The Witness of One Man — Zac Poonen

God's Thoughts and the Privacy of the Human Mind

I want to turn first of all to a verse in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. There is a private area that God has given all of us where no one is allowed to come in. Not even our closest friends, wife, husband.

And that is our thoughts, our mind. You can be married for 70 years and your husband and wife can't read your thoughts or mind. It's a very private area. Very, very private. And it is in that area, you know, it's an area we like to keep to ourselves.

We select what thoughts of ours we share with others. With some we will share some of our thoughts. With some others a little more of our thoughts. But we like to keep this area very private. I don't think any of us would like people to enter our thought lab.

Now I want you to see how God is. God has also got thoughts. But he wants to share all his thoughts with us. It's amazing. Think of a husband who says to his wife, I want to share everything that is in my mind with you.

And think if that wife acts disinterested and say, well, okay, go ahead, I've got other things to do. There won't be much fellowship with them, between them. But think how delighted that husband will be who wants to share all his thoughts with his wife.

And the wife is so eager, sets aside thoughts, things that she thinks are important. And sits and listens to her husband. Particularly if she realizes that her husband is a much wiser and more godly man than she is.

And there's a lot she can benefit by listening to him. Very often, you know, there is a saying in English, that familiarity breeds contempt. That means the more familiar we become with one another, we don't value one another so much.

And very often, wives don't care much for what their husbands are saying. And say, ah, I've got other things to do. And very often that happens also in our relationship with God. Can you think back to your early days when you were first converted?

How you were so eager to read the Bible. So eager to know about God. So eager to keep yourself pure and attend all the meetings and everything else. But after a period of time, familiarity with God has brought contempt.

That means you take a lot of things for granted. Now in 1 Corinthians 2 we read, verse 11, Who among men knows the thoughts of a man, except the spirit of the man which is in him? Our thoughts are so private that even the devil cannot hear them.

The devil can hear your words, but he cannot hear your thoughts. If you pray in your thoughts, the devil can't hear you. If you pray in an unknown tongue, the devil can't understand you. But when you pray in a known tongue, of course the devil understands.

He hears. The devil cannot understand your thoughts. He cannot hear your thoughts. And one of the clearest proofs I've discovered of that is in casting out demons. I can never cast out a demon by thinking in my mind, Get out of him in Jesus' name, Satan.

I think that in my mind nothing happens. Because that demon cannot hear my thoughts. I have to speak it. In Jesus' name, get out of him. And the demon is gone. Even Jesus could not cast out demons with his thoughts.

He had to speak and command the demon to go. So there are many instances like that which prove to us that the devil cannot hear our thoughts. He cannot understand our thoughts. But he's very sharp and very clever.

And when he sees us dreaming in a particular way, he guesses what type of thoughts are going on in our mind. And he stimulates us. Because he's watched men for 6 ,000 years. And when he sees a certain look in their eyes, he knows what's going on in their mind.

But he can't read their thoughts. So it says here, Even so, the thoughts of God, no one knows except the Spirit of God. When God speaks something into my spirit, the devil can't hear it. I'm very thankful.

He can't hear it. If he spoke audibly like Abraham... Oh, the devil can hear that. But today we have a relationship with Jesus that is like a bride and a bridegroom. And supposing you're... You know, when you want to say some very loving words to your wife in your bedroom, you use a microphone and make sure everybody hears what you're saying.

No. You don't want anybody to hear what you're saying to your wife. And that's the type of relationship we need to have with God. And God wants to speak to us, not audibly, but in our thoughts. This is New Covenant.

This is New Covenant privilege. And it says here, Now we have received, verse 12, not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God. This is why the baptism in the Holy Spirit, being filled with the Holy Spirit, is so important.

We receive the fullness of the Spirit so that the primary reason is so that we may know the things that are freely given to us by God. Now, here is a quotation from the Old Testament, Isaiah 64, in verse 9.

Just as it is written, The things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, which have not entered into the heart of man, God has prepared for those who love him. Now when you read that, eye has not seen, ear has not heard, it's not even entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him.

Many, many people think of heaven. Oh brother, your eye has not seen, your ear has not heard, it has not entered into your mind what wonderful things God has prepared for you in heaven. That's true, but that's not what this verse is talking about.

