God of the Poor

Psalm 68:1-10, Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 21, 2023

The Triumph of God

The Modern German Bible (Die Gute Nachricht, DIE BIBEL in heutigem Deutsch), which I often consult when preparing sermons, gives today's lectionary text, Psalm 68, the subtitle "God's Victory" (Gottes Sieg). In a nutshell, it's about God's complete victory over his enemies, "those who hate the Lord" (v. 1) and "kings of many armies" (v. 12). Verse 2 sings.

May you blow them away like smoke— as wax melts before the fire, may the wicked perish before God..

Let them perish is a bit harsh, but similar phrases like this appear throughout Psalm 68, and in all 150 Psalms. God is portrayed as an improved general who has completely defeated his enemy in battle. The point of God's victory is that God restores the dignity of humanity to the persecuted, ignored, and marginalized. The righteous will rejoice and make merry before God (v. 3), and God is "the father of orphans and the judge of widows" (v. 5). The final verse, verse 10, reads

Your people settled in it,  and from your bounty, God, you provided for the poor.

When we hear the psalmist's statement that the victorious God immobilizes the powerful, the enemies, and those who hate the Lord, and protects and cares for the orphan, the widow, and the poor, we are moved to say, "So be it!" but we have a hard time agreeing. Because that's not how the world we live in works: the poor are ignored by the world. Poor countries have a weak voice on the international stage. How many pastors and Christians speak well of poor churches? While there are occasions in human history when evil powerful people are judged, it's not very often. Does it make sense to say that God destroys the wicked and defends the poor when this is the case? Many Christians see the psalmist's confession as mere religious rhetoric and actually live by political and economic power. That's what we've learned from real history, so we can't help it.

I believe that the failure of Marxism in the 20th century, and conversely, the one-sided triumph of capitalism, has been the misfortune of human history. Marxism envisioned the emancipation of the alienated human being from labor. It tried to realize the ideal of working as much as you can and taking as much as you need, but it failed. The reason is that human selfishness was too intense to realize such a lofty ideal. In competition with capitalism, which ostensibly touts freedom as a value but is actually based on selfishness, communist systems with low productivity were bound to fall behind. Starting in the early 1990s, communist countries began to close their doors, and now there are only a few left, and even those that remain are only moderately allied with capitalism. The fact that real socialism (communism) failed to create a world that was superior to the capitalist system - that it tried to create a world without rich people and poor people, so to speak, and ended up collectively poorer - has led modern people to no longer value equality as a priority. The current regime in South Korea is even more blatantly promoting the value of freedom over equality. Their version of freedom is more of an ideology that promotes endless competition rather than human dignity.

I consider it a misfortune of Korean church history that the so-called "Full Gospel Church" in Yeouido, Seoul, has become the largest church in the world. The Full Gospel Church is the poster child for prosperity theology. Korean Christians were attracted to the message that they could all be blessed by believing in God and receive the so-called "triple blessing" and live happily ever after. Conversely, progressive churches that proclaimed that the God of the poor is the God of the Bible did not attract believers. Even among the "Kijang" (Christian Presbyterian) churches, which represent progressive denominations, most of the churches that have grown into medium and large churches are offshoots of the Full Gospel Church. South Korea as a country, and the Korean church as a whole, is mired in a prosperity and growth ideology that makes it difficult for Christians living in it to hear the biblical message of the "God of the poor" with a straight face.

The Image of God

On what basis does the psalmist who wrote today's text say that God cares for orphans, widows, and the poor? Is it just a bunch of crap? The psalmist isn't saying this based on social science data. It's a theological statement that comes from a belief about who God is. There are two beliefs about God that underlie this statement. These beliefs underlie the entire Old and New Testaments, and they underlie the words of Jesus.

One is that God made every person in the world. Genesis 1:27 reads. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them ... " It's a simple sentence, but it's a truly amazing statement. We are said to have the "image of God," where the image of God refers not to a person's outward appearance, but to their spiritual attributes. For example, freedom, joy, and love are spiritual attributes. That's why we are both earthly and spiritual. There are no exceptions to the image of God: even the lowliest person is an image of God. Orphans, widows, and the poor are all created in the image of God, and to ignore them is to deny God. In Jewish society two and a half millennia ago, orphans, widows, and the poor were often ignored. Their very survival was at stake, and the psalmist, seeing through this, had no choice but to say that God protected them.

The other is the belief that God is all-powerful. This belief points to two facts. One is that no one is all-powerful except God, and the other is that God rules the world in ways we don't expect. The kings and nobles who are supposed to rule the world justly are supposed to ensure that orphans, widows, and the poor survive, but they are neither willing nor able to do so. If orphans, widows, and the poor have not been treated well in any society, in any time period, it means that people and man-made systems are not capable of doing so. Our system is also incapable of doing so. People are uncomfortable with the struggle of people with disabilities for the right to mobility and survival. There's a huge lack of prophetic imagination to change the world, and that's a testament to the fact that we're not omnipotent.

Given these two beliefs - that God created humans in his image and that God is omnipotent - we accept as truth the psalmist's affirmation that God defends the orphan, the widow, and the poor like a father and like a just judge. The problem is, as we've pointed out before, that the world we live in too often denies the image of God. We treat people as a means to an end. The gap between the rich and the poor shows no sign of shrinking. The gap between the lives of the people in Wandang Village, Yeongcheon, where I live, and the people in Gangnam, Seoul, is staggering. I wonder if they live in the same country, Korea. Is God really the one who created even the people living at the bottom in his image? Is he really the one who is all-powerful and good, so he is ruling the world justly? Then why is the world so messed up?

It's hard to find a good answer here. Probably no one will find the perfect answer until the end of time, but we do know some tentative answers. We could answer that the world is unjust because humans have sinned and the innocent still suffer, or that justice will only be fully realized at the end of time, or that the righteous who suffer now in an unjust world will be rewarded later in heaven. That sounds plausible, but who would be satisfied with that answer? If we take the parable of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus literally, there is a logic of reward after death, but it doesn't make sense to people who live responsibly in the face of history. I don't have a definitive answer to why the world is not just. I just try to get closer to an answer. Perhaps the biblical view of the righteous and the wicked in today's text can help us get closer to that answer.

According to today's text, the wicked are enemies, haters of the Lord, and those who hold power in their hands. The righteous, on the other hand, are the orphan, the widow, and the poor. Not all the poor are righteous, and not all the rich are wicked; on the contrary, you can be rich and righteous, and poor and wicked. That's a superficial view of people and history; the Bible looks at the issue from a deeper level. 1) The rich and powerful don't really pay attention to God because their lives are centered on wealth and power. This is why Jesus said it's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. 2) The poor have nothing in the world to rely on, so they rely on God alone. This is why Jesus said that the poor are blessed. The idea is that failure to pay attention to God is the most fundamental sin, and a life of dependence on God alone is true righteousness and blessing. From this perspective, God is on the side of the poor, which is why the psalmist today could proclaim that God keeps them and is responsible for them. On the other hand, at the ultimate level, the fact is that we will all be complete strangers at some point, with no one or nothing to turn to, and the only one who will accept us in that moment is God-not our family, not our friends, not our government, not our country, not our church. Happiness in Poverty

I believe that the phrase "God of the poor" is true not only when we die, but also in our daily lives here and now. Let me tell you a little bit about how happiness in poverty happens in my daily life. First of all, when you're poor, you don't bother with finances. You know what a blessing that is. Recently, a young member of parliament has been in the news for investing in coins. While he may not be breaking any laws, he deserves to be criticized for entering a highly speculative business as a member of parliament, and I can only imagine how poor his soul must be. If I were poor, I wouldn't have gotten into the coin business. It's also tiring to 'check' the stock price every day. If you own multiple homes, having to worry about the price of your house going up and down is a drain on your soul. If you're poor, you don't have to worry about any of this at all. Do you think my description is too far removed from reality?

