Preaching Once

Suddenly I find my preaching burden cut by half as our second Sunday service met its demise due to lack of attendance. It was in the afternoon and most people are simply not used to an afternoon service with so many online services in the morning that they could follow including our own channel with live-streaming. So yesterday I gave my all since I knew I did not have to return to preach in the afternoon. My all means a total of 47 minutes of preaching with a couple of minutes' break due to a technical glitch at the beginning. I am pleased I brought my laptop with my slides on it and I proceeded to preach from it while waiting the multimedia people to fix the issue. I preached on Eph 1:11-15 and it has not been easy preaching on Paul's letter to the Ephesians since the Greek is fairly complex with long sentences. Eph 1:3-14 in Greek is one long sentence with more than 10 genitival phrases and clauses.
But I managed to stress the sealing of the Holy Spirit in Eph 1:13 and I spoke about what sealing meant to the original audience - ownership, authenticity and power. We become God's possession when He sealed us with His Holy Spirit. With the sealing of the Holy Spirit we become authentic Christians (born-again baptised in the Holy Spirit) and we are empowered and the Church is not weak or insignificant but powerful as God's Spirit rests within her and works in her midst. I even managed to include my commentary on a PAS's Member of Parliament wrongly citing Christianity as barring alcoholic drinks and I am thankful that only the week before I taught from my John's commentary that Jesus' first sign was to change water into wine. The MP also claimed that the Christian Gospel has been twisted or altered and I responded by saying the Bible or the New Testament gospels and Pauline letters have hundreds of extant copies in the early centuries making the New Testament the most authentic document in the world if you count documentary or written proofs.