The True Jesus Church has 10 articles of faith which are based on the Bible. If we do them, we will obtain eternal life. For example, getting baptised, getting our feet washed, receiving Holy Communion, keeping Sabbath Day, praying for the Holy Spirit. We do this to get eternal life. Yet underlying these 10 articles of faith are principles we can live our life of faith by.

The way of life is a path, and salvation is not obtained through one moment but through a lifetime. While we live our life, we need principles to guide us.

4 have been discussed. First is the belief in the one true God from which we obtain the principle of submitting to authority. Christians submit to authority. The world today is in kind of a mess because people don’t submit to authority anymore, especially the so-called liberal progressives. If they win, they want you to follow them. If they lose, they resist. “You are not my President/Prime Minister!”

The second article of faith was on truth - the Bible. We understand that there is such a thing as absolute truth, and not like this world where everything seems to be according to one’s interpretation.

The third is about Sabbath. God gave us the Sabbath because He being the Creator understands those He created. Life today is about regular work and regular rest. The people of the world are quite different. They believe in work hard and play hard. They work from 9-5…9am to 5am. They work like that so that at the end of the year, they can take 2-3 weeks off and enjoy themselves. But the body isn’t made like that; it needs regular rest. Some people say they want an early retirement and so want to work hard now. They don’t test in the first 20 years of working. At that point, their body may break down. That is not what the Sabbath means. As Christians when we say we keep the Sabbath, we learn to have regular rest.

The fourth article of faith talked about was on spiritual perspective - the Holy Spirit. When we believe that there is a Holy Spirit and receive the Holy Spirit, we realise that there is a world beyond the physical world. What’s important to know is that they overlap, and they overlap in us, because we’re both spirit and flesh. The Holy Spirit in us means there’s a Spirit in us. The surrender between a human being and a computer is that the intelligence in us is God’s spirit. While some people don’t have the spirit of God in them, they have the spirit of man and have intelligence. Because of this we don’t view the world from a physical perspective, we view it from a spiritual perspective.

So when people ask, “Do you have short/long term plans? Do you have insurance for your golden years?” With a spiritual perspective, we add another layer, “Do we have eternal plans? What insurance do we have for the years after our death?”

This sermon will discuss another article of faith.

Salvation is given by the grace of God through faith. Believers must rely on the Holy Spirit to pursue holiness, to honour God, and to love humanity.

Eph 2:8-9
Grace is reward that’s unmerited. It’s something good we get but don’t deserve. We’re saved by the grace of God, because He loves us and gave His life for us. We receive His grace through faith, because we believe that He died for us and believe we receive His forgiveness through His blood in baptism. This is done for most of us as we have been baptised. Yet we have a life ahead of us.

The principles of grace and faith must guide us through our lives. As we have received grace from God, we ought to be gracious to people. We ought not to be calculating. “Has he been good to me or not?”

A Christian life is a life of grace, because we receive things that we did not deserve. So it is that Christianity gives more than it receives.

Heb 11:6
We begin with faith. We must continue with faith. For without faith it is impossible to please God. When we come to church, we must remember that faith is central. And in life, faith is also central. If at any point we look at ourselves and think our faith is getting weak, it must be a cause for concern. Why is it a cause for concern? Because it’s a life of faith. If we don’t have faith, we don’t have life.

The speaker did a search on the word ‘life’ in the Bible. There’re 496 occurrences in 450 verses for the word ‘life’. Love is also very important. 361 occurrences in 322 verses for the word ‘love’. Some people like to compare and say life is more important than love, or love more than life. Based on occurrences, there’re more of ‘life’ than ‘love’. Firstly we must learn that we don’t compare in many situations. Like: “Do you love your father or mother more? If both drop in the sea, which will you save?” Don’t compare.

Because without life, there’s no love. Life is very important in the Bible. Life for Christians is very important. We don’t trivialise the importance of both the physical and spiritual life. Again, the world is in turmoil today simply because they look at life wrongly. They talk more about the quality of life rather than the sanctity of life.

1 Sam 2:6
Life belongs to God, from cradle to grave. When the people of the world reject God and talk about the quality of life, they begin at the cradle and also end at the grave. They challenge God at the cradle by performing abortion; they complain that there’re wars and people die in wars. They worry about climate change.

