The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
00:00:01 [Applause] [Music] today's scripture is from matthew chapter 4 verse 12 to 25. when jesus heard that john had been put in prison he withdrew to galilee leaving nazareth he went and lived in capernaum which was by the lake in the area of zebulun and naphtali to fulfill what was said through the prophet isaiah land of zebulun and land of naftali the way of the sea beyond the jordan galilee of the gentiles the people living in darkness have seen a great light on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned
00:00:52 from that time on jesus began to preach repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near as jesus was walking beside the sea of galilee he saw two brothers simon called peter and his brother andrew they were casting a net into the lake for they were fishermen come follow me jesus said and i will send you out to fish for people at once they left their nets and followed him going on from there he saw two other brothers james son of zebedee and his brother john they were in a boat with their father zebedee preparing their nets
00:01:37 jesus called them and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him jesus went throughout galilee teaching in their synagogues proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people news about him spread all over syria and the people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases those suffering severe pain the demon possessed those having seizures and paralyzed and he healed them large crowd from galilee the decapolis jerusalem judea and the region across
00:02:28 the jordan followed him this is the word of god let's pray father we thank you for today lord thank you for bringing us together online to hear your word and despite the mco and everything that's happening around us fella we praise you and we thank you that lord you are in control and lord that you've asked us to to follow you and to to be your agents of change in this world i pray that you speak to us through this um session lord i pray that you help us to understand your word and help us to follow you even better
00:03:03 after this praise you lord in jesus name we pray amen good morning fbc hello it's good to see all of you again i'll be back here for a sermon session now today we're going to be talking about the kingdom of god and it's in matthew 4 verses 12 25 and as we start i think you know it's still in january and first thing i want to say happy new year to all of you again uh you know it's been a very challenging year last year so many things have happened and so we're all wondering you know what to do and how is
00:03:36 2021 going to be it's going to be the same or not so actually during the new years right i was in joe hall and i spent some time with my wife with sonia actually we sat down actually did some new year's resolution we wrote down what to do how to be a better person you know so down i want to be a better father spend more time with the kids be a better husband don't make my wife angry and all this different stuff you know and when you continue doing this right you see the list growing and growing and growing
00:04:02 you know and we have these high hopes every time during the new year saying that we're going to be better we're going to become a better person and really you know uh become someone that actually loves jesus and looks like jesus that's what we want to do but when monday comes when we go to work everything goes haywire everything goes south why when the pressure comes in it's so challenging you know it's not just about what you want to do it's about what is happening in the world many times do you feel like me you know
00:04:27 you feel like you're not in control you can't control the situation and sometimes it comes to the point where you feel that you can't even manage it anymore and i would say sometimes does it feel like this you're trying to swim upstream at least salmon fish here trying and trying swimming upstream just trying to do your best in whatever the god has placed you in and when this is happening you're trying your best and what happens is you actually meet three bears the bears come and they try to eat you some more
00:04:52 so we have the mco coming we have infection rates increasing and i heard from a lot of ladies as well you know kids being at home is a very very challenging as well so these are all things that's happening and we are still trying our best and if that is not enough if i you know come to sermon today and we actually load on more to you tell you more problems that's happening in the world so for example you see over here this is actually a photo it's not a house it's actually uh it's called pit toilet in kenya
00:05:20 okay it was a pit toilet a pit toilet is basically a toilet that doesn't have a sewage system which means that if you do if you do your business in the pit toilet it stays in the toilet okay it stays there and nobody takes it out you know what happens well can you see that at the back of the pit toilet there's a river so whatever you do over there goes into the river now so when you look at this what you're saying you know nothing to do with me but let me show you what's happening what's uh what is
00:05:49 the effect of this so you see over here a little boy and this is a drain or maybe a stream near to his house and you can see that all the water okay that goes in the toilet goes into the streams and goes in the river and where does he get his water to drink unlike all of us he doesn't have a pipe he doesn't have tap water and his water comes from this polluted source off you know stream or river so this is a big challenge and how big is it you say oh yeah too bad for him if you go to india you go to different countries we
