This sermon emphasizes the importance of wholehearted commitment to God, highlighting the dangers of serving two masters, particularly God and money. It stresses the need to choose to serve God alone, not allowing money or material pursuits to distract from true faith. The speaker shares the journey of their church, focusing on upholding biblical values, financial integrity, and a genuine pursuit of godliness, rather than seeking personal gain or popularity. The message warns against false grace that permits sin and urges believers to contend earnestly for the faith delivered to the saints.

One of the problems I've seen through many years is believers who start well but don't finish the race or end badly. And I wanted to just show you a couple of verses in that connection. Luke 14, Jesus was talking about a man who wanted to build a house and he laid a foundation, verse 29, verse 28, he wanted to build a tower, but he didn't count the cost of the building at the beginning. All of us, if you're building a house or something, you'll certainly sit down and say, well, how much is it going to cost? And he didn't count the cost. And without counting the cost, he laid a foundation. And so he was not able to finish. Now, he's talking about believers who start well. And the foundation we know in Hebrews 6 is repentance and faith and belief in the final judgment of God, etc., and baptism, etc. So that's the foundation where we have accepted the Lord and we are born again and we've taken baptism and we believe in the coming of the Lord and the final judgment. But having laid that foundation, it says here, he is not able to finish and then it is said about him, verse 30, this man began to build and was not able to finish. I believe that word is going to be spoken about many, many believers. They began to build and they were not able to finish. They started the race, but they didn't finish it. And there are a number of verses in the Bible that speak about that. If you turn to 1 Corinthians in chapter 9 and verse 24, 1 Corinthians 9, 24. Don't you know that those who run in a race all run. To come to the starting line of the race is being born again. But the race is a marathon race. But only one receives the prize. Now the interesting thing about the Christian race is, it's not just going to be one who receives the prize. It says to the Corinthian Christians, to all those Christians, run in such a way that you will win that first prize. So the meaning there is, is the one who runs and wins, who gets the prize, but all of you can win. All of you can come first. But in order to complete the race like that, you have to be a disciplined person. As it says, everyone who competes in the games, you know, think of the people who win the gold medal in the Olympic Games. They've disciplined themselves in so many ways. They don't eat what they like. They practice every day and they do that in order to win this gold medal. So he says, I also seek, Paul says, to seek to do like that. One more verse in Hebrews in chapter 3, verse 12 to 14. Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you. Now he's talking to believers. Now, there are some people who feel that if you've accepted the Lord once, you'll never fall away. But, you know, you can't find that taught in scripture. Very often it's people who take half a verse from somewhere who believe that. But here it says, take care, brethren, born again believers, lest there be in one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that makes you fall away from the living God. So I mean, that's so plain that anyone can understand that a believer can come to the place, he's running the race, he started in the starting line. And somewhere along the way, he developed an unbelief. And the Bible calls an unbelieving heart an evil heart that made him fall away completely from the living God. So in order to prevent that, this is what another reason why we come together as a church. Here is the reason why we come together as a church, and not just on Sundays. Here's the reason why we seek to fellowship with one another in between as well. In verse 13, encourage one another every single day, as long as it is called today, because let me paraphrase it, in 24 hours, you can be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. So encourage one another every day, as long as it is called today, lest any of you, especially those who think I'll never fall, I'm wholehearted, lest any of you be hardened, not by obvious sins, by the deceitfulness of sin. Some of the deceitful sins are hypocrisy, you know, giving an impression to people, it's not really true of our private life, personal life, or pride, very deceitful, selfishness. It's amazing how a believer can be utterly selfish and have no clue about their selfishness. It's a deceitful thing. Murder and adultery are not deceitful, they're very obvious sins, telling lies, it's a very obvious sin. In fact, idol worship, all the things listed in the Ten Commandments, there are obvious sins. But here it speaks about the deceitfulness of sin, sins that are very deceitful. Those are the ones you've got to be more careful about, obvious sins you don't have to be so concerned about because you'll immediately be alert to it and stay away from it, or if you fall, you'll immediately get up. But you can be a hypocrite for years and not know it. You can be proud of so many areas and be completely unaware of it. You can be selfish in a hundred ways and be unaware of it. Those are more deceitful ones. So if you're asking God for light on your life, ask God for light on hypocrisy, pride, and selfishness. And where someone is more mature than you, who's walked with the Lord, judging himself in all these areas, he'll be able to see your hypocrisy and see your pride and see your selfishness where you don't see it yourself. See that's one of the advantages of fellowship in a church, and if we seek fellowship in a church that is emphasizing godliness, and there are very few churches like that, there'll be a ministry in such a church that exposes deceitful sins. If you want to get light on yourself, you know, it's like cancer, for example. I've heard of people who got fourth stage of cancer, and they never went to the doctor before that because they felt perfectly okay. That's an amazing thing about cancer, a person can feel perfectly okay for a long time, and by the time he goes to the doctor, he says, it's pretty late now, I can't do much about it. Now, there's certain other things like you got a headache, you're aware of it immediately, you get an injury, you feel it immediately, even a mosquito bite, you feel immediately. But imagine a thing like cancer, it can progress and progress and you discover it much later, and it's very often it's too late to cure. And so many cancers, in the early stage, if you detect it, it can be cured. So these deceitful sins are the things you've got to be very careful about, hidden sins, the sins in the inner life. So I see, therefore, that I would want to be a part of a church, it says here, encourage one another daily, where people believe in this. And this also, you know, applies to husband and wife. The person you see daily is your marriage partner, really. And what I responsibly did is to be an encouragement, because encouragement can save people from falling into sin. It's not criticism that delivers people. Very often we think if you criticize a person and show him his error, he'll be delivered. No, he may be discouraged. But to encourage a person, that means you show him the possibility of what he can be in Christ. And then it says, verse 14, we become partakers of Christ only when we finish the race. Did you read that? We become partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, until the end of the race. So there's no price for those who start the race. There's a price for those who come first, and all of us can come first. So in the days in which we live, where there's so many temptations around us to fall away, it's wonderful to belong