Living Hope: Pursuing Holiness Through Christ's Love

"so it's a double hope that we have we will see him as he is most people have only that one hope but here it speaks up a double hope we see him as he is be like him and here is the way we can know whether you really have this hope of Christ's coming you know just like faith can be a dead faith or a living faith James says there's a lot of difference between dead faith and living faith in the same way the hope of our hope of seeing Christ can also be a dead hope or a living hope and the only way to know which is living in which his dead is like this when in the case of faith James says in chapter 2 that faith without works is dead only faith produces works it's alive that's fairly well known the faith which is only intellectual in the mind is a dead faith it will produce his works of repentance and obedience in our life then it is living in the same way there's a dead hope and a Living Hope and I don't think most Christians have ever thought about that here it says that if you really have this hope as a Living Hope not as a intellectual fact I mean let's compare it with faith what is dead faith dead faith is to know in my mind many things the Bible is the Word of God God is a Trinity Jesus came to earth the Son of God died for the sins of the world rose again ascended to heaven if you believe in Christ your sins can be forgiven you can be filled with the Holy Spirit all these effects but as long as we don't experience it is dead it's only when we experience the reality of it and it produces change in our life faith with works then it is alive in fact James says that there's as much difference between dead faith and living faith as within a dead man and a living man you see a dead man can have ten fingers ten toes two eyes two years and every part of his body but the only thing he doesn't have his life he doesn't have breath so faith that does not produce works of obedience to God is a dead faith like that in the same way it speaks here of a Living Hope a dead hope is just intellectual knowledge and there are a lot of people who study about the tribulation that's coming in the seven years of tribulation about the Antichrist and they argue about what is the number 666 and many other facts about the future and they look around in the world and they talk about the mark of the beast and so many things about various nations rising up in war and that's all proof of the second coming it's all there but there is only one way that you can know your hope is not a dead hope for a living hope and that is it says here in verse three everyone who has this hope purifies himself just as he is pure so I told you that many people there's only one side of the hope they have and that is that Christ will come again but the Bible says it's a double hole it's like and if you don't have the other part of that hope it's not the real hope that is it's like a coin if only one side of a coin is printed or one side of a currency note is printed the other side is blank it's a counterfeit so if you have a hope with one side printed Christ is coming again and the other side we will be like him not care that's a dead hope it's a counterfeit we need to see one John 3:3 very clearly two things let me repeat we he will we will see him as he is one side of the nog coin the other side we shall be like him so if this is our hole then it says we will purify ourselves just as he is pure our life's passion will be to purify ourselves now the Bible speaks about God cleansing us and we cleansing ourselves both are needed that's the correct balance God cleanses us concerning our past life I can never cleanse away my past life we know that all our righteousness is like filthy rags and any amount of good works I do cannot cleanse even one sin in my past life God has to do it completely by himself I don't touch that that is through the death of Christ that my past is taken care of but then the Bible speaks in a number of places of our cleansing ourselves and my my guess is right I would say that 90% of Christians believers in the world he never understand the distinction between God cleansing us and we cleansing ourselves they think God does everything let me show you a scripture what does it say here he who has this hope purifies himself he's not asking God to purify him of course he needs God's help we need God's help for everything in the Christian life but the responsibility is his to purify himself and that is how we prove my hope is not a dead hope it's a Living Hope now if I don't do that and whatever hope I say I have is a dead halt and that's as useless as a dead faith nominal Christians most of you are if not all of you are born-again though so you know the difference between a nominal Christian and a born-again Christian what is the difference is there anything you believe in the Bible which the nominal Christian doesn't believe every denomination of Christianity weathers Roman Catholic or Baptist or Methodist or you know people are not born again all of them would believe that there's a Trinity the Bible is the Word of God Jesus Christ is the son of God he came to die for the sins of the world all these denominations believe it but they are nominal Christians the time came you you and I were like that too but a time came in our life when we opened our life and let the Holy Spirit make these truths real in us then we were born again and you know the difference between a born-again