Let me give you a more realistic example: a poor couple. They avoid (can't) do things that cost money. They don't go to expensive hotel restaurants. They don't have designer clothes or bags. They don't go out with friends often because they don't have the money. It might seem like a very humble life to some, but they take walks together, make simple side dishes and eat them together, read books and talk to each other. There are so many ways to be happy, even if you're poor. If you're married, you can be happy as one; if you're single, you can be happy as single. If you have children, you can be happy with them, if you don't, you can be happy without them, if you're healthy, you can be healthy, if you're weak, you can be weak. I'm not spouting poverty aesthetics here - I'm not a professional monk who finds the deepest meaning in the simplest of lives - I'm not trying to convince you to become poor in a secular society that's going back to its old ways, but I am advising you that you can be as happy as you want to be in poverty. Doesn't that make sense? Are you trying to tell me that I'm preaching something unrealistic because you don't realize how draining poverty can be on our lives?

I'm not preaching poverty per se, I'm preaching God, the God who created us in His image. God is good, his power is absolute, and he will not allow anyone to lose his image through poverty. If we know and believe in such a God, we will realize how deep, mysterious, and rich our lives are. Let me give you one more analogy: There are many ways to get from Daegu to Yeongcheon. You can take a chauffeured Benz car, you can take a train, or you can ride a bicycle. Or you can walk because you don't have any money. Are people who walk the most unhappy? No. There are many good things about walking. You see the sky, you see trees and flowers. You might meet a young couple with their kids and talk to them. Whether he walks or drives, what matters is how much he actually enjoys the process of getting from Daegu to Yeongcheon. That's right. Even if you live in poverty, you can find happiness if you have eyes to see it. If we don't find them, poverty becomes a curse, because God created us in His image. I wonder if South Korea is a country possessed by a poverty curse, because there are phenomena everywhere that we can't understand otherwise.

In the psalmist's cry and praise that God cares for the poor, I see another perspective: that if you actually believe that you are created in the image of God, you actually care about caring for the poor. If you don't care about such things, you cannot be called a believer in God. Here, the minimum standard for caring for the poor is daily bread. Daily bread is actually the foundation upon which a poor person can find their own happy life. This is why Jesus mentioned daily necessities when he taught his disciples to pray. You don't need a communist revolution to make this happen; you just need to be wise with what you already have. For example, if we reduce tensions between North and South Korea, so we can spend less on defense, and if we take a little more tax from those who have more money, we can solve the problem of those who don't have enough to eat. Is this so difficult? Is this some kind of left-right debate? Isn't this a Christian struggle to bear witness in the real world to our faith in God's creation, God's image, God's power, and God's goodness? Yes, it is. Our God is the "God of the poor.

"Alive"

 

John 14:15-21, 6th Week of Easter, May 14, 2023

The Gospel of John was written in the last decade of the first century. The situation of the church at that time was characterized by two things. One is the fact that Christians had been ousted from the synagogues, and the other is the fact that Gnosticism was beginning to flourish within the church community. The first fact concerns the survival of the church, and the second concerns the nature of the church. In the 90s, about 60 years after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and about 30 years after the deaths of James (Jesus' brother), Peter, and Paul, the outstanding leaders of the early church, the church was at a crossroads: whether it would survive history, disappear without a trace, become a subset of Judaism, or be reduced to a syncretistic sect. The anxiety of the church members was palpable. John 14:1 comes from that historical context. "Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God; believe also in me."

Life in Jesus Christ

Being told not to worry doesn't make you not worry on its own, and being told to believe in God and believe in Jesus doesn't make you believe on its own. You have to be given a reason to believe. The Gospel of John, as a whole, is a document that gives that rationale, and if you boil it down to one word, it's "life in Jesus Christ." Christians are "alive" in Jesus Christ, and if that's true, no matter how difficult your circumstances, you won't be anxious. Let's read 14:19.

A little while, and the world will not see me again; but you will see me; because I am alive, and you will be alive.

Two words are key here. One is "see," and the other is "alive." Together, they become "see alive. John 13-17, which includes today's sermon text, is categorized as "Jesus' farewell address to his disciples. After these words, Jesus is arrested, crucified, and buried in a tomb. You could say that the world will no longer see Jesus because he is about to leave this world. But the disciples say they will see him. If the world doesn't see him, but the disciples do, it means that the word "see" doesn't have the usual meaning here.

In Zen Buddhism, there's a concept called bosheng, which is a combination of the Chinese characters for "seeing" and "nature". It means to see the ultimate reality of all things. It refers to a kind of great enlightenment. Not everyone can enter that realization. Why? Something similar happens in our daily lives: we see the same mountains, we see the same rivers, but some people see the mystery of existence there, and some people just pass by. Some politicians see the people as an object to be used or shown off, while others see them as an object to be served. Even in Jesus' day, some people felt God's presence in his words, while others rejected them, saying, 'This is too difficult, I don't know what you mean.

When Jesus says the world will not see, but the disciples will, he is referring to the risen one. The Jesus of Nazareth was recognizable to everyone, but the risen Lord was not a phenomenon that anyone could recognize. 1 Corinthians 15 lists the witnesses to the resurrection: Cephas, the twelve disciples, the five hundred brothers, James, all the apostles, and Paul. Women are apparently excluded from this list, in keeping with the custom of the time. Nowhere in the New Testament does it say that anyone who was not part of the church community saw the risen Lord. Paul was an early persecutor of Jesus' followers, but his inner life was already inclined toward Jesus. In any case, no one in Jerusalem, including Caiaphas the high priest or Pilate the governor, experienced the risen Lord. The implication is that unless the Christian "eyes of faith" were opened, they could not see the risen Lord.

People outside the church won't take the phrase "eyes of faith" seriously; they'll say it's too subjective, and so is the view I illustrated above. You don't mechanically enter the dimension of steadfastness the way money can buy you an apartment or a car. The eye of faith doesn't happen on its own in a day or two, or because you go to church. The disciples were people who had a special relationship with Jesus. They were people who left all their possessions, jobs, and families and obeyed Jesus' words, "Follow me." They accompanied him for nearly three years. They had walked with Jesus for nearly three years. Through Jesus, they had a new perception of God and the kingdom of God. Their idea of life, or as verse 19 puts it, "being alive," had taken on a new dimension. So the text could say that after Jesus' crucifixion, the world would not see Jesus, but the disciples would.

What is alive?

Let me ask you this straight up. What on earth does it mean to be alive, or what is life? Are we actually alive right now? Once we know that, then we can see what the text is talking about when it says "alive." A crude way of putting it is, "It's no big deal to be alive, it's just to be well fed in this world. It's enough to be a little healthier and a little happier than other people, and you can't say that's wrong - you've got to get by here, at least with a roof over your head. The problem is that modern people have fallen for infinite growthism - not just poor countries, but already rich ones, strive to achieve endlessly high levels of economic indicators. But my friends, when life is outwardly abundant, when it's prosperous, there's a deeper emptiness waiting for you. Where the mountains are high, the valleys are deep. Experts tell us that wealth beyond a certain point doesn't make much of a difference to a happy life. And yet, we live as if we're cursed to grow and prosper and gluttony and consumption, as if we're cursed to never go hungry no matter how much we eat.

The Bible tells a different story. The Bible says that God is the author of "living," or life. God is the one who created life, sustains life, and will complete it. We are creatures. No matter how brilliant we are, we are powerless in the face of life events. By analogy, consider Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre Museum in France. No matter how much artistic inspiration the painting provides to many people, it cannot surpass Leonardo da Vinci, because the painting was created by the artist's inspiration and ability to paint. If the Mona Lisa were to be disconnected from Leonardo da Vinci, it would no longer have authority as a work of art. The Bible says that humans, as creatures, cannot have life on their own because our relationship with God has been broken by sin. Paul writes that no one can be justified before God by 'the works of the law' (Romans 3:20). When the world hears this, they may say, "Aren't you guys crazy?" What kind of God are you talking about when we've created artificial intelligence and, if we're lucky, we'll be able to immortalize humans through the power of science in the future. What do you say to these objections? We can't convince them because we see things differently. We can reduce disagreements, but we can't see complete agreement. The best we can do is explain and defend the teachings of the Bible and then live them out in real life.

