a good-looking face that's enough to make you proud. God's given you intelligence more than other people, that's enough to make you proud. Or He has given you a better job, or your family is a wealthy family, or in a high position that makes you look down at others, and God is the enemy of all such people.

Nowhere in the Bible does it say God is the enemy of murderers and thieves and adulterers, but He is the enemy of the proud. It says 1 Peter 5:5 that God is opposed to the proud, but He gives grace to the humble. The picture I get is that if you are humble, God will get behind you and push you forward. He will get underneath you and push you up but if you are proud, God will come in front of you and push you back and come on top of you and push you down. There's no hope for you if God is pushing you back and God is pushing you down. It's better to have God pushing us up and pushing us forward and He will do that for those who are humble by giving them grace. The Bible says in Romans 6:14 that when grace comes upon him, he overcomes sin. So, whenever you are defeated by any sin; whether anger, lust of the eyes, bitterness jealousy, love of money or anything, you can be absolutely sure the reason for that is you did not get grace. If you got grace, sin would not have dominion over you. Romans 6:14 is very clear; it's as clear as 2+2 = 4. It is not 3.9 or 4.1, it is 4. If grace comes upon you, you will have victory over sin; nothing can stop it. Then why didn't you get victory over sin because you didn't get grace. Go one step further back; why didn't you get grace? Because you were proud. That is the only reason why people are defeated by sin. Every Christian in the world who is defeated by any sin has to face up to the fact that some pride in him which prevented God from giving him grace, and that's why he's defeated. So, he needs to go before God and say, “God, please give me some light on the pride in me which I probably don't even see”. I think a lot of Christians genuinely do not see the pride in them. They think they're pretty humble; some very proud people think they're quite humble. They are proud of their humility or what they think is their humility. You can be proud of your Bible knowledge. A lot of Christians are proud of their Bible knowledge, they're proud of the gifts of the Spirit God has given them. Any type of pride; pride in a spiritual gift, pride in Bible knowledge, pride in the work you've done for God, pride in a ministry, any pride in what you've accomplished will always bring upon you the opposition of God. He will fight you tooth-and-nail because He is opposed to the proud and He gives grace to the humble. That is why Satan became Satan when he was immediately cast out.

We need to see the glory of Jesus first of all in His humility. His becoming a man, and as a man becoming a servant of everybody. His whole attitude to people was, “I’m your servant, I'm here to serve you.” That's why at the Last Supper, Jesus washed the feet of the disciples. They had the custom in those lands at that time to wash people's feet whenever they came to the house because the roads were dusty. People did not wear shoes, they wore sandals and having trudged through dusty roads with sandals, their feet would get dirty. Those homes had a bucket of water by the door, a towel, a basin, and a slave in the rich homes would wash the feet of all the people who came in before they went in to have a meal. In this particular home, there wasn’t a slave present because Jesus wanted to have the Last Supper privately with only His disciples. Some kind person had offered the house and arranged for everything for the night. When the disciples and Jesus came with their dusty feet into the house, they all saw the bucket of water, and they knew that somebody needs to wash people’s feet but there was no slave around. They were all too proud to do it themselves because every person was important in his own way. Peter thinks I'm the leader of the apostles, and Matthew says, “I'm a chartered accountant” and John says, “I'm known to the high priests and I can't stoop to these undignified things.” Everybody had a reason; they were either too clever, important or big in their own eyes. So ultimately Jesus goes and takes the bucket and says this is my job. I came to earth to be a servant and He takes the bucket and washes people's feet and they all feel ashamed. This is the way Jesus ended His life; so many people in Christian work when they come to the last day of their life on earth, they want some title, they want some position, they want some honor, they want to be the head of some organization, they want to be right on top and be a director or something like that.

Jesus was no director; He was a servant and He was a slave. On the last day of His earthly life, we find Him washing the disciples’ feet. I want to ask you whether that is your greatest goal in life. Is it your aim that when you come to the end of your life, after having served the Lord faithfully for 50, 60 years, on the last day of your earthly life, you want to be found at the feet of the disciples of Jesus washing their feet, cleaning away the dirt. Oh, how rare to find even among those who preach holiness and sanctification and all that to find this spirit because people have not seen the glory of Jesus’ humility. They have not seen His humility in the way He humbled Himself and went down all the way from heaven, all the way down to earth, and all the way down to the feet of the disciples. While all this was going on, they were discussing who’s going to be the leader. It’s amazing so see such a contrast in the spirit of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet and the disciples sitting around the table discussing who among them is the greatest and who is the most important among them. In the midst of such a discussion, Jesus turned and corrected His disciples and told them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who have authority over them are called ‘Benefactors.’ But it is not this way with you, but the one who is the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the servant. For who is greater, the one who reclines at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves.” He didn’t just speak words, He set an example for them. As I said in the previous chapter, the Old Covenant had teachings about humility but here in the New Covenant, we have an example. Jesus invites us to follow Him and do what He did. We need to see the glory of Jesus’ humility.

Let’s look at another example of the humility of Jesus. In the Gospel of Matthew, we read about a time when Jesus cast out demons from a demon-possessed person who was brought to him (Matthew 12:22). This person was blind and mute and as soon as Jesus saw him, He knew it was a demon and He cast out the demon. After casting out the demon, the man could see and speak so the people were amazed and said, “This man cannot be the Son of David (the promised Messiah), can He?” The Pharisees were jealous, they couldn’t cast out any demon or heal anyone, so their jealousy made them accuse Jesus so that people would not be attracted to Him. They said that Jesus was casting out demons through the power of Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons (Matthew 12:24). You find the same spirit even today in people whenever they see somebody who is more gifted than them, they want to say something to tear that person down. That is the spirit of the Pharisees. They called Jesus, Beelzebul and you know what Jesus said?

He said to them that every sin and blasphemy can be forgiven but not blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and if you have spoken a word against Me, the Son of Man, it will be forgiven. When people called Him the Prince of Devils, He forgave them (Matt 12:31-32). This is different from the spirit under the Old Covenant. In the Old Covenant we read in Numbers 12 about an incident where the brother (Aaron) and sister (Miriam) of Moses speaking against him. Miriam was probably 10- 12 years older than Moses. She was the one who saw the daughter of Pharaoh picking up the little baby Moses in a basket, so she felt she had some authority over her younger brother. Aaron was also older to Moses and they speak against Moses for a small thing like marrying a Cushite woman. It is none of their business whom Moses married, and Moses didn't disobey any commandment by marrying a Cushite woman because was no commandment in those days about such things. The law was given much later through Moses himself. Now when Moses heard this, he didn't have any bitterness against these people, but God said this is serious, how dare you speak against my servant. Immediately, Miriam got leprosy and her face became white as snow. Leprosy usually comes very slowly, but she became a leper immediately for saying a word against Moses. Speaking against a servant of God is serious and God judged her by giving her leprosy for seven days. So, when somebody spoke against Moses, they got leprosy but when somebody spoke against Jesus and called Him something much worse, they got forgiveness. Have you seen the difference between Moses and Jesus, the difference in the age of the law and the age of grace?

There you see the humility of Jesus. He says in Matthew 12:32, “You have spoken a word against Me, I’m just an ordinary man, you're forgiven.” He was not an ordinary man; He was the Son of God. He was eternal Almighty God equal with this Father from all eternity, but He lived on earth as an ordinary man. He called Himself the Son of Man. He chose to be called by that name and He said you're forgiven and not only that, He said whoever speaks a word against me, it is forgiven. Think of all the things that people have said against Jesus in the last 2,000 years. They have said that He is an illegitimate child, that He is a homosexual, that He got married to Mary Magdalene, they have told all types of lies and insulted Him. Think of His humility that He does not pronounce judgement on them from heaven. He could make them full of cancer, leprosy, AIDs and all these judgments, but He doesn’t do it. We see His humility in willing to accepting insult. When they spat on Him, He didn’t say anything. When they slapped Him, He only said, “Why do you slap me if I’ve said what’s right” but when they slapped Him again, He just kept quiet. When they made Him suffer, it says He did not threaten or revile in return (1 Peter 2:23). He did not say, “Wait and see what I’ll do to you when I come back as the judge of the earth.” He never threatened anybody. Proud people threaten others, they threaten those who work under them in their offices, they threaten their servants, children, neighbor and people all around by their position or authority. Jesus never behaved like that, He never said, “You don’t know who I am, I’ll teach you a lesson.” He never did any of these things. Only proud people talk like that to those who are lower than them in society. Jesus considered Himself the lowest of all, and forgave no matter what people said against Him. See how rare it is to find the humility of Christ among Christians today. Why is it that Christians fight and quarrel so much even with each other and with others? It’s only one reason; they are proud because they have not seen the glory of the humility of Jesus Christ. They’ve not mediated on the Scriptures to see that glory. If they have seen it, it would have changed their life completely.

The Bible says the Holy Spirit can change us into the likeness Christ only after we see it. It is only after He shows it to us. If you refuse to let the Holy Spirit show you the glory of Jesus in Scripture, you will never be like Him. 2 Corinthians 3:18 is the clearest verse describing the ministry of the Holy Spirit and what it says there is the Holy Spirit shows us the glory of Jesus Christ and then changes us into that likeness. Be encouraged and let the Holy Spirit show you the glory of Jesus Christ in the Scriptures. A good place to start is to see His humility in these different circumstances when you read the gospels. Don't just read them as stories but seek to see the glory of Jesus and the way Jesus reacted to different people in different situations. The way He reacted to the insults that people gave Him. May God help you to see that and may God help you and me to follow in His footsteps and become like Him.

Chapter 23

Satan Has Been Defeated

Today, we want to look at a work that Christ accomplished on the cross when He died which is not known to most Christians. When Christ died on the cross, a number of things were accomplished. He used these words towards the end of His 6 hours on the cross; “It is finished” (John 19:30). What was finished? First of all, the work of salvation was finished. The payment for the price for the sins of man was paid. The payment for the guilt of man, the debt that man owed to the law of God was paid. The certificate of debt was cancelled and torn out. That’s the first and most important thing. It says in Colossians 2:14 that Jesus Christ cancelled the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us. Every sin that we commit in thought, word, deed, attitude, motive is a debt we owe to the law of God and we are guilty, but Christ died and paid the debt. He took the punishment we need to face for our sins from a holy God who cannot let us go just because He loves us. Why doesn’t God let us go when we repent and say sorry? Because that would destroy the foundations of justice in the universe. If a judge let his son who has committed a crime go because he loves him, he will be an unrighteous judge. But a judge can punish his son with a fine and then pay the punishment himself as a father. That’s what God did; He passed a verdict that man is guilty of death - being separated from God forever. Then He came in the form of man and took that punishment Himself. Jesus Christ died and when He hung on the cross for 3 hours, He was separated from the Father. His fellowship which He had for all eternity was broken and Christ cried out, “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken Me.” He never addressed His Father as God at any time, He always called Him Father. But now He was facing Him as the judge of the universe as He took your sin and mine upon Him, paid the punishment and was forsaken for 3 hours. Because Christ is an eternal being, in three hours, He could face the concentrated punishment of all humanity in hell for eternity in that short period. It was a concentrated time of punishment and that’s why the heavens became dark, the sun would not give its light and the earth shook because the creator of the universe was taking the punishment for man’s sin. That’s the first thing that Christ accomplished on the cross when He said, “It is finished.” The punishment for sin was taken and then He could address God as Father again when He said, “Father, into Your Hands I commit My Spirit” and He went to paradise.

