Being Ready for Christ's Return - Part 2

I'd like to turn you, first of all, to a very familiar verse, and that is in Matthew's Gospel and chapter 18. Please turn there, Matthew 18. It's a verse that you all know. Matthew 18 and verse 20, where two or three have gathered together in my name, I'm there in their midst. And I want to say to you that it doesn't matter if it's in the same room or whether we are separated by 10,000 miles or 10,000 kilometers. If we are gathered in the name of Jesus, and that means for this period of time when we have this meeting, we want to ask the Holy Spirit to make us conscious of the presence of Jesus. And that is not going to be by feelings or excitement or some electric shock down our body like some people say. It's going to be by faith. There were times when I used to say, Lord, I wish I could see your face just once, like Paul saw on the Damascus road. But the Lord gave me a verse, and that is in, I'd like to show that to you in John chapter 20, and it'll help you too. I'm sure many of you would have also desired, I wish I could see the face of Jesus just once in a vision or somewhere. All the paintings that you see, that's not Jesus. All the movies that you've seen of Jesus, they're all American faces, and Jesus did not have an American face. He did not have blue eyes. His skin was more brown, and his eyes were probably brown too, because he grew up in Israel, and his mother was Mary, who was a Jew. So, nobody has seen Jesus. A few people like Paul and Sadhu Sundar Singh have seen him. Most of the others who say they've seen him, I don't believe them. There are very, very few people who have actually seen him. For some reason, God reveals himself to them. But this verse helped me. John chapter 20, when Thomas was not there the first time Jesus appeared, the first day of the week, it says in verse 24, but Thomas, one of the 12, was not with them when Jesus came. John 20, verse 24. So, the other disciples said, we've seen the Lord, John 20, 25, but he said, no, unless I see his hands imprinted with nails and put my finger into the place of the nail and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. After eight days, all the others saw Jesus on the first day of his resurrection, but Thomas did not see him for eight days, because he said, I've got to be sure this is Jesus, not some fake person pretending to be Jesus, and I know it is him by the nail prints in his hands and by the pierce in his side. And eight days later, see how good Jesus is. Jesus didn't say, well, if you don't believe, forget it, you can go away like, no, he's so compassionate to those who are weak in faith. And that's a tremendous encouragement. Thomas, he's called Thomas the doubter. And Thomas came to India, remember? I don't know whether we've got any of that infection from him, especially, at least from Kerala, because he came to Kerala. Anyway, what I say is, Jesus appeared to him. And I praise the Lord that even if there's doubt in your mind, when you think about the Lord and about the heavenly father, he will still manifest himself to you in some way through his word, because he loves even those who are weak in faith. He's not only on the side of the strong. And he appeared and then he said to Thomas, peace be with unto you. And he said, okay, Thomas, you wanted to check my finger and my side. Okay, put your finger into my hands. That's the only indication we have in scripture, the only indication that Jesus still has the nail prints in his hands and the wound in his side. There's no other words that teaches us that. So I thank God for Thomas, for one thing, if he had not said that, we would not have known whether Jesus still has the nail prints in his hands. You know, there's a song that we sing when we go to heaven. It says, I shall know him, I shall know him by the print of the nails in his hands. When I see all the people there, even if there are many people who look like Jesus, I look for the nail prints in his hands. I say, that's the one. Nobody else has it. All the others will be healed of all their earthly wounds. But Jesus has wounds that will last for all eternity. And I praise the Lord. It says, put your finger here and put your hands into my side. Even the side is still cut open. Even today in his resurrected body, for all eternity, he'll be the only man up there with wounds in his body. All of us are, we're not going to have any wounds in our body. We're not going to have perfect and all bald people like me will have hair on our head. And we're going to look a bit different when we get up to heaven. More handsome and more good looking. But the one thing, Jesus will stand out because he's got nail prints in his hands, reminding us for all eternity of what he did for us and how we got there to heaven. And then, this is the word that has blessed me. And Thomas fell at his feet and said, my Lord and my God. And then Jesus said, this is the word that helped me to tell you. Verse 20, 29. John 20, verse 29. Because you have seen me, Thomas, and believed, you have believed. Blessed are those, you know, like this is referring to