Christian and one of the nominal Christian is like the difference between a dead man and the living man so that we understand in the same way there's a lot of difference between a dead hope and a living hope he who has a living hope purifies himself those are not my words every one verse 3 anyone who claims to have this hope as a living hope the proof is this he will purify himself and when does he stop purifying himself when he reaches it says in verse 3 the standard of purity of Jesus Christ so in other words he's constantly purifying himself till he reaches that standard so if you are not doing that daily I'm sorry to say your hope is a dead hope you prevalent probably never knew that - today but it's good to know it let me show you another verse where also it speaks about cleansing ourselves in second Corinthians just like we read here and 1 John 3:3 we purify ourselves I told you God cleanses us from the past and in the present we purify ourselves now 2nd corinthians 7 verse 1 having these promises what are the promises in previous verses I will be a father to you 2nd Corinthians 6:18 and you'll be my sons and daughters that's a tremendous honor if you have these promises now see what it says let us cleanse ourselves it's not God cleansing us just like we read in 1 John 3:3 he who has this yoke purifies himself let us cleanse ourselves have you ever tried to understand what does that mean to cleanse yourself and what should you cleanse yourself from from all defilement of the flesh and the spirit and thus perfecting holiness in the fear of God if your aim in life is only to go to heaven when you die and you don't need these verses but if your aim in life is to please the Lord before you see him face to face then this verse is a very important verse even the other one we read in 1 John 3 because when we see Jesus face-to-face let me tell you what is gonna happen and what you will feel like in that day you will understand the depth and greatness of his love for you and how much he suffered in order to save you and me from our sin I don't think we understand it fully I think God has given me a little revelation of what he suffered but we don't understand it fully for many years as a young Christian all I knew about Christ's suffering was the physical suffering every movie that I saw of Jesus you know there are many movies about Christ like Passion of the Christ and all and when I see it I weep because you really see the look at the way he they whipped him and hammered him and nailed him to the cross and I mean he had to die for my sins but why did he have to be whipped and beaten man God could have saved him or saved all that but God allowed all that and when I see all that I weep and I've done that from my youngest Christian age but I found that after I wept and all that it was it was passing it was finished a couple of days later I am still living for myself just like before still defeated by the same old sins I was defeated by even earlier that's how it was for many years so I found that all that temporary moving of our heart because of seeing the physical suffering of Christ doesn't produce a lasting change in our life it's only temporary and if you're honest you'll have to say the same thing that when you see that you're moved temporarily but but I as I meditated more much later in my Christian life as I grew and I said lord I want to know more about what actually you suffered you know God doesn't show us more than you are eager to know if you are satisfied with your current knowledge of the Lord that's all you'll have God wants us to grow in the knowledge of the Lord the Bible says eternal life John 17:3 is to know God and Jesus Christ and Paul told Timothy to lay hold of eternal life in 1 Timothy 6:17 and lay hold of eternal life 1 Timothy 6 13 and 17 what does that mean Timothy is about 45 years old and Paul tells him to lay hold of eternal life is it just being born again my guess is that the average Christian today does not know what it is to lay hold of eternal life if you read that verse in 1 Timothy 6 how do you understand it lay hold of eternal I will say I've already got it but Timothy already had it why is Paul telling you to lay hold of it that's because we think of eternal life as living forever but Jesus defined eternal life as John 17:3 eternal life is to know God and to Jesus Christ whom he has sent so to lay hold of it is to get to know God and Jesus better and better and better just like the day a young lady is married to a man he's her husband but he does she doesn't know him as she if she really if they really live together happily every year she'll get to know him better and better and better and better that's how we're supposed to know Jesus better and better and better and better and better for example if one week after marriage somebody came to this newly married couples house and asked the lady the wife the husband is not at home and he asks her here's a particular problem concerning in your this situation what do you think your husband would do in this situation what do you think we should do your husband should take a decision can you tell me what your what do you think your husband is not here can you take a decision for him she'd say I don't know I've been married just one week I don't know what decision he'll take but if they have lived together happily and known each other their ways of life you want meat that same wife 15 years later and this man comes in US what do