There was also another thing that was accomplished on the cross as well at the same time. In the next verse of Colossians 2:15, we read that He disarmed the rulers and principalities who had got possession of man. The devil had made man his slave in the Garden of Eden. This happened when Adam bowed down to the devil. What the devil told Eve was essentially, “Will you bow down to me instead of bowing down to God. God has told you not to eat of the tree and I’m telling you to eat of the tree. Who are you going to bow down and make your king?” Adam and Eve failed the temptation and from that time, the human race accepted the devil as their ruler and see the mess he created in the human race in all these thousands of years. When Jesus comes, He's coming to claim back that position of authority and kingship that God created man to have in relation to God Himself. So, Jesus had to destroy the authority that this other false ruler, the devil had over man. When Jesus died on the cross, He also defeated Satan's power. Colossians 2:15 says He took away his armor and all the weapons that Satan had to harm man. Hebrews 2:14 says Jesus died so that He might make the devil powerless. The devil is alive and is not destroyed, but his armor has been taken away and was made powerless. Satan had the power of death, but he no longer does. It says that the power of death which the devil had up until the moment, Jesus died and broke that power. The devil has no more power over any man who chooses to accept Christ. If you don’t accept Christ as king over your life, then the devil remains king in your life. He will have power over you, your family, your business and everything else. He may not ruin your business; he may actually prosper your business so that you don’t have time for God. Satan’s aim is not to make your poor, his aim is to keep you away from God one way or the other. If he can keep you away from God by prospering your business, then he’ll prosper your business. If he can keep you away from God by giving you plenty of good health, then he’ll allow you to have good health and never put any sickness on you because sickness tends to drive people close to God. Poverty also tends to drive people close to God so don’t think the devil is going to come and make you poor or sick because he’s afraid you may turn to God. He wants to rule your life and he wants to make sure that you’ll spend eternity with him in the lake of fire. Satan’s aim is not to prevent you from having a comfortable life, his aim is to prevent you from coming close to God. If you don’t choose Christ as King over your life, the devil will remain king. It is important for us to see that Jesus not only paid the punishment for our sins on the cross, but He also destroyed the devil’s power over those who choose Christ as Lord on their lives.

In the Old Testament, you never read of anybody confronting Satan. Right from the first righteous man Abel all the way to John the Baptist, nobody confronted Satan. All the enemies they confronted were human enemies like the Philistines, the Amorites, the Midianites etc., but moment Jesus came, you find that He is in constant confrontation with Satan. There were demon-possessed people in the synagogues who got disturbed when Jesus came. These demons sat comfortably for so many years when the Pharisees were preaching but as soon as Jesus came and preached in the synagogue, those demon-possessed people suddenly got disturbed because someone had come to disturb that kingdom. These demons knew that the Pharisees were not there to disturb that kingdom so they didn't disturb the services when the Pharisees around but as soon as Jesus came, they would start creating a problem in the service in the synagogue. You also find that every now and then, Jesus came across a demon-possessed person and He was in direct confrontation with Satan and He cast out demons. Jesus says in Matthew 12:28, “If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” We need to recognize Jesus exercised His ministry as a man. He overcame temptation as a man, and He exercised His ministry as a man. He cast out demons not with His inherent power as God, but with the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit and He cast of demons with the power of the Holy Spirit and that proved that the kingdom of God had come to earth. Until then, the kingdom of God had not come to earth. It was an earthly kingdom that the Israelis had in the land of Canaan; they could not defeat the devil, they could only defeat their enemies like the Canaanites and the Philistines but when Jesus came, He brought the kingdom of God down to those who wanted it and that brought a direct conflict with the kingdom of the devil and demons were cast out by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus has ascended up into heaven, but He has another body here on earth. He had a physical body in the days when He was walking in Galilee, now He has a spiritual body which is the church, the body of people who trust in Him and who have made Him Lord of their lives. Through this spiritual body, Christ wants to do exactly the same thing that He did through His physical body— this is the ministry of the church. When Luke is writing the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 1:1), he refers back to the gospel that he wrote (Gospel of Luke) and he describes the book as all that Jesus began to do and to teach. So obviously what he is writing now is all that Jesus continued to do and to teach, not in His physically body, but now with a spiritual body that is formed on the day of Pentecost. So, we can say this book called the Acts of the Apostles is the acts of Jesus Christ through His spiritual body whereas the Gospel of Luke is the acts of Jesus Christ in His physical body. So, the Gospel of Luke is what Jesus began to do and teach and the Acts of the Apostles is what Jesus continued to do and teach. So, what does the Lord want to do through His church in relation to demons? When demons oppress people and where they come across the people of the church, those demons are to be cast out. Wherever the kingdom of God is coming, and demons come to confront that, those demons cannot stand because Satan has been defeated on the cross. Now Satan doesn't want you to know that he's been defeated on the cross. He wants you to think that he still has power over you, he keeps you ignorant so that he can keep you in bondage. That’s why it's important for us to know the scriptures that teach us that Satan was defeated on the cross. It says in James 4:7, “If you submit to God and then resist the devil, he will flee from you.” In other words, if my whole life is submitted to the Lord Jesus Christ under His headship and I stand against a demon or the devil in the name of Jesus Christ, he will flee if I believe that Christ defeated him on the cross and my conscience is clear. But if I have allowed sin in my life, if I allow conscious sin in any area of my life, if there is some sin that is unsettled in my life, then the devil has got a foothold in my life and I can't resist him. If you open the door of sin in your life, the devil puts his foot through that small opening in the door and he is in. You have no authority over the devil if your sins are not confessed and set right because then the devil got a foothold right in your heart and you can't resist it. No matter how much you resist him and say ‘in the name of Jesus’, he will still stay there. But if your conscience is clear and you have yielded everything to Jesus, then when you resist the devil in Jesus’ name, he has to flee. Having a clear conscience means that you have settled everything with God and man, and the blood of Christ has cleansed you from all sin. It means you have asked forgiveness from all those whom you hurt on earth, you have returned things that you have taken wrongfully from people and set all matters right. Satan was defeated on the cross, and if you believe that, and your conscience is clear, then it doesn’t matter whoever you are, even if you are the youngest believer reading this, you have authority over Satan in the name of Jesus Christ.

The devil does not like to hear you telling him that he was defeated on the cross. In Revelation 12, we read about Satan coming down to earth and a certain people overcoming him. We need to know how they overcame him so we can follow their example. It says in Revelation 12:11, that they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death. They overcame first of all by the blood of the Jesus Christ that was shed on the cross. You cannot overcome the accusations that Satan puts into your mind concerning your past failure and sin except you believe that when Christ died and shed his blood, His blood atoned for all the sins you ever committed. They are gone and unless you believe that you won't be able to overcome the accusations of Satan. You can’t just tell him you aren’t going to commit that sin, because you still have your past to deal with it. But the blood of Christ has cleansed you, blotted it out and you are declared righteous before God, and if you believe that, you have boldness before Satan. The other thing it says here in Revelation 12:11 is that they overcame him by the word of their testimony. Now there is a place for us to give our testimony in the church before people. That is to be a witness of Christ. Jesus said we must be witnesses for Him even to the uttermost parts of the earth. But when we read Revelation 12:11 in its context, the word of our testimony means speaking about the word of our testimony to Satan. You have to tell Satan with your mouth because he can hear you. You can’t speak to the devil in your thoughts because he can't hear your thoughts. Only God can hear your thoughts. Even the angels can’t hear your thoughts, your fellow human beings can't hear your thoughts and the devil can't hear your thoughts. The demons can't hear your thoughts when you pray in your thoughts. The devil can't hear you if you say something to the devil in your thoughts. The devil can put thoughts into your mind just like a human being can put thoughts into your mind by saying something to you, but he cannot hear your thoughts. It is very clear in 1 Corinthians 2:11 that only the spirit within a man knows his thoughts. God of course knows all things. He knows what a man is thinking because He looks at a man’s heart.

So, it is important for us to speak the word of our testimony to Satan with our months saying, “You were defeated on the cross of Calvary”. I always encourage every person whom I lead to Christ when I ask them to confess their sins and to receive Christ as their Savior and Lord, I always encourage them also to speak to the devil and tell him straight to his face that he was defeated on the cross. I remember one incident where I was sharing with a lady who had come to our home. My wife and I were sitting and talking to her and telling her to accept Christ as their Savior and then I told her say to the devil, “You were defeated on the cross.” All of a sudden, she turned around to me with a changed expression on her face and her voice changed and said, “I was not defeated on the cross.” She was demon-possessed, and I never knew that. When you confront a demon then you speak to the demon, so I spoke to the demon inside that woman and said, “You were defeated on the cross, Satan. You demon, you were defeated on the cross. Get out of her in Jesus’ name.” And of course, demons have got to respond to the name of Jesus if you believe and you speak in faith, they go, and that demon went out immediately. Then I told this lady, now tell the devil, “You were defeated on the cross by Jesus Christ.” She said it and she was free, but that day I learned something, and that was, that the devil does not like to hear that he was defeated on the cross. Do you like to hear stories of games in which you were defeated? No. You like to hear the stories of cricket matches that you won, not cricket matches and football matches where you were defeated. Well, the devil doesn't like to hear that either but it's important that we tell him that; that strengthens our own life and it's important that we teach all of God's children this wonderful truth that when Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished”, the devil's kingdom was finished for those who accept it. It's not for every Tom, Dick and Harry. if you don't submit to God, and you don't make Jesus your King, then the devil is your king. But if you have decided to make Jesus the King of your life, the Lord of your life then the devil is no longer king of your life; he can be the lord of all those other people but not you.

You need to know your position in Christ that you can be completely free. It speaks in Hebrews 2:14 about the fear of death that the devil seeks to bring upon people. The fear of death is one of the great fears people have and every other fear is inferior to the fear of death. All the other fears, the fear of the future, the fear of poverty, the fear of sickness, the fear of everything else comes beneath that and the devil is always seeking to bring fear into your hearts so that he can control your life. If you allow fear to come in your heart concerning anything, you can be pretty sure that the devil got a little hold in your life. That’s why it's very important that we never allow fear to come into our heart because fear is the opposite of faith. When I have faith in God, that Almighty God is my Father and I believe that Jesus Christ has defeated Satan on the cross and is surrounding me and protecting me, it is impossible for me to be afraid of anything. It's impossible for me to have anxiety, tension, doubt concerning anything; the Lord takes care of everything. But if I allow fear to come into my heart, then the devil gets a foothold there. The Bible says here in Hebrews 2:15 that Jesus came to deliver us from fear because fear brings us into slavery. Anyone who is afraid is in slavery. What can the devil do to you if he was defeated on the cross and his armor was taken away? The devil is the greatest terrorist around. People are afraid of terrorists only because of their weapons, but if their weapons are taken away, what can the terrorists do? They are helpless. This is the position we need to see the devil in; defeated on the cross when Jesus died and rose up triumphant over death, hell, the grave, Satan, sin; everything and He ascended up to heaven. Ephesians 1:22 says God has put everything under the feet of Jesus Christ and He’s given Christ as head to us who are His body. And if we are the body of Christ and the devil and all demons are under the feet of Christ, then you can be pretty sure he's under our feet because we are the body. That’s why it says in Romans 16:20 that the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. He is going to be crushed; he's already been defeated on the cross 2000 years ago and now he's going to be crushed. All his power is going to be taken away from you; he will not even be able to threaten you, frighten you and do anything. He is going to be crushed, the devil's place is under our feet. That is the place that God has ordained for the devil and I must keep him there; he's not supposed to sit on my head or do anything like that to me. Take that position in Christ and you will never live in fear anymore.