you and me. Blessed are those who did not see and yet believed. So I say, Lord, I praise the Lord. I'm more blessed than those apostles. They saw Jesus and believed. I've never seen him. I've been a Christian for 64 years. I was born again when I was 19. I've never seen Jesus Christ. I've never heard him with these ears. I've never felt him in this body. A lot of people say they've heard his voice. Okay, maybe they did. I don't know. Some people say they got electric shock on their spine when they were filled with the Holy Spirit. I tell you my testimony in 64 years as a believer, I've never seen any lights. I've never heard any voices. I've never heard any, I've never felt any shaking in my body at any time. Even when God filled me with the Holy Spirit, there was nothing in my body, no, nothing in my eyes or ears. I praise God that I'm a very, very blessed person according to John 20, verse 29. I don't envy those people who testify that they got a shaking in their body when God filled them with the Holy Spirit or they saw light or they heard a voice. I don't envy them. I say, brothers, praise God. I don't know whether it's true or whether it's imagination because the devil also comes as an angel of light. But I am thankful that I'm a blessed person because I've not seen, I've not heard, I've not felt. My trust in Jesus is not 99%, but 100% by simple faith with nothing in any of my senses. I think that's the experience of most of you. And do you know that that is a more blessed way? And I don't think I understand that. Sometimes I think that if I only see the Lord, I'll be definitely so much more challenged. No, I'm more blessed not having seen the Lord. So I don't pester God in prayer. Oh God, I'd like to see you. I have prayed like that. I'd like to see your face once, Lord Jesus. But I come back to this verse and I say, I'm so blessed. And one day, you know, when we think of the second coming of the Lord, what a wonderful thing it would be because we will see him face to face. And we must always live with that expectation that I'm going to see my Savior face to face. I'm going to see the one who came all the way down to this earth to save not sinners, but to save a sinner like me, to save a wretched sinner like me. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I want to ask you, my brothers and sisters, do you feel like that about yourself? Do you feel that you're a wretched sinner who was saved by the grace of God and that God didn't save you because you did any good works or lived a very decent life? Many times I have said to the Lord, Lord, I descended from the same flesh of Adam and Eve, that the worst terrorists in the world, you know, the names of some famous terrorists from our Middle East countries who have blown up buildings and blown up airplanes and all through the years. Yeah, we think of them as evil, but Lord, I am no better than them. I've said that to the Lord. I don't know whether you've said it. When you come into the presence of the Lord, the more you come into the presence of the Lord, the more you become aware of small, small sins. God is a bright, to use an illustration, God is a very bright light. And when you're far away from the light as we are when we are first converted, we see a few specks in our body and we, yes, we confess certain sins like we told lies or we cheated somebody or we hated someone and we confess those things. But if you are walking with the Lord, and that's an important condition, if you are walking with the Lord consistently, year by year, your awareness of sin will be more. You'll become more and more sensitive and small little things will come up to you as sin. And that's how we must live. Paul was like that. He knew he was a sinner. But let me show you how Paul progressed in his Christian life as he approached the coming of the Lord. You know, we are thinking of the coming of the Lord. And as we approach the coming of the Lord, here's something that should take place in our life, that we become more and more aware of sin in our life. Is that happening? Then you are cleansing yourself in preparation for the coming of the Lord. But if you have no more awareness of sin in your life than you have, say, five years ago, I would request you, my brother and sister, please judge yourself. Ask yourself, what have you been doing in CFC all these years? All the messages you're hearing, and you're not becoming aware of some new areas of sin in your life in the last five years? Let me show you the progress in the Apostle Paul's life. When Paul was, soon after his coming, around 55 AD or so, he wrote a letter to the Corinthians. And he wrote like this in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 and verse 9. In 1 Corinthians 15 verse 9, you see Paul's opinion about himself about maybe 17, 18 years or 20 years after he was converted. He says, I am the least of the apostles. No apostle did more for the Lord as far as I can see than Paul. Nobody wrote more scriptures than him. But what does he think of himself after having walked with the Lord for 20 years? I am the least of the apostles. Okay, go forward