The worship assembly with the
congregation meeting in the center of Cebu City started at 9am on Sunday. After
we had praised God in song and approached Him in prayer, we partook of the
Lord’s Supper. There was one brother who spoke about the meaning and proper
attitude in partaking of the Supper. After that, the collection was taken, and
then I preached for a first time. The lesson was on “What Do We See in Jesus”
from Luke 7:36-48 noting that we must see in Jesus the things which Simon the
Pharisee failed to see.
After the first sermon, we
sang more and then I preached again. That lesson was on “Godliness Without God”
from 2 Timothy 3:1-5. We noted that the people seen in verses 1-4 of being
guilty of such horrible evils were professing “godliness,” but denying the
divine power behind true godliness. In essence, they were trying to be seen as
godly, but they were rejecting God’s standard and replacing it with their own
will. We saw that this was in principle what was done in idolatry of old and
what is being done today in the religious world we see around us.
About 50 were present as some
of the brethren who left the congregation and started a new work in Carcar came
to worship with us before going on to the services in Carcar which are held on
Sunday in the afternoon. There are several works in Cebu that did not exits
previously due to several growing in strength until they could start those
works in various areas of the Cebu City metropolitan area. After going back to
the hotel, I worked on charts for the classes starting the next day and studied
some more.
Jonathan picked me up at 7am
so that we could journey to the meeting place and start the classes on Matthew at
7:30am. We tried an earlier start in an effort to avoid some of the Cebu
traffic. However, we found the traffic was already very heavy at 7am, so we
were a few minutes late getting started. We have decide to move our starting
time for both the commute and the classes a half hour earlier. We are also
hoping to end the classes a little earlier to avoid some of the afternoon rush
hour as well. The commute this afternoon took us about one hour. On Sunday,
when we made the same commute without the heavy traffic, it normally takes
about 15 minutes – 20 at the very most.
We started our classes on the
book of Matthew by introducing the writer, audience, the probable time it was
written, the central themes found in the book and other introductory matters. We
then got into the text of the book itself. We covered through Matthew 4:4 in
the morning session. We discussed such themes as the purpose and arrangement of
the genealogies, events surrounding the birth and infancy of Jesus, the actions
of the wise men, the evil of Herod (we also looked at the Herodian dynasty
itself), the work of John the Baptist, the baptism of Jesus, the devil’s
temptation of Jesus, the early ministry of Jesus and the beginning of the
Sermon on the Mount (covering through chapter 5). The Lord willing, we will go
through chapter 11 tomorrow.
As we started the classes
this morning, we had about 35 present. That is about the number I had expected.
By the end of the day, we had well in excess of 50 present and we hear that
more will join us tomorrow. Among the visitors from morning through
mid-afternoon was the head of the “Bright & Morning Star” (BMS) ministry.
He had to go for a 2pm appointment, but asked if he could come again tomorrow
and possibly bring others with him. Of course, we readily agreed. In the
afternoon, several ladies came from the denominational group to which I have
been invited to preach on Sunday. A good number of preachers from Mindanao have
also made the trip at their own expense to attend the classes. We also had
brethren from all over the island of Cebu as well as several from Negros. A few
also came from Luzon.
Please keep these classes in
your prayers that the Lord will use the to His glory!
