The Way To Growth In Christlikeness - Part 3 — Zac Poonen

Building on the Rock Through Obedience

So we were looking at what are known as the Beatitudes commonly in Christendom, Matthew chapter five. And like I said from the beginning, when you turn to the New Testament, the first long message of Jesus in the Gospels is in Matthew five, six, and seven.

And that comes right at the beginning. And at the end of it, as I said, he said that if you listen to these words and you take all of them seriously and you obey them, you'll build your house on the rock.

Now, everybody wants to build their house on the rock. Nobody wants to build their house on sand, which says one day when the rain and the flood, which is a picture of trial and judgment come, it'll collapse.

I think the little trials that come along our life now, if they make us shake, it is probably a warning that we are not ready for the final trial and judgment. So we must take these little, it's not the final hurricane and flood.

It's only a few drops of rain that make us shake. And then we need to ask ourselves, am I building on rock or on sand? And we don't have to wait till the final day to find out whether we are built on rock or sand, it's too late.

We need to know now in the little trials that come into our life are a way by which God shows us whether we are building on rock or on sand. And to build on rock is made very clear. Jesus said, you hear these words in Matthew 5, 6 and 7 and obeys them.

Every Christian reads Matthew 5. Anyone who reads the New Testament will come to Matthew 5 pretty soon. But the number of people who take it seriously, I found from all these years, I've been a Christian for 60 years.

I found very, very few people in my life, even in CFC churches who take all these words seriously. For example, who equate anger with murder or who equate adultery with lusting with the eyes. Very, very few in my life or who believe that you must love your enemies just like you love your friends.

So it's very, very few. And that's why I find lots and lots of Christians, their life is shaky. But the answer is here. So let's take these things seriously. We already considered what I call the nine right attitudes before we go to the nine wrong attitudes.

The nine right attitudes we saw, first of all is the sense of perpetual poverty in spirit where I know I'm needy all the time. I have to go to God all the time to ask him to give me grace and help and give me his word.

And the other is mourning for my sin. Asking the Lord to be merciful to me and mourning for my failures. And then we looked at last time at meekness or gentleness and verse six, Matthew 5, six, hungering and thirsting for righteousness.

Righteousness as Love for All People

Now, when I began my life as a Christian, I thought of righteousness as holiness primarily. It is in one sense, it is. But I've come to see that righteousness is more than that. And one verse that changed my life or changed my understanding of that long ago was in one Thessalonians as to what is true holiness.

In one Thessalonians chapter three and verse 13. This is the verse that opened my eyes in this matter of what is real righteousness and holiness. One Thessalonians chapter three, verse 13 is speaking about the Lord causing us, verse 12 and 13, you got to read it together.

May the Lord cause you, one Thessalonians 3, 12, to increase and abound in love for one another and for all people so that he may establish your heart without blame in holiness. So what is true holiness?

How can I be established without blame in holiness? It is by my heart abounding in love. So I saw that in God's eyes, righteousness is love. If I don't have love, however holy I think I am, if I don't love others, however holy I am, according to this verse, I'm not established without blame.

Please remember this verse always. May the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another, beginning in your own home towards your husband, wife, and then to your fellow believers in your own local church and then to others and to all people, it says here, so that God can establish my heart without any blame in holiness before God when Jesus returns, verse 13.

So that has become my understanding of righteousness, which has clarified my thinking because otherwise I think that, oh, well, I don't get angry and I don't lust after women and I'm righteous with money and I'm righteous.

And it's very easy to satisfy ourselves with that. All that is essential part of righteousness, but if I do all that and I don't know how to love one another according to that verse, God cannot say I am without blame.

I'm with blame still, even though I've overcome my anger and even though I'm not lusting after women and even though I'm righteous with money. That is, I don't know how to love others. So please keep that in mind, dear brothers, and always it begins in home.

In the home, we are to be witnesses in Jerusalem first, then Judea and Samaria. So it's no use trying to love brothers and sisters in the church if you can't love your own wife or husband. So that's where it begins.

So righteousness is there and I need to have a hunger and thirst for it, a tremendous longing for a heart that's filled with love for everyone, a tremendous longing to be absolutely righteous and pure in all areas, in my speech, in my thoughts, in my attitudes, motives, in money matters, and in love for one another.

