A Robust Christianity Amidst Today's Challenges - Dr Ravi Zacharias

well what an honor to be back here in Kuala Lumpur we always look forward to getting back here whenever we can as the years go by I never know when we'll be able to return to what place because the calendar gets so full so early but I do consider Daniel one of my very dear and loyal trusted friends and his wife Doris we've enjoyed some marvelous meals together the only problem is when I come here it's very difficult to go back home and tell people that you are working hard because once they take you to Kaunas and your midriff gets more globular you just have a very difficult time with all the good food out here to say yeah we've had a tough journey we had a real tough journey so last night I didn't email anybody because it would be unfair to say it's been a long day it was actually been a wonderful day we were in Manila before this and Shanghai before that and on to Jakarta first thing early tomorrow morning three days or four days in Jakarta then to Singapore and then on to Oxford to address our graduating class at the Oxford Center for Christian apologetics I think I told you that yesterday we get home do a couple of days at Wheaton and then on to Bangalore I was telling my colleagues while we're driving in this morning that many years ago I remember speaking in Auckland New Zealand on a Sunday morning my wife was with me and our little girl we took a flight out immediately after that many many hours of flying and I spoke on the same Sunday morning service in Honolulu on the same calendar day nobody could believe you could do this once upon a time but nobody believed there would be such maniacs who would try to do this once upon a time the life that we now lead has challenges has privileges one reasons I really do this is because in the world in which we live this is an extraordinary moment of tension and possibilities it's exactly the way we see it incredible uncertainty economically socially morally familiarly for the families of our world it's a very tough time it's almost like a coming together of the great storm in terms of certainty very few politicians I can really look you in the eye and tell you that in the immediate future they see some bright spots maybe in the distant future but the immediate future things look rather bleak people living beyond their means and so on suddenly in North America that's the way we've been carrying on but at the same time the opportunities to address especially the young are extraordinary I was telling an audience recently that we did an open forum at UCLA and when you think of that campus and Los Angeles one of the most liberal institutions they had asked me to speak on tolerance whether it is really possible anymore it was a midweek session over 3,000 jammed the auditorium and overflow rooms had to be opened up a little while before that at Clemson University they had 97 thousand I think on a Thursday night the year before that Arizona State University we had 9,000 on a weeknight packing it out this is incredible you'd think the University student would be blasé and totally indifferent to these issues but it's not so most of them are very sincere in Hungary for answers I'm very grateful to God for your church what you do how you do it why you do it and the continued presence of God in this congregation I promise we'll be praying for you and may the Lord continue to use you and multiply the impact of this work globally especially under the leadership of Daniel who is so well respected all over the globe may God give you one wonderful team and I pray that as we pray for you you will pray for us because we too crisscross this globe and we are on the same team with the same vision in different venues and the time is critical if I have for having definitions I want to just give you one little bit of a story here and then move into my message that I'm calling interpreting failures and conserving victories interpreting failures and conserving victories but let me throw it back for a moment on something I want to share with you that is very defining for myself and that is this when I was at Princeton University just a few weeks ago again packed auditorium one of the students stood up and asked this question he said what is the difference between the way things were in the original created order and now I was not quite sure why he was asking that question but he was asking it in order to really get a different perspective on the two over there he had some other issues in his mind I don't know but I said to him there were two things in the first in the dawn of creation God walked with his creation in close proximity that idea of fellowship and presence was truly a very precious thing presence and fellowship because the most intimate search in the human heart is the search for ultimate intimacy in the very reason for your creation but then I said there was a second thing I said think about it there was only one restriction one prohibition just one law do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil why because in the day that you shall eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you will be as God knowing good and evil which I interpret to mean this you will play God and start defining good and evil you will act as if you are God and you will start defining good and evil I said take a