FINISH HIS WORKMessage
preached by the Setiausaha Agong,
Secretary General of SIB, Sabah, Pastor Ernest Leduming
Lengik on 7th December 2008 at the Bahasa
Malaysia and English Services. FINISH HIS WORKS In 1
John 5:12, the Bible says, “He who
has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.”
(NKJV) We have to know that those
who do not know Jesus must know Jesus in order to have life. They must know the
Gospel. We must know the Word of
God and preach the Word of God so that the lost souls will have a chance, through
us, to be saved. We must preach the
Gospel, this is the Will of God for each one of us. Just
as God was interested in me, a mere dusk in the universe, God is interested in
each lost soul there is out there in the world. Jesus
gave us this warning in Matt 7:21-23, "Not everyone who says to Me,
'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My
Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day,
'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name,
and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never
knew you; depart from Me, you who practice
lawlessness!' (NKJV) It will
be so sad if at the end of the day, we knock on the door of heaven but only to
be turned away by the Lord saying, “go away, I never knew you!”,
because we have not done the Will of God. Jesus
Himself said in John 4:34, "My food
is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish
His work.” But to do His
Will is not something we can do on our own. Jesus says in John 15:5b “… for without Me you
can do nothing.” (NKJV) Therefore, to do the Will of God, we must
abide in the Lord, stay very close to His heart
because we know that without Him, we can do nothing. Indeed
the Bible in James 1: 22
say that we must be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving
ourselves. To do the Will of God therefore is, first of all, to know the Word
of God. We must read the
Bible. But knowing the Word is not
really a difficult thing to do. To
be doers of the Word is the most difficult thing because in order to be a doer
we must be obedient to the Word of God. There must be an obedient heart. Why is
it so important that we must have an obedient heart? We must remember that Jesus said in John
4:34, “My food is to do the will of
Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.” So, it is not about knowing and doing
the Will of God only, it is about finishing His work too. God has
a mission for each one of us, God has a mission for
the SIB Metro Church too. It is not
wrong to dream of having a thousand members in the SIB Metro Church, but that
does not happen overnight. A
minister of God does not become a senior pastor of a church with a thousand
people just like that. There is a
process of starting with what you have now, begin with the little thing you
have now and persevere in Christ Jesus to reach that goal and to finish
it. Give all you have, all the
gifts, all the talents all the resources God gives to you is for you to use them
to the maximum, with no reserve. To each
one God has given so much and you do not need to compare with others, you do
not need to worry about what others are doing, but all you need to do is that
whatever God has given to you, make use of that which has been given to you to
the maximum, then you know you have done your best and you shall hear Him
saying to you, “good and faithful servant”. That is
what Jesus said in Luke 19:17, “And he said to him, 'Well done, good
servant; because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten
cities.' (NKJV) Therefore,
when we talk about being faithful, it is being faithful in the very little that
He has given to us so that He can entrust us with the bigger things. This is the spiritual standard in the
Kingdom of God. The
Bible is full of examples of obedience to the end, until the work is
finished. Think of the story of the
parable of the two sons in Matthew chapter 21 (verse 28-31). The first son was asked to work in the
vineyard, he first refused, but afterward he regretted, repented and he went to
work. When the second son was asked
to work in the vineyard, he vowed to go but did not go. Jesus asked,
which of the two did the will of his father? Of course it was the one who first
refused, but repented and went to work. Another
story is that of Jonah, the prophet whom God had asked to go to preach to the
people of Nineveh and to cry out against it because of their treacherous sins.
Jonah disobeyed God first, but then when his life was preserved, he knew it was
preserved for a purpose. We too
preserve our lives, even when you say Christ is coming again, we may not feel
the excitement yet because we may not want to leave the family, the children or
the wife. It is not wrong to
preserve our lives, but we must know that God preserves our life for His
agenda. He has an agenda for each
one of us, He has mission for the SIB Metro Church. We must know that agenda and do it, we
must know that mission and begin to work on it and this calls for obedience. In John
3:16, God declares His Will, “For
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever
believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (NKJV). “Whoever believes” means
someone has to go and preach the Gospel that whoever believes may be saved. Once we know that agenda, we have to be
obedient to go and preach the Gospel and preach it well, in seasons and out of
season, be skillful in it, to finish His work. Jonah
came to know that God preserved his life for a purpose and he went and did
exactly what God had asked him to do and Nineveh was preserved, saved because
as they heard Jonah’s word, the King declared a fast throughout the
country, human and animal alike.
They repented and God forgave them. The
story of King Saul in 1 Samuel Chapter 15 was a rather sad one. He obeyed God’s Word partially not
totally. As a result, he was
rejected as King. His partial
obedience cost him his kingdom. Our God
is a huge God. He is in control of
everything. In everything that
happens on earth and in heaven, in everything that we do, behind it is the mind
of God. We cannot cheat God. The Bible says in Gal 6:7, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked ; for
whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” (NKJV) God is God. Let us pray to the Lord that He will
grant each one of us, an obedient heart, to know His Will, do His Will and do
it good and finish His work. Ps Ernest Leduming Lengik |
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