Blessed Hope Bible-Presbyterian Church
500 Upper Bukit Timah Rd, Singapore 678106
Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians Knowing Your Privilege in Christ “The Origin of the Church” (Ephesians 1:1-14) 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful …
On Friendship
Proverbs 17:17 A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
Are you sometimes sad and lonely because you think you have no friends? Do you often wish you could enjoy yourself as do others in the company of dear friends, without that wall which seems to keep people away? Anyone with a heart full of friendship has a hard time finding enemies.
Consider this statement: “Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity. (George Washington 1732-1799).
If you are lonely for the joys of true friendship, then here is glad news. God wants you to know the joys of true friendship! His Book shows you the road to friendship if you will only walk in it.
King Solomon made this observation in his old age, Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”
Do you not remember the wonderful passage described by the disciple John? In that passage, Jesus placed the friendship as the highest gift He could give to His disciples. They had undergone trial and tribulation with Jesus. And He turned to them and gave to them the highest earthly honour He could bestow:
John 15:12-15 “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.”
The way of the Golden Rule had made them the friends of Jesus. And that way, faithfully followed by you, can take you, a sometimes lonely, unhappy, friendless man or woman, and transform you into a happy, joyous child of God with faithful friends on every side.
The believer is exhorted to flee sexual immorality. This is a command to act decisively, to move hastily from danger from fear of being ensnared. Let this be a spiritual reflex in your life. All other sins a man commits are outside his body but sexual sins harms the body. It defiles him. How so? As one writer puts it succinctly, “It wastes the bodily energies; produces feebleness, weakness, and disease; it impairs the strength, enervates the man, and shortens life.” [Barnes]
The believer is to possess his body in honour by abstaining and fleeing any form of immorality. He is joined in one spirit with the Lord. In him dwells the Spirit of Christ. When the believer commits immorality outside marriage, he sins against Christ who is joined to him.
Matthew Poole said well, “Christ is united to the person of the believer, and He is the Head of the church, which is His mystical body; so that the bodies of believers are in a sense the members of Christ, and should be used by us as the members of Christ, which we should not rend from Him: but he that doth commit fornication, rends his body from Christ, and maketh it the member of an harlot; for as the man and wife are one flesh by Divine ordination, Genesis 2:24, so the fornicater and the harlot are one flesh by an impure” union.
The believer must understand that in the same manner which Jesus was raised from the dead, he shall be given a glorified body at the Lord’s returns. The body is not for immorality but for union with the Lord at His coming again. It is to be kept pure.
Hymns: 424 Where He Leads Me, 320 ‘Tis So Sweet to Trust In Jesus, 333 Yesterday, Today, Forever
Study of the Book of Ecclesiastes
(Remember Now Thy Creator)
Understanding Authority
Ecclesiastes 8:1-8
1 Who is as the wise man? and who knoweth the interpretation of a thing? a man’s wisdom maketh his face to shine, and the boldness of his face shall be changed. 2 I counsel thee to keep the king’s commandment, and that in regard of the oath of God. 3 Be not hasty to go out of his sight: stand not in an evil thing; for he doeth whatsoever pleaseth him. 4 Where the word of a king is, there is power: and who may say unto him, What doest thou? 5 Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing: and a wise man’s heart discerneth both time and judgment. 6 Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the misery of man is great upon him. 7 For he knoweth not that which shall be: for who can tell him when it shall be? 8 There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death: and there is no discharge in that war; neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it.
God has wonderfully made man with digestive system in his stomach that allows food that is consumed to be assimilated to nourish up the body. And yet, its benefit is be temporal. The believer must not make the satisfying of his physical appetite the only focus of his life – Matthew 4:4 … It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
A good paraphrase is “All things are permissible to me but I will not be enslaved by any.” The Apostle Paul testifies how needful it is for the believer to exercise their God-given power to say “no” to any temptation to sin and anything that robs him of his devotion to the Lord. He will not be a slave to sin but fears God and will not be brought under its subjection. He uses the first person “I” to encourage the Corinthian Christians that he himself takes steps not to be brought under any bondage of sin, exercising his liberty in Christ. Setting the example, he urges the believers to heed his exhortation.
A good paraphrase is “All things are permissible but all things are not profitable”. “Lawful” in the sense that “it is possible, referring to moral possibility or propriety in that it is lawful, right, permissible”. The word “expedient” means “to be profitable, advantageous, to contribute or bring together for the benefit of another.”