Rejoice in every season - rejoice in the LORD!

Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.
Habakkuk 3:17-18

🌈 True Joy!
The world strives to be happy and makes happiness her goal.

But the child of God only strives to be holy. Happiness is never really his only and ultimate goal in life. For to be holy is to be happy in the LORD - true happiness!

The blessed and happy man’s “his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.” (Psalm 1:2)

But the lie of the devil deceives foolish Christians that to be holy is not to be happy.

There is no joy in sin or in the temporal carnal pleasures of this world. Do you really believe the lie of the devil?

🌈Joy in the God of my salvation!
The Christian’s joy in the God of his salvation is to be in the presence of God for “in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” (Psalm 16:11b)

Our joy is not merely in a joyous emotion or in life’s circumstance or situation. But it is in the Person of Jesus Christ our Lord - the God of our salvation!

🌈 Joy unspeakable!
The believer’s joy is joy unspeakable - it is indescribable that no human tongue nor language can fully express.

His joy in his God “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” (1 Peter 1:8)

The sun still shines even though a cloud comes in between the sun and our eyes and we do not see it. But we know that the sun is not gone.

Likewise, our joy in Christ is not gone even though for a season the veil of trial hides the face of our Saviour - but we know He is there with us. And our joy is not lost!

✝️ Christian men of God can certainly rejoice in every season. Because we can rejoice in the LORD!

📕 Book Recommendation

What book are you currently reading?

I bought ‘Memoirs & Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne’ in 2024 from Tabernacle Books - Calvary Pandan’s book room.

This excellent book was compiled by Andrew Bonar.

Andrew Bonar is the youngest brother of Horatius Bonar - some of whose hymns we find in our hymn book today.

🖊️ M’Cheyne writes candidly about his struggle with sin.

Every product of true godliness always starts with the recognition and acknowledgment of one’s own sinful estate and struggle with the enemy called sin.

No man will turn to Christ without first seeing his own sin.

M’Cheyne describes very accurately what I feel in my own heart but fail to express due to my own linguistic ineptitude.

M’Cheyne probably accurately describes the ‘Educated sinner’ - which is prevalent in this modern 21st century. Do you agree?

“Restrained from open vice by educational views and the fear of man, how much ungodliness has reigned within me! How often has it broken through all restraints, and come out in the shape of lust and anger, mad ambitions, and unhallowed words! Though my vice was always refined, yet how subtile and how awfully prevalent it was!”
Robert Murray M’Cheyne
Memoirs & Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne (page 16)

🪦 M’Cheyne lived a short life of only 29 years. But his testimony for Christ reminds us that it is not so important how long we live, but how we live (for Christ) that matters.

If you are still unconvinced, hear the recommendation from the prince of preachers, Charles Spurgeon himself who commented
👉🏻“This is one of the best and most profitable volumes ever published. The memoir of such a man ought surely to be in the hands of every Christian and certainly every preacher of the Gospel.’

Memoirs & Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne
Andrew Bonar
The Banner of Truth Trust
Published 1844.
7th reprint in 2009

Available at Tabernacle Books
201 Pandan Gardens Level 2

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Save the date!

1 January 2026 (Thursday, Public Holiday)
9am-12.30pm

Christian Lunch fellowship after 🍱

New year 🌈
New beginnings ☀️

Seek the LORD’s face ✝️
Seek the LORD’s favour 🈵

❓ Where are you heading?
❓ ❓ What are you rushing off or busying yourself to do?

❓ ❓ ❓ Will 2026 be a new year but same old life with the same old ambitions and same old pursuits for you?

💎 There is always time for things that are dear and important in life.

❗️ Start the new year by reconsecrating and rededicating yourselves to the LORD!
❗️ ❗️ Invest for eternity!

Called to be approved unto God!

Look into the Mirror!

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
2 Corinthians 3:18

🪞 Mirror that reflects and reveals!
The Bible is a mirror;
it is a divine mirror.

The Bible not only reflects the image of the reader who is beholding his own image on the outside;
it also reveals Christ from the inside.

The Bible reflects the external image of who we are;
it also reveals the internal image of who Christ is.

✝️ Power to save and sanctify!
The Holy Scriptures is able to both save a sinner, and sanctify the saint - to make us holy.

