关乎我们；更是关乎他 It's About Us, Yet All About Him

Title: It’s about us, yet all about HIM
Preacher: Rev Enoch Keong
Date: 03092023

What are some practices we adopt to help ourselves focus on living a life of faith? Some people would read through the bible once a year. Some would go for short mission trip, yearly. Some would observe extended quiet time on a regular basis. Some of us in Jubilee choose to attend multiple CGs. Some would dedicate time and energy to serve in the church. Some are into giving and serving the community. Some do what we call prayer walks.

Some of us from the youth ministry recently met someone who will not speak to a person before praying a prayer for him or her. I like the idea.

How about us? What are some practices we adopt to help us focus on our life of faith?

In today’s passage, we read about a group that went into ascetic practices, such as, to forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods.

For Paul, to even come up with such ideas, these people must have been, “… devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons” (4:1).

Equating asceticism or ascetic practices with being under demonic influence sounds a little harsh. But Paul has a good reason for saying so. God loves it when we live flourishing lives. Everything God has created is to serve this good purpose. To go against this is to go against God, and hence demonic in nature.

Don’t misunderstand Paul to be also against fasting because of what he is saying here. Fasting is not asceticism. Asceticism is a form of severe self-discipline; personal effort to attain a certain level of spirituality. Fasting on the other hand is to withhold from food for a certain period either for health reasons or to focus on seeking God.

The group is wrongheaded because their understanding of godliness was flawed. The question then would be, what is the correct understanding of godliness and what are some proper pursuits? We will use our time this morning to work on these 2 questions.

Paul’s answer to both questions is found in 3:16:

Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness:

He was manifested in the flesh,
vindicate by the Spirit,
seen by angels,
proclaimed among the nations,
believed on in the world,
taken up in glory.

I hope we are already asking the question, “Why Paul introduces the six lines as ‘mystery of godliness’?” The poem is about Jesus becoming man, died for human sin and thereafter taken up to where God is. In this case, wouldn’t mystery of the Gospel, or mystery of Jesus, or mystery of Salvation or God’s saving grace fits better with the content of the poem? Why godliness? The reason is this, godliness is a key word in the Pastoral Letters. It is used mostly in the 3 letters to refers to a manner of life that stems from a committed relationship to God. ‘A manner of life’, that is, the way one behaves and conducts oneself. ‘Conduct’ is Paul’s emphasis. In other words, Paul wants readers to pause and reflect on the behaviors and conduct described in these six lines.

Understanding godliness to be referring to conduct also helps us see why Timothy, the pastor, the one leading the church, was the one told to behave, instead of those who were wrongheaded. What Paul meant is this, Timothy’s behavior and conduct should resemble that of Jesus. The six-line poem encapsulate what Jesus did. Therein lies the true resource for Christians, says Paul. And he wants Timothy to keep going back to the poem and find strength and direction.

Allow me to unpack a few lines to give a flavor of the richness of the poem. The opening line is about God becoming flesh. Calvin commented on this 1st line saying, “The difference between God and man is very great, and yet in Christ we see God’s infinite glory joined to our polluted flesh so that the two can become one.”[1] Just this one line has a lot to say. How big is the difference between us and God? All we know is that between us and God is a wide gap that we can ever leap over to the other side, a gap that only God is capable of leaping across, and he did it. Incarnation is God with us, God for us.

The remaining lines show that the leaping did not go to waste. Jesus completed his mission on earth, and the gospel was passed on effectively. Thomas Aquainas’ has this to say for line 5, “It is most amazing that through simple, poor and powerless men the whole world has been converted.” [2]

The final line, “…taken up in glory…”, tells us that he is now restored to his glory and power. And by not discarding the flesh that he took on during the incarnation, he is still with us, he understands us. In a word, the gospel is real, effective, and the resurrected and living God the Son is our source of help. It is to this gospel message that Timothy is asked to go to again and again, to mediate and to draw strength from it. You and I are likewise encouraged to do the same.

But I can think of a potential problem. To keep reflecting on the gospel can be an exercise that becomes dry and unexciting over time. Especially if we had been doing it for years and years.

Yet, whether it would be dry and unexciting has much to do with our answer to this simple question. Does our life of faith look more like walking in circles or is one where we not only do certain things repeatedly – like attending worship and cell group regularly – but also sees a deepening of faith? Which picture better portrays our life of faith? The one the right or the left? I like to believe that ours is the one on the right, or at least that it is our aspiration.

When we keep on returning to this hymn, I trust that we will see for ourselves new insights on godliness through the Christ event and find new strength. But I want to attempt the question asked earlier on and suggest for us 3 things that we can do, that I believe would lead to deepening of faith.

First, this mystery of godliness is itself the truth that we as the household of God is to uphold with our conduct. This does not mean all actions, no words, and no brains. It is through reading the bible and worship where God refines our cognitions to produce the necessary convictions to act accordingly.

