LORD’S DAY SERVICE ORDER

PRESIDER: Elder Tan Pau Soon
*Silent Prayer
*Confession of Faith
Hymn 57
Responsive Reading: 4. Psalm 8 4. 诗篇 8
Prayer by Elder Tan Pau Soon
Scripture Reading: Matthew 2:1-7 马太福音 2:17
Choir Anthem by Sharon Choir Someone is praying for you 有人在为你祷告
Sermon by Missionary Lauren Li Is Christmas a Burden for me? 圣诞节对我来说是负担吗?
Hymn 122
Offering Prayer by Elder Tan Pau Soon
Offering song: Hymn 405 – Amazing Grace! how Sweet the Sound 奇异恩典 (Sharon Choir)
Announcements by Elder Tan Pau Soon
*Hymn 6
*The Lord’s Prayer

*Congregation Standing

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Let us continue to pray for the growth and revival of our church and for the work of evangelism and missions.
Let us continue to pray for God’s protection of all nations in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic situation.
Please refer to the following for our service times:
- Lord’s Day (Sunday) service @ 10:45am*
- Lord’s Day Bible study at 1:45 pm
- Wednesday service @ 7:40pm*
- Saturday Dawn service @ 6am
*Also broadcasted live on YouTube: http://live.zionchurch.sg
Kindly submit your Ministries’ 2023 budget latest by 31 Dec 2022 to the finance department. Other than 3 departments collected, all remaining ones yet to submit include: Men’s, Praise, Choir, AV, Broadcast & Internet, Usher, Elijah, Timothy, GSS, Seminar Team, Admin & Publication.
Please refer to the following schedule for the end-of-the-year services:

1. (24 Dec, Sat) Christmas Eve Service & Celebration @ 7:30pm
2. (25 Dec, Sun) Christmas Lord’s Day Service @ 10:45am *there will be Holy Communion
3. (31 Dec, Sat) New Year’s Eve Watchnight Service @ 10:15pm
4. (1 Jan, Sun) New Year’s Lord’s Day Service @ 10:45am

*Please note: There will be Dawn services on 24 Dec & 31 Dec at 6am.
There will be all-church cleaning on 25 Dec Lord’s Day after the fellowship. Let us gather our efforts to clean our Father’s house to usher in the new year. There will be no bible study on that day.
HORA Ministries is hosting a 2-Day special seminar series: “Patriarch Ya’akov (Jacob) and Assurance of Salvation” by the acclaimed Rabbi who loves Jesus, Dr. Baruch Korman.

Date & Time: 7 Jan 2023 (Sat), 1:30pm-5pm, 8 Jan 2023 (Sun), 10:40am-12:00pm
There will be a total of 4 lectures. Registration is free but mandatory to ensure seats are reserved at:
https://register.horaministries.com

Please pray that God’s glory will be proclaimed and that all who attend will be blessed through the Word.

UPCOMING PRAYER DUTIES

Wednesday Service 21 Dec: Elder Steve Yoon

Wed Basket Bearers: Eldress Sandra Yong & Eldress Tan May Ling

Christmas Eve Service 24 Dec: Elder Steve Yoon

Basket Bearers: Elder Tan Pau Soon & Elder Ridwan Dinata

Christmas Lord’s Day 25 Dec: Elder Ridwan Dinata

Basket Bearers: Elder Anthony Lim & Elder William Ng

OFFERING & TITHE

Via Internet Banking

You can give an offering electronically by transferring to the following account:

Please make sure to indicate your name, type of offering and the date info under the memo/remarks sections when initiating the transfer. Please indicate your offerings’ purpose especially for TITHES (to be listed as TH).
Note: Any online offerings without indications of whether for tithing, thanksgiving, building, mission, etc will be recorded as regular offerings.
Thank you for your assistance.

1. For regular, tithes, thanksgiving, special, and missions offerings ONLY
OCBC Bank Account: ZION CHURCH
Account#: 621835867001
PayNow UEN#: T00SS0141D

NOTE: Please specify Name, Purpose and Date (ddmmmyy) of the offering in the MEMO or Bill Reference Number section. See Example 1.

2. For Building Offerings ONLY
DBS Bank Account: ZION CHURCH
Account#: 047-903777-2

NOTE: Please specify Name, Purpose and Date (ddmmmyy) of the offering in the MEMO or Bill Reference Number section. See Example 2.

3. Offering toward Missions Offering or Book Drive to support broadcasts of the Historyof Redemption Series globally, can be made in the following ways to HORA Ministries:

1) Direct bank transfer to:

DBS Bank Account: HORA Ministries
Account#: 271-310151-9 (Account Type: Multi Currency Account)

* The old HORA Missions Funds account is NOW CLOSED, please take note to transfer to the above new account starting October 2022.

2) PayNow to HORA Ministries via NRIC S7638942Z

3) Indicating “Book Drive” or “Missions” on the offering envelopes.

Use the following acronyms to indicate Purpose (offering type):

- RO = Regular Offering
- TH = Tithes
- TG = Thanksgiving
- SP = Special Offering
- MO = Missions Offering
- BO = Building Offering

Example 1:
JohnDoe TH 05APR20
SamMiller TG 05Mar20
JaneSmith RO 03May20

Example 2:
JohnDoe BO 05APR20

By Mail

You may mail your offering cheques to Zion Church to below address:
“Finance Department”.
2 Gambas Crescent, Nordcom 2 Tower 2 #10-13. Siangapore 757044.

By ATM

You may transfer via ATM:
BUT PLEASE NOTE THAT YOU WILL BE UNABLE TO SPECIFY TYPE OF OFFERING if you use this option.
Please inform any Finance Team member if want your offering to be recorded.

