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Subject 28 : If You Have Confusion and Emptiness in Your Heart, Seek the Light of the Truth
[28-5] The Holy Seed Is the Only Hope for Mankind (Isaiah 6:1-13)
< Isaiah 6:1-13 >
“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory!”
And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.
So I said:
“Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The LORD of hosts.”
Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said:
“Behold, this has touched your lips;
Your iniquity is taken away,
And your sin purged.”
Also I heard the voice of the LORD, saying:
“Whom shall I send,
And who will go for Us?”
Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”
And He said, “Go, and tell this people:
‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
“Make the heart of this people dull,
And their ears heavy,
And shut their eyes;
Lest they see with their eyes,
And hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart,
And return and be healed.”
Then I said, “Lord, how long?”
And He answered:
“Until the cities are laid waste and without inhabitant,
The houses are without a man,
The land is utterly desolate,
The LORD has removed men far away,
And the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.
But yet a tenth will be in it,
And will return and be for consuming,
As a terebinth tree or as an oak,
Whose stump remains when it is cut down.
So the holy seed shall be its stump.””
“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory!”
And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.
So I said:
“Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The LORD of hosts.”
Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said:
“Behold, this has touched your lips;
Your iniquity is taken away,
And your sin purged.”
Also I heard the voice of the LORD, saying:
“Whom shall I send,
And who will go for Us?”
Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”
And He said, “Go, and tell this people:
‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
“Make the heart of this people dull,
And their ears heavy,
And shut their eyes;
Lest they see with their eyes,
And hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart,
And return and be healed.”
Then I said, “Lord, how long?”
And He answered:
“Until the cities are laid waste and without inhabitant,
The houses are without a man,
The land is utterly desolate,
The LORD has removed men far away,
And the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.
But yet a tenth will be in it,
And will return and be for consuming,
As a terebinth tree or as an oak,
Whose stump remains when it is cut down.
So the holy seed shall be its stump.””
In Isaiah chapter 6 that we just read, we can see various visions God showed to the Prophet Isaiah. In these visions, the Prophet Isaiah saw seraphim, each of which had six wings. With two wings the seraphim covered their faces, with two their feet, and with two they flew. They cried out to one another and praised God, saying:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory!” (Isaiah 6:3) We can also see angels praising God like this in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament.
The Prophet Isaiah trembled in fear, saying to himself, “I am ruined, for I have seen the holy One!” When he saw himself standing before God, he could see that he was doomed to death. However, one of the seraphim took a live coal with the tongs from the altar, touched Isaiah’s mouth with it, and said to him, “Your iniquity is taken away.”
Once Someone Turns into God’s Enemy, It Is Difficult to Turn Around
It is difficult for those who have become God’s enemies to turn around and be saved. When God said, “Who will go for Us?” the Prophet Isaiah said, “Here am I! Send me” (Isaiah 6:8). God then said:
“Make the heart of this people dull,
And their ears heavy,
And shut their eyes;
Lest they see with their eyes,
And hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart,
And return and be healed” (Isaiah 6:10).
When God looked at the fallen people of Israel, He was concerned that they might return to Him and be healed. This means that it was impossible for the people of Israel to turn around from their opposition to God and return to Him. In other words, God was saying that the people of Israel had to change their hearts and return to Him, and that without this genuine, sincere repentance, they could not get the problem of their sins resolved just by asking God to forgive them. Such insincere repentance is very flawed. So, if the people of Israel returned to God without wholeheartedly repenting from their sin of standing against Him just to seek relief from their suffering, such duplicitous repentance would only offend God.
Therefore, the first thing the people of Israel had to do was to sincerely turn their hearts around from their rebellion against God. If they returned to God without true repentance just to give themselves an excuse, God would never recognize it. They would deservedly face God’s judgment for their sin of standing against Him. God judges those whom He judges, and He bestows grace on those whom He bestows grace. We must remember that God is just.
Isaiah 6:13 says:
“But yet a tenth will be in it,
And will return and be for consuming,
As a terebinth tree or as an oak,
Whose stump remains when it is cut down.
So the holy seed shall be its stump.” When God looked at His people, He was skeptical that they would be able to turn around from their sin of idolatry, return to God, and stop living such a sinful life worshipping idols and standing against God. Even though God had demanded the people of Israel to stop living such a life, it was impossible for them to stop.
Let’s imagine that the people of Israel did turn around from their sin of standing against God and returned to Him. It would then be only fitting for God to forgive their sins and accept them. God had given them many opportunities to turn around. However, they had still refused to turn around from the sin of idolatry. This is because their rebellious desire to stand against God was fundamentally rooted in their hearts like a tangled skein and passed on to them from their ancestors. In other words, they were living the wrong life because they were already born in this world with the desire to disobey God. Even though the first man Adam was created by God, he fell into the fallen angel’s temptation, who stood against God. Uniting his heart with the evil desire of the fallen angel, Adam ended up falling into the grave sin of rebelling against God by seeking to usurp His place. That is how not only Adam’s heart but also our hearts as his descendants came to be under the influence of God’s enemy. Therefore, the people of Israel at that time should have admitted the evil sins they inherited from Adam and knelt before God. They should have recognized that they could not escape from God’s judgment and returned to Him.
When we were born in this world, we also inherited the rebellious heart that Adam had when he sinned. We had to realize that because we were by our nature born with the desire to disobey and stand against God, we could receive God’s blessings only if we admitted our evil sins to Him. Those of us living in the present age also have to fully acknowledge the sins that we committed by standing against God. You, too, have to admit to God that when you were born in this world, your heart already had the desire to stand against Him, and that you had lived with this desire. Therefore, all human beings must return to Jesus Christ, the Savior of humanity, and acknowledge “the gospel of the water and the Spirit” that He has given us by the grace of salvation. All human beings must admit that they have inherited Adam’s sin and lived as God’s opponents to this day. They must then humbly ask God for His mercy.
Human beings must return to God and repent truly, so as to be healed from the fundamental sins they committed when they were standing against God. They must also realize that it is impossible to return to God without confessing that they are by nature God’s opponents standing against Him. For all of us to repent truly before God and be saved from our sins, we must first have the faith to recognize God’s authority, His holiness, and His honor. You, too, should now admit that your heart had the desire to stand against God. So, we have to surrender to God’s holiness, and believe in and praise His merciful blessings, grace of compassion, and righteous salvation. For us to return to such a majestic and merciful God, we have to admit that this would be impossible without the guidance of the Word of God and the help of the Holy Spirit, and we have to obtain this help by believing in the work of Jesus Christ.
With the arrival of the age of the New Testament, all human beings have to realize that it is impossible for them to reach true salvation without the help of the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit that our Lord gave us as His gift. Now, we must never forget this fact. That’s because we were born with a fundamentally sinful heart desiring to stand against God and His Word. As we had lived as God’s enemies like this, our only last hope is the righteous work of Jesus Christ the Son of God. Our hope of deliverance from all our sins in this world now rests on Jesus Christ, who came looking for us with the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit. Therefore, it is by believing in Jesus Christ and His righteous work of salvation that we can reach our true salvation, all thanks to the Lord.