you think your husband will do in this situation she say I'll tell you what do you do why she has come to know him better and better than better that she doesn't have to ring up her husband to find out what to do she knows what he will do that is an indication of a wife who's come to know her husband that is eternal life to know Jesus like that John 17:3 that in the beginning when I am converted I don't know what is God's will it's like I'm a new wife what would Jesus do here I don't know but 15 years later I should not say I don't know there are believers who you not 15-20 years they say I don't know well you should be knowing imagine a wife who's married for 15-20 years is I don't know what my husband would do in this situation and that's not a good marriage and that's not a good marriage you have a Jesus Christ if after 15-20 years you don't know what he would do you know one of the things I discovered in my Christian life was that in my early days as an born-again believer in the early years I would get some very specific answers from God even in my Bible reading clearly what shall I do here Lord and I would get an answer and sometimes those answers very were very significant answers you see like I remember once many years as long long ago before I got married more than 50 years ago I had gone for a student camp way back way up in Gujarat from my home in Vellore and I was single those days and this campus for one week and the day I landed in Ahmedabad I got a telegram from my father saying the doctors have diagnosed me with cancer please come home immediately because they advised an immediate operation my father was old and I was the only child in the country or I was the only older mature older one who is available and I said okay but I had just arrived there for the camp from the campus for one week so I began to seek the Lord and said what shall I do and I sought the Lord and it was still about the 25th of October or something and the campus to go on for one week so that particular day my Bible reading was in Deuteronomy and I read in Deuteronomy in Deuteronomy chapter 1 verse 3 that on the first day of the eleventh month the 40th year Moses spoke and the Lord said in verse 6 you have stayed long enough now turn and set your journey and go home so I said okay on the first day of the eleventh month so I said okay it's the 25th of October today I will book my ticket back not for tomorrow but for the first of November now I know first day at eleven but in Israel with something else but for me it was like that first of November and the camp was to finish on the second I said they can take care of it for one day so I wrote sent a telegram back those days there were no phones and all telegram I said dad I'm gonna come only or maybe third of November because I started my journey from here in the first I can't come earlier so if he that was on the basis of something God specifically told me not a voice from heaven I was just my daily reading and when I reached home in Vellore my dad said since you were delayed by one week you didn't come in time I sent the x-ray to another expert radiologist and that person said that was the wrong diagnosis you don't have cancer so you don't have to have an operation and he never had an operation never had cancer in his whole life and I said wow how thankful I am that for a small thing like that I didn't just immediately rush back but I prayed and said Lord what do you want me to do and God would speak to me specifically but as time went on as I've grown in the Christian life I find that God does not speak to me specifically like that now now when I want some guidance in something and I look in my daily reading I don't find anything in fact the next year after that in 1968 when I was seeking God whether in the same year actually in 67 when I was seeking God about marriage and there was this proposal for Annie who's now my wife God spoke to me specifically from the Word of God and showed me that Annie was to be my wife I'm not gonna show you that verse it's not important I showed it to my wife her name was there and I said Lord this is amazing but now over the years I find many times I'm seeking the Lord about something and I read my daily portion there's nothing there and so as I grew I found that I found less and less of this spectacular guidance so I must began to think and now I know the answer but I began to think what does this mean does it mean that God's not speaking to me does it mean I'm back slidden or I don't hear God because I do hear God very clearly when I have a message when I asked a lot what is the message I have to speak to your people very clearly in my heart but I don't seem to get clear guidance and then I got the answer one day from the Lord the Lord said when you're young I have to tell you every little thing every little step' that's because you're like a little child oh you like you tell your children brush your teeth change your clothes take a shower go to bed do your homework but when you become 25 years old you don't tell them your son brush your teeth go to bed take a shower no you don't tell 25 year olds things like that and so the Lord says you're grown-up why don't you tell your 25 year old to brush his teeth and take a shower because he's doing it he knows it himself what to do he doesn't need to consult dad and mom or be careful when you cross the street 25 year old doesn't know meat that and so I was encouraged to know that when we