Jesus Overcame In Weakness

The Bible says that the things written in the Old Testament are written for our instruction, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. And if you read the Old Testament, why is three quarters of our Bible the Old Testament? We speak about the new covenant which we are in, the old covenant is abolished. But even though the old covenant is abolished, God has given us three quarters of the Bible of the Old Testament.

And the Old Testament has not been abolished. We read it to understand things which are fulfilled in the New Testament. The Bible says the Old Testament was a shadow.

For example, you can study about the Sabbath in the Old Testament and see the tremendous importance God gave to the Sabbath in the Old Testament. If a man went to pick up sticks on the Sabbath day, he was killed. And tremendous blessings promised to those who keep the Sabbath.

That must have a meaning in the New Testament. And you find that in Hebrews chapter 4 where it says, we must enter into God's rest. We must come into a life that is free from restlessness and tension and depression and discouragement and self-condemnation.

Those are all no entry roads. There's a no entry sign on those things. Self-condemnation, discouragement, depression, gloom, restlessness, it's all no entry.

We're not supposed to go into those roads. And that's what the Lord was trying to say through the Sabbath and when the Lord emphasized so much paying the tithe. The tithe was, we read in Deuteronomy 14 to teach us to put God first, not money.

That was the whole purpose. In the same way, many other things we could go through the Old Testament. It's very interesting to see the things that God emphasized so much in the Old Testament.

And then another great thing we see in the Old Testament is there were two movements of God's people Israel. Two great movements of God's people that are described in detail. A lot of Christians know only about one of them.

And that is the movement of God's people out of Egypt into Canaan. But there's another movement of God's people from Babylon to Jerusalem. In the latter part of Israel's history, in the beginning of Israel's history through Moses, there was this great movement from Egypt where they slew the Passover lamb and went through the Red Sea and came out.

And the cloud came upon them symbolizing the Passover lamb. We know symbolized Jesus Christ dying for our sins is the Lamb of God. Going into the Red Sea and out symbolized water baptism, not by sprinkling, but going right in and coming out of the water.

And the baptism of the cloud coming down from heaven symbolizing the baptism in the Holy Spirit where the cloud encompassed them. They had two baptisms. Baptism in water, baptism in the Holy Spirit.

A lot of Christians have only one. We need two. Baptism in water, baptism in the Holy Spirit.

But that's not the end of the Christian life. That was only the beginning of their journey. So the baptism in the Holy Spirit is not some type of postgraduate degree.

It's a kindergarten class. And you get in. And that's the way you get your education.

But there's this other movement from Babylon to Jerusalem. What does that symbolize? Deliverance from Pharaoh and Egypt. Pharaoh symbolizes the devil.

Egypt symbolizes the world. And living there as a slave symbolizes being a slave of sin. So the Lord delivers us from sin, from the world, and from the devil.

But there's another thing the Lord has to deliver us from. And that is what is symbolized in the Old Testament is the movement from Babylon to Jerusalem. And that is deliverance from a legalistic lifestyle.

From Phariseeism. From the life of rules and regulations. And a lot of Christians know very little about that.

And we're to come out of this Babylon, which is a whole system, as I said the first day, that seeks your own. And that's built on money. You read Revelation chapter 17, it refers to how Babylon ends up.

And that's linked up with chapter 18. And chapter 18 is all about money. God and money mixed up together.

And Jesus came to separate them. That's why he drove the money changers out of the temple. And you find the money changers are back in the temple today.

They're still mixing up God and money today. Everywhere, in every group. And you know the love of money is in our flesh.

It's not something outside. And if I'm not freed from it, I can't really build Jerusalem. Because then I'm still part of that old Babylonian system, even though I've come out of a denomination.

If I don't seek to be free, I remember once the Lord said to me that The battle in the last days is going to be in the heavenlies. It's in the heavenlies that the battle takes place. And if you don't win the battle there, nothing is going to be won on earth.

And to win the battle in the heavenlies, you must be a heavenly person, detached from everything of earth. That means money has no hold on you, the honor of men has no hold on you, the fear of man has no hold on you, nothing on earth has any hold on you. You live on the earth, but you don't belong to the earth.

Just like a ship which is in the sea, surrounded by water all around and yet not one drop inside. That's how the church is supposed to be. That's how every Christian is supposed to be.

And if you're like that, a heavenly person, we can fight the battle against Satan and overcome. And that's how Jesus overcame. The real Jesus was like a ship in the sea, there was not a drop of the world in him.

And just like the Israelites came out of Egypt, but Egypt had not come out of them, in the same way we find that when the Israelites came out of Babylon, Babylon had not come out of them. They physically came out of Babylon, but that spirit was still in them, even when they were in Jerusalem. They were not interested in building the church.

In fact, God had to send a prophet called Haggai and said, you fellas have come out of Babylon physically, but what are you doing in Jerusalem? You're just building your own houses. And the house of the Lord is lying waste. You're building your own houses, enjoying yourself.

And he stirred them up. And he and Zechariah, the two prophets, began to stir them up to build the temple. That took a long time.

And then Nehemiah came along and he said, this is not enough. We've got to have a wall of separation. We're not just to be just like the rest of the world, there must be a wall of separation.

And then he came and he built the wall. The coming out of Egypt was in a moment. In a moment, the Egyptians were buried and they were out and being born again is like that.

It's not a moment. Born again is not a gradual process. They came out of Egypt in a moment, were born again in a moment.

But the coming out of Babylon we found was a gradual process. They came out in batches and little by little by little. And that's what I've discovered.

Coming out of legalism doesn't happen in a moment. It's a process, but we've got to come out completely. Just like we come out completely from Egypt, we've got to come out completely from Babylon.

And see that there's no Babylon left in our spirit. And that's more difficult. To physically come out of a denomination, that's easy.

Now, when Jesus spoke, he also spoke about these two deliverances. Jesus didn't come to only deliver us from sin. He came to deliver us from this legalism.

And Jesus not only preached against sin, he preached against people who are following empty traditions, which are hindering them from obeying God's word. And do you know that the Pharisees would never have killed him, if he had only preached against sin? It's because he preached against the traditions that they killed him. And you preach only against sin, I tell you, a lot of people will accept you.

Just keep quiet on the traditions. But then you begin to speak about traditions which are not in God's word. They'll crucify you in one way or the other.

It's the same thing today. I mean, it's the same thing that you read happened in Jesus' time. It's happening today.

Because the spirit of Christ is completely opposed to the spirit of the world. And especially to the religious world. It was then, and Jesus' greatest conflict was with the Pharisees, not with the Romans, not with the Greeks.

And it was the Pharisees who were determined to kill him. The leaders, not the common people. The common people heard him gladly, the Bible says.

But the leaders were out to kill him. And it's exactly the same today. The common people, there are so many simple people in all denominations from one extreme of Christendom to the other.

And they are longing for deliverance. It's the leaders who sit and hold them. I have found in the last 30 years, all over India and every places, it's the leaders who hate me, not the people.

The people are longing for deliverance. But the leaders, they won't be delivered themselves and they won't let other people be delivered. And Jesus' conflict was the same.

And Jesus spoke about new wine and new wineskins. What's that? What's the old wine? The old wine is the life of sin, the life of Adam. Jesus wanted to replace it with the new wine.

What's that? The life of Jesus. So, that's the meaning of old wine and old wineskins and new wine and new wineskins. It's very simple.

The old wine is the life of Adam and the new wine is the life of Jesus. And Jesus said, a lot of people drink the old wine and they say, we don't want any of the new, the old is good enough. And that's how the whole world is saying.

Lots of people sitting in Christian churches. They say, we don't want the life of Jesus, the old is good enough. Just a little patch of religion.

And then the new wineskin has got to replace the old wineskin. The old wineskin is this life of traditions and rituals. And I tell you, it doesn't go out from us easily.

And a lot of people have come out of Babylonian systems. But all those characteristics of that Babylonian system are still there. And they judge other people on the basis of that.