Chapter 24

Faith Results In Praise

What should be our attitude when we have recognized that Christ has finished the work of our salvation and redemption on the cross. When He said, “It is finished,” our sins were paid for completely. He paid the punishment for our sin and also Satan was defeated on that cross. What should be our attitude now? Psalm 106:12 says, “When the people believed God's words, they sang His praise.” One of the clearest ways in which you can know that you believe what God is said is that you praise Him. For example, if you're a student in a college and you need some money to pay your fees. You ring up your father and your father calls you back and says I have transferred the amount of two thousand rupees to your account. If you believe his words, you don’t have to check your account at all. You say, “Well, Thank God I can pay my fees. I’ve got the money to pay it.” When you believe something, the proof of it is you’re thankful. If you don’t believe, then you’re not thankful. So as long as we don’t praise God, we can be pretty sure that we haven’t believed His words. If you believe that when Christ said, “It is finished,” your sins were finished and the devil’s kingdom was finished, you will praise God because it’s such a tremendous deliverance. Think if you were down with a serious case of cancer and the best doctor gave up hope, but one doctor said, “Listen, let me do some surgery and see if I can help you.” After doing the surgery, the tests show that there is not a trace of cancer in your body. Are you going to be thankful or not? You are not going to go back to that hospital looking miserable-unless you don’t believe the doctors words. You may say, “Well, he may be just saying things to please me and it’s not true. I may still have the cancer and it may be spread all over my body and he doesn’t want to tell me the truth.” If you don’t believe his words, you will look miserable but if you believe his words, you will go out jumping for joy. If he’s a truthful doctor, then he is speaking the truth and you’re free. There’s a basis for your happiness now.

When God says something, there is no need to doubt it at all. When He says, “Your sins and iniquities, I’ll remember no more,” He means it. He will not remember our sins and iniquities anymore. When He says that the devil’s power has been defeated so that you don’t have to live in slavery to fear anymore, we believe it. Praise is a very important part in our deliverance. It’s important that God wants us to express our faith with our words. Faith is not found in the words, but we have to express it. In Romans 10:9, it says that “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved…” Deliverance or salvation comes through faith in the heart. Faith is not in the mouth. Faith is in the heart and we confess it with our mouths. So, because we believe in our hearts the truth of God’s word, we tell the devil that he has been defeated on the cross. We testify to the devil and say to him, “the blood of Jesus Christ has cleansed me from all sins.” We are only following the example of Jesus Christ Himself. When the devil came to Him with temptation, Jesus spoke a word to Him. He didn’t just think a thought, He spoke a word and said to Satan, “it is written.” When the devil came a second time to tempt Him again, Jesus said again that, “it is written.” He spoke a word and it was that spoken word that drove the devil away. When Satan came a third time, Jesus said the same thing, “it is written…get behind me Satan” (Matthew 4:10). That is the example we need to follow. Jesus spoke from His mouth what He believed in His heart; what is promised in the word of God. Now we can’t say something with our mouth which is not promised in the Bible. I may like to have a head full of hair, but there is no promise for that in the Word. So, I can’t confess that I will get it. One day when Christ returns, I will have my hair back, but not before, since there’s is no promise in the Word. Likewise, there isn’t a word that God will give me a bigger house or a better car or something like that. I can’t confess these things. There is this new-age teaching where you visualize something, and you pretend that you’re going to get it. They say shut your eyes and imagine that you got it and then say what is your heart’s desire (mostly for material things). This is the false gospel being preached today telling you to do that. You won't find any of the apostles or Jesus teaching that. This false gospel is to satisfy covetous people who love material things and whose kingdom is of the earth. Those who have come into the kingdom of God know that if they seek God's kingdom first and His righteousness, all these other material things God will add them without them having to confess anything (Matthew 5:33).

We need to confess to the devil that he has been defeated on the cross. Our warfare is not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers. We praise God for that which He has done and if God has said that He will do something, we can praise Him for that too. It’s very important that we don’t go around confessing lies thinking that is faith. That is another type of teaching going on today where people are asked to confess something which is not true. In Mark 8:22, we read about a blind man who has brought to Jesus at Bethsaida. Jesus took the blind man outside the village to heal him. He normally never did that and would pray for the person right there, but this was such an unbelieving atmosphere in the village that He took the man right outside the village and then He spat on his eyes and laid His hands on him. Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see anything?” And he looked up and said, “I see men, for I see them like trees, walking around.” Now if it were one of today’s preachers, he would have told this man, “No, no, you must confess that you are healed. We prayed for you, just confess that ‘by His stripes you are healed’. Just say I can see everything perfectly and then everything will be perfect.” But that’s not what Jesus said. How could Jesus ask a man to tell a lie but that’s what a lot of preachers tell you to say. They ask you to tell a lie that you are healed, and you are still sick. Jesus never taught that. When this man could not see properly, Jesus wanted him to be honest and Jesus appreciated that honestly. Jesus laid His hands on his eyes; and he looked intently and was restored. This is the one time we read of a two-step healing in Jesus’ ministry. Why did Jesus Christ need to lay his hands upon a person a second time to heal that person? I believe he did that deliberately to teach us in the 21st century that we shouldn't believe this type of deception. This one incident is written in Scripture to teach us that you don't have to confess that you can see when you cannot see. You don't have to confess that you can see clearly when you cannot see clearly. You don't have to confess that you're healed when you're sick. You don't have to confess that you are fully healed when you're only partially healed. This guy was certainly partially healed. He wasn't fully healed. Why should he confess that he's fully healed when he was only partially healed? He spoke the truth and I want to say to you in Jesus’ name, don't let any preacher tell you that you got to tell a lie. God hates lies; all liars go to hell (Revelation 22:15). If you're going to tell a lie that you're healed when you're sick, God's not going to appreciate it. The devil will certainly appreciate that because the devil is the father of all lies (John 8:44). This man was certainly not going to let the devil tell a lie through him. He spoke the truth and because he spoke the truth, the Lord touched him a second time. Now it's very easy for us to be deceived in this area by people quoting all types of scripture. Some misquote Abraham and say that we should follow his example. Abraham believed he was going to have a son, but he did not get up and confess he had a son when he didn’t have a son. That would be a lie. When Isaac was not born, he did not say I have got Isaac. No, he believed that one day, God would give Isaac, but he didn’t confess a lie. It's very important that we understand what faith is. Faith is not confessing a lie. Remember that this man did not confess a lie and that's why he got a complete healing. He came to the Lord a second time and the Lord touched him and then he began to see everything clearly. So, that is the word of caution in the midst of a lot of preaching about faith that's going on today.

I want to show you an Old Testament classic example about the power of praise. In 2 Chronicles 20, we read of the story of king Jehoshaphat when enemies of Judah came to attack it. It’s a great story which we can learn a spiritual lesson from. When King Jehoshaphat heard that news that a great multitude was coming against him to fight Judah, he was afraid and sought the Lord which is the right thing to do. He turned his attention to seek the Lord and proclaimed a fast throughout the land. It’s a very good thing to fast and seek the Lord when something serious happens in your life. When you have a problem or many problems and they all seem to come together against you, seek the Lord with prayer and fasting. So, he gathered other people together and they began to seek the Lord. He prayed and confessed with his mouth the truths of scripture; how God had made a covenant with them and finally they stood before the Lord and said these three things which we also can confess in a difficult situation (2 Chronicles 20:12)

In every situation where you find yourself in a tight corner, you need to confess those three things to the Lord; I don't have strength to handle this, I don't have wisdom to know what to do in this situation but I'm trusting you. That last statement is very important and then it says the Lord sent a message. In those days it was through a prophet and the Lord sent a message when the Spirit of the Lord came upon one of the prophets there and he said, “Don't be afraid, the battle is not yours but God’s. You don't need to fight in this battle at all. The Lord will fight for you. Go out tomorrow and believe in the Lord and He will fight for you.” That's all and Jehoshaphat did not look at the big army and doubt the word of the Lord. It doesn’t matter how big the problem is, the Lord is on your side against the enemy, the Lord is on your side against the devil. So, Jehoshaphat bowed down and worshiped the Lord. The next day, instead of sending solders in the front of the army to fight against the enemy, it says that he appointed people right in front of the army to praise the Lord. He put people right up in front who went forward praising the Lord saying, “Glory to God and give thanks to Him became His lovingkindness is everlasting.” Previously, they were praying. When God spoke an answer to that prayer then they started praising. When they believed the words of God, they praised Him. So, as soon as they began singing and praising, the Lord defeated all those enemies and they got the wealth of their enemies and they became rich. This is the principle we need to learn. They got victory not through fighting but through praising the Lord because they believed what God had spoken. If God has not spoken, then of course we cannot believe. But when the Lord tells us the devil has been defeated, and we believe that, then we praise the Lord for that.

We cannot believe where the Lord has not spoken. When the Lord had spoken and told Abraham, “You'll have a son,” then you can believe. But if the Lord has not told you that and you're a barren woman, you can't believe that. We can't just shut our eyes and visualize and believe whatever we want. That's what a lot of people are teaching today and that's not Scripture. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ (Romans 10:7). The Lord has to speak a word before we can have faith. There can be verses in Scripture but for you to have faith in that, it has to become living to you. There are multitudes of people who believe in their head that Christ died for their sins, but majority of them are not born again. They are what we call nominal Christians. They believe in their heads that Christ died for their sins and rose from the dead, but 90% of them are not born again. They believe what’s written but it has not produced faith in their hearts. In the same way, somebody can quote a scripture to you, but if it has not brought faith in your heart, you cannot act on that. Don't be deceived in this area. You can act on the word that has brought faith in your heart. You praise the Lord and the proof of it will be the results. If the result doesn't come, then obviously you didn't have faith; it's just your imagination or your visualization. So many people are being thoroughly deceived by this today in the name of faith. That's not faith, that is imagination, it's presumption. The devil tries to fool people like that; he even tried to fool Jesus by saying, “it's written, have faith in this. He will give His angels charge over you to keep you from dashing your foot against the stones,” but Jesus wouldn't jump. That wouldn't have been faith, that would have been presumption. If He had jumped, no angel would have protected Him. He'd have fallen down and broken his legs, but He didn’t listen to the devil. Don't you listen to the devil either, even if he comes through a preacher telling you to believe some word of Scripture without seeing other scriptures that balance out. That's why Jesus said, “It's also written. Don't tempt the Lord your God.” That is a word that many Christians need to hear today. Do not tempt the Lord your God by doing stupid things in the name of faith and saying I trust God and I'm going to praise Him. Faith is not a technique, praising God is not a technique. Praising God is the result of a genuine faith that's born in our heart on the basis of what God has spoken and what God has done. Certainly, we can praise God for things which are definitely written in Scripture like our sins are forgiven, the devil has been defeated. These things are clear.

Let me show you another example in the Book of Jonah. Jonah was a prophet who ran away when God wanted him to go to Nineveh. He ran away and when he got into a boat to go in another direction, there was a big storm and the people realized that Jonah was the cause of it, and they threw him overboard. When he was thrown overboard, God cared for him and arranged for a big fish to swallow him and Jonah was in the stomach of this fish for three days and three nights (Jonah 1:17). Now what was he doing for three days and three nights? I have a feeling that he was trying to crawl out of the fish's belly. He tried and tried for three days and three nights without success. Then after three days and three nights of trying, he began to pray. He didn’t pray for three days and nights but only after. That’s usually our way too. We get into a difficult situation (fish’s belly), every often due to our own sin or foolishness like Jonah and we try for days on end to get out of it and we are not able to get out of it. Then finally as a last resort, we pray. That’s what Jonah did. He prayed and nothing happened. So, he continued praying (verse 2-6) and finally he stopped praying and he started thanking the Lord. He said, “I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay. Salvation is from the Lord.” His attitude was that one of praise regardless of the circumstance because God was on the throne. Then the Lord commanded the fish and he vomited him up. Lord said, “this man started praising Me, send him out.” He got delivered when he started praising.