To do this, we must first grasp the work of Jesus Christ, which constitutes the Truth of salvation. This understanding is reached through the Word of salvation that Jesus Christ promised to humankind. To blot out the sins of mankind, Jesus Christ willingly offered His own body to God the Father as the atoning sacrifice for the remission of sins. It is when we believe in this true salvation that we are truly delivered. We must realize that in the age of the New Testament, Jesus Christ completed the work of blotting out the sins of mankind with the true gospel Word of the water and the Spirit.
Now, we must believe with our hearts in the Truth of salvation that has come to us by the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit. When we have this faith, our salvation is perfected thanks to the righteousness of Jesus Christ. When we believe in the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit, the gospel of the remission of sins that Jesus Christ has made for us, it is then that we can finally return to the truly holy God. It is then that we can at last return to the holy God who created us, praise His righteousness, and live forever. For our faith to now be approved by the holy God, we must have the belief that the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit Jesus Christ has given us is the real Truth. Our salvation is completed through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice of atonement, who had promised that He would blot out the sins of mankind.
Now We Must Place Our Hope on Jesus Christ Alone
To this day, every human being has lived the same life as the people of Israel in Old Testament times—that is, all human beings have lived as God’s enemies. Because the people of Israel in ancient times lived as God’s opponents standing against Him and His Word, they deserved to endure a great deal of suffering under the yoke of another nation. To save the people of Israel from all the sins they committed, God had to make His Son Jesus Christ pay the price of sacrifice. Every human life was invariably a lost sheep in God’s sight.
I mentioned earlier that for human beings to return to God, they must all admit that, by nature, they have stood against God’s holiness and majesty just like Adam by their nature. It is when human beings truly moan over their sin of rebelling against God that the gate of His salvation and grace is finally opened. All of us must now kneel before the gospel Truth of the water and the Spirit that Jesus Christ has given to mankind, admit our sins, and accept the grace of salvation God is offering. We must acknowledge that we were all doomed to be cast into hell and face God’s condemnation for the sin of standing against Him and His Word. We should not forget that that the qualification to reach true salvation is attained only if we admit that we had sided with our enemy and stood against God. We had until now rebelled against the holiness of God and His majesty. Human beings must realize the “righteousness” of Jesus Christ their Savior, believe in it, and thereby return to God. Only then is it possible for them to receive the grace of salvation God is offering.
We had lived as God’s enemies, and for us to be saved from all our sins, it was indispensable to realize the real Truth of salvation God had given us for our sake. Having been born on this earth, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God the Father, was baptized by John the Baptist to bear all the iniquities of mankind, and He shed His precious blood on the Cross. We needed the faith to believe that this baptism of Jesus and His blood were the sacrificial offering of redemption that the Lord offered to wash away our sins. The gospel of the water and the Spirit remits away our sins, and faith in this gospel is what the human race needs. When we believe in this Truth of salvation that Jesus Christ, God Himself, completed when He came to this earth over 2,000 years ago, we are freed from all the sins that had imprisoned us in their darkness until now. This means that the true salvation God has given to mankind both begins and is completed with the gospel of the water and the Spirit written in the Word of God. We must realize that salvation from our sins is reached by faith in the Word of God.
God said, “The holy seed shall be its stump” (Isaiah 6:13). For all sinners living on this earth, salvation can be reached only if they believe in the righteous sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who is the holy seed. This faith is the only hope for all who remain sinners to this day. We can find the real hope only if we believe that the Lord has fulfilled the true remission of sins with the gospel Truth of the water and the Spirit. God’s revelation that the Prophet Isaiah saw speaks about His grace of salvation to come in the era of the New Testament. All human beings had fallen into sin, but the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit would save them from all their sins, and Jesus Christ would give this gospel to whoever believes in it. Whether or not all of us are blessed to become God’s own children depends on whether or not we believe wholeheartedly in the true gospel Word of the water and the Spirit that Jesus Christ has given to us as our remission of sins.
Humanity Cannot Reach Salvation by Relying on the Religions of the World
Human beings must realize that it is impossible for them to be saved from their sins by relying on any existing earthly religion. The religions of this world teach that people can go to the Kingdom of Heaven upon death only if they address their sins with their own good deeds. They believe that the only way to solve the problem of their sins is being virtuous and doing many good deeds. They rely on their own thoughts, thinking that if they repent from the wicked sins arising out of their hearts and minds and live a virtuous life, they can escape from all these sins. Believing in their own good acts rather than God and His Word, they think in vain that they can reach Heaven on account of their good work. They could not be more mistaken! Even when the God-given true Word of salvation is offered to them, they cannot realize it. Like this, the religious believe that their sins are addressed little by little as they repent from their transgressions. This is such a tragic misbelief!
Even in Christian communities, many people think that their sins are washed away incrementally by the grace of God when they resolve themselves not to sin again and offer prayers of repentance step by step. To me, such prayers of repentance offered by Christians are no different from the religions of the world. In other words, these Christians are just practicing a religious life with the same thoughts as any other religious people of this world. With passing time, they will see for themselves how their own willful, religious faith evaporates and ends in an abject failure.
For these misguided Christians to turn around from all the sins they have committed to this day by standing against God, they must return to the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit that Jesus Christ has given us. Without faith in this gospel Word of the water and the Spirit, it is impossible to turn around from the fallacious dogmas. They must realize that all those efforts they have put into their prayers of repentance to be delivered from their sins are completely useless. Why? It is because by nature, all human beings were born with fundamental sins to stand against God. It is also because they cannot help but continue to commit such sins in the future. To deliver sinners from their sins, the Savior of mankind offered the sacrifice of salvation in our place through the gospel of the water and the Spirit; and believing in this is the only way for all human beings to turn around from the sin of rebelling against God and return to Him. Mankind can return to God only if they believe in the work of salvation Jesus Christ did to blot out their sins.
Mankind’s Hope Therefore Rests on Jesus Christ Alone
There is only one hope left for all human beings, and it is to believe in Jesus Christ’s work of salvation as the grace of their salvation. This faith alone is their hope. Through the baptism He received from John the Baptist, Jesus Christ bore the sins of mankind who had stood against God on His own body once and for all; He paid off the wages of all the sins of humanity by being crucified to death while shouldering this world’s sins; and He has thereby given true hope to mankind. Jesus is the Savior who has brought real hope to the human beings who believe in this Truth of salvation. By coming to this earth, personally bearing all the sins of sinners on His own body, shedding His blood on the Cross while shouldering the sins of the world, and rising from the dead again, Jesus Christ has completed the salvation of mankind.
The Lord has permitted the remission of sins and new life to all those who believe with their hearts in the righteous work He has completed for us. We must therefore realize that by believing in the true gospel Word of salvation that has come by the water and the Spirit, we can be delivered from all the sins we have committed to this day by standing against God. We believe in the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit that Jesus has given us, but in the past, we did not know how to receive true salvation by faith because for a very long time we had been imprisoned by the sin of standing against God. The grace of salvation for mankind was made possible thanks to the baptism through which Jesus Christ bore their sins, the sacrifice He made on the Cross, and the power of His resurrection. Now the only way for all of us to be saved from our sins is our hearts’ faith in the righteous work of salvation Jesus Christ did to blot out our sins when He came to this earth 2,000 years ago.