Eldress May Ling
Deaconess Leh Tieng
Elder Steve

Living Manna

Sermon Summary
Strangers – The Blind

Scripture: Mark 8:22-26

Jesus spoke about opening the spiritual eyes and seeing with the heart (Mark 8:17-18, Mark 8:21). He relates seeing to understanding the spiritual things of God, understanding the Word of God.

In the Bible there are 3 different kinds of eyes:
1. Physical eyes on our face
2. Eyes of discernment of good and evil
3. Spiritual eyes to see and understand the Word of God.

When we understand the Word of God, we will recognise Jesus Christ (Luke 2:25-30). We human beings can see things physically but it is only through the Holy Spirit that we can spiritually see God’s truth and Word. Genesis 3 records the fall of Adam, their spiritual eyes were shut after disobeying the Word of God.

Ever since then, mankind was born with the wrong set of eyes, only physical and not spiritual. Before the fall, man’s spiritual eyes can see. As a result of listening to the serpent, spiritual hearing and spiritual seeing were blocked and mankind has depended only on our physical eyes. God spoke through Apostle Paul that the eyes of our hearts will be enlightened when God gives us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:17-18, Acts 9:3-9).

Therefore God’s redemption work is to close our physical sinful eyes and open our spiritual eyes. Apostle Paul who wrote the book of Acts testified that God showed Saul the great light (Acts 26:15-18). Jesus said to Saul, “I appear to you right now because I want you to become My witness. I am going to open your new eyes to see the right things and become a witness”. May God close our sinful eyes and open our spiritual eyes to see correctly what He wants to show us. May we become witnesses of His work.

The Bible speaks about seeing in relation to understanding and recognising who Jesus is and what He is doing. The Bible speaks of different levels of seeing, and different levels of spiritual understanding (Hebrews 5:13-14, Hebrews 6:1-2). The solid food is called the Word of righteousness. There are different understandings of the Word of God, likewise, there are different levels of being able to see (Luke 24:15-16, Luke 24:26-27).

Jesus was walking with his 2 despairing disciples then Jesus started to explain the Bible to them. Jesus came to explain and teach the Old Testament and linked it to Himself (Luke 24:30-31). Those who understand the Word of righteousness will be able to distinguish between good and evil. Everyone decides according to their own preferences and standards. When we hear the Word of righteousness, we will understand what is good and what is evil, according to God’s eyes and standards.

The way Jesus opens the eyes of these 2 blind men in Mark 8 is very strange, by spitting on their eyes. Then having to lay His hands on them twice as if the first healing was not effective enough. Jesus who was powerful enough to remotely heal the Centurion’s servant immediately and completely, had to lay hands twice on the blind men (Mark 8:22-25). Why? Jesus is showing us spiritually how our own eyes are to be opened. Our eyes are open only when we come to Jesus and receive His Word. Spit is water. When we receive His Word of life, the Word that proceeds out of His mouth, our eyes will be opened. However, when we first believe in Jesus, we do not see clearly immediately. We see vaguely but are still excited because we were completely blinded before.

The problem when we have blur eyesight is we are prone to accidents and do not understand clearly. However many people are satisfied at that level, and they just go on. There are a lot of us who come to Christ but we don’t understand much. We follow not because we see clearly but because we want God’s blessings as it is exciting in the beginning.

Without clear spiritual eyesight, we will have a difficult spiritual life because we doubt and we wonder. The more we go on in our lives of faith, there are more questions and problems. As a result of not being able to see clearly, we start grumbling, because we don’t understand.

There were 12 spies sent into Canaan. 2 out of the 12, Joshua and Caleb saw differently, they saw from God’s perspective and clearly saw that this is the land God was giving to them. The other 10 spies saw with human sinful eyes and only came back grumbling. In the end, Joshua and Caleb were the ones who made it into the land of Canaan without dying. May God give us spiritual eyes to see His will, so we may also be like Joshua and Caleb.

We say we want to see clearly, how can our spiritual eyes receive sight then? We need to call out to Jesus when He is passing by, just like the blind men (Luke 11:34-36). When our eyes are clear, there will be no darkness in us (Luke 24:44-45, 1 Samuel 14:29, Psalm 119:103). When Jesus opens our minds to taste the sweetness of the Word of God, we will understand the Word. That is why we do Bible studies (Lamentations 4:17). When we depend on other things other than God, our eyes will fail. When we depend on the world, the world will fail us (1 John 2:15-16, John 9:40-41).

Conclusion

We need the blessing of the Lord to lift up the covers to our eyes, ears and heart. After the fall of mankind, we have a covering over our ears, eyes and heart, that we can neither see nor understand the Word of God. Through God’s redemptive work, He will lift that covering (Mark 10:46-52).

This blind was just crying out as Jesus passed by, yet Jesus said your faith has made you well. The gospel of Mark emphasises faith that comes from hearing Jesus. Bartimaeus heard of Jesus passing by too. This shows us that Bartimaeus had heard about Jesus before, and through that hearing, he was able to believe. He called Jesus “Son of David!” which means he believes Jesus is the Messiah, the promised Son who is to come, the promised King. He believed if Jesus had mercy on him, he will be healed. From hearing this, he confessed his faith, even when people were asking him to be quiet.

When Jesus called him, the blind man threw off the cloak covering him. This is the spiritual action we need to take, to throw away the spiritual covering over our eyes when God’s Word is heard. Through hearing of God’s Word, may faith grow in us, and may we confess our faith to our Lord Jesus Christ, and take away the covering so we can see and understand the Word of God with our minds. May you become followers of Jesus from that point on.

AMEN.