Title: Get Up and Stand on Your Feet
Contents
Acts 26:13-18 Get up and stand on your feet
There are things parents go through when raising young children. This is a time when a child is still young and cannot walk properly and is just starting to learn to walk. The child staggers and tries to walk on one foot or two. Then, if your feet do not have strength and you are still trying to fall without a proper balance, your parents will quickly catch you. And if you try to fall again while walking back and forth again, your parents quickly catch you again.
However, if the time for the child to walk alone has passed and the child does not try to walk on his own, the parents will use a method to make the child walk on their own for the growth of the child. Hold the child's hand and say, "Go! Don't step!” Whether you make them walk, buy a walker, or lure them with something to eat, say, “Come on Baby!” You can train your child to walk on his own or, in any case, to get up and walk on his own in various ways.
But now that the child has become a boy and it is time to get up and walk on his own, there are children who do not try to get up on their own, stare at their mothers and fathers, and cry on their faces. In other words, it is a sign that parents want to raise them up. Of course, when children are young, parents quickly raise them. However, when the children are all grown up and have to stand up on their own and stand on their own feet, but they fall and keep crying, Mom and Dad are angry. And “this guy!” I even slap my ass once in a while.
In telling this story, we can compare the relationship between God, the Spirit Parent, and us as His children. God continues to hold us when our faith is still young enough to stand up and walk on our own. But when the time comes, even when we need to get up and walk on our own, if we keep falling down and looking at God, God sometimes allows us to stand up on our own. In other words, sometimes God helps us, but when our faith grows, it also makes us empower ourselves to live.
As I said last week, there are many conflicting ideas in the Bible. In particular, when looking at the history of the church, Calvin's theory of predestination and Arminius's theory of will conflict with each other. The most representative theological thought of Calvin, the founder of the Presbyterian Church, is the theory of predestination. The theory of predestination is that God has already predestined everything in this world 100%. It means that you and your fate have already been predestined. It means that God has predestined who will go to heaven and who will go to hell. Of course, this theory of predestination comes from the Bible.
However, a man named Arminius spoke of willism against Calvin's ideas, which is the idea that God's predestination is determined by human will. In Calvin's time, Arminius's theory of will was condemned as heresy. As a result, many Arminians went to jail and even had to be fired. Today, Presbyterianism has a theology of predestination, whereas Methodism has a theology of willism. Of course, volitionism is also an idea that can be understood biblically.
Let's take an example. God created the first humans, Adam and Eve, and they ate the forbidden fruit and fell. As a result, death of the spirit, death of the body, and the curse of life came upon them. Did God foresee the fall of Adam and Eve? So, if Adam and Eve fell under God's predestination, rather Adam and Eve would have to blame God for their fall, and they would be able to plead with God that they were not at fault. And if God had foreordained the fall of Adam and Eve before creation, God would become a bad God who created the sin of Adam and Eve.
However, we do not understand the fall of Adam and Eve in this way.
I don't interpret it. Rather, it is explained by will. In other words, God gave Adam and Eve free will, but Adam and Eve misused their free will and fell, so the God of justice had no choice but to punish them. In other words, although the idea of predestination is strong in the Bible, not only the theory of predestination, but also the theory of will. These two ideas seem to conflict with each other, but rather, they are complementary to each other.
If you stick to the theory of predestination, you may fall into this error. “God has already predestined who will go to heaven and who will go to hell, so what is the need to evangelize? Those who are destined to go to heaven will go to heaven, and those who are destined to hell will go to hell no matter how hard they try... And what is the need for human effort for my future? It has to be what God has predestined, and it doesn’t have to be if it has not been predestined!”
Ladies and gentlemen, this erroneous idea derived from the theory of predestination is definitely not God's will. Human effort and deeds should never be denied because of the theory of predestination. However, emphasizing only the will can weaken God's sovereignty and lead to anthropocentric thinking. And furthermore, it leads to the unbelieving and atheistic idea that I can do everything on my own without God. Therefore, our right faith means that we must fulfill our own right will, effort, deeds and practices in order to follow God's will while believing in God's predestination.
In order to receive God's love and blessings, we must be zealous and make efforts on our own. There is a saying, “Heaven helps those who help themselves.” Yes. God sustains those who are zealous. To those who strive to be honest, God gives the spirit of honesty. In this foreign land, God guides those who do not dissipate and strive to live uprightly as a child of God.
In today's text, we see a man named Saul. This man was not a good believer in Jesus from the beginning. At first, he imprisoned those who believed in Jesus and persecuted them very badly. But something mysterious happened to him. One day he went to a city called Damascus and tried to imprison those who believed in Jesus there. But as they were taking some people along the road, suddenly a light brighter than the noonday sunlight shone on them.
They all fell to the ground in the bright light. Then I heard a voice from heaven. “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick back the thorns.” “Lord, who are you?” “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. Get up and stand on your feet.”
After this experience, Saul realized that Jesus was the Savior of mankind. And from then on, I began to preach Jesus diligently. Then came many dangers for him. It felt so powerful. But each time he got up and got up again. He got up again even if he was beaten, he rises again if he is stoned, he rises again even if he is shipwrecked, and he rises again after being imprisoned. With God's strength, he kept rising and rising again and again.
God gave him feet to stand up and walk. It means to run on that foot. Of course, there were times when he became discouraged while preaching the gospel. There were times when I was afraid. There were times when I just wanted to sit down. But God appeared to him and encouraged him. Saul was encouraged by God and got up again. As God had said to him, “Stand on your feet,” he gave himself strength and got up.
Gentlemen, there is no need to sit down and lament that no one is helping me in this foreign land. There is no need to complain or curse at others. I have to stand on my feet, relying on God. You must cultivate your own happiness. God sustains those who work hard. God gives opportunities to those who work hard. God promises tomorrow to those who work hard. So let yourself stand up. If I keep sitting down, it's only my loss.
You have to get up and walk. You have to get up and run. You must get up and move forward. Sometimes when you fall, you have to get up again. The Bible says “For though the righteous shall fall seven times, he will rise again, but the wicked shall fall with calamity” (Proverbs 24:16). We are righteous people who fall and rise again. The phrase 'Seven Jeon-Gi', which rises up again after falling down seven times, is exactly what I am talking about. Conclusion. The Lord who appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus appears to us today and speaks to us. “Get up and stand on your feet. Get up and stand on your feet.”