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00:04 Today's passage is taken from the book of Galatians chapter 5 19 to 24 reading
00:10 from the NIV 2011 version. The acts of the flesh are obvious. Sexual
00:17 immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred,
00:24 discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and
00:31 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those
00:39 who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the
00:45 spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance,
00:50 kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
00:57 Against such things, there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have
01:03 crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. This is the word of God.
01:18 Okay, thanks Amanda for reading of God's word. Good morning ABC. Right. It's uh my pleasure to be here to
01:25 share God's word and to learn together with all of you here. Now uh for
01:30 upcoming sermons next week I'll be continuing on Galatians 5. We talking about producing the fruit of the spirit.
01:37 After that, uh, Eldiana will be sharing on bearing each other's burdens and Alex will be sharing on sewing and reaping.
01:45 All right. So, today we're talking about crucifying the flesh. Okay? How can we
01:50 crucify the flesh? It sounds like a lot of work. Sounds like hard work as well. And so, as we look at this, I want to
01:58 have a quick reminder for all of you what we have learned in chapter 5. In chapter 5 of Galatians, we learned that it is for freedom that Christ has set us
02:04 free. Jesus died on the cross not for anything not not for any purpose or
02:10 mainly to save us from the clutches of sin so that we can choose now we able to
02:15 choose whether to obey him or whether we can choose to say that we want to obey ourselves we want to follow our own
02:20 desires so now we are free people amen okay excellent so we all free people
02:26 here and so now we can choose to say that we no longer want to take drugs you no longer need to go to genting uh we I
02:33 think none of you go to you know visit ladies are a child. Okay? But uh I think
02:38 we are we all have this ability to say no to things anymore, right? And so my
02:44 question to all of you is are you happy with your life now that you have Jesus in your life and you have
02:50 freedom from all of these things? Are you happy? Okay, let me just do a quick uh survey
02:57 here. How many of you are very happy with your life? If you're very happy, can raise hands. Very happy with your
03:02 life. One, two, three. Okay, I make it easier.
03:08 How many of you are happy with your life? Happy with your life. Okay, I still see about 30, 40% like that. About
03:14 30, 40% you're happy. The rest not so happy. Okay, later come out, come down for prayer. Okay, come in for prayer
03:20 later. Okay, so so uh if you ask me myself as well, it's not so easy to be
03:27 happy, right? It's not easy to be always happy. And but um in UK okay in Britain
03:34 they actually did a survey on happiness okay in the country and what they found
03:40 was that Christians along with Hindus had the average had the highest average
03:45 mean of life satisfaction. So people if you're Christians or Hindu generally you are very happy at 7.6. Okay. And uh and
03:54 for those those with the lowest average score are non-religious people. people do who do not go to church they're about
03:60 7.4 and uh and people who choose any other religion are at 7.3 don't know
04:05 they don't know why okay but you look at it and if you look at it uh stats do you
04:10 think Christians are really much happier compared to uh other religions do you
04:16 think Christians are much happier than other followers other faiths
04:21 7.6 compared to 7.4 0.2 you know 0.2 too if you compare it is how much it's less
04:27 than 10% variance of it. So if you look at it, they are happier. There are
04:33 people happier but not everybody's happy. As you saw on the surveys now, not everyone is really saying that I'm really happy with my life, right? And uh
04:40 so looking at it's not easy to be happy. Uh another statistics over here by pure
04:46 research shows that if you are actively in church uh there are chances that you're happier but just like the survey
04:52 that we have maybe about 30 40% of them say they are very happy but the rest are are not really feeling like that. Now
04:59 what is my point? My point is this. Now you have Jesus in your life. You know
05:05 who God is. You are saved. Okay, this directed to Christians. You're saved.
05:10 You know who God is in your life. And now you know that there are two paths. Yes, I think everybody understands there
05:16 are two paths. You can walk by the spirit or you can choose to gratify the flesh. You can follow your selfish
05:21 desires, do whatever you want or you can walk by the spirit. And so by right with
05:27 this freedom that we have, we should be really happy because now we can read the Bible. We cannot give bribes. We no
05:35 longer uh can we no longer can smoke. We no longer can uh no longer want to get drunk. We can serve in church. We work
05:42 hard. We do not uh watch porn. We no longer gossip. And we can give offering.
05:47 Are you very happy now? Not very happy.
05:53 But so good. But dear gratify the flesh well you can do whatever you want you know you are the boss. So that is
06:01 actually as I go through this uh passage I find that oh actually if you read the
06:06 acts of the flesh the fruit of the spirit it looks like whole list of things to follow Bible is like a book of
06:13 laws like that you need to follow you want to go to heaven but need to do so many things I if you look at it really
06:18 are you really very happy to to follow and walk in the spirit
06:24 do you really think so and so a lot of times we look like this you know being a
06:30 Christian you're always frowning because must obey must be holy you know um but
06:36 actually what really and you see people who are not Christians they are very happy as well they look very joyful so
06:41 do we really feel free do we feel or do we feel that our freedom is restricted since we follow Jesus which one is it
06:51 and so in Galatians if you do the comparison it says the acts of the flesh are obvious sexual immorality impurity
06:57 departury idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, and so on. And on
07:04 verse 22, it says, "The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control."
