Dear BPCWA worshipper, It has been 21 days since we commemorated Easter Sunday. Good Friday and Easter are periods of Christian celebration. However, the Word God gives us is not just “for that moment” as part of the “seasonal mood”. God’s Word is always to change our hearts and hence our lives. Therefore, while I have not done so previously, I thought it would be a good reminder to recap the messages this year, especially when they are about our Lord’s sufferings for us and His glorious Resurrection.  I do pray that singles and families would recount the key lessons. 

Good Friday: “I Know Not the Man!”. We were reminded of Peter’s betrayal of his Master, whom he had vehemently pledged to stand by and defend with his very life (Matt 26:35). The situations God allowed Peter to go through were opportunities for Peter to show himself as a true disciple. God also brought different groups of people, not to cause Peter to fail, but to help him to be reminded of the God he vowed to be loyal to till death. They were Peter’s privileged opportunities to be let into the judgement palace. After 2 denials in public and in private, God finally brought the “kinsman whose ear Peter cut off” (Joh 18:26) before Peter. It was to remind Peter of Who he was denying.  It was Christ, his Lord, who Peter had just witnessed miraculously touching and healing the ear (Lu 22:51) of the servant whose right ear Peter had cut off (Lu 22:50). By performing the miracle, it would clearly remind Peter again that Jesus is God. Instead of responding to God’s repeated and gracious reminders, Peter denied his Lord and distanced himself from the Master he was a disciple of. In like manner, when God gives us the opportunity to stand for Him as His disciples, we can distance ourselves from God’s teachings because of fear and embarrassment, instead of defending and standing up for Him. It was after the 3 denials that “the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter” (Lu 22:61). Most, when preaching from this passage, remind us that there is forgiveness when we sin, which is true. But in today’s Christianity, we are apt to be flippant about sin because there is forgiveness. So, we must realise that the look that Christ gave Peter was not a look indicating, “no sweat, Peter, I understand. I came to forgive sins anyway”. When we fail Christ, His disciples must focus on what Christ feels, instead of thinking we will be forgiven. We must feel His grief to grow in love for and gratitude to Christ. If all we think about is that Christ will forgive us when we fail Him, then we will conveniently not make right, even when we can.  But if we cared more about how Christ feels, we would choose what will please God so that we do not grieve Him in such a manner, and bear with anything to make things right. Peter had repeated opportunities to make things right. But he chose not to. At every opportunity, we must immediately repent, do what is right by Christ, and choose not to sin because we care greatly about how Christ feels. We must never take advantage of forgiveness. But forgiveness must make us want to repent and do right. We should feel horrible because God is disappointed with us, not simply glad that we can be forgiven. Let us learn from Peter’s lesson not to speak great swelling words of our devotion to Christ, but to stand with Him to face the temptation, not grieve Him, and immediately do right by Him at every opportunity He graciously affords us.

Easter Sunrise: “They Worshipped at His Feet”. Christ’s resurrection made it clear to His followers that He is unequivocally God. With this, falling at Christ’s feet in worship of Him was the first natural response of the women when they saw the resurrected Christ. There is much we can learn from and CHASE after their worship. CHASE: 1) Consciousness that He is the living Almighty God of the universe. Know that it is a privilege to be in His presence. 2) Humility, as they fell to the level of dust at His feet. They abased themselves to the lowest possible state of servanthood, as a dog licking its Master’s hand. 3) Adoration, with absolute devotion and fervent love for our God, Who came to suffer and die to be our Saviour. We must idolise Him, be willing to go to any length, and do anything for Him. When we adore Him, He totally occupies our minds during worship, and He is our distraction. 4) Supreme God of the universe. We worship not an impersonal being, but the Supreme God, before whom everyone and everything pales against and fades away. He commands our supreme worship. 5) Engagement. We do not offer mere formal worship, but worship engages every part of our attention and affection. We must resolve in our hearts, remind ourselves, and prepare our hearts each time to CHASE such worship in church and in our personal quiet time from now on. The Lord’s Day replaces the sabbath, and every Lord’s Day is a reminder of His resurrection for us to worship at His feet. So, this must certainly be the kind of worship we must prepare ourselves to offer to Christ every Lord’s Day until we can offer Him the perfect worship one day in Heaven.

Easter Worship Service: “Why Are You Sad?”. Christ’s third recorded appearance after His resurrection was when He appeared to the 2 disciples on the first Easter Sunday afternoon as they travelled to Emmaus. They were talking about certain events that had happened but were sad because things didn’t turn out as they had hoped for, that is to free the Jews from Roman rule. Their sadness and concern were not that Jesus did not resurrect, but that Jesus died and did not deliver them as they wanted. We are often sad too when events in life do not turn out as we had anticipated or wished for our benefit. We can be focused on our personal disappointments about what we didn’t get for ourselves. To avoid being sad, we must not be shortsighted with a selfish view of God’s purpose. The disciples were talking about spiritual things based on their own reasoning and for themselves. Are our so-called spiritual conversations focused on ourselves or God’s purposes?  If we are concerned about our personal hopes and self-benefits, we will still be sad even when we hear that Christ has risen and is alive. If we only hope to hear what God would do for us, we too can be slow of heart, missing the point about why God does what He does, and what God wants us to do. We must receive God’s Word by faith in His purposes being fulfilled, even when our eyes do not see the “good things” we hope for ourselves. Christ wants us to live on earth so that the world will see the glory of our resurrected Christ. Christ did not resurrect to serve us. Instead, we serve a Risen Saviour. The disciples’ hearts were transformed from being sad to burning within themselves. Notice clearly that Christ “expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Lu 24:27). All they were led to focus on was Christ Himself, not on themselves! The true believer’s heart is stirred by higher and loftier things of God.  This only happens when we stop focusing on ourselves and turn our attention to God’s purpose and live for Christ. When pleasing the Risen Saviour is our all-consuming passion, nothing in the flesh matters because God fills the heart. It is then that our hearts will burn when we walk with Christ by faith in His Word. Christ held their eyes back from recognising Him physically, but He opened their spiritual eyes to the understanding of His Word. See the power of Scripture which Christ Himself used to stir hearts! When we seek to hear Christ’s voice in the Scriptures about Himself and His purposes without subjecting it to our own selfish hopes, our hearts will burn within us. We will not be sad at life’s disappointments because they do not matter to us anymore. Let us have hearts that read God’s Word with an ear to what He speaks about Himself, instead of seeking our gain.  While Christ tarries in His coming, being His witnesses must occupy us. Obey His purposes and trust Him. Use our lives to glorify Him, doing what He tells us to do to glorify Him. Don’t waste our time talking about and brooding over our disappointments.

We can have the same heart-stirring experiences that these disciples had when we read the Scriptures every day. It is the same resurrected Lord who speaks to us in His Word. When we set our hearts to be filled only with the desire not to disappoint our Lord because His heart matters most to us, worship Him at His feet, and read Scriptures to seek Him and His purposes instead of ours, we can say as the disciples did,

“And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?” (Lu 24:32)

Yours in our Lord’s service,
Pastor