Rev Dr David Wong is the General Secretary of the Bible-Presbyterian Church in Singapore and advisory pastor of Zion Bishan Bible-Presbyterian Church. 

He delivered a powerful message titled “All In … But” at the recent LoveSingapore Summit held in January 2025 in Kuala Lumpur. 

Here is an excerpt of his message.

“But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” (Matthew 19:30)

Irony is what appears to be, is not, but the opposite. You think you are first, but you are last. You think you are last, but you are first.

We are going to look at Matthew 19 in relation to two persons, who interestingly, appear next to each other in the Bible. Here is a very quick preview:

The rich young ruler (Matthew 19:16-22)

• He came to the right person
• He asked the right question
• He got the right answer
• He did the wrong thing

Peter and the disciples (Matthew 19: 23-29)

• They were with the right person.
• They asked the wrong question.
• They got the right answer
• Did they do the right thing?

The rich young ruler: He came so close

The rich young ruler is someone you would love to have at church.

In the Gospels, he’s described as young, rich, and already a leader. He was the most promising prospect for a disciple of Jesus.

Jesus didn’t make it easy for him to be a follower. In fact, he made it difficult.

And I wonder, whether as pastors and leaders, we sometimes are tempted to make it easy for people to be part of our church, especially when they are rich, when they’re young and when they’re successful in life, and have assumed some level of leadership.

(It’s better to have a few in a church who have counted the cost of discipleship and become part of their community, than to have many who have not been presented with the terms of discipleship and join the church as non-disciples.Of course, the best is to have many who have agreed to the terms of discipleship, risen to the challenges, and become part of the church.)

So here is the rich young ruler who comes to Jesus …

He came to the right person: Sometimes you wonder why he needed to come to Jesus. He was really successful, he had reached the apex of life. Why did he need to come to Jesus?

I believe that he had heard a lot about Jesus: Jesus performing miracles. Jesus speaking with such tremendous authority. Jesus having such a huge following.

I believe he thought he could come to Jesus to get some kind of public endorsement.

Serving at leadership training organisation Haggai Institute, I’ve met leaders from over the world. And I find myself especially attracted to young leaders, those who are just coming up, in their 30s and 40s. There’s so much zest, energy and confidence about them.

But for some, their image hides an inner insecurity, and they’re looking for older, more established people to affirm them, to endorse them.

And I believe this young ruler is in that category: He had achieved much, but there is still that insecurity. He wants some kind of public endorsement.

We also find it strange that this is someone who feels that he has done enough good – everything God wanted him to do – to gain the favour of God. And yet he finds something lacking; something not there yet within him, inside him.

So, could that be why he is also coming to see Jesus? Maybe there is just a little bit of something that he feels Jesus needs to give to him to make him complete?

I also notice this in some leaders: They’ve achieved success. They’ve reached the top of the ladder. And they find the ladder is leaning against the wrong building. So, there’s a lack of fulfilment.

So the rich, young ruler came to Jesus, and he asked the right question: How do I get eternal life? How do I enter the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God? And how do I get saved?

Here is someone who feels that he has got everything in his life, but he hasn’t got eternal life – the life after this life, the life of another age.

He’s thinking: “I want to enter the kingdom of God, which means that I think I’m still outside. I’m standing at the door, I’m at the entrance, but I haven’t gone inside. I won’t be saved.”

To me, he feels that he is somehow not very good. He’s lost somewhere. He wants to be found and be safe.

He asked the right question, and he got the right answer: Jesus held the law of Moses to him as a mirror and said: “If you want eternal life, keep the commandments.”

And these are the commandments Jesus gave him:

• You shall not murder
• You shall not commit adultery
• You shall not steal
• You shall not bear false witness
• Honour your father and mother

Jesus did not mention any of the first four commandments which is the relationship between man and God. Notice that Jesus gave five of the commandments that have to do with man’s relationship with man, except for one.

I believe that Jesus did it on purpose, because He was waiting to use the commandment as a punchline later on.

So when Jesus uses these commandments, the man is very happy. He looks at himself in the mirror of the Law of Moses, and he says: “All these things I have done.”

And he asks the question: “What do I still lack? What is still lacking after I have done all this?”

Then Jesus says: “Go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.”

Well, this is where he did the wrong thing.

“When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.” It’s one of those sad verses in the Bible.

He came so close. He came to the right person, asked the right question. He got the right answer. But he did the wrong thing.