Psalm 50:23 says, “He who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors Me; and to him who orders his way aright, I shall show the salvation of God.” Another paraphrase of that verse reads, “The one who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving thereby makes a way for Me to show him My deliverance or salvation from that situation.” A sacrifice is something painful. We can praise God when things are going smoothly, that's easy and that's not a sacrifice of thanksgiving. A sacrifice of thanksgiving is when praise Him for He is on the throne despite the problem not being solved. There are a lot of things we can praise God for even if a problem is not solved. I don't have to tell a lie and say, “God, thank you for solving the problem” when the problem is still there. The enemies are still there, but you've set a table before me in the presence of my enemies (Psalm 23:5). I don't pretend they're not there, but I praise the Lord because He's on the throne, the devil's been defeated, my sins are forgiven, all things work together for good to those who love God, He will not allow me to be tempted beyond my ability. All these things are true even though the problem is still there. I don't have to confess a lie, but I can praise God for those eternal truths which never change. It's painful for me to confess these eternal truths; it's a sacrifice because I'm facing problems. My enemies are still there, but I believe the Lord set a table before me in the presence of my enemies and I praise God. And when I do that, God makes a way for me to come out of that. That is how we can be free from discouragement. You need never be discouraged if you learn in those situations to thank God and praise Him for the truths that never change like God is on the throne. He is still on the throne, all authority in heaven and earth belong to Christ, Satan's been defeated, your sins are forgiven, He will not allow you to be tested beyond your ability etc. Think of the life we can live of overcoming if we will praise Him in all situations.

Chapter 25

The New Covenant

We want to look at something that Jesus established through His death and resurrection and that is what the Bible calls the New Covenant. In Hebrews 13, we read that the blood He shed on the cross is called the blood of the eternal covenant. Covenant is a word which means an agreement. The Bible is divided into two testaments; Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament is the old agreement God made with man and the New Testament is the new agreement God made with man. The Old Testament refers to history from the time of creation right up to the end of the period just before Christ comes. The New Testament begins with the birth of Christ and thereafter. It is divided like this because in the Old Testament, for 1,500 years before Christ, God dealt with man, particularly the nation of Israel on the basis of what is called the Old Covenant or Old Agreement.

That agreement was basically God giving the nation of Israel a number of commandments and if they obeyed them, He blessed them, their families, their business and their nation. If they didn’t obey His commandments, then He punished them, allowed sickness into their land, famine and other nations to rule over them. This agreement is described more fully in Deuteronomy 28. There, we read of two sections of the agreement. The first section (verses 1-14), the Lord told them if they obeyed His commandments, He will set them high above all the other nations of the earth and He will bless them. Some of the blessings included blessings in city, in the country, their enemies will be defeated, the offspring of their body and the produce of their ground and the offspring of their animals will be blessed, blessings of their fields, barns and rain in its season, the work of their hands will be blessed and they will never be in debt and have plenty of money to lend to others. It was a promise of material earthy prosperity; physical health and healing if they obeyed God’s commandments. On the other hand, if they didn’t obey His word, then they were going to suffer a long list of punishments (verses 15-68). That is a total of 54 verses of all types of punishment and problems they would face if they disobeyed God. It is very similar to the way we make our children obey us. I call it “the chocolate and the stick” method. We promise them, if you obey us as your parents, we’ll give you a reward. I will buy something for you or take you out somewhere. But if you don’t obey me, I’ll punish you and will use the stick on you. That’s how we bring up our children everywhere because they respond well to the threat of punishment or the hope of a reward. Now we don’t expect our 25-year-old son or daughter to respect and obey us out of the threat of punishment or the hope of reward. We want them to obey us because they love us and know that our commandments are for their good. That is the difference between the old agreement and the new agreement. In the old agreement, God treated people like little children who didn’t have a sense of responsibility or understanding of what was good from them. Every commandment a good parent tells their child is good for that child, but the child doesn’t know that and that’s why the child is hesitant to obey. Once the child knows that what the parents say is good, he or she will have no hesitation to obey.

In the old covenant, man did not have an understanding that whatever God said was good for him. So, we find throughout the Old Testament period, Israel constantly disobeyed God. Even when the Lord told them not to have any idols because He was their God and they shouldn’t represent Him with any physical object, they still went around worshipping idols and making physical objects and imagining that there were many gods up there running the universe. They were punished and suffered the consequences of their disobedience. The Bible describes all those 1500 years as the law. All the law did was reveal to man his sin and his inability to live up to God’s standards and that was necessary. We need to learn our inability to live up to God’s standards before we can enter into the New Covenant where we can live up to those standards. One of the most difficult things for God to do is shatter our confidence in ourselves. One of the rites that God gave Abraham in the Old Testament is the rite of circumcision. He told Abraham that all the males must be circumcised and that is the sign of the covenant between me and your children. Everything that God does has a meaning. Circumcision was the cutting off of the flesh and casting it off and it symbolized a casting off of confidence in the flesh or confidence in our own ability (Phil 3:3). That is the place to which God wants to bring us; the casting off of confidence in our own ability. He wants to show us that within ourselves, we are incapable of obeying his commandments then only we will come to Him and ask Him to help us.

Many of the miracles that Jesus did was to demonstrate this truth. For example, the disciples spending a whole night once trying to catch fish and not able to catch it. What was He trying to teach them? Their inability to do things apart from Him and if they would depend on Him, the problem would be solved. That’s what we see at the end of that story in John 21 that when the Lord came and told them what to do, immediately their boat is full of fish. One of the great lessons that Jesus tried to teach His disciples through all those years that He was with them was the simple truth, “Without me, you can do nothing. They could do nothing without Him and if they learned that lesson, they were spiritually circumcised. Then they would lean upon God. The New Testament speaks a lot about faith. Faith is actually just a life of dependence on God. I’m trusting God to do the work in me and that is the life to which God wants to lead every one of us- a life of faith, a life of dependence upon God. To bring us to that place, He has to first show us a total inability to be able to live up to his standards. We may live up to human standards but completely come short of God's standards. God kept Israel under the law for 1500 years and the end result of that was they discovered they could not come up to God’s standards. That is why it says in Romans 3:23, “All have come short of the glory of God.” Every single human being has come short of God’s standard and that’s why we need salvation freely through the death of Christ.

In the New Covenant, the new agreement which Jesus arranged between God and man is completely different and is based on better promises. First, Jesus is called a mediator between God and man; He is the one who stands between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5). This new agreement is not like the old where it was based on the threat of punishment or the hope of a reward. Jesus isn’t saying “I will bless you if you obey Me and punish you if you don’t.” This new agreement that we read in Hebrews 8:10-12 is based on better promises. Here they are:

I WILL BE MERCIFUL TO ALL THIER INIQUITIES AND WILL REMEMBER THIER SINS NO MORE

We need to start there because all of us have committed a lot of crimes. We are guilty of a lot of wrong things and we want to have it all cleansed and removed and forgiven. That is our first and basic need. In the Old Covenant, there was no removal of sin like that. Sin was covered in the Old Testament times (Psalm 32:1). Now that Jesus has shed His blood, all of our sins are permanently blotted out and there is no memory of it anymore if we confess our sins. That is one of the wonderful blessings of the New Covenant, we don’t have to live a single moment with a guilt of the past weighing upon our minds. Not even for a moment because the Lord says, “I will not remember it anymore.”

THEY WILL NOT TEACH EVERYONE HIS FELLOW CITIZEN AND EVERYONE HIS BROTHER SAYING “KNOW THE LORD”

The second thing which the Lord says here in the New Covenant is they will not teach everyone his fellow citizen, and everyone his brother saying “know the Lord” like it was in the Old Covenant because all shall know Me personally, from the least to the greatest. In the Old Covenant, the Holy Spirit was not indwelling each person, but came upon only a few prophets. If anybody wanted to know something about the Lord or know the will of God, they had to go to that prophet and find out from him what God wanted them to do. They couldn’t find out themselves, they had to go to the prophet and find out. The prophet would find out because the Spirit was upon him so he could communicate with God and tell others. They were dependent on someone else to communicate God's will to them. They could not go to God directly but that's all changed in the new agreement. In the New Covenant, they will not have to teach their each one their fellow citizen or their brothers saying “know the Lord” because all shall know me personally from the least to the greatest. That means the godly person who has been walking with God for 50 years and the newly born-again believer can know Him. The relationship now in the New Covenant like a father and his children unlike in the Old Covenant where it was like a multitude of servants and a master. That’s a very big difference.

In the Old Covenant, the relationship between the Israelites and God was like servants to a master. Something like if you're a factory worker you could work a whole lifetime in a factory and never once meet the chief executive officer (CEO). It's only those who are senior workers like the vice-president of the company or general manager who can contact the chief executive (CEO). The junior workers can only send a message across to the top boss through someone else, they couldn’t talk to him directly. But it's different for a child, the moment he is born, he has a relationship with the father. He can talk to the father every day. No longer does God want us to have a relationship with Him where He is a master and we are servants, but like children to a father. In a home, the youngest child and the oldest child have equal access to the father. Notice the order in verse 11, it says from the least to the greatest. In the factory, the order is from the greatest to the least. Why the difference? Because in a home, parents generally tend to pay more attention to the smaller children more than the older ones. The older ones can take care of themselves and if a ten-year-old wants to talk and a two-year-old wants to talk to his dad, it’s more likely that the dad would first let the 2-year-old talk and then later on listen to the 10-year-old. It's from the least to the greatest which is the exact opposite of the factory.

This is the New Covenant, it's so much more wonderful to have a relationship with God which is like a child to a father. Now many Christians do not enter into this relationship even though it is their privilege because the devil has kept them ignorant about the terms of the New Covenant just like many Christians live with a tremendous sense of guilt which is unnecessary if you have confessed your sin. Jesus has removed it, for He says, “I will not remember your sin anymore.” But if you don't believe that then you live with your guilt. In the same way, the second condition of the New Covenant is also something which many Christians don't seem to live in because when they feel God won’t speak to them because of their spiritual age when they want to find His will. Can’t a two-year-old ask his dad what his dad wants him to do and wouldn’t the dad talk to a two-year-old son or daughter? He certainly will because he loves that two-year-old son and daughter and will answer him or her. This is the faith we need to have when we go to God. Christians whether old or young should not go to a pastor or a prophet to find God’s will for their lives. That is going back to the old agreement and it will seriously handicap your Christian life. This is the reason many Christians don’t grow, because they don’t go to God directly. Jesus is the only mediator between God and men, so you can go to the Father through Him (1 Timothy 2:4-5). Jesus Christ doesn’t have any secretaries; you never read of anyone in the Bible that someone met Jesus through a secretary. He was the most important person on earth at that time in God’s eyes and He had the most important ministry that any human being has ever had and yet He never had a secretary. There are Christians who have less than 1% of His ministry who have secretaries to keep people away from them. It’s one thing to have someone to help you with your work by distributing the work and delegating it, but Jesus Christ was accessible. A lot of Christian workers today are inaccessible; they're not like Christ. Christ is accessible to everybody.

Some Christians make the excuse of saying, “Well, I’m so busy in my ministry.” Well, you can’t be busier than Jesus Christ, can you? He was accessible and even today He is accessible; you don't have to go to Him through a pastor or through His mother or through anybody. You go directly to Him and He reveals the Father to you directly even if you are a newborn Christian. If you accepted Christ today, you can go directly to your Father. This is a tremendous privilege and if you don't live according to this privilege, you will be manipulated and exploited by so-called prophets and pastors who just take advantage of your ignorance. They will tell you, “We’ll find out God's will for you.” It's a lot of rubbish that somebody else will find out God’s will for you in the New Covenant. You may say then, “Why has God appointed shepherds and teachers and evangelists?” That is to fulfill a ministry. Even though you can come to God directly, it doesn’t mean that you know everything in the Bible. God appoints teachers to teach us what is in the Bible. Till the end of the church age, there will be teachers, evangelists, shepherds to care for the little ones but everyone can access God directly through Jesus Christ.

I WILL PUT MY LAWS INTO THIER MINDS AND I WILL WRITE THEM UPON THIER HEARTS.