And the proof of that is the next verse, but God has already revealed them to us through the Holy Spirit. You can't say anymore that human eyes and human ears can't understand it, but God has revealed them to us through the Holy Spirit.

And we can know the things that are freely given to us by God. It's not enough to read the Bible, you must be filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has got to take that scripture and show you what you have been given freely by God.

Everything God gives is free. Someone said, the devil is always stealing, man is always selling, and God is always giving things free. When you steal, you're like the devil. When you sell, people sell their sermons.

Go to the internet, you'll find sermons are sold. Many preachers who are invited to speak in different conferences today, you have to pay a lot of money to get them there. They sell their ministry. That's human nature, to sell.

Whatever I do, if I work hard, I must get some profit out of it. But God gives everything free. And the more you become like God, the more you will give everything free. Because, like Jesus told his disciples, freely you receive, freely give.

Freely you receive, freely give. So God wants us to know the things that are freely given to us by God. There's no charge. You don't have to do any works. They are given freely, we have to receive them by faith.

So, God wants to share his thoughts with us. That's why I used that expression the other day, thinking God's thoughts after him. God has revealed his thoughts in the scriptures, and as I read them and meditate on them, I can think God's thoughts after him, and I can begin to think like God.

The Old Testament and Understanding God's Ways

Old Testament and New Testament. The Word of God. I find great profit in reading the Old Testament, just because I preach so much that the Old Covenant has been abolished, and the New Covenant has been established.

People sometimes misunderstand, saying, does it mean we don't have to read the Old Testament? I said this word, Old Testament, is unfortunately used to refer to the 39 books, the first 39 books in the Bible, but let me tell you something, God never called those books the Old Testament.

It's man. You read, you see the beginning of your Bible, and it says there, Old Testament. That's not inspiring. Man has put that word there. The inspired word begins with, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

But man has called it Old Testament. Well, it's a convenient name to refer to that section, but the Testament or Covenant refers to what God made with Israel through Moses. That has been abolished. These 39 books are the Bible.

That's not the Old Testament. That's not been abolished. We have to study it. I find, for example, tremendous profit in studying Jeremiah and Ezekiel, particularly when I observe Babylonian Christianity today.

I'm studying the book of Daniel. These men who were in Babylon and made a difference for God, and Zechariah and Haggai, tremendous books that speak about people who came out of Babylon and built Jerusalem.

If you go to our website, we have a whole series of studies from Babylon to Jerusalem. It is very relevant to the times in which we live. Practically applying it to build new covenant churches. So, to build, to do things God's way, we must understand God's thoughts.

And in that connection, we must look at another verse. Isaiah 55, it says,. In Isaiah 55, verse 8 and 9, God says, My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts. Because as the heavens are high, Isaiah 55, 9,.

As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. We are thinking about the thoughts of God, which we want to have. I want to have the thoughts of God.

I want to think like Jesus thinks. In everything. It's my constant prayer. Lord, I want to look at money the way Jesus looked at money. I want to handle money the way Jesus handled money. I want to look at women the way Jesus looked at women.

I want to look at sinners the way Jesus looked at sinners. I want to look at divorcees. Divorcees, the way Jesus looked at that Samaritan woman who was divorced five times. I want to look at women caught in adultery, the way Jesus looked with compassion upon that woman caught in adultery.

I want to look at legalists and Pharisees, the way Jesus looked at Pharisees. Do you know that legalism is worse than adultery? You see that in John chapter 8, verse 1 to 12. Jesus standing here, the legalists on one side, a woman caught in adultery on the other side.

And the word of God was very clear in the Old Testament. A woman who's caught in adultery must be stoned to death. And so when the Pharisees quoted that verse, they were absolutely right. So Jesus said, that's right, I can't stop you from stoning her because the Bible says you must stone her.

Moses said that, I agree. But let the one who is without sin throw the first stone. And there were these bunch of legalists. Their mouth was shut. Oh, Jesus was great at shutting the mouths of legalists.

I want to be a preacher like Jesus who shuts the mouth of legalists. And they went away one by one by one till there was one man left without sin who was qualified, according to Jesus' own word, to pick up a stone and stone her.

