Sunday, April 05, 2026
What can we be grateful to God for this Easter?
What can we be grateful to God for this Easter?
(A question to all of us at SIBKL Good Friday service watching from a Cell Group)
As I reflect there are many things I can be grateful to God for; the privilege of a western medical education, supportive parents, adequate financial provision, and a good-knitted, loving family that I grew up in.
In some poorer countries there are thousands of kids more talented, harder-working, more deserving and more compassionate than any of us; yet they know nothing but a hard-life on the streets, toiling the land, poverty and wars. Some were even orphaned or abandoned as a child and left to beg on the streets.
Many of us were born in Malaysia during an era of rising prosperity and development; skipped the two world wars; the Japanese occupation that our parents had to endure as well as the communist insurgency in Malaya. Our forefathers had to endure significant hardship to carve out an existence in a land we now call home, having fled extreme poverty in their homeland. We are reaping the harvest of what they sowed with sweat and labor.
I am grateful I was born in Malaysia as a Chinese where I can receive the gospel and worship Jesus openly, and spoilt for choices of as to which church should have my presence. Yet we sometimes distance ourselves from God when life doesn’t go our way and backslide; while many believers in other countries yearn to openly worship Him but only do so in secrecy as it may cost them their lives.
I was lucky to enter the job market at a time when I could ponder which well-paying, high security profession deserved me, while today’s graduates are finding it difficult to find a meaningful job that can nurture and develop them in the long term.
I can be grateful that I was born in a relative war-free country from my birth till now, with economic growth since I started work, increasing life expectancy and overall quality of life.
The Seven Deaths
i. Death of the High Priest System
The Pastors took turns to share on the seven deaths that occurred when Jesus died on the cross. The High Priest System is dead declared Ps Miranda (Hebrews 7:22-23) as she blew out the first of the seven candles on the Menorah. We now have direct access to God as about forty (40) of us peculiar people, of a royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9) gathered in front of a home TV screen to watch the live telecast.
ii. Death of the Old Covenant & iii. Death of the external law & regulations
And because of Jesus death, the old covenant which none of us can ever keep, is now obsolete (Hebrews 8:13). Thank God, I now no longer need to struggle with the sin in “my flesh” and be the wretched man that Paul described in Romans 7:24. Instead I die to self (flesh) and let God’s laws renew my mind and be inscribed in my heart. I am now finding that if I allow His Word to work deep enough in me, my desires will come to be in line with His desires naturally. There are a lot of things I do not desire as I used to. What was a pleasure a few years back has become a burden. That’s inner transformation! It’s the power of the cross. I need not be bound by external laws and regulations (Hebrews 8:10), nor debate whether the Beatitudes or the Mosaic Laws are the more impossible ideals to strive for. It is all happening internally, auto-update mode as the I more read His word and know His mind better!
iv. Death of the Physical Tabernacle
Ps Sean shared that we do not need to go to a phone booth, a church or any man-made structure to access our Creator (Hebrews 9:11). We have spiritual wi-fi and God is just a breath or a whisper away. The signal and transmission is always excellent and better than 5G or 6G in speed. In fact our prayers to God happens at "galaxial" speed. Surely now we have no excuse not to communicate with our Abba Father. He desires our intimacy. He is the Almighty, yet very personal and His love for us is unconditional and rooted by his nature as a father and not by our deeds.
vi. Death of the Veil & Holy of Holies Restrictions.
“The Holy Spirit was showing by this that the way into the Most Holy Place had not yet been disclosed as long as the first tabernacle was still functioning “ (Hebrews 9:8).
The tabernacle is long gone! When Jesus breathed his last breath, the temple veil “tore” and we were restored to God and the Holy Spirit now not only lives in us, but revealing the deep treasures of God. We are no more restricted from the hidden treasures in the Holy of Holies – the deep things of God, the mind of God as we are now divinely reconciled to Him!
1 Corinthians 10:2 reads, “But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God”. God’s wisdom and riches are so deep and wide that they are inexhaustible. The original root word of revealed” in Greek is apokaluptó - apokalýptō and kalýptō – meaning not only to reveal but to unveil.
v. Death of the Sacrificial System & vii. Death of Jesus Christ
The Chinese emperor's yearly animal sacrifice to Shangdi (皇天上帝, "Imperial Heavenly Ruler") performed by the emperor himself at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, a practice that continued until the fall of the last dynasty in 1911. , historically known as the Border Sacrifice or Feng Shan (封禪), bears notable ritualistic similarities to ancient Jewish (Israelite) sacrificial customs, particularly the burnt offerings described in the Old Testament.
Had the emperor known that Jesus died on the cross once-and-for all for all our sins, this ritual would have ended earlier than 1911 when the Qing Dynasty was overthrown. There is simply no need for the ancient sacrificial system be it in Israel or China anymore as Jesus has done it for us. "It is finished" (John 19:30).
Our sins is finished, our shame is finished, death is finished! This I am forever grateful to the Lord. Amen!
Happy Easter!