to a fellowship which values godliness. You won't fall away if you lose your job, or run short of money, or have to move from a bigger house to a smaller one, or all these trials that we can have on this earth. Falling away comes only when we are deceived by the deceitfulness of sin, and nothing else, really. So when we look at the history of the Christian church through the years, the devil has always tried to corrupt the church in these hidden areas. I've heard of buildings that were built on the olden days, and wooden pillars, and they painted regularly, and it looks very nice, when one day the whole roof collapses, because this pillar was all eaten away by termites, inside, not at all visible on the outside. It happens often in India, where wooden structures are eaten by what are called white ants, termites that eat up the inside, but on the outside it's all painted to look nice. I think a lot of Christians are just like that, a lot of churches are like that. Eaten up on the inside, and suddenly one day the whole thing collapses, and you wonder what happened. It's like the stories you hear of a pastor who suddenly fell into adultery. You think that happened in a moment? No! It was years of termites eating up inside his heart. You know, first a lustful look, and then another, and there's no repentance in that, and maybe a little bit of going into pornography, or a little bit occasionally, gradually it leads to adultery, finally, and try to cover it up, and finally you hear he's caught and he falls away. Nothing happens suddenly, or one who's unfaithful financially, so it all starts very small, sometimes it starts when a person is a child, and the parents don't teach that child that stealing is wrong, telling a lie is wrong, deceitfulness enters in, if you're not strict with our children about deception. So over a period of time, it develops. So it's good to be in a church where we are challenged to the highest. Think of a verse like this, in 1 John 2.6, in my entire Christian life, I never heard a single message on this. Can you believe it? I was born again 58 years ago, and we started CFC in our home 42 years ago, and those 16 years before that, I never heard a single message, even, leave alone a message, I never heard anyone even referring to this verse. 1 John 2.6 says, the one who says he abides in Christ must walk in the same way as Jesus walked. Just listen to that. I say I'm abiding in Christ, I'm in Christ, and I'm supposed to walk as Jesus walked. Now, it's terrible to think that God would ask us to do something which is impossible. Jesus said all of us are evil fathers compared to a loving father in heaven, and is it possible that you would ever ask your child to carry a 1 ton, 10,000 pounds or something of weight on his head, and then punish him if he doesn't do it? Even an evil father wouldn't do that. How much more a good father, you'd never ask his child to do something he knows that child can never do, it's beyond his capacity or ability, and that is what we are indirectly accusing God of when we look at verses in the Bible and say, that's impossible. 1 John 2.6, to walk as Jesus walked, Philippians 4.4, to rejoice 24-7, Philippians 4.6, to be anxious for nothing, 2 Corinthians 2.14, to be always led in triumph, or Romans 8.37, to be more than a conqueror in every situation, or Ephesians 4.31-32, to put away all anger 100%, and Colossians 4.6, to your speech should always be with grace so that people can taste it. You look at these verses like this and say, with many Christians, almost such verses are not in their Bible, they don't even know such verses are in the Bible, but they read it. There are people who say, I read the Bible once through every year, and they seem to have skipped over these verses. We read it, and indirectly, I mean, unconsciously, we say, that's not possible, forget it, just move to the next verse. And that's the reason why after so many years of being born again, our Christian life is so shallow. It's like a student who's in the kindergarten, year after year after year after year. Twenty years in the kindergarten. I mean, any parent would be disturbed. A lot of Christians are not disturbed. They don't see progress to higher levels. The Bible says, let us press on to perfection. There are so many verses like this which are not there in the Old Testament. Now if you're living in the Old Testament, if you were an Israelite living under the leadership of Moses under the Old Covenant, then all these commands are impossible. You never find all these commands I just mentioned. You never find them in the Old Testament, no. Because God treated them like little babies, they're not, they can't do these things. You know, one of the differences between Old Covenant and New Covenant is that God treated the Old Covenant people like little children, and the New Covenant people like adult sons. It's very important to see this difference. I'll show you that in Galatians in chapter 3 and 4. We've often spoken about the difference between Old Covenant and New Covenant, and this is one of the differences. Galatians chapter 3 and verse 23. Before faith came, and that's referring to this New Covenant faith that came through Christ, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith that was later to be revealed. So the law was like a tutor, or the margin says like a child conductor, or a governess, or a maid who we hired to look after a little child. This is very common in India, where families who can afford it will hire a maid to take the child to school, because it's too young to go by itself. It's six years old, the maid has to hold the child's hand and take the child to school and go back when the school closes and hold the child's hand and help the child to cross the road and come back. This is the picture here. The law was like a governess to take care of the child until it's grown up and able to take care of himself. He can go to school on his own, can ride a bicycle and go to school. But until then, it needs a governess, and here it says the law is like a child conductor or a tutor, a governess to look after. The law was like a protection. If the law was not there, it would be like the child just, say, oh, five-year-old child, okay, walk to school on your own and get run over by a bus the very first day. So to protect the child from being run over, a housemaid is appointed to take care of that child. And so the law was like that. And all those other countries where people didn't have a law, they were all got run over by sin. So that's why Israel was protected. But God's will is not that we should always have this housemaid, and you don't want your child to always, even if he's 20 years old, being led by a housemaid to the school. No. It is until the faith came, verse 25, now that the faith has come, you don't need that governess. You don't need that tutor. Because now you're not a child, verse 26, you're a son. Do you see the difference? Before that, you were children, and now you're a son. And that's what's happened. And so it goes on to say in chapter 4, a child is under guardians, verse 2, and managers. Even if the child is a billionaire's child, he cannot do anything with that money. He doesn't know how to handle it. He doesn't know how to write a check. He doesn't know how to go to a bank. Here's another picture used here. He's an heir to a billionaire, but he's a child, and he's no better than a slave. The slave in the house can't do anything with that bank account, and the child can't do anything. A child is no better than a slave, but when he grows up, and therefore the child, a billionaire's child, is kept under guardians and managers until the day when he's able to handle his wealth. And so also, while we were children, that means we lived under rules and regulations. Don't do this, and don't touch that, and don't do the other thing. That's just like we treat our children. And there's a phase in our Christian life, in the early part of our Christian life after we are born again, we tend to live