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As an old saying says, April showers bring May flowers. Our merciful God give us both sunshine and sweet rains so that we can fully enjoy his beautiful creation. What else does God give us? Everything. Everything. Especially our inner peace. In this chaotic era, we heard wars, oppression, peace talks without results, tariffs, etc. But peace is nowhere to be found. We can barely keep up with what's going on, really. Where there's hypocrisy, where there's injustice, where There's unrighteousness. There's no peace. God's word thunder in Amos chapter 5, verse 24. But let justice roll down like waters. And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. This is what we want to hear. This is what we must pursue. We are not unlookers. Every time we come to church, the word of God reignite our conscience and empower us to move forward. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for sending your Son, Jesus Christ, to cleanse our sins so that we can reconciled with you on this Palm Sunday, we can almost hear the sound of a crowd shouting, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!" How beautiful is the name of Jesus Christ. It is because he's the Prince of Peace. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

All right everyone, welcome to Sunday service. Would everyone please stand and we'll enter a time of worship.

How deep, how deep the Father's love for us, how vast beyond all measure, that he should give his only son to make a wretched treasure. How great the pain pain of serious loss. The Father turns His face away, as wounds which mar the Chosen One bring many sighs to glory. Behold, behold, the Man upon a cross. My sin upon his shoulders. Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers. It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished. Accomplished. His dying breath has brought me life. I know that it is finished. I will not boast in anything. No gifts, no power, nor wisdom, but I will boast in Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection. Why should I gain from his reward? I cannot give an answer. But this I know with all my heart, his wounds have paid my ransom. Why should I, why should I gain from his reward? I cannot give an answer. But this I know with all my heart, his wounds have paid my ransom. But this, but this I know with all my heart, his wounds have paid my ransom. Amen. I see, I see the King of Glory coming on the clouds with fire. The whole earth shakes, the whole earth shakes. I see, I see his love and mercy washing over all our sins. The people sing, the people sing, Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna in the highest. I see, I see a generation Rising up to take their place with selfless faith, with selfless faith. I see a near revival stirring as we pray and see. We're on our knees, we're on our knees. Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna in the highest. Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna in the highest. Heal my heart, heal my heart and make it clean. Open up my eyes to the things unseen. Show me how to love like you have loved me. Break my heart, oh, break my heart for what breaks yours. Everything I am for your kingdom's cause as I walk from earth into eternity.

Hosanna!

Hosannah— hosannahs... Hozan-nuhh-in-the-highest? Hose-an-nehhh. Ho-zeh-naa... ho-sen-aahhhh. Ho-san-nuhh—in the highest?! Hosanna!! Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest! Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest! Hosanna in the high— yes! Hosanna in the highest.

Worthy is—

worthy is the Lamb who was slain. Holy, holy is he. Sing a new song to him who sits on heaven's mercy seat. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. Who was and is to come. Oh, with all creation I sing praise to the King of Kings. You are my everything, and I will adore you. I will adore you. Clothed. Clothed in rainbows of living color. Flashes of lightning, rolls of thunder. Blessing and honor, strength and glory, and power be to you, the only one. Christ King. Oh, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. Oh, all creation, I sing praise to the King of Kings. You are my everything. And I will adore you. Phil, Phil with wonder, awestruck wonder. At the mention of your name. Jesus, your name is power, breath, and living water. Such a marvelous mystery.

Oh.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. Is to come. Oh, all creation, I sing praise to the King of Kings. You are my everything, and I will adore you. Holy, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. Oh, with all creation I sing praise to the King of Kings. You are my everything, and I will adore you.

Let's bow our heads in prayer. Dear Lord, I thank you for this time yet again that we can come and worship. We can come and fellowship with our fellow believers, um, and we always fight against the routine, against, uh, just kind of mindlessly coming here, listening, uh, having small talk with others and leaving. But I pray that every single time that we're here, that we would realize that there is a purpose to coming, that there is a purpose to the body. And regardless of our personal feelings on the church, on this particular body, how it's run, its leadership, that we would have faith that you are in this house. And as long as you are here, that is all that matters. Lord, I pray that there'll be boldness in the message and that we'd be able to grow closer to one another and to you as well. In your name I pray, amen. Before you sit down, uh, you know the drill. We have to spend a couple minutes greeting our neighbors, inquiring about their day in excruciating detail.

Hello.

Yo, look, of course, thank you.

All right.