And if I'm not becoming holier, remember one thing, that every person, you and I, and everyone listening to me, this statement is true. You are as holy as you really want to be deep down in your heart.

Let me repeat that. You are as holy today as you really want to be deep down in your heart. If you're not more holy, it's because deep down in your heart, you don't want to be more holy. You got to face up to that.

If somebody else is really living a holier life than you, more loving than you, it's because deep down in his heart, he has a greater desire for that than you have. You can have that too if you have the same desire.

Every person is as holy and as loving as he wants to be deep down in his heart. And that's where the hunger and thirst comes. So if we are not more righteous, more loving, the answer is that we don't really long for it deep down in the heart.

Maybe we're satisfied, we are born again, and we're attending a good church, and we're not doing anything grossly evil, and we're satisfied with that. And satisfaction is the best way to prevent spiritual growth.

A true disciple will be constantly hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Paul said in Philippians 3, he says, I forget what is behind, and I press on for what is ahead. Forgetting all that is behind and pressing on to what is ahead in Philippians 3, 13, I press toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

He saw Christ calling him upward to a higher standard of holiness and a higher standard of love, higher standard of purity, higher standard of humility, higher standard of everything. And he says, forgetting the things behind means not just my sins, but forgetting how much progress I have made.

Paul was hungering and thirsting after righteousness 30 years after he was born again and filled with the Holy Spirit. That's a tremendous example. That's why he says, follow me as I follow Christ. He never stopped following Christ.

He kept on pursuing. Every year, just like we want our children to go to a higher class every year, Paul has a passion to go higher and higher. That is hungering and thirsting after righteousness. And I wanna say again, brothers and sisters, if you hear this word and you don't do anything about it, your house will be shaky.

I'll tell you that. He who hears my word, Jesus said, and does not do them is like a man who's building his house on sand. Think of all these things as words that we hear of the Lord speaking to us. And it's a question of whether we obey it or not.

Mercy, Forgiveness, and the Lord’s Prayer

So we move on from there. Blessed, the next verse is verse seven. Blessed are those who are merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Now, mercy is a very, very important requirement because when Jesus taught us the Lord's prayer, he gave us six requests there in Matthew 6.

We'll come to it later, but I just wanna point out one thing here. One of those six requests is, forgive us our sins. But that's the one request which has a qualification. The others are plain statements.

Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done. Give us this day our daily bread. Don't deliver us into temptation. But here is something, forgive us our sins exactly as we have forgiven others.

There's a qualification to that request. Lord, I don't want you to forgive me any better than I have forgiven others. Think of that statement. What are you saying to God in the Lord's prayer? Lord, I don't want you to forgive me any more than I have forgiven everybody else in the world who has hurt me.

Is that what you're praying to God? Or that is the Lord's prayer? And when you say, Lord, forgive me, whether you say it or not, God is gonna forgive you exactly like you forgive others. Because even if you don't qualify it, that's how God accepts it.

When you say, Lord Jesus, forgive my sin. He hears it as, as he taught in the prayer, forgive me exactly like I have forgiven my husband, exactly like I've forgiven my wife for all the things they did against me, exactly like I have forgiven my mother-in-law, my brother-in-law for cheating me on my property, exactly how I have forgiven my neighbor and my boss for firing me from my job and for being unrighteous.

And exactly, I've forgiven all the others around me, my neighbors and all the people in the church and everybody else who I think has done something wrong for me or somebody who did some harm to me 25 years ago.

Lord, I've forgiven that, the way I've forgiven that person who harmed my child so much a few years ago. Please forgive me exactly like I've forgiven that person. Do you know why many people don't enjoy the forgiveness and fellowship with God?

Because they have not, they are not merciful. Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. This is the one of the nine right attitudes, to be merciful to others, they will receive mercy. The others will not receive mercy.

I could paraphrase it like this. In Matthew 5, 7, those who are not merciful are cursed. The opposite of blessed is cursed. So let me take the reverse. Cursed are those who are not merciful to others because they will not receive mercy.

Think of that. When you read of any of these things, think of the opposites. Those who do not show mercy to others. See, that's not an extreme statement. It's something repeated many times in scripture.

