Chinese New Year Promotes Filial Piety and Parental Love
(Message delivered by Pastor at the True Life Church 9 am Service, Jan 29, 06)
Text: Eph. 6:1-4
Today is the beginning of Chinese New Year and it is appropriate for me to speak on the subject: Chinese New Year Promotes Filial Piety and Parental Love. This subject is based on Ephesians 6:1-4. It reads, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”
Insofar as China is concerned millions and millions of Chinese have been on the move to return home to visit their parents once a year, to eat the last meal of the 29th night and to wish their parents well the next morning. The parents will bless them with a monetary gift. If they are aged parents the grown up sons and daughters will do the reverse. Christians can follow this custom. Indeed Chinese New Year Promotes Filial Piety and Parental Love.
Why do we worship the Lord at 9 am this Lord’s Day Morning? In order we may pay our respects to aged parents, in which case it is our turn to give them an angpow (red packet containing money) to their delight. On the other hand to our younger siblings we must not miss giving them their angpows.
If we have aged parents we might on New Year gather at a Big Brother’s House and spend a get together with the rest of the Big Family. This will promote good relationships. But if one or two small families will be absent, it may mean bad relationship which we do not want to see happen in a big Christian Family.
At Chinese New Year we may see the extension of the celebration to the whole Church, inasmuch as members would come. In Singapore we enjoy two days of Chinese New Year vacation. When Chinese New Year falls on a Sunday or holiday its vacation is extended to Tuesday Jan 31. An enthusiastic Christian and his equally zealous wife make it a point to invite the pastor to preach an Anniversary Message requested by the Ladies with a fellowship lunch thereafter. Doesn’t it seem to us Chinese New Year is more than promoting filial piety and parental love? God will surely bless such a broad hearted home. The joy of sharing Christian Fellowship is such joy you cannot experience anywhere else. It is a first joy we receive out of heaven which the world knoweth not. So, as for me, I must specially prepare my Anniversary Message and tell about my excitement beforehand to our brothers and sisters, Tuesday Morning 11 am, Jan 31. Amen!
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The YPF’s Statement on a 100% Perfect Bible Without Mistake
In the early years of the Bible-Presbyterian Church in Singapore, the preservation of the Bible was a non-issue as it was accepted as matter of fact. However, in recent times, the preservation of the Bible has become an issue with certain parties denying the Verbal Plenary Preservation (VPP) of the Bible. The Young People’s Fellowship (YPF) of True Life Bible-Presbyterian Church stands firmly on the doctrine of VPP. As a matter of contending for the faith (Jude 3), we will like to issue the following statement to affirm our positional stand.
“We believe in the divine, Verbal Plenary Inspiration (Autographs) and Verbal Plenary Preservation (Apographs) of the Scriptures in the original languages, their consequent inerrancy and infallibility, and as the perfectly preserved Word of God, the supreme authority in faith and life (2 Tim 3:16, 2 Pet 1:20-21; Ps 12:6-7; Matt 5:18; 24:35).
The Bible is none other than the voice of Him that sitteth upon the throne. Every book of it, every chapter of it, every verse of it, every word of it, every syllable of it, is direct utterance of the Most High. The Bible is none other than the Word of God, not some part of it more, some part of it less, but all alike the utterance of Him that sitteth upon the throne, faultless, unerring, supreme. Amen.”
The YPF declares that we have a Perfect Bible today! “For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.” (1 Peter 1:24-25). Soli Deo Gloria. Amen.
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THE GOSPEL OF LIFE: Chapter XVII
John 17:16-21
4. For the sanctification of believers
5. For the spiritual unity of believers
While Jesus has asked the Father to guard His children against the attacks of the world and of the evil one, He sees a greater peril from within. That is that they might give way themselves to the inroads of the world and of Satan. Proof: the big turnover in many churches of dropouts, backsliders. Can you name some in the apostolic church?
How to guard them from within? Sanctify them! That is consecrate, or devote, set apart them entirely to Himself and defend them as His sacred property (Calvin). And the means of this setting them apart process is with His truth. Truth not in a theoretical sense but according to “Thy Word”.
Word here means the teaching of the Gospel which the apostles had heard from the Master’s mouth. In the complete sense it must be the whole Bible inasmuch as Paul has declared that the Church is cleansed with the washing of water by the Word. (Eph. 5:26) How important it is to read and meditate on the Bible daily. God’s Word is the most powerful means of grace to keep us from temptation and from the evil one.
During the early days of the 16th Century Reformation there were fanatics among the Anabaptists who relied on visions and hallucinations to be God’s communications to them, at the expense of the Word. These were denounced by Calvin who clung to the Scriptures. Today there has arisen a similar phenomenon of those who stress more on self-revelations, dreams and visions than on the Word of God. This is the surest way to perdition.
Apart from sanctifying them by the Word Jesus prays for unity of believers of the coming generations, for a more effective witness to the world. Here is a Biblical ecumenism of believers who are grounded on the Truth, who stand together on His Holy Word. But this verse (21) has been used by promoters of the Ecumenical Movement to drive towards a super world church, for a reunion with Rome and a syncretism with human religions. The unity that Jesus prays about is spiritual as that which binds the branches to the tree and not humanly organised unity, Satan’s great deception to the church of the end-times. If you are a member of a church linked to the World Council of Churches, what must you do?
John 17:21-26
6. That the world may believe.
7. That believers may be with Him in Heaven to behold and share His glory.
As we have stated, there is a Biblical ecumenism, a unity of believers against fragmentation of the Church that works as a more effective witness to the world (v. 23). What Jesus is talking about is not separation from unbelief which is Biblical and legitimate. What Jesus is talking about is schism, which Chambers defines as “breach of unity without justifiable cause” e.g. the schismatic division in the Corinthian Church under the names of Paul and Apollos, under Cephas and even under Christ! (I Cor 1:12) Beware of personality cults in the Church!
When a church is united, great will be her power of witness. “United we stand, divided we fall.” Let us therefore be careful to cultivate this spiritual unity that is inherent in the church, as the branches are united with the tree. It is clearly there, not to be built up piece by piece like the Tower of Babel, like the organised unity the World Council of Churches is striving to make. Let us take away the little foxes of egotism, rivalry, jealousy, suspicion, gossip, backbiting, character assassination, and you name them, “that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes” (Song of Solomon 2:15). Beware of little cliques in the Church!
And when we reach heaven will we not be one with Him to behold His glory, and the centre of that glory is love! Our unity in the bonds of Christian love on earth are but a rehearsal and foretaste of the heavenly glory to come when we will not only be with the Son, but also with the Father, the fountain of eternal love. Unity cannot live without the freshened air of love!
Earthly friendship is all but vain
In a mirror can be seen
Men’s hearts vary as their faces
But their feelings are the same
Face to face that Day we shall meet,
Gathered round our Father’s feet
In sincerity and in truth
And our differences removed.
– Jason Linn
Young People’s Fellowship and Truth BPC YF Combined Meeting, Jan 21, 2006