07:11 If we examine our lives daily, which one do we actually resemble more? Do we always have love, joy, peace like this
07:17 boy over there on the right, always happy, or do we look like, you know, uh this uh nonovia? How do we actually live
07:25 our lives? And it's a main question that we want to uh address today because the truth is it's not easy to follow God.
07:33 And there is a big wrestle that you go through which William shared with us uh last week. There's always a wrestle in
07:39 your hearts. In Romans 7 it says for I have desire this is Paul. He says for I have the desire to do what is good but I
07:46 cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do but the evil I do not want to do this I keep on doing. Now if
07:53 I do what I do not want to do, it's no longer I who do it, but it's sin living in me that does it. In verse 21, it
07:59 says, "So I find this law at work. Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me." You know, you need
08:06 to actually obey. You need, you know, that you shouldn't give bribes, but in my inner being, I delight in God's law,
08:12 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of
08:18 sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am. What a wretched man I am. And
08:24 my question to you is when you when you say no bribery. I give you example. Let's say their friend said hey Aong you
08:30 know Achong got a deal. You know I got to know this friend Aong got this deal from the government. The government this
08:36 project is 5 million. He didn't you pay 5% only can get the deal already 250,000 just part of transaction. You pay
08:42 250,000 bribe you can get the deal. Okay. And when people tell you hey ano want to do or not want to do or not?
08:50 What's the answer you give? Honestly, sorry. Happy to be poor.
08:55 Happy to be poor. Is it that's why elder right? Right. But for us normal people
09:01 are normal people. Right. How do we answer? A lot of times our answer is honestly our answer is I cannot give
09:09 bribe. Okay. I cannot give bribe. I give example. Let me let me see where I'm
09:14 going. Any smokers here. Before this you were smokers. Anyone? One. I didn't know
09:20 you. You didn't also smoke it last time. Okay. I also smoker last time. Anyone else? Right. When you smell the
09:26 cigarette smoke last time, right? What is it that you think about? Do you think about I people say do you
09:33 want one? What do you say? Do you say I cannot smoke or do you say I don't want
09:38 to smoke? Which one? I give you more. Okay. Men,
09:44 ladies, I don't want to go too much. Men, when your when your guys are in uni time or maybe now in work, hey, you
09:50 know, look at this porn. I found this pornography very nice. I'll show it to you. What do you say?
09:56 I'm a Christian. I cannot watch porn. Do you say that or
10:01 do you say I don't want to watch porn? I don't enjoy porn. Which one do you say actually? Which one do you say? Because
10:10 the truth is it's very hard and a lot of times we are going through this situation whereby we do because we have
10:16 to but do we really have love, joy, peace in our life? Do we have patience? Do we really enjoy being Christian? Is
10:22 the main question that we want to address for today. I'm only going to be focusing on verses 19 to 21. So the
10:29 first point that we have today that we want to address is actually the fight against slavery is real. The fight
10:37 against slavery is real. Let's pray. Dear Lord, we want to thank you
10:43 that Lord, you've given us your word and Lord, you have saved us from slavery, Lord. And Lord, you've given us this opportunity to learn and Lord, you want
10:50 us to have a fruitful and meaningful life and not just wait for heaven. Lord, I pray that you help us to really understand your intention and see the
10:58 big picture and see your grace and your love and help us to change, Lord, to desire what is real, what is true, what
11:05 is good and not just doing it out of drudgery. Thank you Lord in Jesus name we pray. Amen. So the first point today
11:12 is the fight against slavery is real. So William share about this story about
11:19 the white dog and black dog in in your lives for those of you who didn't join
11:24 uh last week. So there's this uh young man who actually talking to a wise person and say that hey you know I have
11:30 I very I find my life very difficult because uh it's like my life there's actually two dogs you know one is a
11:36 white dog you know white dog is a good dog does all the good things teach uh makes me to do the right thing and I
11:41 have a black dog who make me do all the nasty things and he was asking this wise person so how can I see you I see that
11:48 you always uh do well you always are you're a good person not like me for me the black dog always wins one for you
11:54 seems like the white dog always wins. So why how can you do this all wise men? And the answer that I was given was
12:01 if you want to have if you want the white dog to win, you need to feed the white dog. That's what William shared.