The third term of the New Covenant, the Lord promises to put His laws into our minds and write them upon our hearts. In the Old Testament, God wrote those laws on tablets of stone. It was outside of man, he looked at it and tried to keep but couldn’t keep it. They couldn't keep the Ten Commandments. There is not a man in the history of the world who's been able to keep all Ten Commandments, particularly the tenth one which said, “You shall not lust or covet or desire.” Nobody could keep it, but now God doesn’t give us a list of commandments to keep. He says, “I Myself will put My laws into your mind and write them in your heart.” The meaning is I will give you a knowledge of My will in your mind and a desire to do it. He is going to give us a mind that wants to do God's will. God is going to write His laws in our minds so that we will know what He wants us to do and give us a desire to accomplish it. Next, He’s going to write it in my heart. That means He's going to give me the ability to do His will. I don't need only the desire, I need the ability after He has given me the knowledge of God's will. I need to have a desire to do it and I need the ability to do it so God says,” I’ll take care of all that; I'll give you a knowledge of My will, a desire to do it, and I will give you the ability to do it.” That is the New Covenant. In the Old Covenant, there was no such promise. God just gave them a list of commandments and told them to keep it. They could know His will and some of them had a desire. But even those who had a desire couldn’t keep His commandments. For example, David said in Psalm 40:8, “I delight to do thy will, O my God; Your Law is within my heart.” In the New Covenant, the same quotation is slightly different. The same quotation in Hebrews 10:7 and 9 says, “I come to do thy will, O God.” There is a difference between saying “I delight to do Your will” and “I come to do Your will.” One is just the desire; the other is the ability to do His will. This is what God gives us in the New Covenant.

In Philippines 2:13, Both these things are combined. It says, “God is at work in you, both to will and to work for HIs good pleasure.” Isn't this wonderful to be in the New Covenant! This is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does all three things mentioned in Hebrews 8:10-12: He assures us that all our sins are blotted. God doesn’t remember them against us. Second, He assures us that God is now our Father. We can have a direct relationship with Him. We can contact Him; we can speak to Him and He can speak to us. Third, The Holy Spirit works in our mind and our heart to give us a desire to do the will of God in every area and the ability or the power to do that will. This is the New Covenant. This is why Christ died and rose again and sent the Holy Spirit. Many Christians have not understood this New Covenant; the devil has blinded their eyes to see these simple truths. They still go back to the Old Covenant and live according to that standard. They feel they can have no direct relationship with God, they feel guilty about their past and they say they are not able to do God's will. God has promised to write His law in your heart. It’s His business; He doesn’t tell us to do it with our own strength, He says, “allow Me to put that desire and ability in you and you will do it.” I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances (Ezekiel 36:27). Enter into this New Covenant by faith in the name of Jesus Christ.

Chapter 26

Escaping Deception

In one of our earlier studies, we considered the fact that Jesus Christ defeated Satan completely when He died on the cross, but He has permitted Satan still to be alive to be active in the world. Look at all the confusion he's causing in the world. Satan was active in Jesus time as well but the child of God who submitted to God will not be overcome; he will overcome Satan in whatever way Satan may come. The Bible speaks about Satan coming as a lion persecuting, harassing and frightening the Christians. The Christians will overcome Satan when he comes as a lion. The Bible also speaks about Satan coming as a serpent deceiving and this is more dangerous. We may think that persecution is more dangerous but in the history of Christianity teaches that persecution has never killed a church; persecution has made the church flourish. Like someone has said, “The blood of the martyrs becomes the seed of the church.” Throughout 2,000 years of church history, we find that wherever there has been persecution, many people have come to the faith. But when the devil comes as a serpent deceiving, he has succeeded in destroying many Christians’ lives. Now we can ask why does God allow this? Why did God allow Satan to come inside the Garden of Eden? Satan didn't come as a lion terrorizing Adam and Eve; he came as a serpent deceiving by pretending to be Eve's friend. Why didn't God stop Satan from entering that garden? If Satan had been stopped, Adam and Eve would never have gone near that tree but then they would not have been tested either. So, we learned from Genesis 3 the reason why God allowed Satan to enter that paradise of the Garden of Eden.

If Satan could enter Eden, he can certainly enter your church. Your church is not as pure as Eden. If Satan could enter there and God permitted it, He will certainly permit Satan to come into your church and try and deceive people. Why does God do it? For the same reason that He permitted Eve to enter the Garden of Eden— to test man. Man needs to be tested to see whether He will value God in His Word or whether he will go according to his own reason and cleverness. That's what Eve did. Eve depended on her own reasoning and ability and so fell away and there are many people today who ignore the Word of God and are led astray. Do you know what God was testing with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden when He allowed Satan to try and deceive them? Just one simple thing; will you trust My word and go strictly according to what I have said, or will you use your reason and discuss and argue back and forth with Satan. Sadly, they failed and fell. God allowed Satan to try and deceive Jesus Christ by tempting Him to turn the stones into bread, but Jesus would not be deceived into doing something. Jesus overcame by quoting Scripture, He stuck to the written word of God. Adam and Eve did not stick to the written word of God, but Jesus stuck to the written word of God three times in the temptation in the wilderness.

It’s clear now we have a choice of going these two ways; the way of Adam and Eve discussing things back and forth and ignoring God's Word or sticking completely to God's Word. We must stick to God’s Word even in a little thing like turning the stones into bread because the Bible says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” and God has not told Me to turn the stones into bread so I'm not going to do it. It’s amazing how exact Jesus was with Scripture. If you are exact with Scripture, I can give you a written guarantee that you will not be deceived. If you accept the New Testament teaching, the example of Jesus, the teaching of Jesus, the Holy Spirit's teaching in the Epistles to guide you, and to be your only guide and you accept nothing else outside of that, you will never be deceived. But if you take things outside of that because it sounds reasonable, I can guarantee you equally that you will be deceived. The Bible says specifically when Jesus was asked by His disciples in Matthew 24 about the sign of the last days and His return, Jesus mentioned wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, persecution, etc. but notice what He said first and what He repeated more than once. The first thing He said was in verse 4, “See to it that no one deceives you.” Deception is the first thing that He mentioned in relation to the last days and further down He said again, “there will be many false Christs and false prophets” (verse 24). You know what these false prophets are going to do? They will show great signs and wonders in the name of Jesus so as to deceive, if possible, even the elect. In other words, these signs and wonders are going to be done in such a way that even the elect could be deceived. The elect are God's people. Can you imagine the elect being prone to deception if this man is doing wonders in the name of some other religion or some other God? No, impossible! There is the danger of the elect being deceived because he comes in the name of Jesus; he's a wolf but he comes in sheep's clothing. Sheep's clothing means evangelical doctrine. He brings the Bible, he doesn't bring some other holy book, he doesn't use the name of some other God, he uses the name of Jesus but he's a deceiver because Satan comes as an angel of light and his servants come as ministers of righteousness (2 Corinthians 11:14-15). These false prophets will talk about righteousness etc. but you got to be watchful because they will preach another Jesus, offer you another spirit, preach another gospel to lead you astray (2 Corinthians 11:3).

Let me show you another verse in 1 Timothy 4. It says in the last days, the Holy Spirit has specifically said that some will fall away from the faith. Now this is not talking about unbelievers; these are people who have come to the faith and they fall away because they pay attention to deceitful spirits. They pay attention to deceitful spirits and they didn’t stick to the Word of God. Jesus said that in the last day, when the day of judgment comes, many (perhaps hundreds and thousands of preachers) will say to Him, “Lord, Lord, we prophesied in the name of Jesus, we cast out demons in the name of Jesus, we did miracles in the name of Jesus,” and the Lord says, “I will turn to them and declare to them, I never knew you, I never had a personal relationship with you. You lived in sin, depart from me,” and they are sent to hell (Matthew 7:22). Can you believe that people who did miracles in the name of Jesus are sent to hell finally? That all depends on whether you believe the Bible or not. Jesus said, “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” I would rather believe the words of Jesus than your reason and my reason. My understanding and your understanding can be faulty. There are many things we can be deceived by, but I will not be deceived because I believe the words of Jesus. I will not accept every man who does a miracle in the name of Jesus, I will not accept every man who prophesies in the name of Jesus, I will not accept every man who casts out demons in the name of Jesus because of Jesus warning. What will I look for? The same things Jesus looked for in these people. He looked for holiness. He says, “you lived in sin.” They never preached against sin. They lived in and practiced sin and they did miracles. I know I'm safe when I seek to fellowship with someone who has the Spirit of Christ who leads me away from iniquity and sin because that's what Jesus came to save us from.

The other mark of false prophets is that they come in sheep’s clothing with evangelical doctrine but inwardly they are ravenous wolves (Matthew 7:15). A wolf is one who comes covering himself with the sheep's clothing in the midst of the sheep. He hasn't come to bless the sheep; he pretends to be one of them, but his aim is to get something for himself. A wolf comes into the midst of sheep only to get something for himself. He wants to bite off whatever he can from the sheep’s meat to feed himself. In other words, he is greedy and ravenous. That's one mark of a false prophet. How shall we detect a false prophet? Not by his doctrine. He may preach the right doctrine, he may do miracles, he may heal in Jesus name, he may cast out demons in Jesus name, he may preach in Jesus name, he may be a very eloquent speaker, but you will find in him a greedy desire to eat up whatever is yours and take it for himself; primarily your money or your possessions. That is one of the ways to identify a false prophet. If you only go by doctrine (the sheep's clothing), you'll be deceived. You have got to look underneath that doctrine, underneath that sheep's clothing to find what he is after. You will find out that he is after your money and he will even quote scripture to get your money. He talks about the need; he talks about the laborer being worthy of his hire, but you never see Jesus asking people for their money. There's not a single instance of Jesus asking people to support him or his ministry. People gave voluntarily, cheerfully and He accepted it. It’s true that Jesus said, “the laborer is worthy of his hire,” but the laborer doesn't have to go around asking people for it. Whose laborer, is he? The laborer should ask the one who sent him. If you work for company A, do you go and ask for your salary from Company B? No. You get your salary from company A and if you don't get it from company A because they forgot to give it, you go to the boss in company A and ask for it. You can't go to the man on the street and say give me my money, you didn't work for him. If you're a servant of the Lord, whom should you go to for your needs? To man? Then you're a servant of man. I've been a servant of the Lord for 50 years and I've never gone to a single man for any need of mine. Because I'm serving the Lord, I go to the one I serve, the Master but I've never had to go to Him because He always takes care of my need even before I go. He's more faithful than any company A, B or C or X, Y or Z. Remember this; beware of ravenous wolves who are eager to bite off what you have. They're not interested in your welfare. They're interested in getting from you what you have.

The other thing Jesus said is, “You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they?” (Matthew 7:16). Don’t be impressed by a man's gifts. People can have the fruit of the Spirit and the gift of the Spirit. If you look for the gifts, you will be deceived but if you look for the fruits then you will not be deceived. What are you looking for in a prophet? I'm looking for the fruit not the gift because Jesus said you will not know them by their gifts, but by their fruits. Later on, He speaks about the gifts they have (miracles, prophecy, casting out demons) but He says they are not even His servants and are actually going to hell (Matthew 7:22). Remember, these are warnings to protect you from deception. If you look for gifts in a man, you'll be deceived. Instead look for the fruit of the Spirit of Christ. First, look to see if this man is humble. See if this man is drawing you to Christ or drawing you to himself. See if he's got the Spirit of Christ which was totally free from the love of money. There wasn’t even an atom of the love of money in Jesus Christ. Look for that in a man and you will not be deceived.

One of the earliest Christian writings that has come down to us from the second century is a little booklet called “Didache, Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.” It's a very interesting booklet. I don't know who wrote it, but it certainly has come down from those ancient times more than 19 centuries ago. People didn’t have Bible in those days. There were some copies of Paul’s writing here and there. Most churches did not have even an Old Testament and there was a lot of wandering preachers going around claiming to be apostles and prophets. Can you image what deception was going on in those days? Much worse than today when we have a Bible. Since people were being deceived in those days because they didn’t have a Bible, the apostles gave them a simple rule to protect them which everybody could get and be protected by. They said that if anyone comes to you and asks you for money for himself, he's a false prophet. If he asks you money for his ministry, he's a false prophet. We certainly ask people to give money for the needs of others but not for ourselves. That is how they protected those people in those days from deception. So, listen very carefully, when you find ravenous wolves coming with all their gifts, what are they asking your money for? Is it in the spirit of 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 where they are telling you about other poor people whom they are going to bless and they themselves live very simply? Or is it for them to live in grand style where they build big houses for themselves and buy expensive vehicles and etc.? Those are ravenous wolves, be careful. Now in spite of the Lord's warnings, if you still don't pay attention then you deserve to be deceived by these false prophets. There are many ways in which the devil seeks to take advantage of God's people. What is God trying to test through all this? Exactly what He tested in Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Will you take My word as it is, will you take my warnings, or will you ignore my warnings?

