In last weekend’s sermon, Pastor Kong Hee unpacked the importance of reading God’s Word and how it can heal one’s heart and physical body.
“I want you to start this year—2024—appreciating the most important gift the Holy Spirit has given to us: it is the Bible,” said Pastor Kong, senior pastor of City Harvest Church as he opened on the weekend of 13 and 14 Jan. He had just returned from a trip to South Korea, leading over 400 church members to attend Yoido Full Gospel Church’s annual prayer week.
The pastor explained that the Bible is the spoken word of God, while Jesus is the Living Word. Hence, to know and understand Jesus well, one has to understand the Bible.
Pastor Kong was first introduced to the Bible at the age of 10 when he was admitted to the hospital after a serious asthma attack. He was gifted a small King James Bible by his father’s friend and started reading it. But he only understood the Bible better after gaining access to a Revised Standard Version which was easier to comprehend.
Growing up in a family of non-believers, Pastor Kong did not attend church, but his Bible was his nightly companion throughout his secondary school days, as he tried to understand God and the meaning of his life. He candidly admitted that while the Bible spoke to him directly on some days, there were also days he could not make head or tail of it.
After four years of reading the Bible, God revealed Himself to Pastor Kong. He was in Secondary 4 and was convinced that God was real and that Jesus was alive in him through the Holy Spirit.
Since then, Pastor Kong has spent the last 50 years reading, studying and meditating on the Bible and it still speaks powerfully to him. Just last week, Psalm 19:14, a prayer of David spoke to Pastor Kong as he reflected on the “meditation of my heart” has been pleasing in God’s sight.
“The Word of God is like an X-ray machine. You may think you’re reading the Bible, but in reality, the Bible is reading you,” Pastor Kong said to the congregation. From that reflection of Psalm 19, he was convinced that he needed his outer expressions and inner thoughts to be spiritually aligned.
WHAT JESUS SAYS ABOUT THE BIBLE
In John 10:35, Jesus spoke about the Bible, quoting from the Psalms. He pronounced two titles for the Bible: “the Word of God” and “Scripture”.
“They don’t exactly mean the same thing,” Pastor Kong clarified. When Jesus calls the Bible, the “Word of God”, He meant that it is a message sent directly from God—His message to His people.
On the other hand, the word “Scripture” literally means “that which is written down”. “God has spoken many, many words, but not everything is recorded in this book,” Pastor Kong explained. “So there is a limitation. The Bible is what He wants you to know, the words He has chosen for you to have them recorded in writing for your benefit.” These include information on salvation, how to live life, how experience His love, joy, peace from here to eternity.
Jesus also said that the Scripture cannot be broken—a testament to how powerful the Bible is. 2 Timothy 3:16 reveals that all scripture is God-breathed, or “theopneustos”, which is also another name for the Holy Spirit. Hence, the Person behind every verse in the Bible is the Holy Spirit.
“It may have been written by different people through different channels in different times under different contexts, but the ultimate author is the Holy Spirit, who is God Himself,” the senior pastor said.
The word “authority” is derived from the word “author”. “This means that if I want to move in power and authority of God, then I must know both the Author—who is the Holy Spirit—and the book He has written, which is the Bible,” Pastor Kong said. He emphasised the importance of reading not only the Gospels, or the epistles of Paul, but all the books since the verse says “all scripture is God-breathed.”
He acknowledged that it takes many years to read this book and to know it well, but he assured the church that as they continue reading it, they will grow from strength to strength. He pointed out that the Bible helps a believer in four areas. One, it teaches spiritual knowledge and wisdom. Two, it is useful for rebuke, or pointing out moral lapses in a loving manner. Three, it delivers correction, steering believers in the right direction. Four, it provides training in righteousness to refine attitudes and cultivate right living.
As followers of Christ, it is important to understand that Jesus fully recognised the authority of the Scripture. Jesus always had the indwelling of the Holy Spirit growing up.
In Matthew 3:16-17, He was empowered by the Holy Spirit and God publicly revealed Himself as a part of the Trinity during His baptism at River Jordan. While this was an expression of the Father’s love for Jesus, it did not mean that things would be smooth sailing from then on. Instead, Jesus was led into the wilderness where He was tempted by Satan for the next 40 days and nights. “Don’t imagine that God’s blessing automatically means your life is going to be a bed of roses,” cautioned Pastor Kong. “In fact, the opposite is usually true. Satan opposes more strongly those who God has anointed and blessed.”