grow spiritually God doesn't have to speak so spectacularly when God speaks like that to you it's very often because you're still a child so I'm not impressed by all these so-called prophets who say God said this to me and God said that to me now God spoke to me like that when I was 2 years old but I'm more than 50 in the Lord now and he doesn't tell me to brush my teeth and take a shower now I I know what to do and I know so if you're experiencing something like that in your life don't get discouraged it just means you're growing up that I mean if you're still doing the wrong things for example you have to tell a child don't put that mud in your mouth it doesn't know now you say God doesn't tell me all that now but you still put mud in your mouth at the age of 25 then there's something wrong what do I mean by putting mud in your mouth watching pornography do any of you watch it you love to look at dirty pictures it's exactly the same there's a little two-year-old not a little two-year-old six month old putting mud in its mouth no difference but you're not six months old you've been a believer for so long God doesn't speak to you because you are 25 year old so as I grew in the Christian life one other thing I wanted to know more was Lord Jesus show me more of how much you really suffer not just the whipping and the thorns and then that hole really moves my heart but two days later I'm behaving just the same I don't seem to take it seriously so as I meditated on it the Lord began to show me what he really suffered on the cross and that I had discovered was the cup which he prayed in Gethsemane or father take it away from me that was that was not the whipping no he wasn't afraid of the whipping or the thorns or the nails I'm sure Jesus would be willing to suffer that a thousand times for me he loves me or for you but there was something else which was much worse than that much worse than whipping and thorns and on his head and nails that's what I want and you know I I've uh I've had this passion when I find something in Scripture that I don't know and it's written there I want to know it you know in science all the great discoveries were made by people who asked questions like Isaac Newton great scientist three four hundred years ago he saw an Apple fall to the ground and he says why does he have to fall to the ground I mean most people don't even ask that question apples were falling to the ground for five thousand years and nobody bothered about it but Isaac Newton said I got to find out why this Apple is falling it's not and he discovered the law of gravity today we all know it and discovered the how gravity works in the universe not just apples falling in the ground with the moon pulling the tides in the sea etc so no discovery would ever have been made even in science it people didn't want to say why does that happen and so when you read the scriptures if you don't want to go in and say why is it like that not only you will remain ignorant of the Scriptures but he'll be ignorant of God you won't know Jesus Christ you won't be able to lay hold of eternal life and then you won't be you won't purify yourself either so I began to seek the Lord and I said Lord is that cup Lord which you were trying to avoid I know it's not the cross it's not the nails and then the Lord showed me there was one sentence Jesus cried out on the cross my God my God why have you forsaken me and I've heard that from childhood it's not something new but there was certain as I hungered and thirsted I began to realize the truth that as I began to see God because he's a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him Hebrews 11:6 says God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him so the Lord showed me a couple of things just in that verse first of all that that was the only time in his life that he ever called the Father God he never spoke to his father as God he was God but when he spoke to his father he always said father father father that's how he prayed every single time all through his life for thirty three and a half years he never looked up and said God he always said father but once in his life he said my God my god only for a short time and then at the end of the cross again he switched back to father father I commend my spirit into your hand that was the last word and he was gone so always it was father father father for and at the end it was father but in between there was this period where he said my God my god that's the first thing I discovered there do you know the reason I'm sure you read that you heard that for years but this tragedy with so many Christians is that they study their chemistry books with intensity they study mathematics with intensity they want to know how to solve this problem and why does this happen like this they go to the physics laboratory and the chemistry laboratory and search and find out why does this happen and they learn such a lot when they come to the Bible they just read it they don't ask themselves why I want to teach all of you to study the Bible in a different way when you see something there with you which is different from what normally happens you say why is like that why is it like that and the Lord showed me that that was the one time in his life when he was standing before his father as a judge that father was a judge at that time till then he was father father but now because he was bearing sin in his body on the cross he was standing before the judge