12:08 And so if you feed the white dog and you and you actually follow the white dog, which is actually in a way resembling uh
12:14 the Holy Spirit, you get love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gent self-control. This is
12:19 what you get in your life. You get happiness, you get love, you get joy. If you feed the black dog, this is what you
12:24 get. You will start to see the acts of flesh coming out. You have sexual immorality, impurity, debulery, and the
12:30 list goes on and on. So in this text, it says this,
12:37 if your Christian life is actually joyous, it's a lot of times because we
12:42 feed the black dog. It's a lot of times because we do not obey the spirit. We
12:47 obey our own desires and do whatever we want. And this list over here is very quickly summarized into four different
12:53 categories for you. See sexual pleasure, religious sins, community sins for
12:60 example, hating people, causing jealousy, uh dissensions, factions,
13:05 splitting people up, uh you have selfish ambition, not caring about your community or substance abuse. So, and
13:11 these four categories over here are non-exhaustive, which means that there are actually a lot more. But Paul is
13:17 just giving some examples for you to see over here. So the works of flesh are obvious. Uh these are the things that
13:23 you see over here and we all when we see we understand we know what they are. And so for Christians a lot of times we say
13:29 no we don't do sexual immorality we don't do that. Uh idolatry no we don't
13:34 have idol at home drunkenness we don't drink. Okay I drink by the way but uh we
13:40 do not get drunken. We don't actually get drunk. Right? So we said we don't do it. But I want to share with you that as
13:46 a Christian a lot of times this acts of the flesh just becomes more polished
13:52 becomes more polished whereby sometimes you don't even realize that you have it. And so please do not shoot the messenger
13:57 today. I'm sharing with you how Christians may actually still have the acts of the flesh and for us to really
14:03 reflect on how we live and why you're unhappy every day. Is it because you
14:09 have actually not been following the spirit but have been following the flesh? First one, sexual immorality.
14:18 Okay, for normal city folks, your friends who go to work together, the common thing for sexuality, maybe they
14:25 will not go to look for prostitutes. But pornography is something that's so big. Everybody watches it. Okay, everybody
14:31 watches it. But as a Christian, we say no, we don't watch. We don't watch pornography. Okay, we don't do it. And what do we do? We watch Bridgeten.
14:42 We watch what is this? I can't remember his name. House of dragon. Okay. Whereby
14:48 the story is there not sexual story. It's just a love story. It's just some story about schemes and wars. But inside
14:55 they are scenes. And when the scenes come up, what do we say? Yeah, I need to know the story. That's why I need to continue watching.
15:02 Do we do that? Do we do that? Impurity.
15:08 If for people who do not follow Jesus maybe you know uh between two consenting
15:14 adults it's okay to have one night stands it's okay to have um you know have have sex outside but as Christians
15:21 what do we do we do not do one night stands but maybe for us for impurity thoughts we actually will go to IG and
15:29 take photos of ourselves that are very revealing why because we just want people to like it do we do that and so
15:36 if you go to Instagram sometimes if you have downloaded Instagram The first time I downloaded Instagram, I saw why all
15:41 the photos coming out are certain type one. Maybe because they know I'm a man, so they show me a lot of photos that why
15:46 what like that one. But it's just so common out there. Yeah. Uh idolatry. So
15:53 we don't even want to talk about whether you have idols at home. For common um non-believers,
15:58 maybe we say they want to be like Elon Musk. We want to make a name for ourselves. We want we we actually have
16:04 idols. Our careers are idols. Our cars are idols. Our houses are idle. Our success is our idol. But for Christians,
16:10 perhaps for us, what do we do? Our family is our idol because it's such
16:17 a noble thing to take care of your family. We want a family to do well. We want them to get a we want them to
16:22 become, you know, the next uh Bill Gates. We want them to actually uh become someone amazing. We want them to
16:27 go to Oxford Cambridge. And we want to get scholarship. And so what we do, we become tiger moms. we become you know
16:34 father don't have I don't have father tigers right but we we actually make sure that we we discipline them we guide
16:42 them we guide them and we push them all the way so these are possible etc that
16:49 we have witchcraft for non-believers perhaps
16:54 they have charms they have common they have things whereby they use it to control the spiritual uh realm whereby
16:59 they believe that these things can control and that can actually help them to get what one but for Christians we
17:04 have more subtle things that we have think about it's not witchcraft but the way we look into the spiritual uh uh
17:11 dimension whereby we think that we can wear crosses then after we can ward off evil if you have a cross in your house
17:18 you're safer do you have that maybe have cross just for decoration but if you
17:23 think that the cross will ward off evil something is wrong or when we do not do a quiet time yeah no wonder I cannot
17:29 close the deal because today didn't do quiet time sales this week so bad. Why? Because they didn't serve in church. We
17:36 think that we can control God. We think that you know there are certain things we can do to actually uh curry God's
17:42 favor. Hatred. Common people may do bullying. Christians will not. And I think a few
17:47 of them Arnold Peter shared a bit as well on this. Uh in church we do not hate people. We do not bully people. We
17:53 just ignore them. We just don't see them. Okay. Very common in church as well. So you no longer want to see each
17:59 other because maybe the person says something bad to you so you don't want to talk to them anymore. Selfish ambition commonly you know be one day
18:06 you want to become like Trump and you see in every single country everybody wants to be prime minister want to be president nobody wants to come down you
18:13 know everybody wants to actually become somebody for Christians perhaps we say that no we don't have selfish ambition we care about family so what we do we
18:20 work very hard we earn money to take a family but in essence if you really look
18:25 at it what are we doing sometimes is it possible that we want to earn so much money is for our own desires not really
18:32 for the family just for ourselves Is it possible substance abuse? A common one is
18:38 drinking. Everybody will say all your Christians can drink. And the question is always can Christians drink or not?