The righteousness of Jesus Christ alone is the true hope for all of us human beings. When we believe that Jesus accepted all the sins of sinners through the baptism He received in the Jordan River when He came to this earth, we can be washed once and for all from all the sins that have been piling up in our hearts to this day. In other words, we are saved from all the sins of this world once and for all when we believe that Jesus Christ washed away all the sins of this world once and for all by being baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River, and when our hearts have faith in this true Word of salvation. Our salvation starts from, and is completed by, faith in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Only when we believe in Jesus Christ’s work of redemption can we truly become God’s children. Put differently, when the Bible says that Jesus Christ would be the “holy seed” on this earth, it means that Jesus would sow mankind with the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit, the Word of salvation, and that He would complete true salvation for all who believe in this gospel.
When we stand before the holiness of God, all our inner sins are exposed. We can then realize that we are sinners who must stand before God’s throne of judgment for our sins. We can reach true salvation not through God’s Law, but only by believing in the Word of the righteousness of Jesus Christ with our hearts. We often quote the Bible and say, “We are saved from our sins only by our hearts’ faith.” This means that true salvation is possible not by relying on our own righteous work, but only by understanding and believing in the righteous work of Jesus Christ. Therefore, we must believe in the just work of salvation Jesus Christ has done for us, accept this Word into our hearts, and thank God for it.
The gospel Word of the water and the Spirit the Lord has given us enables anyone to reach salvation by believing in this true Word of salvation. Whoever believes wholeheartedly in the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit as the Truth of the remission of sins is saved from all his sins once and for all. In other words, you can be washed from all your transgressions only if you believe in the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit that Jesus has fulfilled for us. We can therefore give unbound thanks to Jesus Christ our God by faith.
Here in today’s Scripture reading, the Bible says that the seraphim praised God while covering their faces with two wings, their feet with two wings, and flying with two wings. The angels mentioned in today’s passage are not the angels that rebelled against God. Although these angels did not stand against God, we can see that they still covered their faces and feet with wings as they could not bear exposing their uncleanness before the holiness of God. For us too, it is when we realize God’s holiness that our uncleanness is exposed more, and as a result we come to grasp that we cannot help but die for our sins; and at that moment, we also come to realize that the grace of salvation is near us.
In heaven and earth alike, the Triune God alone is holy. It was not just the angels who trembled before such holiness, but the Prophet Isaiah also feared. God was so holy that when the Prophet Isaiah saw the holy God sitting on the throne, he didn’t know what to do as his uncleanness and transgressions were exposed in contrast to God’s holiness, and so he fell on his face in fear. As the Prophet Isaiah knew that the very fact that he, a mere human being, saw the holy God would mean his ruin, he confessed:
“Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The Lord of hosts” (Isaiah 6:5).
If human beings with unclean lips were to see the holy God in person, they would all realize that they are filthy and wretched beings who have no choice but to face death before God. That is because while God is holy beyond words, we are so sinful and despicable. We could not help but die for all our sins. When reflected upon God’s holiness, our human nature is so vile, filthy, evil, and pitiful that we are compelled to realize and admit that we just cannot avoid God’s judgment. This is what the passage is teaching us here.
“Who Will Go for Us?”
When God said, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” the Prophet Isaiah said, “Here am I! Send me.” But God said, “Even if you go to them, it will be useless. Even if they were to listen to Me, would they turn around from the sin of rebelling against Me?” The Prophet Isaiah went to the people of Israel and shouted out the Word of God to them. Having received God’s revelation, he spoke of Jesus Christ’s gospel of salvation, which was not seen until the age of the New Testament, through his prophecy to not only his generations but also today’s generations. In particular, the Prophet Isaiah spoke in detail about the form in which Jesus Christ would come to this earth, what kind of Savior He would be, and how He would save us by taking upon our sins on His own body and bearing their condemnation on the Cross. Of all the prophets of the Old Testament, the prophet who spoke the most about the gospel of Jesus Christ is none other than the Prophet Isaiah.
Yet, even so, God said, “The people of Israel will not turn around even if you shout out to them. It is impossible for them to turn away from their act of standing against Me, come out to Me out of their own volition, and be healed from their sins.” That is because their hearts had already rejected God and refused to turn around from standing against Him. However, God knew that if He renewed their hearts, they would come to recognize Him as their God and Savior. So, through Jesus Christ the Savior of humanity, God planned to save even the people of Israel. God is waiting even now, knowing that they will come to believe in His righteousness, and thus be saved from all their sins and praise God. That is why God said to the Prophet Isaiah that unless the hearts of the people of Israel were renewed, He did not have any expectations for them.
There is an important lesson for us to remember here, and it is that we should have the same expectations when we try to evangelize God’s enemies. The Word of God applies the same in this present age. It is only fitting for us to preach the gospel Truth of the water and the Spirit, God’s Word of prophecy, to those who are standing against God. However, those whose hearts are standing against God do not accept His Word even if we preach it to them. Put differently, those who are rebelling against God with their hearts need the righteous work of salvation that Jesus Christ fulfilled once and for all, and therefore they must be saved by believing in this Truth alone. All the sinners living on this earth need the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit that Jesus Christ spoke.
As our Savior, Jesus told us that it is indispensable for us to preach the gospel Truth of the water and the Spirit to all the sinners who wish to believe in the Truth of salvation. Today, when the witnesses preaching the true gospel reach out to sinners, they have the duty to preach the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit, which has been fulfilled with the true Word of God written in New and Old Testaments. And all the sinners who hear this Word can be saved only if they recognize and believe that the God-spoken gospel Word of the water and the Spirit alone can deliver them.
If we were to otherwise to preach about just our own spiritual experiences or add our own fleshly thoughts, then the souls who hear us will be ruined. If a witness preaches something else other than the Truth of salvation, then those who hear this witness will go astray from the true way of salvation paved by God. We should never become such foolish witnesses who end up killing souls that could otherwise be saved. Those who ruin the work of salvation that delivers people’s souls are those who spread Christianity only as a religion without knowing the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit.
God’s Righteous Act Is the Hope of Humanity
God said that just as the stump remains when a terebinth tree or an oak is cut down, so shall the holy seed be the great hope for humanity. In other words, to save sinners, God the Father sent His Son to this earth as the Savior and solved the problem of the sins of this world once and for all with the baptism Jesus received from John the Baptist and the blood He shed on the Cross. Therefore, this true Word is the hope for the entire human race. God’s plan of salvation to deliver sinful human beings from the sins of this world is the true hope of salvation, for this plan has been fulfilled through the righteous work of Jesus Christ the Son of God the Father. God is telling us, that His righteous work alone constitutes the true hope of salvation for mankind.