And that was Jesus himself. But Jesus doesn't throw stones. He's got no stones in his pockets. And we can say that Jesus disobeyed the letter of Scripture by not stoning that woman because he obeyed the spirit of Scripture.

Legalists go by the letter. Look at that verse. And you'll find that Jesus did disobey the letter of Scripture. But he obeyed the spirit of it. You read of another time when a woman who was a prostitute brought a vial full of very expensive perfume.

And if you see the prices of perfumes nowadays, it must have been very expensive in those days. In fact, Judas Iscariot said in one place, it cost 300 denarii, means one year's wages. What is one year's wages for you?

That was the cost of one vial of perfume in those days. Where do you think this poor prostitute got that money from? The only job she ever did was prostitution. She earned money as a harlot. And there's a verse in Deuteronomy which says, chapter 22 I think, which says, you must never bring the money a prostitute earns, a harlot earns, into God's house.

It's an abomination to God. And you cannot bring what money a man earns as a homosexual into God's house. That's also written there. It's written, you shall not bring the wages of a harlot or the hire of a dog into the house of God.

And here was this woman bringing into the feet of Almighty God the hire that she got as a prostitute. Do you think Jesus knew that? Of course he knows. And he accepted it. That's what disturbs Simon. If this man was a prophet, he would have known that verse in Deuteronomy.

And he would have known this woman can't bring that. Jesus disobeyed the letter of scripture to obey the spirit of scripture. There are many brothers who are so careful about the letter and miss the spirit.

So what is God saying? My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts. Your whole way of thinking is different from mine. Even when you become a Christian, you go by the letter of the law.

And one of the tragic things I have seen, I've seen it in CFC also, one of the tragic things, people who have lived in such terrible sin themselves are some of the biggest legalists of all. They have forgotten what they were in their former days.

They have taken the forgiveness of Christ lightly. God is not a legalist. Once when he spoke about saying, you've got to eat my flesh and drink my blood, John chapter 6, people got offended with Jesus.

It says many of his disciples went away. And he didn't call them back and say, hang on, hang on, hang on, let me explain that. I'm not asking you to be cannibals. I don't really mean my flesh. I don't really mean my blood.

I'm symbolically speaking. No explanation. Jesus knew that these people who get offended with a word like that were not serious disciples. If they get offended and go, he said, okay, I just mentioned one sentence.

The words I speak are spirit and life. They left him. Many of his disciples left him, you read. But Peter stuck with him. Jesus said, as it were, you can also go if you wish. And he said, Lord, to whom shall we go?

These are the words of eternal life. But if one of those fellows who had left at that time had come to Peter later on and say, you said these are the words of eternal life. What did you mean? You explain to me.

What did Jesus mean by eating his flesh and drinking his blood? Can you explain? Peter would have said, listen, brother, I'm just a fisherman. I can't explain all these things. Then how do you say these are the words of eternal life when you couldn't explain that meaning of those words?

Peter would have said, I don't need to explain. I know the man. I know the man behind those words. I watched him. I've never seen a man live like that. I've never seen a man live by those principles in all my life.

And even if I can't understand the words he speaks, because maybe they are above my head, I know the man, and I trust him. I've seen that his words are the words of eternal life. A legalist won't go by that.

A legalist will examine him. What does it mean, eat my flesh, drink my blood? And I want to say to you, my brothers and sisters, it is your legalism, perhaps, that has prevented you from being a burning bush.

You could have been that many years ago. But you haven't understood the spirit of Christ. You've gone by the letter of the law. And you've become a prisoner of the letter instead of being a servant of the Holy Spirit.

Many Christians are prisoners of the letter. And they jump on other people who do something against the letter. Ah! You committed adultery! Stone her to death! The Lord says, you haven't understood my ways.

You don't know my thoughts. This is what destroys churches. So as Jesus stood there between the adulteress and the legalists, whose side did he take? The side of the adulteress. Legalism is worse than adultery.

Have you understood that? If you're an elder brother and you commit adultery, you'd be ashamed of yourself. What if you're a legalist? You should be more ashamed of yourself, but you're not. Because you've not tried to understand God, you're trying to understand the book.

