I want to give a special welcome to Dr. Matthew and Anima Ebenezer, who are with us from India today. And Pastor Aaron has welcomed them to come and be a part of us. Dr. Ebenezer, it's been my privilege to know them both for many years and to sometimes sit under the teaching of Dr. Ebenezer at the PT Seminary and to here is preaching, and it's been a blessing. Mrs. Ebenezer, I want to briefly say, has a wonderful ministry also among real needy women and abused women. And many of the women she trains to be able to have a livelihood, and she can tell you more about that. But many have come to the Lord through her ministry as well, and both of their ministry together is a wonderful thing. Welcome to you. Brother Ebenezer and looking forward to hearing you speak and give us God's word. Thank you. It's a joy to be here this morning and to worship with you and Just a little while ago I spoke at the Sunday school and I want to thank you for your prayers for us at the seminary. In the past you have been supporting missionaries who worked both in the seminary and also in India and I want to say thank you very much for that help. I also want to bring you greetings from the Reformed Presbyterian Church of India. where I am an ordained minister. I have stepped down for a few years because of the responsibilities at the seminary. I also bring you greetings from the Presbyterian Theological Seminary, for which I am going visiting churches and speaking on behalf of the seminary. I do hope that you will take time to look at the brochures at the back and consider supporting one of our students. And this would be a great help to us. For our meditation this morning, I would like you to turn to Deuteronomy chapter 6, Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verses 4 to 9. This is page 151 in your pew Bibles, page 151. Deuteronomy chapter six, four to nine. I think, I don't know whether I mentioned it, but I did during the Sunday school hour. I want to thank Pastor Aaron and the session for giving me this wonderful opportunity. Deuteronomy chapter six, verses four to nine. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way. and when you lie down and when you rise, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Shall we pray? Father, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of each one of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer, Amen. There was a conversation between two people who, at a funeral, they were there trying to visit with the family and they started talking to each other and one asked the other, what did he leave behind? and the other replied, everything. That's true, isn't it? When we die, we don't take anything with us. We leave everything behind. What will you leave behind? That's the title of my sermon today. Will you leave behind wealth or fame or good memories? Well, there are things that we will leave behind. and some of those are physical and some are not. Stephen Covey, the famous author of Seven Habits of the Most Effective People, has habit number two as begin with the end in mind. And he says, imagine that you are at a funeral. It's not anybody's funeral, it is your funeral. and ask yourself, listen to people talking about you and how are they describing you in their eulogies? What are they saying about you? The question is, how do you want to be remembered? Very good question for all of us. My proposition this morning is the best thing to leave behind is an example of godliness. And where do we get our guidelines for this? We get it in the Word of God. I'd like to focus on the passage that we just read, and I'd like to emphasize that godliness is not something that we are just born with, it is something that ought to be cultivated. Our passage speaks of two things that God requires from us in our pursuit of godliness. The first is found in verses four to five. God wants us to love him. Our God is a living God. Verse four says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. God is not an impersonal idea. not a philosophy, not a way of life. In India, we have 330 million gods. Don't ask me how they counted all of them. But Hindu tradition tells us that there are 330 million gods. To put it simply, Hinduism is divided into two types. One is popular Hinduism and the other is philosophical Hinduism. Popular Hinduism has to do with idols, idol worship, going on pilgrimages. But philosophical Hinduism is all to do with your mind. You have to reason out God. How do you reason out God? There's one tradition which says the only way that you can describe God is in negatives. Is he big? No. Is he small? No. Is he tall? No. Is he small? No. And so, in the end, what are you left with? Nothing. And that's what a person who was in that tradition, who came out, who became a follower of Jesus Christ said, what you are trying to describe is nothing. It's not God. On the contrary, we have the living God. A living God. As the gospel is preached in India today, many are turning to the Lord. Many are turning to the Lord. And we thank the Lord for that. So God is not an impersonal idea. He is a person. The Lord our God. Only a person can respond to love. The word Lord in the Bibles is used in capital. It refers to the word Yahweh. the God of Israel. It's a personal word for God. If you look at the internet, even today, the Jews don't, they dread to even write this name. They would leave out the vowels, you know. And this Yahweh is the God of redemption. This is a God who redeemed his people. And every time they called on the name of the Lord, they would remember the redemption that they experienced as they came out of Egypt. Our God is the Redeemer. And that same idea we find in Christ. Jesus saves, there's a beautiful hymn that goes, we have heard the wondrous sound, Jesus saves, Jesus saves. And that's the meaning of Jesus, he saves his people. He is a person and it is only a God, a personal God, who can respond to love. We also see that God is a God of