more than watchmen wait for the morning

Timothy Dudley Smith, 1983

“As in that upper room you left your seat

and took a towel and chose a servant's part,

so for today, Lord, wash again my feet,

who in your mercy died to cleanse my heart.

I bow before you, all my sin confessed,

to hear again the words of love you said;

and at your table, as your honoured guest,

I take and eat the true and living bread.

So in remembrance of your life laid down

I come to praise you for your grace divine;

saved by your cross, and subject to your crown,

Stephen Starke, 2001

“Jesus, greatest at the table,

the almighty Son of Man,

laid aside his outer clothing,

poured some water in a pan;

as the twelve lay hushed in silence,

he the servant's task began.

Marvel how their Lord and Teacher

gently taught them not to vie,

as he humbly knelt before them,

dusty feet to wash and dry;

by his tender touch expressing

true compassion from on high.

Jesus took the role of servant

when upon that gruesome span,

for all human sin he suffered

as a vile and loathsome man;

on the cross poured out like water

to fulfill the Father's plan.

Can we fathom such deep mercy?

Do we see what God has done?

Who can grasp this great reversal:

love that gives his only Son?

Christ, the sinless for the sinners,

for the many dies the One.

Jesus gave to his disciples

a commandment that was new:

"Show my love to one another,

do as I have done for you;

all the world will know you love me

Studying Nehemiah 2 and thinking about how the man immersed himself in lament and prayer for a good 120 days was a reminder of how much spiritual preparation one undergoes before action should be taken. A good 3 months to marinate in the imagination, reflection and introspection of heartfelt prayer to God before he opened his lips to a man.

What other lessons can we learn from Nehemiah's entreaty to King Artaxerses and the prayers that preceded it?

First, we should pray about our circumstances. This header may sound redundant. How likely are we, after all, to pray about things that are not our circumstances??? But often we feel so powerless or trapped by our circumstances that we dare not bring them before God - out of a sense of latent guilt that we are angry about them, or fear of disappointment, that we may ask and God may ignore our prayers. In a twisted pragmatism, perhaps not asking at all is a better outcome for everyone. How thoughtful of us to do God this favor. In truth, God invites us to pray about our circumstances and Nehemiah is a good example of this. He grieved over Jerusalem's miserable state, and brought it in tears before the Lord with sackcloth and ashes. So should we lament and cry out to the God who hears our prayers. He wants to know our heart, and our innermost desires, even though He already knows what they are. Give voice to your prayers for circumstances in lament, but also in thanksgiving, supplication and praise.

Pray in all circumstances. Nehemiah's example in chapter 1 shows us a long and considered prayer. It has elements of adoring the character of God, meditation on the theological significance of the covenant made with the patriarchs and with Israel at Sinai, and it has political calculation and assessment woven in. In a nutshell, the longer prayer shows us that Nehemiah thought deeply, theologically and pragmatically. On the other hand, in chapter 2, we see him sending up what some call a "bullet prayer" or a spontaneous prayer of "help God", perhaps too brief to be recorded, in the middle of high stakes conversation with the king. Consider this - that a live conversation with the ruler of a superpower nation was the appropriate time for Nehemiah still to pray. Indeed, we can and should pray at all times, without ceasing.

Laid aside His outer clothing,

Poured some water in a pan;

As the Twelve lay, hushed in silence,

He the servant's task began.

Marvel how their Lord and Teacher

Gently taught them not to vie

As He humbly knelt before them,

Dusty feet to wash and dry,      

By His tender touch expressing

True compassion from on high.

Jesus took the role of Servant

When upon that gruesome span,

For all human sin He suffered

As a vile and loathsome man;

On the cross poured out like water

To fulfill the Father's plan.

Can we fathom such deep mercy?

Do we see what God has done?

Who can grasp this great reversal:

Love that gives His only Son?

Christ, the sinless for the sinner,

For the many dies the One.

Jesus gave to His disciples

A commandment that was new:

"Show My love to one another,

Do as I have done for you;

All the world will know You love Me

As you love each other too."

In Eden’s holy orchard stood,

And of its fruit so pure and sweet

God let the man and woman eat.

Yet in this garden also grew

Another tree, of which they knew;

Its lovely limbs with fruit adorned

Against whose eating God had warned.

The stillness of that sacred grove

Was broken, as the serpent strove

With tempting voice Eve to beguile

And Adam too by sin defile.

O day of sadness when the breath

Of fear and darkness, doubt and death,

Its awful poison first displayed

Within the world so newly made.

What mercy God showed to our race,

A plan of rescue by His grace:

In sending One from woman’s seed,

The One to fill our greatest need —

For on a tree uplifted high

His only Son for sin would die,

Would drink the cup of scorn and dread

To crush the ancient serpent’s head!

