Month: December 2014

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…

Luke 19:11-23

While they were listening to this, he went on to tell them a parable, because he was near Jerusalem and the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once. He said: “A man of noble birth went to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then to return. So he called ten of his servants and gave them ten minas. ‘Put this money to work,’ he said, ‘until I come back.’ “But his subjects hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, ‘We don’t want this man to be our king.’ “He was made king, however, and returned home. Then he sent for the servants to whom he had given the money, in order to find out what they had gained with it. “The first one came and said, ‘Sir, your mina has earned ten more.’ “‘Well done, my good servant!’ his master replied. ‘Because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge of ten cities.’ “The second came and said, ‘Sir, your mina has earned five more.’ “His master answered, ‘You take charge of five cities.’ “Then another servant came and said, ‘Sir, here is your mina; I have kept it laid away in a piece of cloth. I was afraid of you, because you are a hard man. You take out what you did not put in and reap what you did not sow.’ “His master replied, ‘I will judge you by your own words, you wicked servant! You knew, did you, that I am a hard man, taking out what I did not put in, and reaping what I did not sow? Why then didn’t you put my money on deposit, so that when I came back, I could have collected it with interest?’

This parable of the minas is different from the parable of the talents. Here all 10 servants were given one mina each to invest while in the parable of the talents, the servants were given different amounts of money to invest. The parable of the talents tell of different servants given different abilities and the danger is for the person with relatively lesser ability to do nothing. The parable of minas tells of every servant been given the same amount but the difference in results is not due to differing amounts but to differing levels of diligence in investing the same amount.

Only 3 out of 10 servants gave account of what they did with the single mina given. The people thought that the Kingdom of God was going to appear very soon. Jesus wanted them to know that He would go away to be appointed King first and would come back later so there is a period of delay. Meanwhile, His disciples, who have been entrusted with the one same gospel, must put to work the gospel entrusted.

The first two servants were rewarded very handsomely for their faithfulness and diligence – reward of 10 or 5 cities for earning 10 or 5 minas more respectively !

The third servant did not invest the single mina as he had a completely different opinion of his Master. Instead of being a hard man as perceived, his Master was actually quite generous as seen in his reward for the first 2 servants. He did not really know his Master at all.

This third servant represents many in our church today who hardly know the mind of God – completely indifferent to God’s love and concern for the lost and His Kingdom. These Sunday Christians are always concerned about God’s blessings but not God’s interests. They will talk mostly about epicurean living – about their advancement of career, wise investments, fine living, fine dining, buying the latest toys, enjoying the most wonderful holidays and bragging about their children’s achievements, etc – because they believe the false teachers that abundant life is the abundance of every good thing in life. They do not know that they are the Rich Man in the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man or the Rich Fool in the parable of the Rich Fool. How will they ever be interested to share the gospel with the poor and helping the needy ? Isa 58.

I believe this third servant never expect his Master to call him a wicked servant so do all these professing Christians today who is totally unconcerned about the purpose of God and His Kingdom to reach the lost. Because they are fed false cheap grace teaching that prosperity and indulgence is all their lot when they believe in Jesus. Never do they realize that whoever does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God ! 2 John 1:9-11 ESV. These professing Christians hardly know the mind of God when their minds are obsessed with wealth and indulgent epicurean lifestyle, not knowing the serious warning of our Lord not to be weighed down by dissipation and cares of this world. Luke 21:34.

(2 John 1: 9-11 ESV

Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.)

At the very least, this servant can put the mina in the bank and earn interest as told by our Lord. That is, even if we do not have any opportunity to share the gospel with anyone, at least support those who are doing so such as supporting the missionaries and giving to missions.