In Jesus Christ

The Bible says that we, as creatures, have life only when we are in God, our Creator. The same is true for real life. It's not just gracefully eating well and living well every day, but only in relationship with God do we actually live life. Now does this make sense? Does this sound believable, or is it just religious platitudes? Today's text says in verse 19, "I am alive, and you are alive," and then it goes on to tell us what that "aliveness" is, or how we can be alive, in verse 20: "In that day I will be with you.

In that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you.

The preposition "in" is repeated in this sentence. It says ἐν τῷ Πατρί (in the Father), ἐν ἐμοὶ (in me), and ἐν ὑμῖν (in you). One of the concepts of the Trinity is "perichoresis" (mutual indwelling). This means that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit exist "in" each other. The above verse is similar to the concept of co-indwelling. Jesus Christ is in God, the disciples are in Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is in the disciples. Now the disciples are in God through Jesus Christ, which is why early Christianity called Jesus 'Immanuel'.

The link between these three units - God, Jesus Christ, and the disciples - is the "resurrection" of Jesus Christ. Resurrection doesn't just mean living again, it means being transformed into the life that will be consummated at the end of time. In his Commentary on the Apostles' Creed (Das Glaubensbekenntnis), Fannenberg writes, "The resurrection of Jesus was understood as the final rush, the beginning of the eschatological reality of God's reign over all human beings" (p. 144). By "beginning of the eschatological reality," he means that the eternal life of God that will take place at the end of time began in the destiny of Jesus Christ. Having experienced the apocalyptic light in the destiny of Jesus, the disciples were no longer caught up in the political propaganda of the Roman Empire and could no longer remain in the Jewish legal faith. They waited intensely for the eschatological consummation of life, and that waiting is Advent faith. For the disciples, living in that Advent faith was the reality of being "alive." Is that right, or is it just too religious? If so, where do you find the fact that you are "alive?" You have a choice to make. To seek and wait for the light of the eschatological life that began in the destiny of Jesus Christ, no matter what the world says, or to follow only the standards of life that this world presents as plausible. To hope for the reign of God, or to be consumed by self-aspiration.

Those who love me

Here's an everyday analogy for the faith that waits for the eschatological reign of God. Forgive me if this is a very common analogy. A man leaves for a year-long space trip in six months. He doesn't know for sure if he'll come back in one piece. What he does know is that for the next six months, he'll see the world and see people in a completely different light than he ever has before. If people around him get annoyed, it won't bother him so much. He'll be able to embrace and love everyone. If we lived here and now, actually feeling and experiencing the life that God will consummate at the end of time, wouldn't that solve a lot of problems in our lives? We could actually have grace and peace. So why doesn't that work out? Why doesn't the light of eschatological life fill our souls?

The answer is quite obvious. The answer is that we haven't deepened our relationship with Jesus Christ. For those who don't have a deep relationship with Jesus, the eschatological life that occurred in a pre-emptive way in the destiny of Jesus seems very far away because their relationship with Jesus Christ is formal or shallow, just as the Lord of the resurrection did not appear to them. It's as if the trees, flowers, clouds, and birds are all unreal if you don't have a loving heart. That connection to Jesus is what verse 21 of our text says.

He that keepeth my commandments is he that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him.

Keeping the commandments here doesn't mean keeping the law, it means following what Jesus says. It's about being a real disciple of Jesus, about setting your heart on the kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed, about letting go of your worries about what you eat, drink, and wear, about trusting God as completely as you would a father. It's about having a loving relationship with Jesus, because Jesus is one with God, and when you have a loving relationship with Jesus, you have that relationship with God. It is to these disciples that Jesus promised, "I will reveal myself to you."

Some of you have been Christians for 10, 20, or even a lifetime, and you're frustrated that your faith hasn't deepened. You go to church out of habit, you immerse yourself in church programs, or you focus on relationships. These are all good, necessary things. Your faith should bear fruit in those forms, too. But no matter how much fun you have at church, if you don't deepen your relationship with Jesus, if you don't experience Jesus Christ as "alive," or as verse 20 puts it, if you don't realize that you are in Jesus Christ - if the teachings of Jesus Christ don't weigh as much as gold - your Christian faith won't stay healthy. Even in the best case scenario, your faith will remain at an intellectual level.

Consider again the Lord's promise in verse 21: "He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him." The phrase "manifest myself" is used here. The phrase "I will manifest myself" means that the disciples will have life; that they will realize and experience a tangible glimpse of the eternal life that will come at the end of time. To put it in familiar terms, they will realize that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that He is the way, the truth, and the life in our lives. Has He manifested Himself to you, so that you have felt the light of end-time life, so that you are not troubled by all the troublesome things you are going through here and now? Or maybe you've had very few of those experiences and you're just dozing through life. It depends.

Even in the days when John's Gospel was written, some people were living their lives through the eyes of faith and love, and others were not at all. It's true that faith and love are, after all, the grace of God, which is why Jesus Christ repeatedly said in our text that he would pray to the Father to send the Spirit of truth, the Paraclete (the Comforter, John 14:16; 16:7; 1 John 2:1). Paracleteos will defend and comfort the disciples, so that they may have a real realization of being 'alive' in Jesus Christ (kenosis) and live in the fullness of joy in whatever circumstances they find themselves. Amen.

Faith and Eternal Life

 John 3:1-17, Second Sunday in Lent, March 5, 2023

In today's sermon text, Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin in Judea. The Sanhedrin was the public representative body of Judea during the time of Roman colonial rule. It was roughly equivalent to today's Congress and Supreme Court combined. Nicodemus came to Jesus. It's not clear whether he came in an individual capacity or on behalf of the council. We're told he came at night, which might have made him feel uncomfortable to come in the daytime. He opens by saying to Jesus in John 3:2, "Rabbi, we know that you are from God.

"Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

At this point, Jesus was already on the radar of those in power in Judaism. Just before our text, John 2:13 and following, we read of Jesus causing a ruckus in the temple in Jerusalem. He made whips out of cords, drove out the merchants, overturned the money changers' statues, and sternly rebuked them, saying, "Do not make a house of my Father's house a house of trade." What authority did Jesus have to do this? The Jews demanded that Jesus show them by what authority He was doing this: by showing signs (John 2:18). According to 1 Corinthians 1:22, the Jews were originally a people who valued signs (miracles). John 2:23 says that people saw the signs Jesus performed at the Passover and believed in him.

Signs and conversion

Not only then, but even today, people are interested in such signs. A high school that produces a high number of students admitted to top universities, a venture that grows its revenue 500 times in one year, a movie that reaches 5 million viewers, a church that reaches 1,000 attendees in five years of planting, etc. It's inevitable that individuals and nations alike are most interested in things that have concrete, tangible results. It's true that these targets make our lives exciting. We don't have to deny it, and we can't deny it; it's natural. The reason Nicodemus comes to Jesus and asks for signs is because he wants Jesus to do more powerful signs and miracles. But Jesus gives him an answer that Nicodemus doesn't expect, verse 3.

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus was interested in signs, and Jesus said "born again," meaning that the kingdom of God could only be experienced by being born again, by becoming a new person, not through a sign that would get people's attention. It's a completely different view of the kingdom of God, a different view of ultimate happiness, so to speak.

After hearing Jesus' words, Nicodemus asks if being born again means going back into the womb and coming out again. It's a silly question, like a child's. Nicodemus was an intellectual of his day, a Jewish theologian, so it's not like he couldn't understand what Jesus was saying about being born again. It's the same today. Being informed and actually knowing are two completely different things. Even if you're an intellectual, a wealthy person, a leader in the world, and even if you're old enough to know a lot of the "know-how" of the world and to be respected by others, it doesn't mean you actually know life. The fact that you've been in church for a long time is no proof that you know the gospel. Like Nicodemus, who questioned Jesus' statement that you have to be born again to experience the kingdom of God, asking if it meant you had to go back into the womb and come out.

The conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus follows. In a way, it sounds like a cross-examination. Jesus calls being born again a work of the spirit (πνεῦμά): that which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. The reason people don't recognize the work of the Spirit is because the Spirit blows "at will," like the wind. To the ancients, the wind was a frightening phenomenon. It could blow strong enough to uproot a tree, and then go quiet, and you couldn't find the source. Where did the wind go, and where did it come from? Why does the wind feel different every time? What is the nature of the wind? Listen to what verse 8 says.

The wind blows arbitrarily, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or where it goes; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.

Someone like Nicodemus, who only thought of going into his mother's womb and coming out again, couldn't understand Jesus' statement about being born of the Spirit. A miscommunication ensued, and while the text leaves out the details, the key to this whole story is found in verse 16, which encapsulates the faith of the disciples and early Christians. It's the most famous verse in the Gospel of John.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

This is the "secret of the new birth" that Jesus gave to Nicodemus earlier. Only a born-again person - a spiritual person - can actually know that they have eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. That's called being 'born of the Spirit'. Listen to verse 11.

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak what we know, and testify what we have seen; but ye receive not our testimony.

The Jews of that day would not accept the testimony of the Christians about Jesus because they had not been born again by the spirit given from above. The Christians turn to the Jews and say, 'We tell you what we know and testify what we have seen.' The same is true of our situation today. Putting that aside, it's important to know why our testimony is sure: what it really means to say that whoever believes in Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, should not perish but have eternal life.

He who believes in the only begotten Son

First, consider what the word "believe" means. People outside the church often misunderstand Christian faith. They think it's religious fervor, a lack of confidence in one's own life and a desire to rely on an absolute to get you through it. They see it as blind faith or fanaticism that has no rational basis. The village where I live, Wondang, is not far from the 'Donhalmae-ro'. If you follow the stone hag road, you will come to the 'Donhalmae village', where there is a 'Donhalmae' that the villagers have worshiped as a guardian spirit for generations. It's a granite boulder that weighs about 10 kilograms, and depending on how you feel when you hold it, your wishes may or may not be granted. It's so popular that sometimes people come in groups on tour buses. From what I hear, there are 100,000 visitors a year. Palgongsan God Rock functions similarly. It's shamanism in a big way. People are existentially weak, so it's cognitive to want to rely on something in that way.

There are many stories in the Bible where faith can be read as a wish-fulfillment device, including just three in the Synoptic Gospels. In Matthew 9:18 and following, Jesus raises the daughter of a ruler from the dead. On the way to the ruler's house, the woman, who had suffered from hemorrhages for 12 years, touches Jesus' cloak. Jesus says to her, "Daughter, be of good cheer; your faith has saved you." Mark 10:25 and following. In Mark 10:25 and following, we read about the healing of the blind man, Bartimaeus. When Bartimaeus asked to see, Jesus said, "Go. Luke 17:11 and following tells the story of the healing of the leper. When the man returned to express his gratitude for being healed, Jesus said, "Go, your faith has saved you." Based on these stories, people think that faith is the means to being healed and blessed. If we were to link faith to healing and good fortune, we would be saying that Christians who have bad luck don't have faith. Furthermore, since we are believers in the crucified man as Christ, we would be denying our own existence by linking good fortune and bad fortune to matters of faith. These healing stories are an explanation of who Jesus Christ is.

Faith in the New Testament is the willingness and determination to make Jesus' teachings, his faith, his hope, and his love the center of our lives. So before we say we believe in Jesus, it's important to know who Jesus is-who he is. If you think you know it all, that's great, but you might be getting it wrong. To know who Jesus was, you need to know specifically what he believed. Have you ever really thought about what Jesus, who lived in the Jewish faith tradition, might have believed about God?

Jesus believed that God's reign had already begun; he believed that God was with him; and he told the people of his day about God, his kingdom, and his righteousness from a completely different perspective than Judaism, which was centered around the law and the temple. He proclaimed that God didn't look at how faithful you were to the law and the temple, but how much you trusted in God. That's why he didn't mind being close to the tax collectors and sinners the law forbade: he ate and drank with them and mingled with them. He could call out for those who dragged a woman caught in adultery in the field to let the innocent cast the first stone. Through the eyes of such faith, the scribes and Pharisees, the highest echelons of Judaism, were the hypocrites. They were the ones who undermined the very spirit of the Sabbath, not enhanced it. They were the ones who sifted the wheat from the chaff and swallowed the camels. They were the ones who called Jesus a "plastered tomb." After all, he was crucified. The only begotten son we believe in is not the Jesus who had a good life and made it big, but the Jesus who trusted God completely and fell to the fate of the cross. Does this make sense? Does it mean that we all actually deserve to fall to the fate of the cross? It can't, because He promised that those who believe have eternal life.

Eternal life

The dictionary definition of the word eternal life is eternal life, or life without end. When the Bible talks about eternal life, it doesn't refer to an infinite stretch of time. It refers to a qualitative change in time. A qualitatively transformed life is eternal life. Think of it this way metaphorically. Here are two equally terminally ill people. One dies after 20 years of constant hospitalization and reliance on life-prolonging treatments, and the other dies 10 years earlier by living a normal life with minimal medical assistance. The second person decides that it's more important to live a quality life than to extend his life by 10 years. The early Christians believed that through Jesus Christ, they could have a whole new kind of life. This is not to say that it's a good idea to die quickly or to refuse medical treatment, but the point is that they experienced a new kind of life, eternal life, through Jesus Christ.

There are two books by Moltmann that I've enjoyed reading recently. One is New Beginnings at the End of Despair (Im Ende- der Anfang, 2003) and the other is I Believe in Eternal Life (Auferstanden in das ewige Leben, 2020). Both books are on the topic of eternal life, and their content can be summarized in two ways. 1) Eternal life after death does not take place somewhere in heaven, but on earth, called earth. Earth is the world that God created as holy, and it is the place where Jesus was crucified. In the Lord's Prayer, we read, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." We cannot speak of eternal life apart from this earth. 2) A person does not fall into a kind of 'sleep' (1 Thess. 4:13 et seq.) for a period of time after death and then gain eternal life at the beginning of the final judgment; he gains eternal life immediately upon death, because at the end of that time when eternal life is manifested as a reality, the time of 'sleep' after death, the interim period between death and eternal life, is expunged.

This theological conception of death and eternal life is deeply intertwined with the "kingdom of God" that Jesus proclaimed. The kingdom of God is said to be 'not yet' complete, but 'already' begun. While Jesus was alive, he fully embraced the reign of that very same God; he believed in God fully; he lived in the fullness of God's love; and to his disciples, who were bound by his faith and his love, he reappeared after his death as 'the living one'. For the disciples, the power of death was now broken. They were no longer afraid of death. They were not afraid of the violence of the Roman Empire, nor did they crumble in the face of the loneliness, sorrow, and self-limitations of human existence. Through Jesus, they had experienced the eternal light of life, and that is eternal life, so that they could confess that whoever believes in his only begotten Son should not perish but have eternal life.

I'm sure there are some of you who find this confession trivial or unrealistic, because you've believed in Jesus all your life, but you're still worried about the things of this world, you're still anxious about life itself, you're still afraid of death, you're still unable to set your soul free in your daily life, and you're still sweating the small stuff just like the rest of the world, let alone eternal life. I can't solve that problem for you, as a preacher. It's like when you're learning to swim and you're told to put your whole body in the water, but you're not doing it. All I can do is fill in the blanks about what the experience of eternal life is like, and leave the rest to you to figure out on your own.

For John, eternal life is an event of union with the love of God revealed through Jesus Christ. It's not about extending your life to a hundred, or two hundred, or increasing the total amount of luxuries in your life, it's about entering into the love of God. If you experience the fullness of God's love revealed through Jesus in the "now," like a baby in its mother's arms, this is the moment of eternal life for you.

From Darkness to Light!