Good morning. Is this on right? Good morning, everyone. For those of you who don't know me, my name's Yuan Chen, and the kids and the youth refer to me as Mrs. Pan. I'm here to share a little bit about my faith journey. As a lot of you guys, probably similar, I grew up in a non-believing family in rural China in the 1970s with very limited access to everyday necessities. But abundant love from my parents. Education used to be my savior. It provided me with the joy of learning and career opportunities. So from my parents, I learned the virtue of hardworking and kindness. The first time I came across Christianity was through a handwritten letter from my mom. Who became a believer in her 50s. So in the letter, she quoted the well-known verses about love from 1 Corinthians chapter 13. Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. In my early 20s at the time, I interpreted it more from a marital love standpoint and did not connected with godly love. While attending graduate school here in the U.S., I had a lot of godly sowers working on me since day one. One of them was Miss Lydian Hinton, who was probably in her 70s at the time. So she invited me to church and to her house, sharing about Jesus and her son's ministry in Indonesia. He was a missionary back then. I had a lot of respect of her, for her and for Christianity. But upon graduation when she asked me if I was ready to be baptized, I said no. So now looking back, I think it was my pride. That had blinded me from recognizing my sinful nature and my need for God. Sorry, I get emotional very easily. My turning point was after I started a family, when my pride once again got in the way. Sorry, I have a little bit technical here. I lost my notes. Sorry. So my turning point is after I started family when my pride once again got in the way and creating friction between me and my husband. So my husband back then, he was never exposed to Christianity, but when I asked him to go to the church together, surprisingly he agreed. And then he got plugged in in a Bible study on a weekly basis over here at WCEC. So very little did I know that I think God was preparing us for on a very emotional storm that's coming our way. When our oldest child was 5 months old, he had a medical situation that required major surgery. As soon as we brought him to the emergency room— so the moment his small body was carried away to the operation room, I basically collapsed on the floor. So the only thing I could do I was praying to God even though I haven't really committed myself to him. So long story short, as most of you know, Brian lived and thrived. But God brought me down to my knees through that experience. He also exposed many of my sins through my 4 kids. I wish that I had I wish I had repented sooner in my life so that my kids didn't have to live through the anger and impatience that I have brought to their lives. So my growth in faith really took off since I started Bible study on a regular basis and served in the children's ministry. Um, so God's words are truly my daily bread. Sorry, I get a little emotional here. Um, so God's words truly my daily bread and really nurtured me, um, and also saved all my relationships with, you know, my close ones especially. One of my greatest fear as a new parent 20 years ago was that I was not equipped to guide my kids onto the right path in a very extremely self-centered culture with so much freedom to do whatever you want. So today I am proud to say that I have found confidence is in my faith that as long as I am obedient to God's will, my life can be transformed. And I can bring truth to the next generation without fear or shame. So to close out, I'd like to share Proverbs 7:1-3 with you all as an encouragement. So my son, keep my words and store up my commands within you. Keep my commands and you will live. Guard my teachings as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers and write them on the tablet of your heart. Thank you.

Hey Michael, why are you sitting in the back?

Oh, he's a German.

Oh, Gott. I couldn't see you.

Let's read today's scriptures. Ecclesiastes 3:1. There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens.

A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them.

A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. Woe to you, teachers of the law, And the Pharisees, you hypocrites, you, the dogs of Cain, you yourself do not enter your nowhere. You want to, you blind the guides. You say if there's anyone who swears by the temple, it means nothing, but anyone who swears by the golden calf, The temple is bound back. You blind fools, greater than gold, or the temple that makes the gold sick. You snakes, you brood of vipers, how will you do except be condemned to hell? And so upon you will come all the righteous The Torah that has been shared. Son of David, who has murdered on the temple and altar. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who have killed the prophets and stoned those who— how often I have longed to gather you. "Look, your house is left to you desolate." That's the word of God.