Like the Pharisees, study the book, study the book, study the book, and preach this verse and that verse. See what it says here? Are you doing it? That's what I want to liberate people from. Dear brother or sister, try to understand the heart of God.

Eternal life, Jesus said in John 17 3, is not to know the Bible. It is to know God. This is eternal life, that they might know the Bible? No! This is eternal life, that they might know thee, the only true God.

And Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. This is only a channel, a means, by which I can know God. By which I can see Jesus. And it's a very sad thing, when you get stuck in this black print on white paper.

Black print on white paper. You get stuck here, instead of seeing this as a channel to know the creator of this universe. Multitudes of people, Bible colleges are full of people, teaching people to look at this black print on white paper, analyze it and study it and find out what this scholar and that scholar said about this black print on white paper.

One of the things I'm immensely thankful to God for, is that I never went to a Bible school. The greatest men of God who have influenced me in my life, were all men who never went to a Bible school. It's very difficult to get out, certain things out of our system.

There is hope, because Paul went to a Bible school for three years under Gamaliel. And that's why God had to send him to three years into Arabia, to get all that trash out of his head. So, if you're willing to get all that trash out of your head, then there's some hope.

But otherwise it's very difficult. Because there's this intellectual study. I'd like to see a Bible school where they teach you to know God. And teach you to understand the thoughts of God and the heart of God.

I mean, if a day comes when I'm too old to travel and I have to be in Bangalore, I'd like to run a Bible school like that. Where, so let's talk about God. Let's try to understand his thoughts. Let's try to understand the spirit of Christ.

And let's try and get that spirit. That's the greatest need. And then, you see, it's that spirit that makes the fire to burn. So, to understand God's thoughts. And the devil is always trying to divert us.

Not necessarily into sin. He'll try sin. But if he can't succeed with sin, he'll try to make you a legalist. And you'll be just as useless to God as the other person who's fallen into sin. Let me turn you again to the book of Job.

Job, Daniel, and the Witness of One Godly Person

So, to understand the thoughts of God. What is God actually looking for on the earth? I read you that verse the other day in Acts 14. He did not leave himself without a witness. I believe what God needs in India is a witness to his name.

He doesn't have to be very large in number. But there must be a witness to everything that he stands for. Not one or two things. I don't believe God is primarily interested in evangelizing India. Now, that sounds a terrible thing to say.

I'm not afraid to say it. I believe God wants a witness to the name of Jesus Christ in India. And wherever you live, I believe God wants a witness to the name of Jesus Christ in your village, in your town.

A pure testimony. And that's the testimony we must preserve. A pure testimony. What did Jesus say? All men will know you're my disciples when you love one another. Now, we would think it shouldn't be like that.

Jesus made a mistake. People will know you're my disciples when you love them. That sounds more reasonable. That's what the psychologist will tell you. Show your love to others and thus show them that you're Christians.

Sounds so nice. Except that Jesus didn't say it. And why do we think like that? Because we think our ways and our thoughts are superior to God's thoughts. They're not. My ways are not your ways. You think that the best way to be a witness to other people is show love to them.

Be good to them. Give them gifts. Heal their diseases. Start a school to educate them. A lot of missionaries have tried that. And start a hospital to help heal their diseases. It's all good. But Jesus didn't say that.

That's what I'm saying. Jesus said, if you want to be a witness to others, about me, love one another in the church. Love one another. Isn't that a very selfish thing? God says, my ways are not your ways.

My thoughts are not your thoughts. Through many, many years, I have learned one thing. That I'm wrong. When I try to think my own thoughts, God's thoughts are not the same. And the cleverer I am, the more difficult it is to understand scripture.

Jesus said once in Matthew 11, 25, Father, I thank you that you have hidden these things from the clever and the intelligent and revealed them to babes. If you want to understand God's thoughts, become a babe.

Say, Lord, I don't understand. Please teach me. When you come to the book of Job, the first book that God wrote in the Bible, we see what God wanted on the earth. He didn't want hundreds of people. He wanted one man.

Look at the tremendous influence that one man had. It's something God could boast about to Satan. How many people did he need in Babylon? Daniel. He alone was enough. Three others joined him, good. There was just four people.