Jesus said in Matthew 6, verse 15, Matthew 6, 15. If you do not forgive others, your father will not forgive your sins, no matter how much you pray. Do you know the number of believers who have claimed the blood of Jesus has cleansed me from all sin, whose sins are not cleansed?

Oh, I claim one John 1, 7, one John 1, 9. I've confessed my sins, they are forgiven. They are not forgiven, brother, because there's somebody you have not forgiven. However much you claim one John 1, 9, if you have not forgiven others, according to Matthew 6, 15, God, your father, he's not talking about the worldly people, your father means he's your, you're his child, will not forgive your transgressions.

And it says in James in chapter two, James chapter two, he speaks about the importance of mercy. You know, it says here, you can keep the whole law, James 2, 10. That means you can do so many right things in your life, but you stumble in one point.

Have you read that verse, James 2, 10? You keep the whole law and you stumble in one point. It is as good as you're being guilty of committing all the sins in the law, forbidden by the law. That's quite a strong word if you meditate on it.

And then he speaks about one particular attitude. Judgment, verse 13, will be merciless. Merciless means God will treat you as if you have disobeyed every commandment of his. Just like we read in verse 10, you stumble in one point.

He got to look upon you as if you're guilty of having broken all his commandments. So here's the one point, you are not merciful to others. Judgment will be without any mercy to you because you have shown no mercy.

But if you have been merciful to others, people have done tremendous evil to you, spoken evil to you, cheated you of money and property and whatever it is, God's mercy will be in abundance exactly in proportion as you've been merciful to others because God's mercy, it says in verse 13 of James 2, will triumph over his judgment.

Here's this tremendous judgment that should come upon me for all the filthy sins I've committed all my life, but God's mercy will crush that down because I was merciful to others. This is so important.

Mercy and Healing from Unforgiveness

I wonder if you realize the importance of it because I've seen so many believers. It's one of the main things in their life is that they haven't forgiven somebody. So much so that whenever people ask me to pray for them, the Bible says if someone is sick, they should come to the elders of the church and ask the elder to pray.

And so I do that whenever people come to me. But then it says there in James chapter five, one thing it says, if he has committed, confess your sins in relation to healing from sickness. And because if he has committed sins, it'll be forgiven.

And I come to see through the years that the main sin is an unforgiving attitude towards others, which causes sickness to so many people, even a slight little speck of it. Even if I have a slight sickness, I ask the Lord, Lord, there may be physical cause for it, I don't know, but let me eliminate the spiritual causes first.

And I wanna check my heart and say, Lord, is there even a slight unmerciful attitude towards a single human being in the whole world? I'm telling you about myself. I check myself every single time. Whenever I feel something's not gone the way I expected it to be.

There may be 101 causes, but let me eliminate this one first. Is there a wrong attitude in my heart towards any person because of what they did to me or said to me or said to my family or did to my family or any such thing?

When I keep, I've eliminated that so much that now hardly anything comes to my mind because I worked on it and say, Lord, I don't want that to be a hindrance of your blessing flowing upon my life. Health is the least part of God's blessing.

The anointing of God upon my life is a million times more important to me than physical health. But I wanna say this, that whenever I pray for the sick, I always ask them one question, have you forgiven everybody?

Think about it. I say, I don't want you to tell me, but seek your heart before the Lord because God's blessing of mercy is on those who are merciful. Turn with me to Matthew chapter 18, where Jesus answered this question.

He said about, if your brother sins, go and show him his fault in Matthew 18 and verse 15. And if he listens to you, you won your brother. Yeah, and if he doesn't listen, then of course you gotta still try and help him by getting two people other to speak to him.

But the aim is to win your brother, Matthew 18, 15. Don't ever forget that. And then when Peter heard that, he said, Lord, okay, I'm willing to do that. But supposing he does it again, and again, and again, and again, and he does it seven times.

Matthew 18 verse 21, he's responding to the Lord's statement how often am I gonna keep on forgiving him? And Jesus said, 70 times seven, Matthew 18 verse 22. In other words, indefinitely. And in another passage, I think it's Luke 17, where he says, it must be every day.

So imagine forgiving your brother 70, 490 times in a single day. That means 20 times every hour. And if it's every waking hour, 40 times every hour, that means he's sinning against you every minute and you keep forgiving him.

