Category: December 2013

Thank God for our first Christmas Praise Service. It was also our first bilingual service. Preacher Kelvin Wong was at hand for Mandarin translation. Elder Paul Tsao was our worship leader, leading us to sing Christmas carols with Mrs. Siow playing the organ. The Christmas message was entitled “Unto You a Saviour is Born” taken from Luke 2:1-20 rehearsing how our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entered human history more than 2000 years ago. Thank God for the opportunity to preach the gospel especially to friends and loved ones still outside God’s kingdom. Sister Jane and Sister Rose contributed and prepared refreshments for our fellowship after our praise service. Thank God for a blessed time of Christian fellowship with friends and loved ones.

At Christmas, we remember the birth of Jesus Christ – the Son of God. Jesus Christ is the most important person in human history. We divide our calendar by Him – B.C. Before Christ, and A.D. Anno Domini, the year of the Lord. In creation, man was made in God’s image, but in the incarnation, we see God made in man’s image. Jesus is fully man and yet fully God in one Person, the only mediator between God and man. His mission was to reconcile sinful men to the Thrice Holy God.

The call for Christians to live holy lives is a warning to awake Christians who are entangled with sin. These are words spoken with great urgency for the wellbeing of souls in the face of God’s judgment. Habitual sinning dulls spiritual senses, grieving the Holy Spirit in the believer’s heart.

“Be ye separate” is the command given to unrepentant Christians, indulging in sinful lifestyles, to quit sinning. Without having to go to the specifics, it suffices to sound the warning so that readers may take time for self-reflection.

Lot’s wife had her heart completely swayed, immersed and mesmerized by the attractions of the worldly life in Sodom and Gomorrah that she did not escape God’s judgment. Genesis 19:24-26 described for us the last moments of Lot’s wife, “Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.”

Jesus Christ entered human history in the fullness of time, born of a virgin – the seed of a woman (Gen. 3:15). The seed of man is tainted with the curse of sin. The curse of sin, the Bible tells us, is death. Death is the greatest impasse for mankind. Man is born to die. None can escape. Ten out of ten die. But for the Christian, we are born-again to live forever more. When a Christian dies, the Bible says, he is asleep. One day, when Christ returns, he will awake again! Every Lord’s Day, when we come for worship, Christians rekindle the hope of eternal life in our hearts!