look at our world today and I asked you if you see the difference between the time God was defining good and evil at the time now when we have started to define good and evil and the world is in total chaos and we need hundreds of laws thousands of laws footnotes to laws redefining of all kinds of words in America just to do our health care program we needed two thousand pages why because every statement can be redefined I often use the illustration when you get onto a plane what do they tell you do not tamper touch disable or destroy the smoke detector why do you need for descriptions for that temper touch disable or destroy you can just say it in one line there's a smoke detector there in the bay in the washrooms folks don't mess with it don't mess with it but why because in a court of law you can redefine every little word every little word and try to exonerate yourself God gives us simplicity which sublimity and when you live by his definitions life becomes a beautiful pattern unfolded by the grand weaver when we start putting our own definitions we mess things up so it took Moses 613 laws to expand upon that one law I want to give you today a very simple message I know when I begin that way people says don't believe him but I'm going to try and make it as simple as I can but I want to also expand on each thought to put it in a larger picture God has given you and me a blueprint for life and a blueprint for nations a blueprint for life and a blueprint for nations what does God expect of a nation what does God expect in your life he gives it to us very clearly and I would like to read this passage for you from Deuteronomy chapter 8 Deuteronomy literally comes from two Greek words deuteros namaz the reiteration of the law nor most as the word for law that leaves reiteration of the law given an exodus reiterated in Deuteronomy listen to what he says in chapter 8 and one more thing I should say God Jesus when he was speaking and in his incarnation quoted more from this particular book than any other book so it's called a favorite book of Jesus this chapter he quoted three of the main ideas from this chapter when he faced the temptation in the way in the wilderness all of his three responses to the devil come from this particular chapter Deuteronomy chapter 8 be careful to follow every command I'm giving you today so that you may live an increase and may enter and possess the land that the Lord promised on oath to your forefathers remember how the Lord your God led you in the way all the way in the desert these forty years to Humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart whether or not you would keep his commands he humbled you why causing you to hunger than feeding you at manna which neither you know your fathers had known why did he do that do to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these 40 years no than in your heart that is a man disciplines a son so the Lord your God disciplines you then he goes on to save you violate these three principles I'm giving you you will see the kind of judgment that would ensue what are the three thoughts he left with them we see the journey of the Exodus was a tough one they were in bondage they had gone into slavery and now through a plurality of miracles God was opening up the way to redeem them and rescue them the pattern for God is always like this first Redemption then righteousness then worship you cannot change that logical sequence you move from redemption out of slavery into righteousness the moral law you don't earn your righteousness the righteousness you live by is the demonstration of your Redemption Redemption righteousness and worship that's the sequence that God has given here brings them out of bondage then reveals to them the moral law in Sinai and ultimately gives them the pattern for the tabernacle and the temple that redemptive process that deliverance ought not to have taken more than four to six weeks maximum even with the large numbers you can look at the geography and know that within a month to six weeks he could or they could have followed the map and come all the way into the promised land instead of four to six weeks it took them 40 years a whole generation had come and gone and was lost in the wilderness let me pause and say something very simple to you the shortest route may not always be the best route because it will bypass some of the more important lessons in life that God wants to teach you shortest route may not always be the best route because oftentimes it bypasses the most important lessons God wants to teach you you know when a move and a bull woman conceives a child it would be pretty simple wouldn't it for God to one week later bring that child to be born it's already a miracle why does he give that help period of gestation for about nine months to prepare the body of the mother to prepare the body of the child these are the great mysteries that God reveals to us where time is an important component in preparing you for what he wants to do in you and through you time is an important component a very important component and this time that God prepares for you and for me has a pattern and a process what does he do he wants them to teach learn three things the first thing is so that you would see in your own heart what you are really like he took them for 40 years so that in that four decades they would