18:44 No. All these questions come up. And so substance abuse drugs we don't do. But for Christians, do we have substance
18:50 abuse? Do we have addiction? Do you think so?
18:56 Seriously, do you think so? Yes or no? You think so? Yes. So please do not
19:01 shoot the messenger. Some examples of addiction that we may have. How many of you can live your life
19:08 properly without coffee? Okay. Hallelujah. Elder. Yeah. Can can
19:14 live without coffee. How many say that without my coffee I don't sound right. And so this actually my my uh friend who
19:19 meet uh every month this business friend of mine actually share with me. He said that you know coffee is so addiction. You talk about beer, wine, liquor
19:26 addiction. Why don't talk about coffee addiction? It's just being legalized. It's just being normalized that it's okay to be addicted to coffee. True. The
19:34 fruit of spirit is self-control. Do you have self-control? Said you don't need to drink coffee for one week. I'm addicted to ice cream.
19:40 Oh, so you're addicted to ice cream. Okay. So, some added sugar. I just went to do my health check. I got problem.
19:46 So, I'm actually almost pre-diabetic. Okay. Almost. I'm not pre-diabetic. So,
19:51 I I still I still got chance, right? Um or buffet. Wow. You know why? Because we
19:57 cannot have substance abuse like drinking, drugs and all that, right? We find our enjoyment and find our
20:03 gratification in other things, legitimate things like eating food.
20:08 Malaysians love food. Yes. And maybe I should put durian over there. Right. So
20:14 all of us when you see this, we are not as we are not able to escape
20:20 from all of these items over here. Right. At this point, I just want to say hi to my friend Cynthia. Hi Cynthia.
20:27 Right, Cynthia is actually just came from Sa Saudi Arabia together with family. Uh his uh her her husband is
20:34 Chiang, my great friend, my one of my best friends in university. Uh so nice to see all of you here. Sorry I digress
20:39 a bit. Uh why? Because you know I care a lot about them. So let's continue. Right. So substance abuse addiction and
20:46 so why do we nitpick on things like this? Why do we need pick on things like this to say that are you drinking coffee
20:55 also want to control me now last time cannot drink now coffee also cannot buffet also cannot I've heard of people
21:02 say that like that don't don't want to leave die better die already I don't want to be alive anymore because it
21:07 doesn't make sense anymore there's no more joy in life but why do we nitp on this why does the
21:13 spirit talk about substance abuse addiction why because in James it says that each person is tempted when they
21:18 are dragged away by their own evil desire and ties. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And
21:24 sin when it's full grown gives birth to death. When sin is full grown, it gives
21:30 birth to death. Which means if you do not know how to take control, if you do not know how to control yourself and
21:36 keep on eating going to the buffet weapon, you can get high cholesterol, you can get heart attack, right? These
21:41 are all safeguards to protect you. If you keep on chasing after money, I share with you my personal thing, something
21:47 personal. You know, we don't give bribes, right? But Christians still love money sometimes. Now, for example, I
21:53 think for me, I I do fall into that category as well. When you cannot give bribes, what does it mean? You got no
21:59 shortcut. When you got no shortcut, what does it mean?
22:04 You work extremely hard. People work five hours, you work 10 hours. People
22:10 through connection can get things for you. You go 100%. You go two times, three times, four times, five times, 10
22:16 times effort. so that you can achieve the same thing that you want. Without bribery, you steal money. Why? Because you still want
22:22 to gratify your flesh. You still believe that money is important. But you do that what are the consequences of it? You can
22:30 destroy family. You can make your wife angry. You can actually cause yourself to really not have enough rest and cause
22:35 yourself panic attacks which I've gotten before. And so ultimately when you see this, you think this is nothing just
22:40 work hard, very good, very noble, working hard, very good read. There's all these things that's so good to be a
22:46 good mother, but if you do not understand at the back of it, it's not about what you do, but it's about why
22:52 you do it. It's because at the back of it in your mind, there's something more important than God. There's something
22:57 that drives you. There's something that drives you. And so, if we understand that, then we are can actually be in a
23:03 better place because in James, it says that after desire is conceived, it gives birth to sin and sin when it's fullrown
23:10 gives birth to death. So this is the actual situation I shared
23:15 before. The parents uh one of the baby girl, a young infant, a baby died. Why
23:21 did she die? Because the parents were too obsessive on online games. What were
23:27 they playing online? Feeding a virtual baby online. They feed a virtual baby
23:32 online, but after that the real baby died. So again, after desire has conceived, it
23:39 gives birth to sin. And sin when it's full grown gives birth to death. So our first point is the fight against
23:46 slavery is real and we all go through it. Whether you're a Christian or not, you're going through this.