another five years. After 25 years of walking with the Lord, look, now he's progressed. Now he's come closer to the Lord. At that time, he was the least of the apostles. In Ephesians chapter 3, which is written around 60 AD, by the time Paul had been converted for 25 years, he says in verse 8, I think I am the last of all the saints in the world. I am absolutely the last one of all the believers in the world. That's what I think. You know, everybody is better than me and everybody is ahead of me spiritually. I am the worst of all the believers. So he's going backwards as it were in the eyes of men. Worst of the apostles or least of the apostles. Now it goes down a little further, least of all the believers. You go forward another five years, 65 AD. That's about 30 years after Paul was converted. You read in 1 Timothy and chapter 1, 1 Timothy 1 and verse 15. In the last part, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I'm number one. I'm the greatest sinner that lived. Do you see progress in holiness? Progress in holiness is in Paul's case, discovering more and more how small he was and what a great sinner he was. That when he compares himself with others, he feels smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. And he says, boy, I think I'm nobody. My dear brothers and sisters, we can hear these messages on the coming of the Lord and we are waiting for the coming of the Lord. Are you cleansing yourself? Are you becoming smaller in your own eyes? Then you are growing spiritually. If you are not, I can say that with absolute certainty. If you are not becoming smaller and smaller in your own eyes, you are not growing spiritually. If as you compare yourself with other believers, more and more you think you're better than them because you know more of the Bible or you're more used than them, these mean nothing. That's because God gives somebody more gifts. That doesn't mean they're more spiritual. Let me tell you someone who's got a maximum number of gifts, even more than the Apostle Paul. Who had more gifts, supernatural gifts than the Apostle Paul? Satan. You know the number of gifts he has? You read in the book of Job that he could bring fire down from heaven. The first person who brought fire down from heaven in the Bible is not Elijah. It was Satan in the book of Job. You read that in Job chapter one. And what all he could do, he could stir up a whole group, armies of soldiers to come and fight against Job's servants and kill them. And he can send all kinds of calamities. And there's a passage in one, I want you to see in one Thessalonians, one Thessalonians and chapter two. It's an amazing verse. It surprises me sometimes. One Thessalonians chapter two and verse 17. We brothers, having been taken away from you Thessalonian Christians for a short while, only in person, not in spirit, we were very eager with great desire to come and see your face. And I, Paul, more than once, verse 18, wanted to come to you, but I could not come. What? The apostle Paul could not come? What happened? Satan hindered us. Satan hindered the apostle Paul from going to Thessalonica? You think Satan can't hinder you? God has allowed him to have power. And Satan thinks he won a victory when he prevented Paul from going to Thessalonica. But we read verse chapter three, same one Thessalonians three, verse one and two, when we could not endure any longer. Okay. We thought we'd stay in Athens alone. We sent Timothy, our brother and God's fellow worker to strengthen and encourage you as to your faith so that no one would be disturbed. And what happened as a result? You know what happened? Paul could not go. Satan hindered him for some reason. I don't know what it was. Sometimes it could be a sickness. Maybe Paul got suddenly sick and he couldn't travel, but Timothy went. And the result was Timothy developed spiritually. And that was God's purpose. God's purpose was, Paul is already a great mighty servant of God. He had a young assistant called Timothy and God wanted Timothy to develop spiritually, to become a mighty man of God. So when Paul was planning to go somewhere, God permitted Satan to stop him. Maybe with a sickness or some calamity there or something. I don't know what, but because God wanted Timothy to go. And Timothy went and Timothy developed spiritually as a result of that. Did Satan succeed? No, Satan can never succeed. Satan can never outwit God. God uses Satan. I remember once when one of my grandsons, he was only six or seven years old then, he was sitting next to me and he said, grandpa, why does God allow Satan to exist? He's causing so much problems. Why doesn't God destroy him? So I gave him an illustration. I said, have you heard of people who go to the gym to do exercise? And when they want to strengthen their hand muscles, they take a spring and pull the spring. What is that doing? It's putting tension on the hand muscles and the muscles become strong. Or when they want to strengthen their leg muscles, they go to a gym and they have an instrument like a bicycle and they keep on cycling there and the leg muscles become strong. And there are