by rules. There's a sense in which even though the age of the law was passed on the day of Pentecost, we tend to live under that for a little while because that's the only way we can keep our testimony in the church. And I think most Christians live for a period under the law. I avoid certain things. I'm not supposed to go to movies. I'm not supposed to do this. I'm not supposed to do that. I'm not supposed to smoke or drink, or I'm not supposed to do all these things. Therefore, I don't do it. It's not from within. It's rules that I have imposed upon myself, and that I'm very careful to do, especially when other people are watching me, to keep a good testimony before others. Because it's a clear proof that you're a child. Anyone who's always trying to create a good impression and live by certain rules, which they don't follow when they're all alone, but they follow when anybody's watching them, that's a child. And it says that we were in those days when we were like little children. We were under bondage to all these things. But now, verse 4, Galatians 4, 4, In the fullness of time, God sent His Son, Jesus, born of a woman, born under the law, in order that He might redeem or deliver us from this living under rules, and don't do this, and avoid this, and avoid this, just to get a good testimony, that we can become sons, that we can now inherit the wealth of our Heavenly Father. And that's why God sent His Holy Spirit into your heart, that looks up and cries out, Dad, and makes us rich in Christ. And then we can take these New Testament commands and live according to them. And just like you wouldn't put a three-year-old child driving a car, but an adult you would, because an adult knows how to handle it. There are many, many pictures you can use of the difference between a small three-year-old and an adult. And you need to ask yourself whether we have become like that in our Christian life, whether we have grown, or we are still under these rules, trying to protect our testimony, that we don't get a bad reputation before others. And the reason why many Christians are children is because their teachers are children. The ones they call their pastors, their leaders, the preachers they listen to, are also children who live by rules to protect themselves from external sin, and they never have any light on hypocrisy, pride, or selfishness. And there are thousands and thousands of churches that never speak about these three, because it's all inward, you can cover it up. And it's possible to spend many, many years as a born-again Christian looking for churches that are a little better. You know, people leave a church because they say they don't practice believer's baptism. Good. So you go to a church that preaches believer's baptism, but you can have the same hypocrisy and pride and selfishness there. I've seen it. And then you say, well, this church doesn't preach the baptism of the Holy Spirit, doesn't believe in the supernatural gifts of the Spirit, they don't believe in speaking in tongues, they don't believe in healing, they don't believe in casting out demons. Good. Okay, so you leave all that and you go to a church that believes in the baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues and prophecy and healing and casting out demons, but the same hypocrisy and selfishness and pride are in that church. What is the difference? It's just a little, the color, the whitewash of the building is a little different. This one is white, that one is blue, and that one is green. That's all. It's only external. And then in the midst of these churches, there are people who are sick and tired of their defeated life and say, Lord, I'm not happy with this. I'm not happy with this. I'm not happy with this. What do I do? I want to find a place where I can be challenged to walk as Jesus walked, where I can be challenged to obey the commandments, where I can put away all anger and all bitterness from my life and gradually put away all selfishness and get more and more light on my pride and selfishness and hypocrisy so that I grow in grace. For that, I need to be challenged all the time. We read that, no? Encourage one another daily, lest you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. That is how, you know, some of us in India 42 years ago sought for something more than we found in the different churches. I myself had made the round of so many churches and they were all good. But as far as evangelism goes, those churches were excellent, reaching out to the lost, telling them Jesus died for their sins, but producing little children just like themselves who are not delivered from these sins, you know. And I used to think, you know, in a country like where I live and 98% are non-Christian and even the 2% Christian are mostly hypocritical. I say, if a non-Christian came to me and I had to give him the gospel, and if I told him, listen, the trouble with all of us is we have sinned. And no religion tells me that somebody had taken the punishment for my sin except Christianity. Jesus Christ came to earth to die and take the entire punishment for our sin. Another thing he did which nobody else did was rise from the dead. It proves that he is the truth. So I tell him this is what I did. My sins are forgiven and you can do that. I'm not introducing you to Christianity. I'm introducing you to Jesus Christ. Receive him into your life and you'll be forgiven. And he says, really? I say, yes. You can be forgiven completely. All your sins. He says, that's great news. But I've got one more problem. I get angry with my wife and yell at her regularly. Can Jesus deliver me from that? And you haven't been delivered yourself. So you say, well, I'm not too sure about that. You know, Jesus is not that powerful to deliver you from anger. But he can forgive you. He'll say, you keep your Jesus. I don't want it. I look for somebody else who can, maybe Buddha. Maybe he can deliver me from anger. What has been the effect of your witness for Christ? Is it just forgiveness? Or is it more than that? Now, if the New Testament said, Christ can only forgive you. But sin will have dominion over you, even when you're under grace. That will not change until Christ returns. But you'll be forgiven. But you'll have the assurance, which the Old Testament people didn't have. That they were children of God. You can call God Father and all that. But sin will still have dominion over you. Whether you're under law or under grace, sin will rule over you. I mean, Romans 6.14 would be written slightly differently. Think if it was like that. Then I can understand. Let me speak the truth. I mean, if that non-Christian gets offended and goes away, I can't do anything about it. Because I say, that's what the Bible says. That sin will have dominion over me. So, we have to ask ourselves whether the Christianity we are presenting and picturing before others is the Christianity of the New Covenant or some third-rate, washed-out, useless Christianity that we've seen in the different churches. Now, not many people are fed up with this. They just accept it. Well, this is how it is. I mean, I went to this church, it was like this. And these other people who were baptized in water, they're also like this. And these other people who say they are filled with the Spirit, they're also like this. And they give up. But there are a few who say, No, if I believe the Bible is the Word of God, either the Bible is not the Word of God, then let me throw it away. But if I see on one hand the Bible is the Word of God and I don't take seriously what's written there, I don't take what Jesus said, Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. I don't take those words seriously. What is the Jesus I'm believing in? The only Jesus I know of is the one the Bible describes. I don't know of any other Jesus. So if I take the Jesus the Bible describes, who died for my sin and rose again, was born of a virgin, then I must accept some other things the Bible says. