A Good Neighbour

"Love thy neighbour as thyself." 

This commandment is only second to the commandment of loving thy God with all thy heart, all thy soul and all thy mind. Matthew 22-37-39. 

What does it take to love thy neighbour? Proverbs 3:26 is clear what we should not do - withhold that which is due to your neighbour. We should not delay that should have been given to your neighbour. God had provided to us all the goodness at the right time and we have been fully blessed, should we not provide for our neighbours the little bit of goodness that we can give?

In this day and age, having a neighbour that we can communicate is very rare, let alone one whom we can have a good relationship. Yet we know having a good neighbour is so important, but have we made any effort to connect with our neighbours? I have been most blessed to have a good neighbour in this life. Mr Yang is a Peranakan with such a big heart. He has a little Jack Russell that was happily overweight due to all the good food that came from the owner's table. He extended his love even to my two retriever dogs three times the size of his. 10 years ago when I become his neighbour, he became the unofficial guardian of my dogs. Very often he will come with treats from his own dog's stash or off his own table. My dogs grew to love his regular visits as they finally had the chance to eat something sinful, a break from the strict diet they had in my house. 

I benefitted from Mr Yang's generosity as well. Knowing that I would rather starve than to cook something in my own kitchen, my neighbour will give me a bowl of his own lunch or dinner whenever I am at home. He always thinks I will really starve and selflessly provided me from his own table. His portion is always good for 2 or 3 of my own meals and without him, home cook food would have been a rarity in my life lifetime. Mr Yang is my neighbour, the guardian to my dogs and a second father to me. I thank God for His provision of such a good neighbour in such abundance that truly I do not deserve. 

Salt & Fire

Mark 9:48-50
For everyone shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltiness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.

The context of these 2 verses in the entire passage is punishment in times of sin. Fire in this passage is punishment and everyone here refers to every non-believer. The end of the fire is destruction. People who are unrepentant will be seasoned with salt to be roasted in the lake of fire. Thus the importance of spiritually cutting off our hands (v43); foot (v45) and eye (v47) that have caused us to sin against God. Spiritual surgery is important for our Salvation from the Lord.

Col 3:5 - Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

Mortify here is to put to death. The old man that have all these sins have been washed by the blood of Jesus to become the new man.  We need to show the fruits of our salvation in our lives, and be salted with salt as we get cleansed. The sacrifice speaks of the believer, as a sacrifice unto God. Our body is a reasonable sacrifice to God. Thus we are salted with salt to further sanctify ourselves to God. The salt here is a covenant with our God. It will last forever, just as salt preserves us forever.

Romans 12:1-2. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Let's us not conform to the world and salted with fire; but be transformed in Christ to be salted with salt and be preserved forever.

Why So Stupid?

Mark 8:1-21
I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat:
And his disciples answered him, From whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness? And he asked them, How many loaves have ye? And they said, Seven.
When I brake the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve. And when the seven among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? And they said, Seven. And he said unto them, How is it that ye do not understand?

Reason why we are so stupid-
A. We fail to know God and His Word
There is more to God beyond what we know. We examine the miracles that God performed, we go beyond the normal understanding. It is not just being fed with bread, but that God is the provider of all things including the enternal life. More importantly, we fret when we lost our provision in daily life; we lost faith the He will ultimately provide. We worry about daily provisions, when these should be the least of our worries. We need to have faith and trust the Lord to provide while to focus our attention on the heavenly things of enter all life.

God has compassion; He provided for all and fed the multitude when there was no food. God will have compassion towards us;  we just need to have faith and patience that he will provide. We worry, we are stupid. We live like spiritual orphans as though we have no father, we are stupid. We are stupid because we chose to be; forgetting that God is companionate and powerful. Put God first and have faith.

B. We fail to see things through the word of God
Many things happen in the world, and we use our own understanding to interpret the world. God's theology is given to us for the reason, that we can understand the things of the world through the lens of God. People follow great leaders of the world and their thinking; but they forgot that they already have the greatest teaching in the Bible. Only when we know theology then can we see the world in the light of God's word, and everything will make sense  in spiritual sense.