see how wicked and undeserving they really were what's the first lesson he wanted to teach them humility the humbleness of spirit and a humble heart did you hear ever hear of the preacher who said to the audience I really wanted to speak to you on humility today but I think I'll save it for a larger audience yeah get it I want to speak to in humility but I think I'll save it for a larger crowd so often pride comes in the way of the human heart even in a preparation of a sermon where he wants to save the best for a larger audience when Jesus often times saved some of his most powerful statements for an audience of one humility of heart to humble you and teach you what was in your heart there are two ways in which you will learn humility the two ways in which you will learn it it's the simpler way of looking at the person of Christ who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God but made himself of no reputation and took upon himself the form of a servant being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself and became obedient unto death even the death of the cross wherefore God also had exalted him and given to him a name that is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father the Christ life looking at the person of Jesus you know I think it was the great Scottish preacher by the name of James Stewart who put together this extraordinary statement it's years ago I'd memorized try to remember it I'm not sure I will but he said something like this he was the meekest and lowliest of all the sons of men yet he spoke of coming on the clouds of heaven with the glory of God he was so austere that evil spirits and demons cried out in terror at his coming yet he was so genial and winsome and approachable that the little ones loved to nestle with him and nestled in his arms his presence at the innocent gaiety of a village wedding was like the presence of sunshine a bruised Reed he would not break his whole life was love yet on one occasion he demanded of the Pharisees how they were expected to escape the damnation of hell he was a dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions yet for sure stock reality he has all of our cell stylist soundly beaten he was the servant of all washing the disciples feet yet masterfully he strode into the temple and the hucksters and money changers fled from his presence as they saw the fire in his eyes he saved others yet himself he did not save there is nothing in history like the union of contrasts which confronts us in the Gospels the mystery of Jesus is the mystery of divine personality this union of contrasts the startling coalescence of contrariety x' dreamer of dreams and sarah visions yet for sure stock reality he has all of our self-styled realists son Lee Beaton doesn't compare anymore king of kings and the Lord of lords who gets on his knees with a basin of water and a towel to wash the feet of his disciples humility do you know it are you aware of how weak you really are and how fragile your life really is I've seen it come again and again I remember in my studies in English literature at Cambridge studying the life of one of the great poets I admired samuel taylor coleridge he messed up his life with drugs ruined it with opium till he was trying to sit at a desk and write more poetry and he worked he's the one who wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Mariner and Kublai Khan and all of that and that gift went from him till he begged his own genius to come up with it one more time and he sat at the desk pen in hand and couldn't write one sentence anymore it was gone it's gone we're very fragile very weak things happen and as the years go by you realize the virility of youth the strength of youth is there just for a short season and all of a sudden the keepers of the frame begin to tremble and you realize that I have at a very dear friend by the name of John Wesley white Billy Graham referred to him as the most brilliant evangelist on his team the most brilliant Evangel John Wesley white actually helped dr. Dora Graham write many bizarrely books I remember teaming up with dr. white many times it makes his home in Toronto Canada all of a sudden one day I got a telephone call to see if I would give him a call because he had suffered a major stroke a major stroke and I was asked if I would call him and he was still recovering from it and I made that call and his spoke to his wife on the phone and she said Ravi he'll be thrilled to hear your voice so she gave him them the the telephone and I said John this is Ravi yes I am so sorry John to hear what's happened to you yes and the whole conversation was with me with sentences and him with one word yes my colleagues are here with me we dearly love one of our own colleagues name is Prakash he's in Chennai Prakash was the first associate from India that joined our team my brother Ruben went to visit him recently and he Prakash has contracted a rather dreadful disease I'm not sure I'm pronouncing it there's a strange way to pronounce sir for something like a guillain-barre syndrome but that's not exactly the way to pronounce it and it's an ascending paralysis starts off from the feet moves upwards and can ultimately choke and paralyze you just came upon them like that our life contains a thousand springs and dies if one be gone strange that a hop of a thousand strings can