Category: Blog

Matt 7:1-6
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you wil…l see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces…”

Many use Matt 7:1 as a blanket prohibition of all judgment completely ignoring the whole counsel of the Word of God concerning this very important issue. Judging and discernment is so important for without, the church suffers much in many ways and the most dreadful is having agents of the enemy as her leaders and false teaching prevails.

What the Word of God warned here is about unrighteous judgment such as fault finding. In Matt 7:6, Jesus even told us to judge those who are violent towards the gospel so surely Matt 7:1 cannot be a blanket prohibition. Our Lord clearly stated in John 7:24 that we do not judge by appearances but judge with righteous judgment.
Take a look at the whole counsel of the Word of God and decide whether we want to be fully obedient to the Word of God or choose what we are comfortable with.

We do not judge :
1. Appearances or motives. Jn 7:24; Jas 2:1-4
2. Matters of conscience. Rom 14:1-5.
3. Service of another brother. 1 Cor 4:1-5.
4. In speaking evil of another brother. Jas 4:11-12.

But we should judge :
1. False teaching and error in teaching. Matt 7:15-20; 1 Cor 14:29; 1 Jn 4:1.
2. Serious sins in the church. Matt 18:17; 1 Cor 5:9-13.
3. Disputes in the church. 1 Cor 6:1-8.
4. Qualification of elders and deacons. 1 Tim 3:1-13.
5. In admonishing the idle and slothful; and discern and help the faint-hearted and the weak. 1 Thess 5:14.
6. In not being unequally yoked with unbelievers. 2 Cor 6:14.

Any one walking in the will of God need not be bothered by judging because he or she knows his conscience is clear. Only those who are in error or sin usually are the ones who cry foul of judging, and it is so comical that they also commit the very same act of judging which they denounce by judging the motive of those who judged.

We are called to be witnesses for Christ. When we follow His Manifesto to share the gospel, give sight to the blind, visit the imprisoned and relieve the oppressed (Luke 4:18), it is possible that we may perform all these works without really representing Christ. God wants obedience and mercy out of our hearts and not outward sacrifice. It involves more than what we do and say – it requires inner transformation by His Spirit to be more like Him. In that way, we will truly represent Him if we become more like Him.

From the gospels, we know that Christ our Lord had humility, compassion and self control showing He is Love; and confidence, objectivity and assertiveness showing He is Just.

Many of us fail to represent Him completely in love and justice. Love and Justice are both God’s attributes which God desires we know Him well. (Jer 9:23-24).

He came lowly to demonstrate that God gives grace to the humble. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Any teaching that exalts the human spirit is definitely wrong which is at the core of the cheap grace theology. And it is no wonder that the false teachers are often touted as excellent motivational speakers. The proud, the greedy and the idolaters simply love this cheap grace message that they can receive grace without repentance. That they can be born again without being born again. The story of Zaachaeus showed us how we can truly receive grace and being born again. Zaachaeus was a hated tax collector. Money was his idol and he was willing to be hated just to worship this idol. He could very well be a pious Jew having good relations with the religious authorities. But when he came to Jesus, he came not with pride but with humility though he was the chief tax collector. The chief of them all. And when Jesus accepted him, he knew he had to get rid of his idolatry. Though he was financially rich, he was spiritually bankrupt. He went from an oppressor of the poor to be a champion of justice when he decided to make restitution of what he had done before and more. He went from hoarding wealth unscrupulously at the expense of everyone including the poor to the opposite of helping them with his wealth unselfishly. That is repentance before the throne of Grace.

He had full Self-control whenever He was confronted on hard questions by those who intended to trap Him into saying something wrong.

He was also very Confident and Objective as to His purpose in life. He resolved to glorify and obey God to the last detail of going to the Cross, even if it meant something He did not wish to go through.

When He saw the Temple of God being a house of prayer being turned into a den of robbers, He was upset and drove away the merchants because He was Assertive that the sanctity of God’s Temple, God’s Word, God’s Gospel or anything of God must not be brought down to such a shallow level of fulfilling human desire.

Again, any teaching that bring the sanctity of the Cross and Gospel to such shallowness as things pandering to human desires is so absurd and nonsensical. Our intellect can surely discern it but sadly our inner desires completely blind us. That is why so often we read of highly intelligent people doing foolish acts in the news.

Trevor Wax in Christianity Today explained, “…He (God) is angry because he is love. He looks at the world and sees the trafficking of innocent children, the destructive use of drugs, the genocidal atrocities in Africa, the terrorist attacks that keep people in perpetual fear, and he—out of love for the creation that reflects him as Creator—is rightfully and gloriously angry. The god who is truly scary is not the wrathful God of the Bible, but the god who closes his eyes to the evil of this world, shrugs his shoulders, and ignores it in the name of “love.” What kind of love is this? A god who is never angered at sin and who lets evil go by unpunished is not worthy of worship. The problem isn’t that the judgment-less god is too loving; it’s that he is not loving enough…”

Let’s be imitators of Christ all the way and not half the way. May His Spirit regenerates us and gives us wisdom to truly represent Him. Amen.