different equipments in the gym to build different parts of our muscles and different parts of our body. But the principle everywhere is that muscle must be subjected to resistance. And people who do not allow, even walking is subjecting some muscles in our body to resistance. That's how those muscles become strong, leg muscles, et cetera. So if a leg muscle is not, if any muscle in the body is not subjected to resistance, you just lie down in bed the whole day, you become fat. Or that's a bad word in many cases, obese. It means the same thing. And you're not healthy then. God wants our muscles to be strong. So I told him, now who's going to resist you? Who's going to fight against you? God won't fight against you. God is here to support you. Your fellow believers may not, will not fight against you. So God allows Satan to exist to trouble you, to resist you, maybe to resist you through your enemies or through somebody in school who comes in, troubles you in some way. Satan troubles you. And what's the, what is the result? Don't give up. When you love the person who hates you, listen to this, when you love the person who hates you, you're resisting and you become strong. Or some calamity comes, some problem arises and you resisted by saying, I trust my heavenly father to take care of me in this. You're resisting it, you overcome. Who brought that calamity? Satan, as you read in the book of Job chapter one. So I said, that's why you need to resist Satan. And he told me that he said, grandpa, I'm going to resist Satan. Thank you for teaching me that. I see him today, 10 years later, 17 years old, really following the Lord. So I pray he'll remember that all his life when I told him 10 years ago. And I want to say that to all of you, my brothers and sisters, when you face trials, when it says, when you have to say about some situation in your life, Satan hindered me. Remember 1 Thessalonians 2:18, Satan hindered Paul, but it only fulfills God's purpose. Everything fulfills God's purpose. And what is that purpose? It says here in the next turn over the page, 1 Thessalonians 4, it says here that when Christ comes, the shout of an archangel will be caught up to be with him, together with him in the Lord. And what will happen then? What will happen when Christ comes again? And here it only tells us the physical part that we'll be, 1 Thessalonians 4:17, we'll be caught up and we are excited about that. But much more important than the physical part of Christ coming is, first of all, what will happen to our body? Many of us have got aches and sicknesses and we have to wear glasses because we can't see properly. All that is going to change. Nobody's going to wear glasses in heaven. I hope you know that. Philippians, see what Philippians chapter 3 says, that when we're, Philippians 3:20 and 21, remember this, Philippians chapter 3, verse 20 and 21, what is going to happen when Christ comes again? It says here, for our citizenship is in heaven, Philippians 3:20, from which we eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. What will you do? He will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of his glory by the exercise of the power he has to subject everything to himself. Nobody will have diabetes or blood pressure or cholesterol problems when we get up there. Nobody will wear glasses. Nobody will be bald and nobody will be sick. Nobody will have any aches or pains or anything. All wounds and injuries in your body will all be fixed. And our body is going to be perfectly healthy when we get up there. But that's not all. I want you to see another verse in 1 John, which is even better. You say, what is better than my body becoming perfectly healthy? I'll tell you, something far better, something a million times better than getting a healthy body. Today on earth, we think, boy, if I could have a healthy body all my life without any sickness, that would be the greatest thing I ask for. Then you're not a Christian. If the main thing in your life you're expecting is a health, you're not a Christian. I'll say that straight. God's going to give us a perfectly healthy body, but something even better than 1 John 3. Turn with me to 1 John 3. Here we read in verse 2, the last part, 1 John 3, verse 2. We know that when Christ appears, we will be like him. Not in physical appearance. No, we will all have different appearances in our faces, but we will see him just as he is, and our character, our character will become like his. Are you excited about that? That I will be perfected in love, that when I get to heaven, the greatest longing of my life, you know what it is? To love God with all my heart. I tell you before the Lord, that is the greatest longing in my heart. To love God with all my heart and to love every human being just like I love myself or like Christ loved me. To love God with all my heart and to love everyone like Christ loved me. Lord, make me like that. I'm pressing on to that goal, but I see I've got a long way to go, but I'm excited that one day it'll be fulfilled. And I don't care if I have a paralyzed body for all eternity, if I can love God with