Every minute he sins against you and you forgive. Next minute he sins against you, forgive. Next minute he sins against you, forgive. 490 times a day. What is the meaning of that? It means forgive him perpetually.

Have a perpetual attitude of forgiveness towards others and God will be abundantly merciful to you. Oh boy, I tell you, we need the mercy of God all the time in our life. You know, when there was a man called Epaphroditus, let me show you that passage in Philippians chapter two.

It's wonderful to compare scripture with scripture. Epaphroditus was a wonderful servant of God, but he became sick traveling so much, traveling so much and serving. This is a Philippians and chapter two, verse 25.

Epaphroditus, my brother, my fellow worker and your messenger, a fellow soldier for Christ, he was sick and it says here in verse 27, Philippians 2, 27, he was sick to the point of death. It was a very serious sickness, but he got healed and his healing is described as, verse 27, God had mercy on him.

That's the description of his healing and he didn't die. So what is healing? According to Philippians 2, 27, God having mercy on us. So when I want healing, I think of that verse. How will God have mercy on me and heal me?

I got to be merciful to others. And the more abundantly I'm merciful to others, more abundantly God's mercy will be upon me and upon our children. So dear brothers, even if you're a selfish person, be merciful to others.

That's the most selfish thing you can do, be merciful to other people because God's blessing will be upon your life. Because that's not the reason why we should be merciful. The ideal reason why be merciful is as Christ, as God has been merciful to me, I must be merciful to others.

The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant

But I'm just taking that even if you're selfish, the best thing you can do is be merciful to others. Now turn with me. So Jesus continued from that statement to Peter and said, Peter, 70 times seven. And I want to explain that to you with the parable of a King, Matthew 18, verse 23, who wanted to settle accounts with the servants.

And there was one man who owed him 10 ,000 talents. And the margin of my Bible says that is 15 years salary, 15 years salary of a worker. Can you work out how much your salary would be in 15 years? That's here, 10 ,000 talents.

And he falls down before the King and he says something which is absolutely, I mean, he says, I'll pay it to you. But that's impossible. He couldn't pay 15 years salary. He says in verse 26, have patience with me.

I'll repay you everything as if he could. He couldn't repay it till then. Where is he going to repay it? So anyway, the Lord knew that and says, the Lord of the slave had compassion on him. He was merciful to him, verse 27, and forgave all his debt just with one sentence.

He just said, have patience with me. The King said, forgiven. And that man, verse 28, went out and found a slave who owed him 100 denarii. 100 denarii, verse 28, is about three months wages. I mean, it's not $10.

It's a little more than that. But where is three months wages compared to 15 years wages? And here, because one denarii was one day's wage and 100 denarii, and he says, yeah, I can't let you go. This is not just $10.

This is three months salary, forgetting that he had been forgiven 15 years salary. He held this man by the throat and choked him and said, pay back what you owe. And that fellow said the same thing that this man said to his Lord.

Have patience with me, I'll repay you. He said, no, I won't forgive you. And he put him in prison. And that got reported to the Lord, to the King. And the King called back that slave. You read that in verse 32.

And the King said, you wicked slave. Do you know when you don't forgive others? Stop for a moment and think, is there anybody you have not forgiven? You may think you're a child of God. You know what God calls you?

You wicked man. Verse 32, wicked. You might think Almighty God calling you a wicked person. That's serious. I never want the Lord to speak to me like that. I always want him to speak to you as my dear son, my dear daughter, not you wicked man.

But anyone who doesn't forgive others, that's the story here. The Lord calls him a wicked person. You're not even a son, you're a slave and you're a wicked slave. And he says, I forgive you all that you asked me to forgive you.

All the foolish, serious sins you committed. And the small thing that somebody else compared to what you've done against me, it's very small what this guy did. Couldn't you have had mercy on him? And the Lord was moved with anger.

It's a terrible thing when God is angry with us. Most of the time, God's not angry with his children. He's sad. But here's one place where it says he's really angry. He's speaking about his own children just because they won't forgive others.

You know, there are other sins we can commit. God will not be angry, he'll not call you wicked. He'll feel sorry. Okay, I forgive you. You lusted there or you got lost your temper a bit. Sure, you confessed it, it's forgiven.

