Blessed Hope Bible-Presbyterian Church
500 Upper Bukit Timah Rd, Singapore 678106
This text sets the precedence for the collection of gifts on the first day of the week when the church comes together for worship, on the Lord’s Day, the day where our Lord was risen from the dead. The idea of this giving is for everyone of the believers to participate as God enables them, they are to give.
William MacDonald observed well, “The first verse of chapter 16 concerns a collection which was to be taken up by the church in Corinth and sent to needy saints in Jerusalem. The exact cause of their poverty is not known. Some have suggested that it was a result of famine (Acts 11:28–30).”
The blessing of eternal life comes with victory over death and sin. A blessing that the kings in the past sought to find but in vain. The secret to eternal life comes by faith in Jesus Christ. This truth, for God’s people, must warm the heart and strengthen the soul. God’s power of salvation is freely given to all who will receive Jesus Christ by faith.
It is with great rejoicing that the people of God give praise to the power of the gospel to save lost souls. It is first of all imbibed then lovingly offered to others. And the exhortation is that the people of God be kept strong in the Lord and be kept strong fervently serving the Lord.
All that the believer does as unto the Lord for His honour and glory constitutes the believer’s new life in Christ. He is exhorted to keep relying on the Lord through prayer and to do all in accordance with God’s Word. This constitutes the good work of the believer that the Apostle Paul encourages should abound.
Death is no longer an impasse for the Christian, God has provided for His people a comprehensive solution. We are going to inherit an incorruptible body, a new body, no more aches and pains, a body that will last us for eternity. This is the promise of God in the preceding text.
We live in a world where the line of truth is blurred and men call good evil and evil good. A time likened to the days before God sent the global flood to destroy the known world wherein Noah and his family of 8 were saved when they got into the ark before the rain came.
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.