Weekly TRUE LIFE BIBLE-PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH RELC Auditorium, 10.30 am 30 Orange Grove Road, down Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore 258352 Mailing Address: P.O. Box 141, Newton Post Office, Singapore 912205 Email: febc@pacific.net.sg; Website: http://www.febc.edu.sg (Ring Pastor Tow at 9A Gilstead Road, 62502138 Anytime) Vol. II No. 34 22 May 2005

PASTORAL CHAT

My Dear Readers

Apart from our Lord’s Day Worship at 10.30am where for variety we take in a goodly number of speakers, we have the Friday night Prayer Meeting where we speak a half hour for Bible Study and extra time for testimonies (John Sung’s style). We have gone over Revelation and are now entering Gospel of Matthew. We have around 60 who come to prayer meeting regularly. It brings us great joy whenever our prayers are answered. Do you get your private prayer answered? Do you pray every morning? “Ere you left your room this morning, did you think to pray?” Do you teach your young children to pray before they go to bed at night and when they get up in the morning?

For our Mersing Camp, June 7 – 10, we have not only Hien our Vietnamese missionary to Brisbane as devotional speaker but also Rev Errol Stone from Perth. They surely will impart heavenly wisdom to us.

I hear 101 have registered to come. I believe more are coming! Our charges are the lowest. It is the fellowship that should above all draw us together.

At Jemaluang, 13 miles south of Mersing a group of young people have accepted the Lord as Saviour. They have begun a service every 4th Sunday at 10.00am under the charge of Tee Chung Seng of Kelapa Sawit. We are mindful of their growth in waiting for His coming. Amen.

Your affectionate pastor
T. T.
 

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GENESIS
Notes From A Weekly Study
Conducted by Pastor Quek
(Taken from Newsletter of Cherith Fellowship, Vol. 1 Issue 2, May 2005, edited by J.T. Joseph)

CHAPTER 3

Verse 14

Was it the serpent’s fault? – recall that the curse on the serpent would not be lifted even in the Millennium [Isa. 65:25].

Actually, this is not a matter of ‘fair’ or ‘unfair’: God (alone) has the sovereign right to curse the serpent, using it forever as a reminder to all mankind [cf. Jn. 3:14, 15].

Verse 15

The protogospel – man’s salvation, Satan’s damnation.

Note ‘her seed’/‘his heel’ – implying, the saviour will be a male [automatically disqualifies Mary].

Why was Satan not straightaway cast into the Lake of Fire? As a result of this ‘reprieve’, he will induce man to sin even during the Millennium.

Consider this:

The exercise of God’s power in physical resurrection will not save us [cf. I Ki. 17:22; Jn. 11:44], because divine justice must needs be satisfied. The person who is merely resurrected will not have a glorified body, and would thus succumb again to physical death.

Without the shedding of blood, there can be no remission [‘cancellation’] of sin.

We see, therefore, that Satan must be defeated by the Cross first.

Take note of three kinds of death:

• Spiritual death, as happened to Adam the moment he sinned
     • Physical death - Adam died after 930 years
     • Ultimate death at the end of the Millennium, for unbelievers & rebels

Jesus died physically on the cross [not spiritually, because He is sinless].

His very real death conquered (at one stroke) spiritual, physical, and ultimate death for the elect è the elect will one day have glorified bodies.

Verse 16 (b)

What is this ‘desire’? – see also, GEN. 4:7.

This is the woman’s desire to usurp the authority of her husband. Her ‘curse’ would only be reversed under the conditions set forth in EPH. 5:22-33.

‘Curse’ for man: no physiological change [as pain in childbearing]; rather, the ground is cursed for his sake è he has, among other penalties, to sweat & toil just to maintain his physical existence …

Verse 17 ff

… but for his good, otherwise he in idleness would find opportunities to sin the more.

Verse 18

Adam is still herbivorous.

Only after the Flood did God permit meat-eating. Before the Flood, however, those in rebellion to God indulged in ‘meats for the belly’ – e.g., Nimrod.

Despite the ground being cursed, man still found idle-time, which he used to indulge in sins of increasing depravity è God had eventually to destroy the world by water.

Verse 21

Introduction of the idea of substitutionary atonement.

Remission of sin (by the shedding of blood) carries the idea of ‘cancellation’ of the (ultimate) penalty.

Verses 22 - 24

Note the precaution God had to take, to prevent man becoming fixed in the state of sin.

Had Adam, after the Fall, eaten of the Tree of Life, he would have been permanently fixed in the state of sin.

On the other hand, had Adam passed the ‘test’, he would have received, by God’s promise, eternal life. How? – by partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Life? Perhaps.

Note: there was no (recorded) prohibition on partaking of its fruit.

Rev. 22:2, 14 shows us the Tree Of Life, with twelve different kinds of fruit. Only in the glorified state would man be allowed to eat thereof.

CHAPTER 4

There is as yet no ‘nation’ properly so-called. God had to prepare a ‘chosen’ nation to be the vehicle for the coming Seed – the lineage goes back to Shem [see Matthew 1].

Perhaps the most startling testimony to the coming of this Seed is from the mouth of a pagan seer – Baalam: see Num. 24:15 – 19.

Verse 1

Eve – not Adam – named her first child. This was Cain. She presumed it would be Cain who would bruise the serpent’s head.

Verses 3 – 5

The AV preserves the ‘chiastic structure’ of the Hebrew text, this approach being discarded by modern translations.

“Chiastic’ refers to the technique of referring to A then B, and immediately after, switching the flow from B to A. It serves to draw our attention to the specific context.

Our attention is first directed to Cain. His offering was not, in itself, objectionable; the problem lay in his attitude and in his motives.

In other words, his heart not being right, he offered an unacceptable offering to God. Cain’s ‘offering’ was a cereal offering, whereas Abel’s was a blood offering.

Does the context require a blood offering?

Recall that ‘faith’ – per Heb. 11:4 – entails doing what God requires of you at any given point in time, whether or not you understand ‘why’.

God must, earlier, have instructed the brothers as to the type of offering He expected of them – perhaps this instruction was given through their parents [see Gen. 3:21].

As far as God is concerned, motive (attitude) and action must be consonant with His teachings.

Cain’s offering on this occasion reflected his attitude: ‘What’s good enough for me should be good enough for God’.

Note that, at this point in time, there was no detailed teaching from God, concerning a diversity of offerings – that came much later. The only offering required of Adam and his family was the blood offering.

We are thereby reminded that sin offering must always precede the other types of offering as introduced in Leviticus chapters 1 – 6.

If you do not put yourself right with God first, all your offerings & gifts & good deeds are redundant!

Verse for the Week:

The merciful man doeth good to his own soul: but he that is cruel troubleth his own flesh. Prov. 11:17

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Young People’s Fellowship will be having a Visitation to Ling Kwang Home this Sat (May 28, 05). Please meet at FEBC, 3.30 pm. For details, please contact Herbert at 94377715.

Family Bible Study Fellowship Meeting will be held this Sat (May 28, 05) at 5.30 pm. Venue: Mr and Mrs Bernard Tee’s home at 19A Hillview Avenue #08-06, Singapore 669554. Program: Bible Study on Jude by Dr Jeffrey Khoo. For details, please contact Edward at 93887328.

There will be a door-to-door HDB flats evangelism session next Sunday afternoon (May 29, 05) at Bukit Panjang. For details, please contact Dn Tai Mern Yee at 97932330.

Bible Camp June 7 – 10, 05 at Resort Lautan Biru, Mersing. Theme: “Knowing Our Bible-Presbyterian Faith”. Dr Jeffrey Khoo chief speaker. Please register at the Book Table.

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