Well, thank you, Wenxin. That was beautiful. I couldn't look back how many other tears were in the house, but I know I was wiping my eyes. And now we're reading about how Jesus cursed these Pharisees, but he would never curse someone who is contrite in heart like that. We had Palm Sunday last week, even though today really is considered Palm Sunday in many churches around the country. They are celebrating that and talking about about it today. But did you know that in the Gospels, approximately 1/3 or more than 1/3 of the pages and the stories in the Gospel about Jesus' life is referring to events of the last week? It's all crammed, so much information into that last week. So when we use— when we do Palm Sunday a week before the Easter message, we don't have time to get to a lot of that content in between. So now we're going to get Matthew chapter 23, this chapter that rarely gets taught on because it appears to be bad news. Jesus cursing or saying, "Woe to you," and we don't want him to say, "Woe to us," right? So better to just skip over that section. But we're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. We're going to see what happens after Jesus rides in on on Palm Sunday, he goes back. Now, he's— I have this little map here where you can see that evidently it was Martha, Mary, and Lazarus' house there in Bethany where he was staying, like where he could have a free hotel and all his disciples could stay overnight. That's like a 2-mile walk, so it's like a 30-minute, 40-minute drive if you were— so they're staying at a hotel outside of town, you could say. And every night, every day, they're going into town down, then every night they come back out. So along this road— this is the next day after so-called Palm Sunday— as they were leaving Bethany— so they're 2 miles away from, approximately, from Jerusalem at the time— Jesus noticed a fig tree in full leaf a little way off, and he went to see if he could find any figs, but there were only leaves. And he said to the tree, "May no one ever eat your fruit again." And the disciples heard it. So this little incident along the way. And he starts— they say later that he was— they call it a curse of the tree. We'll see in a minute. When he gets into town, there's this moment when evidently Jesus at his peak anger— and you can imagine if— we all know the scene where Jesus went in to cleanse the temple. And he took a whip and drove out the animals. And he overturned the tables of the money changers. And he yelled out, "My temple will be called a house of prayer, but you have turned it into a den of thieves." And I imagine, how many movies have you seen of the story of Jesus? And if you look at different actors and how they portray Jesus' face as he was driving out the animals, you can imagine it could have been that he was full of rage. It could have been that he was just very determined. But I don't know, that could have been that he was just laughing to him, kind of laughing and whipping at the same time. We don't know what his emotional state was. But we do know that even in this moment when he's really unhappy with what's going on, he's still teaching. And he knows that some of the people in the audience are his people, not all of them, but some of them are. And he says, you can see from other gospels, he says, get these things out of here. Stop turning my Father's house into a marketplace. So he's a little bit on edge. So after he'd gone in and they said, Hosanna, Hosanna, now he's cursing fig trees and he's cleaning the temple. And then that night he goes back to Bethany. Well, the next morning as they were leaving Bethany, they passed by the fig tree he had cursed. And Peter exclaimed, look, Rabbi, the fig tree you cursed has withered and died. And he teaches them, "Have faith in God, I tell you. You can pray for anything, and if you believe you've received it, it will be yours." And remember from 2 weeks ago, I showed you how Jesus is trying to train— he knows he's going to be gone from the scene, and he's training his disciples to become managers, to become rulers in his church. And so he's instructing them little by little, and this is no exception. Now, on the road, they're now 2 miles from Jerusalem, but now as he's approaching Jerusalem, Jerusalem, he notices another fig tree. And he says to it, may you never bear fruit again. And immediately this fig tree withered up right on the spot. And the disciples were amazed. Now I should stop and say, you probably never read this before about the two trees. Because if you notice here, this is Gospel of Mark, right? And then this is back to Gospel of Matthew. So the one gospel that was cursed in Mark takes a whole day to wither. And it's right at the— near Bethany. The tree that was in Matthew, it withers instantly, and it's near Jerusalem. And so that's why I suppose there are two trees, although some people might think there's only one tree. But if you look at how the disciples react— so this tree, it says, Jesus says, may you never bear fruit again. Immediately it withers up. The disciples were amazed. How did the fig tree wither so quickly? So they're not amazed that it withered. They're amazed that it withered so quickly. And Jesus said, "If you have faith and don't doubt, don't doubt, you, you too can do things like this and much more." So we see him repeating his message and amplifying it and slightly varying it as they get closer to the city. Now, we then go into this passage that we read, just a small part of it, where he says, woe Woe to you, woe to you. And he calls them names like blind guides, fools, snakes, brood of vipers. And we know some of this language was used by John the Baptist when he was confronting the Pharisees. And we can't see his face, so again, we don't know exactly his emotional state. But we know that it was very confrontational. Now, he had been confronted. In context, they'd been asking the questions like, for example, should we pay taxes? To Caesar, and they were asking him, who gave you authority to preach in the temple? And so they had been confronting him, and now he's kind of returning. He's giving back what they had given to him. So we can't say for sure that it was nasty or anything. But this word, woe, woe to you. How many of you have ever said woe to you in normal conversation? Have you even heard anyone say woe to you in normal conversation? What does that even mean? And so I looked at all the English. There's like 60 different English translations, and it has in other versions, it says, "What sorrow awaits you." "Woe to you" means what sorrow, you have it coming. "What sorrow awaits you," how terrible or bad it will be for you. And in one translation, it says, "Alas for you," how pitiful. But what we see in this chapter is this "woe" is repeated 8 times. 