all my heart and love everybody like Jesus loved me, then I will not be interested in my body at all. But my body will be perfectly healthy because when love fills my heart, health comes automatically. Because the first law is love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. And the second in the old covenant, it was love your neighbor as yourself. But in the new covenant, it is love others as Christ loved you. It's a much higher standard. The new commandment I give unto you, Jesus said, love one another as I have loved you. And where none of us can say we've reached that. But my point is, my dear brothers, are you cleansing yourself, purifying yourself as he is pure? It says here in 1 John 2 and verse 28, little children, 1 John 2, 28, abide in him so that when he appears, see, you know what's gonna happen when Christ appears, there's gonna be two groups of believers. This is not talking to unbelievers. Many times in this, let's see, who is he speaking to? 1 John 2 verse 28. Is he speaking to unbelievers? Read carefully. Little children. Is that, is any unbeliever included in that? No, he's not talking to the world. He's talking to the children of God whom he's writing to. Children, let me tell you, abide in him. This is how we get ready for his coming, that when he appears, there are going to be two groups of people. Among whom? Among these little children. Among believers, there'll be two groups of people. Among all of you and me, there'll be two groups of people. CFC Charter will have two groups of people when Christ comes again. Which group are you gonna be? One, those who have confidence. Praise God. Thank you, Lord. I'm waiting for this day. And another group who will shrink away when he comes in shame. Oh, the Lord has come. I'm not ready. Why you're not ready? You yelled at your wife in the morning and you never apologized. And before you had a chance to apologize, Christ came. Or you yelled at your husband, got upset with him and said some strong words and you didn't apologize. And before you could apologize, Christ came. You're going to be in that category, shrinking from him in shame. Or you cheated somewhere in the office or signed a false statement to make some money and you didn't return it. Or you borrowed some money and you made no effort to return it. And Christ has come. How are you going to return that money now? And you're shrinking from shame. I'm not saying you have to pay all your debts. But if you're not even making an effort to pay your debts, something is seriously wrong. Some people may have house mortgages, taken a loan from banks for their houses, which are not cleared before Christ comes. But if you're not even making an effort, God doesn't see the balance sheet. He sees, are you making an effort to clear your debts? And then he comes, he does clear. I remember a poor, poor farm worker in Kerala once wrote to me many years ago. He said, Brother Zach, I'm a very, very poor man. I earn very little. But sometime in the past, in my unconverted days, I got into a huge amount of debt. I don't remember the figure now. It was such a huge amount of debt. That he said, I don't think I'll ever be able to clear it in my life, some lakhs of rupees. I said, okay, can you pay back 10 rupees a month? Oh, yeah, sure, I can pay back 10 rupees a month. Okay, I said, do that. In one year, you would have cleared 120 rupees of your debt. In 10 years, you'd have cleared 1200. In 20 years, if you live that long, you'd have cleared 2400. That's nowhere near your two lakhs debt. You cleared only 2000 and you died. Let me tell you the good news. God will reckon it as if you cleared your whole debt. I'm saying that to you as a servant of the Lord. You know why? Because God doesn't see the action. He sees the intention of the heart behind the action. Just like even when you do a good thing, God doesn't look at that good thing. He sees the intention of the heart. If the intention is bad, that's a bad action. For example, people can preach. Preaching is a very good thing, wonderful sermon. But if the intention behind that action, that man is preaching to make money from people, or that man is preaching to get some honor from people as a great preacher, or he's trying to show that he's a better preacher than the other person, that can happen even in the church. We have different brothers share the word. And one brother is trying to show I'm better than that elder. Listen to me. That can happen among some of you elders. When you say something clever to show that, ah, you hear what I said? That's cleverer than what that guy preached last week. You're an evil person. I'll say to you in Jesus' name, repent. We need to get light on ourselves. That is how we progress constantly. The only way you can be ready for Christ's coming is like I said yesterday, keep on judging yourself. If we judge ourselves, we will not be judged. And I've discovered, for example, in my life today, I've been born again 64 years ago. And I can't say that from day one, I started judging myself. It was quite some time after that, that I realized I have to judge myself every