Matt 4 ⁸ Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. ⁹ And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” ¹⁰ Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “ ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’ ”¹¹ Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.

I was reading my devotional this morning on Matt 4, and as I read this passage, my spirit was enraged, feeling angry on the audacity of Satan in offering the kingdom of the world to Jesus if he would fall down and worship him!!! Look at that! That shamefully is the most audacious and disgraceful statement from a mere creation, though holding great power, to the Almighty God, the creator. And you know what brought the Son of God himself to such dire undignified stage? YOU, and I. Yes, it’s for the love of mankind that Jesus emptied himself of the heavenly glory and throne, and came to this earth, to be tempted and humiliated and engaged in these titanic epic warfare’s that few talks about.

Philippians 2:⁵ Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Why? It took a lot of humility in the mind of God-Man, to swallow that despicable words, “if you will fall down and worship me”. Those words are too much to take. Imagine, you were the Son of a millionaire landlord who owns a thousand acres of vineyard, and your dad hired thousands of employees in the farmland. One day, you visited your dad’s farmland, and was greeted by the thousands of employees, and the manager of these employees came to you and said, “Come and fall down to me and I will give you the entire farmland.” You go, “Excuse me! Who are you? You are only an employee! I am the owner’s son!”. This is exactly what happened in that transaction between Jesus and Satan in those exchange of words, which I found most offensive in the last exchange. How do you like to be in Jesus’s situation? It just makes you to be strong if you ever faced any persecutions or mocking’s in the world because of Christ. Look at him! He will give you strength.

How did Jesus take that? He made or offered himself to be vulnerable to Satan’s temptation, when he didn’t have to. He could have terminated Satan on the spot, but he didn’t. He is God! But at that point, he was tempted as a man. He is not just God at that point, he is God-Man. God cannot be tempted, but man can. Jesus was tempted in the capacity of a man! That’s where all the actions happened. Jesus represented the tribe of Adam to recoup the glory and power that Adam lost. You must have a man to defeat Satan because Satan defeated a man before, Adam. It’s like David and Goliath’s battle. If David lost, all of Israel perished and went under Philistines. If David won, and Goliath lost, all of Philistines would come under Israel. David is the representative head of Israel. Jesus was the representative head of mankind. He was the 2^nd Adam. To recoup the lost glory of mankind. All of the kingdoms of the world been lost to Satan in Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve yielded to Satan’s temptation and handed over the dominion of the earth that God originally gave to Adam. But Adam lost that dominion to Satan. Good news is, 2000 years ago, the Son of God himself came in the form of a man, became the second Adam, and wrought the Kingdom of the world back to God and brought in the whole race of Adam into God’s family again, through his death on the cross, when he became the substitute death for mankind. He redeemed mankind by his shed blood, and he was resurrected on the 3^rd day, glory to God.

Is that glorious? It took his blood to accomplish this task. The biggest and most glorious task was accomplished on the cross, far larger than the crossing of the Red Sea in Exodus. Jesus brought the whole tribe of mankind out of the kingdom of darkness of Satan, into his own Kingdom of light with his Father.

That epic battle with Satan is all in the mind and spirit. It wasn’t through some weapons. It’s the battle of the mind and will. Jesus won! That’s the 2^nd most epic battle, with the final most epic one is on the cross when he shed his blood and after being beaten severely, he yielded his spirit to God the Father. And he said “It’s finished!”.

Luke 23: ⁴⁴ It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, ⁴⁵ while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. ⁴⁶ Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last.

Amen and Amen. Praise and glory to Jesus!

Keener writes, “While careful study of scriptures helps counter the unbridled subjectivism of popular charismatic excesses, study that does not lead to living out biblical experience in the era of the Spirit misses the point of biblical texts.” [1]

The Unbridled Subjectivism of popular charismatics excesses

This is the biggest problem among charismatics. There is much openings for inadvertent or temptations in going into excesses, because you are dealing with the supernatural which is by faith, a little blur, a little unclear. Unless you have clear doctrinal teachings that ground you, the feelings of the flesh will emerge once in a while, and somewhat overtakes the spirit within us. Because it’s blur, unclear, there seems to be room to ‘help’ the Holy Spirit, so to speak, making it completely unacceptable, deviant from the Scriptures. This causes great damage to the reputation of charismatics and Pentecostals. So much so many charismatics simply retrieve from it, effectively being by name charismatics. But functioning essentially as a non-charismatics. The sense I am taking to draw the line, is really in exercising the gift of the Holy Spirit that defines a so called Pentecostals or charismatics.