00:06:22 just turn a def we just turn a blind we don't care about it but how big of an issue is this so let me give you an idea what's happening this is a global sanitation problem and there's one billion people worldwide affected by this right one billion so that's almost like the whole of china right right there's a lot of people actually affected by this number two right it costs a lot of money for the for the country so just on kenya alone it costs two percent of kenyans gdp which means that the country cannot progress because of
00:06:54 sanitation problem for us resisting for granted but for them is such a big issue and if you want to see in terms of the the total the mortality rate caused by it what you see is 700 000 children below five die each year due to diarrhea diarrhea is something that all of us have experienced before in life but for them is different when you have diarrhoea you cannot get clean water and you keep on actually purging and if you keep on purging and purging your body will lack water and in the end of day what happens you
00:07:23 die so seven hundred thousand children below five die each year due to diarrhea something that all of us can solve and all of us that you can do something about you know and just you know uh one day in one day alone there's about two dozen kids actually dying due to diarrhea by the end of this sermon by the end of this service that we have at least 200 wherever she passed away already so what should we do when we see all this we said too bad it's not our problem is it is a politician's problem it's not us
00:07:50 you know what can we do you know but this is a word that is actually having a lot of issues now if you talk about anal abortions you see this and we understand this in u.s abortion is legal you can just abort babies and so every year right in the year 2017 what you see is 862 000 abortions are done in america alone and out of the women aged between 15 to 44 1.4 percent of them or about two of them were actually about a baby every year that's a lot right i was shocked when i actually saw it and this doesn't include all the deaths due
00:08:26 to post fertilization pregnancy prevention peels which means that the egg has actually uh been fertilized already right there's a fetus and what happens is there is a uh there's an abortion that there's actually a prevention period actually removes it so this is something that happens and for us what can we do if you look closer to malaysia you see this before and it's in the news it's quite hot a few weeks ago we're talking about you know foreign labor whether we take care of them well why does it matter it matters because of
00:08:55 covet when you do not have social distancing and you stay very close to each other there is a problem and the challenge is that you cannot social distancing and so if lesser one person has covet everybody gets coffee together a lot of times when me someone else will think oh you know it's uh it's dangerous to be near them because they don't care about health they don't have the knowledge and they don't have awareness to do social distancing but friends how do you do social licensing when you are actually crammed
00:09:22 up into places like this if you look at it one unit may have maybe i don't know 10 people more even staying inside there and this is how they are their place stays this is actually a kong sea so many many of them stay together and so when one person has cove you see this the cluster will always be like this right so it's not necessary therefore it's not necessary that they do not care about health but they do not have an opportunity to even do anything about it and with all of these things that are
00:09:49 happening in the world we come to today's sermon whereby jesus comes and actually tells us repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near now for us as christian may say yes it's true everybody all these people is causing all this holding all the money don't want to give it to the poor all these people who actually not taking care of the foreign labor they should repent but friends this invitation is not to just some people but it's to everybody so let's look at it together now first
00:10:23 one when the israelites hear this word repent for the kingdom of god is near what do they hear what they hear is that the king is here which king the king that will end all wars the king that we make sure there's peace in the whole world the king that will make sure that everything is right and so in isaiah 9 what it says is of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end he'll reign on david's throne and over his kingdom establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness
00:10:52 from that time on and forever this is the king that we're talking about the king that everybody has been waiting for for hundreds of years and finally he's arrived so when somebody in israel says that they understand you're saying that the king is here now for us the first point today is repent we need to repent but for christians hey i have repented ready friend okay you don't know me i've repented i'm a very nice guy you know i repented already now so what do i do i've done the sinner's prayer
00:11:21 i go to church online you know despite everything i still go to church online i give my ties on do it now you know it's very important and i do it i attend first baptist church not any church but first baptist church and they serve in not one but three ministries now friends this is something that we all of us may be thinking when we think about god asking us repent we start counting do we do this do we do this did i do my quiet time uh was i good for my kids and all these different things but friends this is not repentance
00:11:50 this is not repentance repentance is not a set of actions and i will actually draw you to the point that uh pastor pastor david and susan adams i did a very good sermon two weeks ago about this so go and check out more about what is actually repentance but over here i'll just quickly summarize it for you what is repentance repentance is number one it's an internal change of your mind and heart it's not about the actions that you do but it's about the engine inside you the heart inside you what fuels you that
