Eternity on our Eyeballs!

My wife was up in Malaysia last week and I started listening to the church camp sermon in the car. I am usually hooked on the radio for traffic alert so that I can try to avert the ‘disastrous’ route in order to send her to her work place on time. However, this week afforded me some luxury.

The sermon was on ‘Do not accumulate” and I played it again and again until I have lost count how many times I have played it. Pastor David Cook is certainly one who has been well schooled to bring us such solemn warning and solid biblical teaching. It certainly came as a fitting reminder to myself, especially in this climate of seeming affluence and plenty. What with the bull running all over the markets,  rosy economy statistics, red hot real estate activity, enviable graduate job entry level pay….Our MM says that we are entering into a period of golden age.

For those who has missed out or has forgotten, I strongly encourage you to tune in to the church website www.arpc.net for a nice awakening set amidst this era of hard core consumerism and materialism.

The phrase that keeps replaying in my head is” Money is a good servant but a rotten Master, convert earthly wealth into heavenly currencies!”

For those who knew me better, it has always been my desire to be an entrepreneur.  How to balance this teaching against the entrepreneurial code of self absorption and exertion in building up the venture, much wisdom and prayerful seeking are required. My brethren, pray with me that this earthly endearvour shall not obstruct my heavenly vision.

In an era of dazzling wealth, profounce affluence and breathtaking working and family pace, we as christians can often be blinded and numbed to spiritual realities and our christian duties.

Let our prayers ever be as with Jonathan Edwards, the greatest christian philosopher who ever walked in New England “O Lord, Stamp Eternity on my eyeballs!”

Fighting Giants

I was recently reading on Deuteronomy in preparation for what I thought was the next series to be studied in our church sermon series. I think I was mistaken. Nevertheless, the book of Deuteronomy is a book rich in God’s teaching and I must say I am greatly encouraged by the sharing of Pastor Wilson in his blog blog and mablog exposition. As he aptly commented that oftentimes we may have forgotten who are the enemies that God wants the Israelites to chase out of the land of Canaan, no thanks to the children bible stories book portrayal.

The land of Canaan is really a land full of giants as he wrote in his blog. Pore through the entire chapter 2. See the various Giants with different names and dwellings. Note the way scripture narrates how Israel cousins such as the  Edomites. Ammonites and the Moabites drove some of these Giants out of the land in order to occupy the land God gave them.

Observe especially Israel unbelief with her God’s help and command in contrast to her cousin victories over the Giants. If these people whose God is not their Lord can do it, why is Israel doubting Jehovah who possesses the world and all its fulness?

This also brought into particular focus later battles with giants such as the story of puny David overcoming a 2.4m tall giant named Goliath and  the greatest Battle of them all: “the binding of the strong man by Jesus our Lord at the cross”.

My brethren, the world in which God called us to live in may also be one full of Giants. Perhaps it may not be in the physical sense. It can be those problems or challenges that we think are too strong for us. Take heart and be encouraged!

Unbelief will say the giants are too strong for us as the Israelites did in Deuteronomy. Faith will  say that the giants are too big to be missed (in the words of Pastor Wilson)

Our God is a God who delights in fighting giants and makes a spectator of them. Trust your God and Be Thou do likewise! Amen 

Good Bye The Ngs, Welcome Anyone?

 

 For those of the DG members who may yet be aware, Yak Chow and his family will be saying goodbye to this little sleepy town of Sembawang perhaps by the time you have read this post. They have shifted in deference to their daughter’s educational needs. It is indeed hearty to know how they have uprooted for the sake of their daughter’s godly training. Let’s all pray that they will continue to persevere in walking faithfully with the Lord and His people even in their new place. And do not forget to pray also that Chenxi can be given a place in the school of their choice. Be it public worship or private worship, we may be encouraged by their progress in the faith. To the Ng’s family, it was good to have you as our town folks!

 

As the Ngs have encouraged our communal lives, maybe it is a good for us all to pray that the Lord will be pleased to bring others into our midst that we may encourage. And as this process of encouraging others and being encouraged continues, may the Lord be glorified!

 

If any of you is staying up in the North part of the island and thinking of finding out more of the Lord we love and serve, do contact me. We gather in one of the member house every Friday night 8.30pm. We will be delighted that you can grace our gathering with your presence.

The Preservation of the saints

 Last month while on board a flight to Bangkok to attend my ex boss wedding, I was reading a little book entitled Portraits of faith by Joel Beeke. It gave a sketch of 5 biblical characters whose names were not emblazoned in the hall of faith in Hebrews chapter 11, but whose lives and conducts certainly merit our imitation. They demonstrate aspects of faith that are solely needed by the Church of Jesus Christ as stated on the back cover of the book. As I was nearing the study of the last character Caleb, who with Joshua were the only believers in a seas of unbelievers  in trying to claim Canaan, their persevering faith stand in stark contrast to the prevalent unbelieving opinion in the two million people camp. Two against two million! Will their faith be swallowed up? Will they succumb to the unbelieving views around them?  

Let’s hear the judgment of the scripture for ourselves; “Num 14:24 :But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it.” In fact, the only two people who are permitted to enter into the Promised Land from those generations of people are Joshua and Caleb. Observe the example of Caleb!

It maybe that as a Christian you may feel very lonely, that there are few Christians around you. But here is your encouragement: It is possible to be a Daniel in the courts of Babylon; it is possible to be a Caleb in the midst of murmuring faithless millions! The book stated that out of the 168 hours a week in the midst of a powerful, terrorizing, godless world bombarding us with its worldview, we spent perhaps 2-3 hours in the house of Lord on the sabbath day. And the wonders of it all is that the Lord uses those 2-3 hours to preserve our Christian sanity and sensibility.

