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Subject 23 : The Epistle to the HEBREWS
[Chapter 1-1] The Mission School Class (Hebrews 1:1-3)
(Hebrews 1:1-3)
“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”
We are not only learning the Word of God through our Mission School, but we are also learning to serve the gospel by uniting ourselves together with one accord within the order Christ Jesus has established in His Church. We learn how to pray and also trained to have strong faith and to obey the order of God’s world in this Mission School; and we can also fill the weak areas of our heart with the Word of God’s Truth. Through such training courses we can stand firmly by faith and attain the ability to fight the enemy after being born again as the true servants of God.
I give thanks to God for allowing us this Mission School. I also give thanks to God for giving you and me the opportunity to serve the Lord and training us. I am always preaching the gospel with such a heart in our country and abroad. You don’t need to take notes on all the contents of the sermon I am preaching to you. You just need to be attentive to the parts that I point out repeatedly because I think they are important. And it would be beneficial for you to listen to my sermon tapes repeatedly on the parts that you are not sure about.
During this Mission School session, I would like to deal with what the Lord wanted to tell us from His Word from the Book of Hebrews. The book of Hebrews is an Epistle to the Hebrews written by a servant of God. It was during the patristic age, and the Israelites were dispersed all over the known world at that time due to the persecution of the Romans. For this reason they could not meet any spiritual leader, and this was the reason why the servant wrote the Epistle. Besides the Four Gospels and the Book of Acts, all the Books of the New Testament were a collection of Epistles that some servant of God had sent to His saints in such historical context. You must first understand this historical background.
God Has Spoken to Us at Various Times and in Various Forms
Today I will speak to you mainly from the Book of Hebrews 1:1-3. It says: “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”
During the Old Testament times, the prophets received the Word of God and spoke to the Israelites and recorded it as well. When we read the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament we can see that it is made of the contents concerning the Word about the creation of the heavens and the earth, the birth of Jacob’s twelve sons who are the descendants of Abraham, and the process of moving to Egypt. And the Book of Exodus deals with the Israelites who were living as slaves in Egypt for four hundred years and their exodus from Egypt to the land of Canaan. And the Book of Leviticus speaks about the sacrificial system, and the Book of Deuteronomy deals with the journey of the people of God entering the land of Canaan. God speaks about all these processes in various parts.
God speaks about Jesus Christ in various parts and in various forms through various prophets like Moses, Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah, and others. The Scriptures tell us that God intended to reveal Jesus Christ at various times and in various ways in times past to His people, the Israelites.
Adam and Eve, the common ancestors of humankind, committed sin after being created and allowed to live in the Garden of Eden. They then wore the coverings made of fig leaves. After that, God came to them and made tunics of animal skin and thus clothed them properly. This account implies the truth about how God gives the remission of sins to sinners.
Then how did the Hebrews, the people of God receive the remission of their sins? With what faith were they able to receive such an immense gift of salvation? Here we must contemplate whether they received the remission of sins simply by their own righteousness they had accumulated or whether they instead received salvation solely by believing in the righteousness of God. They were indeed saved by believing the righteousness of God by which He had saved them from all their sins. God had saved them with His righteousness because He knew they did not have any righteousness of their own. Like this, the Scriptures’ contain the Word both about the fall of humankind and about the gospel of the water and the Spirit the Lord has given for the remission of our sins.
In the Book of Leviticus we can see people offering up sacrifices in the Tabernacle. While the Israelites were living in the wilderness, they did not know their sins although they committed them repeatedly because they did not have the Law before the presence of God. At that time, God called Moses to Mt. Sinai and gave him the two stone tablets of the Law. God also showed him the detailed form of the Tabernacle and told him to build it when He gave the Law to Moses. It was to make the Israelites realize their sins through the Law and to make sinful people receive the remission of all their sins by offering up these sacrifices according to the sacrificial system God had established. Like this, we can see that the Lord spoke to them in various ways and in various forms about the remission of sins. And He speaks all about how the Israelites came to believe in God and how they went through such a difficult situation. The most important thing is that through this Word of God, we must understand how we receive the remission of our sins and how we should live out our faith.