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will not pass away. And think of a statement like this. I've often thought about this verse, which, I'll tell you 99.9999% Christians don't even think seriously. I don't know whether some of you belong to the 0.0001%. Let me show you the verse. Ask yourself this question. Have you taken this verse seriously? Matthew chapter 12. Just one verse. I could show you many others, but I'll just show you one for the time being. Matthew chapter 12 and verse 36. Matthew 12, verse 36. Jesus says, I say to you. Now whenever he said something like that, it means like, it's like underlining. You got a letter and some lines are underlined. So whenever Jesus said, verily, verily, I say unto you, or I say unto you, he's underlining something. Every careless word, idle word, that you speak, you will give an account in the day of judgment. Every word. Is it really true that verse 37, by your words you will be justified in that final day. By your words you will be condemned. Is it really true that the words I speak at home, when nobody's listening except my wife or my husband, those words are important. That they'll come up in the day of judgment. I tell you, I have seen Christians all over the world. 99.999% do not believe it. I'm telling you the truth. You ask yourself whether you believe it. Well, if you believe it, whether you live by that. You read on the internet that certain type of food is junk food. You believe it and you avoid it. That's why you stopped eating some of the junk food which has been known to just make you obese and unhealthy. That you believe. But not this. I'm absolutely convinced. I could make, if I had the time, I could make a list of the number of things we believe, which we read in the news, and then contrast that with a number of things in the Bible which we just don't believe. Most people believe more what the media says than what the Bible says. The media, a lot of it, believe it or not, is fake news. That's trying to present something to make you think in a certain way. The Bible is not like that. There's no fake news in the Bible. It's 100% true. And I believe that if God tells me that my words are going to be very, very important, and I say, Lord, I'm absolutely helpless when it comes to speaking, my tongue is my biggest problem. In fact, the Bible itself says in James chapter 3 that no one can tame the tongue. The Bible says they've tamed lions and elephants and wild animals, but no one has been able to tame the tongue. Did you know that verse? James chapter 3, verse 7 and 8. Now, this is way back in the first century itself. They had already learned to control animals. James 3, 7. Every species of beasts and birds and reptiles and creatures of the sea has been tamed. Whales have been tamed. Lions have been tamed. Tigers have been tamed. Many of us have seen them by man. But the tongue, no one can tame because it's a restless evil full of deadly poison. Now, people can read all that and read that every careless word men shall speak and say, Lord, what's the solution? And when a man longs to find that solution, God shows it to him. Not just if he wants an answer from me. We'll go to Brother Zach and ask him, what is the solution? No, no, no, no. You'll get a theoretical answer. The answer is to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Okay, you got the answer. Now, in a question and answer paper, you'll answer, what's the solution? Be filled with the Holy Spirit. You think that's all there is to it? No. There is a law in Scripture. And the law is, let me show you a few verses. Matthew chapter 5 and verse 6. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They shall be satisfied. Not those who want to find the answer. But those who hunger and thirst to really live a godly life. And they read something like, we must walk as Jesus walked. They say, oh, God, that's where I want to walk. They read every careless word. They shall give an account, oh, God, I'm not afraid of judgment. But I see my careless words dishonor you. So I want to avoid it. I don't want the devil to accuse me before you. Let's see, this fellow calls himself your child god. Look at how he's talking to his husband or wife or to that person in the office. Look at his road rage in his car while he's driving the car just because everybody else is frustrated. He's frustrated too. How is he your child god? That's what the devil says. He's called the accuser of the brethren. And when I think of that, I say, Lord, I don't want the devil ever to open his mouth about me to you. In any situation. Do you have a burden like that? Revelation 12.10 says he accuses us day and night to God. What's he accusing us? He can't tell a lie. He can't go and say, Zach's a murderer. Because that's a lie. He won't tell God things like that. But if he sees me do something, not something according to his standard, something the Bible has said I must do, and I don't do, or something the Bible says I must not do, and I do it. That's the thing he accuses me of. Look at him. Remember how he pointed out Job. And according to the Job standard was Old Testament. So that's all the standard by which he was judged. You know, in the first grade, you only get first grade question papers. So Job was down there. So he was not judged by this New Testament standard. But according to that standard, God could say there's a perfect and an upright man. He was certainly not perfect and upright according to New Covenant standards. You read that as you read the book of Job. Because he had a lot of complaints against God and questions. But according to that level where he was, according to that first grade level, he had got 100%. He got A+. And God could say, have you seen him? Perfect and upright man, one who fears God and turns away from evil. And I believe that the devil's coming before God and God's looking for people in the Bay Area whom he can point out to God and point out to the devil and say, have you seen that? Have you seen that? And the devil says, look at all these hypocrites in all these churches. Look at all these fellows running after money and say they are following Jesus. And then God says, yes. But have you seen that one? And have you seen that brother? Have you seen that sister? Oh, and the devil points out families that are a pathetic testimony to the Lord. And then the Lord says, yes, but have you seen that family? That's different. I believe that should be our goal. And that was those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They shall be satisfied. Lord, what about those who don't hunger and thirst for righteousness but who want it? They won't get it. Because it's a principle with God which we must understand. And it was there in the Old Testament too. Jeremiah chapter 29 and verse 13. It's a very important principle. It's universally true, whether under Old Covenant or New Covenant. Jeremiah 29, 13. When you seek me, you will find me only when you search for me with all your heart. What about the guy who doesn't search for me with all his heart? He won't find me. Or Hebrews 11, 6. King James is more accurate there. God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied. He will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. He's a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Not those who casually seek Him. Who are desperate. You know who, like I used the illustration, if you lose a 10 cent coin at night in the grass, how long will you look for it? Not even one minute perhaps. But if you misplaced a hundred thousand dollar bunch of currency notes somewhere as you were moving around, how long would you look for that? You take leave from your work to look for it. And many people are searching for God like a 10 cent coin. They seek for something. They want to be filled with the Holy Spirit. How are they seeking for it? Like a 10 cent coin. I prayed for it. I didn't get it. Okay, never mind. I've got other things to do. We'll pray again tomorrow if I'm passing by that way. I'll look for that 10 cent coin again. Do you think a person like that is ever