We cannot help but marvel at the preservation of saints in the hands of an Almighty and faithful God. We need to see more urgently the importance of daily devotion and be more grateful to God for the miracles He has wrought for keeping us. My wife was sharing with me her experiencing with having like minded believers woking in her place and praying together during lunch time. How it has ministered to her soul tremendously. My dear brethren, are you persevering in quiet time and seeking out like minded brethren to fellowship and pray in the week?

All Glory to Him! 

Come and Welcome

My family has been attending a Disciple Group (DG for short) for the past two and half years up north in Sembawang estate. The demographic make up of the group is 99% married couple and family. The courageous 1% statistic belong to a young charming man named Yong Wei who also happen to peddle his insurance trade brilliantly. Indeed I have been very encouraged by his attendance.

The teaching from the group follows that of the church sermon closely. It was anchored by the men within the group on a rotation basis. The leaders of the group are Wing Poh and Mook. Of course there are other families and members whom I hope will slowl show themselves and be introduced. This segment is specially dedicated to the good folks of my DG. I hope it can serve as a good forum to share the thoughts and teaching of what we have learnt and perhaps our own meditation and readings.  This will also benefit those who may miss the gathering due to one or the other reasons as well as the sacrificial mums who had to tend to their kids. So please keep those posts coming. As iron sharpens iron……

Body, Sex and Marriage

How serious is the sin of sexual immorality? The key to understand this is the single word known as covenant.

And to further expound on this word, we must apprehend the relationship between marriage, sex and our body.

 

 

Marriage is not a piece of paper as the moderns would have us believed. The foundation of marriage as God would have intended is covenantal. (Prov 2:17, Mal 2:14) What does that mean?

 

A marital covenant is a solemn bond between a man and a woman sealed by marital oath and consummated by sexual union. It is first and foremost an act of God. “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder”(Matt 19:6) God is the One who marry the first woman to the first man. From then on, it is to be a pattern to come.

 

Not only is marriage a covenant, it is also meant to image the great covenant between Christ and His Church transacted in the new covenant of Jeremiah 31:31.. This Paul revealed to us in Eph 5:32 and it is said to be a great mystery. By that, we understand that every marriage is a dim picture of the gospel, the relationship between Christ and His church. Depending on the marriage, every couple is either proclaiming it truthfully or falsely, nevertheless the proclamation is always made.

 

Husband, do you love your wife sacrificially and as your own body as Christ loves the church? Wife, do you submit to your husband and respect Him as the Head? God in His dispensation has ordained that how well we understand this New Covenant doctrine by how we treat our spouse! If a Christian man thinks that he has fulfill his husband duty by putting bread on the table and driving the kids to church on Sunday, he has yet to understand this doctrine.

 

As much as modern man may protest otherwise, every marriage is an act of God. But modern man continue to extinguish every creation of God by thinking that another piece of paper can easily replace the one the newly married have just signed. But the judgment of the scripture is that death and sexual immorality have the power to absolve this covenantal bond. (Matt 19 and Roman 7:2)

 

But why does sexual immorality have this absolving power? The key to understanding this is to understand the place of sex in God’s economy. Sex is not as many moderns would like to imagine, after a night of physical passion, the willing engaging parties departed in the same way they came with no ramification whatsoever. The bible declares that the one flesh union consummates our marital covenant. A covenant is not normally enacted unless the one flesh union has taken place together with the marriage oath. The two shall become one. And when a man has engaged in sexual intercourse with a woman, the two have become one body and a covenant has been enacted. (1 Cor 6: 16) This principle remains the same regardless if the man pays the woman or otherwise.

 

Looking from this light, when the married man join his body to another woman in extra marital infidelity, he is in fact covenanting with her and his original marital covenant will be broken. The marriage is therefore judged to have no covenanting bond. That is how powerful sexual immorality can be, even put asunder what God has joined together.

 

This also throws up some light regarding why sexual immorality is categorized under idolatry in Col 3:5. Idolatry is the sin of breaking the covenant of God by following after other idols. In similar way, sexual immorality has this capacity to break the marital covenant.

 

In view of all these, our unredeemed body does matter and this is in opposite to Gnostic doctrines. The fact is we are all going to dwell in bodies forever. We are going to live in flesh and bones forever!

 

Now this body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and it has been joined to the Lord in one spirit. Therefore the scripture exhorted us that the body is meant for the lord and the Lord for the body. We joined with the Lord’s Body, the church in baptism. That is why the Lord’s body, the church must give us the blessings before we can join to another body in holy matrimony.

There is a very clear connection that is made in Titus between sexual purity and the blessed hope: “teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Tit. 2:12-13). The glory of the resurrection body is a great inducement to moral purity now.

 

The scripture says when we commit sexual sins, we sin against our bodies. Sexual sin is not the worst of the sins but it is certainly the most complicated. Some people understand this verse as contracting sexually transmitted diseases after a few rounds of reckless fling. It may very well includes that but considering what we have been talking about our bodies, sex and marriage, the impact of sexual sins is much broad based. This body which is given by God and indwelt by the Holy Ghost and ultimately to be joined to Jesus should not be thoughtlessly bonded to other illegitimate bodies covenantally through sexual immorality. We are really doing this body the utmost injury and risk falling short of the standards for the warning is clear and unmistakable (1 Cor 6:9)

 

What does this mean for us, husband? It means that we should keep our eyes on our wives, leave our heart at the altar of God and when we smell the slightest temptation, we should run a million miles away.

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