23:52 Second point, you can't be free if you love your chains. You cannot be free if you love all these things. You can't be
23:59 free. And in verse 21, it says over here, those who live like this will not
24:05 inherit the kingdom of God. If you live this way, you will not inherit the kingdom of God. Which means if you willfully decided to say that you will
24:12 want to live like this private okay m I just continue you know pornography okay I just want to continue. If you
24:18 willfully in your mindset that this is okay, I accept it. I continue doing it. You will not inherit the kingdom of God.
24:24 Why? Because you're saying that you allow the fresh, you allow the flesh to reign. You don't want to obey the spirit. If like this, you go to heaven,
24:31 you actually get tortured anyway. Anyway, okay. If you are actually with God, you'll get torture anyway because when you are in uh heaven, for example,
24:38 when you're with God, you're supposed to obey. But you can't obey in heaven. You don't have all these bad things, you know, no pornography in heaven. So, it
24:44 will be very torturing for you. So therefore it is your decision. It's our decision to say that we willfully say
24:50 that we don't want this life. So those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now but and why this is
24:59 case is because it's total opposite of love. This act the way when you gratify your your desires your selfish desires
25:06 desires what you have in your heart is a total opposite of love. Is not thinking about other people. It's just thinking
25:12 about ourselves. Now why does this happen? It happens because of self-centerness.
25:18 Um the the Latin is actually incovetous in say what it means is that we are self-centered. Human beings have a
25:24 tendency of looking at ourselves. What we like to look at the most when you take a photo with other people, what's the first thing you look at? We look at
25:32 yourself. Why? Because you are the most important person in the world. Correct?
25:37 We look at ourselves. We care how we look. And so our feelings matter. When person when somebody does something,
25:43 they didn't say hi to me. I get angry said they don't respect me. I my uh staff just went to Indonesia recently
25:48 and they said that uh they were on a table talking to people and then suddenly they noticed that there was this big shot sitting next to them and
25:55 then after that they say hello to the big shot and gave the business card to the big shot. The guy took the business card and threw it across the table. Why?
26:02 Perhaps because they were so friendly with everybody but didn't talk to him first. Happens. And so why does this why
26:08 why why do we have sin? Because we refuse to trust God. refuse to trust God to really believe that what he has in
26:14 our in his plans are actually the best for us. And if you look at it, this is
26:20 the picture that was shown I think for a few weeks already as well. The sex all these sexual immorality,
26:26 impurity, all these acts of the flesh are just symptoms. The root cause is actually our desires inside our
26:33 self-centerness and us overdesing something. We want something too much more than what we are supposed to. So I
26:41 give a case study over here. Okay. And so I need your help to tell me what's the right thing to do. Um I on Saturday
26:47 Sunday I get very busy for this few months because our friend Daniel Jacqueline introduced us to uh football.
26:52 So every Saturday Sunday from about 3 to 5:00 I send my uh kids to play football.
26:59 And so last week something happened when we were playing football, right? Um
27:05 my son was playing and the ball hit his shin, deflected and flew and actually
27:13 hit a person's face. A little boy's face. It hit the little little boy's face. Little boy was very tough. He
27:20 said, "Okay." They asked, "Okay." No. He said, "Okay, okay." But after 5 seconds, he started crying. Not okay really.
27:27 And after another five seconds started bleeding. The nose started bleeding. Now
27:33 my question to you is what should a good Christian who preaches on stage do? Tell
27:40 me what should you do? What should you do?
27:45 Go to the boy. Oh, are you all right? Okay. What else? What else will you do?
27:51 Okay. Help me. Anyone else? Anyone else? What will you do? Okay. You may actually want to you know
27:57 care about people are people okay talk to people and all that right so the correct answer I think is this
28:05 I care about God first thing is you know care about other people I care about the boy care about parents talk to people
28:10 and we want to be a good testimony for to everybody yes right and so in because
28:16 football actually what's important is teaching my son values being hard work those are important things it's not
28:21 about winning you know coaching football winning is not so important correct
28:26 You know what I did? This is what your preacher did to me. What's most important is winning.
28:34 When the boy was bleeding, what I did was actually the first thing I did is I ran to my wife, took a few pieces of
28:40 tissue. I ran back to the little boy. I passed to him because there's some other parents there. And I ran to my son and
28:46 started telling him, you know, when you play football, you need to engage. You know, you need to go harder. Go to goal post.
28:53 And then my son was actually a bit panicking because he thought that he caused it but his his aim is not so good
28:59 actually. He cannot even cause it anyway but he was actually a bit guilty but it's not your fault. Don't worry about
29:04 it. Tell you what later when the game starts again you need to actually be able to play like this and stand here and do all these things. And at that
29:10 time they were actually winning 3-1. They were already winning 3-1. And yet for me I was doing all this. Why?
