Category Archives: Text

Sermon Text: Faith and Repentance the Response

Posted by on August 1, 2011 No comments

Faith and Repentance the Response, preached at KBCF Lighthouse Church on July 31, 2011. Scripture is from Habakkuk 3.

I feel like I need to explain myself to you before we even begin the message for today… Because I think, you will sense a feeling of finality in this message. A sense that we’re finished. That the series is over, or whatever…

And on one hand, that is true.. Today is my last day preaching to you. That is until, or if, Pastor Alvin asks me back again sometime in the future. But I do need to get back to my own church, Morningstar, as they haven’t seen me there in almost 2 months now.

In addition to that, we are closing off the book of Habakkuk today… I already confessed to you last week that I didn’t think I could make it through the entire book, small as it is. But by God’s grace I did! And I’m actually really happy about that.

And then today, we are also finishing off the fourth and final point of what you might call the “Gospel Proper” or the “Gospel Core”. These four points make up the Gospel message, and if you forget everything else that I’ve talked about these past four weeks… five, if you include my introductory message at the end of June… I hope you’ll remember these four points.

1. God is the Righteous Creator. He created all things, and all things belong to him. He is also righteous, holy and perfectly just, and cannot ever tolerate wrong.

2. Man, God’s creation, rebelled against his creator and sinned. And so, God being perfectly righteous, holy and just, cannot tolerate man, who then must suffer the consequence – first of physical death, but more importantly, of spiritual death – eternal separation from God.

3. But… Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate, came to earth, lived a perfect life, but nonetheless took on our sin, and was punished with physical death on the cross, but again more importantly, with the spiritual death of losing communion with the Father. But, Jesus conquered death, rising again on the third day, and now sits at the right hand of the father, offering his righteousness to those who believe in him. Read more »

Sermon Text: Jesus Christ the Saviour

Posted by on July 26, 2011 No comments

Jesus Christ the Saviour, preached at KBCF Lighthouse Church on July 24, 2011. Scripture is from Luke 24:13-31 (Mini-Sermon) and Habakkuk 2:2-20 (Main Text).

Please turn to Luke 24, which is where I want to start the message today. Now if you’ve been here for a few weeks, you’ll know that we are actually going through Habakkuk in this series that we are doing, called: “What is the Gospel?” However, as a way in to that, I want to quickly look at one small story in the middle of Luke 24, kind of like a mini-sermon within a sermon.

Luke 24, starting on verse 13 is the story of two disciples – one of them, Cleopas, and the other unnamed – meeting the Resurrected Christ on the Road to Emmaus. It says in verse 16 that their “eyes were kept from recognizing him” when Jesus began speaking to them.

Jesus asks them what they are talking about, and Cleopas gives this almost incredulous response: he says in verse 18, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”

Jesus, just calmly and cooly asks “What things?”

To this the two give a pretty good recitation of what had happened so far. Let’s look at verse 19, which is where they start…

“Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him.

But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.”

Can you imagine this situation? Two of Jesus’s disciples – not part of the twelve, yes, but still two students who were presumably pretty close to Jesus, their teacher and master, meet him on a roadside and don’t recognize. More than that, they seemed pretty ticked about his ignorance of the major events that had been going on around Jerusalem in the past few days. Major events that affected these two disciples quite personally.

Now to be sure, verse 16 is pretty clear in stating that “Their eyes were KEPT from recognizing him”, so you can kind of cut them some slack, because it does seem like Jesus meant for them not to recognize him at first. But then the reason why that is, is in their account of who Jesus is and what his mission on Earth was. You see what’s clear from what they said, is that despite all of the time that they spent with Jesus, all those teaching sessions that they had, they still didn’t get it. We see this in two ways.. Read more »

Sermon Text: Man the Sinner

Posted by on July 26, 2011 No comments

Man the Sinner. preached at KBCF Lighthouse Church on July 17, 2011. Scripture is from Habakkuk 1:12-2:1.

So we are in the middle of a sermon series based on this book, “What is the Gospel?” by Greg Gilbert a pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC.