going to find God? Not in a hundred years. You shall seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. When you treat God as something cheap, you won't find Him. And that's the thing that makes the difference between one believer and another, even in the same church. Why do you find someone radical, wholehearted, overcoming, and gracious, and anointed, when another person dries a bone? Yeah, they believe in Jesus Christ. They both claim to be born again. They're all baptized in water. Maybe they even speak in tongues. But there's a difference. Why? Because God sees that in their inner life, that person is seeking me with all his heart. And He rewards him accordingly. Not all are rewarded in the same way. Those who seek God with all their heart, find Him. Jesus said that also. Let me show you a couple of passages in the New Testament. In John chapter 7, in relation to being filled with the Holy Spirit. John 7 and verse 37, He's speaking about the fullness of the Spirit. And verse 38, about from His innermost being will flow rivers of living water, if He believes. But the beginning is, if He's thirsty. John 7, 37. If man is thirsty, desperately thirsty, that means he wants this more than anything else on earth. Not, I'd like a drink of water right now. Not like that. But imagine if you've been wandering in the desert for 6 or 7 days, you'd pay anything for a glass of water. You'd be willing to pay $10,000 for a glass of water. Because you're dying. That is the type of thirst spoken of here, when God means more to you than anything. There was a very godly man in India called Sadhu Sundar Singh. He died in 1929. He was born in 1888 or something. Died when he was around 43. When he was around 14 years old, you see, he was a man who hated Christians in those days. He'd tear Bibles and despise all the Christian missionaries, etc. In the north of India, in a place called Punjab, he grew up there. His father was part of the Sikh, S-I-K-H, Sikh religion. But he was desperate to find God. His mother would take him to various Hindu holy men and all that. And I think his mother died and he was seeking God on his own. He was just about 14 years old. 14 or 15. Young boy. Think of a 14, 15 year old boy. Seeking God. And one day, he was so desperate, early in the morning around 4 o'clock or something, he got up and he said, Oh God, I don't know who you are. So many religions say they are the truth and all that. I want to know you. And I've been seeking you for so many years. So many years means what? He's only about 15 years old. He's already been seeking God. And he says, If you don't reveal yourself to me by 5 o'clock or so, that train that's coming by my house, I'll go and put my head on the rails and commit suicide. Because I cannot live anymore without you. And before the train came, he saw a vision of Jesus. He expected to see some other non-Christian God. He saw Jesus. And Jesus spoke to him. You know, just like Paul and Stephen. That happens today. It happened to him. He said, why only to him? Well, I said, show me a 15-year-old who is so desperate to find God that he'd commit suicide if he doesn't find God. Hardly anybody like that. God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. He was so desperate. And God revealed himself to him. And he immediately knew the truth and surrendered his life to Christ and woke up his non-Christian father and said he'd become a Christian. His father thought he went off his head. And the parents poisoned him because they felt it was a disgrace that somebody in their family would become a Christian. And they threw him out of the house. He didn't know he was poisoned. The food he ate threw him out of the house. And he got a train or something and reached the house of some missionary who was vomiting, vomiting along the way and recovered. And he went on for the next more than 25 years to be an outstanding witness for Christ. I've met people who say they have seen him. He died long before I was born. And they say that they saw such purity in his eyes It's rare to see purity in the eyes of a man. They saw such purity. It stood out, the purity in his eyes because he had looked at the face of Jesus for so long. He was not interested in money. He'd go around preaching. He was going to the most difficult places to preach the gospel. I read that story as a young believer and I said, boy, really Lord, you're a rewarder. I mean, this guy knew nothing of the Bible when he was converted. But he wholeheartedly sought after God. And I see that God is even today the rewarder of all who diligently seek Him. Here was a non-Christian who was seeking God a million times more seriously than so-called Christians who had a Bible with them. This chap never had a Bible. He tore the Bible. He thought it was a false teaching. And he became the most outstanding preacher, the most outstanding Christian. I don't believe India has seen a finer Christian than him in all these hundred years. Those who thirst will be satisfied. So another verse is Matthew 11. If anyone thirsts, come to me, Jesus said. Not all can come to Him, only those who thirst. Another verse, Matthew 11, 28. Come to me those who are weary and heavy laden. And I paraphrase that like this. Come to me those of you who are sick and tired of your defeated life. Are you sick and tired? Not of other people. The world is full of people who are sick and tired of others. The numerous homes where wives are sick and tired of their husbands and husbands sick and tired of their wives. God, Jesus is not inviting any of them. And I want to say to any of you sitting here, if you're sick and tired of some other human being, my brother, sister, the Lord is not inviting you. No. Come to me those who are sick and tired of yourself. I remember a brother who came to me at a conference once and said to me, Brother Zach, I'm sick and tired of this church I go to. There's all this corruption and all. Can I join your church? I said, no. You can't come to our church. You come to us, you'll be sick and tired of us. Because we are not perfect. When you get sick and tired of yourself and your defeated life, then come to us. Because we are a bunch of people who are sick and tired of ourselves. We're seeking to press on to perfection, becoming more like Christ. We haven't got there yet, but we're pressing on. So I said, that's the one Jesus. Jesus did not invite everybody. He said, come to me those who, if anyone is thirsty, let him come to me. If anyone wants to seek me with all his heart, come to me. Come to me those who are sick and tired of their defeated life. I will give you rest. And rest, by the way, that phrase, that word rest in the New Testament is always a picture of a life of overcoming sin. And if you want clarification on that, read Hebrews chapter 3 and 4 sometime. Where the land of Canaan, where the giants are defeated, is called a life of rest. The Lord gave them rest. And it says there, when God has given us a promise of rest, be fearful lest you come short of it. Read Hebrews 3 and 4 sometime, you'll see that rest is a picture of that life of victory. And that's the meaning of the Sabbath. When it says six days you shall work, and the seventh day you shall rest, the meaning is that you'll come to an end of all your struggling, and you'll overcome sin. That's the life of rest that Jesus has promised. The life of overcoming. That's what the Sabbath referred to in Hebrews chapter 4 says, that there is a Sabbath rest for God's people. A life of overcoming, a life of victory. So, Jesus was saying, if you come to me, you're sick and tired, I'll give you this rest. So, this is what happened. Just to give you a little history of how it happened with us. I was sick and tired of my defeated life. 1974. I was born again, I was baptized, and I was even preaching. And I had a gift, but I was defeated. Inwardly, my life, externally, my life was okay. Nobody could point out a single thing wrong with my external life. But my inner life, my thoughts, the words I spoke at