00:12:19 needs to change yeah that whole thing needs to change so for example i love drinking coffee so instead of saying that i if instead of saying that oh i like drink coffee but now actually i still like butt i will reduce i drink one only that's not repentance repentance means basically that knowing that this is not good for me and i actually stay away from it okay so this is an example for you it's a 180 degrees change in direction it's not saying that oh i'm sorry that i got caught i'm sorry they found i did something wrong
00:12:49 okay it's not just an improvement of behavior that we're looking at it's not just a positive attitude but it's a totally change of the engine inside you in essence what it's saying is this you have to surrender your crown i have to surrender my crown we are all king of our own lives and we decide today what i'm gonna do tomorrow i'm gonna do but jesus comes to us and tell us that we need to repent we need to surrender a crown why because the king is here the king is here and in his kingdom everything will be made right
00:13:22 and he knows what's best for us this is what repentance is now so if you look at this photo this yoda i love star wars i love movies so i found this online so yoda is uh listening to some music over here so you can see him dancing over here now if you continue doing this with him even after like five ten seconds you'll start to get tired right you feel it's a big thing a bit tiring and boring for you why does it keep on doing it and friends all the different things we're doing in life whether going to church prayer service
00:13:55 you know or even giving your life to god can feel like a chore if what you're doing is just falling in motion if kian doing it it's very tiring you don't know why you're doing but for yoda it's different you know why because he can hear the music good this music is he can hear the music and this music is like god when this is inside you everything else becomes joyful it becomes yes i should do it yes i enjoy doing it that is a difference it's not asking they're doing grudgingly in fact if you have god with you
00:14:27 you will just do it because you love doing it you see the reason and you find that this is the best thing ever to do everything else has changed your appetite has totally changed that is repentance now the second point that we have today is follow me when i say follow me what does it mean if you see the passage in verse 19 to 21 jesus says come follow me and i will send you out to fish for people at once they left their nets and followed him verse 21 jesus called them and immediately they left the boat and
00:15:04 their father and followed him now these two verses here is actually where jesus calls the disciples to actually come and actually follow him but i have actually drawn a few points for us to see over here what is it that the passage is trying to talk about here first one when we follow jesus it is an invitation that is urgent didn't jesus didn't say would you like to follow me tomorrow how about after you drink your coffee after you finish playing this computer game or after you deal with the kids
00:15:34 would you like to follow me after that or maybe after you retire after retire you follow me that is not jesus invitation the invitations is urgent at once when they heard jesus inviting they left everything and they went so the other thing to us to see is also the invitation is initiated by god it's not initiated by us it's initiated by god and god has called all of us to some form of following him okay so now let me show you this is something that when i did this semen i i find it something that i need to
00:16:08 really repent on as well what is our idea of a good christian life friends if you say you say this person is a good christian what do you have in mind if you said this person is really successful really a person that i look up to i don't become like this person what do you have in mind well a lot of times what you see is number one they must serve in church right yes of interest very important okay so there's something we should do second one aside from serving in church we need to actually take our families and all that
00:16:35 so number two we must have a respectable profession yes correct number three we need to gain favor from leaders right game favor from leaders which means that for example we making sure that our bosses are happy with us right and so that's number three number four capable friends they will ask you know you mix with good friends you mix with people who are capable you don't mix with turkeys you make sweet eagles that's what we always hear because why turkeys cannot fly eagles can fly mixed with eagles
00:17:07 this is what we always hear you know mixed with the right crowd and number five travel the world perhaps if you are new you know i've actually interviewed so many people uh throughout my my work i hire people from time to time and one of the things that all young people want is they want to travel the world they want to see the whole world right if you tell them oh your job only involves malaysia they're like i want to go and see the world i want to see how the world is and so there's this picture in their mind that
00:17:33 you know they're wearing their the nice tie and then after they fly around uh maybe in first class or business class that's what we're looking at and good christian is like that you serve in church you're successful everywhere well-rounded everything is good for you but friends what if god invites us to follow him another way what if god invites us to follow him another way now let's look at let's take a look at this and see when we follow god do we actually follow god or follow an image or idea
00:18:03 that we have perhaps it god tells us you didn't become a missionary i have a struggle seriously okay i have a struggle for this so let's look it together first one become missionary so you need to quit your job and then go to a different country go to india or somewhere and i should become missionary there second one instead of being an engineer or maybe it guy or maybe a sales person or banker what god asks you to do is go ask you to work in the sewerage industry it tells you to live where you are