Three weeks ago, I started it with an introduction to the book while also covering the first chapter, concerning the Word of God, by preaching out of 2nd Chronicles 34 which is the story of King Josiah and the Old Testament revival that he ushered in during his reign.

The result of that revival was the retrieval of the Book of the Law, which showed Josiah and the people of Judah just how badly they had gone of course in their relationship with God. Our point during that sermon was to show that God’s word is the ultimate authority over everything, and so it is the place where we must look in order to be able to answer the question “What is the Gospel?”.

Then last week, we started on the book of Habakkuk, which falls chronologically in line with 2nd Chronicles because Habakkuk, a prophet of Judah, the Southern Kingdom, was most likely active during the reign of Josiah, a time of spiritual fruit and maturity, but then he saw the decline and the return to apostasy of the people after Josiah died and his son Jehoahaz was made king.

Now, Habakkuk, remember has three major sections, the first two are complaints that Habakkuk makes to God, and God’s answers to each complaint. While the third is a prayer that Habakkuk offers up to God at the end of their “conversation”.

We covered Habakkuk’s first complaint in chapter 1 verses 2 to 4… then God’s answer to that complaint in verses 5 to 11. In these verses, we magnified characteristics of God – his righteousness and his wrath – as a way to make sense of the characteristic of God which most other people today usually magnify… that is, God’s love.

We saw that although love and wrath may seem at first to be at odds with each other, in fact, they complement and explain each other.

We cannot know how much God loves us without first an understanding of the wrath that God is saving us from. Conversely, God’s wrath, his punishment, is actually a loving act towards us, just as parents punish and reprove their children whom they love.

All of that corresponds to Chapter 2 of “What is the Gospel?” which concerns “God the Righteous Creator”.

Today then, we turn to Chapter 3 of the book, “Man the Sinner” and to the next portion of Habakkuk, found in chapter 1 verse 12 to chapter 2 verse 1. It is the 2nd complaint that Habakkuk makes to God, one that he actually makes in response to God’s answer to his first complaint. Read more »

Sermon Text: God the Righteous Creator

Posted by on July 12, 2011 No comments

God the Righteous Creator, preached at KBCF Lighthouse Church on July 10, 2011. Text is from Habakkuk 1:1-11.

There’s this man who was kind of down in the dumps. He had been fired from his job, couldn’t find another one in his field; His savings were dwindling, and pretty soon, he was gonna get evicted from his place.

One day, though, he was looking through the news paper finds a job listing for the Zoo. Didn’t say what it was, just that it required no experience, it paid pretty well, but they really needed someone right away. So he gets up, gets all dressed up ready for an interview and heads on down.

At the zoo, he meets with one of the managers, but then gets some bad news… the manager says that what it is, is, they’ve run out of monkeys, but it was going to be a really busy day and so they needed someone to work as a monkey.

“Sir, I’m not a monkey” the guy says.

But the manager says to him, “Don’t worry, it’s not hard. We’ll give you the outfit, we’ll dress you up properly and everything, and all you have to do is swing around a little bit, eat some bananas and some peanuts, make some monkey noise, and no one will ever find out.”

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Sermon Text: The Authority of the Bible

Posted by on July 6, 2011 No comments

The Authority of the Bible, preached at KBCF Lighthouse Church on June 26, 2011. Text is from 2 Chronicles 34:1-21.

Before we begin to consider our text for today, I have to first set up and explain what will be happening here at KBCF Lighthouse Church starting in 2 weeks when I will be coming back to preach again, and going on for pretty much the rest of the summer.

I will be doing much of the preaching for you in July – in fact, next week, which is the first Sunday of the month, is the only week I won’t be preaching. And so, starting July 10, I will be with you for 4 weeks straight so that Pastor Alvin can receive a much deserved break, and a little bit of time to do some deputation for his ministry.

Anyway, during my 4 weeks with you, I will be starting a series of sermons based on this little book called “What is the Gospel?”, and it has just 8 short chapters. Today, I will kind of be covering Chapter 1… And I do say “kind of” because really the bulk of the chapter is just an introduction to the next four chapters, which is what I will then be covering in more detail with you when I come back in July. Afterward, the last three chapters will be covered by either Pastor Alvin, Pastor Mike, or myself.. Or some combination thereof.