The key word here is “subjectivism”, which is the opposite of “objectivism”. Being subjective can become the opinion of the person doing it, instead of operating under the doctrinal watch of scriptures. Take for example, the entire ‘prosperity doctrine’ is popularized by some faith preachers that uses the power of the proclamation of the word of God because of the power in your confession. There is power in your spoken words, but it’s taken too far. So faith preachers recently in America just proclaimed that virus Covid 19 to disappear in the Name of Jesus in TV and when I saw that, it really looks like an excess of the faith preachers. This is being laughed upon by some reformed preachers in twitters, and it is causing damage to charismatics reputation. Confessing of the word is used in :

Romans 10 ⁹ because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰ For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

The power of confession is used here for the Lordship of Jesus Christ, not for you to calm a storm, or heal a disease. There is espousing too much power which beings to God only and not for human confessional prayers. I like the Westminster confession that uses confessions for prayers of confessing sins etc. Luther is known for confessing sins by word of mouth in his struggle against the condemnation of sins in his own life.

Mark 11: ²⁰ As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. ²¹ And Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.” ²² And Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. ²³ Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. ²⁴ Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

Jesus passed by a fig tree and he reached for some fruit but found none. In his disappointment and frustration, he cursed it. It withered. In that context, disciples told Jesus that the fig tree Jesus cursed had withered. There is an immediate effect of the spoken words of Jesus. He is also the one who spoke into being the world.

Genesis 1In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. ² The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. ³ And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴ And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness.

You see here “God said”. It’s the Trinity God, Father, Son and the Holy Spirit who spoke. Jesus was one of them.

Genesis 1:²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

You see the words “Let us..” its three persons, the Trinity of God.

The point here is Jesus as God spoke, the fig tree dried up. We, as Christians, who are humans, are in no way matching Jesus in our proclamation of our words.

Then Jesus says: ²² And Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. ²³ Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.

The point here is “Have faith in God”. Not “Go ahead and speak to anything by your mouth, and it shall be done”. You can say all you want, but without faith in God, nothing will happen. Its God who can do it, not you or me. The main object or subject here in this verse is faith in God. What drives this whole conversation teaching of Jesus is about Faith in God. Now faith is not something you pump up, but rather something you grow by experiencing. This is a very beautiful verse on faith:

Hebrews 12: ¹Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, ² looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

We get and grow our faith by looking to Jesus. Literally visionary spiritually, meditatively upon the scriptures.

Study that does not lead to living out biblical experience in the era of the Spirit misses the point of biblical texts

What Dr Craig Keener, a Pentecostal theologian, is saying is that studying the word of God is the first absolute requirement for us all Christians. However, if our study does not lead us to biblical experiences in the era of the Holy Spirit, we miss the point of biblical texts. Miss the point of studying scriptures. It’s like you study traffic laws, regulations, and the manual of using brakes, accelerator, steering wheel etc. from the books, but never got a chance to actually drive a car! It’s like learning all the skills of swimming by books on strokes, watching videos etc., but never got into water to experience water! You would never learn to swim.

The point of biblical texts point to the experience of the biblical texts. That’s the whole point. By right, as he said, all Christians are charismatics, because Jesus gave us all gifts (charismata) in Greek, and we all have at least one gift.

1 Corinthians 12:4–11 ⁴ Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; ⁵ and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; ⁶ and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. ⁷ To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. ⁸ For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, ⁹ to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, ¹⁰ to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. ¹¹ All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

Paul is saying here that all kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are gifts of manifestation of the Spirit, wisdom, utterance, healing, miracles, prophecy, distinguish spirits, tongues, —all empowered by the one and same Spirit.

How many gifts operate in your church now? Honestly? Gifts are operating in preaching in manifestation of wisdom, knowledge generally, but the rest??

Conclusion

These are called the experiences of the bible, or biblical experiences in the era of the Spirit. We are in the era of the Spirit now. This is it. Go and run for them.

1 Corinthians 14: 1 Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. ² For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit. ³ On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.

First pursue love. Then earnestly desire the spiritual gifts especially prophecy. Not just desire, but earnestly desire.

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[1] Craig Keener, Spirit Hermeneutics, p 5 W B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan , 2016

The doctrine of universal redemption is unscriptural and destructive of the gospel-JI Packer ^[1]

This is an earth shattering statement that I hope to cover later, and I will.

Reading JI Packer’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, I was blown away how crisp incisive he is and convicting in how we all have espoused some half-truths of the gospel in our church upbringings, and pastoring. As someone who has pastored a few churches over ten years, coming from largely Arminian charismatic movement, listening to JI Packer is a real eye opener, and that should be as # 1 on our reading list. Not only that I really am blessed to see how JI Packer nailed down the gospels truncation and the world manipulating with the gospel, distorting it, that the root of all these Christianity problem is that we have received a different gospel.

