Reflecting on Faith: Embracing Hope for 2025

Let us pray Let us pray together We thank you God for your guidance all through this year and now we have come to the last Sunday of the year 2024 and so we ask that you grant us a heart that is appreciative of the fact that we are mere temporal beings in the passage of time and by your great grace you have given us so much in our life and may we be reflective today in our Sunday worship service and that we will be humbled to be a part of your love for us to listen to your voice, hear it and turn and follow you May everything we do bring glory unto your name in Jesus' name we pray, Amen This morning our brother, Yosah will be leading us [00:03:55]

And Pao, for us, is a lot about the spirit and all that. But this year, there's a little bit different. Something that Dr. Tong pushed this year is children. He kept pushing that you all have to have a lot of children. He has this thing about how other races and other religion people have a lot of kids. You guys have no children. And he said that it's the very first commandment that God gives to us. Be fruitful and multiply. So, yeah, over here, only Patrick kind of fulfilled that. Nobody else. Because to him, two or three is not good enough. Okay, you must have four, five, six. Then you kind of fulfill. Because he himself had four. So he used four as an example. [00:36:09]

And I always use the excuse that I'm an English educator. So, you know, I will tell you what I think right away. But that's important, right? I mean, if we think about the ministry and what I've been sharing with you all these years, the truth is everything because God is true. So we want to be very careful that we are followers of the truth. And that includes objective truth. Of course, you need wisdom because sometimes the thing you think is true end up not true too, right? So humility is important. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. But we must always adhere to biblical truth whatever we do and not because somebody is your charismatic founding leader. Therefore, he always is right. [00:38:07]

And when we think about Ecclesiastes, the thing that everybody, if you have read it, know that it actually explores life from the angle of a wise person, supposed to be a wise person, trying to seek meaning in life. So Ecclesiastes is like a guy who was thinking through all the many, many parts of life. What is it all about? And he does go through all the different aspects of life. And this guy then gives a very brief... Brutally honest assessment as to what life is all about. [00:49:08]

Apostle Paul, when he wrote, he was already an apostle. So by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he's teaching us many, many things that God revealed to us. Ecclesiastes, of course, we believe the Holy Spirit inspired the writing as well. However, much of Ecclesiastes is about a guy who is looking at the world without the idea of God, not leading, is like a person using his best mind, especially King Solomon. We know he's like the wisest man who will live, ever live and ever will live. And so from that angle, he looks at life and he tries to find meaning throughout Ecclesiastes from many, many areas. [00:49:41]

The preacher says that you must remember that true wisdom comes from that one shepherd. Everything else is meaningless. You go study all, you go and study philosophy, you go and study Socrates or Plato or Lee Kuan Yew, whatever it is. And the preacher said those are meaningless. And at the end of the matter in verse 13, all has been heard. And what is the end thing he said? Fear God and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man. [01:19:46]

So my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, Ecclesiastes points out the fact that without God, everything you do from the big to the small, from the grand to the minor, from the insignificant to the greatly offshaking significant are meaningless and vanity without God. Therefore, with God, everything will change. And when we went through the wisdom literature series, I keep hammering this verse into your skull. Proverbs 3, 5. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not lean on your own understanding. [01:20:31]

For us as people of God, I want to tell you without a doubt, that we are people who have been saved. And so our pathway is a sure pathway. It's a certainty in Christ Jesus. And I want to make sure that all of you understand this deeply. Because even I don't understand it deep enough. A couple of weeks ago, I saw somebody wrote an article in Chinese. And in the article, the guy said, which means we are people who have, we have received great grace. 蒙大福民 We have received tremendous grace. And all of a sudden, it struck me that, oh my, I don't quite understand this, you know, how much grace that I have received in my life. [01:24:00]

I suspect that we all need scratch, the surface, including me, of the great grace that is given to us. But scripture is very clear. We are all people whose destiny is set. No matter what happened in your life, in reformed understanding, when you belong to God, you will never not belong to God. You are beloved. He has you in his hand. And that's certain and sure. The victory is already won. So for us Christians, when we come to the end of the year and we think about resetting our life and all that, yes, we will reset our life. And yes, maybe like the rest of the world, sometimes we will feel. [01:25:02]

And when we think about holiness and all that kind of thing, I know all of us have the same experiences. Like Paul says, you try and then you fall. You've tried, you fall. Guess what? The difference between us and the rest of the world is that we go up and up and down, no doubt. However, we certainly will reach perfection. We won't go this way, you know. And so for us, all of us, we make resolution and all that, fine. And we fail, fine. We say that we want to serve God, you fail, fine. You say you sin, you don't want to sin your whole life, then you sin, fine. So it is up and down. The difference is no matter what happens, you will always reach the final goal because this is promised. This is promised by Jesus Christ himself. It's not about you. It's about him. [01:25:46]

In the meantime, we must not give up. We must keep getting up every single time we fall and trust in the Word of God and not our own understanding, right? Because your own understanding plus the whispering of the devil is that you are never good enough. Why do you bother? Give up. Nobody is good enough. Yeah, you are right. Nobody is good enough. But you must trust the Lord with all your heart for Jesus Christ came to die for us on the cross and understand the whole teachings of the Word of God that will deliver us from our mistakes. [01:31:23]

That's why you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free. The truth is that at the turning of the year, remember what the great missionary Charles III said, only one life will soon be passed. Only what's done for Christ will last. May we devote our life to the cause of our Lord Jesus Christ, not perfect but continue to improve on and on and on until we shall see him face to face. Let us pray. We thank you God for speaking to us at the turning of the year, at the last Sunday of 2024. The big wheel of time rolls forward for every single one of us. No escape. [01:32:39]