But when you're not merciful to someone, that's far more serious. It's far more serious than lusting with your mind or watching pornography or... I'm not saying those things are not serious. They are serious, but this is far more serious.

And he handed him over to the torturers, verse 34. You know who the torturers are? Demons. A demon cannot possess a child of God. Demon can never come inside the heart of a believer unless that believer turns away from the Lord and goes away and rebels against the Lord and loses his salvation.

Then he becomes like an unbeliever. Otherwise, a demon can never enter a believer. It's a false teaching propagated in a lot of charismatic Christianity that demons enter believers propagated by some great Bible teachers, but they are teaching contrary to scripture.

Christ and a demon can never dwell in the same heart. Impossible. One has to go. But here it says that torturers torture this person and demons can harass a person from the outside. Job was a very righteous man.

And yet the devil could give him boils all over his body. He couldn't get inside him, but he could trouble him from the outside with God's permission, of course. And here it is with God's permission. I'm handing you over to the torturers.

Why? Not because you lusted after women. Not because you lost your temper at your wife. Not because you were a bit unrighteous with money. Those things are small compared to what you did right now. You did not forgive others.

The way I forgive you, I hope I've emphasized it sufficiently to show you what a serious thing it is not to forgive somebody. It doesn't matter who it is. It doesn't matter how much wrong that other person did against you.

You may say, well, if I keep on forgiving my mother-in-law, she'll keep on taking advantage of me. Aha. Do you believe this promise of scripture, which I have proved for 60 years, one promise, 1 Corinthians 10, verse 13.

God is faithful. He will never allow me to be tempted or you to be tempted beyond our ability. So just because you forgive somebody, you don't be afraid that they'll take advantage of you because God is in control of there.

He can even kill that person if the person is troubling you too much. Sure. I don't have any doubt about that. Or he can stop people. And there are people who have harassed me and troubled me in so many ways through the years.

But when the time came, like the Lord tells the waves of the sea to stop at the seashore and said, thus far and no further. You know how the waves come to the seashore and sometimes you see the waves coming and it looks as if it's going to go right over into the land.

No, it comes to the seashore. If you've gone to a beach, you've seen that. It comes like that. You really think it's going to come over you and it goes back. And in the book of Job, you read, the Lord stops the sea saying thus far and no further.

And I'll tell you this. If you're a child of God and you seek to obey his principles, the Lord will say, thus far and no further. Thus far and no further. That's what he'll always say. He will not allow it to come any further.

He will not allow you to be tempted beyond your ability. But when the temptation comes at a trial from whomever, he'll give you some way of escape. I don't know how that'll be. In different situations, in different ways, but I found that through the years.

He can stop anything. He can stop people trying to kill you. He can drop people trying to take you to court or harass you, make you lose your money. He can stop anything. Yeah. There was one time in my life where people who hated me tried to blow up the car I was driving.

I didn't know it. I was driving along and I don't wanna go into the details, but it didn't happen. God protected me till I reached my home. There's nothing God cannot save you from. I don't wanna give you all the details of that.

But let me assure you, my dear brothers and sisters, your life will be tremendously happy if you learn to be merciful to others. I don't wanna go on more on that. I think I've said enough, but it's very, very, very important.

Purity of Heart and Seeing God

Okay. We go to the next good attitude or right attitude. Matthew 5 and verse 8. Matthew 5 and verse 8. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. So what is purity of heart? That's another thing.

We've already thought of righteousness in verse 6. This must be something more than righteousness. Righteousness is having a clear conscience that my heart, I seek to love everyone. I've sought to be merciful to others.

I've mild, all those qualities are already there, mourning for like sin. Now it talks about purity of heart. It must be something more than what has already been covered. And I believe that refers to, see, there's only one person who's pure, and that's Jesus Christ.

That means having a heart that has no place for anything other than Christ. There's no love in my heart for anyone other than Christ or anything other than Christ. That is one of the conditions of discipleship.

So this is what purity of heart means. Let me turn to Luke 14 on the conditions of discipleship. Understand purity of heart. If anyone loves father or mother more than me, he's not worthy of me, Luke 14, 26.

