How will you spend the Chuseok holidays?
How will you spend the Chuseok holidays?
1 Corinthians 10:19-22
2009. 10. 4, am
First, let's have an order of welcoming each other. Good morning! nice to meet you! You're welcome! Love it! Thank you! I pray that God's wonderful grace and blessings overflow on your homes, workplaces, businesses, and your children, who come to church today especially on Chuseok and worship God.
1. Origin of Chuseok
According to the encyclopedia, it is also called the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節), Gabae (嘉俳), and Hangawi. It is the most prosperous time of the holidays as it is the time to end the year's farming and harvest five grains. It originated from the ancient society's Pung-Nong Festival and corresponds to a kind of Thanksgiving Day.
On this Chuseok day, the whole family gathered together to prepare food to give thanks to the ancestors who brought them a bountiful year throughout the year, and to eat food together to strengthen family harmony. This Chuseok has many similarities to Thanksgiving in the United States. The biggest difference between Chuseok in Korea and Thanksgiving in the United States is which god is the offering of thanks to. On Thanksgiving Day in the United States, we worship God knowing that it is God who brought us a good harvest, whereas in Korea, Chuseok is a festival where the god who brought us a good harvest is our ancestor.
2. Then, who brought the bountiful harvest?
Our nation from an early age understood that when our ancestors passed away, we would ascend to the ranks of gods. That's why we didn't call our ancestors our ancestors, we called them ancestors. It was thought that filial piety was to serve the ancestors well, and it was thought that if the ancestors were well worshiped in this way, the ancestors would take good care of their descendants and all the big things and small things of the family, prosper, and produce a prosperous agricultural year. That is, we believe in and worship the ancestor god as the god who controls the good years of the family and the prosperity of the family, and we make ancestral rites to this ancestor god. For this reason, our ancestors thoroughly worshiped their ancestors, and the most central act of their worship is to offer sacrifices to their dead ancestors.
But the people of Israel knew that it was God who made the years of abundance and famine. God is the Creator who created the universe. He is also the Lord of this world, the sovereign and ruler of this world. He is in charge of our life and death, and he is in control of the history of mankind. So, of course, it is God who makes agriculture produce bountiful years, and it is God who makes agriculture suffer from famine. It is God who makes our business prosper and it is God who destroys it.
As Joseph interpreted Pharaoh's dream, God caused 7 years of abundance followed by 7 years of famine. Here, we can see that it is God who makes this land both prosperous and famine. The ancestors of the Israelites knew that it was God who was in control of this bountiful harvest.
So, who will be in charge of all the industries we run, as well as the agriculture we run today? Of course, they are not ancestor gods, nor are they any idol gods. As Joseph said, it is only God who causes abundance and famine.
3. Sacrifice to the ancestors
Demons clearly exist, but these demons do not become demons when people die, but are spiritual beings that have fallen from angels and become demons. Therefore, to make our dead ancestors become gods to take care of our descendants and bring about a bountiful harvest is being deceived by this demon. So, to make a sacrifice to an ancestor is to offer a sacrifice to a demon, and it is a foolish act of idolatry.
That is why, in our Christianity, it is forbidden to make sacrifices to our ancestors by defining it as idolatry. Today, let's read verses 20-21 together. So, in verses 20-21, the Apostle Paul said, “For the sacrifices of the Gentiles are offered to demons and not to God. You will not be able to drink, and you will not be able to partake of the Lord’s table and the table of demons.” So, allowing sacrificial services like Catholicism to worship God and even to demons is an act of idolatry that violates the Word of God and directly violates the Ten Commandments.
Let me say it once again, but sacrifices to dead ancestors are never filial piety. Obviously, sacrifice is religious idolatry. You can clearly see it by looking at the ritual rituals during the ancestral rites. First of all, when performing ancestral rites, local is used, and if you look at the contents of the region, the father writes ‘Hyeon High School Student Bugunshinwi’ (顯考school生府君神位). This clearly describes the dead ancestors as gods, and the novelty (參神), Kangshin (降神), Choheon (初獻), and Chumun (祝文) all correspond to the dead ancestor gods, not the living ones. And bowing to the altar is a ceremony to serve and worship this ancestral deity. The people of the world who do not believe in God wish to avoid anger, gain peace of mind, and receive blessings from the ancestors by offering sacrifices to their ancestors. But they are being deceived by demons.
God said in Exodus 20:3-6, “You shall have no other gods before me; you shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth below, or that is in the water under the earth. Do not bow down to them or serve them. I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God; I take revenge on those who hate me, from father to son to the third and fourth generations; but to a thousand generations those who love me and keep my commandments. 1 Corinthians 10:7 says, “Do not become idolaters, like some of them.” Deuteronomy 11:26-28 says, “I set before you today a blessing and a curse, and it will be a blessing if you will hear the commands of the Lord your God, which I am giving you today. If you turn away from the commandments of the LORD your God and follow other gods of which you did not know them, you will be cursed.”
Obviously, if you serve idols other than God, you cannot escape from wrath for thousands of generations, and if you disobey this command and serve other gods, you will be cursed. And the greatest curse is also falling into Hellfire. There is only one person you and I should long for and serve, the Lord. The place we should long for is the heavenly kingdom of heaven where our Heavenly Father resides.