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 Sermon > Official Service |
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Title |
The Love of the Father - Feast of Harvest Sunday Evening Service - Holy Communion |
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Speaker |
Rev. Jaerock Lee |
Bible |
John 6: 53- 55 |
Date |
2013-07-07 |
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Passage
[John 6: 53- 55]
"So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. [54] "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. [55] "For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink."
It feels like we've just had the 2013 New Year's service, but it's already July and we are already having the Feast of Harvest Sunday.
The people in the world also say the time flies like an arrow, and the flow of our time in the Lord is also becoming faster.
Feeling the same rapid flow of time, the unbelievers talk about the meaninglessness of life, but Manmin members have a completely different feeling.
Before the Father God, you have been piling up faith, hope, and love, and your effort and faithfulness to become sanctified in each day of your lives.
Every month, every week, everyday, and every hour, minute, and second of your lives you have been filling up with the grace of God.
Especially in this year, you have been busier in the march of faith than any other years.
God gave us the time of grace on Easter, and you prayed very earnestly for three months since the beginning of this year.
Then, you took no leisure to rest because we had the separation of spirit in May, and since then you have been preparing for the leadership conference in July.
But it doesn't mean you had a difficult time.
In the hope of Heaven and happiness given through the separation of spirit, the time passed by very quickly.
How thankful we are that we can look up to the things above while we go through human cultivation on this earth!
Our faith has increased as we have been changed by the truth day by day.
We have fullness of testimonies and thanksgiving for we are always protected and blessed.
And the final outcome of this kind of time we spend on this earth will be the glory and rewards of Heaven.
God the Father is preparing to give us the glory that cannot be compared to what we have accomplished, rewards that cannot be compared to what we have done, and happiness that we cannot imagine.
Today, on this Feast of Harvest Sunday, I hope you will remember this love and grace of the Father and offer up the deep aroma of thanksgiving.
I pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that you will run your march of faith until you meet the Lord, with hope and happiness that increase day by day.
Main
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
In this message, let me talk about two aspects of the love of God the Father.
First, it is the love of the Father who has given us Jesus Christ.
John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life."
The precious Son of God came to this earth in a human body.
He preached the gospel of the kingdom of heaven to the souls and saved them from diseases and various pains with His great power.
Eventually, to redeem us from our sins He received the wretched punishment of the cross.
What would you have felt if you had directly seen Jesus being flogged and moaning, with His whole body covered with blood?
Also, what if you had eye contact with Jesus who had such desperate eyes for the souls, when He was hung on the cross?
I believe the shock of it would not be forgotten for the rest of your lives.
The memory of the eyes of Jesus would be vividly reminded whenever you hear that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to save us.
You would burst into tears thinking of the love of Jesus who was hung on the cross and of the love of the Father, who for us had given His only begotten Son unto death on our behalf.
Some people have the following kind of thoughts.
"Did Jesus really suffer the pains? It would have been easy for Him to bear with tiredness, hunger, and even the sufferings of the cross."
But it is never the case.
Though He is the Son of God, He as a human still had to suffer all the pains as they were, because He came to redeem the sinners from their sins.
He suffered from hunger, tiredness, cold and heat. And the pains of being torn by the scourging and being nailed through the hands and feet, were felt the same way any ordinary man would have felt it.
He confined all His divinity in the small physical body, and He felt all the stuffiness of this physical space, and He missed the Father God increasingly more greatly.
He had great concerns for those souls who had weak faith and also for the disciple who would betray Him.
Before He took the cross, He had to pray until His sweat became like drops of blood.
But He did not try to avoid any of those painful moments.
It's because He knew so very well the love of the Father who wants to open the way of salvation for the souls that were going the way of death.
Of course, Jesus had the same love as the Father.
God the Father also mourned so much when Jesus was taking the cross.
While He was on the cross, even the sun in the sky lost the light and it became dark. When Jesus breathed His last, there was an earthquake and the rocks split open.
We received salvation because the Father took up such pains and gave Jesus to the cross.
We gained the way to go into the eternal kingdom of Heaven being set free from the eternal punishments of Hell.
How thankful we must be!
And how amazing this is!
I hope you will etch this love in your heart so that you will not forget it even for a moment.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
The love of God the Father that we have to remember, secondly, is the love of giving us a true shepherd.
Latter part of John 10:11 says, "I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep."
A good shepherd would not spare any kind of effort for the flock.
If ferocious animals attack, he would protect the sheep risking his own life.
In spiritual sense, a true shepherd would take care of the sheep with all his life as well.
Today, there are many churches and many pastors, but it is not easy to meet with a true shepherd who would protect the flock with all his life and lead them to spirit.