And that's what hinders their spiritual growth. We've got to break not only from sin, but we've got to finish with all those traditions that we've got, which are not found in God's word. Jesus said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

And not by any tradition. I decided when I, I came out of a so-called Christian church, which is traditional, which prayed to Mary, prayed for the dead, and all that type of stuff, very similar to the Roman Catholic, but not Roman Catholic. And I decided when I began to read God's word, more than 45 years ago when I was converted, that if ever I found a tradition, which is not in the scripture, I'd throw it away, I don't care who believed it, I don't care how many thousands of people believed it, I would only follow the word of God.

And I want to encourage you to see whether all those things that you value so much can be found in scripture. If it can't be found in scripture, give other people the freedom to be different from you. Otherwise, I tell you, we'll build a cult.

The way to build a cult is to follow traditions, or favorite verses, not balanced with other verses. You know, this is how a lot of Christian leaders are deceiving people today. They study the scriptures and they study their favorite verses, and they know that this is true in every church, that 90-95% of people sitting in every denomination, including ours, do not study the Bible carefully.

And therefore, it's very easy to fool them, when you quote verses to them. For example, do you know that Jesus believed in eternal security? And I do too. Let me read it to you.

John's Gospel, Chapter 10. These are the words of Jesus. Verse 28.

And I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish. No one shall snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given these people to Me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.

And I say, what does that say? Listen to me preach now, what does that say? What has God, Jesus given you? Eternal life, verse 28. What does He say will never happen to you? You will never perish. What does He say? No one will snatch you out of His hand.

What does He say more? My Father is greater than me, no one can snatch you out of the hand. I mean, if that isn't eternal security, what is? The only problem is, it begins with the word, and. And means, there must have been something said before that.

And I want to read the first part of it, and that's what a lot of preachers won't tell you. That's how they fool you. The first part is, My sheep hear My voice.

Okay, are you listening to His voice? And, I know them, and they follow Me, and I give them eternal life. So who gets this eternal security? The ones who are following Jesus. Are you following Jesus? Brother, you are eternally secure.

If you stop following Him tomorrow, verse 28 doesn't apply to you anymore. I can't understand it any other way. I believe in eternal security.

With all my heart, I believe in eternal security. That all those who follow Jesus are eternally secure. Anything other than that is heresy.

And I believe the opposite also. If you don't follow Jesus, you are not eternally secure. This is what I mean.

I said the other day how you can preach the blood of Jesus cleanses everybody from all sin. It's not true. If you walk in the light, as He is in the light, 1 John 1.7. Then, and then only, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.

So how do people deceive others? By quoting half a verse. You take half a verse and build a doctrine on it. It can be eternal security, it can be the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.

So many things. You know there are songs we sing, I told you, I give you another example. We are under the blood.

Well, I thank God I am not under the blood. I am not an Egyptian with blood over my door posts. Do you know that the Bible never says in the New Testament that the blood covers me? Like we sang in that song just now.

I thought of it when I sang that song. Nowhere. It's an Old Testament thing.

Blessed is the man whose sins are covered. It's like all our sins are written on the blackboard and a sheet is put over it. It's covered.

You lift up the sheet, it's all there. But the blood in the New Testament cleanses. It wipes out that blackboard.

You can never find it. There is no sheet to lift up. There is nothing there.

It's gone. It's gone forever. And the sins and iniquities I'll remember no more.

I thank God my sins are not covered. Because somebody may lift up the sheet and discover it. It's gone.

It's cleansed. It's gone forever. You can't lift up anything and find anything there.

It's wonderful. The blood of Jesus Christ does not cover us from any sin. It cleanses us.

My dear brothers and sisters, I'm just giving you examples how traditions have got so much in your mind that you've almost accepted it as God's word even though you don't have a single scriptural verse in the New Testament for it. I'm just giving you examples to show you how people have fooled you for so many years. That's why I always say be like the Bereans.

And say, Brother Paul, I know you're a great man of God, great preacher, but we'd like to check the scripture before we believe what you say. Say that to every man. Show that to me in scripture.

I've said it for 40 years, 45 years. That's what's protected. And I want to encourage you, be a student of the scriptures.

Paul told Timothy be diligent to study the word. And I want to encourage you to do that. We need not only the new wine, the life of Jesus, but we need that new wine in a new wineskin.

In a wineskin that Jesus has given to us. And that's why we preach about being delivered from Babylon. And I want to share something further today about the life of Jesus.

It says here in 2nd Corinthians 13. Something about the life of Jesus we see here in 2nd Corinthians 13. You know, maybe we can begin at verse 3. Since you are seeking for proof of the Christ who speaks in me.

You know, these Corinthians were so ungrateful. Paul had done such a tremendous work there. Established a church.

And then they were questioning whether he was an apostle. I mean, we would have thought they are the last people in the world who should be questioning whether he was an apostle. He spent one and a half years there and established this church when nothing was existing.

And they were still questioning whether he was an apostle. And he said, you fellas are still seeking for proof whether Christ is speaking in me. And what does he tell them? He tells them about his weakness.

Not about the mighty things. He said, listen fellas, you know I raised people from the dead. You know, that's how we try to impress somebody that Christ is speaking through us.

You want proof that Christ speaks through me and works through me? This is what I did over there. These are the people I raised from the dead. I can bring before you people who have been healed through my prayer.

Those are the people whom demons I cast out. And these are the books I have written. And these are the places I have established churches.

What do you mean you doubt my apostleship? That's not what Paul said. That's how people in the world and Babylonian people try to boast about their accomplishments. We don't have anything of that.

Do you ever find Jesus getting up and saying, you know I raised the dead over there and I healed the sick over there. And I remember I'll tell you the story of the blind man, I healed over there. He never said these things.

He spoke God's word. And so, here we see Paul doesn't use any of those ways to prove that Christ is speaking through them. He never thought about it.

He said, you want to know how Christ speaks through me? I'm a weak person. God's made me weak. In the previous chapter he said, you know God's given me a thorn in the flesh.

I've got a sickness I'm not healed from. You want to know that Christ speaks through me? I've got a sickness I'm not healed from. You want to know whether Christ is with me? I prayed three times to God and he didn't answer my prayer.

Paul, are you stupid? Are these the type of things you're going to say to prove that you're an apostle? You're crazy. The way of the New Testament is the way of brokenness. The way of weakness.

The way of helplessness. The way of a weak, helpless person depending upon God. It's like a branch in a tree.

That branch is absolutely helpless, useless, good for nothing without the tree. Even if that branch has had 50 years of experience being in the tree producing fruit, what's it today? A weak, helpless branch. What's the difference between that branch which has had 50 years experience in bearing fruit and this branch which just came out of the tree today? Tell me, is there a difference? Is there a difference between that fellow who found Christ today and someone like me who knew Christ 45 years ago? Absolutely not.

In terms of our human ability to do anything for God, he and I are just the same. The branch with 45 years experience bearing fruit and the branch which just started coming out of the tree today. Both are equally helpless, dependent on the tree for the sap to bear fruit.

And it's when people begin to think that their experience makes them special. That's when they get puffed up and God stops using them. I've seen numerous cases.

I want to say to you wonderful young people who have accepted the Lord, I want to rejoice with the angels in heaven over every sinner who repents. The Bible says, there's joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. And if you can't rejoice when a sinner repents, something's wrong with you.

You're not in touch with heaven. But I'll tell you another thing. And that is, there's sorrow in heaven.

When these wonderful believers, 10 years later they've lost the fire. Or 5 years later they've lost their love for Jesus. They're enmeshed in the world and taken up with other things.

And they've built a new set of traditions, another old wineskin. That's when there's sorrow in heaven. When these people who are meant to be on fire for God, got married to the wrong person, went after money, went after earthly honor, began to get something for themselves, lost that original vision which they had when they converted.

