What Can We Do for Our Nation?

(Message delivered by Pastor at the True Life Church 10.30 am Service, Aug 7, 05)
Text: I Tim. 2:1-4

It was forty years ago in 1965 after we were not welcome to become a part of Malaysia that we had to stand alone, and now we are become a nation. By honest hard work we have become first port and first airline of the world. Many expatriates working in Singapore could wish to make Singapore their homeland. As for me I have always declared there is no better place for me to live than Singapore. God has blessed us for choosing Singapore for the founding of Far Eastern Bible College where 120 students from 19 nationalities are gathered in these last days for training before our Saviour comes.

What can we do for our Nation while our Lord tarries? Paul exhorts us that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions and giving of thanks, be made for all men. Fifteen percent including Roman Catholics are Christians. The rest 85% are Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims and Hindus, who are outside Christ. We are to pray for them and even thank God for them. Isn’t this the first step to bring them to Christ?

Then for kings and all that are in authority that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For our Prime Minister and all ministers of state that we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. In so doing it works out good and acceptable to our God and Saviour who will have all men to be saved and come unto the knowledge of the truth.

Is it not a fact that the churches in Singapore by keeping the law obtain favour from the Government so that we can preach the Word, and people from the outside have come to know the Truth. The Government in fact has great respect of the church. Our own Calvary Tengah B-P Church celebrating 11th Anniversary is a case in point.

When some trouble has erupted within the church, some people have thought they will get redress from the Government. But the Government respects a great deal the church and will not interfere in any way.

“Who will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (v. 4). This is the main emphasis of the whole passage of our text. This passage of Scripture bespeaks St. Paul’s mind and is an exhortation to us, every member of True Life B-P Church, even in missions, to those of us who regularly leave Singapore in the night to get to Kemaman and Kuantan the next day. And to Hien our Vietnamese graduate from Far Eastern Bible College now serving in Brisbane, Australia and remember once again the Lord is coming back even in our life time.

 

 

THE GOSPEL OF LIFE: Chapter XIII

John 13:33-38
Cocksure Peter

There’s a Chinese saying, “As distance measures the power of a horse, so long associations between friends reveal the heart.” We have tasted the gall of bitterness in Judas’ character as revealed by his treachery of the Master at the Last Supper. Now we shall see the cocksureness of Peter, the centre-forward of the remaining Eleven, pruned. Are you a Peter?

Let us go back to the beginning: “. . . . when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own which were in the world, he loved them to the end.” (13:1) With Judas now gone into the night, Jesus all the more expressed His tender affections to the rest. But His greater concern for them was their welfare after He was gone, that they love one another.

Now as Christ cared lovingly the future of His disciples, Peter rose to the occasion to express his devotion in the Master’s impending danger. He sensed, as they all sensed, that their Lord was coming to the hour of crisis, the hour of arrest and death. In a moment of noble resolution he offered to die together with the Master. Is that not the experience of us who are more emotionally charged? Don’t be too cocksure! As Jesus predicted that Peter would deny Him three times before that cock-a-doodle note, so must we be warned against cocksureness.

I have known of an elder who loved his Lord dearly and was outspoken for His cause in peacetime. During the Japanese occupation of Singapore this elder was one day searched as he walked past a Japanese sentry. Gospel tracts were found on his person. When questioned if he was a Christian he vociferously denied he was one. Peter, beware of cocksureness!

 

Chapter XIV

To Thomas and You Who Grope for Salvation, Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life

As night had descended and zero hour was approaching, the disciples (minus Judas) were beset with a mounting anxiety. To allay their fears our Lord comforted them with this sermon in the passover chamber. Though He was soon to take leave of His disciples, He would not leave them comfortless like wandering orphans. He was going back to His Father and would return to receive them to a better abode He would prepare for them. In this sermon Jesus leads them to higher planes of truth, with many applications for their edification and ours.
(1) His Second Coming
(2) His being the onlyway to God
(3) His oneness with the Father
(4) His sending of the Holy Spirit
(5) His peace that transcends the world
(6) His subordination to the Father

Oftentimes we hear John 14:1-6 read at funeral services for the consolation of bereaved families. We hear it so much that we almost know it by heart. Let us pay more attention to the remaining portion of this chapter.

Usually, it is Peter who stands up to speak or ask questions. Having just been told how he would thrice deny his Lord in the ensuing encounter with the enemy, Peter is ominously silent.

Can you identify the three disciples who speak this time? Who is Judas, not Iscariot? He is the author of the Epistle of Jude, also called Thaddaeus and Lebbaeus in Matthew 10:3.

 

John 14:1-6

1. His Second Coming
By telling the disciples of His second coming, Jesus gives them what the Church calls the Blessed Hope. Jesus is the only way to God, but it is not a one way street for Himself to go home to the Father forever. It is a two way street, whereby He will return to take us to Himself. That is why He begins with “Let not your heart be troubled.”

The classic chapter describing the manner of His return is 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. Jesus’ second coming will not be the same as His first coming. It will not be in a lowly manger but with loud fanfare of trumpet-sounding angels, in super-atomic power and celestial glory visible in the clouds to the whole earth.

At the second coming the dead in Christ will be raised with new, glorified bodies. They will be whisked up to heaven with those Christians alive after them in a lightning Rapture or Catching-up. Such a cataclysmic event of comic proportions defies every imagination.

Some Christians, studying Revelation and other prophetic Scripture on the end-times, argue much about the timing of the Rapture. This is like going to take a train armed only with time-tables. Jesus does not stress on the timing of His Second Coming, but rather our preparedness to meet Him. Those who have His truth and His life will go with Him who is the way. Thomas’ question from a heart of inexperienced faith leads us all who reads this chapter and believe Him into a faith that needs no experience. If we trust the Lord, He will take us back to be with Him. He is our guide to show the way. Can you say you will go with Him at His Second Coming? Or, should He tarry longer, to meet Him when you die? If He does not come to us yet, we must be prepared to go to Him! Are you ready?

 

John 14:6
2. The One and Only Way to God
Though we have covered up to verse 6 in the previous lesson, we must give special attention to this one verse, for it touches on a very important aspect of truth. Note that Jesus says, “. . . no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” No man can go to heaven except through Jesus Christ. How different is Jesus’ assertion from the philosophy of the world.

This means the Roman Catholic doctrine of making Mary a co-Saviour is a great lie, though they acknowledge Christ died for our sins. Are you a Roman Catholic? You are taught a wrong doctrine.

This means every human religion, east or west, is of no avail to save us. There’s one religion that substitutes with a man for a mediator to God. He is out! Because without the Son, there is no way to the Father. Thus we must pray in Jesus’ name. “. . . for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.” (Acts 4: 12)

The Jews who stick only to Moses and the 39 books of the Old Testament are also out. They will be saved as a nation when they worship Jesus as their Messiah at His Second Coming (read Zechariah 12:10).

Much less can those who follow Confucius, who doesn’t know of life beyond the grave. Much less the followers of Buddha or Laotse. What a pity to see our own countrymen worshipping idols and devils and a host of gods and goddesses; Kwan Yin and Kwan Kong. Heroines and heroes they might be, but those we have named above, including prophets, could not save themselves to live again. How then can they save us?

Some who say, “As long as we have faith”, without reference to Jesus, are lost, like a ship without anchor or rudder in a stormy sea. Jesus is the one and only way to God! This is what we must tell to others who do not know Him. Do you? Rev. C. T. Hsu, a founder member of the B-P Church now in New York tells the world that “ONLY JESUS SAVES” by wearing this label on his jacket wherever he goes! This has provoked many a debate with Roman Catholics, for good!