Yet to uphold the truth with our conduct does place the focus on actions rather than on words, on doing rather than talking. There are many things that we as Chrisitan could do. I would like to suggest just 1 that we may take to uphold the truth. The action is: Donkey! Donkey?

Most of us have seen this 2023 youth camp publicity poster. Designed by the youth camp community based on the 2 verses from Exodus 23 which reads, “If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it; you shall rescue it with him.”

The verses stress, loving one’s enemies through action.

To love one’s enemy calls for forgiveness. The beauty of Christian forgiveness and what it can achieve is something that has been hovering at the back of my mind in recent weeks. I have yet to reflect more in depth, all I can say this morning is that forgiveness is as powerful as it is difficult. Forgiveness is the act that commission new beginnings. We who have experience forgiveness would know how forgiveness brought new life to relationships that were dead and rotting away with a stench.

To forgive is but one way to uphold the truth. Yet I think it one of the greatest strengths that Christianity processes.

When we keep going back to the gospel and reflect on it, I am sure we will find inspirations on how to uphold the truth. What we want to settle here and now is this, that we committed ourselves to be people that uphold the truth with our conduct.

Our resource to do this? Jesus, the main character of the poem. It is for this reason that my sharing is entitled, “It’s about us, Yet all about him.” We uphold the truth, but only because he has done so, and he is the one who strengthens us to do it.

Second, a reflection especially for us who consider ourselves as shepherds. God the Son did not only come to the human world. He entered the personal worlds of people of different backgrounds and life circumstances. To give a few examples, in the book of John, Jesus went to a wedding, turned water into wine, and made the happy occasion an even happier one. He was with the people when they held celebrations. Also in the book of John was this woman caught red handed for committing adultery. Jesus prevented her from being stoned to death. With Jesus she found acceptance. Zacchaeus the tax collector, a public enemy; Jesus went to his home to eat with him. With Jesus he found acceptance. The woman who prepared Jesus for his burial by pouring on him an entire jar of perfume, the people around saw that and protested, but Jesus told them she has done a beautiful thing to him. With Jesus she found acceptance. Jesus is also well known for reaching out his hands to bless and to heal. He put his hands upon the children and blessed them. He touched the leper, and the man was healed. In short, Jesus’ way was to be with the people, in their moment of happiness and struggles, and he ministered to them.

Many of us here perform shepherding functions, some of us are a member of the pastoral team like me or a session member or a cell-group leader. Or we are doing shepherding work, but not holding any title. We are someone’s prayer partner or a befriender. Whether or not we hold a title, the bible tells us that the way Jesus ministers is by entering the personal worlds of people of different backgrounds and life circumstances.

Applying Jesus’ way of mistering to ourselves, it would mean that as shepherds, we journey WITH the ones God love, aka everyone. I like us to ask ourselves afresh this morning, are we shepherds who do things with our flock? Or do we lead by issuing advice and suggestions? Do our flocks see us walking with them, talking with them, laughing, and crying with them, learning with and learning from them, growing with them? Shepherds are called to journey WITH the ones God loves.

Speaking about journeying WITH people brings me to the third point, this time it’s something for all of us to think about. The climax of Jesus being with us, was him bearing our sins on the cross. Bearing burdens, one another’s burdens, is the Christian way of journeying with someone.

Come to think about it, if there is no bearing of one’s another’s burden, started with Jesus by coming to our world and going to the cross, there would be no church to being with. So, the very spirit seen in Jesus, the kind of courage, commitment and sacrifice that gave church its first breath of life, in my opinion, had better be there for the church to breath and live on as Christ’s body. Paul in Galatian brings home the point succinctly, “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” (Gal 6:2)

Of course, we don’t do this blindly, or for our own sake. We are called to do good, but also to be shrewd. In any case, the end point should look something like this, that are we making the environment a better world for one another. Giving one another a new tomorrow, something that God had done and doing still. To do so can be very challenging; Jesus sweat blood in accomplishing the mission. Humanly speaking, it is so natural for us to want to retreat to safety. But if retreating to safety is all that’s worth thinking about, then it is not that there will be no benches to sit in the church, there would have been no church in the first place.

I share 3 things that I find doing them repeatedly would lead to a deepening of faith. I believe we as Christian do acknowledge that the gospel is our true resource. The encouragement this morning is to keep going back to the gospel and find the strength and direction we need.

[1]Yarbrough, The Letter to Timothy and Titus, Kindle Edition, 347 (Calvin, The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians and the Epistles to Timothy, Titus and Philemon, 233).
[2]Yarbrough, The Letter to Timothy and Titus, Kindle Edition, 484 (Aquinas, Commentaries on St. Paul’s Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. 47).

华语崇拜视频链接：https://youtu.be/OP65QiY-BTo
Bilingual Service Video Link: https://youtu.be/5b-GhEOHRNE?si=kp7XtgaCSRPDRRhU