day. So really, only after I was filled with the Holy Spirit in about 48 years ago, that I began to seriously take judging myself, judging myself, judging myself. And you say, well, keep on judging yourself. Don't you get depressed and discouraged? Exactly the opposite. The first 16 years of my born-again life, I was frequently discouraged and condemning myself. I'll tell you honestly before God, the last 48 years, it's gone. Discouragement, self-condemnation has gone from my life. Why? Because I judge myself. The devil fools you if you keep judging yourself. I don't look inside to judge myself. No, I feel depressed. You know how I judge myself? How did Isaiah in chapter 6 of his chapter get light on himself? Oh, I'm a sinful man. Let me show you that passage. It's a very good example. Turn to Isaiah chapter 5. Isaiah was a great prophet. Isaiah chapter 5, as a true prophet, he was preaching to all the people who were committing various sins. Isaiah chapter 5 and verse 8, woe unto those who keep on adding, buying property, property, property, property, so that nobody else can buy property. Woe unto those, verse 11, Isaiah 5 11, who keep on drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking, and are inflamed with wine. Woe, woe, woe. And then he said in verse 18, woe unto those who drag iniquity with car, who tell lies and keep on sinning and pull sin with cart roads. And verse 20, woe unto those who call evil good and good evil, who turn the real sense of values. Verse 21, woe unto those who are wise and clever in their own eyes. Woe, verse 22, woe unto those who not only drink, but make strong drink for others. What is he preaching as a true prophet? Woe to this group, woe to that group. He's condemning every single group of various types of sins. And there may have been many more. Woe, woe, woe unto this group, woe unto that group. That means, let there be a punishment upon you. Let there be a punishment upon you. Let God judge you. That's the meaning of woe unto you. And then what happened? Chapter six. In the year that Qutb Nazar died, I saw the Lord. Till now he was looking at people. Now he saw the Lord sitting on the throne and the angels going around him. And the angels were covering their faces and they're covering their feet and flying. And they were saying, holy, holy. They cannot even look at the face of God, covering themselves completely. Angels covering them who have never sinned, covering themselves when they see God. And he realized how holy he is. Now what does he say? Woe unto whom? Verse five, woe unto me. You see the change from chapter five to chapter six? That is what happens when a man sees God. When a man comes face to face with the Lord, he begins to think, wow, oh Lord, like Paul said, I'm the greatest sinner in the world. Nobody's as bad as me. Are you getting there? Are you getting light on yourself? That is the proof that you're judging yourself. I'll give you one example of how sometimes something that looks so innocent can be sinful. I've used this example many times and many of you may have heard me saying it before. There was a young brother in the early days of CFC Bangalore. He used to meet in our house and he used to come. He was the only one converted in his family. I think his family was Roman Catholic. And he was a student. He would come to the evening meetings and he would stay in our house because he had to go to college next morning. So he would sleep there and he was so free in our house. He himself would go to the kitchen and make a cup of coffee for himself and bang the door and go away early morning to college. We were very close and he grew a lot in faith. And he was with us for quite some time and he grew and was a wonderful young brother in our midst. And then he got a very good job and we moved up to some northern part of India. And then we never heard from him. I mean I would hear from others how he's getting on and I was happy. He had a good job. But he never wrote one letter to us thanking us for all that he did for him for so many years. And I began to think what an ungrateful young man this is. He doesn't even drop a note to thank us. That's the time the Lord spoke to me. He said, he told me I was sinning. I said, Lord, I'm sinning. What did I do? We just helped this young chap so much. And the Lord said, you're sinning because you're expecting him to thank you. I never knew till that day that expecting somebody to thank me for what I did was a sin. And this is how the Lord explained it. You know what it says in Matthew 25 when the Lord says, yeah, you have done this and that for me. When I was a prisoner, you visited me. When I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink. Matthew 25, 35. And the righteous will say, oh, when did we see you sick? Or when did we see you naked? And the king will answer Matthew 25, verse 40. This is what the Lord reminded me of. Matthew 25, 40. If you have done it to the least of these my brothers, you've done it unto me. If you have helped the least and the youngest and the weakest of my children, the Lord says you've helped me. And so the Lord said, this