It wasn't a big church. But look at the influence of one man, Daniel. How he could influence. He influenced only three others. But that was a fantastic witness right from the king downwards to the nation.

In Noah's time, God was happy with one man, one family. One family on the whole earth. Would you be happy to be one family totally committed to God, you and your children and your wife and their families totally living for God, one family and nobody else is interested in the high standards you preach?

Never mind. That is what God is looking for. We need to see what this burning bush is. God would rather have one bush completely on fire than a hundred bushes that are half on fire. I believe that. God would rather have one family totally on fire for God, father, mother, children, everyone, than have a whole heart of half-hearted families.

I believe that. One burning bush accomplishes more for God than a hundred or a thousand half-burning ones. And that's why we must determine that every area of our life is on fire for God. Every area surrendered.

Every area of my life, I'm trying to understand the thoughts of God and say, Lord, there must be a reason why you commanded this. I may not understand the reason. Like Peter would have said, I don't understand what Jesus meant when he said, eat my flesh and drink my blood.

But I know the man. And therefore I trust him. That even if I can't understand it, I know these words are eternal life. One day I will understand it. And later on Peter did understand it. For example, baptism.

Water baptism. You can say, what is there in water baptism? Just dip a person in the water. Does it matter whether you sprinkle on the head or dip or sometimes stand in the water and pour water on the head?

I met people who came from the Anabaptist background who were poured water on their head as adults after they were born again. And then they realized that that is not the symbolism of baptism. Baptism is burial.

And when you, a man is dead, you don't just pour sand on his head. You put him completely underground. And so they realized that they were not properly baptized. Even though they had water poured on their head when they were born again.

And you know what they did? The wholehearted ones, they got baptized properly. You say, ah, it doesn't matter so much. See, it's that attitude where we think we know better than God. Ah, it doesn't matter.

It's in the little things. You remember when Jesus went for baptism to John the Baptist. I can imagine as he went along, the devil could have said to him, you don't need to be baptized. Why do you need to be baptized?

All these sinners. Or he would have said, if you stand in that line of sinners, people will misunderstand you. They'll think you had some secret sin in your life to confess. And that's why you're lying.

Don't give rise to such misunderstanding. Oh, the devil has got so many arguments. He comes to us with such arguments. There's only one answer to those arguments. What does God's word say? Jesus rejected the devil long before he went into the wilderness temptation.

And he said to John the Baptist, thus I have to fulfill all righteousness. I'm going to be baptized. Then he came up out of the water. The Spirit of God came upon him and said, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased.

And I believe that always happens. Whenever a person simply obeys God, even if people around him tell him, don't do it, don't do it. Oh, there's no need. And your reason says there's no need to do it.

And you say, Lord, I'm going to obey you. As you come up out of the water, you'll hear the voice of heaven saying, I'm pleased with you. And the Spirit of God will come upon you. I believe some of you have missed something from heaven because there's something God spoke to you and your reason said, oh, that's not so important.

You know what is the biggest enemy of faith? Reason. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean upon your reason. Proverbs 3, verse 5 and 6 is the enemy of faith. I'll tell you there are many things I don't understand.

But I do it. I could not explain the meaning of baptism when I got baptized. I can explain it now. The 3 ,000 people who got baptized on the day of Pentecost, they had not read Romans chapter 6. Romans chapter 6 was not even written for the next 30 years.

How did people get baptized then? Without understanding. It was a simple act of obedience. They admitted this, submitted to what God had said. Breaking of bread and many other things like that. Why did God give the gift of tongues on the day of Pentecost when he sees the tremendous amount of confusion that is with that gift and the counterfeits in the 20th century?

Is it a mistake that God said, oh, I'm sorry I gave this gift of tongues, I better take it back. God never makes a mistake. He always does it perfectly the first time. That's what I believe. I don't understand, but I believe that God did it perfectly the first time.

It was absolutely right that he gave them the gift of tongues and that it continued even 30 years later in the church in Corinth and it's a gift of the Holy Spirit. There are many things like that. If you use your reason, I tell you there's no need to speak in tongues at all.