In the Bible, we read of people who fell down before the Lord with their head down to the ground and worshiped Him. That is how everybody worships the Lord God from Genesis to Revelation. We know in our Indian society what it means to show our feet to somebody. If you lift up your feet and show the bottom of the soles of your shoes to someone, it is an insult. Whereas falling down before a person and bowing down before him with your head to the ground is worship. What do you think of people who fall down to their head down before God? They are worshipping Him. What do you think of people who fall backwards and show their feet to God? They are insulting God. Yet that goes on today with so many preachers claiming to be a manifestation of the power of God and of the Holy Spirit. Does the Holy Spirit make people insult God like that to show their feet to God? Not at all! It's sinners who fall backward in the presence of Christ. It’s demons who throw people down. I've seen demons throw people down myself and you read in the Bible about demons throwing people down but never the Holy Spirit. Jesus always lifted people up and if people fell down before the Lord, it was with their head down to worship Him not showing Him their feet. I’m just giving you an example of the amount of deception that's going on and the multitudes of Christians who look at all this and say it’s the power of God.

Do you know that there were people like that even in the Acts of the Apostles who were deceived? We read in Acts 8 that in Samaria where Philip went to preach, there was a magician called Simon who did amazing things before people, all types of magic, astonishing the people with all his magic and do you know what they called this man? They called this man Simon, the great power of God (Acts 8:10). That's what they called him, and they were paying attention to him because for a long time, he astonished them with his magic arts. There are followers of Simon today who are also being called a great power of God. How are believers deceived by that? For the simple reason that they won't accept God's Word. They see clearly in the Bible that Jesus never pushed anybody down, but they ignore that. They see clearly in the Bible that the apostles never pushed anybody down, but they don't care for God's word. They say like the people in Samaria, “Oh this Simon is the great power of God.” Well, if you want to be deceived, you can be deceived. God won't stop you; He didn't stop Adam and Eve from being deceived. He has not stopped thousands of people from being deceived, millions of people in all these 2000 years. He's not going to stop you if you ignore the Bible. God's Word is clear and if you ignore the example of Jesus and the example of the apostles then you deserve to be deceived and to be led astray and to ruin your Christianity and your life. Jesus often used to say, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” teaching us that not everybody has an ear to hear the truth. It's the same thing today, many people can’t hear these things even though it's clear in Scripture. The Lord is able to keep us from falling, He doesn't make us fall. The Lord is able to keep us from falling (Jude 24). Psalm 91:7 says, “A thousand may fall on your side and ten thousand in their right hand but it won't come near you.” God is not in the business of making people fall; He's in the business of making people stand. Jesus wants people to rise up and walk not fall down and lie there and show Him their feet.

Dear brothers and sisters, don't be deceived in these days. Don't be deceived by these ravenous wolves who are after your money showing you their magic arts in the name of Jesus in order to lead you astray. Follow a person who's got the Spirit of Christ who is seeking to lead you to godliness, seeking to lead you to be free from your sin. That’s the thing that will help you in this life and help you in eternity. In the last days, there will be deceiving spirits, people will go from bad to worse, people will be lovers of money more than lovers of God (2 Timothy 3). Let us be careful in the days in which we live because these are days of tremendous deception. 2 Thessalonians 2:10-11 warns us very clearly that all those who don't receive the love of the truth will be deceived. God Himself will allow them to be deceived because they don't receive the love of the truth and it says there that they will be deceived by the false signs and wonders that Satan is going to manifest (2 Thessalonians 2:9). It looks as if some good is being done by some of these things, but the question is where does it finally lead you? To Christ, to the real Jesus or to another Jesus? To follow God's Word or to be deceived? May God help you to hear these words and be saved and protected.

Chapter 27

The Right Way To Pray

One of the practices found in all religions is prayer. There's no religion that doesn't teach prayer whether it is some type of chanting, some type of repetition, some type of appealing to God. Usually, it is for help. Jesus also practiced and preached on prayer. Sometimes He would spend all night in prayer. Frequently, He would slip away and pray. Particularly in the Gospel of Luke (Chapters 4, 5, 6) you read instances when He would get alone. Now we need to understand this clearly from the Lord's own mouth to find out how He prayed because when He prayed, His disciples heard Him once and said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray. We have never heard anyone pray like You.” There was an intimacy in the way Jesus prayed. So many prayers that people make are so formal. Have you heard the way Christian leaders sometimes pray from the pulpit; they change their voice and they become so artificial. It's like a formal lecture they are giving to God and that's the type of prayer that the disciples had heard the Pharisees pray in the synagogues. They give formal lectures to God like you know people would in the olden days before kings and bow down and read out some statement, but that's not the way Jesus prayed. He prayed like a child talking to a father and He taught us to pray in the same way. The best way to pray is to pray like your children talk to you as parents. They don't put on an artificial voice. They respect you, but they speak freely. It's intimacy that is important in this matter of prayer.

Let’s look at what Jesus Himself taught on this subject because the way He taught us to pray could mean that we have to make some radical changes in the way we pray if we want our prayers to be effective. There's a wonderful verse in James 5:16-18 where we read there that the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. If you are righteous in your life as we have been considering in our last sessions, that is not enough. We also need persistent prayer and if we are fervent in prayer and we are righteous in our life, it's going to make a lot of difference. In fact, the one thing that Jesus said we must do always was pray. In Luke 18:1, He said, “Men should always pray and never give up.” Jesus taught two parables in relation to prayer. One was about a man who had a friend coming to him at midnight and needing food, and his going to his neighbor’s house and knocking and asking for food persistently until he got it (Luke 11). The other parable is of a widow who went to the judge asking for justice until she got it (Luke 18). Both the parables teach one lesson and that is you must not give up. You must be persistent even though it looks as if no answer is immediately coming. It's only your faith being tested. We may wonder why God asks us to pray again and again and again. Isn’t praying once enough; hasn’t He heard our request once? Well, as a matter of fact, God knows our need even before we make one request. You don't even have to mention it at all, leave alone once. Jesus Himself said in Matthew 6:8, “Your heavenly Father knows what you need even before you ask Him.” There's no need for you to ask in a sense. Prayer is not in order to inform God about something He didn't know about. Prayer is not trying to make Him have compassion on somebody who's in need for whom you think you have more compassion. God has more compassion; He sent His Son to die for their sins; you didn’t, and I didn’t. So, it's not to move God's heart towards them or to inform him about anything. Prayer is primarily to bring us into communication with God and it does a lot more in us then it does externally. God asks us to keep on praying and to persist in it because it does something in us. For example, you like your children to come and talk to you. Which father doesn’t like his children to come and talk to him? God also wants His children to come and talk to Him. I’ve heard numerous complaints of parents who say my teenage children don’t seem to be interested in talking to me. I think our heavenly Father has the same complaint too; a lot of God’s children don’t seem to be interested in talking to their heavenly Father, they want His blessings but don’t seem interested in talking to Him. They just come and say, “give me this, give me that, give me the other thing and go away.” What would you think of your children if all the conversation they wanted to have with you was, “Give me this, give me that, give me the other thing.”? Wouldn’t you be disappointed with your children? It’s the same with God. God is a Father; He wants us to fellowship with Him and it does a lot more good to us then it does to Him.

In Matthew 6, Jesus taught us about prayer very clearly. First of all, He told us how not to pray. It’s very important to learn first of all how not to pray before we start to learn how to pray. In Jesus’ time also, there were all these religious people who were in the synagogue praying just like religious people pray in all denominations of Christendom today with formal lectures to God. Jesus told us not to pray like them because they were not actually praying to God, they were praying in order to be heard by many and to impress them. He said, “Don’t be like the hypocrites because they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men.” (Matthew 6:5). Most of the prayers I have heard in my life in whichever denomination in Christendom have been prayers prayed to impress the audience; particularly if you ask somebody to open a meeting in prayer and the crowd is a large crowd. Boy, he’s really interested in impressing that crowd with his prayer. Sometimes, he comes with a written statement. Do your children ever come with a written statement to read out to you? Well, they come out with a written statement and they call it prayer. It’s not a prayer, they are preaching to the congregation, and for namesake, they call it a prayer. We see a lot of this that Jesus warned against. Hypocrite means an actor; don’t be an actor when you pray. Don’t act a part. In a drama, an actor gets up and says certain thing which he has rehearsed over and over to give a nice presentation. When your children come to talk to you normally, they don’t rehearse what they are going to say. They come and open up their heart to you. That’s exactly how you and I are supposed to pray to our Heavenly Father. A lot of prayers (I believe that more than 90%) prayed in Christian congregations by born-again believers are not even heard by God. Why? Because He knows these fellows are just acting and He knows that they are just trying to impress the audience how well they can pray or how emotionally they can pray. Some of them put a tremor in their voice when they pray just to impress people. God is not fooled by all that because He sees through all that hypocrisy and humbug and these people pray like that because they haven’t read Matthew 6:5. They disobey by doing exactly what Jesus told us not to do when we pray. You need to ask yourself even if you are not a Christian leader and you have ever prayed in public, ask yourself whether you don’t pray like that. When you pray, are you conscious that so and so is listening and I must say something to move him and if two or three people say “Hallelujah,” you get all excited which proves that you’re not really praying to God at all. You are praying for people to be moved emotionally by your prayer. You are not talking to God, but to people; then you should expect an answer from those people so don’t be surprised if you don’t get an answer from God. Sincere prayers that Christians pray are when they are all alone. Even then, a lot of it could be formal but the most likelihood of a sincere prayer is when you are all alone in your room and there is nobody around and you are praying to God. You kneel beside your bed and you pour out your heart to Him. Likelihood is that your prayer is much more sincere than when you are standing in public. But we have to fight this battle of acting before God in public prayer. We have to get rid of pretending when we talk to God when we are really only trying to impress people. It’s a battle and you won’t overcome it in one day, but we have to keep fighting it. I know I've gone through it myself. I prayed to impress people and I've gone back and repented before God and said, “Lord, help me, help me” and it's been a battle and over a period of years, I've gradually broken free from trying to impress people with prayer. Yet even now in some new surroundings, I may still be tempted to do that. With constant battle I believe we can come to the place where we will never again pray to impress anyone. When we shut our eyes and we pray, it will be to our Father in heaven; and that should be our goal. This is a very important statement: Don’t ever pray to impress people.

The other thing Jesus said about prayer we're not to do is meaningless repetition. He didn't say repetition is wrong because we read in Matthew 26 that in the Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed for maybe a couple of hours the same thing. He went three times and prayed to the Father the same thing; it was repetition. He told us to persist in prayer in the two parables, it was repetition. The widow said, “Give me justice, give me justice.” The man who went to his neighbor said, “Give me food, give me food.” Both of them used repetition but it was not meaningless repetition. Many Christians are involved in meaningless repetition. People say “hallelujahs” meaninglessly very often, it's become a habit, a tradition or ritual. People say “praise the Lord” or whatever is the equivalent in your language meaninglessly as a repetition and Jesus said don't do that. You can repeat something a hundred times a day if you mean it every time. When you talk to people, do you say meaningless things? I hope you don’t. Certainly, we should not say meaningless things to our heavenly Father. We shouldn't repeat things in our prayer for the sake of repeating them. It's all right to say a hallelujah in prayer but I hope you mean it. What does hallelujah mean? Hallelujah means I want to praise you, Lord. It not wrong to do that but mean it every single time you do it. There must be a reason behind your saying it and not just a time filler. When people don’t know what to say when they are praying, they fill up the time by saying a few hallelujahs. That’s trying to play the fool with God, it's better to pause. When you're talking to someone and you don't know what to say next, you pause. There is nothing wrong with pausing when we don’t know what to say next, but it is wrong to fill up the time by saying meaningless things. All of this meaningless repetition is because people don't fear or reverence God. God wants us to talk to Him like a father and not give Him a lecture.