It has the power to restore the effaced image of God in a lost sinner at salvation in Christ- restored to glory! At salvation!

It is also able to conform the image of the saint more and more to the image of his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and eventually perfect and glorious on that final day - changed from glory to glory! In sanctification and in glorification!

🪞Face to face One day!
We see Christ in Scripture beholding as through a glass;
but one day, we will see Him face to face!

As we see Christ in Scripture;
our external image ought to be more and more conformed to the internal image of Christ in the Scripture!

The Bible sanctifies us to be conformed more and more to be changed into the likeness and image of Christ in Scripture.

When you look yourself in the mirror of God’s Word;
does the image of Christ shine brightly in the image of yourself that you see?

We don’t get holy by will power and resolve to be holy;
it begins by first looking into the divine mirror of the Holy Scriptures!

📖 Knowledge of God and of man!
When we look into the divine mirror of the Holy Scriptures;
we ought to recognise the 2 most important branches of knowledge - the knowledge of Jesus Christ the Son of God and only Saviour of the world, as well as the knowledge of the sinful depraved man that we are.

👀 Look into the mirror of God!
In it, may we see Christ and His image in ourselves.

🌈 In looking into the mirror of God, may we be enriched in all things by Jesus Christ in all utterance and knowledge, by whom the grace of God is given - that the testimony of Christ may be confirmed in us unto the end, that we may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Men of God, will you not look into the Mirror of God’s Word daily?

Press toward the mark!

Philippians 3:14
I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

🖋️ Paul was an Apostle of Jesus Christ - writer of more than half of the New Testament books if one includes the book to the Hebrews.

Apostle Paul may be safely considered a battle hardened and seasoned veteran of the spiritual battle.

He was an experienced runner of the Christian race - having endured and experienced so much in his Christian life.

He could have reasonably been expected to take a break. Or could have been forgiven if he had said “I need a break”.

🏃 PRESS ON!
But the Apostle Paul continues to press on! He preserved in agonising and pursuing after the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Forgetting those things which are behind and not living in the past, he looks into Jesus and presses on for that incorruptible and sure prize!

Like the Apostle Paul, Christians have our salvation secured in Christ. We have our sins forgiven. Heaven is secure. But between now till heaven - what are we to do?

🚶 DAILY WALK
Our daily walk with the LORD is as important as getting to heaven. This is our sanctification and our service unto the LORD.

The goal and objective and destination of heaven is clear. But equally important also is the clarity of the journey step by step along the way.

Victory is secured. But Paul presses on to the mark and destination. And so must we!

We have a goal of heaven. But we also have to take steps to reach that goal along this way from earth to heaven.

This is our pilgrimage onward towards our sure and certain victory and success that is guaranteed in Christ Jesus.

🕰️ COUNTING DOWN!
1 month of 2026 has passed, and time continues to count down here on earth.

We must continue to study God’s Word daily and diligently. We must continue to pray without ceasing. We must continue to serve the LORD zealously and fervently, and do with all our might what our hands find to do.

🏆 Like Paul, let us as men of God continue to press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus in the remaining time of the year of 2026!

Come out from among them!

2 Corinthians 6
17. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,
18. And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

✂️ The B-Ps!
The Bible-Presbyterian church was birthed in America through biblical separation.

Ties were severed from the Presbyterian Church of USA (PCUSA), and then subsequently divided from the Orthodoxy Presbyterian Church - these separatists eventually formed the 1st Bible-Presbyterian church in Collingswood in 1937.

🏙️ The Corinthians!
The Corinthian Christians were relatively young believers, with the 2 Corinthians letter written only a few years after the founding of the church.

Many were fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, abusers of themselves with mankind, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners, and such were some of us: but are washed, but are sanctified, but are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Cor 6:9-11)

They had family, friends and business partners in the carnal and sin-filled cosmopolitan city of Corinth strategically located in the isthmus between the Adriatic and Aegean seas.

🔛 A Tension!
There was now a tension - because old things are passed away, behold all things are become new in Christ! (2 Cor 5:17)

The tension is demonstrated in 4 ways - between righteousness and unrighteousness, light and darkness, Christ and Belial as well as Temple of God and idols.

The temple of idols is made of brick and mortar, but the temple of God is made up of living stones - children of God, Jesus Christ being the foundation and chief cornerstone!