An interesting thought:
Suppose really that the ice caps melt, and the world becomes warmer. The sea levels rise. We lose the land on the coasts. But we got a lot more land because Antarctica has lost lots of ice. We can stay in Siberia, Arctic, Greenland, Canada now because all the ice has melted. But the people of the world are all so concerned. Again, they forget that God said it’ll never flood in this world.

And how many people die of abortions every year? 30million. That’s 6 times the population of Singapore are killed every year. And they’re not concerned.

The speaker discussed with his nephew who’s a liberal progressive. He works in the media. During family dinners, he doesn’t want to eat shark’s fin.
The speaker asks him, “So you’re worried about the sharks yeah?
“Yeah we cant let the children come out. It’s such a bad world today!”

“But who gave you the right? Imagine you’re the foetus in the womb and someone tells you not to come out because there’s not enough resources in the world both them and you.”

30 million are killed. They don’t respect God’s sovereignty over life.

At the other end: the grave. People say that if their life is full of pain or have a terminal illness, they should just kill themselves. “Who gives you the right to stop me?” Soon, there’ll be thousands of people who opt for euthanasia.

All this happens because people don’t respect God’s sovereignty.

The twisted idea that life is only meaningful when you have a life of quality. But Christians are not like that.

Let’s take an example from a person who led a life of faith from which we can learn. Philip the deacon in Acts 6:3-7.

Philip was filled with the Holy Spirit and serving in the church. Notice that Philip was full of the Holy Spirit, then he became a deacon. It’s not that he became a deacon then he was full of the Holy Spirit and served in the church. What we need in our congregation is everyone being filled with the Holy Spirit. The day we’re baptised, we should live a life of faith, pray for the Holy Spirit and serve in church. This is a life of faith, where the church and religion is the most important thing. We are all at different stages and levels at our growth of faith.

Philip is a good example. In chapter 8, he preached the gospel to the Samaritans and the Ethiopian eunuch. A life of faith means sharing this faith with others. These are things worth repeating. Sometimes we come to church but we forget why we come to church. And when we forget why we come to church, we’re in trouble. Just like children nowadays: children go to school and forget why they go to school. When this happens, they make trouble in class. Often they ask, “Why do I need to learn this and that?” Teachers have a harder time now. Last time they just needed to teach the content, now they have to spend 5-10min explaining why they learn it. But that’s ok because they children are loved. Sometimes it’s hard to explain though.

Having a life of faith is preaching the gospel.

Philip also raised a family. A Christian life of faith is not a monk’s existence - going to the hill/mountain/cave and not mix around with society. We raise families. Until we know when Christ comes. There’s only one reason why we shouldn’t raise families, when we’re VERY certain Christ will come soon. That’s in Matt 24 “In those days, woe to those who are in childbirth.”
Paul also said to not get married to focus on God’s work. But we don’t know when Christ is coming. So we live normal lives. We get married. We have children. We bring children up in the Lord.

Philip had 4 daughters and brought them up well such that they could prophesy - they could preach the gospel.

It’s quite a simple life isn’t it? It’s the natural thing to do. But again the world is complicated. An article said that it’s better for a woman not to get married. Less stress. More success at work. More fulfilment. Can travel the world. Enough money to go and have high tea. So even the matter of marriage is a big problem for developed countries all over the world. But for us again, a life of faith is doing what naturally comes in the body that God has created for us.

We live a life of faith. And to live a life of faith, we must be able to have time. Some people say that they want to time to make money; time is money. So they sacrifice their health. They work very long hours, because time translates to money. But for us, time is life. If we live a life with enough time, there’re many things that we can do. There’re many things we can enjoy.

Today the speaker took a walk through town because he sent his car for servicing. He walked from Great World City to Chinatown to meet his daughter for lunch. He was amazed to HDBs in town. When we have time, we enjoy life. When we have time, we can do the work of God.

“The just shall live by faith” is a very important phrase.
Rom 1:17, 16-18
The just shall live bf faith means this bf ain’t feels us what’s right and what’s wrong. This is very basic. If we do what’s right, we shall be saved. If we do what’s wrong, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness. In our life of faith, we must find out from the Bible what’s right and wrong.

