Title: Duty of Saints (1 Thessalonians 5:12-15)
Contents
The first is to cherish the leaders of the church the most.
Verses 12 and 13 are translated as follows if you look at the joint translation of the Bible.
“Fellow brothers and sisters, I beg you. Respect those who labor with you and guide and admonish you in obedience to the Lord’s commands. Consider what they do, love them and honor them with utmost respect. And be at peace with one another. Please."
The authority of church leaders does not come from men, but from God. It has nothing to do with the degree of wealth, the degree of learning, or the age of life, but because God established it, the authority of a leader rests with God.
There can be no problems in a family that values parents the most.
And there can be no problem in a school that values teachers the most.
The same goes for churches that value their leaders.
Don't we think of church leaders and salespeople on the same line today?
The second is to become a peacemaker.
Wherever people gather, there are peacemakers and peacebreakers.
Based on the text, we can see that peace is created when we discipline the lazy, encourage the timid, support the weak, and treat everyone with patience.
When the peace among us is broken, we often do not have patience when dealing with people. We need to compare ourselves with the Lord who achieved endless silence for sinners until he died on the cross.
Isn't Christ's perseverance of endless silence changing this world infested with all kinds of sinners?
Each of our homes and churches should value our parents the most, and also the leaders of the church, and create a life that always creates peace.
⊙ Prayer after the sermon
⊙ The main prayer
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【 Family Worship with Adults 】 October 11, 1997
saint's attitude
⊙ Apostles’ Creed: Together
⊙ Hymn: 358
⊙ Prayer: in the family
⊙ Main text: 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22
“How can a fountain bring forth sweet and bitter waters from one hole?” (James 3:11).
In today's text, Paul is telling the Thessalonians that it is God's will to always rejoice, pray always, and live with thanksgiving in any situation.
A spring cannot produce sweet and bitter water at the same time from the same hole. It's natural.
But for some reason, sweet and bitter waters pour out of the saints' mouths.
A Christian who loses joy in life, builds a wall with prayer, and is not thankful is the same as losing the meaning of life.
It is like a ship drifting to and fro in the sea depending on the direction of the wind.
Christian joy, thanksgiving, and prayer are mysteries hidden in Christ.
This is our own secret that the world cannot understand.
To us like this, the devil always encourages us to criticize, slander, and complain in any situation. Criticism, slander, and complaining are the so-called three major strategies of the devil.
When Jesus came to Jericho, he said to Zacchaeus, who, eager to see Jesus even from afar, stretched out his short neck from a sycamore tree and looked at Jesus.
Zacchaeus, come down, and I must stay at your house today. Do we have that kind of feeling of Zacchaeus, who was moved and rejoiced at the words of Jesus?
Before meeting Jesus, Zacchaeus enjoyed the joy of accumulating wealth, but after meeting Jesus, Zacchaeus shared his wealth with others, and his heart was full of joy and overflowing with gratitude.
Christian joy and gratitude are absolute, not relative.
The joy and gratitude that come from wealth, learning, or social status that make up who I am today are relative, but this mystery hidden in Jesus, who is the source of our life and our eternal hope, is eternal.
It is God's will for us to rejoice, pray always, and live with thanksgiving in any situation. Let's become us who fulfill this will every day.
⊙ Prayer after the sermon
⊙ The main prayer
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【 Family Worship with Adults 】 October 18, 1997
Stephen's words
⊙ Apostles’ Creed: Together
⊙ Hymn: 490
⊙ Prayer: in the family
⊙ Main text: Acts 7:54-60
There are many characters in the Bible, but very few of them make wills just before death. Among them, if we look at the last words of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, in today's text, first, there is hope.
“Lord Jesus, receive my soul” (verse 59).
This means that the end of our life does not mean the end of our lives, but that there is another world after death.
Life in this world is like a pilgrimage after a short stay.
“You do not know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a morning mist that appears for a moment and then vanishes (James 4:14).
As these words say, the life we live on this earth cannot last forever and is only for a very short period of time. What will protect us when we end our lives of joy and sorrow from birth to life? Can the wealth, power, or honor that I have cherished and cherished all this time can protect me? Our hope is none other than Jesus. Stephen entrusted his life to the Lord Jesus because of the fact that he had a hometown to return to even at the moment he was bleeding and dying at the scene of martyrdom.
We must put our hope in Jesus as well as Stephen and hold onto this hope until the last moment.
Second, the words of forgiveness.
On the road of life where he came empty-handed and had to go empty-handed, Stephen lived a life of rich faith until the last moment as a man of God. He showed a willingness to forgive the enemies who threw stones at him with a generous heart.
If one of us living today suffers material and mental loss because of the Gospel, what will we say?
If we are disciples of Christ, we will have to live a rich life of faith with a generous heart like Stephen in today's harsh life.
The reason that God has made us exist in this world today too is to testify to Christ, who is the true hope of all people in the world, and to make us a grain of wheat like the Lord.
We must be all of us who change this world, which has many condemnations but lacks forgiveness, with the words of Christ.
⊙ Prayer after the sermon
⊙ The main prayer
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【 Family Worship with Adults 】 October 25, 1997
fruitful life
⊙ Apostles’ Creed: Together
⊙ Hymn: 307
⊙ Prayer: in the family
⊙ Main text: Luke 6:37-49
Time flows like a flowing stream. Seeds sown in spring grow luxuriantly through summer, and then you can see that the seeds are beginning to ripen in autumn, the season of fruit.
When we look at these ripened grains, we can see that our hearts, not farmers, are somehow overflowing with abundance.
How much more so, our hearts are so rich, how happy is the heart of a farmer who plowed the field in early spring, sowed seeds, and worked hard to take care of it?
In today's text, Jesus says that a tree can be known by its fruit.
There are two types of fruit.
One is good fruit and the other is bad fruit.
Good fruit comes from good trees and bad fruit comes from bad trees.
To put this into human words, a good life comes from the accumulated goodness of the heart, and an evil life comes from the accumulated evil of the heart.
We are all human. People are said to be social animals.
This means that we need to live in harmony with each other.
In this world, the majority of people set their own standards of judgment.
They are emotional and preoccupied with prejudice and self-righteousness. We set our own standards in our relationships with others, and if we do not meet our standards, we easily condemn others.
Also in the text, Jesus is talking about a person who exposes the faults of others without seeing their own faults.
If we follow the will of the Bible, we can see that man should not be placed in a position above or below man. Therefore, we cannot stand in the seat of condemning and judging others.
All I have to do is to do my best in my own life silently every day.
We need to reconsider our relationship with our neighbors. By cultivating and cultivating our hearts with the Word of God every day, we must become people who resemble the Lord who saved us.