stay in tune so long we are fragile we're weak the best of our minds can go the best of our health can go and I challenge you to remember your fragility but most importantly the impoverished nurse that the poverty of your soul without God you can't make it and so he says remember what is in your heart take a look at your own heart have you done that have you seen the poverty of your own heart God wants to teach you humility and you know without a redeemer you and I cannot make it without the indwelling presence of God you cannot make it I've been in the ministry forty-one years temptation may still stalk lust of the flesh lust of the eyes pride of life lust greed pride stalks all of us all of us and unless you know how vulnerable you are you will never come to him for saving grace God alone knows how to Humble you without humiliating you and how to exalt you without without flattering you he alone knows how to humble you without humiliating you and how to exalt you without flattering you those are the words of the famed speaker o'clock I've often reminded myself of that humility you can either learn it by observing the life of Christ and learning from him or you can do it the hard way by stumbling into sin and finding yourself shattered by it til that reminds you you are not God you're not who you think you are I'm coming from a set of meetings in Manila where there was a handsome young man who stood up and confessed and he said I may as well be transparent before this audience they all knew who he was I don't know he was I don't live in the Philippines but he was an actor he was a popular man everything was hunky-dory everything was right was riding the crest of success till something happened that shattered him in the public image and you know what he said to me when he was talking to us in a small group he says I'm living with so much shame now I am so ashamed he said I don't want to do may be my only hope and that people just surrounding listening to him the tragedy of a broken life that did not move in the right direction but thankfully God's grace is still sufficient he can bring you back he can turn you around Thomas Aquinas said this which is rather powerful but Aquinas is major point that he actually makes elsewhere I haven't written it down carefully here I thought it I had it here somewhere near on hand but here it is Aquinas says this listen to him carefully writing centuries ago first time I read a time was not sure what to make of it but now I believe he's saying the truth he says this in order to overcome their pride God punishes certain people by allowing them to fall into sins of the flesh which even though in actuality before God they are less Grievous but in the human environment it is more shameful from this indeed the gravity of pride is made manifest for just as a wise physician in order to cure a worse disease Allah is the patient to contract a lesser one that is less dangerous so is the sin of pride shown to be more grievous by the very fact that as a remedy God allows some people to fall into lesser sins in order to awaken them to the deeper sense of pride to the deeper scent of prime that's Aquinas and so God's goal is to bring you to himself humility but there's a second principle here it's spirituality how to feed and nurture the reality of the soul and this is the reality that God wants for you and me the deep sense of what is spiritual and true God wants you to have a relationship with him that's the beginning of all wisdom that relationship which is not merely abstract but that relationship which knows God and serves him the truly spiritual this is the longing of your heart and mind you know there are many hungers in your life this physical hungers there's aesthetic hungers there are spiritual hungers there are divine hungers physical aesthetic spiritual divine hungers that God plants in you that only God is big enough to fill I want to point two things to you here in an illustration and move to my final thought some years ago I was visiting Lebanon Lebanon used to be one of my favorite haunts even in the day where you really couldn't get in you'd have to go to Cyprus take a boat 12 hours journey by night to Junie a and I would be picked up out there on one of these strips it was just a raucous trip because there was a wild storm on the high seas and we were just literally in the boat it was called the sunny boat I want you to know there was nothing sunny about it and it was hardly a boat and we were doing 12 hours of this journey I had to lie down to keep from being Tinh ually sick and my notes and my Bible and my things were scattered all over the floor he couldn't keep it the boat was just rocking like this and when I got up in the morning and it had calmed down and I went up to see what time we were disembarking everybody looked like they'd really been beaten up that night they'd all had it we all wanted to get off and so we got off that boat and somehow I made it and started to have the meetings and then the dreaded thing was I had to take that boat back due to to Cyprus I was dreading this whole thing but something happened actually a lot it's a long story I won't go into details they were not going to let me off the boat they let everybody else off they weren't going to let me off and a big burly guy by the name of Antoine said are you of angelical and I want to know