Bởi Pastor Li

The Christian gospel is not a pliable message that can be molded into something new to fit changing times. It has a fixed content that the Church is called to proclaim, protect, and pass down to future generations. But there will always be pressure to amend or adjust the gospel. Either by subtraction or addition. By denying/downplaying central trut…

Bởi Pastor Li

Bởi Pastor Li

Many of us have experienced God’s faithfulness. He provides for us a spouse. He enables us to escape debt. He allows us to enter the school of our choice. These things remind us that God is with us. Yet we find ourselves lapsing over time into sin. Anger. Greed. Grumbling. How do we cultivate a lasting faithfulness after experiencing God’s faithful…

Bởi Pastor Li

Bởi Pastor Li

God’s people celebrated and dedicated the wall of Jerusalem by worshiping the Lord. To be a people set apart for God, they purified themselves. To demonstrate their love for God, they gave generously. To be consecrated before the Lord, they responded to God’s Word by repenting and turning back to the Lord.…

With its walls rebuilt and gates restored, Jerusalem was habitable again. But it was far from desirable. In contrast to the preexilic heyday of Israel, it was more appealing to live in neighboring towns than to settle in the burnt ruins of Jerusalem. But the people of God were challenged back then – just as we are today – to commit, through sacrifi…

Bởi Pastor Li

Elder Gordon explains God's design for worship, speaking in tongues, and prophesy.Emeth Sun gives his spiritual testimony.

Bởi Pastor Li

Naturally, as a follow-up to the people returning to God in repentance, the people enter into a curse and oath to walk in God’s law and to do all that he has commanded his people to do. In their covenant renewal they focus on three areas where the people of God have most prominently failed to do: Mix marriages, observing the sabbath, and giving sup…

Bởi Pastor Li

After God's word has been read, the Israelites humbly repent in response to that word. However, true repentance is rare in our day because we often harbor too small a view of God, which trivializes our sin. Through this remarkable prayer, we learn how to enlarge our vision of God through repentance. Along with Nehemiah and his people, we discover h…

Bởi Pastor Li

On that first Easter morning, the three women at Jesus’s tomb were not anticipating a resurrection. They were coping with the loss of their beloved master and merely hoping to honor him with a proper burial. But what they encountered instead aroused a mix of trembling fear and great joy – transforming these women into history’s first evangelists.…

Bởi Pastor Li

The attention has shifted from rebuilding physical walls to rebuilding spiritual lives. Nehemiah and Ezra now work together to ensure that God’s Word is foundational to the reconstituted covenant community. This is achieved by conducting a massive worship service where Scripture is read and studied for hours. It results in mournful weeping due to t…

Bởi Pastor Li

Completion of the wall was only the first step in the process of reestablishing Jerusalem as a spiritual center for God. Nehemiah chapter 7 is a transitional chapter, where the focus has shifted from the project to the people. The city's physical structure was rebuilt. Now the people’s spiritual lives needed to be rebuilt. They must embrace their i…

Bởi Pastor Li

Once again, opposition to the restoration of the wall, and to God’s city, is faced with opposition from the same adversaries we have encountered throughout Nehemiah. This time, their attacks are focused on Nehemiah himself. In these chapters we see their failed attempts to make Nehemiah stop the good work of God by trying to make him afraid. We’ll …

Bởi Pastor Li

Bởi Houston Chinese Church

Bởi Pastor Li

In Nehemiah 4, the builders of Jerusalem’s walls experience unremitting opposition. Enough to demoralize and deter the best of them. But they’re exhorted to remember the Lord. Because when you remember that the Lord fights for you – that your ultimate battle is not against flesh and blood – you can focus on the task at hand. You can remain vigilant…

Bởi Pastor Li

Nehemiah 3 is a chapter we typically gloss over. It’s like reading a genealogy. It’s filled with unfamiliar names and monotonous repetition. But if all Scripture is profitable for teaching, then there must be helpful, edifying truths that we can glean from this ancient record of who worked on what section of the ruined gates and walls of post-exili…

Bởi Pastor Li

Prayer and planning complement each other in working out God’s will. While we depend on God’s power and sovereign rule, we carefully organize plans that can further his purposes; while we wait, we prepare. God supplies his people with what they need to accomplish his purposes.Bởi Houston Chinese Church

Bởi Pastor Li

The book of Nehemiah is about the rebuilding of the walls and gates of Jerusalem after the people’s return from exile. But walls and gates aren’t the only things being rebuilt in this story. On a grander scale, they were rebuilding their ruined identity as the covenant people of God and restoring their ruined mission as his representatives. And wha…

Bởi Pastor Li

God stirs us up by showing us work that needs to be done. He often uses our concerns to stir us up. We feel concerned that our congregation fails to welcome newcomers well. Work needs to be done in welcoming others. We feel concerned that believers struggle to think biblically. Work needs to be done in helping believers think biblically. What shoul…

Bởi Pastor Li

This Sunday’s theme is on the Sanctity of Life. Every year, we set aside a Sunday to reflect on what the Bible says concerning unborn life. This morning we’ll be looking at Psalm 139 to see what David has to say about unborn life.Bởi Houston Chinese Church

Bởi Pastor Li

For this MLK weekend, we want to designate today as Ethnic Harmony Sunday where we’ll consider how the gospel calls us to pursue ethnic harmony in our personal lives and in our life together as the church. In our text, we’ll see how the blood of Christ has established a unity – and forged an identity – between Christians that runs thicker than bloo…

Bởi Pastor Li