29:18 Because for me winning matters. And why does winning matter? Why does winning matter to me? Because in life you don't
29:24 win, you will suffer. You cannot get a good job. So for me, it's not enough to win in football. You must win in
29:31 everything. You must win all the time. That for me is important. And so you see
29:36 all this what I cares about winning, coaching football, caring for others. Okay, I just show show face a bit. But
29:42 being a good testimony, I seriously didn't think about it. Teaching values, I thought really bad value. God totally
29:49 not in the picture at all. It was only until one of uh a non-believer next to me say hey maybe
29:56 it's good for your son to go and say sorry to the boy then like yeah correct only then I did it but so why do you do
30:04 it? Because for us over here okay sin actually does this one thing. Sin takes all the good things and make it become
30:11 ultimate things. So for example sexual immorality why does it happen? Because we want intimacy. Sometimes as you are
30:18 growing up, you see everyone getting married and then you feel you, you know, everybody loves each other but nobody
30:23 loves me. So you want to get intimate but you don't get it. So you actually try to get it by force. Justice maybe
30:30 you see Jolo, you get very angry. Justice is correct but you hate but you want justice so much and you don't you
30:36 cannot do something about you start hating people. So you start hitting all the people who actually give bribes
30:41 because why? Because you love justice. That's wrong, right? You desire career growth but you can't get it so you get
30:47 jealous. So maybe you at first for me maybe it's about stewardship about doing
30:53 the right thing about you know God's calling you know workplace uh marketplace and then serving in the marketplace but after a while it's very
30:60 nuance sometimes it becomes just selfish ambition and for food coffee it's okay to enjoy creation but when you have it
31:06 too much when it becomes too important it actually leads to all this addiction uh uh that happens over here. So how can
31:14 we be saved? How can you be safe? If you want to be saved, what is stated over
31:20 here by Thomas Charm is this? There are few things you need to know. The first one, the love of God and the love of the
31:26 world are two affections and not merely in a state of rivalship but in a state of enmity. These two things cannot live
31:32 together. You either love God or you love the world which we all understand. I think all of us know that you cannot
31:38 love God and love the world. enough Bible text that actually tell you this that you can't do that. You can't serve
31:44 mammon and god at the same time. Second point,
31:49 we have already affirmed how impossible it will for the heart by any innate elasticity of its own to cast the world
31:56 away from it and thus reduce itself to a wilderness. So if you say that there's a
32:01 lot of bad things in your heart, it's not possible for you to say that oh you you have this um pornographic addiction,
32:08 it's not possible for you to just remove pornographic addiction from your heart and cast your heart in the wilderness
32:14 meaning not loving anything. It is not possible for your heart not to love anything. Third one, the heart is not so
32:21 constitute which means uh paragraph number two over there. The only way to dispossess it of an old affection is by
32:30 the expulsive power of a new one. If you want to remove pornographic addiction, coffee addiction, work addiction,
32:37 bribery addiction, all this from your hearts, the only way to do it is by introducing
32:42 the expulsive power of a new one. You need a stronger desire. It's not that
32:48 you can remove desires from your heart. is that you need a much stronger much better desire in your heart to actually
32:53 remove the bad desire that you want to remove. So what it means is this if you
32:58 have any of these addictions here you cannot tell Elon Musk don't be Elon Mus just like that. It doesn't work. You
33:03 cannot tell a person don't go to genting and then they just through will power they say they don't want to go. It doesn't happen. It never happens. What
33:10 is needed is you need a much stronger desire in the heart. You need you need a much stronger power to go in the hearts
33:17 and actually push away and expose all these things from them. And what is the strongest desire in the world?
33:24 What's the strongest desire that you have in the world? And verse 24 over here it says those who
33:32 belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with his passions and desires. The answer is if you want to crucify
33:39 your flesh, all these selfish desires. So for example, the black dog is the one
33:46 that's bad. You want to crucify it, right? The only way to do it is you need
33:51 to remember. The only way to do is you remember that who you belong to. You
33:56 need to remember that you have been purchased by God. You need to know that you belong to God's family. Now it is
34:02 through approvating what Christ has given you. all that you know in your mind and put it into your heart only
34:08 then can remove all these things out there that is necessary that's the only
34:13 way to do it so I just want to give you a example for you to understand it
34:19 um we get sad we cry we get upset when something is very important to us and
34:26 this is Ronaldo do you know why he's crying because Portugal lost uh against um
34:33 Morocco it was upset they lost was 1 nil and this was his last football match of
34:39 his entire career for international football. So it's very sad and he I think he dreamt of being you know
34:44 holding the world cup but didn't happen and so he's very sad and for all of us we have such scenes before in our lives
34:51 we get upset when we don't achieve what we want maybe the girl that you want to date maybe the work or maybe the deal
34:56 they trying to close or maybe the figure that you want the clothes you want to wear because you don't fit inside
35:02 anymore you feel upset about it we have a lot of things that we feel upset about but I want to share with you that
35:08 sometimes the way to learn and really have a way if you want to ex you even
35:13 expose and really remove all these big desires that causes you trouble, right?