Or wife or children or brothers, sisters. See, he used the word hatred there. We've talked about this before. But the point is this, I never stopped stressing it. For years and years, I preached that you cannot be a true disciple if you love your father or your mother or your wife or your child or your brother or sister or brothers and sisters of the church more than Christ.

In fact, your love for Christ must be like the light of the sun. And your love for all these other people must be the light of the stars. Yes, there is love there, the light of the stars, but it disappears when the morning sun rises.

In other words, in the presence of the love of Christ, my love for others disappears. It's there, but I can't see it because I can see only Jesus. You know how you look at the sun and then you look around and you can't see other things clearly because your eyes are so full of that blinding light.

That's what it means to be pure in heart, where I love God supremely. In other words, there's no place in my heart for anything other than God. Anything, something other than God is also in my heart. Somebody I love is also there.

And you say, well, how am I supposed to love my parents and my wife and children and all through Christ? When you love your parents through Christ, you'll never do anything wrong to please your parents.

A lot of people want to please their parents. Well, they don't love God with all their hearts. I want to please God. And I'm willing to offend my parents if I have to please God. I'm willing to offend my wife if necessary to please God.

There are very few Christians who live this life of discipleship. And that's why the Lord doesn't speak to them. They don't get revelation. Their lives are not effective in God's kingdom for other people.

They're not radical disciples. That's half-hearted slipshod in their life. And therefore they find that they don't find rivers of living water flowing out from them, blessing people. Imagine when you stand before the Lord one day and God shows you rivers of life could have flowed out from you if you have loved me more than everybody else.

And you would have loved all those people much better. I'll tell you something. You'll love your wife much better if you put Christ first and say, Lord, I love you. All my heart is filled with love for you.

You'll love your wife much better and you'll love your family much better, definitely. So put the Lord first. That's the meaning of a pure heart where there's no place and no place for possessions. That's the other condition, a man who doesn't give up all his possessions.

You know, in the Old Testament, the big sin was idolatry that God condemned more than anything else. And Christians have got idols in their heart. Many Christians. Money is one of the biggest idols that Christians worship.

Money or God, you cannot love both. It is impossible. You have to make a choice. And sometime or the other, if you make that choice and stick to it, your life will be tremendously useful to God. I believe God could use many of you far more than he's doing right now.

If you say, Lord, there'll be no place for money in my heart. You'll be there. And I believe you'll provide for me whatever I need. I've proved it for more than a half a century, for more than 50 years.

You put God first, he'll take care of all your needs. So there's amazing what God can do when you are pure in heart and when your heart is full of God alone, what happens is you are able to see his face more clearly and you'll be able to serve him more fully.

Otherwise, you'll only be serving people. You know, they say you must love people and serve them. I agree. But I say there's a lot of difference between serving people and serving God. I don't want to serve people.

I want to serve God. And that way I serve people much better than if I try to serve people themselves. I don't know whether you have seen this. I believe this is related to blessed are the pure in heart because they shall see God.

That means if my heart is like this, I'll be able to see God all the time. I'll speak to him face to face. Like God said about Moses, I speak to Moses face to face. And that's what I want. I want to be able to see God.

Seeing God in Trials and Opposition

Another meaning of this is that if my heart is pure, I'll see God in every situation. I'll never see Judas Iscariot coming to betray me, no. I'll see my heavenly father giving me a cup to drink like Jesus did in Gethsemane.

Peter saw Judas Iscariot because he didn't see God there. And he took out a sword to fight. We take out a sword to fight because we don't see God in that situation. We see Judas. We see the Roman soldiers and we want to take out our sword and fight.

Jesus said, put your sword back. He said, the cup which my father has given me, shall I not drink it? Even in that desperate situation, he saw God because his heart was pure. Hanging on the cross, forsaken by his father.

He saw God. He said, father, forgive them. They don't even know what they're doing. A person who sees God will always react like that. He'll never fight. And if someone does come to hurt him, and like Malchus, that soldier, that servant, Peter cut off his ear and Jesus healed it immediately.

We'll do good to the fellow who's come to harm us. When you see God, that's how you are. You'll be like God, doing good to the fellow who's come to harm you. So that's the meaning of seeing God. Blessed are the pure in heart.

And if you're not seeing God in every situation, if you find yourself facing a situation right now, and you can't see God there, you only see all the evil people trying to harm you. The problem is not with those people.