He went away sorrowful because he had great possessions. So what was the commandment he couldn’t keep? It was the last commandment: Thou shall not covet.

“If we think we are all in, is there something that’s holding us back from going all in for Jesus?”

He wants everything that he had gotten; he is not prepared to give it up.

And so the irony of this situation is: Many who are first may be last. And the last first. And what appears to be is quite the opposite.

So for this rich young ruler, we could say that he was ready to go all in … but something held him back.

I remember a friend with a beautiful wife. One day, his wife collapsed and went into a coma. I visited her in hospital.

According to the doctors, she was already dead. She was only kept alive by the ventilator. My friend kept her alive for one month. I asked him: “Why? What is God saying to you?”

He said: “I’ve given Jesus 99% of my life. But there’s one last 1% that I am still holding back – that’s my wife. I just cannot let go.”

Eventually he gave up the 1%.

You know, it’s not good enough to give 99% of ourselves to the Lord. He wants everything.

We cannot be “all in” if something is holding us back.

I’d like us to take a few moments to ask ourselves: If we think we are all in, is there something that’s holding us back from going all in for Jesus? Something you just can’t let go of, some secret compartment of your life that you have not handed over to the Lord?

It could be a sin in our life, or a love of something or someone we don’t want to let go of. Maybe you’re saying to Jesus: “I will follow you. But please don’t ask me for everything.”

Don’t be like the rich young ruler – all in … but.

Peter and the disciples: Did they do the right thing?

Let’s turn our attention to Peter and the disciples.

They were with the right person: Jesus.

But they asked the wrong question: “See, we have left everything and followed You …What then will we have?”

Peter is thinking: “So, what’s in it for me?”

Now, we call this WITFM. It sounds like a radio frequency. Basically, it’s the behaviour of many of us: Before we do anything, we want to know: “What’s in it for me?”

Many of us behave like Peter: Before we do anything, we want to know: “What’s in it for me?”

Well, Jesus does two things:

First, he sounds a warning for riches, and then he makes a promise about rewards.

And I like the way Jesus does it. He is a great teacher; a great teacher always disturbs the comfortable and then comforts the disturbed.

So He gives a warning. “I tell you the truth, it is tough for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Mark 10:25)

And the disciples said this: “How then can anyone enter the kingdom of heaven?”

Because in those days, if you are wealthy, if you are successful, you are considered blessed by God. You’ve got a place in heaven already.

But Jesus said: “What is impossible for man is possible for God.”

And what Jesus is saying is: Entering heaven is not something that we do to enter; it is something God does for us to enter. Wealth or not, man cannot do it; God has to do it.

And then Jesus gives a promise of rewards. He says, and I quote from Mark 10:29-31 (which has a fuller version of what Matthew has written): “I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for Me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields –along with persecutions – and in the age to come eternal life.”

It’s a wonderful promise.

When God called me to ministry, and I was just young and out of school, this was a promise that God made.

I still remember after I became a pastor, my father sat me down, and he said: “David, you have two brothers; one two years older than you, one two years younger than you. One only went up to Sec 2, the other only went up to Sec 4. You went abroad to study. You went all the way to university.

“How is it that your two brothers have their own flat, their own car, and they have their own domestic helper, and you don’t have any of this?”

Well, when my wife and I married, we decided not to buy a flat because we didn’t know whether God was going to call us to the mission field. I did not have the means to buy a car or have a domestic helper.

When my father asked me the question, I didn’t have any answers.

But I thank God for my brother – a believer – 10 years younger than I. He said to my father: “Dad, his riches are all in heaven.”

But my father did live long enough to see me eventually buy a HDB flat, have a car provided for me for two years by the church, and have a domestic helper.

If he had lived longer still, he would have seen how God blessed us way beyond my imagination.

And if you don’t believe me, just talk to anyone who has been ministering for 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, and they will share with you the same testimony: God’s promise is that you will receive blessings in this present age if you live long enough, if you serve long enough.

But of course, it comes with persecutions. It comes with hardship and difficulties. But this is God’s promise to us.

So when we go back to Peter, it is again a study that many of the first will be last, and last will be first. And what appears to be is not the truth, but the opposite.

So Peter and the disciples, they’re all in … but …

Open hands: To release and receive

So we see two ironies in this passage.

The first irony is not what the rich young ruler lacks; but he has too much.

It’s not that he did not have enough, that he needed to have more. It’s just that he had too much, and couldn’t let that go.