35:19 Selfish ambition, drunkenness, pornography and all these things. The
35:24 only way to actually remove it is you have something way bigger, way stronger in your heart. And so because of that,
35:30 let me introduce you to Jazil. This is Jazil. Jazil is actually uh uh
35:38 one of our live group members, right? How old is Jazine? Six. Okay. J is six. Uh yeah, the son of
35:47 uh Daniel and Jacqueline. And so as you see him over here, he's very happy. And
35:53 if you and he just finished his football match. What do you think his football match score was?
36:01 Uh, I know that he was um very bad actually, but but he's so happy. Why is
36:08 he so happy when he's actually eating his McDonald's? Why? Because for me, actually for me, I
36:14 would not even allow my son to look like that after the match. If you lose like that, something is wrong. And I've done a lot. I don't want to share with you.
36:20 I've done a lot of things before. But why does Jazil look like this? because Jazil has actually this thing called
36:27 rightly ordered loves in his heart. Okay. At six year old I think what is
36:34 important if you ask him what's important and the day we had life group uh and even the oldest son will say what's the most important thing in your
36:40 life and he said daddy and mommy. So uh so the way if you look at this ordering of loves to jil what's important is
36:48 parents uh maybe after that family the brothers and so if you look at it the order
36:54 what's important to him football actually really doesn't matter to him winning who cares right what's important
37:02 is getting to play with friends and go to McDonald's right but because of that then you can see that you if you put
37:09 football and winning as most important if you drive you and it drives you to your death. Because the same thing about
37:15 football I share with you can be applied to so many things in your life. The way you chase after certain things. You
37:21 can't get it, you chase after it. Your labu or whatever it is, you cannot get it. You go and chase after it. You go and fight for it. You can pay for it.
37:27 You go online shopping. Keep on trying to buy the cheapest things. And some of us try to save money. We go online keep trying to save money. But it really
37:33 drives us mad. So the only way to really do to really have a proper life is to
37:38 have rightly ordered love. to say that when you do a stock tick I don't have
37:44 time to do a stock tick with you but do a stock tick in your life now do a stock take in your life when you go back and
37:52 see what are the things you have in life your career
37:57 marriage family church quiet time buffet
38:05 coffee arrange it and think and see what's really important for You and it's not to
38:12 say that it must be always the same. For example, when you're a teenager, getting married shouldn't be the most
38:17 important thing. But if you put as most important thing, you have big problem with your grades. Agree?
38:24 But when you are married, marriage should come up really. So it always
38:29 moves. But you need to have rightly ordered loves in your life because if your loves are not ordered properly, you
38:35 have a problem. And who can actually guide us to order our lives properly? order our loves properly. The answer is
38:41 God. If you put God on the first as a first as at the top, everything else
38:47 will automatically flow into place. You know what is the right thing to do and so the spirit will guide you and through
38:54 having if you obey the spirit, you walk in the spirit, then you have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
38:59 faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, all these things will be there to help you. And so your life will be done will
39:05 be live in a much better way. So, and I want to just clarify this one
39:11 thing for you. A lot of times, uh, recently I was talking to some business owners and we were talking about
39:18 ambition. Hey, you want to grow 10 times, you grow, uh, two times, is it
39:23 too much or not? Are we actually asking for too much or not? And so, it's important for us to know. Yeah. Uh,
39:30 worship team can come up, please. So the uh as it's important for us to know that it is not that God doesn't want us to
39:37 have ambition. It's not that God says that food is wrong. It's not that God
39:42 says that you know sex is bad. It's nothing like that. But it's whether these things these good things become
39:49 your ultimate things. So this is what CS said. It would seem that our Lord finds
39:54 our desires not too strong but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling
40:01 about with drink, sex, and for my case, ambition. When infinite joy is offered us,
40:10 [Music] when you get to know who God is, you get to have infinite joy. And through this
40:17 infinite joy, you actually can rightly order your lives. And when you have appropriate understand what God has done
40:23 and if you look at this, the Bible is not a book of laws.
40:30 You read like this, you be drudgery. You hate it. You read only when you want to sleep.
40:37 The Bible is a book of love.
40:44 is a story from the beginning of time until now on
40:49 how the creator of the whole world has been pursuing you. Even when you didn't know
40:55 him, he's been pursuing you, pursuing all of us and wanting the best for us,
41:01 wanting us to become who we were meant to be, wanting us to know him, wanting
41:06 us to be in the right relationship and not chasing after all these items. And so CS way says over here for us when we
41:13 chase after this drink sex and ambition we are like an ignoring child who wants
41:18 to go on making mud pies in a slum because we just cannot imagine what is
41:26 meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. We
41:33 are far too easily pleased. And so a lot of times when you obey the spirit it
41:38 seems to be so difficult but if you can see past it and understand what goodness
41:44 comes out from it. I'm not saying just you become a good person. I'm saying the real joy the real joy of being able to
41:49 say that you do not want to pay bribes because instead of saying that I cannot pay bribes. You say I don't want to I
41:54 don't need to pay bribes because I have sufficient God has given enough. I'm happy what I have.