Now from that tree of Jesus’ shame

Flows life eternal in His name;

For all who trust and will believe,

Salvation’s living fruit receive.

And of this fruit so pure and sweet

The Lord invites the world to eat,

To find within this cross of wood

The tree of life with ev’ry good.”

1. Joy of resting in the sufficiency of Scripture.

2. Joy of seeing people converted.

3. Joy of knowing the congregation well enough to see lives changed.

4. Joy of singing God’s praises.

5. Joy of knowing the state of your members is more important than numbers. Know how your members are.

6. Joy of hearing others preach better sermons than you.

7. Joy of being more excited at God’s work than your own.

8. Joy of knowing the weight of the world is on God’s shoulders, not ours.

9. Joy of longing for heaven together.

Show me that that the solid Rock is holy ground. That the place on which I stand is consecrated, not by human ritual or worship, but by your very Presence. For if you do not go with us, how will the nations know that we are yours? So turn your face to look upon us, and grant us the light of your countenance, and the blessing of your Presence with us. Thus even the valley of Baca becomes a place of springs, and pools spring forth where the desert was.

Show me what it means to stand in the shadow of the Cross. For when you mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? But because Jesus was struck down, in Him I can stand, forgiven. To know my sins expiated, peace with God, and conscience cleansed. To know the Father's embrace, the friendship of the Helper and the joy of heaven's home. I linger then, in the shadow of what He achieved there.

So lest I fall, support me and hold me up, O Shield and Strength of the weak. Be glorified in my faltering weakness. Be magnified in my anonymity, my ignominy, my insignificance. Take the nothings of this world for your great purposes. Use the invisible to reveal your glory. For those who have none, have all in you. Those who fall short, find abundance in you. Those pressed down, find freedom in you.

Stephen Charnock, "On the Goodness of God"

As we enter into a new year, some approach the year with a sense of foreboding and fear, others with a sense of opportunity and excitement. Still others look at the days to come with a certain coolness of spirit - a disinterest and detachment - that is neither excited nor anxious, because we cannot tell what tomorrow will bring. Truly as James 4 reminds us, we are merely a mist, and we should neither say with certitude that we know what tomorrow will bring, for only He that is eternal, unchanging and enduring can speak of tomorrow with certainty. Still, at risk of presumption, 2024 looks like it will be characterised by at least five things:

First, a measure of fine flour will be sold for a shekel - the turbulence of geopolitics, decoupling and inflation. For most of the last semisesquicentennial after the great World Wars, the world has remained in relative peace with an integrated global order characterised by American dominance and the flourishing of liberal democracy, global trade and interdependence and the unfettered flow of goods and services the world over. Today, that world order has been severely disrupted most significantly as China rises, stumbling, to take its place as a major geopolitical, economic and military power competing strategically with the United States. This competition has spilled over into multiple domains - from trade, capital, proxy states, theatres of conflict, naval access, military technology and sponsorship to digital applications and semiconductor chip manufacturing. So intense has the competition become that markets have begun to “decouple” as the world splits into two playgrounds each with its own Big Brother trying to assemble friends, lackeys and allies. This has driven up global prices and hotted up inflation, which had already been aggravated by the recent pandemic’s impact on global trade. Things will become more expensive. The world will continue to be pulled into different directions. Flashpoint issues - none greater than the issues of Taiwan’s independence - closely watched in the 2024 Taiwanese presidential election, will become intensely hot. Will these two superpowers learn to get along? How will their relationship mold every other bilateral and multilateral relationship in the world? How will it affect the global economy, stock market, your company and your working agenda this year? This question will mark the rest of the century.

Second, the days of wars and rumors of wars. No one expected 2023 to bring us not one but two major conflicts with massive international ramifications. Since 1945 major war on the European continent has been thought unthinkable. Since 1973 major incursions on the modern state of Israel has been thought unthinkable. Both of those assumptions have been upturned, and without prior warning. Putin’s war on Ukraine has not gone as he has hoped, but it would appear that international support for Ukraine is starting to wane. Will the United States be able to continue funding Zolensky’s admirable campaign against the regional superpower or will domestic pressures choke out American funding? In Israel, international support for the Israeli retaliation has already dried up, even though Prime Minister Netanyahu insists that Israel will go it alone for months until all the taken hostages are returned by Hamas. Meanwhile every day that Israel continues its occupation of the Gaza enrages both Muslims and the global community who see the human cost of that war. Iranian-funded Houthis have risen in solidarity and taken up arms in the Red Sea, imperling global trade around the Suez Canal even further. Will this give rise to more intifidas and acts of terror in solidarity? What will be left in Palestine when the dust settles and how will it change the Middle East? In the meantime how much more can our interconnected world endure from rising costs of war in the Middle East? How will these events impact where you live, what you have to give up and what you have to do?