In Luke, Jesus was “full of the Holy Spirit” as He was being led into the wilderness, but after 40 days, He returned in the “power of the Holy Spirit”. Pastor Kong noted that to move in the authority of the Spirit, one has to first overcome challenges and opposition like Jesus did in the wilderness.
Jesus knew that Satan was a liar, only because he knew the truth that was written in the Word of God. First, Satan wanted Jesus to doubt God’s word. Satan knew that with doubt comes disbelief which will eventually lead to disobedience. In Matthew 4:3, when Satan asked Jesus to turn stones to bread, He wanted Jesus to doubt what he read in the Scriptures and what He heard from God. But Jesus answered him with the words from the Bible.
Pastor Kong highlighted that all three of Jesus’ replies to Satan were quotes from the book of Deuteronomy, a book considered “dry” by many and not one many would quote. Jesus knew Satan could not question the authority of Scripture.
Christians face temptation daily, and Jesus demonstrated the way to deal with them: by using the Word of God, coming against Satan by saying “It is written…” Each time, Satan had to back down.
“The moment Satan can get you to doubt the Word of God, then he has got you,” Pastor Kong warned. “He’ll bring into disbelief and ultimately, disobedience and denial of everything God wants to do in your life. You will deny His truth, deny Him and what He wants to do in you.”
WHAT THE WORD OF GOD CAN DO
The Word is the weapon that the Holy Spirit has given to Christians to use against the devil (Eph 6:17). The Greek word in this verse is rhema, which means “the Word that is spoken”. When Christians speak out the rhema of the Bible, it becomes a sharp pointed sword to fend off the evil one.
“But all the power and authority of the Bible would not protect you if it’s just sitting on your bookshelf or locked away on an app in your mobile phone,” the pastor taught. “It only works if you study it, quote it, confess it and pray it out with your mouth and speak it forth!”
Hebrews 4:12 describes the Word of God as “alive and active”—it is the power of God. If allowed to go deep into one’s heart, it deposits the life of God there and it will make one come alive.
The Word is likened to a sharp sword, penetrating deep into one’s soul and spirit. It contains the life of God and acts as a medicine to heal a person’s soul deep within (Ps 147:3). If the soul is wounded, there is no medication that can be prescribed.
Growing up in a dysfunctional family, Pastor Kong had a lot of repressed anger. “But the Word of God is a medicine for it,” he shared. Through meditating on Bible verses, he has been empowered by the Holy Spirit to cultivate a life of zero anger.
Similarly, the Bible can heal a broken heart. “If you’ve been hurt by people, abused, abandoned, if somebody has lied to you, lied about you, and you’re devastated by the betrayal, let the Word of God heal you,” he encouraged, before reading Isaiah 61:3, a verse that speaks of God turning giving beauty for ashes. To those who are experiencing depression, he assured them that God loves them and has a destiny for their lives.
The Word can also penetrate the joints and the marrow and heal the physical body (Prov 4:20-22). The pastor shared the testimony of Pastor Semy Bolang in Jakarta, who suffered from an incurable autoimmune condition that caused alopecia, making him lose all his hair. He suffered constant migraines and was in pain. He drew comfort from Proverbs 4:20-22 and meditated constantly on this Scripture. Finally, he was healed of this chronic disease.
God sends out His Word to bring healing to His people (Ps 107:20). “There is no place that God cannot reach to heal you,” Pastor Kong reminded the congregation.
Reading 2 Peter 1:4, the pastor went on to preach that God’s almighty power has given everything needed for a godly life. To tap into this power, believers need to know Him through scripture where He reveals His promises. Through the fulfilment of His promises, believers step closer to their union with God and transform to be more Christlike. The fruit of the Spirit would also ripen within them.
As he closed his sermon, Pastor Kong urged the church to invest their time into reading the Word of God. He shared that during his sentence, his wife Sun had to juggle many roles and responsibilities and could only read the Bible late at night. Yet, the Word gave her the strength to carry those out to the best of her abilities.
He also recalled how he was warned as a young man that the National Service would keep him very busy and is a time when many backslide. However, he found time to spend time in the Word and grew very close to God during those years. While everyone is at different phases of life, Pastor Kong encouraged them to make time to read the Bible diligently.