of the universe who was punishing him for sin my sin your sin punishing him he was not standing before the Father he was standing before the judge of the universe and what was the punishment the judge of the universe gave him for my sin and your sin yo first second so then I began trying to understand what does it mean to be forsaken I was just meditating on one sentence that's all my God my God why have you forsaken me it never happened throughout his life he never called him God before and he was never forsaken before this is the only time he was forsaken and as I meditated on it I discovered that that is what hell is hell is not a geographical place you know a lake of fire I mean God uses all these pictures of a lake of fire but it's a picture language it's not real fire it's a picture like Jesus said there's gonna be mansions in heaven not real mansions and what are you going to do with the 10-bedroom mansion in heaven what do you do with it I don't want it here on earth the God is using pictures to show what is valuable so you see for example I'll show you I'll prove to you why there's no real fire in hell do you remember the story where Jesus said about a rich man and Lazarus his beggar sitting at his door and both of them died and Lazarus went up to Paradise to Abraham's bosom and the rich man it says went to hell and what are the rich men say do you remember I'm thirsty my tongue please send Lazarus to give me a little water do you think now when you hear that when you read that you think does this rich man have a tongue his tongue is in his body that was buried on the earth it's his soul the soul doesn't have a tongue he's rich his body was buried on the earth and it's done is there and he's saying in hell I want some water have you thought of that it's picture language to show you that the same intensity with which a body will burn in the fire and he cry out and thirst that is what the soul faces to a much greater degree when he's in hell forsaken by God it's worse than your body being burnt in the fire and I saw that is what Jesus suffered on the cross forsaken by God and then I realized that what I had believed all my life that Jesus physical death was the punishment for my sin was not really true because physical death is not the punishment for sin I mean you know you have sinned how is God going to punish you for your sin is it physical death if you just think of it if it is physical death then the moment you die you say Lord I paid the price I can go to heaven everybody dies physical death they'll all go to heaven why shouldn't have a physical death is the punishment for sin everybody who dies has to go to heaven because he's died he's paid the price and if that is what Jesus did on the cross then I say Lord you don't hurt her I can die myself you don't have to die in my place at all so then I realized something you know as you meditate on Scripture the Lord begins to show you more and more of himself and I saw that the punishment for my sin is spiritual death not physical death physical death everybody has and what is spiritual death it is to be cut off from God forsaken completely something like you cut off the wire that brings electricity to this bulb it's dark immediately that's how it is to be cut off from God from the life of God you're cut off permanently that is eternal hell and it's a million times worse than being burnt in the fire million times worse than worms and all eating you know no that's nothing compared to being forsaken by God that's all picture language to show you how terrible it is to be forsaken by God because if you just hear the word for a second by God you don't realize how bad it is and so Jesus uses the picture of fire and worms and all types of things to show you how terrible it is so that is what Jesus suffered on the cross forsaken by God that's what he experienced so the next question that came to my mind was as I meditated on it but Lord the punishment for my sin is not being forsaken by God for three hours no because that's all he was forsaken on the cross punishment for my sin is forsaken by God for eternity not four thousand million ten million years but eternal forsaken by God is the punishment for my sin Lord were you forsaken like that and I discovered he was and I discovered that you know human beings have to have eternity to experience eternal hell but because Jesus was infinite we are finite Jesus is infinite and infinite being can experience the eternity of Hell in one second it's a simple mathematical equation infinity into one second is equal to a finite being into eternity so I understood something there what Jesus experienced on the cross was what I would experience and not I all the billions of people together would experience for all eternity if you can try and understand that it's very difficult to understand to all eternity the equivalent of being burnt and eaten by worms and whatever picture you got it being forsaken by God and living with all the demons and forever and ever and ever and ever Jesus suffered that it really opened my eyes to what the death on the cross was and I said Lord it's amazing that you loved me so much and that that's what you were agonizing in the Garden of Gethsemane Father I don't want to be forsaken by you I mean I've been with you in fellowship for all eternity I don't want to be forsaken I don't mind the whipping and the cross and the nails and all that but to be first-second by God and I wanted [00:02:34]