8 times. Do you remember how many blessings there were in the blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers? How many? Yeah, ba, because in Chinese we call those the 8 blessings, ba fu. Well, here are the 8 curses that kind of balance out the 8 blessings that had come at the beginning of Matthew. And so again, we don't know for sure that he's angry, but we know that it is very confrontational, very blunt, very direct, and I'm sure the Pharisees listening are not very happy. So this is my question then. This is the— my goal for this message today is to ask the question: we're supposed to be Christ-like, so we're supposed to be Christ-like all the ways that Christ was, or only some of the ways? And if this is one of the things that he did, was calling people names, for example, or calling them out, are we to do that too? Aren't we to be zealous? So this is the question that I'm wrestling with, and so we're going to get into it. Now let me say that the answer is rarely, not never, but not very often. So let's not get in the habit of cursing each other, but we'll see this by the end. So we know, for example, that when Jesus was given this woman caught in adultery and they said, look, Law of Moses says stone her, what do you say? There's an opportunity for him to throw out a curse or to mete out punishment. But what does he do? He says, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." And then one by one, the accusers leave him— leave her, remember? And he says, "Neither do I condemn you, but go and sin no more." And so in this picture, we see that Jesus is modeling how he's leaving it up to God to judge this woman and asking her, giving her an opportunity to repent. And so this is the, is one important way that when even when you have an opportunity or we see something wrong or something that we could be judging, we can still leave it up to God's judgment and give someone a chance to repent. So he still calls it out, but he doesn't— it's not harsh, is it? Not, not at all. So here we see there's this balanced message On the one hand, Jesus saying, blessed are these kind of people, these kind of people, and 8 kind of people, and then woe to you if you are this, this, this, and that. So there is a balance here. And it kind of reminds you of when Moses in the end of the book of Deuteronomy, when he's saying goodbye to the people of Israel, he lays out all of these curses and all of these blessings. If you do these things, you'll be cursed. If you do these things, you'll be blessed. And that's because he knows there are like two audiences that are within, that can listen, that are listening. That he's got the— it's like the goats and the sheep. He's got the sheep here in the front, and then he's got the goats there lining around the back. Now, in Chinese, when we say goat and sheep is mian yang and sha yang, right? Two different kinds of yang. It's all yang. So it emphasizes how similar the sheep and goats really— they're quite similar in a lot of ways. But actually, they're not so similar. The woe is to the goats, and the blessings are for the sheep. Or then there's a parable of the soils that we've talked about and how some soil is good soil and some soil is not good soil, but it's the same seed. So here, Jesus is giving his message to these two groups of people at the same time. Does that make sense? You got woes and you've got blessings. Now there's one thing that's important. We, we talk about this call to repentance. People can change their mind, right? Some of these people in the back may decide after they see Jesus raised from the dead to join, to join the sheep. Or maybe some of the sheep will join the goats. So the people could still switch from one side to the other, and that's why we call them, giving them a chance to embrace. Now, in Ecclesiastes, we read, there's a time for this and a time for that, a time for throwing stones, a time for gathering them, and immediately after, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. So we see Jesus— typically, we see him in that embracing posture. He's welcoming people in. He's saying, come to me, all you burdened. Take on my yoke. 'You shall find rest for your souls.' This is the image that we most have in our mind. But here in Matthew chapter 23, he says, 'You're going down.' He's saying very clearly, 'Your house,' meaning your whole administration, your riches, your authority, your titles, and even your temple is going to fall. And that, that is quite different It's a time of like not embracing. It's really like a divorce. And we talked about how the Old Covenant, or any covenant, is like a marriage contract. And so God, you say, married Israel, but now Israel has gone through failure after failure, then they had some restoration, and now finally he's saying, I've had enough. And this is what the divorce is gonna look like. And he's directing most of his anger right at the, the leadership because they are— have most of the responsibility. Now, question: what did they do that was so bad that caused Jesus to say, we're going to get a divorce? What did they do that merited this kind of anger or condemnation? And he summarizes it right at the first when he goes into these 8 curses, and he says, you lock up the kingdom of heaven You don't go in, and you don't allow others to go in either. Now, if you remember what Abraham's mission was, he's— God said, I'll bless you, and through you I'll bless the whole world. And these guys are like the anti-Abraham. Not only they're not getting blessed, they're gonna stop other people from getting blessed. They're kind of monopolizing all of God's name, all of the scriptures, all of the, the practice in the temple. They're monopolizing it and and manipulating it. And it's a disaster. So he is not happy about it. This is why he wants a divorce. Now, he goes on, and what we talk about, like hypocrisy, there's this outward version of the Pharisees. They look good. They wear good clothes. They have good titles. They treat each other to positions of honor. And indeed, they were the official teachers. And Jesus even says, yeah, you even pay your tithes. That's not bad. That, but, but that's— you shouldn't be ignoring mercy and the more important things. So they had on the outside, they looked pretty good, but on the inside, of course, Jesus could see through them. And I think a lot of the people could see through them as well. And we know that in the Old Testament, of course, over and over God says he looks on the heart. And this is what is not happening with the Pharisees. So this is why he needs to condemn them. Now, this is not all original to Jesus. So Jesus was very well-versed in the Old Testament scriptures, right? I'm sure he had them all memorized. And we can read this from Ezekiel chapter 34, where he's also condemning the shepherds or the leaders of the time. He says, woe to you shepherds who feed yourselves instead of the flock. You drink the milk, wear the wool, butcher the best animals, but you let the flock starve. 