It is written that God who spoke the Word at various times and in various ways to the ancestors of faith also speaks to us through His Son in these last days. God spoke to the Israelites through the servants of God in the past, but how does He speak to us now? How does God speak to us the believers who are living in this present age? God has spoken to us through Jesus Christ, His Son in these last days.
The Book of Hebrews in the New Testament was recorded about 1900 years ago. However, even the people at that time also knew that God the Father spoke to them through Jesus Christ. Then, how can you and I and all the people who live in this period know and have faith in God’s will that He has spoken to us? We were able to understand because God has spoken His righteousness to us through Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
You do not need to try to understand something new through the classes of this Mission School or try to fit all the Word of God to the thinking you have had until now. In God’s Church, knowing the Word of God is not everything, but your faith in the Word must follow. We must however believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit and learn how to be regenerated as God’s faithful workers. Therefore, you must listen attentively to what I am saying here and be careful not to fall into your own fleshly way of thinking. And you must engrave the Word of God into your heart. When the Word is engraved in your heart like this it will never disappear.
The Bible is the Word spoken by God. A good sermon is truthfully explaining the Word of faith repeatedly so that you can have such necessary faith in the Word. God speaks the Truth to us through His Son. God the Father said that He gave us the remission of our sins by His Son when we also became sinners born as the descendants of sinners. Just like the sacrificial system recorded in the Book of Leviticus of the Old Testament, Jesus Christ came to this world and gave us the remission of all our sins at once by both the baptism He received from John the Baptist and the blood He shed on the Cross. And the Lord told us to preach this the gospel of the Truth to the entire world. And the Lord also told us to live out our faith. It is written, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 6:14). The Lord told us clearly not to mingle with the non-born again, not to unite with sinners, and not to work with them. Rather He told us to get together with the people of faith to expand the Kingdom of God.
The Lord’s Prayer says, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” God chose many of His people among the peoples of the world and wanted to take them to the Kingdom of God and live together with them eternally. Therefore, God planned this work in Jesus Christ, and the beginning of this plan was to send His Son Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world to blot out all the sins of the world. Therefore, we must remember that God sent His Son to us in these last days. This very Jesus Christ is the Master of the entire universe and all things in this universe are also of His work.
God the Father sent Jesus Christ to this world and allowed Him to receive the baptism from John the Baptist for the remission of all our sins, and this Jesus faced death on the Cross and saved us all at once by being resurrected from dead. And He gave the remission of sins to all those who believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit and made them the true people of the Kingdom of God. The Lord moves the history of the world for this very purpose. And the Lord also tells the righteous to live by the righteousness of God and keep the faith and the genuine gospel.
The gospel of the water and the Spirit is the beautiful thing. The gospel of the water and the Spirit makes us blessed so that we can live a victorious life eternally. It’s because the Master of the gospel of the water and the Spirit is this very Jesus Christ. God the Father gave us His Son and made us the believers in the gospel of the water and the Spirit into God’s very own people. What an amazing plan of salvation is this Truth?
Therefore, we must not just nod our head as we read the Scriptures because there are so many lessons God wants to say to us in His Word. We must absolutely remember that God the Father has spoken to us by His Son. Hence, we must receive the remission of sins by believing in the righteousness of Jesus Christ and live out our faith in God’s Church. Only then can we hear the voice of God and believe in and follow Him. Therefore, instead of boasting of our righteousness in God’s Church, we must become the people of faith who believe and follow the righteousness of God and return the glory to God.
Those who are spiritually immature in God’s Church think they are someone great when they think they have reached some kind of understanding of the Scriptures. And they are prone to ignore other people when these people do not even understand the same thing, but such people are not mature spiritually. These people who just boast of themselves with their own understanding and think only they are right are actually in an infantile stage of faith when seen spiritually. There are so many people who show off their own righteousness even though they have been saved from their sins by hearing the gospel of the water and the Spirit in God’s Church. But such saints still have a long way to go. Such people do not understand the Word God properly as spoken to us through His Son. Rather, we must believe and boast of the salvation God has achieved through His Son. The Lord did not allow us to receive the remission of sins to exalt our own righteousness.