That's when there's sorrow in heaven. And I want to encourage all of you wonderful young people, let God break you. And there'll never be sorrow in heaven.

All of your life, God wants to break you. He says, you want to see proof of Christ working in me? Verse 4, here's what I said. The real Jesus, He was crucified because of weakness.

If you can understand that verse, you'll understand the power of God. He was crucified because of weakness, yet He lives because of the power of God. Do you know that, I don't know whether you know this, Jesus, it never says anywhere in the Bible, that Jesus raised Himself from the dead.

You try and find a verse that says that. It's not there. Jesus did not raise Himself from the dead.

It always says, God raised Him from the dead. Always. Jesus gave Himself to die.

Now my question is, I mean, if I say, well, I'm not going to raise myself from the dead, that's not a great thing. Because I don't have the power to do it. It's like saying, well, I decided today I'm not going to fly.

What's so great about that? I don't have the power to do it. If you have the power to do it, and then you don't do it, that's something great. That's the type of weakness I'm talking about.

And you see this weakness right from the beginning of Jesus' life to the end of His life. He had power to turn stones into bread, but He wouldn't do it. Now if I say, I decided not to turn this grass into bread, that's not a great thing.

I don't have that power. But when Jesus was hungry for 40 days, and had power to turn stones into bread, and had the discipline to say, I won't use it. I will never use the power God has given me to satisfy myself.

Even to satisfy my hunger. Look at the number of people today, who are using the power God has given them to fill their bank accounts, to make money, to get honor, and all types of things. Using the gifts God has given them to promote themselves.

To promote their own organizations. To promote their own churches. And you see how different they are from Jesus Christ.

The real Jesus never promoted Himself. He never used God's power for Himself. He was weak.

He had power to turn stones into bread, He wouldn't do it. He wouldn't use it. And right at the end of His life, how do you see it? He had power to call 72,000 angels from heaven to fight against these Roman soldiers.

There's a verse in Isaiah which says that in the time of King Hezekiah, he prayed to God, when the Assyrians came to fight with him through Sennacherib their leader, and God sent one angel. And you know how many people that one angel killed? 185,000 people. Can you imagine how many people, 72,000 people angels can kill? You work out the math on that.

72,000, it's millions. He could have called 72,000 angels, and He didn't do it. That's weakness.

He could have called down fire from heaven much quicker than Elijah to burn up that fellow who spat on Him. He didn't do it. You and I don't have that power.

We don't do it. It's not a great thing. He had the power, and He didn't do it.

Now the disciples, they didn't understand that. We read in Luke chapter 9 that they came to Samaria, and the people in Samaria did not receive Jesus. You know why? Because He was going to Jerusalem.

And it's like, Jesus, they told Him, Well, if you're going to that denomination, then we won't let you preach here. Okay, fine. And the disciples, who knew the Bible very well, they said, Lord, you know, this is the place where Elijah called down fire, the same Samaria.

We remember that from the Old Testament. It's written there in 2 Kings. He called down fire from heaven, burned up these people who wanted to capture Him.

And let's do that now, James and John said. And Jesus said, You don't know what spirit you're of. He had the power to call down fire from heaven, and He wouldn't use it.

That's how it is. That's weakness. He was crucified in weakness, means He had the power to be free, but He would not use it.

He refused to use His own strength to fight back against people who fought with Him. He said, It's okay. And Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 4, We also are weak in Him, but we will live with Him by the power of God.

This is the secret of the Christian life. To be weak like Christ was, so that God honors us, so that God exalts us, so that God raises us up. We humble ourselves, He exalts us.

God bore witness to Jesus Christ. We read that in the Acts of the Apostles chapter 2, when Peter is preaching. He says, Here is a man whom God bore witness to.

God bore witness to the Apostle Paul. And I want to say to all of you, all of you dear brothers and sisters, God must bear witness to you, and to your life, and to your labors. It's not enough that other people think you're great.

That's worthless. Get all the opinions of all the people in the world, and throw it in the garbage bin. It's trash.

It's good for nothing. The good opinions and the bad opinions. It means nothing.

There's only one person whose opinion matters. I hope you know that. I've said this for years in India, 10,000 people calling you a prophet, will not make you a prophet.

10,000 people calling you a devil, will not make you a devil. It's what God thinks about you that matters. It's the only thing that matters.

He's the only one. Hebrews chapter 4 verse 13 says, He is the only one with whom we have to do. And when you live like that, that's how Jesus lived.

He didn't care whether people called him demon possessed, or devil, or false prophet, or false teacher. It didn't make any difference, because he lived before his father. He was secure in his father.

Remember what he said to his disciples. Even his disciples in John chapter 14. See these words in John 14.

Sorry, John 16 verse 32. John chapter 16 verse 32. He says, An hour is coming, and it's already come, for all of you.

Now remember, these were the only 11 people who finally stuck with him, and everybody had left him. And now there were 11 with him. Imagine being in a church, where you see one by one people leaving.

You're offended with your message. I've seen that happen many times. They get offended, they get offended, they leave, they leave, they leave, and finally you're left with 11.

You think they're wholehearted. And then it says here in verse 32, The time has come when all of you will also run away to your own homes. You'll want to save your own life.

And you will leave me alone. To be left alone in the world is real weakness. Everybody leaves you.

Your best friends who said they would stick with you through thick and thin, leaves you. Maybe your wife turns against you, your husband turns against you. You are alone.

That's weakness. And he says, What? I'm not alone. Here's a man who's totally secure.

He's not saying, Oh, I hope you fellas won't leave me. You're the only ones I've got left. No.

There was a time in John chapter 6 where we read many people got offended with what Jesus preached about the cross and they left him. And then he looked at the 12 and he said, Do you also want to go? And that's not what a person who is insecure would ever say. So often we find, you know, it's really true.

Many of you, you don't realize it. I don't want to shake you up, but it's good to be shaken up sometimes. I feel that a lot of you are finding your security in a church and not in Jesus Christ.

And you won't be strong. Your security is as some wonderful brothers and sisters around you. Maybe only 4 or 5 or 10 or 11.

And you find your security there. Oh, these folks will stick by me through thick and thin. And I'm happy with them.

It's good. It's like a baby stage in the Christian life. Grow up, brother.

Grow up from that. Grow up to the place where it doesn't matter if you leave me too. I have God.

Then you're strong. Then you can really be a blessing in the church because you're free from men. You're even free from these wonderful brothers and sisters around you.

I remember when we started building our church. We started with about 10 people in our home. Less than 10, I think, of those who are with us now.

Maybe 4 or 5 only are with us now. In our home 29 years ago. And I said, Lord, I have seen certain truths.

I don't hear anybody in India preaching them, but I'm going to preach them. If everybody leaves, that's fine. It doesn't make one difference to me.

I've seen something. Now I'm going to preach it. And those who want to hear it can come.

Those who want to get offended can go. I studied John chapter 6 and I saw John chapter 6 is one of those wonderful chapters which begins with a great multitude following Jesus. Jesus preaching the cross.

And finally the number becomes 12. And he looks at the 12 and he says, One of you also is a devil. If you want to know how to reduce a great multitude to 12, read John chapter 6. That's how we build a church.

Everywhere around us people are trying to make the church bigger. Jesus was trying to make the church purer. There's a world of difference.

Have you noticed one thing about Babylon and Jerusalem in Revelation? I don't know if you've noticed it. You study the Bible carefully, you discover one great thing about, use a concordance. I would encourage you to use a concordance when you study the Bible.

Babylon is called the great city. 11 or 12 times in Revelation. Jerusalem is never called the great city.

It's called a holy city. That is the difference between Babylon and Jerusalem. One is great, the other is holy.

One's great in the eyes of the world, big. The other is holy. You remember the story that the parable Jesus said about a mustard tree which is only supposed to grow this high? That's how high a mustard tree is supposed to be.

And it grows up and becomes the biggest of all the trees. It's not supposed to be that. That's not the way God intended it.