'You have not taken care of the weak, tended the sick, nor gone looking for the lost. Instead, you ruled them harshly. Therefore, you shepherds, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I now consider these shepherds my enemies, and I will hold them responsible for what happened to my flock.' And so this is being echoed in Jesus' words to the Pharisees. In fact, you could say it was a prophecy even though it applied to to some of the leaders of the time. So getting back now to Matthew, Jesus summarizes after he gives the 8 woes or curses. He says, "You indeed are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets." So they're not just worthy of divorce, they're actually murderers and worthy of the death penalty. "Sons of vipers, I am sending you more prophets." He's about to send them prophets. —after Jesus dies and is raised, he's going to be sending more prophets like the disciples, Apostle Paul. And you will kill some, flog others, and chase them from city to city. And as a result, you will be held responsible for the murder of all godly people of all time, as we read from Abel all the way to Zechariah. So this is like the summary then of what they're being held to And all these things will come upon this generation. So pretty serious stuff. But we notice, is that for our generation? Is that for every generation? And that's the question. And that's why we started here in Ecclesiastes, where it says, to everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. So fortunately, we're not seeing this in every generation, that there's all these collapsing temples and disasters like they were on that same scale. So what happened was this regime change between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. Well, we have the New Covenant now, so we don't have to keep regime changing again from New Covenant to a new, new Latter-day Saints covenant. We've— we're good with the New Covenant. It's gonna last a long, long time. So what do we see then is if we look at other curses or other generations, we'll look in a moment, we'll see behind the curse is a promise of restoration. So Jesus, or God, is never going to just curse for the fun of it, or just curse to kill. He's cursing to prune. He's cursing to correct. He's cursing to find from within the mess. Like with pruning in the garden, you get rid of the weeds and then everything else can be more fruitful. And we see this going back it was in this generation. It previously had been in the generation of Jeremiah, which is when Jerusalem was destroyed the first time and the First Temple was destroyed. And that was curses and the kind of prophetic language, and all this judgment happened. And prior to that, there had been— oops— there had been the Northern Kingdom of Israel. So Jeremiah was— Jerusalem was in the Southern Kingdom of Israel. The Northern Kingdom Kingdom had also been destroyed some hundred and some years prior, and it had received prophets. Amos and Hosea had prophesied that it would be destroyed if they didn't repent. And so that was also a generation of great turmoil and regime change, if you will. Then before that, there was when Moses got the people out of Israel, went into the wilderness, and they had to go into the Promised Land. Then there was more destruction of of Jericho and all the people there, again, for a purpose to prepare the land for God's people. And even before that, there was this curse on Noah's generation. And of course, out of that came promise, the rainbow, and all of the promise to never flood the world again. And ultimately, the very earliest curse was the curse when Adam and Eve were banished from the garden. And do you remember the promise that was given then? Anyone? If we were in Sunday school, they'd ask you to raise your hand. Oh, Bonnie just raised her hand. You were just itching your ear? Yeah. You were itching your ear or raising your hand? Ear. Okay. Remember what the promise was, that there is going to be a new Adam. Her seed, the seed of Eve, is going to do what? Crush the head of the serpent. So that was always— when these cursed kind of things are going on, there's something good coming out of of it as well. So let's get back now to the question of should we imitate Jesus cursing? Well, if we're in one of those generations, then maybe. If it's really kind of revolutionary times, then there may be. But it seems like in normal times, we wouldn't so much. And I'm thinking now, for example, of the 95 Theses. What generation was the 95 Theses? Chris, help me out here. 1517, yeah, roughly 500 years ago was such a generation that where the Catholic Church had gone so far at the time, had wandered, I guess, from the faith that this revolutionary period began. Of course, then the Catholic Church also responded and they had this Counter-Reformation and they got also improved. Quite a bit. So that was a generation of great turmoil. So maybe there's going to be a new Reformation someday that's going to require reforming the reformers who maybe have slipped a little bit off when it's needed. We'll leave that to God. But that's one sort of public kind of judging or cursing. But how about our private? So I want to talk about one application of this is how we correct each other or confront each other or— I hope not curse each other,. But when we get upset about something, we could just put it, you know, "bía zhà xīn lǐ." How do you say that? Keep it to ourselves, or we could try to do something about it and reach out to people, right? So the first thing I'm wanting to remember then, if we are interested in correcting someone privately, we make sure to check our motives. So it's very easy to to do it for selfish reasons or out of frustration or because we're making a personal attack or even vengeance. And the first example that came to mind is like when I'm teaching Sunday school in the high school level especially, and there'll be like 8 or 9 kids around and then 2 of them are off in this side and they're just playing on their phone. These 2 are playing on their phones and then these 8 are listening. Listening. So what am I supposed to do? So I had— I was like wrestling with— it didn't make me that mad as long as they're not trying to get other kids to do it. They're the ones that are suffering their own problem. So in a way, I don't— I want them to stop, but I don't want to necessarily confront them. And so I'm wrestling with this question. And so what I did was to put a little shelf in the middle of the table and encourage them to do And then I want some of the kids to tell the other kids. I'd rather have one kid say, "Hey, you're bothering me." And they would rather do it for their friends than they would for me. I don't want it to be a drag, you know, every time they go to Sunday school and the teacher's gonna like harp on them. But last Friday night during youth group, Kevin was the speaker, and he saw a couple of the kids playing with their phone, and he was not so gentle as I was, right? Kevin, do you remember the exact words you used? Stop it! Something like that. Something like that.