You know we have all died in Christ, right? Of course, some of you who are rich in your own righteousness might not know this truth very well. However, the Lord took away even such sins of such people through the baptism He has received from John the Baptist, and was nailed to death on the Cross for all those who lack their own righteousness. Hence, we who believe in the righteousness of God have become new creatures in Christ, and the Lord also resurrected us and blotted out all the curses of the sin to make us live in the new world. Therefore, although we all are inadequate beings, we must believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit by which the Lord has saved us from the sins of the world and we must follow the Lord with this faith. The more we live for the gospel of the water and the Spirit, the more we become thankful for this gospel. However, those people who do not cherish the ministry of preaching the gospel of the water and the Spirit sincerely and just pretend to do so are on a wrong path.
Who is the most humble person in God’s Church? It is the person who knows that the Lord has made everything for him no matter how well he lives. God has given us His grace in order for us to serve the gospel of the Lord, not to boast about it in a fleshly way and act arrogantly. We must not live as if we have achieved anything by our own strength without even serving the gospel of the water and the Spirit. For example, if God gave us a knife, He gave it to us to use it for a righteous cause, and not to harm other people with it.
You have now entered this Mission School, and your first task is to know the spiritual flow of God’s Church. There are various kinds of people in God’s Church. There are various kinds of ministers and their personalities are different from each other. However, all that they are seeking is none other than the preaching of the gospel of the water and the Spirit. We must all live in union with the faith that believes in the righteousness of the Lord although our personalities are all different since God the Father has made us live the life of faith after saving us by the Word given through His Son. We must exalt the righteousness of God by faith and care for the preaching of the water and the Spirit and pray and work hard to carry out this mission throughout the entire world instead of living just for our flesh. The Lord said, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” I am sure that God will give us everything we need for our flesh if we exalt the righteousness of God and live by the will of God as this passage says.
We must live by such faith. However, those who are not like this yet must receive much training. Therefore, you also must learn such things while you are in this Mission School. It’s because people who have not set their hearts firmly on the will of the Lord yet can depart from His will again even after getting close to it.
God has spoken to us through His Son in these last days. How amazing is this? We must know the righteousness of Jesus Christ, recognize that Jesus is God Himself, and know God the Father who has sent Jesus Christ. Moreover, we must know that Jesus is the God of love as well as the God of wrath, and we must also know that God has told us how we must live. If we have such faith, we can live for the righteousness of Jesus Christ and also know what Jesus Christ who became our Savior is saying to us and what He tells us to believe. We must live by faith that places the righteousness of Jesus Christ in the center of our hearts and by the heart we must follow this faith. You must not seek only such things like seeing visions while praying. Rather, you must understand the work of salvation Jesus Christ has given to all mankind. And we must accept it into our hearts.
The Bible is the very Word of God. Therefore, we must receive the Word of God exactly as it is recorded in the Scriptures. God works through such people of faith. In order to become such people of faith, we must live together in God’s Church and check ourselves to see if there isn’t anything secular mixed in with our faith that hinders us from believing in and following God’s will. And if there is anything else besides God’s Word in our hearts, we must filter it all out completely.
Any gathering that cannot preach the gospel of the water and the Spirit properly because it does not know this Truth cannot be called as one of God’s Churches. It is just a gathering of dead souls like a heap of empty heads of grain. Many theological seminaries in the world are not able to properly teach the gospel of the water and the Spirit which is the righteousness of God. They are going astray because they just teach the contents they copied from the philosophies of the world instead of teaching the gospel of the water and the Spirit which is the Truth of salvation. However, God’s Church is different from them. We preach the genuine Truth of salvation to the people of this world.
God the Father Spoke to Us by the Son
We must know that it is the very Word of God that saves us and speaks to us in our everyday lives, and we must obey His Word by sincere faith. Only then can this true faith manifest itself inside your heart. When we follow Jesus by true faith, all the Word of God recorded in the Scriptures works inside our hearts and makes us carry out God’s work and preach this Word by faith. Hence, we must receive the Word of God by faith.