The other thing Jesus said was that we should not use meaningless repetition as the heathens do thinking they will be heard because of their many words (Matthew 6:7). Don’t think that God will hear you because you prayed for one hour. I remember in the early days when I was trying to understand how to pray and I said, “well, Jesus prayed all night and I want to pray all night” and I knelt down beside my bed and I was enduring trying to pray all night. I was constantly looking at my watch hoping that morning would come soon because it was quite an endurance test and finally when morning came, I had accomplished the feat. Do you think that was all-night prayer? No. It was just a form of asceticism which accomplished nothing, and I believe that there is a place for all night prayer if a man has a burden.

Burden is the essential part of prayer. If you don't have a burden, you can't really pray. Prayer is like a circle; it begins with God coming and putting a burden in our heart—that's half the circle. My praying it back to God is the completing of the circle and I know it will be answered because the burden came from God. Things you pray for, where the burden comes from God, you can be absolutely sure He will answer it. But if it’s just your own opinion or idea, you can’t be sure that you’ll get anything from God as a result of that. So, these are the warnings He gave about praying and then He said you must believe and have faith that your Father in heaven knows what you need before you ask Him. Having this faith is very important thing in prayer. So, before Jesus taught us what is known as the Lord’s Prayer, He introduced it by saying, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.” Remember that when you pray; everything that you’re asking for, He already knows you need it and why is He asking you to pray? He wants you to express your need and He wants to have fellowship with you. He wants you to have the joy of knowing that you asked for something and got it. James 4 says, “You do not have because you do not ask”. Jesus said, “How much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask Him.” (Matthew 7:11). In Luke 11:13, He say, “How much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him.” People are not going to be baptized in the Holy Spirit without asking for it. There are some rare cases like Cornelius who in their ignorance God meets with them, but they were praying for other things to God even before He met with them. No one ever receives anything valuable from God without asking for it. God does give health and money and a lot of other things required for life on earth to people who don’t ask and even to those who deny His Name. But the really valuable things of eternity in heaven, you have to ask for it. For example, you have to ask for forgiveness of sins, you have to ask for the baptism in the Holy Spirit, you have to ask for spiritual growth, spiritual riches etc. It’s good to learn to ask our Father in heaven for that.

Now we need to look at how we should ask. Jesus said pray in this way, He didn’t say meaninglessly repeat the Lord’s Prayer. In fact, He said earlier as we saw that we shouldn’t meaninglessly repeat anything and yet many people take this Lord's Prayer and meaninglessly repeat it every day. I think I used to in my younger days repeat it every day, but I didn't know what else to say in my prayer, so I just repeated it. Now there's nothing wrong with repeating it if you mean every sentence. You can repeat it twice a day every day of your life if you mean every sentence. The Lord is not against repetition, but He is against meaningless repetition where you're saying something and it's just like a tape recorder playing a tape or a parrot just repeating something. We can memorize the Lord’s prayer in our mind after praying so often that we can automatically repeat it even when we are half asleep and we may not even be meaning a single sentence of what this prayer is. So, what Jesus said was all our prayers must be in this way or in this pattern. Jesus was not putting words into our mouth saying just repeat this, He was laying down a pattern for prayer.

Many of you have repeated the Lord’s prayer but have you ever noticed that the words, “I, Me and Mine” are not found in this prayer at all. Not a single time do you find in this prayer saying, “give me this” or “give me that” or “Lord, I want this.” The words “I, Me, Mine” are not here because the Lord is trying to deliver us from this self-centered “I, Me, Mine” type of life we got from Adam. One of the first things that happen after Adam and Eve sinned was that they got separated from each other inwardly. Adam began to accuse Eve saying she is the one who gave me the fruit and Eve began to blame the serpent. Adam and Eve became individuals. Each became “I, me, mine.” It's one of the results of sin and notice here also that as soon as we begin to pray, Jesus said we are to address God as our Father in heaven.

Now this is very important so we should stop here for a moment and think about it. Why did He say, “When you pray, say ‘Our Father who art in Heaven’?” You see, most people in the world do not know God as a Father. They think of Him as a great terrible judge who’s there to punish them. In fact, all the greatest men of God in the entire Old Testament could never call God, “Father.” They could only talk about the great and terrible and mighty God out there who they could pray to. Jesus was the first Person who came and said “Father.” God was His Father and through His death and resurrection and especially the gift of the Holy Spirit coming into us, He becomes our Father - God is our Father. In fact, it says in Romans 8:16 that when the Holy Spirit comes within, He cries out saying, “Abba Father.” Abba is a Hebrew word and the literal translation of it into English would be “Daddy.” The Holy Spirit comes within us and cries out to the Father in heaven - God in heaven saying “daddy.” Do you believe that you can talk to God like that? He's not a general manager of a company you're talking to, it's your own Father. That's how we're supposed to talk to Him. That's the first thing that Jesus said in relation to prayer; you must recognize whom you're talking to. If Christ is Lord of your life, you have trusted Him for your salvation and ask Him to forgive your sins, confess your sins, repented and believe that He rose up from the dead and is living, you can come through Him to the Father. In Jesus name, you can come straight to God and He is your Father. Father means you know His love for you. His wisdom is far superior to yours, His love for you is intense proved by the fact that He sent His Son to die for your sins and mine and that's what we need to recognize before we pray. I’m praying to someone who loves me so intensely and like it says in Romans 8:32, “If He did not spare His own Son, but gave Him freely for us all, how will He not with Him also freely give us everything else?” He certainly will! We just need to trust Him. So that first sentence is to produce faith in our heart. The whole purpose of saying our Father in heaven meaningfully is so that faith comes in our heart that I am praying to someone who loves me intensely, whose wisdom is perfect and who's interested in helping me out, solving my problem and blessing me in whatever way possible. Now that's not all; Jesus also said when you pray, you must pray saying, “Our Father who art in heaven.”

Earthly fathers may love us a lot and may have a lot of wisdom but they're not almighty. Your father on earth can't solve all your problems however much he may love you and however much wisdom he may have. So that's the second thing that Jesus said. When you pray, remember you're praying to a Father who is in heaven, who runs this universe. Look out at the night sky and see the stars and if you have studied a little bit of geography, you know those stars are millions and millions and millions of miles away and light-years away and earth is a little speck of dust in this universe. Planet Earth is like a grain of sand and on this grain of sand is a still smaller speck called you or me and we are praying to this Almighty God who runs this universe. A Father who art in heaven beyond this universe; is there anything He cannot do? Faith rises in my heart as I realize whom I'm talking to. It's very important for me to be focused in remembering that I'm praying to my Father who is in heaven, who runs this universe, one who loves me intensely, one whose wisdom is perfect and one who has almighty power unlike my earthly father. The assurance of His love for me and wisdom comes because He is my Father. The assurance of His almighty power because He's in heaven is the basis for faith. Because faith is the leaning of the human personality upon God in total confidence, in His perfect love, perfect wisdom and almighty power. Those are the three things on which faith is based; God's love for me is perfect, His wisdom and planning my life is perfect and His power is almighty. That's what we find in this expression, “Our Father who art in heaven.” There we find a basis for prayer and all prayer must come out of that. Thereafter, we shall look in our next study about the rest of that prayer; how He taught us to pray concerning God's needs first and then our needs. Let's learn how to pray.

Chapter 28

God Centered Prayer

In our last study, we were considering Jesus’ teaching on prayer in Matthew 6 and how Jesus taught us first of all how not to pray (Matthew 6:5-7). We are to pray in secret, not trying to impress people. He also taught us when we are praying to begin with getting a foundation that will produce faith in our heart. We are to pray to our Father who is in heaven - a Father who loves us perfectly and whose wisdom is perfect and who is in heaven proving that He is Almighty. Once we understand that God loves us perfectly and that His wisdom is perfect, His power is Almighty and can solve every problem, there's nothing He cannot handle, He’s got everything under His control, we can pray in faith. Once we come there, we can look at this prayer itself. There are six requests in the Lord’s Prayer and it's very interesting to see as that the words “I, me and mine” are just not found in this prayer at all. The requests are first of all concerning God: hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, and thy will be done. Then our requests: give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our sins and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. So here are three requests concerning God; His kingdom, His name and His will, then three requests not concerning me but concerning me and my fellow believers who are also God's children. That's why you find it is not give me, but give us etc.

First of all, let's look at the three requests He prays in relation to God's glory and His name etc. Prayer is to come from a heart and not just from our lips. If prayer comes from our lips, we are merely actors rehearsing a part and repeating it. True prayer must come from our heart, from our innermost being. What shall we pray to God? We are to say Lord, the deepest burden in my heart and my number one request is that your name should be respected and treated as holy. You name should be glorified on earth especially in the land, country, and town which I live. My dear brothers and sisters, if you will only change the way you pray from today to put the glory of God's name first in everything and that is the deepest burden of your heart, you will find your whole life will change because your prayer will be now God centered. All prayers of most people in the world, of all religions, is man centered. We have a man centered gospel today which is not the true gospel. The true gospel is God centered, God wants something from us and when we seek His kingdom and His righteousness first, other things are added to us. A gospel that teaches you to seek for these other things first is a false gospel and if you seek those other things, you naturally will be praying for a car and a house and so many other things. Health is a good thing but even that should not be first. Never mind that people drag our name in the dust. Be concerned that the name of Jesus is being dishonored in your city and your country. Let the burden of your heart be, ‘O God, My Father’, never mind my backache and never mind my poverty and never mind that these little struggles I'm going through. Let your name be glorified at any cost.” Such a man will find his backache gets healed and many other problems get solved because God is trying to make us stand on our feet.

The whole world is full of people who are upside down and God is trying to make us stand on our feet. God didn't create Adam to walk on his head. Spiritually speaking, the whole world is upside down. They put God down there and their own needs on top. That's what I mean by upside down; their feet are on top. The Bible says the head of every man is Christ. Christ, the head should be on top. Isn't that how you walk? Christ and His kingdom should be uppermost in our life, but is it? Sadly, it’s the other way around where the least important things are uppermost. Man’s walking with his feet in the air and his head on the ground and all that God is saying is, “listen, that's not the way I created you to walk. Straighten up!” And when we straighten up, we'll find we can make much more progress. You can walk a lot faster on your feet than on your head however much of a juggler you maybe. You can walk much faster on your feet when you put Christ first and uppermost in your life, you'll find that your spiritual progress becomes amazing. It’s true, I've experienced it. Be concerned about God's name first of all. Let God’s name be glorified. Think of the way the name of Jesus is being dishonored today by all the false things people say about Him. Think of all the movies that are produced to dishonor His name to say He was a homosexual or to say that He was married, and all types of lies being told. His name is being dishonored; are you concerned about it or are you only concerned when your own name been dishonored. That's the reason why we are so slow in our spiritual growth. Be concerned from today onwards that the name of Jesus must be honored. “Hallowed be thy name in my land. Lord, let the heathen know that Jesus Christ is Lord. Let them tremble at that name. Let them throw away all other gods and trust in You Lord Jesus. Let Your name be glorified and honored.” That is our prayer, that people will know the truth and know God. We don't force anyone. A lot of people talk about forcing people to be converted. There's no such thing. If you force somebody to be converted, that's not a conversion. Not at all. God Almighty who's much more powerful than all of us doesn't force anybody. He allows everybody to go according to whatever religion he wants. What we do is we offer Christ. Those who voluntarily, joyfully, cheerfully want to accept Christ without any incentive, without giving them money or gifts or any such thing are the ones whom God wants. They should receive Christ into their lives because Christ died for their sins. Anything forced where we urge a man to receive Christ because of some type of bribery is dishonoring to God completely. Those who do that are not representatives of Jesus Christ. We urge people to pray, “Jesus Christ, let Your name be glorified. Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.”