what this boy is up to he wasn't gonna let me off and then finally when he looked at me let me off the boat I said you know keep me here I'll leave tomorrow and so on and then he puts me into a car taxi and has a guy in the front seat with the barrel of a gun staring at me and I'm sitting in the backseat and Antoine is sitting next to me and he said you haven't done so to my question now do you have angelical I said I thought I did that's why I'm here yes I'm an evangelical I'm here to speak and then he leaches out holds my hand and he says I am too welcome to my country I said what was this all about you know what is this all about and then a long story but they let me out and my host was Sammy dagger if you've never been with Sammy dagger this side of heaven you have missed something he's short as a teddy bear but he's pardon the analogy is like a packet of dynamite he doesn't even say good morning without expending more energy than I would in a sermon how are you my brother and he gives you that big hug Sammy knows no fear and his wife is English he's Lebanese wife is English her name is joy she needed to have that name to put up with this guy and here's the story they're driving at 11 o'clock at night and he sees a suitcase on the side of the highway sitting unattended only Sammy would think of getting off the car to check on it he says darling there is a suitcase on the side of the road she says Sammy it's not ours in any part of Lebanon you don't check somebody else's suitcase on the side of the road unless you're Sammy and he gets off and he Pat's it he says darling it's full she's a Sammy leave it alone he says somebody must have lost it she said obviously he picks it up and puts it into their van and she's having kittens heading back home while he's celebrating that he's found somebody's suitcase he takes it into the house and she leaves the room he opens it you know what he sees there every square inch money nobody ever has that experience and says why me Lord he dumps the money out and he sees a business card and he looks at the telephone number and about midnight he phones and a voice picks it up and Sammy says to him are you mr. so-and-so and he said yes why are you calling he says have you lost anything that man isn't pin-drop silence he says have you found it he says yes on the side of the road he says it's full of money he says yes I was trying to leave the country emptied my bank account put it in the suitcase and tied it on the top of my car and I'm heading to the airport and it must have blown off when I came back I couldn't find it Sammy says I have it and I don't think anything is missing there's no room it's full the man is so shocked he says can I come he's another nerds curfew now if I had any other plans for your suitcase I wouldn't be calling you he says you come tomorrow morning this is my dress pick it up so the guy comes the next morning picks it up he stunned that a man has turned in this kind of money so he dips in and he lifts this money and he says you're a pastor he says yes he says give this to your church Sammy says I only take an offering like this on Sundays you come to church on Sunday and you foreign-eeze so the guy comes to church and he puts that money and he can't get over it the night I was leaving this man had come with this family and Sammy was hosting him for tea and then he was taking me to the port and I'm sitting there while they're talking in their language and Sammy keeps interpreting and then at one point Sammy takes a Bible for him for this man's wife for his children he has a Bible and here's what he said you thought you had lost your treasure he said who really wants Lebanese money he said you thought this was treasure he said I'll give you the treasure that moth will not devour that thieves cannot break in to steal and he gave every one of them a Bible this man could not stop weeping and the tears are running down his face he takes that Bible and kisses it and holds it against his arm and I watched as Sammy had the privilege of praying with this family and giving them the greatest treasure they could ever own the Word of God this is it this is it this is what Jesus quoted to resist the devil and said begone it is written begone it is written begone it is written this is God's Word this is history Matt and I were in Moscow recently and there were people in the front row who had served years and years in prison for reading this last time I was there a little over a year ago when I was introduced to the over a thousand pastors sitting in front of me and their spouses and young people you know how is introduced they said if my brother had come here 20 years ago the only Bible he would have found would have been in the museum today there's over a thousand Bibles here in this auditorium alone the Word of God the Word of God the Word of God thy Word is truth and your scriptures cannot be broken says David I give to you this you want to know what true spirituality is turn to this word you want to know what the real bread of life is turn to this word and the second thing I say to you is not only is it propositional it is relational there are many things I could say to you and many things I could say to you and maybe I'll just cut through the muster here quickly those of you who've read my story walking from east to west will know that I had a tough relationship