I said, it's fine if you don't listen, but shut up.

Yeah, if you don't listen, that's fine for you, but don't make noise that disturbs the other people or even the speaker, right? So that's where we have to see what are our motives. Is it to help other people, or is it just because we're angry that they spoke out? Now there's plenty of verses in the New Testament talking how anger is not good and it just leads our judgment to get out of balance. And I know in Chinese culture we don't like anger, right? If you get angry and, you know, it shows it's kind of you lose face. It means you've lost control. And so that's really— It's good to not get angry, but then we have to have other ways of dealing with those feelings. So anyway, this is obviously easy to read, but we can be blunt without being angry. So we can make our needs known and we can even understand— we can tell people what the goal is, like when Kevin said, "Don't be so loud, other people are being hurt by it." So we can be blunt and we can give general corrections without being angry or, you know, use filthy language. And then in James, he says, with our tongues we praise our Lord, but we curse humans. That should not be. I was thinking about another time in the church in Guangzhou, we had— you know what multi-level marketing is? There are certain companies that they recruit someone to sell goods to their friends, then they get their friends to be in the business to sell goods to their friends, and then everybody sells sells it to their friends. It's called network marketing, multi-level marketing. And as a business person, I don't like that. And we don't have to go into all the reasons here, but the reason I'm bringing up is we had a lady in the church in Guangzhou years and years ago who was recruiting another lady in the church to join her multi-level marketing business. And for reasons which I won't explain all the details, I was quite alarmed by it. And so So I took her aside and told her, you know, that's a no-no and why. And we had— she didn't take it very well. And I was young and, you know, it didn't go very well. But then like 20 years later, then there was another case, a similar thing. And I learned a little bit of my lesson, but it still didn't go very well. And I guess the reason I'm bringing this up is it's not easy to— It's not an easy thing, but we just have to do it sometimes because people will otherwise will be hurt, and we need to have a little bit of courage to go after it in making sure that our method, our motives are right and that we're as gentle as we can and also direct. So we don't make sure that we don't have a personal reason why we're attacking. And then one other way it's stated in the in Romans is to not take revenge because we can leave righteous anger— leave that to the righteous anger of God. For the scriptures say, I will take revenge. I will pay them back, says the Lord. If your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink. Don't let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good. I heard of a church once that they were doing something a little controversial, and they had a bunch of demonstrators Protesters had come to demonstrate in front of the church and created a big scene. And it was evidently a hot summer day, so the minister said, "Go take them some— make some lemonade and go serve lemonade to all the protesters." And so what did they do? They drank the lemonade and they went away. So this is an example of feeding some drinks to your enemies. So we have to use discernment. I'm sure some of us are more judgmental or more able to spot problems. And so it's even more tempting perhaps for people that have that ability to hold back because it comes so naturally. You see where all the problems are. But there's an interesting case of giving constructive criticism that's found in the Book of Acts when there was a brilliant speaker called Apollos. Was teaching in the first century church, but he only knew about John's baptism. He evidently had left Israel and was now in parts of Asia Minor. He had left before the crucifixion. So his news wasn't up to date. But he was speaking very well. So Priscilla and Aquila heard him preaching, and afterwards they took him aside and they explained, they filled him in on there's more good news than there was before. More, so that he could teach even more accurately. Now, what was the— so this is like really helpful because Priscilla and Aquila, you can imagine them being alarmed when during the hearing the message was off. They didn't— it was incomplete. They could have thought to themselves, oh, this audience today is getting it— not getting the right message. We better jump up and intervene or interrupt in the middle of the meeting. But he— they didn't. They waited. And so they were willing to wait and do it behind closed doors, and then he got the message better. If they'd made a scene, it might not have gone so well. So here's an example of constructive criticism, which is very useful and very valuable. Was it— there's this technique they call— I think they call it the sandwich method. Like if you want to give somebody your criticism, you first get this— the criticism is the meat in the middle of the sandwich, right? First a little bit of bread and then the meat and then more bread. So something nice to show respect for the person or what your common goals are, then you get the meat, and then at the end you have something more nice to express your hope going forward. And I can imagine that's exactly what Priscilla and Aquila did on that day. All right, now we have to use discernment. As I was saying, it's difficult, and there's these two verses phrases, again, in the Gospels that look to be contradictory. And this is the case where the disciples are noticing other believers out there, or people who appear to be religious that