If the shepherd is a hired hand who seeks his own, he does not really have to teach the flock to live a holy life being distinguished from the world and to enter into the narrow gate.
He can just teach that they will be saved if they say they believe. He can tell them, "Be at peace!" and "May you receive blessings."
But because a true shepherd is one who works for the flock, he will teach about sin, righteousness, and judgment.
You must understand what a tremendous blessing it is that you are always being taught to be holy and pure, and you are learning to cast off sins in your life of faith.
But teaching the truth does not necessarily make the teacher a true shepherd.
1 Corinthians 4:15 says, "For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel."
A true shepherd is not just a teacher who only teaches with words.
The true shepherd is a person who shows the example of practicing the truth and supplies the flock with the strength to act.
The world is becoming increasingly darkened, but there are still those who preach the truth being awake and receiving the works of the Holy Spirit.
But there are not many people who can strengthen the souls who are in sins to practice the truth so that they can gain life.
If you can meet with such a shepherd as a sheep, it is such a great blessing. You can also serve him like a father for he is guiding you to gain spiritual life.
For the flock to walk in the light, the shepherd has to pay the price, just as Jesus Christ paid the price with His life to open the way of salvation.
As the shepherd of this church, I have been storing up countless prayers and fasting so that you could gain the power to practice the truth.
I taught the true will of the Father by having deep communication with the Father God, and I have clung to Him to open the spiritual realm so that you could have more hope of Heaven.
Whenever it was necessary I showed you greater manifestations of the power, drove away the darkness with light, and supplied you with the strength to change.
For the flock who sinned, I brought down forgiveness by paying the price of suffering pains that were like death itself.
Furthermore, there were souls who said they repented of sins leading to death but could not turn away completely. For them, I had to cling to God once again with so many tears and so much mourning.
To make way for just one more soul to be saved I could not rest my mind. I had to lead just one more person to the rock of faith, from the rock to the spirit, and from the spirit to the whole spirit, and from the whole spirit to reach the fullest measure.
I offer up aroma of earnest prayer to the Father day and night.
I am trying all my best to lead the flock entrusted to me into New Jerusalem, no matter what kinds of sacrifice I have to make, and even if it means I have to dedicate my life again and again.
Now, many of you are standing on the rock of faith and have come into the spirit, and many more of you are coming into spirit.
At this end time when it is difficult even just to receive salvation, you are leading a life in faith in a church that is taking hold of New Jerusalem. How thankful it is!
I hope you will always give thanks for the love of God who has given us a precious church and a true shepherd so that you could lead a proper Christian life.
Conclusion
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we have Holy Communion in this second part of the service.
The night before Jesus took the cross, while He was having the supper with His disciples, He said the bread was the flesh of the Son of Man, and the wine, His blood.
He told them to take it in remembrance of Him.
It means we have to remember the sufferings of the cross of Jesus and think of how we should live our lives.
Just as we share the bread and wine of the Holy Communion, we can gain eternal life when we eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man.
Now, what is the meaning of eating the flesh of the Son of Man?
John 1:1 says that the Word is God.
In John 1:14 it says that the Word became flesh and came down to this earth, and it was Jesus.
So, to eat the flesh of the Son of Man is to learn and take in the Word of God.
It is not just to know it as knowledge but to change our heart with the Word.
We have to cast off evil and cultivate goodness and love.
In order to eat the flesh of the Son of Man, we have to drink His blood at the same time.
It is much like we have to drink liquid when we eat food.
The nutrients can be absorbed by the body and we eliminate body wastes only when there is liquid.
In the same way, when we learn the word of God, we must not just remember it in our head, but we have to try to practice what we've learned.
We have to obey the words that tell us to do, not do, keep, or cast away certain things.
Only in doing so, the words of God that you learned will become life and power in you.
Brothers and sisters, the believers in the early church tried to gather everyday and participated in Holy Communion as Jesus commanded.
Every time the apostles broke the bread with the believers, they must have remembered Jesus who was breaking the bread for them not so long ago.
Also, they must have remembered the sufferings that Jesus took while being hung on the cross.
So, every time they had the Holy Communion, I believe they must have been so earnest to fulfill the will of Jesus.
I hope you will participate in this Holy Communion with such earnestness of the apostles.
Do not make the sufferings of Jesus meaningless. The shepherd is earnestly pleading with you, and do not let his voice slip through your ears. Cast away all lingering attachment to the meaningless, fleshly things and just look at the things above.
I pray in the name of the Lord that, in doing so, you will become pure brides of the Lord our bridegroom and be at His bosom. |
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