The second prayer is, “Thy kingdom come.” All the corruption and evil on this earth is because this earth is not being ruled by God. It’s being ruled by the devil and that's why there is bribery, corruption, immorality and all types of evil and men are suffering. Little children are suffering. What should we pray? When will you come back Lord Jesus, and establish Your kingdom on this earth? That's the second thing we need to be concerned about and the church is supposed to manifest to people what the kingdom of God is like. By church, I don't mean the physical building being called a church, or a denomination being called the church, but the group of people who call themselves Christians. We the church, the fellowship of God's people, are supposed to show others what God's kingdom is like. It should be a taste that we give to the world about what God's kingdom is like. But there again, we find most Christians are a great failure when it comes to demonstrating the principles and values of God's kingdom. So, we need to repent of that and say, “Lord, we really want Your kingdom to come here on this earth. We really long first of all that in these little pockets where you’ve established Christians coming together, let them manifest the principles of your kingdom properly. Lord, come from heaven and set up your kingdom on this earth soon and relieve the pain of suffering humanity.” We will continue to do our best for suffering humanity and help people in every way. We will do our best to help the orphans, the widows, the poor, the suffering, the sick and everybody else, but whatever we may do, it will be a drop in the bucket because the need is so vast. The ultimate solution for this world is the return of Jesus Christ from heaven when He establishes His kingdom of peace on the earth. We should have a burden that God’s Kingdom should come soon.

The third prayer is, “Lord, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” God’s will should be done in our own lives first. It's no use asking for God's will to be done on earth if you don't want it to be done in your own life. If you're not serious about reading the Bible to find out what God's will is, how can you have God's will done on earth; if it's not being done in your own life first of all? So, let's pray that God's will be done in our life. “Lord, I want your will to be done in my life as it is done in heaven.” How is God's will done in heaven? The angels don't go running around doing something or the other for God. Sometimes Christians are told to go and do something for God. God doesn't want you to do that. What does the angel Gabriel do? He waits before God as it were in prayer. He waits before God and says, “Almighty God, what do you want me to do.” In some of these big offices, you have a person who's sits as servant or watchman outside the door of the managing director. We call him a peon and when the manager inside rings the bell, he opens the door and says, “What shall I do, sir.” The manager says go and take this file to another office and he does that and comes back and sits on his chair. That's how God wants us to wait on Him. “Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven.” Lord, I've got many things to do on earth. I've got my family to look after. I've got to work and earn my living but in the midst of all that, in my inner heart, I'm always waiting before you with the attitude of what do you want me to do. I’m always available for you Lord to hear you.

It’s like these policemen who walk around with a walkie-talkie. It’s always on but they are not always talking on it. These policemen are going about doing their work, but they are always listening for a call from the headquarters. If a call comes to them in the middle of the day or multiple times a day, they respond immediately. When headquarters gives them a call on their walkie-talkie, they've got to drop everything and go. That's how it must be with us. That's how the angels are; always ready and when God tells them to do something, they do it immediately. They drop whatever they're doing and do it. Are you praying that God's will be done in your life like that. Lord, I want to do your will as soon as I hear it- immediately. The angels do God’s will joyfully; they don't do it to with a long face; with a grumble or a complaint. Third, they do it completely. They don't do a half-job and come back. Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished.” It is a principle by which He lived all through life. If His mother told Him to go and bring a bucket of water from the village when He was a little twelve-year-old boy, He wouldn't bring a half bucket; He'd bring a full bucket. These are little steps of obedience which delights our Father in heaven. “Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven.” Lord, I want to do your will waiting on You, and when I hear Your voice, I am going to do it immediately, joyfully and completely. That's how I want to do Your will and I want this to be done in every aspect of my life. I want it to be done in my family, I want it to be done like that in my local church, and I want it to be done like that in my city, in my country and all over the world.

“Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven.” Notice here it's God's name, God's kingdom and God's will. The focus of my life shifts from being centered in myself to be centered in God. You know when Adam chose to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he was actually choosing a life centered in himself and not centered in God. The tree of life was a choice to be centered in God, but Adam didn't want that. Now Jesus has come to bring us back to the tree of life, to have a life centered in God because that is having our head up. When you're centered in yourself, you're walking on your head with your feet up. You are actually walking upside down. When some folks in Acts 17:6 said that Paul and the other apostles were turning the world upside down, what they should have said is they are turning the world right-side up. It looked upside down because everybody else is walking upside down, but it is actually right-side up; they were telling people to be centered in God and to put God first in their life. That's what Christ came to do.

Once we do that then we come to our requests. Is it right for us to pray for our requests? Absolutely right! Is it right to pray for material things? Absolutely right because we need those things on earth. In that little prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” I want you to notice God doesn't want you to think only about your own needs. If you're hungry, the people around you, your fellow believers are hungry also. Don't just say, “Lord, give me food.” What about them? If you have a need in your family, your fellow believers have a need in the family as well. Pray for them as much as for yourself. Do you want your children to be married? Do you have people around you who need their children to be married; pray for them too and not just for your children. God will mightily care for you when you start caring for other people. I've seen that through 50 years. I have proved it and I've experienced it. You take care of God’s family and God will take special care over your family. So, don't say “give me” but pray “give us.” Let’s change our way of thinking. It's not just repeating it as a formula. No, it is actually putting others needs also in our mind.

I'm not saying don't pray for yourself. The prayer doesn’t say, “Give them their daily bread.” No, we're not ascetics or super spiritual. Jesus said, “Give us.” I need bread too. I need my children to get married too but I'm thinking of the needs of others as well. I need housing, they need housing. I need a job; they need a job. In that little request “Give us our daily bread” is included many things. Daily bread is a symbol of all that we need for life on earth: food, clothing, shelter, our children's education etc. It includes education because our children need it in order to get a job when they grow so that they can get their daily food, clothing and shelter. I see that, in that request for something earthly, is a request for, food, clothing, shelter, my children's education, everything related to earthly needs, maybe for medical treatment or physical health. Prayer for physical health is all included in that little statement “give us this our daily bread.” It's basically praying, “Lord, help me to be able to live a healthy life to earn my living and to take care of myself. I'm not expecting manna to drop from heaven. No. I'm expecting to work and earn my living so I'm praying that I'll have a job. I'm praying that I'll have a house to take care of my family. It's all included in that prayer and it's absolutely right to ask for it. God may give you more than you asked for. He may give you ice cream and not just bread, but you don't ask for it. There's nothing wrong in asking for it once in a while but that's not the main burden of our prayer. My point is we're not asking God for luxuries. If God decides to give us some luxuries, that's fine but don't get into debt to buy them. Never. God increases your financial circle so that you have enough to buy something, some time-saving gadget in your home, or some little luxury to make transport easier, go ahead and get it. There's nothing wrong in that but don't make that the goal and focus of your prayer where that is the only thing you want in life. Leave that to God and you seek His kingdom and His righteousness, and He will add to you whatever He knows is good for you and take away the things that are not good. So, let's not hesitate to ask for material things provided it is number four on our request. This request follows after the prayer, “Thy will be done.” In other words, Lord I'm praying that you will give me health to do Your will on earth as it is done in heaven; that's the point. Why do I want all these things? Why do I want food, clothing, shelter, opportunity to educate my children? So that I can do God's will on earth because that is the previous request, “Thy will be done on earth in my life as it is done in heaven.” And in order to do thy will, Lord give us this day our daily bread, give me my food clothing and shelter and opportunity to educate my children so that they will do Your will on earth in their generation.

Then we go to the next request. It's interesting that even forgiveness of sins is mentioned after “Give us this day our daily bread,” teaching us that it's perfectly right to ask for material things. How can we live on earth otherwise? Then forgive us our sin just as we forgive others. That is the condition. How do you want God to forgive you? Exactly like you have forgiven somebody else who harmed you. When somebody who's harmed you comes to you, do you say “Well, I'll forgive you, but I can't ever forget what you did to me.” That’s how God is going to forgive you too. When you pray to God, He will say, “Well I've forgiven you, but I'll never forget the way you rebelled against me all these years.” You want God to forgive you like that or do you want God to forgive you saying, “Listen, I don't even want to remember anything that you did in the past.” I want God to forgive me like that, but God says you better forgive others like that too.

In fact, Jesus picked out forgiveness out of all the six requests in the prayer and emphasized. In Matthew 6:14-15, He said that if you don’t forgive others, your heavenly Father will not forgive you. If you forgive people, only then will your heavenly Father forgive you. Forgiveness is not unconditional, it is conditional. Jesus made it so clear. It doesn't matter how many years you've lived in faithfulness to God, at the end of your life, if there's one human being you have not forgiven, your heavenly Father will not forgive you. Either this is true, or Jesus is a liar. A lot of people think they have served God for forty years and it doesn't matter if they keep a little grudge against somebody before they die. You better be careful; you'll get a surprise when you go beyond the grave as to where you end up because heaven and earth will pass away, but this word will not pass away. Our heavenly Father will not forgive someone who has not forgiven others. So, if you haven't done it and you don't know when you'll die, you better forgive them right away. That doesn't mean you're to go and visit them and do all types of things for them. Just forgive them. It's an act of your will in your heart. Right where you're sitting right now, you say “Lord, this person, that person, the other person who has harm me, right now I forgive them. I wish them the best. I don't wish them any evil from now on. I pray you will bless them. I want to love them. I may never see them in my life but my attitude towards them has changed. Right now, I have forgiven them.” Jesus doesn't tell you to go visit them. He doesn't tell you to go and meet them or anything. If you meet them smile at them but in your heart forgive them. That's all He's saying, and we must ask the Lord to forgive us in the same way and we can believe that the Lord will forgive us in the same way.

The last request is, “Don't lead us into temptation but deliver us from evil.” We recognize that there are some temptations that are too strong for us and so we pray to the Father, “Please Father, don't let me ever face a temptation that's too strong for me.” He has promised in 1 Corinthians 10:13 that He’ll never allow us to be tempted beyond our ability. But He wants us to pray it, also to remind ourselves that we ourselves should not expose ourselves to temptation that's too strong for us. If the devil asks you to jump from the top of the temple like He told Jesus, say “No, I won't do it. That's tempting God. Lead me not into temptation. Don't walk into a pornographic bookshop and ask God to protect you from temptation. Don't go to a pornographic site on the internet and ask God to protect you from temptation. He won’t. If you go there yourself, How can you pray, “Lead us not into temptation?” We have to be very careful here. Many Christians fall into sin because they go into situations that are provocative. For example, don't walk in lonely places at night with a woman who's not your wife; you can be tempted. Young people should be careful; don't allow yourself to be in situations where you’re tempted. You can lose your whole testimony for Christ in a moment and destroy your usefulness for your whole life. “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” We pray that God Himself will set us free from Satan and from all evil. We believe that He can keep us from falling and that's what we're praying for. He will deliver us from evil completely; not 90% but 100%. I don't want any evil in my life; deliver me from all evil. Not only physical evil but something worse than that which is spiritually evil. Deliver me from sin is a prayer for victory over sin. Lord, keep me from falling. Don't let me fall in thought, word, deed, attitude, motive in any area. Lord, I believe that you will answer all this because all power is Yours. The kingdom is Yours; the power is Yours and when you answer these prayers, the glory will be Yours; I will never take the credit for myself (Matthew 6:13). Then you finally conclude with amen. You know what the word “amen” means? Amen means I believe it will be exactly as I have prayed. It's a very good way to conclude prayer; In Jesus name, I claim this, and I know it will be true in my life. May God help you to change the way you pray from today- centered in God, considerate for others and believing that when you pray, your Father in heaven will answer you beyond what you ask or think.