Because the religious practitioners of this world, including even Christians, do not know the gospel of the water and the Spirit, they believe in Jesus in vain and are obfuscating the Word of the Truth. These people try to reach salvation by relying on their own thoughts or religiosity. As they have not heard the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit, the Truth of Salvation, they are busy living their religious lives as sinners. They are still trying to wash away their sins with their own piety, praying fervently, getting all emotional about their spirituality, and offering prayers of repentance. However, they will eventually come to realize that such religious acts are completely ineffective to blot out their sins. Even worse, there are some Christians who, in their attempt to receive the Spirit of God, go into a cave, pray while fasting, and claim to see visions. But this kind of fasting and praying is completely useless for blotting out their sins. Relying on their own religiosity, they say they are “good” Christians whose faith in Jesus Christ is impeccable.
In today’s Christian communities, many believers seek out people who they think are more spiritual than they are, and ask them to lay their hands and pray over them, so that they may get their sins washed away. However, I am certain that none of them could get any of their sins washed away, not even one transgression, from such “spiritual” leaders. Even though these leaders may seem spiritual, in reality they are spiritual frauds and no more than false prophets in God’s sight. Their thoughts and hearts are already set on defrauding their followers to satisfy their own interests and greed, and what they do is akin to a panhandler exaggerating his misfortune to trigger compassion and get some food. The dogmatic faith they hold is incapable of bringing true faith to sinners. Christian leaders whose sins remain in their hearts offer nothing to expect the grace of God.
Therefore, you must realize that there is only one Savior of all the sinners of this world, and it is Jesus Christ. And the genuine spiritual leaders who preach the real Truth are those who preach the gospel of the water and the Spirit Jesus Christ has given to mankind. Jesus Christ is the Creator of mankind, and He is the true Savior who has saved us from the sins of this world once and for all. It is indisputable that Jesus Christ is the righteous Savior who fulfilled all the righteousness of God when He came to this earth. It is precisely to save His people from their sins that Jesus Christ came to this earth. Now, for all of us, our salvation is fulfilled definitively when we know and believe in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is our Savior, and the righteous Truth of salvation fulfilled by Him was more than enough to save us the believers from the sins of this world.
We must therefore believe that Jesus Christ is our Savior and the Son of God. The blessings of true salvation are received when we realize and believe with our hearts that Jesus Christ is our true Savior. To bear the sins of mankind once and for all, Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, and when He did so, He bore all our sins as well. He was then crucified, shed His blood to death, and rose from the dead. He has thereby become our just Savior. When we grasp the facts of this Truth and believe in it with our hearts, we can all receive the true remission of sins for sure.
Through the baptism He received from John the Baptist, our Lord accepted the sins of this world once and for all and took them to the Cross. While shouldering the sins of the world, He was crucified, shed His blood on the Cross, rose from His bodily death, and has thereby become the true Savior for all of us who now believe in this Truth. When we believe with our hearts in the God-given Truth of being born again of water and the Spirit, it is then that we can finally become God’s children. As the believers in this unwavering Truth of salvation, we can then receive the power to live according to the will of God.
Therefore, the righteous can prosper in both body and spirit by abiding in God’s Church. And God’s Church is where true rest is found for all the believers, for it has the Word of God. By believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, the Truth of salvation, we have reached true salvation and eternal life. So let us all live by faith, giving thanks to our God.
Let Us Pray to Jesus Christ, Not the Wailing Wall
Even today, the people of Israel go to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem to pray to God. They are still standing against God, for they do not believe in His Son Jesus Christ as their Savior or their God. They have not turned around from their ancestors’ sin of rebelling against God, and they are still standing against Him along with their false prophets. They are standing against Jesus Christ because they are living the same life that their ancestors lived—that is, their hearts are one with God’s opponents. Although they are committing the same sins their ancestors committed, they are actually oblivious to their own sins. To this day, they are living without accepting Jesus Christ, the Son of God who had come to save them and their ancestors from all the transgressions they committed.
In fact, if the Jewish people properly recognized that Jesus Christ had come to save them from their sins and their ancestors’ sins, wouldn’t they have accepted Him into their hearts as their Savior? It is because of their ignorance that they are rejecting Jesus. But, in time, I believe that the Jewish people will eventually come to realize that Jesus Christ is their Savior God and accept Him into their hearts.
Let us take a short pause here and pray for the Jewish people: “Dear Lord, we pray for the people of Israel. You are not only our Savior, but also the Savior of the people of Israel and everyone else in this world. Please deliver them from their sins! In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.”
In the days to come, the Jewish people will also accept Jesus Christ the Savior into their hearts. God will prepare faith in their hearts to deliver them from their sins. In not-too-distant future, they will realize that Jesus Christ is the Ruler of this universe, the Lord of mankind, the Sovereign of all things, and the God of salvation for them. They will believe that Jesus Christ is the Savior they have been waiting for all this time, and they will repent from their sin of standing against God. They will yearn ardently for the return of the Lord.
“Lord, please make the people of Israel believe that You are the God whom they have been waiting for, Amen.”
The problem, however, is that the people of Israel still do not accept Jesus Christ into their heart as the Son of God who had come to save them, nor do they recognize Him as such. It’s said that the Jewish people do not pay close attention to Isaiah chapter 53. The passage in the Old Testament that the Jewish people intentionally overlook is Isaiah chapter 53. This is because Isaiah chapter 53 reveals that Jesus Christ is the Savior. It’s because this passage writes about the coming of Jesus, and how Jesus, like the sacrificial lamb of Old Testament times, would bear the sins of this world once and for all and endure terrible suffering because of these sins. It’s all written there for the Jewish people to understand.
Isaiah chapter 53 prophesies how Jesus would come to this earth and sacrifice Himself for the salvation of mankind. In other words, it prophesies how Jesus Christ the Son of God would demonstrate and prove, through His sacrifice, that He is the Savior of all the sinners of this world. And in New Testament times, Jesus did in fact sacrifice Himself as the sin offering of salvation, just as prophesied in the Old Testament. In accordance with God’s Word of prophecy, Jesus came to this earth incarnated in the flesh of man to save sinners. With the exception of the people of Israel, people all over the world know Jesus Christ as the true Savior of mankind. Thanks to God, many people believe in Jesus Christ as God Himself and the only begotten Son of God the Father. Yet, the people of Israel are still rejecting Jesus, refusing to believe in Him as their God and Savior. Far from believing in Jesus Christ, they do not recognize Him as their Savior, and are rejecting and standing against Him.
We know that the people of Israel are making such a grave mistake and sinning like this because they have misunderstood God. Their misunderstanding of Jesus Christ stems from their monotheistic belief. They believe there is only one God, and that their God is this God. In reality, God is triune, but they recognize Yahweh as the only God. So, they find it hard to acknowledge the divinity of Jesus Christ. It is because they think they would be betraying Yahweh, the only God they believe in, if they were to recognize Jesus as God. But this is a misunderstanding. God is not just Yahweh, but there are three Persons: God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. What kind of God are the people of Israel waiting for? They think of only the Yahweh God of the Old Testament, and they are waiting for God Almighty.