Problem of lack of deep repentance and holiness

Packer writes, “The problem of holiness, our evangelism, pastors dealing with the flock, are all part of this complex problem in our days. A substitute product that doesn’t reproduce the old authentic gospel. It doesn’t produce a sense of deep repentance, holiness, a spirit of worship and a concern for the church. The reason is the character of the gospel.” ^[2]

The question that we need to ask ourselves is if we find ourselves having a sense of deep repentance, holiness, a spirit of worship and concern for the church? I believe we don’t have problem for the last two generally, however, we are problematic on deep repentance, holiness. Why? Because of what Packer calls it that we shifted the gospel from ‘God centered’ to ‘self-centered’. This is subtle, and not as obvious and blatant as prosperity doctrine; however, it causes all kinds of problems, spiritually, and therefore emotionally, communally ethically and culturally. Because men have been trying to put man as the center, with the gospel as supporting it.

What’s man-centered Gospel?

Packer writes, “It seeks to be helpful to men, to bring peace, comfort, satisfaction, but too little concern to glorify God. The old gospel’s first concern is to always give glory to God, proclamation of God’s mercy, sovereignty, bowed down to him for his goodness.”^[3] Its center is always God. In the new gospel, the center is man. Calling the old gospel as religious, the new is not.

The Root Cause of Man Centered Gospel

This boils down to the problem of Arminian theology. Basically Arminian theology says Jesus came and died for everyone in the world, and it’s up to us to make a move to come to Christ and believe in him. In that sense, Packer writes, “we depict that God the father and the Son are not sovereignly actively drawing sinners towards themselves, but merely waiting in quiet impotence “at the door of our hearts” for us to let them in.^[4] Can you imagine how weak God is with that theology? God waits in quiet impotence at our hearts, waiting for us to open the door to let them in. Wait! God has impotence, lack of power, vigor?? Our God is omnipotent, the almighty God.

Nahum 1:5 The mountains quake before him
    and the hills melt away.
The earth trembles at his presence,
    the world and all who live in it.

The helplessness of God sounds ridiculous, but that’s exactly how Arminian Christians believe in salvation. Because we major in the free will of men, ultimately for us to accept Christ into our lives, it will have to be us pulling the trigger. Not God. It’s like I am in charge, not God. That’s the beginning of the  shift from God centered gospel to man centered gospel. Gospel of God is merely to “help us”, not to glorify God and put him right in the center of our theology and lives. Many evangelical Christians following Arminianism has no clue about this very intricate and nuanced centrality of God in the entire theology of soteriology (salvation), and it is such a blessing to have such gifted theologian like Packer to unpack that for us.  

Consequence of rejecting the absolute sovereignty of God

I believe Arminianism Christians are genuine believers in Christ, and they are for sure our brothers and sisters in Christ, just like majority of Catholics. I don’t believe they intentionally ‘knock’ God out of his central throne per se, or centrality of salvation, but it’s the side effect of it by teaching that men have the free will to finally decide to receive or reject Christ. This sounds noble and making a lot of sense of individual choice society we live in today, but when we deal with the all-powerful sovereign God, there is no such thing, anything to take the sovereignty of God away in any sense or way, has just diminished who God is. And that’s very dangerous, treading upon heresy. You touched God, you touched the holiness of God, and it capsized the whole boat. What we see in our world today, the evangelical world, there is lack of deep sense of deep repentance and holiness, is directly caused by our lack of understanding of the absolute sovereignty of our Almighty God. Therefore, in effect, we truncated the mightiness of God, reduced his divinity, a huge repercussion on our state of spirituality, is we reap the consequences of it all. We can’t seem to get to the deep repentance because we don’t see that it’s all in the hands of God, as we see we are also responsible for our final process of salvation. Therefore, we can’t deeply repent to God, as we say to ourselves, we should be sorry to ourselves for letting us down. But in actuality, we don’t even sense that deep repentance need anymore. Talking about holiness, once you reduced the sovereignty of God, his holiness just been truncated, in our perception and understanding. We no longer can approach him with such holiness life anymore, because we don’t see God holding that absolute power and glory anymore, as some success will have to be attributed to man, to ourselves. Holiness has just been truncated by our self-driven will power and choice. That’s the result of going for complete free will of men, and rejecting the absolute sovereignty of God.  

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^[1] JI Packer’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ

^[2] Ibid

^[3] Ibid

^[4] Ibid

It can come in the form of verses that is like dropped into your mind, or even seeing visions. Some hear non audible voices in the midst of waiting upon the Lord.