Some quick little details about the book… It was written by Greg Gilbert, who is a pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC. The senior pastor of that church is Mark Dever, who also wrote a popular book that has helped guide many churches, pastors and elder boards, called “Nine Marks of a Healthy Church”. That book went on to propagate an organization called “Nine Marks”, which produces resources to help build healthy churches. And this book, is one of their publications.

I first heard of the book more than a year ago… maybe around December of 2009, a few months before it was even published. At the time I was just starting to get acquainted with a group called “The Gospel Coalition”, which is headed up by D.A. Carson, a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago, and Timothy Keller, a reformed pastor in New York City. You probably know him for his book “The Reason for God”, which was actually on the New York Times Best Seller list for a little while.

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Sermon Text: The Word Became Flesh (V2)

Posted by on June 28, 2011 No comments

This is the second version of my sermon, The Word Became Flesh, preached at KBCF Lighthouse Church on December 12, 2010. Text is from John 1.

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I knew, of course, that Brother Jun was going to be introducing me to you, because Pastor Alvin asked for a that biographical sketch of myself, highlighting my education and current work.

But as I was writing this sermon, I had a very overwhelming sense that I really ought to contextualize myself to you a little further… Or that is, introduce myself a little more to you so that you might understand just a little better what exactly I am preaching about and why I am preaching about it. Especially since this, I hope, is only the first of at least a few sermons that I will have the chance to share with you.

I am not sure how much it value it will be, I am treating this sermon more like how we do it in my church during communion Sunday, that is more like a short devotional leading into to communion. So no worries, I won’t be speaking for 40-45 minutes like I’ve been told Pastor Alvin does.

Anyway, I very much identify myself with what you might call a “new breed” of Ministers that is emerging, ready to tackle the new kind of challenges that this culture is presenting to us today. There are many different ways to describe this challenge – but possibly, the most popular term that you might be familiar with is “Post Modernism”. There many things that characterizes this new movement, or era, or whatever you might like to call it, but what is most relevant to us, is that it is characterized, in part, by a deep scepticism about Religious Faith in general, and in particular, because it is so prevalent in the Western World, the Christian Religious Tradition.

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Sermon Text: The Word Became Flesh (V1)

Posted by on June 28, 2011 1 comment

This is the first version of my sermon, The Word Became Flesh, preached at Fellowship Filipino Baptist Church in Vancouver, BC on August 15, 2010. Text is from John 1.

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I’d like to thank you all for giving me the opportunity to share withyou today… Especially about something that is very near and dear to myheart – the Reliability of the Bible. Now there are of course manyways of looking at how the Bible is reliable. Often quoted is theverse from Second Timothy 3:16…“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, forreproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.”

It is one of the classic texts to talk about the reliability ofscripture because it is talking about how Scripture was “Breathed outby God”. Which is another way of saying that the Bible is reliablebecause it is inspired by God. In fact, Inspired by God is a commonway of translating the Greek word behind this English phrase. Anyway,while this is of course very true, this verse and Biblical Inspirationin particular isn’t actually what I wanted to talk to you about today.What I wanted to talk to you about today is an often overlookedquality of the Bible, which is that it is rooted in History. Thingshappened, someone remembered it, and under God’s guidance – or,“Inspiration”, you might say – he wrote it down. And now, manythousands of years later, these things are preserved for us to readand learn from.
It’s an incredibly simple truth, but it’s one that, actually manypeople really do not think about.

Yes, today, I want to speak about the historicity of the Bible withtwo particular points in mind: Number, 1) The history recorded in theBible is reliable. And Number 2) The Bible itself as ancientliterature is historically reliable.
I am first going to talk about these two text, and then I will move onto our text for today, found in John 1:1-14, and see how thehistoricity of the Bible is ultimately reliable because of thehistoricity of the one to whom the Bible points… Jesus! The WrittenWord reveals the Living Word, and the Living Word gives authority tothe Written Word. It’s a little circular, I know. Kind of like thechicken and the egg. But I hope, at the end of all this, that you willgain an appreciation for history in general, and really begin to seehistory a little bit like I do. I’ll talk a bit more of that later.
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