Caroling Sermon - John 3:15-16

How do we know there is a God - from nature, galaxies, stars, four seasons. As such man already seen and know that there is God. Man has a natural tendency to worship a higher deity. Some worship money, animals and seven superstars, political figures. They worship things that are dead and cannot protect themselves; and worship man that are fallible.

The bible says that God loves the world and sacrificed. The greatest love is to give the best of yourself to the person you love. We were made in the likeness of God. God loved his creation - us, whether we believe Him or not. Man does not acknowledge God as our creator. We are rebellious, disobedient to God. Man is greedy and yet exceedingly proud. Man is full of sins. Nonetheless God loved us regardless of our sins. He sent his only begotten son for us, to die and be sacrificed for us. God is love. He gave his son to save us even as we do not deserve it.

However we need to be accountable for our actions. We will die and face judgement after death. We need to recognize God's gift for us - his son as the sacrifice for our sins, so that we can have salvation. He bore our sins so that we can be saved. God loved us and is willing to give us his only begotten son to die for us. Christ died and rose from the dead on the third day. As such Christians fear no death for we will have everlasting life, just like our Saviour. We just need to believe in Christ and His salvation work in order to be saved from eternal death.

Commit ourselves to God and let go. Allow God to lead in your life and you will find that your burden is light.

The Pre-millennialism Church

Revelation 20:1-6

We believe in the pre-millennial return of the Lord Jesus Christ. Pre - "before". Millennial - "one thousand years". This one thousand years will be the period of Jesus Christ's reign on earth. This is the physical ruling of Christ on earth. The other school of thought is Armillenialism, where there no physical ruling but spiritual. In fact Christ is ruling in heaven right now, and there is no 1000 years, it just refers to a long time. They also believe that we are now in the millennium, and Christ is already reigning in heaven.

There are couple of reasons supporting pre-millennialism.

1. In the millennium, there is an absence of Satan. Rev 20:2 states that Satan will be bounded for 1000 years. "And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years." If the millennium is now, then we should not see Satan's presence on earth, but this is not the case. 1 Peter 5:8 says we need to be vigilant bacause Satan is still abound. "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour."

2. The reign of Christ is a physical one on earth. Rev 5:19-20
"And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth."

The millennium is a period of peace where people worship the Lord on earth. There will not be war, but this is not so today. There are still war abound. There will be no peace until the Lord returns.

The lesson for understanding pre-millennium is to be vigilant, holy and live according to God's will for us. If we are found on God's side, we will be together with him at the first resurrection. Make sure that we are indeed so.

Sunday Sermon - Obey God and Not Man

Acts 5:17-42

Easier said than done? It should be easier said and even easier to be done.

Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man's blood upon us. - Acts 5:28

This, apostles Peter and others did not follow, for it is important to "obey God rather than men". For it is true - the blood should be upon the people for when even Pilate declare Jesus sinless, they wanted him crucified. The command to stop preaching was borne out of guilt.

1. We must obey God because God commands it. "Go, make disciples from the people". That is Jesus' commandment to His disciples. This is precisely what Peter and the other disciples were doing. If God commands it, we must follow, for His commandment is always right. Be purposeful and determine what we should do when the commandments of man go against the commandments of God. Daniel is a good example, stand firm even if it means we will be thrown to the lions's den.

2. We must obey God because only God can save us. Know who our saviour is! And when we obey God, Satan will try to take us away from Him. God is very much alive and working in our lives, we will experience miraculous help from God even as God miraculously deliver the apostles out of prison during the days of Acts.

But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth, and said, Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life. - Acts 5:19. This is the same God that we have today. What he did in the past, He will do the same today. He is our saviour and protector. Go and carry out God's work by faith! God will be with us.

3. We must obey God because when we obey Him, it proves that we are truly saved. When we are saved, we have the Holy Spirit who allow us to obey God, for by our sinful self will not want to obey God. Naturally we do not want to obey God; supernaturally we cannot help but obey Him because of the Holy Spirit that is in us. The Holy Spirit compelled us to be grieved when we sinned and He brings us back to God when we confess our sins.

