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 Sermon > Official Service |
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Title |
Flesh and Blood of the Son of Man - Thanksgiving Sunday Evening (Holy Communion) |
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Speaker |
Rev. Jaerock Lee |
Bible |
John 6:53- 55 |
Date |
2014-11-16 |
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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. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink."
[Introduction]
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
All over the country, and all over the world, Manmin members see the power of God not just in the Bible. They always see, hear, and experience the power of God in their lives. But even though such great power is manifested in this church, for you to be able to experience those works, you must have the qualifications, too.
Those being that you must walk in the Light. In other words, you have to eat the flesh and of Son of Man and drink His blood as in today's reading passage. For this Thanksgiving Sunday we have Holy Communion after the sermon. In the Holy Communion, I hope you will check yourself as to how well you have eaten the flesh and drunk the blood of the Son of Man during this past year.
Also, I hope you will think about what kinds of life we have to live now, since we have received such great love of God. In doing so I pray in the name of the Lord that you will always experience the power of God and also manifest it yourselves by becoming glorious workers of God.
[Main]
Dear brothers and sisters,
Let us first briefly review the spiritual meaning of eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of Man. To eat the flesh of the Son of Man is to take in the word of God. John 1:1 says 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 the words of the Bible as knowledge. It is to cultivate the Word in our hearts and is also to change our heart with the Word.
To eat the flesh of the Son of Man this way we must drink His blood at the same time. This means that in addition to learning the word of God, we must have the deeds of actually practicing the word.
It is much like we have to drink liquid when we eat food. We can absorb the nutrients and pass bodily waste only when we also consume liquid. It is similar when we learn the word of God. We not only have to realize and keep the Word in mind, but we also have to practice it.
We have to obey God's words that tell us to do, not do, keep, or cast away certain things. Only by doing so, the word of God that you learned will actually become your life and strength. To the extent that you obey, your heart will be filled with the truth and the untruth will be removed.
Hatred will go away to the extent that we fill it with love. Arrogance will be cast away to the extent that humbleness enters in. As meekness fills, hot temper will go away.
Brothers and sisters,
I preach about eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of Man every time we celebrate one of the feasts. Then, how much flesh and blood of the Son of Man have you eaten and drunk? If we can measure the characters of your heart with a machine, how much love would you have? How much hatred do you have left? If you've been believers for 10 or 20 years, and yet if you have 90% hatred remaining and if your love is not even 10% filled, does this mean you have properly eaten the flesh and drunk the blood of the Son of Man? If your temper, arrogance, lust, and greed are easily agitated, can we say you have led a proper life in faith?
No matter how long you attend church, your spiritual faith cannot grow unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man. Your knowledge may increase, however your faith will be the same or even backslide.
You might even be tempted by the world, and your faith to receive salvation could be taken away. You can say you have true faith to receive salvation only when you actually show the effort to practice the Word.
1 John 1:7 says, "but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin." Here, to walk in the Light is to practice and obey the word of God.
The sinless Jesus has already shed His blood to pay the price for our sins. But to receive the grace of His precious blood, we have to walk in the Light. The meaning of this is the same as saying that there is life in us only when we eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man.
Dear brothers and sisters,
Since you have accepted the Lord, if you have been eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of Man well, your faith should have grown up very well. And only when you grow up this way, you can eventually possess perfect eternal life.
Here, we can realize one more thing. When Jesus preached these verses 2,000 years ago, people at that time couldn't understand it well. As He said they had to eat and drink His flesh and blood, even the disciples found it difficult to understand. Perhaps, it might have been easier to understand if He had said, "You have to keep the word of God in mind and practice it so you can gain eternal life."
But why did He speak in symbolism saying they had to eat His flesh and drink His blood to gain eternal life? It was so that we could realize the love of the Father God and the Lord contained in it. It was so that we could understand that gaining eternal life by practicing the truth was made possible only through the sacrifice of Jesus.
Sinners cannot get eternal life just by learning the Word of God and practicing it. If we cannot be forgiven of our original sin and self-committed sins, we are still sinners even though we practice the word from some point on.