1 Peter 2:2-10, Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 7, 2023

Pneumatikos

The first verse of today's sermon text, 1 Peter 2:2, reads as follows. Listen to it as if you were hearing it for the first time.

As newborn babes, as newborns, desire the sincere, divine milk, which is pure; for by it ye shall grow unto salvation.

As simple as this verse seems on the surface, its meaning is deep and subtle. Let's look at just three points: 1) First, let's look at the original Greek words for "pure and divine milk": λογικὸς, ἄδολος, and γάλα, the English equivalents of which are reasonable, pure, and milk, respectively. The Greek word 'logikos' means 'rational' and 'spiritual'. Our English Bibles translate logikos as 'divine', which conjures up a picture of something like a mountain spirit. To preserve the meaning of the original, it should be translated as 'rational' (Luther - vernünftig). The point of the text is to study the 'Word of God' 'rationally'. This exhortation was given because there were Christians at the time who ignored reason in favor of fervent religiosity.

2) 'Adolos' refers to that which is without admixture. It is a warning against religious syncretism. For example, the idea that not only is soul salvation important, but that being materially prosperous in the world is also important is syncretism. Just because you like milk and you like wine, what kind of drink would you get if you mixed milk with wine? From this text, we can see that there were already irrational and syncretistic beliefs at the time 1 Peter was written.

3) The word "adore" means "to think fondly of and long for. It's a phrase we don't use much these days. The New King James Version of the Bible says, "long for," and the King James Version says, "seek." The English word is crave or desire, and the German word is begierig. These words are closer to crave or desire, which is a stronger meaning than longing and longing. Psalm 42:1 says, "As a deer thirsts for water, O God, as a deer thirsts for a stream, so my soul thirsts for you." Psalm 130:6 says: "My soul waits for You more than the watchman waits for the morning." The parables of the woman who searched the house by lighted lamps for the missing drachma (Luke 15:8) and the father who waited anxiously for his second son who had left the house (Luke 15:20) also point to this longing.

According to the text, the reason to hunger for God's word is to grow to salvation. Just as the body needs a balanced diet to grow, the soul needs a balanced diet of the word to grow. This means that only those who hunger for the Word in a rational and consistent manner, like seekers and practitioners, can grow to salvation. Otherwise, they will remain in a childlike state. That's why Paul once said in his letter to the Philippians, 'Always be submissive, working out your salvation with fear and trembling' (Phil. 2:12).

A living sacrifice

What it means to work out your salvation is shown in verse 3 and following. Listen to verse 5.

That ye also, as living stones, may be built up as a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable unto God by Jesus Christ.

That "spiritual" when it says a spiritual house or a spiritual sacrifice is πνευματικὸς, an adjectival form of the Greek word pneuma. The English Bible translates it as spiritual. The same adjective 'divine' is applied to the divine milk in verse 2 and the divine sacrifice here in verse 5, but they are different words in the Greek Bible. In verse 2 it is logikos and in verse 5 it is pneumaatikos. Logikos is "rational," as mentioned earlier, and pneuma is "spiritual. Of course, logikos can also mean "spiritual. Ancient Greek speakers thought of reason and rationality and spirituality and invisible inner strength as similar phenomena. What this means is that a spiritual person is someone who is strong inside, rational, and reasonable. Modern Christians don't fully understand what the Bible means by "spiritual." We've pushed its meaning into a narrow corner. We tend to understand it as some phenomenon that is irrational or irrational, which is why our English Bible awkwardly translates pneumaatikos as "divine.

When the Bible says spiritual, it doesn't mean outwardly pious, it means experiencing God's created world at its deepest depths. Contrast that with superficiality. For example, let's say you have a guitar player who's very good at playing. He's mastered a lot of advanced techniques, but those techniques don't make him a great guitarist. It's the depth of the music that he has to penetrate through those techniques that makes him a really moving player. Because music has a surface and it has depth. It's the same with philosophy, and it's the same with life itself: it's one thing to know a lot of information about philosophy and life, but it's another thing to actually live it and live it to the fullness of your daily life. It's one thing to be good at church life and another to actually live in Christian spirituality as a person who belongs to a church community. One is staying on the surface of information and the other is going into the depths of information. The basis for saying that there are depths to our daily lives is the fact that the world and our daily lives are God's creation. Some of us see that and some of us don't.

Strange light

In this sense, for us Christians to be holy priests, offering spiritual sacrifices, means to be people who experience God in the depths of our daily lives. Verse 9 of our text explains this with the Old Testament concept of the people of God. As I explain verse 9, it will become clearer what I mean by spiritual sacrifices and being a holy priesthood.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may declare the beautiful virtues of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

The marvelous light that the text is referring to is the experience of the depth of life just described. The New International Version translates it as "marvelous light," the NIV translates it as "wonderful light," and the KJV translates it as "marvelous light." It's saying that the life, or the experience of life, that Christians are given is a marvelous light because it's so true that it's like nothing else in the world. To put it in more biblical terms, it's the light of creation, and it's the cloud that Jesus Christ will ride on when he returns at the end of time.

Before the text says light, it says darkness, because if there is light, then there was darkness. Darkness is the absence of life, and light is the presence of life. When I say darkness, I don't just mean living immorally. No matter how moral and cultured a person is, they cannot escape darkness, because they have no life within them. And when I say no life, I mean they don't know God, the author of life.

People outside the church will reject the idea that a person without God is in darkness, and they'll have it backwards: they'll say that Christians are depressed, boring, and somehow hypocritical, while they enjoy life and try to live it nicely and honestly. That's what happens to Korean Christians, but that's not the essence of Christian spirituality, so that criticism is not accurate. In any case, it's hard to convince people outside the church that the world without God is darkness, because you can't feel darkness as darkness unless you're in God's wonderful light, just as the words "He who wields the sword will perish by the sword" fall on deaf ears for those who have fallen into war games.

Let me give you just three examples of what it means to come out of the darkness and into God's wonderful light that we can experience in our daily lives: 1) On February 14, 1990, when Voyager 1 turned its camera toward Earth, the Earth appeared as a tiny dot in a photograph. The distance from Earth was 6.1 billion kilometers. Carl Sagan titled the photograph "The Pale Blue Dot". When you realize how small Earth is in the universe, you also realize, paradoxically, how precious it is. This experience is also a kind of light. 2) There was once a man who was earning a high salary and living a busy life. His head was full of work and family and travel and hobbies. One day, as he was rushing into his office, a dandelion blooming in the small garden attached to his building caught his eye. In that moment, it dawned on him that the world wasn't just about what he was doing, but that the dandelion was also important, and that the dandelion's work could be more important than the work that was related to his salary. The dandelion became a light to him. 3) There is a traditional Japanese literary genre called "haiku". Among the haiku by Kanno Tadatomo is the following line. "Even this charcoal was once a twig topped with white snow." I don't mean to imply that the source of all that exists is always experienced as light to us, but that if we deepen these experiences in our daily lives, our souls will always be alive and moving.

Among the Old Testament characters who experienced the "wonderful light of God" were Abraham and Moses. 1) In Genesis 15:1, Abraham hears the word of the Lord in a vision: "Abram, do not be afraid; I am your shield and your very great reward." At the time, Abraham was in the midst of extreme fear: He was a displaced person, old and childless, and uncertain about his future.

Genesis 15:12 reiterates that after preparing the burnt offering of a heifer, a goat, a ram, and a mountain dove, Abraham fell into a deep sleep, and great darkness and fear came upon him. In verse 17, as the sun was setting and it was getting dark, a smoking brazier was seen and a "burning torch" was seen passing among the burnt offerings. Abraham experienced God as a light in the midst of darkness. 2) Exodus 3 is the story of Moses' calling. Moses has been living in the wilderness of Midian as a taskmaster to Jethro the priest for 40 years - a time of darkness in his life. One day he encountered the messenger of the Lord on Mount Horeb during the phenomenon of the quaking tree, which caught fire but did not burn. This was the moment when a light began to shine in his otherwise dull life.

