Title: Sow tomorrow in today / Matthew 6:33-34
What I'm going to tell you today is that over the years the way we think has changed and the breadth of human beings has changed. When we were living in difficult times, our faith was narrow. We need to be a little bigger. You need to dig a puddle wider and deeper. The church must also be deep and wide. Hopefully, the Riverside Church will be in charge of this one axis, and the Kyungdong Church will also be willing to take the responsibility together.
Have you heard of this? 'Morning hyung' Human. I don't like it very much. When is it easy if you work every day? There are also 'evening hyungs' humans. 'Morning hyung' means a human being during the day, and 'evening hyung' means a human being at night. Both are good, but I was wondering if there was any way to combine night and day, so what I came up with was a 'dawn-type' person. Dawn is the point at which the night ends and the day begins at the same time. Dawn is the point where the beginning and the end meet. The past night ends here and a new day begins at the same time. That is why the dawn is important, and I think those who pray at dawn receive blessings.
It reminds me of a story I heard directly from an unbeliever while visiting.
What are the legs? God, who is the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, saw the world he had made, saw that the world was too turbid and fell into the trap of death, and decided that an over bridge was necessary between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of the world to save the whole world He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world, and that is the bridge called the cross. What is the cross? It is the bridge of life. The bridge where the old sinful history ends and new life begins through resurrection, the place where the old ends and the new begins, the point where the kingdom of the world goes and the kingdom of heaven begins, the point where the dawn ends and the day begins, this is the secret of the cross is. How did you prove this secret? Those who died on the cross were raised to life. The cross is the beginning of the life of resurrection, which conceived eternal life. Every day, today is the day of the cross, the day the future of the resurrection begins, and today should be the dawn every day. I recommend Dawn of the Cross.
When I was in my 30s, I went to Germany and lived there for 10 years. He often guided me to the gas chambers where the Nazis killed Jews. When I left the gas chamber, I used to look around the barbed wire. I used to read a book written by a Jewish psychologist named Victor Frankl, who had survived the gas chamber, and the content was that the people who woke up at dawn every day in the concentration camp and looked at the same barbed wire yesterday and today were desperate and died day by day before being liberated. , For those who greeted the morning while looking at the wild chrysanthemums over the barbed wire, those wild chrysanthemums became hope and all came to life. It's a simple story. No matter how difficult it is, if there is even a thin blade of hope behind the difficult reality, we will never die. If the cross is today's reality, the cross hurts. Resurrection, the eternal light, conceived in a painful cross, awaits the pain of childbirth. I live with this fact alone.
The conductor is Jesus Christ, and the church can make an orchestra of faith by taking the Bible as sheet music and working together under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We've left that to all of us. That hope is starting today at the cross. I would like to ask you a favor. Those of you who are good at music, those who draw well, those who speak well, those who have a good heart, write all of them before you die. Give it to those who don't have any. Sing to the point where you can't hear your voice, so do the service. When I go, I leave everything behind. Poor people leave their poverty behind. Because of the riches of heaven. If you leave a disease behind, God will take care of it. Not only the good but the bad are all left behind. This is God's blessing.
Whenever I think of the Garden of Eden, I don't know how great the wisdom God has given us. When there are difficult things, realizing the truth of life while going through the difficulties, gathering together as a family to sing praises when there are happy things, having fun when it is fun, and having fun when it is difficult. There will be no fun if we become God. Humans cannot become God, but even if they do, they give up being human. Human beings have sinned stupidly.
Even today, in this world, the tree of God called the tree of knowledge is still next to us, and the fruit of the tree of life is abundantly open next to it. Let's give thanks to God for allowing us to enjoy the highest value and the highest happiness among His creatures. Do not try to eat the forbidden fruit. As stewards, we eat, spend, serve, and live joyfully. If we let go, God accepts us.
The Reformer Luther told us a story that tells us the wisdom of life. There is a bridge on the top of a mountain that only one sheep can pass through, and when the two sheep stand on either side supporting each other, how can they both live? It means that if one of the two ducks down and passes over it, then the other passes by and it lives. If you lie down, both will live. God came into this world and fell on his face on the cross. The cause of conflict in our society is that no one bows down. Who should lie down? Those who have it must first bow down. Let those who are strong fall down first. Let those in the know get down first. Faith is like that. The way our society and the church can live is if those who came first fall down and pass us by, we too will live and win-win. Just as God first fell on the hill of Golgotha.
I will tell you a story that serves as a model for my life that I heard when I was in seminary. There was a father who had 17 sheep. He made a will to his three sons. He asked the eldest son to inherit half of the 17, the second son 3/1, and the youngest son 9/1. The three sons started fighting over an indivisible number. A neighbor lived a poor friend who had only one sheep, and he just gave one of his sheep to his fighting brothers. It was only then that the three sons were able to share the eldest son with 9, the second son with 6, and the youngest son with two equally. Elders, priests, deacons, everyone must realize this fact.
Do you know why the world has wars and conflicts? Because I can't share. God gave us enough food. However, humans have not developed a way to divide. It's because of greed. The God who took on the human body of Jesus, united in us to become 18, divides them all and says, ?쏤ollow me.??Then the world will change, your family will change, and you will be saved. It is all about becoming one. One is wisdom that saves countless people. Now is the time of joy to taste the future ahead. I hope you always live like that. The place of that time is the place called the cross. It is the place where the resurrection is prepared.