But it becomes such a huge tree with all these artificial fertilizers and psychological tricks that people try with this little mustard tree and it becomes so huge. And what's the end result of that? All the demons, birds of the air, come and nestle in that. That's what happens to these big Babylonian denominations.

When you make something much bigger than God intended it to be. Jesus was interested in making the church pure. In weakness.

All through his life, there was weakness. And he says here, Even you, Levin, will leave me and go away, but I'm not alone. The Father is with me.

Do you know, God wants every single one of us to have such a knowledge of Jesus Christ. This is eternal life. We saw that in the first day.

This is eternal life. That they might know God and Jesus Christ whom God has sent. And I want to say to you, this is the most important thing that you should pursue in your life.

To know God. And the Bible is only a means of knowing God. When I tell you to study the Bible, it's not an end in itself.

You'll be a Pharisee if you make the Bible an end in itself. It's only a way by which you can know God because this is the only book in the world that tells us what God is like. This is the only book in the world that tells us what the real Jesus is like.

And we've got a lot of false ideas of Jesus which we've probably seen during this weekend. And if you come here, you get to see the real Jesus, you know him. And that's eternal life.

And that's eternal security. When we begin to know Jesus personally and say, Lord you were like this. How was he? He was a person who could turn around to the only 11 people sticking with him till the end and say, you're going to leave me too.

I'm not going to be alone. I'm secure in my Father. Can you say that? Supposing everybody in the church here left you.

And you were left alone. Would you feel sorry for yourself? I would say that's fine. I'm not alone.

Supposing your wife turned against you and say, I think you're going the wrong way. I'm not going to divorce you and I'm not going to support you in this type of direction you're going. It's fine.

What am I going to do? Compromise to please my wife? Never. I've got to follow Jesus. That's why Jesus said, you can't be my disciple if you love wife or husband or father or mother or child more than me.

Sorry, you can't be my disciple. Go and find some other thing to do. Because He wants us to have that personal relationship with Him where it doesn't matter where who turns against us.

That's weakness. And God makes us weak. And, you know, sometimes I feel it doesn't matter the whole world turns against me.

Six billion people against me. It's fine. I remember hearing the story of of a great man of God.

His name was Chrysostom who stood up for the doctrine of the Trinity way back in the early I don't know when he lived 2380 or something like that. And those were days when there were a lot of people preaching false doctrines. And somebody told him these words which stuck in my mind.

He said, do you know Chrysostom that this doctrine you're preaching the whole world is against you. You see, those days Constantine had made everybody nominal Christians. And it was sometime then he said the world is against you.

He said that's fine. Then Chrysostom is against the whole world. That's all.

It's the end of the matter. I mean, no further discussion required. You're not going to change me by saying the whole world is against me.

Let them be against me. Let God be true and every man a liar. And I want to say to you my dear brothers and sisters you must develop that individual life with God and not something that leans upon the church.

I'll tell you what I've discovered in Bangalore in our home church. We have a wonderful church. And because it's such a wonderful church a lot of people have not grown spiritually.

Isn't that a contradiction? It's not a contradiction. It's like in the villages sometimes I see and people are not who are away from Bangalore and who are in some place where they don't have a church and they've got only Jesus. And I see them once a year at a conference and I say Boy! That fellow's grown spiritually more than this person who's sitting listening to all these wonderful messages for 52 weeks.

Why was that? Because he could lean on the church. And that fellow had nobody to lean on but the Lord. And that can happen.

You know in India sometimes we have you probably never see it anywhere else. You'll never see it here in the United States. We can get into buses and trains which are so jam-packed.

That's the word we use. They're jam-packed. And that when you get into the aisle you never get a seat of course.

You stand. But the wonderful thing about standing in these aisles is you don't have to move. There are people behind you who just keep pushing you up and you keep moving without any effort.

It's like these travelators and escalators. You just stand there and you just move. And these are human forces that keep you moving.

And you can be in a church like that where everybody is pushing you forward and you move. And effortlessly you move. Till all those people drop out one day and then you suddenly find you got no strength.

You don't know the Lord. I've seen numerous cases like this. It's one of the dangers of being in a good church.

It's one of the dangers of being in a zealous church where everybody is zealous around you and they just push you along. And you're a passenger. You don't have an individual connection with Christ.

Very dangerous. So what shall we do? Leave that church? No, in the midst of that church have an individual connection with Christ. And say, Lord, I want to lean on you.

I want to develop an individual life with you. I want to know you. I don't want to be pushed along by others.

And one way to discover whether you're being pushed along by others or whether you have an individual life in Christ is this. Do you find that God speaks to you only in the meetings? That's a dangerous sign. Doesn't God speak to you when you're all alone reading the Bible or walking down the road? God doesn't speak to you then? Something is seriously wrong, brother.

You need to check up. Something's seriously wrong. Thank God for the times God speaks to us in conferences like this and in the meetings.

But you must hear God speaking to you at other times when you're all alone. Seek for that. Seek for that.

Otherwise you'll be... This is how a lot of people get dependent on some pastor or preacher. And it's very easy. It's very easy for you folks here to lean upon Jason so much even though he may not call himself a pastor.

You can lean upon him so much that you don't need God. Terrible if it becomes like that. I've seen sometimes... This happened to me through the years.

I've seen somebody leaning upon me and I've pushed him away. He's got to lean on Christ. You're not going to lean on me.

I remember one person who would only come to visit me and never visit any of the other elders or the other brothers in the church. And he'd always come to me. One day he came to my door and said, I said, I don't want you to come to my house again till you go and have some fellowship with these other brothers.

Now that sounded rude, but I needed to do that so that he wasn't leaning on me. We don't want anybody leaning on man. We want people to come to a living connection with Christ and to value the different brothers and sisters.

Our calling, we're not to be an end in ourselves. We're to be a signpost saying, Jesus is that way, go there. And if people get stuck at the signpost, something is wrong.

And this is what's happening. It's so much of Christian leadership today. People come and they're stuck with the signpost.

Jesus is over there, but these fellows don't have a signpost. And these are the people who are acting like Jesus. You know when Jesus said, many will come and say, come into the world and say, behold, I am Christ.

He said, where in the world have I met a person who says I am Christ? No, you haven't met anybody like that. But you met people like this who get you so attached to them. They're acting like Christ.

They're acting like God. You're supposed to be attached only to God. I'll never in my life allow anybody to be attached to me.

Because that's the mark of the Antichrist. The Antichrist sits in the temple and acts as if he's God. Everybody's got to be dependent on me.

I've had people come to me and say, Brother Zach, can you please find out the will of God for me in this matter? I say, I certainly won't. I'll give you some advice. But you've got to find out the will of God yourself, because God's given you the Holy Spirit.

I'm not going to make you dependent on me. I'll give you any amount of advice. I'll sit hours with you giving you advice, but I will not take that decision for you.

You ask me, what should I do? I say, I don't know. I remember hearing about, I was in the Navy, and I heard a story about in the wartime, there was a commanding officer of a ship who wanted to encourage people to take individual decisions and not depend on him for everything, because he wanted them to develop understanding in warfare. So, he sent a signal across to the captain, this junior ship captain.

I sent a signal across to the top commander and said, shall I turn, now I'm going towards the enemy, shall I turn left or right? He said, yes. He said, yes to the left or yes to the right? Yes. He wanted him to be independent and take a decision.

By all means take advice, but learn to lean upon God. And if you're weak, all the more reason why you can lean upon God. It's in weakness that God manifests His power.

So that's why God allows so many circumstances in our life to make us weak. And that's how it was with Jesus. You know the real Jesus, it says in John chapter 7, that his brothers, verse 5, did not believe in Him.

Can you imagine, if you had an elder brother, just imagine, now picture this in your home. Sometimes we gotta use our imagination, put ourselves in the place, I put myself in the place of these brothers of Jesus. Maybe 2 years younger to Jesus.