love. He demands that we love him totally, fully. If you look at verse five, it says, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength. Three different areas, holistically. It's not just with your heart, but with your mind, with your strength, holistically. All of life is important. Sometimes we compartmentalize life. For several years, I was teaching part-time in a neighboring seminary and I happened to be, my classroom was fairly close to the dorms of the students and it was a charismatic seminary, very interesting. I taught part-time there. And every time I used to enter my class, I hear a lot of noise in the dorms. And I used to ask my students, can you explain to me what's happening there? When I go to the chapel, I see all of you so humble and so godly and all that. And then you leave God there and then come out here and have a whale of a time. Is that what's happening? And they used to understand what I'm saying. We don't do that. We don't have God only for the sanctuary here. God is as important when we step out into the world. I heard a very interesting story by a very well-known preacher in India. He's known for his very wonderful preaching and his singing. And he says one morning he needed something for his house and so he had to walk to the nearby shop and get it. And this was one of those small little shops which you find in India. And there he went and when he said, he waited and the man was on the telephone. And in India, when people are on the telephone, sometimes they speak for a long time. And my friend, or rather this pastor, was waiting and waiting and waiting. And he waited for what seemed a very, very long time. And then he exploded. And he has such a deep voice, you have to hear it to believe it. He screamed at him. He said, when will you give me the sugar? And the guy dropped the telephone and he came shivering and he said, so here is your, you know. And then the pastor kind of imagines what happens after that. He says, another customer comes and he has heard all what went on and the customer is surprised and he asks, this man, who is this man? Oh, he, he's the pastor of that church, you know. He's a person who comes here sometimes to buy things. And so what he was trying to say is, you know, he spoiled his testimony there by exploding in front of other people and behaving in a very unchristian way. Our life, our witness has to go out into the streets, into the marketplace. All of life is important. Do not separate or compartmentalize life. Where there is love, also there is no room for fear. Fear and love cannot go together. We have, in the place where my wife has the business, she runs a cafe, and we have a wonderful Christian man as the chef. But you need to know his background. His name is Manoj. Manoj worked as a chef in one of the best restaurants, a chain of restaurants, a few kilometers from where we live. His life was a mess. He abused his wife and his two children. And his children grew up in fear. His wife had given up, you know. And she was brought to this place where my wife has the ministry. And they said, give her some work to do. So, of course, she gave her some embroidery to teach her. She started learning. would come drunk at two o'clock in the morning, wake up his family, beat them up. That was his lifestyle. Then he started, when he was sober, he started coming to the Dhaka Center. And one day he told my wife, I need to take our family to the village. And she asked, what for? Well, we have to sacrifice to our gods. otherwise they would do something bad to us. My wife said, you don't have to go, the sacrifices that have to be done are done already, have been done by Jesus. You trust Jesus, you don't have to make this sacrifice. To make a long story short, he did not go, nothing happened to him, and that was the turning point in his life, he began to consider Christianity and Jesus Christ. A few weeks later, he came to us and he said, I want baptism. He moved from that cafe, from that restaurant to move, he moved to work with my wife at a much lower salary. He said, I'm fed up with that life. I want baptism. I want to live a different life. As a session, we interviewed him and we said, Manoj, can you tell us some, give us some evidence of what has happened to you. He said, look at my life, that's enough. And after his conversion, we went once to, for his birthday party, his son's birthday party. And someone told me, this is the first time we are seeing this man sober. He is always drunk at parties. He came for baptism, but he was baptized with his two children. His wife said, I will never believe this. I will not take baptism until I know that this is true, because she knew her husband. After six months, she too came and took baptism. The life of transformation. from fear to loving God. And what he did recently, just maybe six months ago, he goes to his village and he doesn't earn much, but he sees a girl who is in need, a little girl, and she's like an orphan. He brings her to his home and he's looking after her. That's what the Lord does. It's amazing. And when we begin to love the Lord, we are freed from fear and we have a new relationship. We start doing things that people would be surprised about. This is what God calls us to do. He calls us to know Him as a person and to know that we can love Him. And through that love, May our lives be a blessing to many people. The second thing that is there is God wants us to obey him, in verses six to nine. If you look at verse six, it says, these commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. It's very interesting. Commandments and heart? You would think that commandments have to do with the mind. If you go to the army, the military, it doesn't say, please, obey this if your heart tells you to obey. No, it's a command. Stand at attention. March, whatever it is, it's a command. And your mind has to be willing to respond. But here, it says, these commandments are to be on your hearts. Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. If you love me, keep my commandments. John 14, 15. It shouldn't be a burden to us to obey the Lord. The Lord wants a heart response from us. Again, God wants us to impress this upon our children. How? Take every advantage to teach them the word of God, not simply at church, not simply at Sunday school, but even in our homes. Verse seven, impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit down, sit at home, and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up. What are these words trying to communicate to us? that constantly we need to watch out for our families. One of the big things, one of the things that is alarming in India is the breakdown of families. I know that it is widespread in some places in the West, but the breakdown of families is a serious thing. India has moved along with development into another stage where You know, living is kind of very easygoing and even today we find that people are having relationships outside marriage. It's very common. You know, in such a situation, the word of God speaks to us. Impress them on your children. I was privileged to grow up in a home, a Christian home, and we had prayers every morning and evening. My dad was quite strict with us children especially and then we, all of us prayed together and this happened every day morning and evening. And I can, I always thank the Lord for that background. We come from our roots in a place in South India where if you were at the Sunday school this morning you would know that where St. Thomas came and and preach the gospel. Even today, right there, there are areas that are Christian. When you walk down the street, you'll hear the singing from various homes, singing of hymns for family prayer in the morning and in the evening. It's beautiful. And I know that the practices here with families are much more richer I know there is involvement with the family, so many little children are given opportunities to be part of family prayer, which is very wonderful. Keep it up. Don't neglect it. So, it's not just when we gather for some spiritual meeting that we need to be studying the Word of God. We need to carry it with us. Today, by God's grace, we have access to sermons online, we have access to the Word of God online and you can listen to it when you drive somewhere, you can listen to sermons, you can download sermons and you know listen to them anywhere where you go. I go for my exercise in the mornings in India and I listen to the 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia and my kids gave me a iPod which has which has a download facility For 10th press and I see it's it seems. I know the pastor so well And you know beautiful sermons, but by the time I finished my exercise Every day I have listened to one sermon, so it's so enriching Please use those those things that are there so throughout all of life, in all of life, let God be at the center. My family was in Korea for two years, South Korea. We learned so many lessons there. And unforgettable, their emphasis on prayer, so much prayer. If you visit Korea, you will see that someone comes to your house to visit, And many times it has caught me off guard. Usually I open my mouth and immediately I say, oh hello, how are you? Nice to see you after a long time. Not a whisper. The person who has visited me is praying. These people, you learn about prayer from them. They come, the first few, you can say it's less than a minute, but it's spent in prayer. and then they will start talking to you. And what a safeguard it is that even the conversation that we have is something that is under the Lordship of Christ. Our text also says in verses eight and nine, tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates. Down in South India, where I told you about where Thomas brought the gospel, there is a Jewish community there. Now they are dwindled down, there are just a few, but when we go to that place and when we walk down the street, we see the mezuzah, the thing that is on the door post. And I'm told that the Jews, when they go in and come out, they touch it. It's a shema. It's this passage from Deuteronomy written by a scribe, and it's in a small scroll. It's a reminder that you are under God constantly, God's protection. What a beautiful thing. What a beautiful thing. The word mezuzah literally means doorpost. Why is it important for us as Christians to remember God this way? Because of the world we live in. I thank God for the communion. Every time I take this, I am thankful to the Lord because if we did not have this, How will we remember the Lord and what He did for us? It is so easy to forget. Very often pastors forget the sermon they preached on the previous Sunday. Isn't that true? We have one celebration of baptism when we become Christians, but this is the constant reminder for us. and it's something tangible that we can touch, hold, feel. Someone rightly said, when we hear the sermon, when the sermon is preached, we hear the gospel. When the Lord's Supper is administered, we see the gospel. It is something that we see. We see what happened at Calvary, how important it is for us to remember God. The psalmist said, thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. Constantly be in touch with the word. How do you want to be remembered? It's never too early or never too late to make a choice. Be remembered for your love and obedience to God. What will you leave behind? Make it the legacy of a godly life, and you can begin today. Shall we pray? Our gracious God, we thank you for your word, and we thank you, Lord, that we as your people have the opportunity, the unique opportunity, to know you, to love you, to serve you, to obey you. And Lord, we pray that we will be remembered as people who lived a godly life and who set a godly example to our children. We pray that you will bless the rest of the worship we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.