The light of the gospel

The most definitive "marvelous light of God" that 1 Peter points to is the experience of Jesus Christ. It is through Jesus Christ that God has brought us out of a life of darkness and into a life of light. It is through Jesus Christ that we have been saved, that is, freed from sin and death. We've been freed from the compulsion and the temptation to try to fulfill our own life on our own. It's not our righteousness that makes us righteous, it's the righteousness of Jesus Christ that makes us righteous. That's why the last verse of our text, verse 10, says, "Now you have obtained compassion." If you don't experience Jesus Christ as light, the word compassion seems far away. What about you? Why don't we feel the compassion of God? Why do we miss the fact that life is a gift given by God's mercy? Why do we fail to take Jesus' words to heart practically, to not worry about what we will eat or drink or wear, but to seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness? More fundamentally, why do we fail to grow to salvation, as verse 2 of our text says?

The one-word answer is that we don't have "repentance" (metanoia). I know some of you think that's a pretty obvious answer, because the church tells us to repent all the time, but the repentance Jesus is talking about here is changing the direction of our lives. Changing the direction of our lives is easier said than done; there has to be a revolutionary change. I know I'm still not fully converted in that true sense, so I'm always praying for God to have pity on me. In relation to verse 9 of our text, which talks about calling people out of darkness and into the light, I think there are two ways of life that need to be converted.

The first is conversion from Baal worship. The reason why Baalism is darkness is because it's an attitude of life that, to use a crude phrase, stirs up survival anxiety, and it's really hard to get out of that anxiety. When we look at how capitalism, the modern version of Baalism, enslaves our lives today, we understand why the Old Testament prophets identified the greatest sin as Baal worship. It's really hard for us as individuals to deal with the zeitgeist of Baal worship, but we have to be converted from it if our souls are to experience the wonderful light of life. A country that ensures its survival so that individuals are not disturbed by such issues would be a good country, and ours seems to be in the middle of nowhere.

The second is conversion from legalism. Legalism is antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The law itself is good, so it's not simple to recognize how it is distinct from the gospel. That's why the Pharisees and scribes, who perceived the law as the way to salvation, were bound to misunderstand Jesus Christ. You can see how legalistic the church is today: the building of church buildings, the revitalization of church organizations, the discipleship and missions and evangelism strategies are all legalistic paradigms in the grand scheme of things. It's a kind of meritocracy, a desire for self-salvation, and that kind of meritocratic faith, whether it succeeds or fails, makes our souls sick. We either burn out or we fall into hypocrisy, and that's darkness. How can we come out into the light of the gospel if we're hanging on to it?

Dear saints, is your life full of light right now? Is your freedom, joy, peace, and love growing more and more abundant? Or does your life feel dark because you lack all the happy conditions the world says it should have? If so, go back to the beginning of your faith and start anew. Start anew by making it your spiritual mantra that God has called you and me out of darkness and into His marvelous light. Yes, Christians are people who make new beginnings in order to grow to salvation until death.

Life Dominion

 

Life Dominion

 Romans 5:12-19, First Sunday of Lent, February 26th, 2023

 Today, we have chosen one of the most difficult passages to understand in the Bible as our sermon text. It is Romans 5:12, the first verse of the passage.

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.

In summary, this verse can be broken down into four sentences. Sin (ἁμαρτία) entered the world through one man. Death (θάνατος) came as a result of sin. All people have sinned. All people have been subject to the destiny of death. The "one man" mentioned here is Adam, who disobeyed God's command in the Garden of Eden and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He fell for the temptation of wanting to be like God, refusing to acknowledge that he was a creature. As a result, he gained knowledge but moved farther away from God. This story is the origin of sin as depicted in the Old Testament.

The Fate of Adam

Paul says that the fate of Adam has become the fate of 'all' people. This refers to the universality of sin and death. It means that no one in this world is free from sin and death. People in this world would find it uncomfortable to see death, a biological phenomenon, as a result of sin according to the teachings of the Bible. Sin in the Bible does not only deal with human ethics and morality. It refers to the deeper corruption of the human soul. Sin is self-centeredness, self-pity, and self-love. Collectively, it can be called pride (hubris). Pride refers to the attitude of placing oneself at the center of life and trying to exalt oneself. It is a strong desire and ambition to complete one's own life. Since it is a desire for what is impossible, life is destroyed through it. What would happen if a frog kept jumping off a rock hill, thinking it should fly like a bird? For example, the reason why we risk our lives to earn money in a capitalist system is because we are convinced that having a lot of money guarantees a happy life. In reality, no one lives a happy life with wealth alone. Life is destroyed when we go 'all-in' on what cannot be done. The soul becomes sick and dies. This is the universal death of humanity that Paul speaks of in today's passage.

At the time when Paul wrote Romans, people living in the Roman Empire probably did not pay much attention to what Paul said. They might have refused or looked down on it. They would have said that Adam's sin was Adam's sin, they were themselves, and not to talk nonsense. Paul also knew their arguments, but he did not back down. He gave them very strong words. It is verse 14.

However, even those who did not commit sins like Adam, up until Moses, also experienced death, for Adam was a model of the one to come.

The phrase "up until Moses" is mentioned. After Moses, the Jews distinguished themselves as righteous or unrighteous according to the law. If they did not live according to the law, that is, as it is in today's situation law, they were sinners, and if they lived properly, they were righteous. However, Paul says something completely different. He says that there was sin even before the law. This means that the problem of human sin cannot be solved by laws, rules, and norms. We can confirm this in our daily lives as well. List the things that are recognized and respected in the world. They also help people in need, teach students diligently, treat patients, and strive to change the world. There are also respected pastors. The world becomes a little better with such people and such things. We must strive to live in that way as well. However, we cannot escape the power of sin through this way of life. Our inner selves are still hypocritical, self-centered, and proud. We cannot solve this problem through our efforts. Paul referred to this, saying that even those who did not commit sins like Adam also experience the dominion of sin and death.

Royal authority.

I am not trying to talk about the tragic fate of human existence, which is bound by sin and death, but rather the opposite. Look at Paul's expression, referring to Adam as the "type of him who was to come." In our Korean Bible, the word "example" is accompanied by a footnote, "typology" (τύπος), which means "type" or "figure" in English. Luther's Bible translates it as Bild (picture, symbol). Adam is not a historical figure, but a model that symbolizes Jesus Christ, the one who was to come. In Jesus Christ, who is the one who was to come, the opposite of what happened to Adam occurs. It is not sin and death, but righteousness and life. In verse 17, Paul says this. This verse explains what the gospel of Christianity is, connected to the fate of all humanity.

Therefore, just as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

The phrase "leads to justification and life" is used twice. It already appeared in verse 14, and is repeated twice in verse 21. In Greek, it is distinguished by past and present tense verbs, and the root is "basileia." When we refer to the kingdom of God (basileia tou theou), that kingdom is the royal authority. It is rule and governance. After Adam, it was a time when death ruled like a king, but now, through Jesus Christ, the time has come when life rules like a king. To summarize this expression, it becomes "the royal authority of life." I will read only that part from the new translation from the Bible.

It is even more certain that those who receive overflowing grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

Note that "reigning in life" happens to those who have received the "gifts of grace and righteousness" through Jesus Christ. Paul already mentioned this in verse 15. There are two types of grace mentioned: one is from God, and the other is from Jesus Christ. Through these graces, people have received blessed gifts, and they have become "righteous" (verse 16) by obeying God's will through Jesus Christ. This means that, through God's grace given through Jesus Christ, we have obtained righteousness that leads to life (eternal life), not to death.

Thus, those who are deemed "righteous" will naturally have the power to reign in life. They will experience joy and hope in life instead of fear and despair of death. Therefore, Paul could say in verse 18 that "many people have received justification and thus reign in life." Is this possible? Can it be true that through Jesus Christ, all people are universally recognized as righteous and are freed from Adam's sin and attain righteousness? What is the basis for this claim, given who Jesus Christ is and what he has done?