We also make decisions according to our own wisdom and understanding; we never bring God into our decision making. What is His will for us? What is the Bible say about what we are going to do? Would the decision we made be a good testimony to us as Christian? Did we consider all these questions before we make decisions? How stupid can we be?

If only we rely on God, life would be earlier for us. We are limited in our understanding, God alone should should be our only yardstick for all.

Building a Spiritual House

Church anniversary sermon 2 Oct 2016

1 Peter 2:5 "Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ."

A Christian is never alone. Once you accepted Christ, you belong to a family. God says so long as there is 2-3 people gathered in His name, He will be with us. 

God is unique to each of us, He meant to each of us differently, but He will never leave us. He will always have the spiritual house for us. 

In return we now live for Christ because we have a direction, we have a goal and and end point to go to. 

1 Peter 2:1 "Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings. As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious." 

Now that we have a new life, we need to set aside all guile, hypocrisies, malice and evils, but to live a life for Christ, and produce only good things from our lives. We will also have a great appetite for God's word as milk for babies, so that we can grow in God. We will feel the graciousness of God through better understanding of His Word. 

We have tasted the love and goodness of God. We are Christ like, spiritually alive, and not dead. We shall be faithful to follow Him and He will bless us accordingly.

Enrich Your Life

Our Hope to an Enriched Life

John 10:7. Why did Jesus come to earth? He came to give us an abundant life. Without him there is no hope of an enriched life. He is the only door that leads to God's blessings. This is exclusively provided by the Salvation of God. There is no way we can work towards an abundant life unless through Jesus Christ.

"All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them."John 10:8. Who are the thrives and robbers of our life now? Those that pulled your life away from Jesus and our faith. Your work, your friends, anyone and anything that casted doubt in your faith. We may do well in this world, we will still fail in God's eye.

What then, is an enriched life? It is a life of spiritual growth. John 10:9 " I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." Surrender our lives to Jesus and find the door to an enriched life.

Our Responsibility to an Enriched Life.

John 10:9 "...shall go in and out.." Labour in the work of the Lord and feed on the Word of God as the pasture of our life. With that we can have spiritual growth and endless opportunities in God's kingdom. This is the process of sanctification that gives us an abundant life gradually and naturally in God.

Start the day with God, and ask Him for power and strength for the day. The quiet time is the most important part of the day, start your life with this.

Enrich your life and be accountable for it.

Bible Study - 2 Samuel 18

Civil war, David and Absalom.

The foundation of this war is the belief that King David is the rightful King. As such, the people did not allow David to go to war with them, for his safety's sake (v3). King David felt responsible for Absalom's action due to the consequence of his action with Bathsheba. That's why he asked his men to deal gently with his son (v5).

The wood of Ephraim was in the middle of Israel, a dangerous and treacherous place. More people died in the forest than the war - God was on David 's side. Absalom was caught by his hair, his pride and vanity (chapter 14), and irony with God's humor. The men refused to kill him by virtue of David's command. The men knew that David was strict towards the commands he issued to his men. Joab did not agree with the men and went ahead to kill Absalom (v14).

Was what David asked of his men right or wrong? As a father, it was right; but as a King it was wrong. This was David's dilemma. However, the biblical way was to be objective and not allow anyone to escape the law just by the fact that he was someone special. No one should be spared under God's law. David allowed his feelings to interfere with the affairs of the nation of Israel. This is evident at the end of the episode where David wept and moaned for his son's death. The lesson to learn here is to bring up your son fearing God. Don't let any area of your life hinder with your work for God. Let every area of your life be God honouring, else you will find yourself in a dilemma where you need to choose between different areas.

Joab - a strange character in the Bible. Did he kill Absalom out of his personal revenge or for King David's sake? He was capability but cunning, he seemed to do right, yet he can be ruthless. A character worth studying.

The war was over at the sound of Joab's trumpet, and the people that supported Absalom fled to their houses, hoping that no one knew they supported Absalom (v17). Absalom's life ended sadly, with only his pillar as a symbol of remembrance ( v18), a reflection of his unfruitful life. We must not aim for glory but for a spiritually fruitful life. May Absalom's life be a reminder to all Christians to live according to God's will and serve him so long as we are on earth.