🗣️ Talk only?
All their talk and profession of purity and holiness will now be put to the test - in the once beloved faces of old time family and friends whom they all once enjoyed the pleasures of sin in their previous lifetime.

Can one swim without getting wet, or remain in the fire without being burnt? Can one walk into a closed airtight room full of Covid virus and Covid patients without getting infected?

Certainly not - except they come out!

😷 Biblical Separation - The Protection!
Biblical separation is a defence to protect purity, and the immunity against contamination!

The LORD has left His people in the world to be the salt and light of the world and not removed us - else would the decay in the world accelerate and the world be plunged into darkness if the salt and light be removed from the earth!

But if the salt is unsalted and ‘decayed’, or if the light is snuffed out and ‘darkened’ - what use of it!

Biblical separation is not paying lip service to church purity or merely being theologically right on paper, but at the same time having fellowship with the neo-evangelist behind closed doors in the privacy of one’s own home. Or enjoying the subtle associations and plaudits of an ecumenical platform or publication.

👶🏻 Salvation and the adoption as God’s children in Christ is not only a gift, but an experience to be had that we may cry Abba, Father.

The Heavenly Father’s injunction to His children is “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.”

Will His children hearken and obey?

Are they still orphans? Or children indeed?

Come out from among them to the blessed embrace of your Heavenly Father, if He be yours indeed! 🌈

Ye must be born again!

John 3
3. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
5. Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
7. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.

✝️ Are you Born Again?
“Are you born again?” is the most important question that one has to make sure in his/her lifetime.

We ought not to be offended for this is a serious question about life and death - a question that we cannot afford to be presumptuous.

For the Lord Jesus Christ says “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God…ye must be born again”!

To be born again of Water (Word of God) and of the Spirit (Holy Spirit) is the single most important condition to enter the pearly gates of the heavenly kingdom.

✝️ Be Born Again!
At the judgement day, the passport to the kingdom of God to be stamped is BA - Born Again!

Jesus will ask “Are you born again?”.

The question is not if you had come to church. But if you had come to Christ!

This was Nicodemus’ problem when he came to Jesus.

It was not because he had never read Law of God. Or that he had never gone to the temple.
Or had never gone for worship on the Sabbath day. Or did not observe religious laws. Or did not know the law of God.

Like Saul of Tarsus, Nicodemus could boast in the rituals he observed, the religion he embraced, the righteousness of the law that he kept as a Pharisee, as well as the riches and status he owned and enjoyed as the ruler of the Jews. He was a sincere, zealous, respectable and religious man!

But the problem was that Nicodemus was not born again!

Jesus knew Nicodemus’ spiritual need. Jesus ignored Nicodemus’ pleasantries when he came to Jesus by night, and went straight to the heart of Nicodemus’ need - that he was still unsaved!

Unlike the rich man whom Jesus told to sell all that he had, take up his cross and follow Him.
Jesus told Nicodemus - ye must be born again!

✝️ Not Born Again!
There are many like Nicodemus, who may tell Jesus on that last day “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?” (Matthew 7:22)

But to these who had went in Jesus’ name to do all these ‘good Christian works’ but were not born again, Jesus tells them “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity”. (Matthew 7:23b)

✝️ Ye Must Be Born Again!
Therefore, it is of utmost importance that we must make sure - that we are born again in Christ.

We must get this matter of being born again in Christ right.

Because if we get it wrong, we must be careful that it leads to a terrible end. In Hell fire where the fire is not quenched and the worm does not die.

Therefore, it is incumbent on every soul to conduct a critical self-evaluation in the light of Scripture that we are born again, with much fear and trembling.

Are ye born again?

Ye must be born again!

🙇‍♂️ Hear again the eternal words of the Lord Jesus Christ!

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.

🏟️ Heading to ActiveSG Sport Village @ Jurong Town RMG Sports Day?

📍 2 International Road, Singapore 619618

🚆 Nearest MRT: Lakeside (EW26)
🚌 Buses: 154, 30, 240, 246, 79, 97, 198 (alight along International Rd or Corporation Road)

🚗 Driving? Limited on-site parking available. Nearby street & public carparks are within walking distance.

🗓️ THIS SATURDAY (7 March)
⏰ Devotion & Breakfast: 8.30am onwards

⚽⛹🏻‍♂️🎾🥏🥍⛹🏻‍♂️🏃🏻
Games: 9am onwards

See you there!