young man whom you helped, you were helping me. And the Lord said, if you're helping me, who should we expect thanks from? From that person or from me? I said, I'm sorry, Lord. I don't want to expect thanks from him at all because I did it unto you. I realized at that moment that I was doing it unto that brother and not doing it as unto the Lord. And I discovered something that day that everything I do for another person, I must do unto the Lord. If I'm serving people, preaching or helping somebody financially or any other way, it's not that person. If you have done it to the least of these my brothers, this word says you've done it unto me. I want to ask you brothers and sisters, have you done some service for some brother or sister? You help them. You took some food for them when they were sick or you visited them, encouraged them or preach the word that really blessed them or serve them for many years as an elder or did something for the church. Listen to the word of the Lord. In as much as you did it to the least of these my children, you have done it unto me, the Lord says. Expect your thank you note from the Lord, not from that person. From that day, I stopped expecting people to thank me. People do thank me and I say that's fine, but I don't expect it because I have not done it as unto them. I've done it as unto the Lord. It's not that I don't love them. I do love them and I want to serve and help. I mean, anybody who's needy, that's been our passion all our life. In fact, one reason why I married Annie, why I decided to marry way back in 1967 was because I heard that as soon as she finished her medical degree in CMC Willard, top college in India, she decided, most of the others went to America, she went to serve lepers in Maharashtra in some remote village where there was no lady doctor to care for the women lepers and the women lepers would not go to a male doctor. So she decided to go there when she was 24 years old and she decided that when she was 16 and would visit every year and I said, Lord, that's the type of person I want to marry who's not interested in making money as an option, but who's interested in serving the poor. And I saw that in the last 25, 30 years, how we've done that for all of giving free treatment to so many poor villagers in Tamil Nadu. Every year we go there and she conducts medical clinics. So, but we didn't do it for them. We did not do help the poor. We did it as unto the Lord. We don't expect any gratitude or thanks and certainly not money. It was all done unto the Lord. And I want to say to all of you, my dear brothers and sisters, serve one another, love one another. And when you're doing that, don't expect them to return the favor or do something for you in return. I don't expect anybody to do anything for me in return because I did it all as unto the Lord. And when I look at my life, particularly, you know, I left my naval job in 1966 and it's 57 years now that I trusted the Lord, never asking anybody for money, never sending any reports. And it's amazing how the Lord has taken care of me. We did not live in grand style. I had to ride a scooter and not a car for 42 years in Bangalore, but that was okay. It took us from one place to another. I could take my wife and my children on a scooter, but the Lord provided for us. We never starved one single day. God took care of us. It's amazing. I tell you this, I can say from my life, you seek the kingdom of God first and his righteousness in your life. All that you need will be added to you. You may not live the most luxurious life on earth. Your life may be a bit of a struggle. It's okay. And those struggles made me stronger spiritually. And I'll tell you, it made me healthier. All these people who are always eating rich food because we are so wealthy, they are unhealthy very often. We could not afford all that rich food when we lived in Bangalore for so many years, but the result is we were healthy. We never starved, not one meal, but God provided us enough and our children were healthy. And I'm so thankful that Annie and I, in our eighties, we were so healthy that we can travel around and preach so many times a day. And in fact, today I have to speak seven times, by the way, but I believe God will give me grace. This is the first one. And I'm extremely thankful for the grace God has given me. And I say this for your encouragement, never, never, never seek for thanks from human beings. Never, never, never serve a brother. Serve him as unto the Lord. Serve him with all your heart, but do as unto the Lord and don't expect him to be considerate towards you and all that type of stuff. And every day of your life, judge yourself. Say, Lord, I have not yet become like Jesus. There's some area I've not yet seen in my life. One of those areas I was expecting thanks, but Jesus never expected thanks from anybody. He just served and moved on. And so like that, little by little, I find God's given me life in different areas. How shall we be ready for the coming of the Lord? Judge yourself every day and don't judge other people. Get rid of that bad habit. It's as bad as