However, the God who revealed Himself to the people of Israel in the age of the Old Testament is not just one God, but rather the Triune God. It is absolutely important for us to grasp this. God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all God to us. It’s just that the three Persons of the same one God have different ministries. To put this in simple terms, God the Father made the plan of salvation, Jesus Christ His Son fulfilled this plan of God the Father when He came to this earth, and the Holy Spirit, through the written Word of God, bears witness of the truthfulness of the salvation planned by the Father and fulfilled by the Son. Like this, it is the Triune God who has saved mankind from their sins, made them His children, and blessed them to live forever in His Kingdom. This was the Triune God’s plan and purpose.
So, let us all receive God’s blessings by believing in this Truth. Through His only begotten Son, God the Father has saved the believers from all the sins of this world once and for all, and He has blessed them to become His children. What we must grasp here is the Truth: that the only begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, is the Savior of mankind; that Christ blotted out the sins of mankind when He came to this earth; and that He has thereby delivered and saved the believers from their sins. Know that Jesus Christ is the same God as God the Father, and give thanks to the Triune God with your faith.
However, because the people of Israel today do not realize that Jesus Christ is their Savior, they are rejecting Him. They are spurning Him instead of accepting Him into their hearts. As a result, the people of Israel are making a huge mistake, believing just the Old Testament and rejecting the New Testament. Even today they are still trying to keep the Sabbath Day as Yahweh commanded through Moses. They are still devoted to keeping the 613 commandments and statutes decreed in the Old Testament. There is therefore no bright future for them. Moreover, they will increasingly question why it is that their Savior God is not coming despite waiting for Him for so long. This means they are devoid of any hope.
For the people of Israel also, Jesus Christ alone is their hope, as is the case for you and me alike. The God of salvation is the hope for the people of Israel. For all those who believe with their heart the work of salvation Jesus Christ did when He came to this earth to save them, the way is open to wash away all their sins once and for all. All of us ought to be grateful that we can forever become God’s own people by knowing and believing in Jesus Christ as our God. Only by believing wholeheartedly in the love of Jesus Christ our God can we go to His Kingdom and stand before Him. And we must believe that we will be able to see Jesus Christ face to face, and live and be with Him every day forever.
We should not forget that we had been God’s enemies who could never be with Him. How could human beings ever speak with the holy God face to face? This is absolutely impossible unless the sins they committed by standing against God with their hearts are forgiven. Therefore, for us human beings, the righteousness of Jesus Christ alone is the hope of salvation and eternal life. Moreover, Jesus Christ means everything to all those who believe in God’s love and salvation. If Jesus were not the Savior of mankind, you and I would have no honor now. If our relationship with Jesus Christ were to end once we are saved from the sins of this world, then we would still be completely hopeless. However, because Jesus Christ is not only our Savior but also our God, we have all received the spiritual blessings of Heaven by faith. The Truth of salvation is that Jesus Christ has blotted out our sins, but if this Truth were not remaining in our hearts as the Word of God, then we would be completely worthless now.
By faith, we must hang on to the righteousness of Jesus Christ, the blessings of the gospel of the water and the Spirit He has given to us, the promise of Heaven He made to us, and the Word of covenant that He will fulfill in the future. Unless we hold on to the Word of God by faith, we would be devoid of any hope. What is so great about us human beings without any faith in Jesus Christ? When we examine the nature of the human heart before God, we see that there is absolutely nothing that is righteous. However, thanks to Jesus Christ, we do have one thing that sets us apart, and it is His love and righteousness, which we believe in through His Word. In the beginning we were made in the likeness of the image of God. This means that God planned our salvation from the very beginning so that we would all be able to live as His children, and He created us according to His purpose. That is why, despite uniting our hearts with God’s enemies earlier, we have become honorable in God’s sight, for we believe in His salvation and His Word of providence.
From the Days of John the Baptist until Now the Kingdom of Heaven Suffers Violence
The Bible says in 1 Peter 1:23, “Having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever.” Put differently, the New Testament also says that the holy seed is the stump of this earth. God has left His Word of prophecy and its fulfillment as the written Scripture for us today, and when we turn to Malachi chapter 4 in the Old Testament, we see the Bible saying:
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet
Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
And he will turn
The hearts of the fathers to the children,
And the hearts of the children to their fathers,
Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse” (Malachi 4:5-6). God promised to send Elijah to this earth. And in Genesis also, God promised to send the Savior of mankind to this earth, saying, “He shall bruise your head” (Genesis 3:15). Such prophecies were given continuously by God, and they were also fulfilled by God.
So, in the New Testament, Jesus said the following about John the Baptist: “He is Elijah who is to come” (Matthew 11:14). Jesus also spoke about the ministry of John the Baptist, saying, “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matthew 11:12). Here, when Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence from the days of John the Baptist, and that the violent take it by force, He was saying that John the Baptist would pass the sins of mankind to His head. From then on, the sins of this world would be passed on to the body of Jesus Christ through His baptism. Having thus been baptized by John the Baptist, Jesus carried these sins of the world to the Cross. It’s written in John 1:29, “The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, ‘Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’” The Kingdom of Heaven is given to every believer from the days of John the Baptist—that is, from when John the Baptist passed the sins of this world to Jesus through baptism, and from when Jesus shed His blood on the Cross and rose from the dead. That is why the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence from the believers.
Where would our sins be, if John the Baptist had not passed the sins of mankind to Jesus’ head through baptism, a form of the laying on of hands? We would be living as sinners for the rest of our lives, for the sins of mankind would have remained intact to this day. However, on account of the baptism John the Baptist gave to Jesus Christ in the Jordan River, all the sins of this world were passed on to Jesus, and our sins were thereby washed away. It is at this moment, when John the Baptist baptized Jesus Christ, that the Lord bore all our sins once and for all through this baptism. Following this, precisely because Jesus Christ shouldered the sins of this world in this way, He went to the Cross and shed His blood to death. He then rose from the dead in three days, and today, He is offering the grace of the remission of sins to all who accept this Truth into their hearts. In other words, the Lord has given the gift of true salvation to today’s believers in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. Jesus Christ is the “holy seed” that the Bible speaks of in both Old and New Testament, and He has saved us through His righteous work. That is why we call Jesus Christ our Savior.
Jesus Christ is also called “Logos” in the Bible. The “Logos” here means the Word of God. God is Spirit, but how has He manifested Himself to us? He has manifested Himself to us through His written Word. Put differently, God is the Logos—the Word, that is—and the Word is God. Coming to us as the Word, God wants to save the believers and bless them. This means that God does not reveal Himself through any other way but His written Word.
God does not manifest Himself through strange noises, thunders, whispers, or any images. God is instead pleased to reveal Himself to us silently through His written Word. The holy God wrote all His Word of prophecy in the Old Testament, and when the time came, He fulfilled all this Word of prophecy in the New Testament. That is how God has revealed Himself to us. Because God has spoken to all human beings through His holy Word, the complete compilation of this Word of God is called the Scripture.