aren't part of the disciples, or these independent groups. Maybe they had heard John's disciples or something else, and they're kind of confused and said, Jesus, what about those other guys? And Jesus says, anyone who is not against us is for us. But then at another place he said, anyone who isn't working with me is against me. So, so, so which is it? If they're not with us, they're for us, or they're not with us, they're against us? Well, if you look in the context, you'll see that in the context where he says not against us is for us, he's talking about other believers. And in the case of not with us is against us, he's talking about non-believers. So this case is like the Pharisees. So applying it to our world or to today, I would say this is other Christian groups and this is more Buddhists and Hindus and Scientology, etc. Does that make sense? So when we— a lot of times it seems like Christians pick a lot of fights in this group at the top and they just avoid the bottom group altogether. But if we spent more time with the bottom group, maybe we could have— there would be more, more action, maybe confrontation, but maybe also results. But in the top, in the top group, we don't have to fight quite as much. Now, and again, there's a lot of discernment here, but basically my message is that most denominations aren't— they're more good than they are bad, otherwise God wouldn't put up with them. As a young man, I thought There must be one denomination out there that's the right one and all the rest are wrong. And someday the right denomination will take over, all the other denominations will go away. This was my previous, my young Paul's vision of the future. But my current understanding is that we're going to have denominations with us forever and ever, as long as there are churches. And that that's not a bad thing. It's kind of like the 12 tribes of Israel. They have tribes, have their purpose. Purpose and their usefulness. And therefore, we shouldn't try to necessarily get rid of them. So anyway, you will discern that. And I do encourage you, if you're ever traveling, like as a tourist or somewhere, and you're on a weekend, just go on the internet and look up churches near me. And you'll see there'll be a dozen nearby. And go visit and try them. It's very, so interesting to visit. Like this Lutheran church I went to. Went to recently. When I started studying for my M.Div., I started to visit a lot of churches. And just walking right in and hearing this bell choir— have you ever heard a bell choir? You go in and this music just like— and it's like up in the choir loft. You can't see the people doing it, but it's just like this heavenly music. And you're like, where is that coming from? And it's all like live people that are— there's this whole chorus of people doing this. It's pretty amazing. And then the priests walk in. Lutheran Church, and the first thing they did, very, very first thing, is everybody is like reading from a script. We are sinners, we confess. It's like the very first minute, and then immediately the priest says, okay, and I forgive you. So like right off the bat, they're doing these things that, oh, we never did that in our church before. So anyway, so it's really, it's really useful, good idea to do that. That. Okay, how are we doing? We're doing okay. So this is the last thing I wanted to touch on. When we talk about these other groups here, or maybe even other people that are other denominations, I want to remind us of this passage in Romans 2 where Paul is describing Gentiles who do not have God's written law. He's trying to encourage the Jews to be more receptive to Gentiles, and he's saying even though they don't have God's written law, when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it, it demonstrates that God's law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience guides them. And this has been really helpful to me as I lived in China for so many years, and there weren't many Christians there. And in fact, when we did business, my business partner there was a Chinese Communist Party member. And most of my Christian friends, oh, you should be careful of Communist Party members. I said, well, I'm not looking about what his card is on his, you know, what kind of card he's carrying. I'm looking at his heart, his conscience, and the way that he acts, the way he reacts to things. And he was an honest guy, and so we were able to do business together, and I felt okay. So this has been very helpful to me many times. Okay, let's stop there and let's pray. And Kevin, would you come back up? Kaput. Father, we're glad that Jesus was bold and courageous to face down false teachers who had monopolized your word and had closed the doors of the kingdom. We're thankful he came to open the doors and that they are open now. Father, sometimes when we read about these records from 2,000 years ago, we don't always know exactly how to apply them, but I pray that you've planted seeds in our mind by giving us your word, that we can meditate on the stories, and that as we meet certain situations, we can draw inspiration, uh, courage to sometimes to speak up, but also a heart of gentle, uh, loving and kindness, always focused on the purpose of a correction or the good fruit that will come of it instead of trying to achieve personal goals. Thank you for our— all the personality of everyone in this room that's naturally able to discern your will and to discern how they can love the people, even when they have to speak the truth in love that isn't always well received. I pray that you will help us to have harmonious relationships despite the occasional conflict. Help us to have one goal and one purpose and to always remember we serve one Lord in one spirit. Pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right, would everyone please stand for reflection song?