home, defeated, defeated, defeated. But, in the church, a holy man. And I remember the day in my life, January the 12th, 1975. The Lord asked me, will you stand up in that church where you've been preaching all this time and tell them openly that you're a hypocrite. I said, yes Lord, I'll do anything if you will meet with me. That is a condition the Lord asked me. He doesn't ask everyone to do that. He asked Abraham to offer up his son. For me, it was like that. He asked me to stand up in the church and say I was a hypocrite. A church where everybody respected me, where I'd been preaching for more than six months, every single Sunday. And I was preaching internationally, too. Different, different countries. And they knew that. And that day, I went to the church, ready to say that, and there was another preacher that day, and I said, as soon as he gives an invitation, I'm going to get up. Somehow, for one reason or the other, he never gave an invitation that day. I never got the opportunity. But the Lord met with me. I laid my Isaac on the altar. The reputation with men meant nothing to me. That's what the Lord was testing. Do you care for what these people think of you? I said, no Lord, I want reality. So once that was laid on the altar, the Lord met with me that day, filled me with the Holy Spirit, and changed my life completely. It was like a turnaround that happened in my life. I hit rock bottom, and then I started going up. I didn't reach where I am today overnight, but little by little, the climb started. But it started with a desperate longing for reality. And then, once I experienced the baptism and fullness of the Holy Spirit, I began to share it, and people didn't like that in that church. And so, I had to leave, and one other brother also left, and that's how we started a church in our home. The first day, we just met for prayer. We were sick and tired of ourselves. That was the only thing common between us. He was of a different culture from me, but we were sick and tired of ourselves. And we decided to pray and seek God, and that's how our church started. We were sincere because of one reason. Both he and I, at some time in our life earlier, had quit our earthly jobs to serve the Lord full-time. And that's a sacrifice. To quit your job because you want to serve the Lord. I know when I did it, my income dropped 85% when I did it. And he had quit his job. That was the only common thing about us, that there was something in our life where we really were seeking God even earlier. But we didn't know how, and here we are. We're now seeking God. We didn't know where to go, and God met with us and filled us both with the Holy Spirit, and we started meeting together. And from there, it was God who gradually drew to others, those who wanted this life. Those who wanted more than what they were getting in other churches. Those who wanted this life described in the New Testament. Not just individually, but together. As a family. As a body. And that's what God began to build. That's another thing we've hardly ever seen. Where a church is like a family. I mean, you can be like a family, even though Freemasons are very careful of one another. So I'm not just talking about caring for one another. But more than that, where we care for one another to even rebuke a person if he's sinning. That's real love. Freemasons won't have that. They care for one another, helping one another financially or medically and things like that. But to love a person enough to rebuke that person, that you find only in true Christianity. Jesus said in Revelation 3.19, Those whom I love, I rebuke. And the more we become like Christ, we will detest sin in someone. You know, just like you see a sickness in your child, and you love that child, but you hate that sickness, and you want to get rid of that sickness, and you'll take that child to this doctor, that doctor, the other, this hospital. Because you hate that sickness. If you love a person enough and you see him got a bad habit, you will tell him, even if it makes you unpopular, because you love him so much. It's rare to find that type of church. I said, Lord, that's the only type of church we want to build. Not where we just comfort one another and say, praise the Lord, we're all happy to see each other. No, but where we rebuke and correct and seek to lead people to godliness. And that's how God built us together in those days. And we've been going now 42 years, and during these 42 years, our prayer was, Lord, if there's anybody else in this area, and we were just in one corner of the city of Bangalore in India. And Lord, if there's anybody in this area, and we were just thinking of a few miles around my house. Because, you know, transport was very expensive and difficult those days. None of us had a car. Almost everybody came traveling by bus or by bicycles or walking. Everyone. And so we couldn't think of people traveling from long distances. But Lord, if there's anybody in this area who's seeking for a godly life. You know, we are a small despised church. We're not very rich. We are poor people. But if they're seeking a godly life, please bring them in touch with us somehow. Because you're sovereign. You can arrange circumstances that we meet. Or bring us in touch with them. Maybe we'll meet them in a grocery store or in a bank or somewhere. And somehow hit up a conversation and discover that they're also seeking godliness. And we can invite them. And like that, little by little, people came. Some came on their own. Some came out of curiosity. To see what is this new thing. And they're the ones who easily got offended and left. So we had a high turnover those days. People would come and go and come and go. But through this all, as God removed the chaff, a few grains of wheat came together and we were able to make a bread. And that's how we started. And then we began to pray, Lord, if there are perhaps, now that we have a little fellowship here. We were meeting together for six, seven years. And at the end of seven years, we were about 50, perhaps. We would count the children also so that we were a respectable number. Instead of, I mean, we didn't boast about that. It was for ourselves. When we said, Lord, perhaps there may be other people in India who are seeking for this life. Bring them in touch with us or bring us in touch with them. And we'd say, if you don't do that, show us what's wrong with us. Why can't you bring people in touch with us? And I would say things like this. Lord, if there's a man like Job, a God-fearing man, or like Stephen in the New Testament, wholehearted, who's living somewhere in this area. Why should he walk past my house and go to some other place to find a church? Why can't you bring him here? There must be something wrong with us. Show us. We'll set it right. We'd pay any price, but we want to be the church you want us to be. We don't want to be large in number, but we want to have quality. We don't want to be a big pile of wood, hay, and straw, because the Bible says you can have churches like that, 1 Corinthians 3. We want to be a small church of quality, gold, silver, and precious stones. And so the Lord would, over a period of time, suddenly He began to open up doors in different parts of India and planted churches. The Lord planted them. I never planted any of them. I used to go, and then there would be something, and God would bring together people, and He'd plant a church. I was there just like a midwife, that's all. The Lord would plant a church here and plant a church there. Little by little, He began to draw together. And our aim was exactly what we read in Acts 1.8. When you are filled with the Holy Spirit, and we knew we were, you will become my witnesses. Not bear witness, you will be my witnesses. That's what we emphasized. Not just with words, that's bearing witness, but be a witness by my life. In other words, we should be able to say to people, come home and see how we live. Come home and see what we teach our children. Come and see. Not just come and hear the message we preach on