God Speaks to Us through His True Written Word
God is saying to us now through His written Word: “I will bear your sins once and for all by being baptized by John the Baptist, I will be condemned for all your sins by being crucified to death while shouldering the sins of this world, I will rise from this death, and I will thus wholly save all of you who believe in Me. If you just believe, from My written Word, that I have saved you in this way, you will be saved from all your sins regardless of the condition of your soul. If you just admit your sins before Me, acknowledge that you are facing destruction for your sins, and believe with your heart that I have saved you from them all, you will become My people. You can now be saved from your sins, boldly come out to the holy God and Me, and live face to face with Me without any shame. Believe in what I am saying to you and ruminate on My Word. You will then be blessed to enter and live in Heaven.” Through His Word, God spoke to us of everything He did for us, and everything has been fulfilled according to this Word.
Because God has spoken to us through the written Word, from now on, our hope depends on God and His written Word. The written Word of God contains the promises God made to mankind. And just as God spoke, when the time came, Jesus Christ came to us; and just as God said in the Old Testament, the Lord fulfilled our salvation from the sins of the world once and for all in the age of the New Testament. Our salvation depends on what God spoke of and did. Therefore, apart from faith in the written Word of God, we do not need any work of our own. Believe in the Word of God written in Old and New Testaments. Believe in the sermons that explain the written Word of God. God’s blessed remission of sins will then come into your heart.
God Himself came to this earth to save His people from their sins, and at the age of 30, Jesus Christ received baptism from John the Baptist. At that time, Jesus said, “Thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15), and He fulfilled all the righteousness of God once and for all by being baptized by John the Baptist. This was the significance of the baptism Jesus received from John the Baptist. It is through His baptism that Jesus Christ took upon our sins on His own body once and for all. And because Jesus shouldered the sins of this world by being baptized, He was able to take those sins to the Cross.
It is written in John 1:29, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Because Jesus bore the sins of the world through His baptism like this, and because He shed His blood on the Cross while shouldering these sins, He has given new life to all of us who now believe in Him. Jesus completed all His work of salvation on the Cross. And He rose from His death. The Bible says, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). Jesus Himself told us here that He is the Lord of resurrection. It is through His written Word that we have come to know this God of resurrection; it is through God’s Word that we have come to believe in Him; and it is through this faith that we have received eternal life. We could now become God’s children on account of our obedient faith in the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit.
Therefore, thanks to our God and His written Word, we now have true hope. It is impossible for mankind to find any hope apart from Jesus Christ and the written Word of God. That’s because only God can bring true salvation and the hope of Heaven to us. What we must realize here is that our God and His written Word alone are the source of true hope for mankind. Because the Word that Jesus Christ spoke to us has the power, it could bring the remission of sins and eternal life to us.
Unlike Human Beings, God Has Every Power
Unlike mere mortals, God has all the power of salvation. Jesus Christ had the power to deliver all mankind from the sins of the world. Jesus Christ had the power to come to this earth incarnated in the flesh of man even though He is God Himself, and He had more than enough power to keep and fulfill the Word of covenant He spoke to us. As the Savior of all sinners, He could therefore deliver them from their sins. It is because Jesus is fundamentally God Himself that He could fulfil His promises with His power. Through the body of a woman, Jesus Christ could come to this earth incarnated in the same flesh as ours. He did this to keep God’s Word of promise, that He would come to bring salvation to mankind. And He was able to bear the sins of mankind once and for all through the baptism John the Baptist gave Him. Because Jesus Himself had absolutely no sin by nature, He raised a representative of mankind and commanded him, John the Baptist, to pass the sins of this world to His body. Through the baptism He received from John the Baptist, Jesus could accept each and every sin committed by all human beings once and for all. Having thus become the Lamb of God, Jesus was then able to give up His life for us His believers by being crucified while shouldering the sins of this world.
No matter how anyone might claim to be full of love, no human being can love as much as Jesus loves us. Some people might be willing to be crucified to death for their loved ones, but no ordinary human being can do this for another person. However, as God Himself, Jesus Christ had the power to truly love all human beings. The work Jesus Christ did when He came this earth—being baptized by John the Baptist and suffering on the Cross—is the righteous work that Jesus did to save human beings, who were all destined to destruction and hell, from their sins. This is the work of sacrifice that Jesus Christ did to save the hell-bound from their sins and judgment, for He loved them all, and that is why He could willingly endure all that suffering. So, through the water and the blood, Jesus Christ Himself personally carried out God’s work of saving human beings from their sins when He came to this earth.
Just before passing away on the Cross, Jesus said, “It is finished!” He then rose from the death of His body. Jesus had the power to rise from the dead, for He is the God of creation who made the heavens and the earth. Because Jesus had the power to overcome even death like this, it was possible for Him to take care of the accursed condemnation of the sins of mankind once and for all while shouldering them on His body through baptism. Yet, when Jesus Christ was enduring the suffering of sins on the Cross, He felt every bit of this suffering just like weak human beings. This was the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and it was also God’s love for us.
It is written in Isaiah 53:4:
“Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows.” This means that Jesus Christ had the same emotions as we do, and He felt the same humiliation and the same pain when bearing the condemnation of our sins as we would have. The difference, however, is that He had the power of salvation to deliver mankind from all their sins once and for all. Our God is forever almighty, and His power of salvation is everlasting. That is because Jesus Christ is not a mere creature like human beings, but the self-existing God. It’s for that reason that He is named Yahweh. Jesus Christ has the power of salvation and creation. So, having created this universe and all things in it, He can eradicate the first heavens and the first earth and create new heavens and new earth. Jesus Christ has such powers, and He is the God who created us.
In saving all the sinners of this world from all their sins once and for all, Jesus Christ has permitted salvation to those of us who believe in His holy Word of promise. When Jesus Christ came to this earth, He fulfilled once and for all the covenant He promised us according to His Word. Jesus is now telling us to believe wholeheartedly in the Word of righteousness that He Himself fulfilled. And He has blessed those who believe in the righteousness of God to receive the remission of all the sins of their flesh and hearts. Jesus Christ, who is alive even at this very moment, has made us His believers God’s children, and He has also given the everlasting remission of sins and eternal life to all of us who believe in the Word of God. As we now believe that He is the Christ, He has blessed us to enter and live forever in the Kingdom of Heaven.
It is now possible for us humans to be saved from all our sins by believing in the Word of salvation that Jesus Christ spoke for our sake. Jesus Christ has permitted whoever believes in the Word of salvation fulfilled by Him to become God’s child. This has been made possible only by the powerful Word that Jesus Christ, the Almighty, fulfilled for us; it can never be achieved through our own effort or work. Only Jesus Christ is the true God for all of us who believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit through His Word. He has not only saved the believers in the gospel of the water, the blood, and the Spirit, but He has also given them eternal life. And He has revealed this Truth to us in detail through His Word.