Third, the world pursues misanthropy and assaults the image of God. From the original design in Creation, Man was meant to image and mirror God’s likeness in being male and female as His imagebearers to all Creation. However in sin, we have tarnished that likeness in numerous ways, many of which are now showing up in at least three secular discourses:

The climate crisis facing our world - part of the Genesis narrative is the delegation of man and woman to be vice-regents over the world that God has made. We are to tend life in the garden, image God to the Creation, and receive it as a gift given for our food and nourishment. Yet far from being that one family given stewardship over the garden for good by God, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COPS28) closed in December 2023 by acknowledging that little progress has been made to steer humanity from the course of reaching its 1.5 degree increase limit. In other words, our way of life continues marching towards the point of destruction as we consume fuels and produce power in a way that makes the outcome inevitable. Will our secular language continue to fall short of humanity’s great sin and failures to steward God’s earth? Will we look for new ways to speak of sin, greed, pride and self-interest - the many ways we have tarnished God’s holy image? Friends, is there also a need to evaluate your own personal relationship to waste and consumption, at home or at work, as we think about our stewardship of God’s earth?

Anxiety over Artificial Intelligence - will the data that powers our collective experience, insight and creativity - a reflection of what we are, powered by cloud and quantum computing show us that the sum of human existence is less than the whole? With the rise of ChatGPT at the tail end of 2022, executives, workers, creatives and are terrified at seeing the leaps and bounds of AI’s potential and the risk that we will lose our jobs. The irony in all of this is that what it means to be human is precisely the question raised if what we have made in our collective “image” is faster, more networked, informed, insightful and intelligent than we are. Is there nothing more to being human than being human if our collective consciousness can do what we do? How has AI caused you anxiety at work last year? How will it change the work for the year to come?

The war over gender and identity- champions of women’s suffrage will claim that the battle for equal rights began much earlier than the 1960s. In 2023 the issue of abortion in the United States has freshly been invigorated by the striking down of Roe v. Wade by the USSC. But in this modern, even post-modern era, the gender wars have long moved beyond what it means to be male and female and to be recognised as such. Today the fight is for the rights of the same-sex attracted, and on to the rights of the gender fluid. Gender identity is not an assigned category as much as it is a way of seeing one’s self. But the waves of the sexual and trans revolution have begun to crash against the hard surface of the shore. In parts of the world where trans rights had been thought enshrined we have seen something of walking back of support for pro-trans positions as in areas of transition treatment or gender-affirming treatment for minors and trans women in women’s sports. How will humanity continue to reject the way that God has made us - male and female - in the days ahead and how will this conflict intensify? What choices will we need to make - especially those of us with children or with interactions with small children - how will we need to speak, model and teach on these issues?

Fourth, we will see more of life in an “Ecclesiastes 12” world. All around the world, we see a “hyperaging” phenomenon, but especially in developing countries like Singapore. Related to our misanthropy (above), falling birthrates and the declining respect for marriage, parenting and the role of the family show how our common humanity is marked by a dislike for other humans. Pet ownership is on the rise whereas parenting is on the decline. Unwittingly this contributes to our hyperageing where there are less babies relative to the aged. In Singapore, one of the advanced and prosperous nations in the world, one out of every four persons will be aged 65 and above by 2030. We will live increasingly in an Ecclesiastes 12 world - a world where we see a growing concern for healthcare, wellness and longevity where the body deteriorates and its related concerns increase. This will impact how we think about our costs, duties, where we live, how we live, our worship, spiritual formation, our relationships, obligations, freedoms and every part of life. How will we prepare for the needs of our seniors in the days ahead? What needs do we need to prepare for as a result?

Fifth, the wheat and tares will continue to grow. Without a doubt, the words of Matthew 13 will come to mark 2024 as we see the continued growth of both the true church of Christ growing like lifegiving nutritious wheat, and the world and its counterfeit of God’s holy church, like tares or weeds, growing alongside the wheat. At times it may even be confusing to distinguish between the two. There may be well-meaning believers who think they are spreading truth but actually propagating error. There may be sexual abusers and those who hurt others lurking in our communities. There may even be unrepentant believers, rejecting church discipline and shepherding, persisting in their wayward pursuit of sin, self and idolatry, living in close proximity to the people of God. Nowhere in the parable are we promised that the wheat grows independently from the growing weeds. But we are assured that both will grow and remain till the end, where they will be a sorting by the Farmer. In what ways will we see the church grow this year? Will it be in missions where the Gospel advances to the nations? Or will it be in the raising up of new leaders, preachers and evangelists for the sake of Christ’s name? Or will there be a harvest of people coming into the gathered feast, reclining at table and enjoying the fellowship of His people? Is there a need for a personal reset as we think about the growth of the wheat and weeds - what needs to change in your life as a result?