Worthy, worthy is the Lamb who was slain. Holy, holy is he. Sing a new song to him who sits on heaven's mercy seat. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. With all creation Salvation, I sing praise to the King of Kings. You are my everything, and I will adore you. Clothed in rainbows of living color, flashes of lightning, rolls of thunder. Blessing and honor, strength and glory, and power be to you, the only wise King. Oh. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. Oh, with all creation I sing praise to the King of Kings. You are my everything, and I will Adore you. Phil— Phil with wonder, awestruck wonder at the mention of your name. Jesus, your name is power, breath and living water. Such a marvelous mystery. Oh. And holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. Oh. With all creation creation, I sing praise to the King of Kings. You are my everything, and I will adore you. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. With all creation I sing praise to the King of Kings. You are my everything, and I will adore you.

You may be seated.

Good morning, everybody. I have a whole slew of announcements, so I know that attention is a very valuable commodity. I hope to be able to get some of it from you. You'll notice, perhaps, maybe not, but you'll notice the first thing is that the website changed there from what we normally had, but it's not that hard to remember. wcc.churchcenter.com. If you go to the top of the page and click This Sunday, you'll see this Sunday's bulletin. So it's also distributed. If you're not on our email distribution list, talk to me or talk to Paul and we'll get you on that. So we're not trying to hide the bulletin and changing it on you, but we do have a new website for those who are at church, and our old website is for those who might be looking at churches to visit. And so hopefully with these new websites, they'll bring some visitors to come. Speaking of that, um, the next slide— if there's anybody here today, your first time, if you'll raise your hand, somebody will get you a book that we have as a gift and a Connect Card. If you would go to the next slide. So a lot of things coming up. Next Friday is Good Friday, and we will be having a service here, and I still need at least 3 people to sign up as readers for that. We do have 5 people reading, and we have somebody moderating at the service. And so if you don't mind reading a couple verses, we need everybody— we need 3 more volunteers to help us out on that. Um, I have another slide about next weekend to give you a little bit more details, but one thing that's not on that slide is that during the Sunday school hour, after having had a sunrise service and then a normal morning service and the Cantonese noodles in between, um, we will be having, uh, instead of a regular Sunday school, we'll be having a special project. And so, uh, yeah, so that's That's correct. I almost misread that. 4/22, the Tuesday thereafter the Easter weekend, is the Momco. And a little bit too quick. Back one slide. And yeah, I'll be coming to it. To mention the Memorial Day retreat with Thomas Wong, we have a slide coming up about the retreat. He'll be talking about community, of all things, why we pursue it and yet why it's so hard. And then also, as I've already mentioned to you for the retreat workshop, we'll be having a book club. And so if you have a book to present, let me know. I've got one already coming. I know at least two others that will probably be there. Okay, so now the next slide. And this is probably a little bit too small for you to read, and so I'm going to turn and make sure I get it— well, I can, I can look at it from here. At the, at the February and March elder and deacon meetings, we have been discussing the possibility of expanding the church's multifunctional activity space. And this would include an indoor gym which could also be used for English worship service and also to have a kitchen and activity venues for other people, for elderly and other people. And so at present, no decision has been made to do this, but we wanted to let you know that this has been discussed and we will be bringing more information about this at the retreat, and so we wanted to just bring that to everybody. And some people may have gotten an email with this information or have talked about it in the Salt and Light group. But anyway, I just wanted to give that to you for your information. Probably, possibly we'll be bringing it to a vote in November. And so that's that. And next slide. This is just a heads up, as I already mentioned, Good Friday. We need some readers. We do have things that we'll be preparing for that. And then Sunday morning, as I mentioned, there's a sunrise service at 7:30. And if you come to the sunrise service, you'll get your ticket to go get Cantonese breakfast. If you don't show up for sunrise service, you'll have to do your best to beg for that. And then a regular service at 9:30. And then the Sunday school that I mentioned, the special project. One more slide. This is the dates of the retreat. As already mentioned, Thomas Wong will be coming. And as I mentioned last Sunday, it is a, it is a free will donation. You know, please come and don't let cost be the issue. Any questions, you have Paul Wu's email address there and his phone number. So that's it, I believe, for announcements. If you If you would please rise for the doxology.

Benediction is from James chapter 3. May the Lord grant you wisdom that comes down from above from above that is pure, peaceable, gentle, and open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And may he bring forth in you a harvest of righteousness. Thanks for being here today. Bless you.