Another fellow 3 years younger, another sister 4 years younger to Jesus. There were 4 brothers, we read their names in Mark 6, and 2 sisters at least. And they have growing up in their home, they can watch their older brother never get angry, never act selfishly, always do the dirty jobs, ready to do whatever mommy or daddy says, always obedient, never get irritated, never hits back.

When you grab his toy, he lets you have it. As you grow up, you grab something else, he lets you have it. You watch this for 30 years, and you don't believe in Him.

That's absolutely amazing. It's amazing how blind you can be. And you know what happens whenever you have a really good boy like that in a home, all the others gang up against him.

I've seen that. One good boy in a home and all the other wicked ones gang up because they are irritated that this fellow never gets angry. And they want to work him up, work him up, work him up, till they get him angry, and then they are happy.

Have you seen people like that? Who are upset because you don't get upset. And they work you up, work you up, and they relax only when they see, at last, we got him upset. But they tried that with Jesus year after year after year, and he never got upset.

But can you imagine the pressure that was on him, with them making fun of him and calling him, and all six of them ganging up against him, in that home where he grew up, and he couldn't run away, because his father said, that's where you got to be. That's where you got to be. Imagine the brokenness that came upon him.

And then he walked down the street, and there'd be old people sitting by the road and say, you know that little boy, the one on the other side? We know his mother, Mary. We don't know who his father is. That's the reputation he grew up with for 30 years, a young boy.

Imagine a young boy being always pointed out, that's the one we don't know who's father he is. Mary got pregnant before she got married. You know there was a reproach upon Jesus, long before he came into his ministry.

These are the means God used to break him. When it says in Isaiah 53 verse 10, it pleased the father to crush him. Because that's the way God does, and that's the way God did with his only son.

You can be sure, that was his favorite son. And the closer you are to God's heart, the more he will deal with you like that. You want to know someone who was very close to God's heart, other than Jesus? The apostle Paul.

I want to show you something that he went through. Turn to 2nd Corinthians in chapter 11. Now remember, this is Paul writing to people, to whom he's trying to prove that he's an apostle.

Okay? And he doesn't talk about the people he's raised from the dead. He doesn't talk about the scriptures he's written. He doesn't talk about the books he's written.

He doesn't talk about the churches he's planted. He doesn't talk about any of these things. The things that today's Christians boast about.

I've done this, and I've done that, and I've done the other thing, and I've done the other thing. He doesn't say any of these things. He says, okay.

Are they boasting? Okay. He says, I'll also boast. What shall I say? 2nd Corinthians 11, verse 23.

Are they servants of Christ? And now I'm speaking like a madman, he says. I'm more than them. How? Because I've labored more.

I've been in jail more times than them. What a way to prove that you're an apostle. I've been in jail more often than those people have been.

They say that wherever Paul went, there was either a revival or a riot, and usually both, and it finally ended up with Paul in jail. But then, he wouldn't be quiet in jail. He'd convert people right in the jail, till they got him out of the jail and sent him out from there.

That's how he was. Far more imprisonments. He says, I've been beaten so many times, that I've stopped counting.

You see, he's trying to prove he's an apostle. I've been beaten so many times, and God didn't come to help me. God didn't paralyze the hand of the man who was beating me.

He just allowed the guy to beat me and beat me and beat me. And that didn't just happen once, he says. It happened so many times, I've lost count.

I've been in danger of death numerous times. Verse 24. Five times the Jews gave me their 39 lashes on my back.

And God didn't paralyze the hands of those Jews who whipped me on my back. I was beaten with rods three times. I was stoned once.

Three times I was shipwrecked. We think at least God could save this man from a shipwreck. What was he going for on the ship? Where do you think Paul was going on a ship? You think he was going to make money? Was he going on business? No! He was going to preach the gospel.

Do people who go to preach the gospel face shipwrecks? You know, we've got this wrong idea about God. Because we haven't understood the way of weakness. And the way of brokenness.

So much of our thinking is not like the thinking of Jesus. It's like the thinking of the world. God is here to help me.

I'll never have a shipwreck. I'll never, nobody, God will not allow anybody to stone me. God will not allow anybody to whip me on my back.

I am a child of the king. I am a son of God. I am a servant of God.

Well, he was one of the greatest servants of God. Shipwrecked not once, but three times. And he says, 24 hours.

Once when I was shipwrecked, I was in the water. Wondering whether I'd drown or somebody would come to rescue me. Imagine being 24 hours in the open sea, clinging on to some piece of wood.

Hoping that somebody would rescue you. Do you think Paul was praying at that time? I'm sure he was. He prayed for one hour, nothing happened.

Then he prayed another hour, nothing happened. Oh God, please send somebody, some ship on the horizon. Nothing.

12 hours, nothing. Do you think God would let his servant drown? No, he had a ministry for him. But these were ways in which God had to break this man.

Because he was used so mightily. When God uses a man mightily, he has to break that man mightily. And that's what he had to do with him.

He says, I've been on frequent journeys and dangers from rivers and dangers from robbers and so on and on and on. And he says, I've been through many sleepless nights, verse 27. And in hunger and thirst, often without food and cold and exposure.

Now, there were times when Paul fasted. That was out of choice. Which all of us should do, now and then.

But there were other times, when he did not want to fast. And he could not eat, because he didn't have anything to eat. And I've discovered one thing through the years.

That if you have a love for food, you cannot serve the Lord. You better forget about serving the Lord, if you love food. If you love sleep, forget about serving the Lord.

To sleep is okay, but to love sleep is wrong. To have money is okay, but to love money is wrong. To eat food is okay, but to love food is wrong.

Because you can't serve the Lord. I've seen numerous people. They can't serve the Lord, because they love food so much.

There's a time in Mark chapter 3, I think it's verse 20 or something, where it says, Jesus was so busy with people, that he didn't even have time to eat his meals. Has that ever happened to you? Where you're so busy serving people, counseling people, advising people, that you didn't have time to eat lunch. That's how it was with Paul.

God broke him, sometimes he didn't have food. And here's another thing. He was shivering at times, because he didn't have warm clothing.

And he didn't have the money to buy it. In another place he says, he tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, Please bring that cloak which I left behind in that place. I'm here in jail and I'm shivering in the cold and nobody will give me a cloak.

Can you please bring that cloak, that old cloak I left behind there. Here's the greatest apostle on the face of the earth. He didn't have a blanket to cover himself in that prison.

Have you understood what it means to serve God? It's so different from these film star type of preachers today who stand in platforms with a spotlight shining on them. This is another type of man, this is the man I want to follow. Not these modern day film star type of evangelists.

They don't, I'm not even tempted to go that way, because I know that that is another Jesus. I've seen it clearly. And I don't care how many people get mad at me, it's another Jesus and I don't want to follow that.

I'm not here to criticize them. It's none of my business to judge them or criticize them. Like I was saying yesterday about demons casting people down, I was saying that in another meeting in another place and somebody said, why don't you then, you mean to say all these people are pushing people down and got demon possessed.

No, I said I didn't say that. Don't quote me wrong. I've been misquoted so many times in so many places, even in India for 25 years.

You know, something I say, somebody picks it up and misquotes it to promote their own agenda. Then once I went to the Lord and said, Lord, what am I going to do, Lord? Have I got to go and clarify every time somebody misquotes me? And the Lord said, don't worry, I've been misquoted for 2000 years. I said, OK, well, that comforts me.

People misquote the Bible and they build cults on it completely against the spirit of Christ, quoting the words of Jesus Christ. So I got some comfort from that. So people misquote and I said, that's not what I said.

I didn't say they've got demons. I just said Jesus never did it. That's what I said.

The rest, you are deducing from that. I'm not here to judge another person. It's not my business.

And I say, I see in the Bible that Jesus never pushed anybody down. But I do see in the Bible that demons push people down. Period.

That's all I have to say. I'm not going to say anything more. You know, Jesus said a number of things.

