This sermon emphasizes the importance of diligently seeking God and working hard in the spiritual journey, drawing parallels to the effort people put into achieving worldly goals. It highlights the need to work hard to understand and apply the principles of the Bible, stressing that God rewards those who earnestly seek Him. The speaker encourages believers to strive for spiritual growth and maturity, comparing it to the progression through different academic levels, aiming for perfection at each stage.

I think of all these people who look for jobs in Dubai. They spend lakhs, they are cheated. Again they try and spend lakhs, again they are cheated. Finally they reach the other end. They say they have achieved it. I tell you Christians who are 25% as interested in getting victory over sin like these fellows are interested in going to Dubai. Boy, you should have got it long ago. Like many other things in life that you pursue after, earnestly, sincerely, you try so hard. And you get it. It's like that. God is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him. He told Adam as soon as he sinned. He says from now on things are going to be different. The law is you'll get your bread when you sweat. Without sweating you won't get your bread. You know you got to sweat. That means work hard even to get spiritual bread from the Bible. You really got to work hard. If you really want to get something yourself, you're going to be fed. You're going to be spoon fed like right now. What I'm doing is spoon feeding. You know babies have to be spoon fed. That's fine. But if you want to get something yourself, if you want to earn your own bread, if you want to get your own bread from the Bible, you really got to work hard. I mean if somebody else is earning the bread in your home, bread winner, that's okay. You just sit and eat it. That's how it is in the church very often. But you should be growing up to be a bread winner yourself. Spiritually I mean. Well you got something to give. For that you got to really work hard. It's like that in everything. God is not a rewarder of lazy people. He rewards those who diligently work. Let me show you this verse in 2 Timothy 2. 2 Timothy 2 it says, It seems to be a law in everything in life. It's not just spiritually even in the secular world. You really got to work hard to get. 2 Timothy 2 it says in verse 6. The hard working farmer has to be the first to receive his share of the crops. So the hard working farmer gets a crop before everybody else does. I mean everybody has the same type of ground, the same rain, the same seed. Why did this guy get it first? Because he worked hard. Everybody's got the same Bible, same 24 hours a day. Everybody's got to work. How is it that some people know it and some people don't know it? They worked hard. How is it some people understood the new covenant and got into a life of victory because they were honest and they worked hard at it. And then he's not talking about farmers. He says in the next verse, verse 7, Think about what I say and the Lord will give you understanding in what I mean. And I want to say to that, think about that verse. The hard working farmer is going to be the first one to get his share of the crops. And Paul was saying that to Timothy who had already been with him for 25 years. This is his last letter. And he says, Timothy, I can't explain it to you. I'm sorry. You're my closest friend, but I just can't explain it to you. I'm not telling you to read my episodes 20 times and you'll understand it. No, you won't. He says here, the Lord has to give you understanding. Do you know you can come to the best church in the world and listen to the best preacher for years and you won't get understanding? I mean, if there was anybody who could have explained it, it was Paul to Timothy. And he says to him, listen, Timothy, I can't explain it. The Lord has to give you understanding. So, I've seen this. A lot of people understand it in their heads and they don't understand it in their hearts. And faith is a matter of the heart. The difference between faith in the head and faith in the heart is the difference between hell and heaven. In hell they have faith in the head. The Bible says, even the devils believe and tremble. It says in James 2. Faith in the heart takes you to heaven. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, not your head. So, understanding in the heart is different from understanding in the head. You've got to seek God not with all your head, but with all your heart. If head was so important, God would have made all people equally intelligent. If intelligence was necessary to know God, God would have made all people intelligent. You'd think that the people who are more intelligent would know God better, but it's not true. I mean, we've seen that in our own churches. Some of those poor brothers in Tamil Nadu seem to know God and get such revelation when they share something from the word, which I don't get from a lot of very highly educated, intelligent people. PhDs and all don't seem to know the word like that. God is no respecter of intelligence. It's like color of skin. You know, a lot of people in India think that a white-skinned person must be more spiritual. Not true. He's got nothing to do with color of skin. He's got nothing to do with intelligence. He's got to do with the hard-working farmer. So you can understand and enter into this life of the new covenant if you really work at it. Go to the word and say, Lord, I really want to know this in my life. Even if it's late, I'm late in life, understanding it, I want to know it now. Let's turn back to Hebrews chapter 8. What did we see there? In Hebrews chapter 8, we read, What is it the law could not do? First of all, let me show you Hebrews 7.19. The law made nothing perfect. God is interested in perfection. The law made nothing perfect. And Jesus told us, Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. It's the last verse of Matthew 5. Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. He didn't say, be like Elijah. Or be like John the Baptist. No, he said, be like your father. What a standard. He didn't give you some low example. You think Elijah is a low example? If you're like Elijah, we're pretty serious Christians. But he said, that's not good enough. Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. Matthew 5.48. What a standard. But the law could not do that. But the bringing in of a better hope. On the other hand, Hebrews 7.19. There's a bringing in of a better hope. By which we draw near to God. And perfect means not completely like Christ. That will take time to come. But it's like perfect in my conscience right now. It's something like, maybe you're in the first standard. And in mathematics, you got 100%. Isn't that perfect? That's called a perfect score. You can't get 101. No matter how much you know, you can't get 101. You can get only 100. That's a perfect score. But you're not perfect in your knowledge of mathematics. In first standard, even though you got 100%. Next year, you go to second standard. And you start with 60%. Because a lot of new things you learn, which you didn't know before. And then in the next exam, you get 70. In the next exam, you get 80. And finally, you get 100% in second standard. That's better than 100% in the first standard. So there's perfection to perfection. And then you go to the third standard. Again, you start with maybe 50%. First exam, 60, 70. You get 100% in the third standard. And it's all the way. I mean, you go to BSC. You're still struggling. So that is the Christian life. It's like that. Perfect at my present level. Next year, I may not start with perfection. But I'll be perfect at that level too. It's exactly like a school. The Lord gives me revelation on something new in my life, which I never knew before. And I can cleanse myself. Become a little more like Christ. But he doesn't want us to live in the first standard forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. Studying first standard subjects. I mean, you'd be terribly disappointed if your child lived in first standard even for two years. Leave alone ten years. Can you imagine how disappointed God is with many of his children? Forget the other children. Ask yourself this searching question. Is God disappointed with me? Am I in the class where he wants me to be today? Now, if you put your child in the first standard, you expect that by ten years later that he's in the tenth standard. Don't you think God has some expectation of you that he brought you to new birth some years ago and many years have gone by and you should have overcome certain sins by now? And you've been in a church where you heard about overcoming sin for so many years and even more you should have overcome. And is God disappointed with you?