Genesis: God’ Word in Season to Us (Part 2)
By Ps Vernon Quek
This weekend, we celebrate Zion Bishan’s 30th Anniversary. As we do so, it is right that we intentionally take time to reflect on our journey as a church family, and to acknowledge the LORD’s guiding hand through the years.
Last Sunday, we saw how Noah built an altar and offered burnt offerings on it after the Flood, and how that offering of clean animals and birds was a pleasing aroma to the LORD.[1]
Perhaps a good question to pause and ask this weekend is how have we as a Zion Bishan family been a pleasing aroma to the LORD these past 30 years? Reflecting on what has pleased the LORD so far will help us look forward to doing more of the same in the coming years.
As a vibrant and growing church community, we might be tempted to point to key milestones in our history – such as building projects, memorable events or our growth in the past years. While these are good and to be cherished, God’s Word to us in Season, the book of Genesis, helps us remember what really pleases the LORD when He looks at our church family.
Ps Dev and I both pointed out our sermons respectively last Sunday that Noah’s burnt offering is an atonement sacrifice in the Levitical Law[2]. A blood sacrifice must be offered in order for God to be pleased and to have restored relationship with sinful man. This foreshadows the One and Only Person who can please our Holy God – the Only perfectly clean and unblemished Lamb who sacrificed Himself for us.
What an important truth to remember as we remember our past and look to the coming years of the Zion Bishan story. The One and Only way God looks at us and is pleased….is when He sees the Lamb that was slain for us, and our right response is to live like the Lamb in thankfulness for what He has first done for us[3]. Let us not forget that key lesson from our time in Revelation.
The Apostle Paul puts it this way to the Corinthians:
14 But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. 15 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing…[4]
Whatever may come in the future of Zion Bishan, may this be our constant prayer: That we will indeed be a people where the fragrance and aroma of our Saviour King Jesus is so powerful, that anyone who comes into contact with us will desire to know Him too. May the LORD truly be pleased in Zion Bishan in the years to come!
Read Part 1 if you missed it here:
https://www.zionbishan.org.sg/2024/09/genesis-gods-word-in-season-to-us/
[1] Genesis 8:20-21
[2] Leviticus 1:3-4 and 1:9,13,17
[3] Revelation 7:14; 12:11; 14:12. Also Romans 12:1.
[4] 2 Corinthians 2:14-15
