Blessed Hope Bible-Presbyterian Church
500 Upper Bukit Timah Rd, Singapore 678106
God provided the way out of man’s misery through our Lord Jesus Christ. What great news! What relief! Just when it seemed impossible for mankind to be freed from the curse of sin which is death and eternal hell-fire, God enacted a most unfathomable mission to send His Son to save the world. Sin and death is a conquered foe!
And it is the law of God that helps us to know the will of God so that we may see by the standard of the law that we are miserable sinners. It shows our weakness and failure to obtain righteousness with God by the keeping of the law. We fail miserably. And because of our sins that death falls upon us. And the law shows our inability to find righteousness with God but to seek it through Jesus Christ, as revealed in the gospel. Thank God the sting of sin is overcome by Jesus Christ. Indeed, the just shall live by faith in Jesus Christ’s finished work of redemption. Amen.
Death is a great nullifier. All that the man has, he leaves behind. Naked he came and naked he went. A sobering truth that jolts one to think of the meaning of life and its purpose. Such a question is posed by the preaching of the gospel to the miserable man, confronted with the prospect of death so that he may understand there is a solution that God has devised for his salvation. And the truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ three days after he died, provides that solution and signals that victory. Death is no longer a sting to the believer in Jesus Christ. Jesus will bring about the resurrection, remake of a glorious, incorruptible body for the soul that dies in Christ. This is the hope that is put forth for our encouragement.
16th Century Reformation in Germany
Martin Luther (Part 2)
Luther’s chief struggle had to do with the phrase ‘ the righteousness of God’. He was convinced that in Romans 1:17 and elsewhere these words referred to the awful holiness of God, and His unchanging hatred of sin and sinners. How could he, Martin Luther, ever achieve the kind of holiness that would turn away the anger of God against him?
He did not yet understand Paul’s words in Romans that the gospel is the saving power of God to everyone who believes in Christ, because it reveals the righteousness of God. This righteousness of God is nothing other than Christ’s perfect obedience to His Father’s will in life and death, ‘even the death of the cross’ – obedience which God counts as belonging to all those in whose place Christ died. Just as the punishment of the believer’s sin was borne by Christ so it is because of Christ’s righteousness that the same believer, though ungodly in himself, is pronounced ‘just’ or righteous in the sight of God. In this way, Paul says, faith receives the righteousness of God: ‘To him that worketh not but believeth on him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness’ (Romans 4:5).
And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.
What an elusive word “immortality”! An impossibility. How could mortal man put on immortality? Death is still an impossible impasse today. The best scientists together could not prolong life beyond the limit of 120 years old given in Genesis 6:3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
The time when the church of Jesus Christ shall be taken to heaven (born-again believers both dead (asleep) and the alive) will be preceded by a trumpet sound. The Apostle Paul called it “the last trump”.
The Bible predicts in the coming future, a coming instant where born-again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ shall put on a glorious and incorruptible body that is fit for heaven and shall be ushered to meet our Lord in the heavens. Theologians call this the rapture of the church where the believers are caught up to heaven. Just as Enoch in the book of Genesis was taken to heaven bodily.
There is a time of change that will take place for all who sleeps in the Lord. And the Apostle Paul is signalling to the saints to “behold”. He urges them to see the mystery of God’s resurrection power unveiled to reverse the sting of death upon all who have died in Christ.
This earthly body is not fitted for dwelling in heaven. This is the meaning of the statement “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” We shall be given a heavenly body fitted for our heavenly home when Jesus returns. This is the believer’s blessed hope.