So, therefore, without violating the nature of created realities, or reducing man’s activity to robot level, God still “works all things according to the counsel of His will”…But surely in that case what we think of as our free will is illusory and unreal ? That depends on what you mean. It is certainly illusory to think that our wills are only free if they operate apart from God. But free will in the sense of “free agency” as theologians have defined it – that is, the power of spontaneous, self determining choice referred to above – is real…How God sustains it and overrules it without overriding it is His secret, but that He does so is certain. – JI Packer, Affirming the Apostles’ Creed.

The old church is a house of prayer.
The new church is a concert house.

The old gospel is a call to self hate. **
The new gospel is a call to self love.

It is sad that many professing believers can debate on biblical truths but yet do not really know how to be saved. Because knowledge (which is a change of mind) does not save but repentance (which is a change of heart).

Rom 10:9-10.
That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

Dr John MacArthur explained this way how to be saved in his book The Heart of the Bible :
“The first thing you must do is to confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord. This means more than acknowledging that Jesus is the Lord…After all, James 2:19 says that even demons know that God is the sovereign of the universe, but that knowledge does not save them.
Confessing Jesus as Lord means saying that Jesus is your Lord, your Sovereign. Making this confession means expressing out loud before others your deep personal conviction – without reservation – that Jesus is your Master and the Ruler of your life.
Jesus said, “If you want to follow Me, you must deny yourself.” (Luke 9:23). That is an amazing statement, considering the way people think about the role of Jesus in their lives today. The gospel is not about self fulfillment, as many suppose. It is about self denial. No one can confess Jesus as Lord and say, “OK, Jesus, I’m going to let you into my life and I want you to make me more successful and improve my marriage and lower my golf handicap.” The gospel is not about Jesus coming into your life and giving you what you want. It is about you coming before Jesus and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Save me.” It is about saying, “Jesus, I acknowledge You as my Sovereign, Master, and Lord. I turn away from my own desires and my own need to control my life. I submit to whatever You want for me.”
The rich young ruler would not do that (Luke 18:18-27)…You aren’t saved by getting rid of your money. Jesus’ point was to test the man’s commitment to Jesus as his Lord. He could have asked him to do a hundred different things, but Jesus chose something He knew would test his willingness to deny himself. The ruler could not bring himself to submit to Jesus’ rule over him. He could not confess in this way that Jesus was Lord of his life. He went away sad – and unsaved.”

We are commanded to pray often. What then is prayer ? Is it the means to unlock fulfillment of our personal desires through persistent prayer ? We will run into difficulty with the sovereignty of God if our persistence or our faith is the driving force in forcing the hand of God.

Firstly I believe everyone agrees that prayer is essentially the means of approaching the throne of God and getting into His presence. When we first believed, we were taught to pray using the format of ACTS. That is, to express our feelings of awe of God’s glorious omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence (Adoration), God’s mercy (Confession), God’s goodness (Thanksgiving) and God’s provision (Supplication) when we converse with Him. So prayer is not all about petitioning but rather a whole worship experience which includes our concerns. We learned as well that Jesus our Lord and His Spirit are both interceding for us when we stutter with our concerns.

Prayer is essentially a means of grace in which God’s Spirit assists us in progressive sanctification. It will deepen our walk with Christ as the main fruit of the exercise. Through prayer, God’s Spirit will quiet our anxious restless spirit when adverse or trying circumstances rage around us. Through prayer, we can reveal our true condition of helplessness. At the end, prayer accomplishes not just answered prayers but surely our total dependency on God.

The whole creation is groaning right up to the present time as she awaits the coming glory and we groan too as we wait eagerly for our adoption to son-ship and the redemption of our bodies. Rom 8. We are then commanded to pray persistently so that we do not lose sight of the Hope when true justice will prevail. Prayer is where we find comfort and encouragement to wait for the coming glory when we know God will hear our prayers. Luke 18:1-11.

(Luke 17:6 He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.)

Luke 17:6 has been ridiculously quoted out of context by false teachers that you can just command in faith about anything to obey your wish. In the context of Luke 17:1-10, the disciples were finding it almost impossible to be so forgiving and to be watchful all the time that their daily action would not stumble others as the judgment was draconian; so they were asking for faith to do so. The key word is TRUST – our trust or our faith in God – that the power to do anything rest in God. As long as you can comprehend and trust even a LITTLE (your faith as small as a mustard seed) that with God nothing is impossible, your prayer to be forgiving or to be Christ-like will surely be answered for such prayers are definitely in His Will. It is the same consistent teaching as in Matt 19:16-26.  The disciples were shocked to learn that it is hard for a rich person to enter heaven as they believed wealth to be blessings from God (and they have just noted that the rich young ruler was pious too) – to which Jesus our Lord replied that with man it is impossible but with God all things are possible.