It is written in the Book of Hebrews 1:2, “He has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds.” ‘All things’ refers to all things of the entire universe. It is referring to all things visible as well as invisible. Now, the first world is about to pass away and there is a new world that is to come soon. Jesus Christ is the very Being who has brought the Millennial Kingdom to existence and gives it to the believers in Him. It means God the Father has made Jesus Christ the heir of all things.
God the Father has given His Son to all humankind and He will make us a new world, a new universe, a new earth, a beautiful place, different from this world that we could see now with our naked eyes. God the Father has given us Jesus Christ to make us the children of God so that we who have received the remission of sins through Jesus Christ will be able to enjoy eternal life in that new world. The second world can exist to us because of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. God has made the new world for you and me who have received the remission of sins by believing in the righteousness of Jesus Christ the Savior. The Lord has made the new world. The Scriptures say, “Whom He has appointed heir of all things,” and it means that God has made the world and made Jesus Christ His Son rule this world. It is also written, “Through whom also He made the worlds,” and this passage means that the Lord Jesus has made not only this visible world but also another world that is invisible to our eyes. These are all for us the believers in the righteousness of God. Through whom is this possible then? This is possible through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is our God, our Lord, and our Savior who has blotted out all our sins and trespasses once and for all.
God the Father has created Heaven and hell. God has brought hell as well as Heaven into existence. Why then did God make hell? Why did God not just make humans obey Him only and make them unable to disobey from the beginning? I think many people would have such a question.
The world God has made for the first time has spiritual beings. But an angel called Lucifer rebelled against God. That angel was a being with a free will. Instead of making that spiritual being like the robot who just serves God unconditionally, God gave it a free will and a character that could serve Him on its own out of respect for Him and also go against Him from its own free will. Lucifer who was created like this wanted to be exalted alone and was as a result cast out of Heaven eventually when it rebelled against God for some reason. In other words, God wanted to be the Most Majestic Being whom all the creatures could but admire Him with their free wills. That is the reason why God gave this free will to every human being.
Heaven and hell as well as this world we are living in now were all created by God through Jesus Christ. Hell is also an eternal place that God has made, not a place that vanishes after existing for a while. God also made Heaven. God also made everything in this universe. God made all of them through Jesus Christ, our Savior. We must believe in all such facts. God is the God of Creation. He has existed from even before time began and will exist eternally. He is God who exists eternally without beginning and end. We come out into the world from our mothers’ wombs and dwell in the world just for a while, working hard to live and then die from old age or sickness. However, Jesus Christ is the One who actually created us. Jesus Christ is the very One who gave our mothers the power to conceive us in their wombs.
The word “Jesus” means Savior and the word “Christ” denotes the King. Why did He name Himself Jesus Christ? God came to this world as our Savior, but He named Himself Jesus Christ because He was anointed as the King and the Prophet, and also took the duty of the High Priest alone by Himself.
Jesus Christ whom we believe in is different from any man-made gods of this world. We must know Jesus Christ is essentially different from the so-called divine beings made by humans. The very God we believe in is the only Divine Being and the Almighty One. The Triune God is alive and all three Persons of this Trinity are the same One God to us. We must understand this fully. And we must believe in this with all of our hearts. We must accept it in our heart exactly as it is and not just believe it out of obligation.
Let’s read Hebrews 1:3 together: “Who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person.” Knowing Jesus Christ is the same as knowing God the Father. When we know and believe in Jesus Christ correctly, it is like seeing God with our own eyes in this faith. The Scripture verse above says that Jesus Christ is the brightness of God’s glory. Jesus Christ was born to this world through the body of the Virgin Mary in order to be clothed in human flesh. Jesus then was baptized by John the Baptist to take all the sins of the world onto His own body when He became 30 years of age. And the Lord was crucified to death on the Cross with all the sins of the world upon Him at the age of 33, and He was resurrected from dead and became God to all the people who believe in this fact. When we look at the prophecies about Jesus Christ before His birth and the 33 years of His life after His birth, there is not one jot or tittel that does not coincide with each other. We have committed so many sins and also will continue to commit sins because we are lacking. However, Jesus Christ did not have a blemish to be the lawful sacrificial offering for all mankind.