If you have a bat or ball, or some food or drinks you would like to share - most welcome to bring along!

If you have them not, it is perfectly fine - you're still most welcome to come along!

For it is your fellowship most of all we want to share!

Breakfast provided.
No registration required.
No skills or fitness needed.
Courts ready.
Equipment supplied.

All you can contribute is your presence and Christian fellowship to encourage another brother.

All brothers - young and old, boys and men - welcome!

MENU

☕🧃
Hot coffee. Iced Tea. Cold Milo.

🍝🍳🍗
Bee Hoon, Egg sunnies, fried chicken wings.

🥪🫔🥯
Healthy kaya toast, yummy Chee Cheong Fun, good 'ole pau

🥤100-plus and ice.

Sports, lazy chairs and all.

📍 Join us at the following locations any time!

🥍 PICKLEBALL
- Court 1 : 9am-10am; 11am-12pm
- Court 2: 11am-12pm
- Court 3: 9am-12pm
- Court 4: 9am-10am; 11am-12pm

⚽ 5-A-SIDE SOCCER
- 9am-11am

🥏🏐 HANDBALL (Captain's Ball, Frisbee, Indoor futsal, children's free play)
- Section A : 9am - 12pm
- Section D: 9am - 10am

🎾 TENNIS
- Court 2: 9am - 12pm
- Court 1: 11am-12pm

🏃🏻⛹🏻‍♂️ WALKING/JOGGING/RUNNING/BASKETBALL
- 9am onwards (free & easy)

Ephesians 5
15. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,
16. Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
17. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.

⏰ REDEEMING TIME

An inch of time, an inch of gold.

🏦 TIME is like money but with a difference. It comes to every person - man, woman and child - free. You cannot buy time or sell it.

You cannot accumulate time or refuse it. Every day God's TIME BANK credits each one of us with 24 hours of time, equally. Think of it as money: $1,440 every day (1440 minutes each day) to your account. One rule governs this precious gift: you must spend all of it in one day. No balances are allowed, and no overdrafts. How shall we spend the $1,440?

📈 The answer is: in good buys and wise invest-ments. Every dollar must be carefully spent, and to good purpose. For the way we spend our time may affect others and certainly it will affect our own lives for eternity. How do you spend your time each day? Have you ever written out a budget or time-table for your 24 hours, allotting the minutes and hours to the tasks and demands of the day? Do a little "time-accounting" and see how your 1,440 minutes are spent each day and it is likely to give a few rude shocks.

🕰️ Time once past is beyond recall. How then can we "buy back" or redeem time? For this is what the Apostle Paul exhorts us all to do. "See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil." What is Paul saying to you and me? Paul sees the evil and corruption of the times and exhorts believers to "walk circumspectly" or to live lives of maximum usefulness for God. Our $1,440 must be spent with eternity in view.

💵 Look into your own life and see how many dollars you have carelessly or thoughtlessly thrown away. You may have done it for years, perhaps for all your life. The Apostle says, "Buy back those precious hours! Redeem the time!" For years you have wasted hours daily doing use-less, inconsequential or even harmful things: aimlessly killing time, reading worldly books and magazines, watching TV for hours, polluting the mind, indulging in questionable pastimes, and doing a host of other unprofitable things. With a little judicious time-accounting it will become clear where you may buy back many valuable hours.

✝️ Let every minute and every hour be used for God! Cut out every harmful, unprofitable pursuit and transfer the time to godly and spiritually edifying activities. "Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is." Fill your day doing God's will. Do it while the year is still young!

Thought: Yesterday is a cancelled check. Tomorrow is a promissory note. Today is the only cash you have. Spend it wisely!

Source:
Building Firm Foundations
Dr. SH Tow
Pages 46-47
A Banner Publication

https://cpbpc-documents.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/Books/Building+Firm+Foundations.pdf

Missed the RMG Sports Day this morning?

This morning’s devotion was Ephesians 5:15-17 “Redeeming the time” from Building Firm Foundations written by founding pastor Dr. SH Tow.

These are the brethren who arrived early at 8.30am for morning devotion, prayer and breakfast before Sports Day commenced.

Stay tuned for more updates and photos.