Preaching – Page 12

Category: Preaching

Preaching the Christmas story to seniors

21 December 2016 blogpastor Leave a comment

The wonderful truth, the magnificent truth, the incredible truth of the Christmas story is that God came to this hopeless, blinded, wayward world dressed in robes of humanity to live with us and suffer for us and die in our place. God dwelt among us as a babe, as a toddler, as a child, as a teenager, as a working young adult. He identified with our suffering, divided, and uncaring world. He revealed himself to us so we could know him through his words and deeds. He came to make salvation and union with God possible. Without the incarnation there would be no salvation, as much as without the cross and empty tomb there would be no redemption.

There are many characters or “lampstands” in the Christmas story: Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph, wise men, shepherds, Simeon, and Anna. However, when we preach about the characters in the Christmas story we need to hold before the congregation the main thing: Jesus was God incarnate who came to reconcile rebellious humankind to himself. The characters were like menorah lampstands shedding light together so that we can all see that God sent Jesus to save us from all our sins.

Without ignoring this contextual truth, we can look at some smaller picture highlights and use them as focused points of relevance. I am thinking of all the seniors. There are four of them and their journeys lend secondary insights that we could apply to lives of seniors today.

There are so many seniors in the churches in Singapore. During the heyday of the revival among evangelicals and the charismatics many youths came and followed Christ fervently. Most of these people are now gray-haired and white-haired and no-haired in our churches. If ladies stop dyeing their hair for a year we will indeed get a clearer impression of the ageing of our congregations. And there is a spirituality for seniors just as there is one for the kids in Sunday School. The seniors have to learn to navigate in a godly way some of the transitions and experiences they will encounter from 55 to 95. The four inspiring seniors in the Christmas story addresses some of them.

Disappointed Faith Restored

Seniors will face a faith challenge. As they near the end of their life, they will think more deeply about faith and life after death. They will think about God, about religion, and about death and eternity. Zechariah’s story of a disappointed faith restored is a good story to inspire people to think about the quality of their own personal faith, and how God wants to assure them when they have doubts.

A Vibrant Faith in the Latter Years

Elizabeth’s story is one of deep disappointment, shame, sadness and barrenness. She would have often recalled her past and felt she had failed to make a meaningful life. However, the angel came along and intercepted her pain and tears and delivered the impossible. In her senior years, her life took on purpose and meaning for she and her husband would have the privilege of rearing John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Messiah. This inspiring senior prods us to realize that even in senior years and beyond retirement there can be a higher purpose and great weight attached to living out our faith till death or Jesus comes.

Live Well to Die Well

Simeon was another godly senior, a prophet without a card. A man ahead of his time. 400 years of silence – no prophetic word to Israel. Suddenly Simeon filled with the Spirit, guided by the Spirit declares by the Spirt the destiny of the child Jesus when the parents came to do Mary’s purification rites and the child’s dedication. Then he prays, Lord I am now ready to go home. I am ready to die. I have seen the Messiah and it is enough. Simeon was able to pray like that because he lived well –he walked in the Spirit and did not gratify the lusts of the flesh. Seniors in our churches need to learn to live well so that they can die well.

Endings and New Beginnings

Finally, there was Anna. Great material for inspiring seniors. Seniors will need to learn to grieve well for they will lose loved ones, lose health, lose investments, lose their beauty and they would need to learn to grieve well. As well as Anna who lost her husband at the probable age of 21 after seven years of marriage. The text is silent after that but indications are that she grieved well and had no bitterness towards God or man for she spent her years in dedicated prayers and fasting, serving God and his people and the Temple. What an inspiring elder.

Advent has four Sundays leading up to Christmas day. Do consider preaching a series on inspiring seniors in the Christmas story. Singapore churches need to hear a relevant word for them. Let’s not always focus on the young; speak up to meet the needs of the elderly and inspire them to finish well.

Postscript: Here are more Advent Sermons that will inspire women of all ages and stages of life.

The blessedness of preaching Revelation

27 July 2016 blogpastor Leave a comment

There are great blessings in preaching through the book of Revelation. Blessings for those who preach it and those who hear it. “Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.” (Rev 1:3).