pornography, judging other people. Judge yourself and get light on yourself so that you progress as you come closer and closer to God and you discover sins in your life that you never even knew were there. Not sins of action, but sins of attitude, which are more subtle and certain old things that long ago somebody cheated you or hurt you and you still got that little bitterness and memory of some unforgiveness. I want to always to be able to say, as I can say right now, there is not a single human being on earth that I'm not forgiven completely. And not only forgiven, let me close with this one example. It's called future forgiveness. Have you heard of future forgiveness? I mentioned it the other day, but I want to repeat it for those who haven't heard me. Matthew chapter 12, we read of a time when they brought a demon-possessed man to Jesus. Matthew 12 verse 22, a blind and deaf and dumb, as a rare case, blind, deaf, dumb and demon-possessed boy brought to Jesus and Jesus needed to heal them. And he could see, he could speak, he could hear everything. And the crowds were amazed, Matthew 12, 23. And they said, wow, this must be the son of David, right? The promised Messiah. And the Pharisees heard it and they were so jealous because they couldn't do that. And they were jealous of Jesus. And they said, no, no, no, no, this is, this is the devil. Beelzebul is another name for Satan, the ruler of demons. Satan, this man is possessed with Satan and is not possessed with the demon. He's possessed with Satan, the ruler of demons. So he tells other demons to go. What a way to explain the casting out of demons. And what did Jesus do? You know, when Miriam spoke against Moses in the book of Numbers, you know what she got? Leprosy. When some young men, second kings, spoke against Elisha, after he had come back from Elijah being raptured, some bears came and they made fun of him saying, you bald man, go up. You also go up. And they made fun of him. And some bears came in the wilderness and ate him, ate them up. That's what the punishment was speaking against the servant of God in the Old Testament. And here they were speaking against the son of God. You know what they got? Not leprosy, no bears eating them up. They got forgiveness. See Matthew 12, verse 31, 32. Matthew 12, 32. Whoever speaks a word against the son of man is to be forgiven. Have you called me Satan? Have you called me Beelzebul? Worse than what Miriam called Moses? Worse than what those young men called Elisha? I have come not to punish you, to forgive. You are forgiven. And not only that, read that verse carefully. You must read the Bible carefully, slowly. Whoever speaks, that's speaking to the future. Read carefully. What is, you understand English? Whoever speaks a word against the son of man, that means in the next 2000 years, it'll be forgiven. And right now, that's called future forgiveness. All the people who spoke against Jesus in 2000 years were forgiven when? 2000 years ago. And I said, Lord, I want to follow you. I, today I forgive. Long ago I did that. I forgive everybody who's ever going to speak against me or do something against me or my family for the rest of my life, already forgiven. So when somebody comes to me and says, Brother Zach, you know, this chap is saying something against you. I said, I forgave him five years ago. You say you forgave him five years ago? How is that? He only did it yesterday. No, no, no. According to Matthew 12, 32, I believe in future forgiveness. So I have already forgiven everybody for the rest of my life who's ever going to do anything against me. Have you done that? This is one example of how God gives us light as we come closer to the Lord from scripture, not from somewhere else, not from some supernatural revelation from it, just some scripture, reading scripture slowly, carefully. That's how you get ready for the coming of the Lord. I hope it'll be true in all of your lives. God bless you. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, please help us, every one of us, to live in a constant self-judgment every day, to be aware of your presence. Even today, you've been with us and spoken to us. Help us to serve you and to our children, Lord, and our families. Oh, we long for them, that they'll grow up to love you, resist the devil, and be overcomers. We want to pray for them. Please bless all the children and all the families here, that they'll grow up to love you. And help us, Lord, to forgive everyone who's hurt us or going to hurt us, everyone who's cheated us, cheated us of family property or any XYZ, whatever people have cheated or going to cheat us, we have forgiven them already. We want to do everything as unto you. We don't want thanks or gratitude from anyone. They may do it, but we don't expect it. We commit ourselves to you. And every brother, sister here, thank you for these wonderful brothers and sisters whom I've grown to love in all these Gulf churches. I thank you for every one of them. Thank you for all the way they serve and how sacrificially they give for the work in India. Bless them all. We commit them to you. In Jesus name.