Sunday. The Old Testament, that's another difference we saw between Old Testament and New Testament. Come and hear. The prophet Moses has come down from the mount with a message from God. Come and hear what he has to say. This is the word of God. I mean, he fights with his wife at home. You read about that in Exodus 4, how Moses fought with his wife. Don't worry about that. That's not important. Come and hear the message. Or Samuel has come with a message from God. I mean, don't look at his children who are taking bribes and deceiving the Israelites. Don't look at Samuel's children. But Samuel. And it's right. They were only told to come and hear. Come and hear. Come and hear. Come and hear. But in the New Testament, it changes. When the disciples of John the Baptist we read in John 1 once came to Jesus and said, Master, Rabbi, John 138, where do you stay? Jesus said, come and see. That's the difference. It's not come and hear. The Old Testament prophet said, come and hear the word of the Lord. The New Testament is come and see where Jesus is living. In a home. In a church. Where Jesus is in the midst. Come and see. So that was our emphasis. If people are not able to come and see, we have nothing to offer them. If it's just another church saying, come and hear some new truth, which other churches are not preaching. And it's very easy for a church to descend to that level, even though it starts well. Brothers, here in this church, we preach certain new truths, which are not preached by others. That is, again, the old come and hear. Come and see how these new truths have changed our lives. How it changed my attitude to money. How it changed my attitude to my family life. How it changed the way I brought up my children. How it changed my attitude to anger. To lusting after women. And changed my attitude to telling lies. And changed my attitude to many, many things like that. Changed my attitude to getting honor for praying or anything like that. And little by little, as the Lord says in Acts 1-8, you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem. That's your home first. Hometown. Judea, the surrounding area. And Samaria. Maybe like a country and then a continent. And then to the uttermost parts of the earth. So that was our goal when we started. But for many years, it was just Jerusalem. In our home, in the small area. And then the Lord began to reach out. And then little by little, you know, we decided to use every possible means of spreading the gospel that we could. The full gospel. DVDs. And then the Lord opened up the internet. And at last, we were able to reach the uttermost parts of the earth. It's amazing what God has done. Not that we reach every individual, but the Lord didn't say every individual, but he said the uttermost parts of the earth. You know, when you get an email from somebody in Greenland saying they've been listening to the message and being challenged, I say, wow. And from there to the other extreme, the Fiji Islands and some places I've never even heard of. Lord, it's amazing what you can do. But we don't glory in that. We want to see them come to a godly life. We want to see them planting fellowships. And God can do that anywhere. He picked up unlearned fishermen. And the only qualification they had was they loved Jesus supremely. They made mistakes. And you read in the Acts of the Apostles also they made mistakes. But they loved Jesus fervently. He meant more to them than anything else. And one of the things the Lord spoke to us very clearly in those days was from Luke 16 and verse 13. I mentioned about how we have to pursue wholeheartedly for to find God. Here in Luke 16, 13, it says about no servant can serve two masters. And I've discovered through the years this is a message which Christendom today needs to hear. Most Christian churches today are serving two masters. The two masters are not God and Satan. No Christian believes they can serve God and Satan. But many Christians believe they can serve God and money. In other words, you can have a passion for wealth and a passion for God. It's a lie. It's one of the biggest lies that the devil has fooled Christians with in the last 50 years perhaps. You can have a passion for God and a passion for money. Jesus said no. You have to choose. So we decided to make a choice. That's one of the things we started. We lived in a country, India, where almost every single church and Christian organization that I knew, money was a major thing for them. They would urge people to give money. They would say that we want you to give, we want you to give. And we don't want any silent offerings. That means we don't want any coins. We want silent offerings. That's what it said. We don't want any noisy offerings. Meaning it must be currency notes, not coins. You see, that doesn't mean anything in a country like this. But in a poor country, in the villages in India, they are poor. They bring coins. There are so many subtle ways to urge people to give and give and give. And then, of course, there are the organizations that have to write reports about fantastic work and reports that are sent to Europe and America particularly. And money pours in from these countries. And these preachers, the directors of these organizations, they fill their pockets with that. And the Christian name of Christ is dishonored. There was a place recently in India where a number of non-Christians came and burnt up the houses of many Christians in a particular part of the eastern coast of India a couple of years ago in a village. And I was so grieved to hear it. But when I wrote to a brother of mine, a brother in the church, who was there and asked him, can you tell me what actually happened? Sometimes what you hear in the media is not really the news. It's fake news. But he was living in that area and said, tell me, why did these guys go and suddenly burn up so many houses and make so many Christians homeless? He said, I'll tell you the truth. There were so many Christian organizations here who were spreading false reports on the Internet and everywhere that thousands are being converted. They were saying that in order to get money from America and Europe. Houses are getting converted and we need to build churches, we need to do that. And then thousands of non-Christians are getting converted. And there were people who were non-Christians reading this on the Internet in different countries and saying, what's happening? A lot of our people are leaving their religion. It was not true. Hardly anybody was getting converted. It was just publicized for the sake of getting money. And so these people believed all that. And they said, well, we've got to destroy these Christians. Who's to blame for that? A lot of reports that you get, I tell you, 90 percent of it is lies. And so what happens is the average non-Christian in India says, hey, we know why you guys are Christians. You want money, right? We don't want money. So why should we have your Christianity? That's what they would say. This guy didn't get a job, so he became a pastor. That's true, believe it or not. Of 90 percent of the Christians I have met in India who are Christian workers, if they were doing a secular job, they wouldn't get earned 10 percent of what they're earning as pastors and preachers. So you see a country like that, where money is such a big thing, you do Christian work in order to make money. We decided we have to be different. How do you make sure that the light must be as different from the darkness as day is different from night? So we took some decisions. In our churches, first of all, we won't have any pastors. We'll have working people who will be elders. Every one of them will support themselves financially, one way or the other. We will not have one paid worker in any church that we plant. And secondly, we will never take an offering in any of our churches. We'll just keep a box there. Those who want to put can put. Those who don't want to put, do not put. Because Jesus said you must give secretly. You can't give secretly