00:18:38 and go and work in the sewage industry because i showed you right diary is such a big problem you should go to africa and all these countries to solve the problem will we feel called and may we do it or not or would be hesitant and saying god actually can send the other guy i'm not so good you know i don't have any experience in this will he said that number three favor from leaders what if god says that we need to speak the truth a lot of times i just read a article online and it says that asians are always taught to keep
00:19:03 quiet asians are always taught to keep quiet if anything goes wrong you keep quiet you take care of yourself you keep quiet you do not make a fuss right why if you make a fuss you may be on the chopping block so what if there's something wrong and god wants you to speak out a lot of times uh what we hear is you know when our bosses are even sometimes our leaders you know they may say something that we don't agree or we think it's wrong and the most we do is just just laugh it off yeah we keep quiet but what if god asked us
00:19:33 to just be the truth do we do it or not yeah number four capable of friends instead of surrounding yourself with capable friends god tells you surround yourself with foreign labor go and serve them work with them personally even serving them just working together with them how do you feel about that you know how do you feel how about that so and finally i'm traveling the world so apparently god tells you okay you can travel but you go to all the turbo countries and i've spoken to a lot of people and
00:20:04 you see in your eyes when you tell people oh i'm going on i'm going to work and the other way going you say australia this oh nice and wow iceland for holiday wow really nice but you tell them oh i went to india for holiday they're like why'd they go there okay the next question will come is do you get diarrhea or not see the kissing question comes back again so friends one question that we always need to ask is this we have this perception of following god we perceive following god a certain way
00:20:33 but what if god really wants us to follow him a different way do we really follow him so when we follow jesus remember first one is urgent the initiative is actually by god and is guided by him he decides on where we go the final one is the invitation has a cost as well that's the cause now a lot a lot of times we say salvation is free which is true you know but actually jesus paid the price it's free for us but jesus paid the price and following jesus whether you like it or not actually has a course because when you say yes to
00:21:06 jesus it means that you say no to everything else around you when you say yes to jesus you say no to everything around you so following jesus has a course and it's sometimes good for us to really think are we willing to pay the cost are we ready to pay for this cost that is out there so the last point i have is however even though the cost is high if you repent you will definitely follow jesus and if you follow jesus you will definitely bear food maybe not every day but you will bear fruit so one more time
00:21:42 as i did this sermon i realized that actually there's only one point over here only one which is this number one as we repent and we call jesus our king we will follow him because for example mco when the prime minister says something we will obey yes so if we call jesus okay we will follow him we'll listen to all his instructions and as you eat for these instructions you realize that you would definitely bear fruit why why would you definitely be i'll show you shortly but in this verse over here
00:22:09 you can see jesus went through galilee teaching in the synagogues proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people so he's doing all of these things and at the same time news about him spread all over syria and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases those suffering severe pain demon possess those having seizures and the paralysis so the list goes on and on is so long if that's a one thing happens next to you you said it's so amazing indeed and
00:22:38 hasn't finished and he healed all of them he healed them you know he didn't say i'm so sorry i'm preaching my sermon uh if you're not feeling i just go somewhere else he healed all of them large crowds from galilee the decapolis jerusalem judea and the region across the jordan followed him so everybody came to follow him but what you see is in jesus ministry it is actually having three things number one it is spiritual he came to save the loss okay to save our souls to actually tell us that there's a
00:23:10 different way and he is our king number one but friends a lot of times there's a church i'll humbly submit to you that sometimes we just stop there we just think that you know church is about spiritual things and that's it which is true to a certain extent but number two the physical part of it is very important when jesus came he healed the sick he actually assisted people those who were hungry he fed them with his with the five loaves and two fish all right so it's holistic the transformational
00:23:42 effect of the kingdom is holistic not just spiritual is physical but the third one that i would like to emphasize is supernatural which means that it's not about you doing how much it's all jesus it's not about you it's not about how smart you are everything that happens in the kingdom is because jesus is there through jesus this engine inside us everything changes the king of kings will be there to direct everything because the kingdom belongs to him and not us now so i want to bring you to this point