But there's a wonderful thing that Jesus said here in John chapter 8, which I have learned to take for myself very seriously. John chapter 8. He said in verse 15. You people judge according to the flesh.

I am not judging anyone. You want to see the real Jesus? The real Jesus was one who did not judge anybody. You say, well, didn't he say certain things exposing the Pharisees? He certainly did.

But that was not judging. You know, it's like, if I have children in my home. There was a time in Bangalore where kidnappers would kidnap children from the gates of the school.

They'd go and tell these little children, your dad's around the corner. He's asking to come and pick you up. And the innocent child would go with that person.

And the child would be kidnapped and his hand would be broken. And he made a beggar on the street and some 500 miles away in some other town. Or if it's a girl, child would be taken for prostitution.

This used to happen. So what do I do to my children? I say, be careful. There are kidnappers around.

Don't just listen to anybody who says your dad's waiting around the corner. Don't go with them. This is warning.

And when I had spiritual children in a church, I had to give them warnings too. There are kidnappers around. There are people out to kidnap you, take you away from Christ.

I have to warn them. Wouldn't any father do that? Now that's not, I'm not here to judge those kidnappers. It's not my business.

But I have to warn my children. And there's a lot of, and Jesus was warning his disciples. He says, be careful that you're not like those Pharisees who preach things which they don't practice.

That you don't follow those ways. That you don't exploit poor widows and come to the church and preach wonderful, and pray wonderful prayers and preach wonderful sermons. He says, God won't be impressed with you.

And don't just be taken up with little, little things, and neglect the more important things like mercy. And so, we see here, in the same way, Jesus was always, he said, I never judge anyone. And he said that twice.

He said, and then he said in verse 16, Even if I do judge, my judgment is true. If there was one person who lived on this earth, who could judge perfectly, and never make a mistake, that was Jesus. That was power.

But he never exercised it. Throughout Jesus' life, you find he had power to do certain things, but he'd never use it. Another place, in John chapter 12, he says, He says, if you don't obey my word, I won't judge him.

Verse 47, John 12, 47. If anyone hears my sayings and doesn't keep them, I don't judge him. My brothers and sisters, can we follow Jesus here, and say, I don't judge anybody.

I warn my children, sure, against all the kidnappers, and there are plenty of them in Christendom, but, I will not judge anyone. That's not my business. Yesterday I mentioned the first words that Jesus spoke, recorded in the Gospels.

You remember what it was? My father's house. I gotta be about my father's house, my father's business. Do you know what the last words that Jesus spoke in the Gospels? The last words recorded in the Gospels, are in John 21.

If I were to paraphrase it is, it's like this, Mind your own business. Those are the last words he spoke in the Gospels. Mind your own business.

You wanna hear it? It's in John 21. You know, the Lord had just told Peter, in verse 18. You know what's gonna happen to you, Peter? You're gonna suffer, you're gonna die.

When you grow old, now you're free, and you go wherever you like, after some time, somebody will stretch you out, stretch out your hands, and you'll be crucified. And he said that, telling him, verse 19, what kind of death he was gonna die. And Peter looked around, and saw John, verse 20, and said, as it were asking, Lord, what about this man? Verse 21.

Is he gonna have a comfortable life? Is only me gonna suffer? What about him? And Jesus said, that is none of your business. That's essentially what he was saying. If I want him to remain for 2,000 years, till I come back again, what's that to you? You follow me, you mind your own business.

Your business is to follow me. Whether somebody else is following me or not, is none of your business. Whether you have a difficult life, and he has a comfortable life, is none of your business.

Lord, why have you given me such a small income, such a small house, and so difficult to make ends meet? And that other brother, he seems to have life pretty comfortably. You know what the Lord will say to you? M-Y-O-B. Mind your own business.

What's that to you? You follow me. You follow me. I believe many, many believers need to hear that word.

Because we are looking around at somebody else, and we don't say it, but we're thinking, why is he having such an easy time? Why is it only me having such a rough time? We need to hear the last word that Jesus spoke in the Gospels. You mind your own business. Don't judge him.

You know, because when you get in the business of minding other people's business, and starting judging them, it's very easy, unconsciously sometimes, to begin to hold hands with the devil. Because the devil is the accuser of the brethren. And Jesus once said in John 14 and verse 30, When the devil comes, he finds nothing in me.

There's absolutely nothing of Satan in Jesus. There was not any spirit of accusation. My brothers and sisters, I'm saying this as one who has fought against Babylon for 30 years in India.

Who exposes it constantly. But I say to you, watch your spirit. Watch your spirit when you do it.

You can do it with a judgmental spirit, you can do it with a critical spirit, and you'll destroy yourself. Be careful. I've seen young people, I remember one brother in our church, who came out of the Roman Catholic system, and all he could do, every time he would meet people, was condemn the Roman Catholic priests, and the bishops, and the Pope, and this was the Antichrist, and this number 666 was this, and then I said, Brother, you'll destroy yourself.

This is not our gospel. Our gospel is not that the Pope is the Antichrist. That's not my gospel.

You got hung up on that, go ahead. But that's not my gospel. My gospel is that Jesus Christ is the light of the world, and in Him is life, and that's what I'm trying to lead people into.

And I said, if you continue this way, you will destroy yourself, and sure enough, he didn't listen to me, and he did. He destroyed himself. He fell out of the church, because his message was anti-Catholicism.

Now I'm just warning you, you can get so taken up, I mean, it's alright in the early days, you know, you're excited that you've come out of a system, and I believe we have to expose it, and I believe I expose it just as much as anybody else. But you got to watch your spirit. Jesus exposed the Pharisees, but he was willing to die for them.

Don't forget that. Question, did Jesus die for the Pharisees or not? No catch in it. Yes or no? Well, he had a right to rebuke them.

If you're willing to die to save those people, boy, you certainly have a right to rebuke them and expose them. But if you're standing outside of that and say, you fellas, you don't know anything, and I'm here. Be watchful of your spirit, because that could be the spirit of the Pharisee.

It's very easy to have that. Jesus was willing to die for them, and that's why he could expose them. You remember the story of the prodigal son? Let me ask you another question.

No catch here. The father went out of the house for which son? Which one? Both. Don't forget that.

He first went out for the younger one, who was the sinner coming back, the worldly sinner, and then he went out of the house for the elder son, who was a self-righteous Pharisee, and pleaded with him also to come inside the house. And that father is a picture of God. And God cares for that filthy, rotten, worldly sinner, and He cares for this self-righteous Pharisee also, because both of them need salvation.

So if you've got that type of heart, then you're alright to understand how to stand against Babylon. Otherwise, it's very easy to hold hands with the accuser of the brethren. Because, how many of you believe there are some of God's people in Babylon? There are.

The Bible says that. Come out of her? My people. If God can call them His people, why can't I? They're in the wrong place.

And God says, You are My people, but come out of there. You're in the wrong system. We've got to understand that.

Otherwise, it's very easy to become Babylon ourselves over a period of time. Jesus was determined that there'd be nothing of the devil. John 14, 30 is a verse that God's spoken to me many, many times.

The ruler of the world is coming, and He has nothing in me. Make that a goal in your life. One of the goals in your life.

That when Satan comes against you, he finds nothing of his spirit in you. And one of the primary characteristics of Satan is the spirit of accusation. That there is zero spirit of accusation.

You know, you can accuse your wife. You can accuse your husband. You can accuse the elders in a church.

You can accuse brothers and sisters without knowing their circumstances. You think you know. We don't know.

The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 4, Judge nothing till the time comes. 1 Corinthians 4, 5 to 7. Judge nothing till the time the Lord returns. Because when the Lord returns, He'll show you the inner motive with which that person did something.

Then you will be able to understand whether he was right or wrong. But you've got to be pretty conceited to think that you know what's going on in a man's heart right now. We don't know.

I really believe the mark of a humble man is that he says, Lord, I don't know. I don't know there what's in his heart. I don't want to judge him.