And then for Peter and his disciples, it wasn’t what they would lose in giving up everything to follow Jesus, but it was what they would gain. That’s what Jesus promised them: That whatever you have given up for me, it will come back to you much, much more.

I illustrate this with the picture of open hands.

We open our hands to do two things: We open our hands to let go of what is in our hands. But we also open our hands to receive what is going to be given to us.

Today, the call for us is to open our hands. First, to release (unlike the rich young ruler), and second, to receive (like Peter and the disciples). Photo by Jeremy Yap on Unsplash.

So here we see the rich young ruler and Peter having a problem with faith.

Jesus said: “Come, follow Me.”

Are we prepared to trust Jesus completely and say: “I believe, and I’ll follow You wholly”?

For the rich young ruler, it was the lack of faith to release. Basically it was a covetous spirit: He had so much, he wanted so much, he was not ready to let go of it.

His problem is: “What do I lose if I follow Jesus? And I don’t want to lose so I walk the other way.”

For Peter and the disciples, it was a lack of faith to receive. I call it a calculative spirit: You give something, you want something in return. “How much are you giving me back?”

And so the question for them is: “If I go all in, what do I get?”

This is where we need to pause for reflection. I’m sure there are many here working in ministry long enough know that service for the Lord and His kingdom is not easy.

For those who have been hurt, betrayed, rejected in their service for the Lord, you’re asking the question: “Is it worth being all in?”

Our heart is often deceitful, and sometimes we want to serve, but we also want to get recognition, the praise of man, but we don’t get it.

Then you say: “It’s not working; I’m going the other way. I’m out. I used to be all in, but I don’t have anything to gain.”

What is holding you back?

So my question today is: “What is our ‘but’?

“I’m all in for Jesus, but what is holding me back?”

For the rich young ruler, he had not even begun following Jesus – something was holding him back.

For some of us, we are already following Jesus, we are already serving Jesus and His kingdom, but something is holding us back from serving Him wholly, completely. In other words, you’re not fully committed.

If you are still asking, “What do I lose?”, that is your “but”. You’re afraid to do something.

The other question we ask is the wrong question: “What do I gain?” That’s not our concern. God will reward us in his own time.

So today, the call for us is to open our hands.

First, to release. (Unlike the rich young ruler who refused to release and thought that by turning back, he could keep everything and continue in his trajectory as a rich young leader. But he turned out last.)

Second, to receive, like Peter and the disciples. They may appear – to us – as the last, having left everything to follow Jesus; they had nothing left.

So that’s why, at the end of the passage, Jesus concluded with this: “Many who are first will be last. And the last, first.“

That’s the question that I want us to ask today: Would you want to be first, or would you want to be last?

But the irony of it is, in order to be first, we need to be last. Are we prepared to be last in order to be first?

John Sung: All in for Jesus

I want to close with an example of a man who was all in for Jesus.

John Sung (1901 – 1944) was a remarkable character, the son of a Methodist pastor in China. He wanted to go to the US to study and didn’t have the money, but somebody sponsored him.

When he arrived in the US, he could hardly speak English. But he did his bachelor degree, he did his masters. He graduated at the top of his class, and went on to do his PhD. In fact, he did so well in academia that the city where he studied adopted him as an honorary citizen.

Well, that was when he decided that to please his father, a pastor, he would to do a course in theology and signed up for seminary in New York.

Unfortunately he was disillusioned by the theologically liberal teachings. But one day, he saw a vision of Jesus, and that was his conversion experience.

He was so thrilled about what happened, he went to the professors and said: “You will burn in hell because you are sending all these people to hell.”

Anyway, they thought he was a madman and put him in the mental institution. During the six months he was there, he read through the Bible multiple times and called the sanatorium his seminary.

On his release, he decided to return home. And on the ship back, he had a dream. In it, he saw himself lying in a coffin with all his certificates and diplomas. He knew that he had to die to self.

So he threw all his academic awards into the ocean, except his PhD degree, which he gave to his father and said: “I fulfilled what I went to the US to do. And now, I am going to serve God.”*

And for the rest of his life, he was all in for Jesus and His kingdom.

In the 1930s, he brought the gospel and revival to China and South East Asia including Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. It is said that he brought salvation to at least 100,000 Chinese.

*Ps David had the privilege of interviewing John Sung’s daughter, who verified this. During his sabbatical at Regent College in Vancouver, Ps David wrote a paper on John Sung. Ps David, with his brother, also wrote a musical based on the life of John Sung.

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