with my dad and in our culture my culture and Indian culture I know many of your Indians sitting here and some of you may know my family when I wrote it I sent it to my brothers and sisters and I said have I been hard on dad in this book they wrote back and said no Rob you've been you've been you've been actually very fair and you could have said a lot more you didn't but I always say this Christ brought me to himself on a bed of suicide and years later he brought my father to himself and my dad who'd given me a tough life and out of us five kids was hardest on me he would say that you if he were here today say it without any mistake when he was going in for open-heart surgery in Toronto Canada and he was not physically ready for it he was overweight he had all the issues that they should have waited and prepared these in the early days of heart surgery in in the 70s but I lived in Niagara Falls Ontario with my family and my dad was living in Toronto all my other brothers and sisters were in Toronto he gets on the phone and phones me Niagara Falls which is 75 miles away and he said when I go in for my heart surgery son would you drive me I knew there was something up why he asked me I said dad I'd love to so I drove to Toronto early that morning picked him up and I took him to the hospital and he wanted some time alone with me out of us five kids he was closest to my oldest brother and he was very close to the other three I was the one from whom the distance was the greatest and he asked for me and as I drove him and I was watching him wheeled in he had a talk with me and in that talk what her father said to her son is very private but you know what the most important thing was he saw the shortcoming of where he had failed in the earlier days and just wanted to make things right that's all because I knew the Lord he knew the Lord I never thought I would never see him alive again and all I say to you is God has his appointments God has his times God as his healings God has his restorations and the most important thing is when that truth is combined with spiritual transformation He pours out his grace without measure and that grace is a gift of God for a father and a son to have this cordial close conversation alone minutes before he goes only God could have made that possible I say to you do you know your Heavenly Father do you know when he changes you and changes others around you all your relationships are rebuilt all your relationships are transformed humility spirituality and ultimately faith these are the three principles by which he wants you to be governed humility spirituality faith now I want to say a couple of things about faith faith is not credulity it's not stupidity it's not like you'd have no reason for what you believe in in fact we have very good reasons for what we believe in why Jesus Christ is the savior of the world we have very good reasons for that all of the prophecies for hundreds of years all of the purity with his impeccable life all of the prediction for his crucifixion all of the struggle before that crucifixion and then the promise of the bodily resurrection from the dead and how he would build his church and the gates of Hell would not be able to pray it to prevail against it all of these promises come together hundreds of them in the person of Jesus Christ but when you see that and see the reasoning behind it you see the contrast and the credulity of the world I remember in my days of Cambridge studying under a quantum physicist John pocong Horne who had lecture after lecture after lecture on the incredible fine-tuning of the universe how it took such specificity such complexity such little margin of error to even make it possible for your life and mine to exist one slight fraction off and we wouldn't be here so precise is the fine-tuning that scientists who were even skeptics will say you wind back the clock and start all over again it'll never happen let me give you just one example the enzymatic makeup of your body the enzymes to skip sir Frederic oil the astronomer and the mathematician Chandra Wickramasinghe from Sri Lanka Chandra Wickramasinghe was at cardiff oil at Cambridge they co-authored a lot of stuff and you know what they said the enzymatic makeup is so incredible that Vikram a singer came a who's a Buddhist by profession which is non-theistic but Chandra Wickramasinghe and Hoyle came up with this conclusion that the possibility of the enzymes coming together it's some tough words here I won't go into them in time through time diachronic synchronic all of this stuff they come up with but basically say this it is mathematically so unbelievable that the possibility of it happening by accident he said would be one in ten to the power of 40000 that's one followed by 40,000 zeroes here's what they say you know even in the known universe there's only one in 10 to the power of 80 atoms and so for the enzymatic makeup to have one in the possibility of 10 to the power of 40,000 in an understatement to say mathematically it's impossible that's just the enzymes see here's what Frederick Coyle says which means it needed something with complexity to start with and so in what he did he believes in the panspermia theory that a spaceship or something from another planet brought some spores to seed the earth that's how it all got started they tell me I have faith spaceship a