Even if we do not interpret within the context of this whole passage of Luke 17:1-10, it is almost ridiculous to think that the method or the way we shout or command in our prayers of selfish desires will tip the scale between the sovereignty of God and the obstacle from the Devil (as expounded by the hyper grace false teacher). Can you seriously believe that the Will of the omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God has to depend on the way we shout or command in Jesus’ name ?

God’s Revealed Will from the beginning to eternity has always been to make man conformed to His Son. Rom 8:29. First, He pre-destines (Rom 8:29) and then He sanctifies progressively (2 Cor 3:18) and finally He fulfill His will for us when Christ our Lord returns (1 John 3:2). Self scented-ness in the centre of sin is the root of all our headaches from which we seek freedom in Christ. If our prayer is always about self scented-ness being the perennial theme and focus focusing on personal well-being and prosperity always, how can God ever fulfill His revealed will for us ?

The holiness of God is the most difficult of all God’s attributes to explain, partly because it is one of His essential attributes that is not shared by man. We are created in God’s image, and we share many of His attributes, to a much lesser extent of course—love, mercy, faithfulness, etc. But some of God’s attributes will never be shared by created beings—omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, and holiness.
God’s holiness is what separates Him from all other beings, what makes Him separate and distinct from everything else. God’s holiness is more than just His perfection or sinless purity; it is the essence of His “other-ness,” His transcendence. God’s holiness embodies the mystery of His awesomeness and causes us to gaze in wonder at Him as we begin to comprehend just a little of His majesty.

– GotQuestions.org

As I read up on the evidence in cosmology, physics, astronomy, biochemistry and human consciousness, it gets so mind boggling for me that God will go to such an extent to make such an unique habitat for man against the backdrop of an apparently infinite universe. If we cannot see we are the crown of His creation, I think we are really not worthy of His love. Surely, He wants us to explore our habitat and eventually to find and know Him through it. This physical part of His creation only help us to see just a little of that majesty.

If we sum up all the probability of all the amazing precision for life to exist :

1. In the structure and composition of the solar system, galaxies and universe,

2. Of the earth’s location, its size, its composition, its structure, its atmosphere, its internal dynamics and its many intricate cycles that are essential to life – carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, calcium, sodium cycle, etc – which are so incredibly balanced,

3. Of the 26 essential elements life requires and the 16 elements of bacterium,

4. In the cell which can viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines and they are rightly called machines because these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts,

we will have a probability far exceeding the number of stars in the universe which is already incredibly large. The point I am making is that there will not be another unique habitat like earth in the whole universe.

We are created in His image with several of His attributes – not limiting to love, mercy and faithfulness. This is the spiritual part of His creation that we begin to see more of that awesome majesty. And it is this spiritual part that He wants us to be more and more like Him.

This awesome physical creation and His invisible qualities are made known plainly to us and yet we suppress this Truth. Rom 1. Instead of glorifying and thanking Him, we are idiotic enough to pursue after the physical creation like it is god to us. We worship our own work. We worship our achievement. We worship our career. We worship our possessions. We worship ourselves. We think we are wise. We are fools of the worst kind.

If we can somehow grasp a little of this whole holiness of Him, we cannot help but to feel so unworthy before Him. His glory and His majesty or His holiness is too overwhelming for mortal creature like us to fully comprehend. Yet we think we know it all. We think we are the centre of our lives. The Creator God is only our imaginative invention.

And that really breaks His heart. How does a finite creature get so insolently far off his or her place in this whole creation ?

(If I am the infinite Creator looking at the arrogance, the self sufficiency, and the self-centredness of these insolently proud finite creatures of mine, I won’t hesitate to annihilate them like pests. Nothing to describe the broken-heartedness. Maybe the closest, humanly speaking, is to vomit blood.)

Instead of giving Him His deserved glory, we turn around and demand glory from Him….we fully deserve the coming tribulation…we fully deserve eternal damnation…

He did not give up on us. He came personally as the Way, the Truth and the Life. He has shown that despite being the Creator God, He can empty Himself for the sake of His creation. We only need to believe. We need to reverse our course and follow His course if we truly believe. We have only two courses. One is to live for our own glory and the other is to live for His glory. (Beware of the wicked teaching that we can both live for our own glory and His. That is a despicable lie.)

I pray we can see His eternal power and divine nature through His physical and spiritual creation enough to grasp a little of His majesty, His glory and His holiness; and then grasp His immense Love for us with such an elaborate effort (I cannot stress enough this elaborate effort). We are indeed the crown of His creation and we are definitely made for a better purpose than to eat, drink and be merry, and die…