00:24:11 that i will mention i mentioned to you that when we repent we definitely follow him and we follow him we definitely bear fruit just as over here in john 15 5 says that i am divine okay jesus is divine and we are the branches if you remain in me and i in you you bear much fruit apart from me you can do nothing what do you need to do what do we need to do we just need to remain okay we just need to remain in him and we will bear fruit so it's the same thing the entire passage is only one point repent as you repent you actually follow
00:24:47 and you will definitely bear fruit because the fruit doesn't come from us it comes from comes from god god causes the fruits so today i'm very excited with this sermon actually because i did some search and i found a few examples of how does following jesus really look like so let's take a look at it together first one what i have here is this problem i mentioned to you right about the whole uh problem with sanitation in all these uh many countries affecting more than one billion people now if you see this and supposedly
00:25:23 you are a if you are a um if you're in the pharmaceutical industry okay if you see this and say that a lot of people are getting diarrhea what will you do the answer a lot of times is oh if i'm in pharmaceutical industry what i realize is yes they are all having direct we should get a lot of money let's try to get a lot of funds let's get a lot of funds charities and we take the money pass it to them so that they can buy the medicine needed to solve diarrhea that's one way to look at it right there's one thing we can look at it many
00:26:00 of us actually don't even do that we just uh too bad you know it's too bad it's too far for us there's nothing we can do it's too big but i wanna share with you uh this person called dr kim tan is actually originated from malaysia and uh he visits malaysia from time to time currently he should be in uk and he's actually part of tbn asia their branch so tbn has a branch in in singapore as well and what he does is he does impact investing what does impact investing mean impact investing means that
00:26:28 he is actually a venture capitalist but the money that they use they use it to invest to have an impact to the society which means that they're not looking for just a financial return by looking for a impact a societal return something that can really benefit the country and it's also called patient capital what is patient capital which means the capital the money they put in is very patient normal investors work this way i give you so much within one year two years three years you must give me so much
00:26:56 for them they put inside they actually don't even take it out normally okay they don't take it out they put it there and let it do its work to try to help more and more people it's called impact investing it's something that's growing very big globally and i see it to be one of the best things out there for businesses now what he did was he went to africa for a holiday and as he was trying to go for a safari ride he noticed that there's so many slums he and he said that i cannot choose to just bring my children to the
00:27:22 safari without seeing the other side of the world so they brought them to see the entire place like all these you know all these photos i shared with you they saw it and he realized that there's a big problem because he is from the pharmaceutical industry no matter how much medicine you pump inside there no matter how much diagnostics and different things how many doctors put inside it will not solve the problem you know why because the problem is with the toilets the toilets are causing the problem
00:27:48 without water and therefore the kids are all getting sick and everybody is affected so what he did is he actually invested in his company he worked with people so when they invest they don't just give money they actually work together people and they do work so they invest in this company called synergy it's a non-sewer sanitation system okay and it's all a full value chain approach what does it mean it means that they actually invest in building toilets across the region to make sure that people have a better way of
00:28:15 actually doing the business now so this is a company over there this timeline is building sustainable sanitation in urban slums now let's look at it for you to see so as a shared resource now these are how the pit toilets work and in fact he always when you have and you hear him always tell you this joke also that when you go for this side visit or over there you'll be very careful because the pit toilets work all right but if the pit toilets are too close you know what they do the people actually do their business in
00:28:43 plastics specs and after they're done they'll just swing it and throw it around so they said be very careful they're flying toilets around here so they need to wear helmets that's what's happening so when they went over there they converted all these toilets that you see into something else into actual decent looking ones now but what's so special now why can't we just spend a lot of money and do this and francis if i want to share with you when god calls you god has also equipped you god has given you something special that
00:29:11 is actually something you can do about and i'll show you what's so special about this number one if you build a toilet what happens is this the government builds toilets everywhere but it's always vandalized and destroyed so as a business person what does he do he tries to think think about a financial model a business model that is sustainable and the way to do it number one is that he builds the toilets but he actually privatizes it the toilets are being owned by franchises which means that i can own a
00:29:39 toilet near my house and weapon is i pay people right sorry people pay me when they want to use the toilet so i earn an income number one jobs are created right number two all this money right helps to make sure that there are people to come and actually empty the toilets when they are full so the instead of going to the river the the uh the waste is actually being removed and moved somewhere now but if you look at economics of it no matter how much pay 10 cents 20 cents is not enough to actually