Various references have been made to what the world is like today. It is changing unbelievably fast. Never in the speaker’s life did he imagine how accepted homosexuality is today. Nowadays comedians all panic (e.g. Eddie Murphy, all the jokers) because people dig out the jokes they made about gays last time. Society is such.

If we follow the way of faith, the white sheep frown upon the black sheep to save the black sheep. So if we’re in an all boys school and there’s one classmate who has homosexual tendencies, you laugh at him and say “Aiya be a man la!”, the person can be saved.

In the speaker’s school in Malaysia, there were 4 guys with homosexual tendencies. He and his friends became friends with one of them, forming a group of 4. 4 of them went through life, got married and had children. The other guys in the class of 40, became gay, they encouraged one another in this way.

Today the black sheep frown on the white sheep. They use gay pride. They are proud of it. They steal the symbol of God - the rainbow grace, God’s mercy upon people that God won’t flood the world again - to talk about gay pride and warn about flooding.

A life of faith is knowing what’s right and what’s wrong.

Gal 2:20
A life of faith begins with a death, because we have to die in baptism first. It’s very very meaningful that we die in Christ. And when we live, it is Christ who lives in us. A life of faith is a life of realisation; a life of gratitude. People are unhappy when they’re not grateful. There’s always something to be ungrateful about; to be unhappy about.

For example, HDB 99 year lease. Somebody stoked anger in people: how come government cheat us and take our flat from us? We can live in a flat for 99 years, while in HK they have no place to stay. Here we can buy cheaply from the government, when the price goes up, we can sell at a profit. We can choose to

But because we’re ungrateful, we become angry. And what if they say, “After 99 years, the tiles belong to me!”
The speaker answered, “Ah then the government take back the flat, you take back the tiles la.”

But we live in faith in Christ because we’re dead in Him and live in Him.

Many of us try to be a good Christians. We underachieve in the sense of the world. It’s okay, because we have a different view of what’s important in life. A common thing Singaporeans say, “If you can’t take the pressure, migrate to Australia!” But actually if you can’t take the pressure here, just lower your expectations, and things are okay.

The speaker believes that and so his expectations are low. By the grace of God, many of us have good lives.

Heb 10:38
A life of faith is a life of endurance to the end. If we read the whole passage from v35-39, “ Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise: “For yet a little while, And He who is coming will come and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith; But if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him.” But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul.”

A life of faith means going all the way to the end. It is very pitiful if we lose our faith at the end. Life is very important. If we were to divide our modern lifespan into 3 sections of 30, the speaker is not approaching the third part of 30, it is important for him to not lose his spiritual life in the last 30. It is sad for some who have trod the Christian path and lose it in the last 30. This is sometimes traced the the need to achieve something in the last 30. “I want to make my mark in this world.” That happens in the physical world but worse still if it’s attempted in church. Attempt to change the truth and go against God. So many have this problem now. Why? Is it worth it? Don’t you think you should preserve this life in the last 30? Because if we lose our pure faith, we draw back to perdition (v39); condemnation. The speaker would rather be nothing than to lose his soul. If by speaking a sermon he speaks the truth, he’d rather not speak a sermon. It’s not worth it.

Rom 12 is a wonderful chapter on how to live a life of faith and grace. Every verse tells us what to do. Read it and try to do it.

Question/verse 1 tells us we must present our bodies as a living sacrifice. We begin a life of faith, our lives no longer belong to us. This should seem reasonable to us. If we think “Why should I do this? Why must I come to church?” then we get zero marks for question 1.

Question/verse 2, do not be conformed to this world but transformed. Again, we mess up because the world thinks this way and we follow. Change our mind, change our direction.

v3-6 is all work in change. v6 says according to the proportion of our faith. We must really do according to what God has given us.

v9 Let love be without hypocrisy.

v10 Be affectionate to one another in brotherly love.

v19 A life of is not taking revenge. Even when driving a car and someone overtakes you. Don’t take revenge by tailgating him.

v16 Associate with the humble.

A sermon is a sermon. What happens is when we go home and live. Let’s encourage one another. May God bless us.