42:02 You do not need to watch pornography. Why? because you don't feel lonely anymore. One of the biggest problem in
42:08 pornography is loneliness. It's not sex, it's loneliness. But because you have
42:13 the community of faith, you have you have people, you have your family, you no longer feel like this. And you can
42:18 say, I don't need pornography. I don't want to watch it. You don't need anymore. The same thing goes for your
42:26 money, anything else you chase after. When you have God, everything gets ordered correctly.
42:33 And so what we need is a much stronger desire. And in Galatians 2:20, it says
42:39 over here, I've been crucified with Christ. And I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the
42:46 body. I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
42:53 When you feel the urge to drink your next cup of coffee and you cannot control yourself. When you feel the need to go and eat food because you get so
42:60 upset you eat your ice cream to actually have some comfort food. When you feel that you need to pay the bribe because
43:05 you not the bills will not be covered. When you feel that you're so lonely
43:11 because you have a marriage problem and need to watch your pornography. Remember in your hearts
43:20 there's somebody pursuing you from the beginning of time until now.
43:26 and he loved you so much that he gave himself up for you.
43:33 Now friends, I by right now I will close and I'll ask uh the choir team to come in, but I just want to share something
43:39 extra for you because I got 3 minutes extra. Can I do that? Can I? I always
43:45 end my sermon with a cross. I always do it. But recently I found that it's
43:50 something wrong actually because if all I have in my life is a cross is actually
43:57 a problem. The cross signifies justification that Christ died for our sins. And I
44:04 always tell you because God died for you, you can do this. I always tell you that.
44:10 But I want to introduce something else for you to remember and see. Now God just didn't God didn't just die for you.
44:16 and can if I can ask J to help as well. First thing I want to emphasize to you is every time I come to church, right,
44:22 some realize that, hey, these pictures are not for fun, you know? Can you look over there
44:28 on your left, you actually see that the God, the creator of the whole earth
44:35 was born as baby in a manger. His life, Jesus life was lived to show us example.
44:43 And so he's given example to follow and to tell you that he understands you. The
44:49 crucifixion is to pay for the sins that we have. But I want to share with you
44:54 which during the next sermon I will try to focus and maybe need some help from the elders as well. It's actually over here. Can you please focus the camera to
45:02 this side please [Music] on the right side of the hall for those
45:07 of you who are online there's actually a
45:13 picture of the empty tomb. If all we have in our lives in order for
45:19 us to live well is willpower to say that we obey the spirit and that's it. I
45:25 think it's really we are missing out a lot because it's not just about justification.
45:30 It's actually because of the resurrection of Christ because of him
45:36 dying and being resurrected. There is power. There's power when you become a
45:43 Christian. You're not living alone. The Holy Spirit is with you and you
45:49 don't leave your life alone saying that through my willpower I work hard and earn my money and take care of my
45:55 family. But every single day and even now in every single one of your hearts, the spirit of God is in you.
46:02 The Holy Spirit is with you and everything you go through, he knows. And
46:07 he said, "I have kn I will never leave you nor forsake you."
46:13 And that gives us hope. If I can, I'll add one more at the back, which is actually Where's my phone? It's ringing.
46:21 Tells me time is up. And at the back, if I can, I'll add one more, which actually the Pentecost, the
46:30 giving of the Holy Spirit to tell you that when you become a Christian, it's
46:36 not that you're living alone anymore. The Holy Spirit is with us. And that
46:41 gives us power to say that even when things are tough, we can do it because of the Holy Spirit with us. That makes
46:50 the most different. The Bible is a text we learn. We know who God is. But you're never left with just a Bible. You're
46:56 left with a community which I know we share more next week. Sorry, the week after. And also at the same time, you
47:04 also been given the Holy Spirit to guide and help you. Shall we pray?
47:09 Let's bow our heads and pray. Father, we thank you for for teaching us and letting us know
47:16 about our hearts. Lord, our hearts are deceitful. And Lord, a lot of times we
47:21 want things. We have our own selfish desires. But Lord,
47:27 you given us a spirit and Lord, you have been with us and you are always with us.
47:32 We thank you for this love that you have for us. And Lord, help us to appropriately understand that we need to order our desires properly and put you
47:39 first and remember that no matter what it is, you are enough. We thank you for this Lord.
47:46 We thank you that Lord, you are with us and Jesus is at the right hand of God
47:51 interceding for us, being our perfect priest and caring for us and pleading
47:57 for us and also praying for us and we never left alone.
48:02 We thank you Lord in Jesus name we pray. Amen. The service is over after a moment
48:08 of silence prayer. Um please enjoy the fellowship outside. For those of you who
48:13 have uh any prayer requests and maybe you have questions um you want to become
48:20 Christian, you want to know more about Jesus, uh please do come in the front. Our um leaders are here to uh have a
48:27 chat with you. Thank you. [Music]