00:30:10 make this whole thing sustainable which means that for impact investing it's not about charity it's about going way beyond it using our god-given talents to do something about it and following jesus in different ways let me show you so what they did was they said that in order for this to work this must be sustainable and one way to do is they take all these ways and they actually use it to number one generate biogas for electricity number two to generate fertilizer so they make organic fertilizer for all the plantations
00:30:40 around there right number three and also because of the flow of the of the race right there's a lot of flies there so before the flies come there'll be a lot of maggots right so what they do is they take all these mangoes and now they're using it to produce as chicken feet so the mangoes are chicken feet for the chickens to eat and i read an article saying that after they started this whole project right a chicken that can only lay five eggs become ten eggs and the eggs become much better because
00:31:07 the feed is getting better compared to something that's not good they're eating nutritious feeds which are maggots that's what chickens eat right but what you see is this it's no longer about just following god in church singing from one time to one time giving ties and after that going to do our work when we follow jesus we follow from monday to sundays every single day we follow him doing whatever we can to serve him in every single capacity we have if you're from the pharmaceutical industry and you see a problem perhaps
00:31:40 if if god calls you you will go and do something about it perhaps so this is a very good example i think can share and show to us that following jesus is not just about the few ministries although it's very important without luke here and malcolm he actually doing this whole recording over here we will not have sermons we don't have worship on sundays but aside from that if we want revival in this world we need to follow jesus not just on sundays but from monday to sundays now so the return is 12 million tons of
00:32:13 waste is being removed every day 800 jobs created 1 100 toilets 34 000 daily users and all these things so you see that it's all because one person worked together with many many people to do this here's a lot more investments i've have time to talk about but this is really one of the seniors and person that i really respect and i look up to i hope one day i can do something small like that one day yeah next one remember i talked to you about listening to our leaders and and also a lot of times they say asians are
00:32:46 supposed to keep quiet remember that what if god asks you to speak up now for those of you who have been following the news many years ago this is one of the biggest thing that ever happened in u.s and so this company is called hobby lobby hobby lobby is a christian-owned business now what they do is they sell arts and crafts so if your kids want to go and buy art supplies you go there right so it's it's just a normal supply art and craft supply company but for them because they love jesus what
00:33:16 they do is number one they pay double the minimum wage which means that it work for them you get better salary sundays are off you don't need work on sundays right so sundays are off because it's a lot today number three it's privately owned to have more autonomy the owners had this in mind saying that if you go listening you're accountable to your shareholders and this is important point to understand it's not about being christian means that we only go to christian we're accountable to everybody
00:33:45 around us our customers our vendors everybody around us are employees and so for them they say that we don't want to go listening because we need to be accountable to okay the people around us but at the same time when you have autonomy which means that i can actually decide how my business wants to go and direct correctly so this is i think the second or third generation already uh that's managing the company and so far there's about 13 240 employees in 41 states and they started this thing called
00:34:12 museum bible it's a it's a museum in u.s where they put all the bible artifacts and stuff so if you're interested you can go and visit it next time the story if i were to stop here it sounds just like another one of those follow me you know just being nice christian does it but i'm going to show you what happened in the year 2014 at that time hobby lobby was involved in a lawsuit and what is the lawsuit the lawsuit is that the u.s government under obama says that every single employer needs to pay for
00:34:44 birth control so if your employee works for you you need to pay for birth control which is fine but hobby lobby believes that life begins at conception which means that when the sperm and what's it called when it actually joins together right this is where life starts already okay this is when life starts so what they said is we're willing to provide you both controls but there's a few types that we're not willing to provide because the baby would have actually start forming life has started already
00:35:15 so they're unwilling to provide this birth control that prevent eggs from implanting in a woman's uterus through health insurance now as a normal christian if this happens to you what would you say too bad like yeah you know it's a bad country everything is bad we shouldn't follow it we should migrate correct we should migrate go somewhere else but for them they stood their grounds and they said that they're going to sue the u.s government and tell them that we will not do this because this infringes our