There are many things in the Christian life. When you understand the thoughts of God, you find it's not exactly according to reason. Some things go against reason. They are not, I'm sorry, not against reason.

What I mean is your reason has not risen high enough to understand it. Let's put it like that. You know, if you talk to a second standard student about trigonometry and physics and chemistry and calculus and things like that, he says, I can't understand all that.

It's not because those things are wrong. They are beyond his level of understanding. They are right. He'll understand them 10 years later. So there are many things in scripture which are not against your reason but beyond your reason.

One day you will understand. And I've discovered many things as I've gone along that I've understood which I could never understand 20, 30 years ago. So when we come to God and say, Lord, there are many things I don't understand, but I want my ways to be more in alignment with your ways.

I want to be free from this living according to the letter of scripture. I want to obey the spirit of scripture. So in the first book that God wrote, in the book of Job, I told you God showed the testimony of a man who was a godly man who brought up a godly family and who was the target of Satan.

Job's Integrity, Trials, and the Limits of Legalism

Wherever Satan finds a godly, upright man, he targets him in one way or the other. But God, he can't touch him without God's permission. There's a threefold hedge around every man of God. Satan made the mistake of mentioning it here, and so I know it, that there's a hedge around me, there's a hedge around my family, and there's a hedge around all my possessions.

That's in Job chapter 1, verse 10. It was a tremendous comfort for me when I discovered the truth of these words that Satan said. When Satan speaks to God, he speaks the truth. When he speaks to me, he tells lies.

But when he speaks to God, he can't tell lies. So I know when he speaks to God, that you have, you know, surrounded him, made a hedge, verse 10, around him, his family, and his possessions. I see there's a threefold hedge around me, around my life, my body.

The devil can't touch my body. Around my family. My family is blessed because I'm a righteous man. And your family is blessed if you're a righteous man and not a legalist. And my possessions, God is interested in my business and my bank account.

The devil can't touch it. God may allow me to face certain losses, to enable me to be free from the love of money, etc. But anything that Satan does is with God's permission. So there's tremendous comfort in knowing that.

These are the things God wants to reveal. That when a man stands for Him, and wants to be a witness for God in the midst of so many people who are not, God will protect him and take care of him in amazing ways.

Satanist churches can target him or pray against him. It makes absolutely no difference. He's got this threefold hedge. And the way to remain within this threefold hedge, my brother, sister, is very, very simple.

You have to always humble yourself. That's all. Remain in humility, and this threefold hedge will be around you until the day Jesus comes. You lift up your head, and the sniper of the devil gets you. That's why we've got to be very careful when God blesses us.

You've often heard me say, it's very easy for God to bless a man. It's very difficult for God to keep him humble after He has blessed him. And that's why it's very important when God has blessed us in any way, or our children, that we keep our face in the dust and make a deliberate effort to do that.

The other thing we see in the book of Job is sometimes a man, who's a man of God, may have a very difficult wife. So, you know, some of you may have difficult wives, or difficult husbands, and you may get discouraged and say, well, how can I be a godly man with such a wife like this?

Well, the first book in the Bible tells us about a man of God who had a very difficult wife. But I think by the end of the book, chapter 42, Job's life changed his wife. Because she had ten more children through Job, and she saw, and I believe she got converted, by the influence of a man who would not compromise in order to please his wife.

He did not do what his wife told him. He was upright. Don't ever blame your wife for your lack of spirituality. The first book in the Bible is about a man of God who had a very difficult wife. But he still retained his integrity.

The other thing we read is that a genuine man of God like Job will have a lot of people who are jealous of him. Those three preachers that you read in the book of Job, Bildad, Zophar, Eliphas, they were preachers, and if you read the things they said about God, almost everything they said was right.

In fact, one of them is quoted by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 3. He catches the wise in his own craftiness. You know who said that? It's one of these preachers. So what they said was right. There are people in the world who sometimes say things that are right.

It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. It's not in the Bible, but it's a very true statement. So these three people said what was right, but they are the first examples in the Bible of legalists.

Right in the beginning of the Bible, let's see what all God teaches in the first book of the Bible. A man of God will be the target of Satan. A man of God will seek to bring up his children in a godly way and pray for them.