In the face of all these likely anticipations, what are God’s people to do as we think and look to the future? Two Scriptures come to mind, which are really one exhortation.

First, hear the words of Deuteronomy 6:6: “these words I command you today shall be on your heart”. Moses will go on to urge his hearers to bind the words of the Torah to the frontlets of their eyes and on their hands, so they can speak of them to family and friends everywhere they go. In other words, to be a people of the Word of God, anchored, rooted and established to the unchanging commands of the living God. While the world around us changes, let us remain steadfast, committed and immovable. To do this, we need a discipline of ever setting God’s Word before our eyes and hands. What we see and what we do must reflect that priority and that concern. To borrow the words of the Wesleys in their Watchnight covenant prayer of committment, we should aim to live according to God’s will guided by God’s Word: “I am no longer my own, but yours. Put me to what you will, place me with whom you will. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be put to work for you or set aside for you, Praised for you or criticized for you. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and fully surrender all things to your glory and service. And now, O wonderful and holy God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer,  you are mine, and I am yours. So be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, Let it also be made in heaven. Amen.”

Second, heeding the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:24–27, build your house on the Rock: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

If Deut 6 calls us to keep God’s Words in our heart in inner conformity, Matthew 7 calls us to trust and obey God’s Word by living them out in outward conformity. Jesus’ exhortation is clear - wisdom is to hear Jesus and do what He says. That is the equivalent of building your house on the Rock, the true, unchanging and immovable foundation that is stable and safe. When the storms of life land - the storms of geopolitics and macroeconomics, of wars, of cultural and societal revolution and church rise and fall - your foundations will all be revealed. 

It was a year of returning to some normalcy post-COVID-19, especially in the area of international travel. More than ever in recent years, I had new experiences seeing the world for ministry, work and personal purposes. I travelled to Kuala Lumpur, Barcelona and Tokyo on three separate work trips for exchange, diplomacy and foreign relations. For ministry there was also a teaching and training visit to Tacloban City in the Philippines early in the year, which as encouraging indeed.

This culminated in a new work situation that I began only in April. Along with that came new workplace, new colleagues, new situations, new assignments and new anxieties. Work is one of those things that really consumes so much of your time and energy that it affects all others. I even travelled for this new role this same year.

They say that travel changes a man, and causes you to let go of preconceived ways of seeing the world. In that sense, last year was also a year of saying goodbye to heroes, seniors and family members. The loss of leaders like Tim Keller, Charles Stanley and Harry Reeder will be sharply felt. In particular, the passing of Tim Keller after a long struggle against cancer, was mourned the world over. More privately the passing of my maternal auntie, and R’s maternal auntie, all of whom professed faith in the end, will be sharply felt in our families. Towards the end of the year the surprising passing of a young man from church circles was also full of grief.

There were also moments of profound struggle and hurt as we had to deal with matters of church discipline, and we also saw instances of fruitlessness in life and ministry. These moments can turn us towards doubt, fear and loneliness even from one another as we feel the need to self-preserve and turn in on ourselves. Thank God for the grace of reaching out and being reached in godly community amid these moments.

Still change takes different forms as life moves on into different stages. Dad struggled with mobility this year after his fall and we see the effects of age setting in for our parents. For our friends, we saw more of them move into the N area, while others had newborns enter their lives - some the first child, others the second, and still others, twins.

Change was afoot in the church as we welcomed new members and new pastors. Rachel and I transited from the interim care group to starting our own new care group, and I also relinquished overall leadership of the CG after four years. We started a new conference series on BHC and welcomed MD to Singapore for the first time as we made new networks and friends in the region.

And what did God teach us from His Word? We were in Exodus, Hebrews and Isaiah for most of the year — big books that proclaim the grace of God for us in Christ, that perfect God-Man and faithful Servant of the Lord. At points though we struggled with His Word, we were reminded frequently of His glory and power, His wisdom and plan, and His grace and mercy. The Lord will not fail, His Servant is at work.

My praise shall climb to his abode;

Thee, Savior, by that name I call,

The great Supreme, the mighty GOD.

Without beginning, or decline,

Object of faith, and not of sense;

Eternal ages saw him shine,

He shines eternal ages hence.

As much, when in the manger laid,

Almighty ruler of the sky;

As when the six days’ works he made,

Filled all the morning–stars with joy.

Of all the crowns Jehovah bears,

Salvation is his dearest claim;

That gracious sound well–pleased he hears,

And owns Emmanuel for his name.

A cheerful confidence I feel,

My well–placed hopes with joy I see;

My bosom glows with heav’nly zeal

To worship him who died for me.

As man, he pities my complaint,

His pow’r and truth are all divine;

He will not fail, he cannot faint,

Salvation’s sure, and must be mine.