There had to be the sacrifice of Jesus for there to be forgiveness of sins. He had to give His flesh and blood all together, like a lamb for atonement. A way was opened such that anyone who believes in this fact and dwells in the truth can be saved. For this reason, Jesus explained with the allegory of flesh and blood of the Son of Man in explaining the way of salvation, so that we could remember His sacrifice and love.
In cultivating human beings God does not say to us, "I am conducting human cultivation, and you humans only should go through pains and sorrow to learn the relativity of things." God and the Lord both also pay such a great price of sacrifice to lead us to salvation and blessings.
Dear brothers and sisters,
When I was a child, we considered grains of rice so precious to the extent that we would feel guilty if we had thrown away even one grain. The adults sometimes washed the rice that went bad and they ate it. It was because we were very poor, but more than that, it was because they thought of the efforts of the farmers. Suppose the parents who are farming in the countryside work so hard for the whole year and send the harvested crops to their children in the city. How should the children treat the crops? They should consider each grain so precious because they know the hard work of their parents.
You should have this kind of attitude when you learn the word of God. He gave us the promise that we will receive eternal life only if we eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man. The Bible also clearly tells us of the ways to be protected and to receive blessings.
Before we sinners could receive such words of promises, Jesus had to sacrifice Himself in a miserable death. Also, the words of promise in the 66 books of the Bible contain the tears of the Father God who endured for such a long time hoping to get true children.
Thinking of this grace and love, we cannot just hear and forget the word that tells us to eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man. Moreover, I clung to God for seven years to receive the spiritual meanings contained in the Word of God.
I can never forget the emotions I had when I first began to receive the interpretations of the Bible after asking God in countless fasting and all-night prayers. He explained to me difficult passages of the Bible, the Message of the Cross, the Measure of Faith, about Heaven and Hell, Spirit Soul and Body, and about the book of Genesis and Revelation.
As I preached these messages that God had revealed to me, there were many persecutions, too. But I never succumbed to it. It's because I was convinced that the members could understand the deep heart of the Father and go into the spiritual realm only with those words. Because it was given after 7-years of tremendous effort, each of the words was as precious as life to me.
And you can just listen to them and make bread of them, without having had to toil so much, so how thankful you must be! I hope you will with all your strength eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man and keep the love of the Father deep in your heart. Do not just hear the words and store them as knowledge, but I urge you to change yourself as you listen to the messages. When you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man this way, you can always experience the power of the living God and even practice it yourself.
[Conclusion]
Dear brothers and sisters,
For the last 32 years, I have never doubted the promise given by God. They are not just the promises in the Bible, but also the promises given to this church.
Sometimes in the reality of it all, it looked like things were going the opposite way of God's promises. Sometimes I thought while desperately waiting, "Will this promise be fulfilled tomorrow, or next week?" but it was not fulfilled for several years. But as I believed the promises of the faithful God until the end, God fulfilled His words at the most appropriate time and received glory.
Also, even during the course of such waiting, the works of God's power manifested in this church never ceased. God confirmed that He is with us by showing us increasingly greater power and new things as the days went by. As I went through such processes year after year, my trust in the Father only increased, and the Father's trust in me also increased.
And now, you church members also look up to the Father with the eyes of faith, which I have, and you have been achieving the standardization of spirit together. The conditions for the world evangelism and the construction of the Grand Sanctuary are being made. From now until the Lord comes back again, God the Father will lead you to spirit and whole spirit with greater grace than before.
To the extent that you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, and to the extent that you are united with the shepherd with trust and love, you will go into spirit and whole spirit quickly and receive the guarantee of God in all things. You yourself, your families, and your workplaces will be blessed, but above all, the power of God will be manifested through you.
As in Mark 16:17-18, you can even manifest such signs as driving out demons, healing sicknesses, and breaking the synagogue of Satan. God will also fulfill His providence of the end time as He planned since before the ages, and He will receive glory through you to the fullest extent. I pray in the name of the Lord that you will all be used as such glorious instruments. |
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