Acts 2:17–18 (ESV)
17 “ ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams;
18 even on my male servants and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.

We are now in the end time. Theologically, end time or eschatology started from the resurrection of Christ till the return of Christ. We are 2000 years after that, right in the midst of that. It says in the last days, v17 I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, that’s the key verse. God pouring his Spirit upon all flesh, not only some selected individuals. V18 and they shall prophesy. Prophesying is debated among scholars just exactly what they mean. A prophetic sermon is a sermon that communicates the heartbeat of God at the time as it was preached. Prophecy is relevant and applicable at that time, at that place, to the people concerned. It’s always specific, and not general. To miss the prophetic voice of God, and calling prophecy has ceased is very unfortunate.

1 Corinthians 13:8–12 (ESV)
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Reformed scholars teach that tongues and prophecy have ceased, because perfect has come. Tongues and prophecy in Acts were given after the finished work of Christ! Only after Christ has returned to heaven, he gave gifts to some to be teachers, prophets etc.

Ephesians 4:8–13 (ESV)
8 Therefore it says,
“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,
and he gave gifts to men.”
11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,

Christ ascended on high, and he gave gifts to men. What gifts? He gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. Charismatics commonly called it as the 5-fold ministry. These gifts were given as Christ ascended back to heaven. Many refer these to just the apostolic ministry of Peter, Paul, and others, and they call us as in the post apostolic age. It is hard to see and read that Jesus gave gifts of these ministries for one generation. There is no context for that, and there is certainly no argument for that. For sure we have not achieved the full maturity in Christ, and there is no way, God suddenly pulled the plug after Peter, James, Paul. Yes, we see a different wave of move of the Spirit now, but that’s no ground to eliminate the offices, therefore.

I will share a testimony of the power of prophetic voice from God. First, when we were about to start our first church in Kuching, a camp speaker who is a pastor from New Zealand, prophesized over me in our church camp in Kuching Malaysia, years ago. Ps Steve Blackmore, who had never met me prior to that, was called by my senior pastor to lay hands on me and prophesize over me as I was torn at that time of seeking to leave the mother church and join a church planting movement round the world. The tension was pulpable, at least for me, with about 200 pairs of eyes watching me holding my first born in my hands at that time. Someone went to call my wife to come. Lo and behold, that pastor laid hands on me, in the presence of God, and with the entire church watching , he prophesied that the Lord has called me to go to a new land, outside of this church, so as to join the work God has called me. It’s just dropped like a bomb upon me barely on the first sentence. As a matter of fact, my senior pastor at that time disagreed with my intension to leave and join the other church planting movement, and here the prophet he invited from New Zealand, a mega church pastor himself, prophesized contrary to what he was hoping, and exactly what I needed. Tears came rolling down my cheeks as I was stunned at the turn of events, I felt a big burden lifted off my chest. I felt God just came down on me by his Spirit. Thereafter my pastor released me to move forward, and my assistant hugged me and blessed me. That’s how we started our journey of church planting in Malaysia.

We went ahead and planted our first indigenous Bahasa Malaysian church consisting 100% of college and high school students within a few months thereafter. It took off within months to reach 60 people, and we saw students would take bus, and walked to our mansion house, in Bampfylde road, Kuching, one of the most expensive zip code with nice trees around. Also at that time, just before I launched the church, my aunt heard that I was seeking a building to start my church, she gladly suggested I rent her mansion house of 6 bedrooms in a half an acre land in a posh land to start the church at less than half the normal rental. I was blown away, and I knew in my heart, this is the Lord. Students came in buses, and would stay overnight on Saturday nights when I would teach them leadership word of God, and the next day our Sunday service. Our worship is through the roof, the energy of these students were unheard of. To the extent there were times, my neighbors would yell at us because we were loud on Saturday night worship that lasts over an hour! My life was totally transformed. I connected with the Holy Spirit, the anointing of God was upon us, and it was a mini revival that’s not seen among students especially the native speaking Bidayuh, and I being a Chinese Malaysian. It was incredible, as God trained me to learn Bahasa in my one year stint in Bintulu in my job posting, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to preach in Bahasa, as I went to study in England and never took Bahasa seriously , in fact failed in my Form 5 Bahasa test.

That’s how marvelous what God did, and it is glorifying God for sure. The spirit of revival was among the students, and I would host camps for them twice a year. All our food and expenses were kept to a minimum with the natives students, and in fact, my wife and I paid for all the food bill of some 50 students that came over night on Saturdays and they ate simple food but with such glad ness and joy!

Today these students continued to grow and many cities have them as their pastors, definitely in the Bahasa church.