I've got enough to do judging myself. That's enough for me. I don't want to hold my hands with the accuser.

That's why he never, never, Jesus never, never judged. Even though he had every right to. And I believe this is the real Jesus we need to follow, that I never in my life judge another person.

I remember once in one of our village churches, young sister came with a lot of jewelry on her. Now, I don't believe that you've got to take off your jewelry to go to heaven. But in our churches, 99% of the sisters don't wear jewelry.

It's not a law. It's just their own choice. I've never told anyone to remove it.

I remember when we started meeting, all the sisters wore jewelry except my wife. And I told those husbands, please don't ever tell your wife to take it off because then it'll be a dead work. So we're not, our message is not remove jewelry.

No, I've never preached that. I've baptized people who wear jewels. I've no problem with that.

But here was this girl coming decked with jewels and for such a temptation to judge, boy, she's really trying to show off. Till a brother told me, you know why this young girl wears jewels and come here? Because their parents are Hindus. And they have said to her, we'll allow you to go to that church as long as you don't take off your jewels.

If you take it off, the day you take it off, we won't let you go to that church again. What was she supposed to do? I said, please, please wear it and come. Thank God they're allowing you to come.

At least that way you can listen to God's word. But how, I thought of that, you know, how easy it is for us to look at someone, we don't know his circumstances, we don't know the background and you pass a judgment on that person. You judge according to the outward appearance.

And Jesus said, I don't judge anybody. It's always better to put a good construction on that. Say, I don't know.

Now, I'm telling you from the mistakes I made. I don't have any stones to throw at anybody because I'm with sin first of all myself. I've done this so much in my life, made a mess of my life in my younger days that I've learned a lesson.

I want to save you young people from wasting your life in your younger days judging other people. Leave them alone. Mind your own business.

Judge yourself. Live before God. See, I've seen also people criticize pastors, preachers, full-time workers.

In our church, I'm talking about Bangalore. I said to them, be careful brother. You've seen me say that.

And you're trying to imitate me. You didn't get a revelation from God to say that. You're just imitating brother's act.

Now, I'll tell you something. I said, I have a right to speak about that. First of all, because God laid it on my heart.

And secondly, because there was a time in my life where I gave up my job to serve the Lord. I stepped out in faith with nothing and I lived in poverty for quite some time. I have a right to speak to these people.

You fellas, who are sitting in your comfortable jobs never once gave up your jobs to serve the Lord. You don't have the right to speak to them. Sometime in their life, they quit their jobs to serve the Lord and become missionaries.

Okay, they're part of Babylon. But you don't have the right to criticize them because you never made the sacrifice. They made it sometime.

So there are so many things, you know, where we can look down on someone and say they're gone astray. I know they're gone astray. But maybe you don't have the right to speak to them.

Somebody else has got to speak to them. We got to recognize our boundaries. One of the biggest mistakes a lot of Christians make is to go outside their boundaries.

And they get in a lot of problems. I said yesterday, Jesus sat in the synagogue for 30 years listening to all those boring Pharisees and he never got up once. Think of that, he knew much more than any of them.

But he never got up. Because the Father's time hadn't come. There was a time, he always operated on the principle of my hour has to come.

When my hour comes, is there a need for wine here? My time has not come. When it comes, I'll do it. That's how he always operated.

He recognized his boundaries. He wouldn't do things because he had power. He'd do things when God prompted him to.

Because he was like these people who got, these policemen who got walkie-talkies in their car. It's always on. Anytime a message comes, they listen to it.

That's how a Christian must be. Always a walkie-talkie connected to headquarters. You never know when the message will come.

So you go to the policeman and say, well, are you going to go down there where there's been an accident? He says, no. Why not? I haven't got orders from headquarters yet. So the other fellow goes off.

Five seconds later, this policeman gets an order from headquarters. Go to the site of the accident. And he goes there.

And the other guy says, hey, you're a liar. You said you're not coming here and here you are. It's very easy to misunderstand.

You read that in John chapter 7. The disciples, no, the disciples, the brothers of Jesus said, are you going to the feast? Jesus said, no, I'm not going to the feast. Okay. They went off by themselves.

Five minutes later, Jesus went to the feast. Have you read that? And if he walked a little faster than them, he'd have reached Jerusalem before them. And they see him there.

They say, now we're convinced. You're a downright liar, calling yourself son of God and all that. You told us with your own mouth that you wouldn't be coming here.

And here you are. Do they understand what it means to listen to God? Do they understand this walkie-talkie principle that I act so much on orders from headquarters that I have to say no because I've got no orders from headquarters. And five seconds after you leave, I get orders from headquarters to leave.

I follow. I don't care if you misunderstand me. Jesus never bothered to explain himself to people who misunderstand him.

Do you remember that time when, in John chapter 7, this is the real Jesus. He never tried to explain himself to people who misunderstood him. They said in John chapter 7, this guy cannot be the Messiah because he was born in Nazareth.

Now you've got to live in a village in India to understand the situation in those first century Palestine. You see, if you tell me you're from Missouri, it doesn't mean you were born there. You could have been born in Kentucky or California or somewhere else.

But that's not true in India. In the villages in India, if a man says, I'm from village X, you can be absolutely sure he was born in village X because people don't move. They're there.

You can be absolutely sure his father was born in village X and his grandfather, going back many generations, was in village X. That's why they were absolutely convinced that Jesus, if he's from Nazareth, he must have been born in Nazareth. Where else? And Jesus, that was a wonderful opportunity for him to explain. Do you remember 30 years ago, there was a census and Augustus Caesar passed a rule that everybody had to go to their hometown and that's when I went to Bethlehem and I was born there.

Do you think he wasted his time explaining all that to them? What an opportunity to prove to them he was the Messiah. Why didn't he explain it? He said, if these guys need to see my birth certificate to find out whether I'm the Messiah, they're not interested in the truth. If they can't see it in my life, I'm not going to convince them with a birth certificate.

You know, so many Christians try to convince people, I don't waste my time. The Lord told me years ago that if people attack you, keep quiet. Just ignore them.

Leave it alone. If people fling mud on you, what should you do? If you wipe it, it'll spoil your shirt. You leave it alone, it'll dry off and drop off by itself and your shirt will be clean.

That's the best thing to do. Don't try and wipe it off. Leave them alone.

Just leave them alone. I've seen people, I remember a person who rang me up once because of some decision I take. Sometimes as elders we have to take decisions which are strong decisions that upset some people.

Doesn't bother me if I've lived before God's face. This one was so, he was not part of our church, but he was so upset about some decision, a discipline I didn't take on someone, he yelled at me on the phone and yelled and yelled and yelled and yelled. Now I could have just, you know, been rude to him and put the phone down.

But these are the times you've got to put the phone really close to listen when somebody is criticizing you because there may be some truth in what they say. Have you heard the saying that your enemies say more truths about you than your friends? It's true. Your enemies say more truths about you than your friends.

So I was listening, listening, listening, listening. I never said a word. He didn't understand the situation, why this person had to be disciplined.

And finally he finished. I said, brother, have you finished? He said, yes. I said, okay, God bless you.

Goodbye. I didn't believe in explaining anything to him. Six months later, I get a letter from him.

Oh, dear brother Zach, I never knew the whole story. Now I understand. I'm really sorry for all that I said.

Wasn't it better that God convinced him? There are different times when people have tried to attack me. There are people who have taken me to court for exposing them as heretics. Christian groups, so-called Christian groups.

There are three court cases filed against me. The last six years is going on in India. There are different ways.

God hasn't finished breaking me yet. There are many ways. He does it in different ways with you, different ways with me.

But I say, so what? I mean, God's in control. And very often what the Lord says to me is this simple question. Okay, these guys are attacking you.

Do you want to deal with them yourself or will you let me deal with them? What's your answer? I say, Lord, you deal with them. It's far better. I'll leave them alone.

