1 Corinthians 16:13-14
Ps Paul Cheng
“…we come together to rejoice in God’s faithfulness…”
~5 min read
Praise be to God for seeing us through yet another year! Although the Covid-19 pandemic is still prevailing, life seems to have returned to normality. We were able to resume normalcy in all the church activities, and many events have occurred in this financial year. As we come together to rejoice in God’s faithfulness, let us consider how we ought to respond to His goodness. Let us take heed to stand fast in the faith!
1 Corinthians 16:13-14, Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. Let all your things be done with charity.
I. Be watchful
Watch ye means be alert or vigilant and it has the idea of staying awake and not falling asleep. We must be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: (1 Peter 5:8). The devil who is the head of this worldly evil system, wants us to live in spiritual drunkenness so that our spiritual senses will be hindered, live in sin and be rendered ineffective for the service of God.
- We must be watchful of temptation and not allow any form of wickedness to creep into our lives.
- We must be watchful of our spiritual condition and stay spiritually healthy by utilizing whatever resources offered to us by the church to guard, protect and maintain our walk with God.
- We must be watchful of complacency and not let our Christian lives get into a rut and just go through the motions of attending and serving without understanding the spiritual significance of those activities.
II. Stand fast
Stand fast in the faith means to stand firm in the faith. Here, the definite article before the word faith tells us it is not our subjective faith as in our belief, but the objective faith which is the Word of God. In other words, we have to stand firm in the Word of God!
Satan cannot remove the Word of God nor take away our salvation. Once we are saved, we will never lose our salvation. Jesus said, And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand (John 10:28). But what Satan wants to do is to cause us to live a life that will dishonour God and be ineffective in our services for Him. And the way to do that is to cause us to doubt God’s Word. That is why he sends false teachers and preachers, and floods this world with all kinds of books to deceive the people with strange teachings to confuse the people with the different interpretations.
The world is always changing in regards to its views about the Bible. Consider the attacks on the inspiration and preservation of Scriptures, the innumerable theories like evolution and theistic evolution, and the devastating movements like the ecumenical, feminist and gay movements. The wiles of the devil may be crafty and diversified, but we must stand fast in the faith and not be moved.
As a church, we have this awesome responsibility not only to stand firm in God’s Word, but to guard the truth and pass it onto the following generation. This is the only way the church can be kept pure!
Can you imagine if five years down the road, Bethel has drifted away from the Word of God? Sunday school is all about games and parties! The Young Peoples’ Group is all about outings! The Sunday sermon is only ten minutes with little or no reference to the Bible! How tragic that will be! The Psalmist said, If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? (Psalm 11:3) Thus, we must not hold God’s truth in a careless way but to hold it firmly and never let it slip from us so that every generation of Christians in our church will have a strong foundation.
III. Be strong
Quit you like men, be strong.
This was translated in the Old English which often used phrases like “quit yourselves like men and fight,” meaning to fight like a man. So, here it means to behave, like men should behave, and be strong!
When we stand fast in the faith, what will happen? We will face hostility, opposition, rejection and even persecution, and therefore, we need spiritual strength. It is the kind of strength that comes from within us through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man (Ephesians 3:16). We cannot strengthen ourselves, for that is the Lord’s work (c.f. Philippians 4:13), and He has commanded us how to be strong, and that is to put on the whole armour of God (Ephesians 6:13-19). When we do that; the outer man or the physical body may be weak and it will soon die, but the inner man is strong!
IV. Be loving
Let all your things be done with charity (or love).
What is the greatest commandment? Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets (Matthew 22:37-40). If we truly take these two commandments very seriously, then whatever we do, will be done with this love for God and for others.
Notice, Paul spoke about the truth first (stand fast in the faith), and then the love. Our love must be based on the truth. If we love someone, we want that person to know and live by the truth, and glorify God. We are willing to do whatever we can to help that person achieve that. We are willing to be misunderstood, face rejection, hostility and even persecution. That is love!
Love and truth are like two sides of the same coin, they cannot be separated! We can be watchful, but without love, it is meaningless! We can stand fast in the faith, but without love, at best it would be legalism, at worst, it would be hypocrisy! We can be strong, but without love, we would just be a cold and hard-hearted person!
God has blessed us with so many ministries and fellowship groups, and we must let all your things be done with charity. Thirty eight years have come and gone, and if God were to give us another year to live and serve, what should we do? What kind of a believer should we be? A believer who is watchful, stands fast, strong and loving!
A blessed annual congregational meeting to you!
With love in Christ,
Pastor Paul Cheng
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