The greatest blessing for me is the confidence and sense of achievement it gave me. Completing the whole series was not smooth sailing. It was challenging. There were times when I had inadequate time for research but the sermon had to be delivered. There were times I was groping for answers to my questions. Quite a few times I was sure the sermon fell flat. Other times I struggled to find interesting connections and applications. However, once it was finished, I felt something similar to that of climbing Loh’s Peak for the first time: a deep satisfaction and a super high. With this experience of perseverance and passion, I feel that I can tackle any other lengthy book of the Bible if I am led to do so. There cannot be anything more difficult in the Bible.

Preaching Revelation had forced me to grow as an exegete. I had to apply principles of interpretation that is unique to apocalyptic literature. I had to grope with controversial issues and work with them to a conclusion even if a tentative one. I had to sort out and learn to recognise different approaches like the dispensationalist approach. I had to learn to remove my coloured lenses due to years of hearing sermons and reading books on Revelation that uses a particular theological viewpoint. Reading many commentaries have broadened my mind. Yet I observe that in terms of the main themes many of them share similar views. I am now better able to handle such types of literature (genre) in the Bible.

My hope was rooted deeply in God’s sovereignty. The dominant themes of stubbornness, idolatry, judgement, holiness, conflict and persecution, God’s sovereignty and faithfulness kept reappearing. It made me realise the importance of being watchful and faithful to the end. I have to persevere in the grace of God knowing that in the end injustice will be overturned, and the victory will be manifested in fullness.

How I decided to preach through Revelation

11 July 2016 blogpastor Leave a comment

Preaching through the whole book of Revelation was something I was apprehensive abut. When it was first suggested to me by Deena, a church leader, my reply was, “Wah, that book is too controversial. How to preach? Maybe a Bible study discussion class is a better format. Cannot lah!” The reasons for my apprehension were a few. I had never studied the book of Revelation for myself before. All I had been exposed to during my spiritual beginnings were the early teachings of our church’s founder, Brother A.M. Mathew, who loved to preach from that book. Of course like many other Christians in the 70s, and 80s, I had heard and read a smattering of messages and books a la Hal Lindsey, Dwight Pentecost, and Tim La Haye. I now know they belong to the school of interpretation called Dispensionalism, but not at that time. Seminary did not teach it. I had on a few occasions tried to study the Revelation, but each time I never got beyond chapter 6. So I had a general idea what Revelation was about. I had in my hands several pieces of a strange jig-saw puzzle that looked familiar. However, by and large, I was apprehensive that if I were to embark on a series, I would be entering without a clear idea of my view. I had a lot to research and learn, and was unsure if the congregation would be able to “endure to the end, and be saved”.

Providentially, by the mouth of two witnesses, the power to embark on this long uncertain expository journey, was imparted. One was the Turkey-Greece exploratory trip organised by Bible Society and Omega Tours for pastors. During the trip in 2015 pastors took turns to share devotions about the messages of the glorified Christ to the seven churches. As I listened to those devotions the Lord drew me in and shifted my “impossible” attitude towards preaching Revelations, to one of “maybe it can be done”. Then back in Singapore I was sharing this with pastor Eng Hwa, an evangelical free church pastor, and he said he has done it before and shared how he did it. That got me thinking it can be done.

I prayed some more, discussed this with my colleagues, and explored different ways of doing this project. My colleagues, pastor Thomas, and Ethel the youth worker, did not object and were supportive. Looking at different outlines and examining the church calendar, I tried different options of doing Revelations. However, the best option was to divide out the book into its natural sections, and have other more topical, accessible and practical sermon series interspersed with the more serious and sobering themes in the Revelation series. Rightly, I figured that the darker themes of judgment, conflict and disaster in Revelation would be balanced out with lighter seasons of lighter practical, relevant subjects that directly touched the congregation’s felt needs. It was like making sure we add to the year’s spiritual menu with some foods they can enjoy together with the vegetables and fibre of Revelation.

Finally, I had to take the first step of faith of announcing the series, which I called Revelation Made Simple, to remind myself through the series to keep it simple. When that was done there was no turning back. However with the relatively more easy preparation required in the early parts of Revelation chapters 1 to 5, I would have about three months of buffer to begin initial preparation of the more difficult sections which starts from chapter 6. An exciting sermonic adventure had begun for me on the 5th July 2015. As the angels in heaven had sung, so did I resound with a loud, HALLELUJAH, when I completed preaching through Revelation, and all God’s people having gone through the great tribulation echoed, Amen, on the 29th of May 2016. Glory to God.