We don't have to be afraid. Let people, I mean, if I'm walking with a lion down the street and I see a dog barking there, what am I going to do? Go and fight with that dog? I've got to be crazy. Let him bark.

If he comes to attack me, I'll let the lion deal with him. That's the meaning of having Jesus with us, the Lion of Judah. He's with us.

Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world. Jesus was never afraid of the devil. You know, I've seen so many believers who glorify the devil so much.

Oh brother, the devil did this and the devil did that and the devil's doing this and the devil's doing this in my family and the devil's disturbing me in my work and the devil's doing that. Boy, I say, where's Jesus? Is he around anywhere? Or is the devil hanging around all the time doing this, that and the other to you? Now I want to ask you this question. We're talking about the real Jesus, okay? I want to ask you first of all, be honest.

Have you ever said that? The devil did this to you and the devil done that and the devil did this through your wife or the devil did that through someone else? Now, let's look at the real Jesus. You search the Gospels and see if there's even one time when Jesus said, the devil's doing this to me and the devil's doing that to me. Never.

He wasn't occupied with the devil. You know who he was occupied with? His father. I have learned not to glorify the devil.

He's been defeated on the cross 2,000 years ago. I'm not going to give him some type of, you know, supernatural position. I say to the devil, God's given a place for you.

Do you know where it is Satan? Under my feet. Romans 16 20 The God of peace will crush Satan under your feet and I tell him to his face, you're under my feet. You were defeated on the cross 2,000 years ago.

He doesn't like to hear it. I remember once when he was casting out a demon out of a woman and I didn't know she had a demon. I told her to accept Jesus and I said, now say, Satan, you've been defeated on the cross and she looked at me and changed her voice and said, I've not been defeated on the cross.

That's the moment I knew it was a demon. I said, you're a liar. I'm speaking to the demon now.

Get out of her in Jesus name. And the demon left. And I then told the woman, now tell the devil, you've been defeated on the cross.

And she said it. Then I knew the demon had left. But that's the day I learned one thing.

The devil does not like to be reminded that he was defeated by my savior on Calvary's cross 2,000 years ago and I decided that I'm going to remind him of that as often as possible. Tell him to his face that he was defeated on the cross. He has no power over me.

Now some people would even get scared to say that. Boy, if I say that in public, the devil will be after me for the next week. How scared Christians are of the devil.

They don't know Jesus. That's the problem. This is eternal life that they might know God and Jesus Christ and you'll never be afraid of the devil anymore.

God, if he does anything to me, it's what God's permitted him. Have you read the story of Job? Every single thing that the devil did, he had to get permission from God first. Can I do this? Okay.

Can I do that? Okay. Think of this court case that came to me six years ago. I can imagine maybe ten years ago the devil said to God, I want to get a court case against Zach.

God said no. He's not ready for it yet. Nine years ago.

Can I have a court case against him now? God said no. No, no, no, no. Six years ago.

Can I have a court case against Zach? God said yes. Okay. He can't do it without God's permission.

And if you see that God's permitted him to do it, why do you glorify the devil? There was an Old Testament saint called David who had light on this, which New Testament saints sometimes don't have. And if you want some help on this, read 2 Samuel and chapter 15. Where it's chapter 16, where there was a guy called Shimei.

You read in verse 5. I don't have time to go through the whole thing. 2 Samuel 16, verse 5 to 14. Read it sometime when you get time.

Shimei was jealous of David because he was a relative of King Saul. And King Saul had been ousted. David had come on the throne and Shimei was waiting to get a chance to get back at David.

And one day when David's son Absalom rebelled against David and overthrew David. And David had to run for his life. Shimei said, now is my chance to get my own back on this guy who stole away the throne from my relative Saul.

And it says he threw stones, verse 5. He came, cursed him, called him all types of names, threw stones at him. And one of David's soldiers, and he said to David, get out you worthless fellow. And finally God is taking revenge on you for taking the kingdom from Saul.

And one of David's soldiers, Abishai, verse 9, said, why should this dead dog curse my king? Let me go and cut off his head. This is just like Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane. And there you see the man after God's own heart, David.

Just like Jesus. He says, no. Abishai, put your sword back.

Listen to this, verse 10. One of the most wonderful examples of faith in the sovereignty of God found in the entire Old Testament. If the Lord has permitted him to curse me, the way he put it is, the Lord has told him to curse me.

Who am I to say, why have you done it? If the Lord has permitted somebody to treat you badly, who are you to say, why have you done it? You're fighting against God. Have you seen the way David understood God's sovereignty? Have you seen how David understood that all the things that happen around him, all the evil things that people do to him, are all permitted by God, without God's permission? It didn't happen. David had already, obviously read the book of Job, that nothing can happen without God saying, you know, without God giving permission to Satan.

Do you remember the time when Jesus told Peter in Luke chapter 22, Peter, Satan has asked for permission to sift you. He won't harm you. He'll sift you like wheat is sifted.

You don't do that because you get cleaned wheat here in the shops. In India we don't get cleaned wheat. When we buy wheat in the stores, it's got stones in it.

Because that adds to the weight. And they can sell less wheat. And it's deliberately added very often.

There are so many other things with it. And you can't make anything out of it till you first sift it. And when you sift it, you only get rid of the rubbish.

The wheat, the stones and the chaff and things like that. And you're left with the good wheat. That's all that Satan can do to us.

Do you know that's all that Satan can do to you? Get all the rubbish out of your life. That's all. He cannot harm you in any way.

Even if he sends a thief into your home to rob some things from your home. What does he succeed in doing? Make you a better pilgrim with less things in your home. That's all he can succeed in making you a better pilgrim.

That's all. In every situation, you can give thanks. In every situation, you can give thanks if you understand what David understood and what Jesus understood.

No complaints. I tell you, if you believe this, you can walk like Jesus, always giving thanks. He had so much joy nine hours before he was crucified that he went around encouraging his disciples, saying, I've got a lot of joy, I'd like to give some of that to you.

This is nine hours before he was going to be crucified. And if you know you're going to be hanged tomorrow morning, just imagine you're going around encouraging the other people and saying, well, fellas, I'm leaving the earth tomorrow, but I just thought I'd encourage you fellas before I go. That's true Christianity.

This is the real Jesus. He wasn't afraid of the devil. He knew the devil could not touch him one bit, in one area.

We read in one place in Luke chapter 4, they took him up to the top of a cliff to throw him down. He wasn't afraid. How could anybody kill him if God had determined that Jesus was not to die by being thrown over the cliff? How can somebody touch you and kill you before God's time? It is impossible.

Not cancer, not enemies, not road accidents, nothing. Because Jesus says in Revelation 1, I have the keys of death. Do you know what keys means? The keys to open a door.

Jesus has those things, has those keys. And if you're a committed disciple of Jesus Christ, until he opens the door, you can't go through. That's what brings rest into my life.

The sovereignty of the Father. His care for us. We're not afraid of the devil.

Nobody can touch you without God's permission. That's why he didn't have to take revenge on people. He left it for God to deal with them.

Let's pray. I hope in these days, more than listening to messages, I hope you've seen a vision of what Jesus was really like on earth. The real Jesus.

So different from perhaps the Jesus you have seen, from the Jesus you've heard preached in so many places. So different. Not one who was going around showing off his power, but one who preferred to remain weak and let God defend him.

Take that position. In weakness, God will manifest his power through us and endorse our ministry. Heavenly Father, there are many things we've heard this weekend.

We may not be able to remember all of them, but I pray that in the moment of need, the Holy Spirit will bring to each person's mind that particular bit of truth that they need to know at that time for their need. Show them Jesus at that time, how he would react in that situation, and give us grace to follow in Jesus' footsteps so that we can be the church that you want us to be. Holy, pure, separated from the world with not an atom of self-righteousness in us or pride.

Help us, Lord. We can't do it on our own, but we believe your Holy Spirit can do it for us. And we pray that you raise up such churches in many places where these different dear brothers and sisters live.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.