Title: The Secret to Maintaining Grace
Contents
Text: John 3:22-30
Last week, there was a revival meeting with Director Choi Se-woong.
I was very happy and thankful to see the members diligently attending and receiving grace.
I received a lot of grace from the revival meeting, but in order to maintain the grace I received, there are some things I have to throw away.
① We must give up laziness.
“Sleep a little, sleep a little, lie down a little longer, and your poverty will come like a robber” (Proverbs 6:10). In order to keep what we have been given grace and to develop our faith more maturely, we must not be complacent with what we have received, but do our best. You must be diligent in attending worship and be zealous.
② We must let go of our pride.
If you are arrogant, knowing that you have been blessed with grace, received a gift, or had a spiritual experience, and you are arrogant, the grace you received becomes useless because the devil works, and rather, the grace you received becomes a root cause and ruins it. Therefore, I hope that those who have received grace will be more humble, more obedient, and more silently serving.
③ You must throw away the blood.
When you receive grace, you need to be careful with your blood. If you use blood, grace will be destroyed. The devil prevents the saints from attending the seat of grace in the first place. Even if you attend the 2nd lane, you will not receive grace. Third, if you have received grace, you will pour out the grace you have received by exercising your blood and temper. I have to bury my bloody self at the foot of the cross and let only Jesus live in me.
④ We must get rid of envy.
We need to be careful because it is a sin to blaspheme the Holy Spirit to be jealous and slander rather than celebrate because the grace that others have received is greater than the grace we received. We need to break the habit of making fun of other people's things.
Today, I will testify of the Word under the title of “Envy and Jealousy,” which is the fourth thing to be thrown away.
Most people don't like it when someone else is more popular than them. But John the Baptist was not like that. He was the one who baptized Jesus, and as the son of a priest, he had a good family and was older than Jesus. Although his name was so famous that he was called ‘John the Baptist’, in verse 30, “He must increase and I must decrease”, and we can see the greatness of John in his humble words. Jesus called this John, “Among those born of women there is none greater than John the Baptist.”
If we look at the greatness of John the Baptist,
1) A person who lived for a mission rather than a family.
If I succeeded my father and became a priest, I could live comfortably, but for the mission to prepare the way for the Messiah, I went out to the wilderness to pray, ate meager food, and cried out, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” He rebuked them for being children (children of the devil) and baptized those who repented as a sign of repentance. It is not easy to live for a mission rather than a family, but those who go down that road are great people.
2) He is a person who transcends envy and jealousy (John 3:27, 30).
He is a wonderful person even if he does not feel sick about others doing better than me, but at a time when he was not sure whether Jesus was the Messiah or not, John the Baptist did not envy when his popularity turned to Jesus, and said, “Jesus must rise, and I must do it.” We, too, should sincerely congratulate anyone when they receive grace, receive an office, buy a new house, or have something to celebrate. That's right.
3) Among the prophets, he is the only one who has seen Jesus, the Messiah.
Jesus said, “The law and the prophets were until the days of John the Baptist.” The Old Testament prophets vaguely prepared the way for the Messiah, but John the Baptist specifically foretold the coming of the Messiah, saying, “He who comes after me is mightier than I, and I am not worthy to untie his sandals.”
4) A person who gave his life for the truth.
The account of the death of John the Baptist is Matthew 14:1-12; Mark 6:14-29; It is found in Luke 9:7-9. It was the time when Herod the Great (37-4 BC) was ruled by his three sons following the Judean rule. Herod Archelaus (BC4-AD6) ruled over Judea and Samaria, Herod Antipas (BC4-AD39) ruled Galilee and Berea, and Herod Philip (BC4-AD33) ruled eastern Galilee. “Herod the tetrarch” in Matthew 14:1 refers to Herod Antipas, who married Herodias, the wife of Philip’s half-brother. This is incest, forbidden by the law (Leviticus 18:16), and you will hear John the Baptist's harsh words. In the end, Herodias conspired with her daughter to have John the Baptist beheaded by conspiring with John the Baptist. According to the historian Jerome, Herodias was beautiful, but very evil. After taking John's head, he cursed him and pulled out his tongue and stabbed him with a needle. At the end of her life, she and her husband leave home. After that, Jesus also called Herod a “fox” (Luke 13:22). Giving your life for the truth, paving the way for a martyr