00:35:41 rights and the penalty is very high for every single day that hobby lobby does not comply to it the fine is 1.3 million a day within a year it'd be 500 million their revenue is about 3 billion so if we do the profit calculation that they cannot survive they are unable to survive for sure but they did not just stop and say that yeah you know such a big thing you know something due to politics i'm just a business guy it's not really to me and so i keep quiet but they went and fought this case and they actually won
00:36:11 it so this these were all the things it was a very big case it went to u.s supreme court and so there were such uh um demonstrations outside saying that you know no bosses in my bedroom why are deciding what i should do and so it was a big hoo-ha but they stood their ground and finally the u.s supreme court said that yes you know companies are allowed to make such decisions so this is a us supreme court decision over here corporations qualify for protections of their religious beliefs because they are
00:36:39 made up of individuals although publicly traded companies cannot seek such protections so after the whole case went about the reason why hobby lobby could decide and actually manage to actually get this case they wanted is because they were privately held and why am i showing this to you because it's not just about money it's not about whether you're trying to grow your company how many times you go listing your valuation of your company goes by 10 times 20 times but what it's saying is this we are
00:37:06 stewards we are stewards of god whatever role we are in and you never know you will never know the amount of impact you can make until you really follow god so for them this is something that's very good and actually i managed to save a lot of lives in a way now the final one we have over here in fbc we have johnny earns restaurant so this is johnny's i've eaten there as well the pricing is good and it's a very nice environment as well so for johnny over here i'll show you how does johnny follow
00:37:36 jesus so if you look at it from outside it just looks like another restaurant but the heart the engine behind it is different the engine that drives journey is different it's jesus and what what what's the difference that causes it what happens when johnny is actually uh running his business our first thing is can you see this uh photo over here this is actually the lodging for his employees a lot of them are foreign labels and this is how the rooms look like this is how the kitchen looks like can you see it's a very big difference
00:38:11 compared to what i show users now about the foreign labor condition in many many places why why does johnny do this because for him everybody everybody is important and when he spoke to him over the phone he said a few things first thing he said is that he understood just that but i think rick warren said last time he said that if you are the boss of the company which means you're the part of the company right because there's no pastor around right so you are the one you are the shepherd you are the one to
00:38:42 make sure that everybody is okay so he wants to make sure that everybody is good he serves everyone well number two he says that money is not our king because if money is our king a lot of different things can happen and it will never go well but god is our king so we are merely stewards and if we take money from the business we're taking from god actually so he wants to be a good steward and treat everyone well be it vandals and he says that we respect our vendors we talk them nicely we don't just keep them
00:39:09 pressing it as well we cut this to them until employees we treat them well no matter who they are where they come from right and also to the customers they make sure that customers can get the best quality food they can so these are all things that is being done why is it because not because of johnny no it's because the engine inside him so friends if we follow jesus it's a very exciting right hate for all of us as well so i mentioned all these rages now this is uh what uh johnny mentioned and perhaps one thing that i want to
00:39:41 draw for you as well he said one thing if i want to make sure that i can give good prices to my customers and making sure that i treat my employees well and all that it means i must be really good at what i do i must be able to eventually run this business otherwise i don't have any margins i cannot afford to pay so it means that being a good steward just doesn't mean that i know i pray and be good it means that every single waking moment of your time belongs to god and you use it to serve god and when you can do that
00:40:08 amazing things can happen yeah so god can use anyone who wants to follow him it doesn't matter who you are what background what location you are if you follow god god can use you why because over here in isaiah 9 7 it says that the zeal of the lord almighty will accomplish this as we mentioned earlier the bearing fruit is not because of us it's not because of what we have but it's because of the lord god's kingdom will continue moving forward a lot of times i've heard this before and it says kingdoms come and kingdoms go
00:40:49 but the church of jesus christ marches on i want to strongly engage all of you when we are here when we give our life to jesus it will never be a race the cost that you pay is always worth it and jesus knows that is something that you can pay you will never ask for something that's extra something that you can afford you only ask for what you can but the return will be something that for the life forever and ever you will be happy because the return is not money it's not property it's not stocks it's not
00:41:17 friendship it's souls souls something that will ask for eternity so as we end over here i want to share with you this song i've decided to follow jesus this is a very old hymn and i did some search and there's actually a background behind this this strong this song was actually originating from india and the story was this there was a revival in well in wales and so a lot of missionaries actually went to india to actually preach the gospel and that time the ground was very hard and people were actually reluctant