if somebody puts a plate in front of you. You're disobeying scripture right there. So we decided we're not going to do that. We're going to never take an offering. We'll have no paid workers. We'll never send any reports anywhere. And we haven't done it in 42 years. Nobody's ever got a report from us about what we have done. And we will be so upright financially, we'll never make a plea for money in any of our churches at any time. We will not even suggest that you must give. And, okay, we struggled. We struggled, many of us. My wife and I struggled in our home. And others struggled. Fine. There's nothing wrong in struggling. One thing, Jesus will never make any of us homeless. That's impossible. If you seek the kingdom of God first and his righteousness, you'll have enough for your needs. You may not become a millionaire, but you'll have enough for your needs. Sure. And so now we've proved that over 42 years. I don't count the number of churches, but it must be around 70, 75 or more. I don't know. But I know that I work with about 100 elders, every single one of them supporting themselves. And that's just to be a light in the midst of darkness. You cannot serve God in money. So that we can turn to the non-Christian and say, listen, we're not doing this for money. We're doing this because we love the Lord. Now, that may not be so true here. I think it is true everywhere because I find that a lot of preachers are urging people to give money here. I mean, if you turn on television, I thought of this. You know, I saw one of your American well-known tele-evangelists, their program in India. I saw it in India on a Christian TV program in India, where this man, believe it or not, showed this picture of a huge, of a jet plane that he had to buy in order to travel the world to preach the gospel. Imagine showing that in a country like India on Christian television. And he said, if you give me $1,000, in those days it was 49 rupees to a dollar. So 49,000 rupees. 49,000 rupees. Boy, people in the villages in India live a whole year with that amount of money. If you give me $1,000, I will write your name in the front of the plane in a big list. And I sat there watching this, furious. You know, Jesus was furious with the money changers. I got furious when I saw this too. I was just being a little more like Jesus there. And I thought, if some non-Christian, there are many non-Christians who respect Jesus in India. If some non-Christian sees this, he'll say, that just convinces me that Christianity is just a money-making religion. It is. If you could see what happens in the orphanages in India, where the directors pocket the money that comes there, collected in the name of orphans. And they send pictures and reports from orphans to different countries. And the people who support this one orphan don't know that 10 other people are supporting the same orphan. Everybody thinks I'm supporting this orphan. It's all a hoax. How to solve this problem? You've got to separate God and money. It's like separating oil and water. If you mix oil and water, you can't pour it in your car. It's useless. You can't drink it. Keep it separate. It's good for both purposes. It's like that. Money is okay in the business world. Jesus never went to the marketplace in Jerusalem and turned out the people from there and said, don't make money. No, you can make money. Sure. Honestly, in the business place. But don't bring it into the church. He chased them out from the temple. God has preserved us all these 42 years. We've never compromised on our standard. We don't want it to be said of us that we began to build and we didn't finish. So I want to encourage all of you. Don't give up. Be careful about... Yeah, I have to show you that verse. Jude. It says about people who creep into the church. Who don't have your values. Jude, verse 3. I was making an effort to write to you about our common salvation. I felt the necessity to write to you, appealing that you contend earnestly. Fight for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. The values in the New Testament. Because certain people have crept into our churches. Unnoticed. Ungodly persons. What have they done? They've turned the grace of God into a license to commit sin. That's the meaning. You know how you can drive when you have a driving license? So the grace of God has become a license to commit sins which you couldn't do under the law. Under the law it says you shall not commit adultery. That's a law. You can't do it. It's like you don't have a driving license. You can't drive a car. But now you've got a license. You can drive a car. Grace has become a license. Now it doesn't matter if you commit adultery. Because you'll be forgiven. Now it doesn't matter what you do. Because you'll be forgiven. But that's not what Romans 6.14 says. Romans 6.14 says when you're moved out under the law, sin does not rule over you. That's real grace. This is the false grace. And it's being preached everywhere. You accepted Christ 10 years ago? Okay. You're all right. People have crept into the church. Crept means what? It reminds me of a snake crawling under the gap at the bottom of the door. And the doorkeeper is not alert. And he comes and sits there. We have been very alert. At least whenever I was an elder, I was very alert to all this. And I said, I don't care how many people get offended. But we're going to be alert about people who come here and play the fool with sin. Or who are seeking after their own. Whose main interest in life is to make money. But they also want to be a part of a good church. They're not radical. They're not wholehearted. They don't want to deny themselves and build fellowship with others. Or they won't want to be with people of the same community. That's another thing. When my sons came here to study in the United States, I said, never, never join an Indian church. Don't even go there. Because there's no such thing as an Indian church. It's only the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is a local church. And the example I used to them was, think of a bunch of Americans came to Bangalore. And decided to build a church only for Americans. It never happened, by the way. The Americans had more sense. I've never seen or heard of a single church like that. And they wouldn't allow any Indians to come there. Indian Americans. I said, that is as ridiculous as a bunch of Indians going to America and saying, we're going to have an Indian church. We think those Americans feel they're superior to come to India and start an American church. What do the Americans think of Indians who come to America and start an Indian church? I said, don't ever join them. Thankfully, they never did. Because a church must be a local church. Where people, Jews, Gentiles, the Bible says Jews, Gentiles, barbarians, Greeks, educated, non-educated, whatever it is, must all be one in Christ. That is the only church that Jesus is the Lord of. That's the church Jesus is building. So these are things, you know, which, when we stress everything written in the Bible, you find very few people want everything. They want this, that. Yeah, this is good. This thing in this church is good. But there's another thing I don't like. It'll never go well with you. You'll discover when you stand before the Lord that you missed out so much of what God wanted you to have on the earth. Because you pursued some honor with men, some pleasure with sin, or some money somewhere. The three things that Moses rejected. So may God help us. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that in this church, everyone who comes will always be challenged to the highest. Even if many get offended and leave, that there'll be a testimony here that's bright like the light of the sun that drives the darkness away. We pray you'll raise up godly men and women in this church. There'll be a testimony here and in their homes for what the amazing grace of God can do. What the power of the Holy Spirit can do. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.