Eon

It is important to understand that in Pauline theology, the world is divided into before and after the arrival of Jesus Christ. The perspective of dividing the world in this way comes from Gnostic philosophy. The world that Gnostic philosophy refers to is not the cosmos that Greek philosophy talks about, but rather the "eon" (world). There are old eons and new eons. The old eon is a world of sin, very violent and ruled by the wealthy and empires. When a new eon begins, the old eon comes to an end. The one who brings about this change is the Son of Man (Huios tou Anthropou), that is, the son of man. In today's passage, he is referred to as the "coming one." In the new world that Jesus Christ brings, sin and death no longer hold authority, and righteousness and life hold authority instead. The world is completely different. It is like a paradigm shift from two dimensions to three or four dimensions, from a plane to space, from Newtonian mechanics to Heisenberg's quantum mechanics, and from geocentric to heliocentric theories.

Some time ago, I read a book called The Hated Plants by John Cardiner. The subtitle of the book is "About flowers and grasses that have not yet found their use". The book talks about plants that are usually considered weeds. Weeds have always been around, but they were named by people as grasses that hinder crop growth. Weeds don't harm humans much, but they can be very harmful to crops, and humans try to remove them using tillage or herbicides. However, according to Cardiner, humans cannot completely get rid of weeds because they are constantly evolving in response to human behavior. This is similar to the current Corona 19 pandemic, which is a result of human actions.

The book's epilogue concludes that humans cannot defeat weeds, and it's time to let go of our arrogance about controlling nature. We should appreciate nature more and respect the adaptability of these extraordinary green creatures that continue to evolve in ways we may not fully understand. Reading this book has changed my thoughts about weeds, and I now see them from a new perspective. This is similar to falling in love and changing one's perspective on life. Only through this new perspective can we understand the "kingship of life" that Paul speaks of.

Paul was originally a Jewish legal expert who saw the world through the lens of Jewish law. However, everything changed after he encountered the resurrected Jesus. This event opened up a new world for him, much like the overwhelming feeling of relief one experiences upon discovering that someone who was thought to be terminally ill was actually misdiagnosed. Paul exclaimed that anyone who is in Christ becomes a new creation, with old things passing away and all things becoming new. Despite this, Jewish experts at the time ignored his experience. What's even stranger is that those who have not experienced these new changes cannot fully comprehend them. It's like hearing about the taste of an apple without ever having tried one.

On Monday, the 20th of last month, a member of the Daegu Seongseo Academy living in Seoul emailed me after hearing my sermon "Jesus is the Light" on Transfiguration Sunday. He had been searching for answers for 23 years, but had not found any until now. He wrote that he had finally understood the meaning of the Bible and the religious metaphor of the "light" mentioned in John 1:14. This experience has made the Bible appear new to him, and he has now had a completely different understanding of things before and after this experience.

Feeling hopeless

While some people may experience the kingship of life through Jesus Christ, others may feel like they haven't had such an experience. I have had a similar faith journey, so why do some people reach such experiences while others do not? Looking at the stars in the same winter night sky and feeling the same late-winter sunlight, some people feel the infinite mystery and joy of being alive, while others feel nothing. Even while worshiping together, one person may feel the peace of their soul, while another may remain as a mere spectator. That's why Paul states in today's text that "those who receive the overflowing grace and the gift of righteousness" enjoy the kingship of life, which is a gift from God.

Now, here's the final question: Why do we sometimes not receive the gift and grace to enjoy the kingship of life? Let me give you an example from one of Jesus' parables to help you find the answer. The younger son received his inheritance from his father and went to a faraway land, squandering it all before returning home as a beggar. The father threw a banquet for his son, but the older son couldn't understand his father's actions. He was trapped in his own world, unable to comprehend his father's unconditional love and acceptance without judgment. That is the core reason why some people don't receive grace. Instead of asking why grace doesn't come to them, they should ask whether they are ready to receive it. They lack the earnestness of the psalmist who cried out, "How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?" (Psalm 13:1). If one doesn't have earnestness towards God, it means they don't want grace, and therefore, the responsibility for not receiving grace ultimately rests with them.

I am currently writing a meditation article called "Rereading the Book of Revelation at the Age of 70" on the website of the Daegu Bible Academy. In Revelation 3:14, there is a letter addressed to the church in Laodicea. The reason for their rebuke, "You are neither cold nor hot," is that the believers in that church were bound by the notion that they lacked nothing because they were rich. They were satisfied with their decent living and did not long for God's grace. Just as a person who is not thirsty cannot drink sweet water, they cannot enjoy the kingship of life because they do not long for grace.

Dear fellow believers, I want you to experience the kingship of life in Jesus Christ that Paul proclaims today in a very practical and abundant way, even if you are lacking in other areas of life. When you do, you will experience a level of spiritual freedom, peace, and fullness that you have never experienced before.

The ultimate meaning of a bowl of cold water

 The ultimate meaning of a bowl of cold water

Matthew 10:40 to 11:01, the Holy Spirit descended after the fourth week , 2020 years 6 Mon 28 days

 

 

Matthew 10 focuses on the story of the trials the disciples face . Stories that appear sporadically in other synoptic gospels appear in a bundle in Matthew 10 . The names of twelve disciples are listed in verses 2-4 . After that, it is said that the disciples should live as nomadic evangelists until v. 15 . In verses 16-23 the story of the persecution that the disciples must face follows , and in verses 24-33 there is an admonition not to be afraid of the world's powerful . In verses 34-39 , there is a paradoxical sentence stating that he came to bring a sword, not peace, and that those who lose their lives for the sake of the gospel will gain their lives . At the end, the text of today's sermon, Matthew 10:40-11:1, appears .

Last 11:01 clause does leave a brief report about the whole situation, mainly Village 10: 40-42 , try to focus on the section . What do you think of when you treat a text like this ? Nothing is tricky to understand . Overall, it is read that because people who live as disciples of Jesus are rewarded, it means that we must live rightly like disciples in order to receive the reward . It is a story that we all know . The conclusion has already come out . But I'm going to take you to the deeper world of this text . I look forward to myself .

 

1) The story in front of today's text sounds horrible overall . Jesus disciples must face all kinds of difficulties . According to verse 10:14 , the disciples are favored by people . So when the disciples see Jesus , " Send the amount come to the center and the same " (16 sections ) He says . Verse 17 says that the disciples will be brought to the Inquisition at the Judaic Sanhedrin , and v . 18 says that they will be taken to the Roman governor . This story of persecution and suffering continues to verse 39 , the previous verse of today's sermon . These persecutions and sufferings were revealed in the early Christian history in the late first century when Matthew was written . Many disciples and Christians danghaetgo the hardships , finally Suspended until martyrdom . Until the end of the 1st and 2nd centuries of European historyAnd, for quite some time since then , the church has been treated as an unwelcome group . With this historical background, read verse 40 again .

 

Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me .

 

Was this word accepted by the disciples ? Two premises are required . First , the disciples must recognize that Jesus and their destiny are the same . Without such awareness, the phrase “ He who accepts you welcomes me ” is meaningless . Second , the disciples must see through the fact that Jesus is sent from God . This is an insight into the fact that God was with Jesus' teaching and destiny . That is, the ultimate life experience through Jesus . Given these two facts, the disciples can even accept the surprising fact that they are participating in the work of God . Based on the trials of the disciples, verse 40 can be expressed as follows . Those who reject the disciples of Jesus is to reject Jesus , the people who reject Jesus is to reject the one who sent him .If the disciples were fully aware of and believed in this fact, they would have survived their situation of being excluded . Disciples here refer not only to the twelve, but to all of us who have accepted the gospel of Jesus and entered the church community .