May we determine in our lives to obey God and not man.

Sunday Sermon - Fulfilling All Righteousness

Matthew 3:13-17

Jesus went through baptism, but he has no sin and did not need to be baptized. Why would Jesus want to go through baptism? Even John the Baptist refused to baptize Jesus, for he was in need of being baptized himself by Jesus. John saw his Saviour and immediately humbled himself. We need to learn this humility. Do we come to churn each Sunday thinking that God needs us or do we realized that we needed God instead? Each week we come bringing our burdens and sin that we committed in the week, and we come to seek God's mercy and grace. We come to seek spiritual wisdom to lead a life humbly and worshipfully everyday.

Jesus went through the baptism to fulfill all righteousness. For we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Therefore Jesus has to go through the waters of baptism for our sake. There is the judicial, the moral and the ceremonial laws under the Jews requirements. Jesus kept all these law for our sake, and earned all the righteousness that will allow us to go to heaven. Galatians 4:4.

The significance of the baptism is that Jesus is identifying himself with man. Jesus was 100% man, he shall be man's representation and substitute. He will save mankind of their sin. Jesus also went through the baptism to obey God the Father's commandment. Verse 17 - God said "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." God is acknowledging Jesus' obedience to the Father. Throughout Jesus' life he worked hard to be perfectly obedient for our sake. So we need to now work hard for him. There are so many things to do and commandments to keep in our lives. We need to press on, looking forward to the time when our Lord will say "Well done my child."

Are we thankful for what the Lord had done? Instead are we ashamed of being a Christian? Is it because we live a different life outside church? Do we hide the facts of our Christian life from our friends? Are we being thankful to God by behaving this way?

Baptism is an outward confession of our faith, telling the rest that we are not ashamed of being a Christian. Baptism is both a commandment and a blessing from God. Such a blessing is special only to us. We can only live a victorious Christian life by partaking in this means of grace. Similar to the Lord's Supper, a means of grace for us where we receive spiritual forgiveness and strength to continue our lives.

Preserve and fulfill all righteousness in our life so that we can run the race and complete the course in perfection, to receive the crowd of life at the end.

Sunday Sermon - Overcoming Temptation

Luke 4:1-13, Matthew 4:1-11

Why must Jesus go through these temptation? It is to fulfill all requirement. He needed to overcome sin for us. The representative principle applies here. Adam the first man failed and sinned. By him all man sinned against God. Jesus, the 100% man needed to overcome sin as mankind's representative. He must prove perfect obedience to God's law so that he might earn the righteousness for us.

The lust of the flesh - turn stone into bread. Jesus was 40 days in the wilderness, he needed food. Adam was also tempted as he saw that the apple was good as food. Jesus quoted from Deuteronomy 8 to resist this temptation.

The lust of the eye - the power and glory of the world. Jesus will have all these so long as he bow to Satan. Likewise, Adam saw how pleasing the apple was to him. Again Jesus quote from Deuteronomy 6:8 to repeal the devil.

The pride of life - to jump down so that the angle will protect him as promised by God. Adam was tempted with the knowledge that he will get by eating the apple. Yet again Jesus quoted the law against this temptation.

For all three temptations Adam failed miserably. Jesus overcomes all of them by being faithful to God. Jesus used the law to prove that he come to fulfill the law. He did not sin, and he did it for all man. Jesus even went through greater temptation than Adam. He was driven in the wilderness while Adam was in the garden of Eden. During the 40 days in the wilderness, he was repeatedly tempted over and over again. Yet Jesus overcome all for our sake.

Jesus was our representative, and he set an example for us to resist the same type of temptations that we face today. The lust of the flesh - the love of money. We need to replace this love with the love of God's words. The list of the eyes - the outward beauty of people. The roving eyes of man that caused us to be unfaithful to our spouse. We need to resist such immorality by avoiding such temptations. The pride of life - the power we thought we had. Our pride and self- esteem caused us to think that he can do things ourselves and forget the only God makes all things possible.