00:41:59 and they have a lot of very violent people over there they refuse the gospel and they didn't want to believe but one missionary remember missionary one missionary actually went to preach the gospel and managed to actually share the gospel to one family husband wife josephia husband wife and two children after hearing the gospel the family decided to believe in jesus as soon after people started to really come to wanting to know more about the faith but the village chief got very angry about it so he gathered
00:42:32 everybody in the village to come together they made a whole circle and asked this family to come here and tell them you must renounce jesus he told the man you must renounce jesus okay if you do not renounce jesus we will kill your children and this is when he sang this song the first verse i have decided to follow jesus no turning back no turning back and after he saying that the village chief ordered people to immediately shoot arrows and kill the two kids david chief continue and said now you have
00:43:20 your wife and you renounce jesus or i will kill your wife also and the man said don't go with me still i will follow no turning back no turning back and his wife was cute as well and there was when his wife was dead and his and his um kids were dead the village chief said i don't understand i don't understand why why are you like this your whole family is there already now it's about your life do you want to renounce jesus or not and he said the word behind me the cross before me no turning back
00:44:11 no turning back and with that he got killed as well but because of the death of this family the village chief actually suddenly just said that i too want to become a follower of jesus christ and the whole village actually came to know christ friends god wants us to follow him there is always a cost to pay it's not just a sinner's prayer jesus is not a bus ticket to heaven it's not that after we believe in jesus we can relax wait for holidays wait for coffee to be over and do whatever we want and wait for the day that we go to
00:44:51 heaven god has given all of us a lot of talents especially in fbc many of you are so talented and you have done so many things you know i would say it is really god has given all of us something to do and i strongly believe this it may sound it may sound wrong but i will share with you this i don't think god asks a ceo of a company to just do ushering yes ushering is important saying welcome which is important humility but i believe when god gives you talents there must be a reason and it's about
00:45:24 how you use it to glorify it glorify god because it is about his kingdom so i hope that this sermon today has been actually a good um sharing for all of us to understand and we can all to understand this we have we decided to follow jesus this family is currently with the lord but there are many many out there who doesn't know who don't know god and sometimes you can't blame them because they don't have the light in the world with them when there's no light there's only darkness where is the light
00:45:59 the light cannot just congregate in the church it must go out and actually permeate every part of society this is our responsibility and it's something that god has called us to as we end for today i have a challenge for all of us here and challenge is number one if you are a non-believer and you want to say that you want to follow jesus you know that you've done a lot of wrong things and you know that you can't keep up you're not in control and no matter what happens you don't know whether it's
00:46:33 going to be mco 3.0 and all that you don't know what's going to happen and you want help you understand that you are a sinner and you want god to come in your lives and call him king and let him lead your lives if this is you you can scan this qr code that we have over here or type this link and respond because why in this current time it's very hard for us to do church because we don't see each other if you're in front of me now i ask you to actually come to the front and we can pray together as a family because we love each other
00:47:02 we are a family over here but with this whole mcu and all these things happening we can only do what is best currently and so if you want to follow jesus you can scan this qr code and someone will be in touch with you to share more about christ with you and help you further it's number one number two if you are new believer and you want to know about alpha scan this care code and over there just you can register do a quick registration to put your names and somebody will invite you for the alpha
00:47:32 that's ongoing currently it's happening on wednesday nights currently so i think it's about 8 00 pm so if you're interested scan the qr code and we can help you further so we get to know more about christ more about religion more about jesus even if you're a non-christian you don't know more about why these people like that dr kim tan or maybe johnny um why would he do something like that what's so special about jesus and this christianity scan this come to alpha get to know more number three many of us are out there
00:48:03 swimming and surviving on our own true when you have problems who do you go to asia from god who else do we go to and i firmly believe that god didn't leave us here on earth alone we are a body and so there's somebody out there that can help you somebody that's here to support you so i just want to encourage you if you have not attended a live group and you said yes i want to be part of god's body i'm going to learn how to follow jesus together and be on the most amazing exciting journey on life i would say
00:48:34 come scan this qr code and attend an upcoming live recession somebody will help you with that and final one if you any prior prayer requests you need help with something you you feel that you have certain challenges you're not feeling well or any pre-requests you have you can do so fill this up as well thank you so much