 

2) Section 41 is an additional explanation of section 40 . Who accept the prophet will receive a prophet of the award , who will receive a righteous man will receive a righteous man has the . It means that those who accept Jesus' disciples receive the corresponding reward . It must have come to the Jews with a very special meaning . To them, the prophets and the righteous were those who would sit in the highest places in the kingdom of heaven . There are two practical meanings of the text . One is that the dark world is brightened even a little by the prophets and the righteous , and the other is that people are comforted by the fact that the prophets and the righteous exist . So the Jews , as we do today , appreciated and took the prophets and the righteous with high regard, even if they did not live like the prophets and the righteous . Fortunately, there were those who received this so that the prophets and the righteous were able to take on their roles .It is correct to say that they will receive a decent reward because they participate in the lives of the prophets and the righteous indirectly . We want to live that way too .

The life of the prophet and the righteous as this verse 41 refers to is " seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness ." Called ( Matthew 6:33) correspond to Jesus' words . A prophet is a person who receives trust from God and tells the Word to people . The word of God they convey is the kingdom of God . The righteous are those who seek justice and justice . Justice and justice are the most obvious features of God's rule . Jesus disciples are those who are called to the lives of prophets and righteous people . When people reject their disciples, they reject the prophets and the righteous . Conversely, when they accept their disciples, they have accepted the kingdom of God and His righteousness . So they won't lose the prize . If the disciples knew this, they would have been able to withstand their situation of being excluded . If you don't know enough about it, you will be lamented .What standard of life are we living by now ?

 

3) The words of verses 40 and 41 would have given the disciples and early Christians great strength . They learned that their gospel ministry belongs to the kingdom of God . Verse 42 explains that more directly .

 

And whoever gives even a bowl of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple, I tell you the truth, he will never lose his reward .

 

Here the little ones refer to the disciples . It means that anyone who knows this and offers them even a bowl of cold water will not lose the prize . The disciples are literally little ones . They were not sitting in a position to be treated in the world . They are people who really have nothing to offer . There is no power , no money . There were no people who supported them . Only things that are uncomfortable to live await them . During the days of Matthew's Gospel, Christians began to be expelled from synagogues . To be expelled from the synagogue not only means that Judaism and delinquency are lost, but also that there is no institutional safeguard against persecution by the Roman Empire . There was no sign of resolving this situation anywhere . It is a stuffy reality . People are usually frustrated when they fall into this situation . Figuratively speaking , here are 10Suppose there is a young man who has been preparing for a job for years but has not been able to find a decent job . Your self-confidence will disappear and you will live with an empty heart . Repeatedly doing this can lead to depression .

According to the text, giving a bowl of cold water to insignificant disciples wins . In verse 41 , there is also an expression of receiving a prize . Luther did not say that he was awarded a prize, but translated as receiving a reward . Other English Bibles have also been translated as reward, meaning reward , not prize . A reward or reward, or similar, but reward is a word that emphasizes the price worthy of it . Awards can be done with honor , reward is going very practical . For example, receiving honors from the school, but can be done only with publicly traded , compensation to employees in the most significant achievements in the insurance companies are the same as those raised under reasonable money there . To be rewarded means to be sure of God's approval . So Jesus in this passage , " I tell you the truth, " he said represented . Greek “ Amen Lego WhiminIt is a translation of " . In the Gospels to highlight ' Amen ' it is used . In some sentences, ' Amen ' is repeated twice .

A small ruler and a bowl of cold water are words that communicate . Both are small things the world does not pay attention to . Words with similar meanings appear before them . That is the sparrow in Matthew 10:29 . Sparrow is one of two gees ' Aww come Sari " I was sold on that . Small chairs , water bowl , no one concerned with the two sparrows . But the body is related to these little things God's work , he says coming up the reward of God . Is that really so ? Do you nod to this word ? You may be nodded, but you really don't want to live as a small one , or live under a bowl of cold water or two sparrows .

 

4) Yes . I think it is difficult to live according to the words of Jesus unless the ultimate world to which these words are pointed is in hand . Small design student , cold water in a bowl of little things , and ' amen ' if you do not know the depth of God's tangled compensation can not but responded with life, you hear a hollow word .

Compared to the great power of the world, the disciples of Jesus, who belong to the little one, are actually very specially great ones . They are the ones who have done something special so that God's reward must be followed with a bowl of cold water provided to them . It is on a different level from the world . The world is judged primarily by what it sees outside . The larger and more objects you can handle, the more competent you are . About two months ago, there was the 21st general election , electing 300 members of the National Assembly from our country . There were many people who set out to become lawmakers . Thousands of people have voted to become lawmakers by counting each party's primary . Competition was fierce . The discretion given to lawmakers is enormous . Each legislator receives the human and material discretion from the state to destiny of a small business . After becoming a member of Congress, they compete again for higher positions .Other jobs work in a similar way .

This worldly way does not work for God's work, which is the essence of life . The small can be the big . The big one is rather the little one . Jesus said this many times . “ Whoever humbles himself like this little child is great in heaven ” ( Matthew 18:4). Those who are like children are the little ones in today's text, a bowl of cold water, and a sparrow . It is difficult to see such a statement as a defeatist's self-rationalization . The disciples were small from the viewpoint of the Jewish authorities or the Roman Empire at the time, but they were never small because they were called by Jesus, the Son of God, to preach the kingdom of God . Their lives were the greatest than anyone else because they were focused on the kingdom of God .

In this regard, the following facts are important . On a fundamental level, everyone is as small as a bowl of cold water . Even if there are slight differences in human lifespans, they are all just moments in time throughout the universe . This is the term for measuring acorns . I don't think Daegu Samteo Church is smaller than any other church in Seoul with hundreds of thousands of members . This is because large and small have no meaning in the dimension of the kingdom of God . I don't think America is stronger than poor North Korea . This is because in the long history of mankind, all are just acorns . The Roman Empire, the most powerful in the world for hundreds of years, is now without a trace . It is important who leans on the kingdom of God because it is so small that neither individual nor country can display business cards . The disciples were such people . They were so special that even a bowl of cold water served to them could be rewarded .

 

5) The last sentence of verse 42 of today's text is " That person will never lose the prize ." It is . I can imagine how great this word would have been to the disciples who lived in the Jewish tradition . They believed that when the time in this world is over, God's time begins . The world is " old eon ' and , in the future world to come is ' New eon " was . A world dominated by empire and violence cannot achieve true peace and rest in any way . They believed that eternal peace will be a reality because God directly rules the world to come . If you can be sure that God will not lose your reward in a world under which God will directly rule, your disciples will be able to withstand the situation as if it were a pardon . There are often parables about this in the Gospels .The church is like a bride waiting for Jesus, the bridegroom, to come . When the bridegroom comes, he tells us to be a wise virgin who prepares oil so that he can light a lamp ( Matthew 25:1-13). How can we endure life in this world today without this hope and excitement . The passage that describes God's complete hope for a new world in the most naked literary way is from Paul's 1 Thessalonians 4:13 or less . There Paul said that at Jesus' Second Coming, those who survived would be lifted up into the air . It's a very poetic and true description .

Some people might think that the reward you get right now is not the reward you get after you die . In the future, you will be rewarded in heaven, so you are told that you have to endure the difficulties you are facing now . Look carefully . To say that you will be receiving a prize in the future also implies that you have already received it here . This is important . Paul, II Corinthians 5:17 and said in verse . “ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, and the old has passed away, and behold, the new has become .” People looking bored out that the reward of God is given to the life of the disciples ' already ' will be found also in fact it received the reward here . Because in his life ' already ' everything is new . The disciples were those who discovered in Jesus a new life that corresponds to the kingdom of God . We are the ones who want to join this rank of faith .

To those who ask me if you live the way you preached , I cannot answer aloud . You can answer by listening to a parable in a small voice . From October last year, I drink a glass of water every morning with my eyes open . The water is ice in the Alps ( by courier ) came , drink the feeling came from, or Baikal Lake . At that moment, I am filled with life . Jesus Christ is the cold ( living ) water from God . By drinking him I am filled with life . To be full means that you no longer need to make up for the life of God . It ' already ' a reward given to me by God .Not only have I been promised a reward, but I have already received it, so I am trying to live a life faithful to a bowl of cold water .