five-year-old boy could probably say who made the spaceship who made the spores he's not the only one Sir Francis Crick who got the Nobel Prize for cracking the code of the DNA he said he believes some spores were brought from another planet to see the earth so he explained it there are three point what if I told you that a dictionary developed because of an explosion in a printing press would you believe me that's only 26 letters of the alphabet to compute comprise a dictionary and you would laugh at me if I said it happened by in fact even even Sir Frederick oil said actually we are trying to believe that it is possible for a jumbo 747 to come together because a tornado goes through a junkyard he's words how many letters in your DNA 3.1 billion bits of information faith not credulity there's a grand designer there's a grand weaver humility spirituality faith I want to close with this simple little illustration and bring it all together for you it is something like this very simple it's this when God asked Noah to build the ark he gave him every detail every detail but there were two things that were not there there was no sale and there was no rudder which means he could not control it have you ever thought of that all the details no sail and no rudder he could not control it there will come a time in your life where you'll have to say I have no sail I have no rudder I turned my life completely on to you I remember sitting next to a fellow once when our airplane was in trouble and they couldn't get the landing gear down and he said that's what I hate about flying I'm not in control I said when you get off this plane you really think you're going to be in control a lot of people are ready to pray when the plane cannot land because they find out they're not in control I got news for you you're not in control of your life either Oh certain things you may you had no decision on your DNA you have no decision on the final moment of your life unless you choose to violate the sacredness of the trust God has given to you I want to tell you I love watching my little grandson because I now can enjoy a child without the major responsibilities of a child but the moment he sees me in fact my daughter has been writing dad he keeps saying when am I going to see Papa when am I gonna see Papa you know call me Papa the moment he sees me he puts his arms out and rests his weight completely in my arms as he does with his parents and with his grandma whether they're awake or asleep their weight is completely in your arms that's faith it's faith why because he knows you love him you can know that what Christ today can know that about God humility spirituality and faith and I just say to you are you willing to cost your care upon him here's the closing illustration in Delhi when I was growing up I was reading a little story in Hindi it was called done tamari bass hare in Hindi that means the wealth is very close to you done wealth tamari pass near you hey is the work to be done tamari passing it's a story of a very wealthy pearl merchant diamond merchant who used to take a journey to his home village every year and would take his most precious diamonds put into a bag a thief used to watch him doing this and one year decided to track him and he was going to steal all those jewels the rich man was smart he knew what the bhisma was up to and they used to have to spend the night in an inn every night and continue the journey the next day the rich man knew what this was about so they'd go into the Dharamsala into the end and would they be given a mat and a pillow and a basin and they would be given that basin of water to go out and wash up and then come and lie down the rich man would always tell the thief would-be thief why don't you go and wash first when you finished washing come back I'll take the basin and then I'll take my turn and when the thief would go out and wash up the rich man would take all of his jewels and put it under the pillow of the thief all the precious stones under the pillow the thief and then the rich man would go and wash up and the thief would quickly rummage around the bags of the rich man look under the pillow the rich man look under the mat of the live life for the life of it couldn't figure out where these jewels were the one place he never looked was under his own pillow on the last day the rich man was leaving him gave him a big hug and a namaste and he says I know what you're looking for you're looking for my jewels weren't you said he looked in my bag he looked at my pockets he looked under my pillow you looked under the that you never looked under your own pillow done the Mara pasta the Mara pasta the done was nearer to you the wealth was nearer to you and you ever realized and he said just remember that done Temari passe the wealth is very near you you don't have to go and run up 5,000 stairs somewhere you don't have to go and buy it you don't have to go and pay for it you can cry out to Christ where you are he is nearer to you than you realize the wealth humility spirituality faith that's the picture for a nation that's the picture for an individual

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Keywords: Ravi Zacharias, DUMC, sermon, christianity

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Length: 47min 57sec (2877 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 05 2013