Because our ancestors Adam and Eve stood with God’s enemy in unity, we were all destined to be cursed by God. However, God came to us and promised that He would personally save us, and according to this promise, the Lord has indeed delivered all of us who believe in the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit in our hearts from the sins of this world. Like this, even though we were doomed to hell for our sins, our Lord Jesus Christ has saved us from the sins of the world and the condemnation of these sins most fairly, most justly, and once and for all.
Because Jesus Christ has saved us so fairly, so fittingly, and so justly, and because the Lord Himself has proven that He has saved those who believe in this true Word today from all their sins once and for all, even Satan is speechless before His work of salvation. God’s amazing “justice” refers to the fact that He has saved all human beings from their sins completely justly. In other words, God’s “justice” means that God Himself paid off the wages of the sins of mankind by being baptized, shedding His blood, and rising from the dead, and that He has fulfilled salvation from sins for all those who believe in this Truth. This is God’s justice and His love for those of us who now believe in the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit. Put differently, God did not save mankind biasedly or unfairly.
How marvelous is God’s just salvation of mankind? It’s not easy for human beings to be fair. No matter how hard they might try to be fair to everyone, they often fail at this. In our busy everyday lives, we often don’t give enough consideration to others, and as a result cause misunderstanding. Like this, our unfairness is inevitably exposed. This is because we are all human. Sometimes we end up with unfair outcomes even though it is not our intention and we do our best to be fair, all because of our human weaknesses. So, I often ask our team leaders to be fair and balanced when it comes to assigning different tasks to different workers.
Through our faith in the righteous Word of God Almighty—that is, Jesus Christ—we have been delivered from all the sins of the world. Jesus Christ came looking for us with love and blessed us to be born again of water and the Spirit, and we have been saved from our sins by believing in His love and salvation. Our salvation depended on Jesus Christ’s just salvation. We were able to be saved from all the sins of the world by faith because we believed in His just work of salvation. The Lord promised us that when we believe in the just salvation He fulfilled for us, He would give us the right to become God’s children. Accordingly, we were indeed able to become God’s children just by believing in the righteous salvation fulfilled by Jesus Christ.
We have received the remission of sins by believing in the written Word of God with our hearts. Even at this moment, there is no sin in our hearts. If one believes in the just salvation God has fulfilled, then whoever has such faith is forever sinless in the heart. Our sins are not blotted out just by trying to control our own minds. Even though we have many shortcomings in our flesh, because the Lord accepted our sins by being baptized by John the Baptist, shed His blood to death on the Cross, rose from the dead, and has thereby blotted out all our sins justly once and for all, our faith in this just salvation is by itself more than enough for Jesus Christ to become our God and our Savior. For that reason, it is simply impossible for us the believers in the gospel Truth of the water and the Spirit, the gospel of just and fair salvation, to have any sin. Therefore, the hope of the entire human race rests on the “holy seed”—that is, Jesus Christ and His Word. What would the holy seed be? It is the Word of God, and this Word refers to the righteousness of Jesus Christ, who came to this earth incarnated in the flesh of man.
The Bible says:
“As a terebinth tree or as an oak,
Whose stump remains when it is cut down.
So the holy seed shall be its stump” (Isaiah 6:13). We become God’s children by believing in His Word that has come by the gospel of the water and the Spirit. As those who now believe in the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit, we are preaching to people this gospel Word of God that constitutes the holy seed on this earth. And thanks to the gospel Word that we are spreading now, people can realize, by faith, the Truth of salvation that God has fulfilled. The righteous are spreading the holy seed—that is, the work of Jesus Christ—and God has promised that no one who comes to believe in this gospel thanks to the work of the righteous will ever be cast into hell for his sins. This means that God has fulfilled everyone’s salvation, so that anyone can go to Heaven if he only believes in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
In the Time of the Coronavirus Also, Jesus Christ Is Our Hope
My fellow believers, on this earth, the Word of Jesus Christ is the hope of mankind, and God’s Church is the hope for all human beings. And to sinners, God’s servants and people are their hope. Without us the righteous living on this earth, there would be no hope for this world. God will not leave this earth and this universe in their present condition. He will eradicate mankind and the first world He created. God’s original purpose in making the universe was to save human beings from the sins of the world, take the believers to His Kingdom, and live with them. God’s desire is to take to the Kingdom of Heaven not only those of us who now believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, but also all those who will come to believe in this gospel.
No matter who, all human beings can become sinless if only they believe in the just Word of God with their hearts. God has fulfilled salvation justly so that whoever believes in His righteousness can enter Heaven. He has allowed all human beings to become His children if only they believe in His just salvation with their hearts. He has blessed us all so that we can meet and live with the holy God. The Prophet Isaiah and the angels alike could not help but fear for their lives before the holiness of God when they were in His presence, and we, too, were in the same state. However, for those who believe in the salvation of the holy God and the righteousness of Jesus Christ, God has made them holy just like He is holy. This means that those of us who believe in God’s justice can now live with Him on account of our faith. So, let us all live with gratitude, giving our thanks to Jesus Christ for His justice, who is the hope of this earth.
Although we are now living in the time of coronavirus, Jesus Christ is still the hope for us the believers. When the world is in turmoil, our hope does not lie elsewhere. Nor does our hope rest on our bodies. Your hope is not found in your IQ, smartness, or abilities. Our bodies will inevitably decline with passing time. We are so fragile that focusing on just one task can easily exhaust us by the time we take on another task. So, without Jesus Christ and His Word, you and I have no true hope. However, we still do have one hope, and it is because we believe in the just Word of the holy God. We have this hope because we have accepted God’s just Word of salvation into our hearts. Despite living in the time of coronavirus, we still have hope because Jesus Christ is with us.
We the believers in the righteousness of God have hope because we are preaching His Word of salvation to mankind trapped in sin. This means that the people of this world have hope because they are living in the same age as the righteous. When they meet the righteous, they will find the great hope of salvation. Thanks to the righteous who believe in God’s justice, sinners will not only be saved from their sins, but they will also enter the everlasting Kingdom of God by faith. Put differently, the hope of the entire human race now rests on you and me who believe in the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit. The true hope of every human being is found in the holy, true gospel Word of Jesus Christ. Mankind cannot find the true hope of salvation anywhere else.
We have the hope of salvation thanks to the “righteousness” of Jesus Christ. When we pray to God and we think what we are asking is impossible, we can have hope by placing our faith in God. We ask God for our needs when we pray to Him, telling Him that we have faith in His Word, that God Himself told us to ask Him, and that we believe that He will fill all our needs, protect us all, and bless us all. In the age of the Old Testament, hope was placed on God the Father alone, but in the age of the New Testament, we can pray to God the Father as well as Jesus Christ.
Jesus said in John, “Have you not prayed in My name? I will answer you whenever you pray in My name.” That is why we pray to Jesus Christ. Whenever we pray, we always say at the end of the prayer, “We pray all this in the name of Jesus Christ.” We say this at the end of every prayer precisely because Jesus is our hope, our true Savior, and our God. It is because on account of our faith in Jesus Christ our God, we are now qualified to come into His presence.
Because we have received the remission of sins and the holy God’s blessings by believing in His Word, we pray in the name of Jesus Christ. It’s because Jesus has saved you and me from all the sins of this world once and for all that whenever we pray to Him, we say, “We pray in Jesus’ name.” Thanks to our faith in Jesus our Savior, we can now come out to the presence of God the Father. Because Jesus Christ loves us and has blotted out our sins, our faith in Him is indispensable. Faith in the Word of Jesus Christ brings the true hope to mankind, and to each and every one of us. We all believe in Jesus Christ as our God. We are nothing if we don’t have faith in Jesus Christ. We must therefore have faith in Jesus Christ, and this faith is attained when we believe in the Word of God.
In the Time of Coronavirus Also, We Must Have Faith in the Word of Jesus Christ
As we carry on with our lives in this age of coronavirus, we must have faith in the Word of Jesus Christ. For our part, we should do our best to take every precautionary measure, such as wearing masks and practicing safe social distancing, to keep ourselves safe from coronavirus. Beyond this, all that we need to do is live by faith in the Word of God. If we are anxious and worried, we just need to pray to our God and live by faith. I am hopeful that God will provide us with effective medications as well. Wouldn’t God solve this problem for us? Those who pray to God by placing their faith in His Word will be protected by Him. When His time comes, God will answer our prayers and solve our problems. Until then, we must be on guard and bring order to our disorderly hearts. We must persevere.
Our hope lies in Jesus Christ and His holy Word. Jesus Christ is your Savior and mine, and He is also our Shepherd. He is the King of love to all of us who believe in His righteous work of salvation. Jesus is the King of kings, but above all, He is the King of love to us. ‘For those of who believe in Jesus Christ, this ought to be our confession of faith: “Our Shepherd is the King of love and our shield against tribulations. As we believe in the love of Jesus Christ and His work, no one can destroy us. God will surely deliver us from our great tribulations.” Putting all our hope on Jesus Christ, let us all live by believing in His every Word. I hope and pray that you would have faith in Jesus Christ as your God and your Savior.
Today, many people do not know the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and as a result they can neither believe nor preach that He is their Savior. The name “Jesus” means the Savior, and the name “Christ” means that He has fulfilled His three offices as the King, the Priest, and the Prophet to achieve our salvation. For you and me, Jesus Christ fulfilled all the three offices as the King, the High Priest, and the Prophet when He came to this earth, and in doing so, He has saved you and me from all our sins and condemnation. So, even though we were sinners, Jesus Christ has become our Savior and our Shepherd. This is the fact of the matter, but since people in this world do not know it, they cannot believe it. And they cannot preach this Truth, either. But, we believe in it and are spreading it.
God said to the Prophet Isaiah, “Who will go for Us?” When Isaiah said, “I will go,” God said, “Even if you go and preach, these people are so corrupt that they do not believe in My Word, so how could they ever reach salvation? How could they turn around from their flawed beliefs?” Once one embarks on the wrong path, it is extremely difficult to turn around. Many Christians today do not believe in Jesus Christ’ work of the water and the Spirit, nor are they able to preach God’s holy work of salvation.
The Lord therefore said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). The Lord told us here to “seek first the righteousness of God,” but people mistakenly think that the “righteousness” here is about doing God’s will. However, when the Lord told us to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” He was telling us to first believe in God’s work—that is, in the Truth of salvation that God has fulfilled for us human beings. And it also means that we ought to spread this faith in the righteousness of God first. God is telling us here to preach to people about faith in His righteousness, not to just live virtuously or give a lot of offerings.
God said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” What is His “righteousness” here? It means what is right and just. In other words, God is telling us to believe that He has saved us from our sins justly and fairly, and that Jesus Christ, with the baptism He received from John the Baptist and the blood He shed on the Cross, has solved everyone’s problem of sin without exception, leaving behind not even one person in this world. Jesus Christ has given true salvation and new life to all of us who believe in the baptism He received from John the Baptist and the blood He shed on the Cross. How utterly fair is this Truth of salvation? Of all the people of in this world, did Jesus bear just some people’s sins through His baptism while not bearing other people’s sins? No, of course not! That would be unfair! Through the baptism He received from John the Baptist, Jesus bore all the sins of this world, and He shed His blood to death while shouldering them all. How justly and fairly has the Lord saved us the believers?
It is not with just words but by actually giving up His own body for His people that Jesus Christ has saved the believers once and for all through the baptism He received from John the Baptist and the blood He shed on the Cross. By bearing the sins of His people who believe in the water and the blood that constitute the righteousness of God, and by personally taking upon their curses and the condemnation of their sins on His own body on the Cross, Jesus Christ has saved them justly, righteously, and fairly. Therefore, even though Satan, standing against God, wishes to question how mere creatures could become God’s children, there is nothing he can say, for Jesus Christ, God Himself, has saved them from their sins so fairly and justly with His actual work of salvation, not just words. Just as the Bible says that “the wages of sin is death,” the Lord paid off the “wages of judgment” for all our sins on the Cross once and for all, and He has saved all of us who believe in this. That is why Satan just cannot refute our salvation no matter how much he is itching to do so.
Jesus Christ, God Himself, bore all the sins of this world through the baptism He received from John the Baptist, was condemned for all your sins and mine by shedding His blood to death and suffering on the Cross, rose from the dead, and has thereby completed the work of salvation to deliver us once and for all. So, who could ever complain and say that there is something wrong with the righteous work of salvation that Jesus Christ carried out on this earth? Who could ever say that what the Savior of mankind has done is unfair and unjust? Absolutely no one can refute Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul testifies in Romans chapter 8, “If God is for us, who can be against us? No tribulation, persecution, or any creature can stand against us.”
The true Word of God that you are hearing now cannot be heard just anywhere, but only in God’s Church. This present age will see many changes to come. But, even so, the end of the world will not come too rapidly. When will it come then? When natural disasters are so devastating that nations cannot tackle them on their own, and when not just a few but at least 50 out of around 200 nations that exist in this world cannot address their challenges by themselves, it is then that the Antichrist will emerge slowly. When the situation gets this bad, you can safely surmise, “It’s time for the Antichrist, God’s enemy, to appear. It’s time for this enemy of God to be cast into hell along with his followers.” God’s enemy will put up his last-ditch fight and do his utmost to gather and deceive as many people as possible. Know this and believe it. To all the people made in the likeness of the image of God, the Antichrist will claim that he is God, and he will do everything he can to once again stand against the real God. Gathering people to himself, he will throw fits to try to stand against the holy God once more.
However, at that time, Jesus Christ the Savior will return to this earth and vanquish all His enemies with the Word coming out of His mouth. When the end times are here, God will return to this earth and judge them all just with His powerful Word. Therefore, for us the believers in the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit, our hope is found in Heaven, and thanks to our faith in the Word of God, we will be blessed to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as its spiritual people. I hope and pray sincerely that you would all realize just how blessed our faith in the gospel of the water and the Spirit is, and what blessed Word you are listening to now. Together with all of you, I praise God and give all my thanks to Him forever. God will always be with you and me. Hallelujah!
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