There are many people in Israel today with the name “Jesus.” We see also that there are some people who blaspheme that the existence of Jesus itself was a manipulated figure. However, people find out that the more they investigate to verify this, the more they find that they cannot but acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ. Consequently they have all knelt down before Jesus Christ. They have sought forgiveness from Him, saying, “Lord Jesus Christ, You really are God. I am truly sorry that I have fought against God.” Many people of this world have tried to verify that Jesus was not an actual person. But the fact is that Jesus is the true Son of God who really came to us. The liars who claimed themselves to be gods are in their graves, but there is no grave for Jesus Christ. Why is it so? It is because Jesus Christ was resurrected from dead. The Lord was resurrected from the dead because He is the Creator of the entire universe, and He could not be locked inside death for He is the Lord of resurrection. Jesus really is the very Person who created all things in this universe.
It says that Jesus Christ is the brightness of God’s glory. Truly, the love of Jesus Christ is unfathomable. What loss would He incur just because we went to hell? Pharisees who appear in the Scriptures were enemies of Jesus Christ and their descendants are still standing against Him even in today’s Christianity. Adam and Eve did not believe in the Word of God and sided with the Devil, and as a result, all human beings have become sinners without exception. However, Jesus lifted out all these sinners from their sins at once by the gospel of the water and the Spirit. This Jesus is the true Savior and God. We cannot but acknowledge Jesus as the King and serve Him when we understand how majestic the Lord is and what immense love He has bestowed on us and how perfect He is.
You must also remember this. You also serve this gospel of the water and the Spirit as I do. We are all precious people who serve this gospel. We must look at one another as precious co-workers and not as our competitors. We do not serve the gospel alone. Instead, we must cherish our fellow saints who are serving the gospel in union with one another. We who serve the gospel of the water and the Spirit are truly great people. We ourselves are not great, but the Holy Spirit inside us and Jesus Christ are great. Jesus Christ gives the necessary materials to us the faithful workers who live for Him. However, we use them for the preaching of the gospel instead of using them to satisfy our fleshly desires.
The Mission School is different from all the schools in this world. This school is the school of Jesus Christ. We live for Jesus Christ, live because of Jesus Christ, and also live with Jesus Christ. We continually preach the gospel for Jesus Christ because this Mission School is the place where you are disciplined to have the faith of living for Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person. We must know and believe Jesus Christ as God through the Scriptures and know that God is such a great Being. Today’s Scripture passage says, “Upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.” God’s Word has wonderful power. In the Book of Genesis chapter 1 verse 3 God said, “Let there be light; and there was light.” And from this we can see that this God is exactly Jesus Christ, who blotted out all our sins by coming to this world, being baptized, dying on the Cross, and being resurrected from dead. There was light when He said, “Let there be light,” and there came to existence the sun and the moon when He said, “Let there be the greater light and the lesser light,” and many kinds of trees and grasses rose up out of the earth when He said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth.” Everything exists because He said let there be such things. Our Creator is God who has such great power. Things come into existence even without God moving His hands at all when He says let there be such things. We have to use our hands to do any kind of work. However, all things came into existence just by God saying let there be such things. He is God who has such immense power. The Scriptures said that God upholds all things by His Word of power. All things are still in existence and moving as He said because the Word He spoke at that time is still effective. The stars and the other heavenly bodies still coexist at their fixed position in space by the power of gravity even now. This is possible because of God’s Word that is still effective even today.
We believe in the Word of God. We did not exist at the time when the Lord Jesus Christ was in the world, but we believe in Him through this Word. Our sins were entirely blotted out because we believed and accepted this Bible as the Word of God. Our sins are all blotted out because we have accepted the Word of the Truth. It is written that He does the work of blotting out all our sins by the Word of power and also does the work of purifying us, and sits at the right hand of the Majesty on high. “He” here is referring exactly to Jesus Christ. All the Scriptures speak about Jesus Christ. He sits as the right hand of God the Father and waits for the day to return to this world. The Lord is now waiting for the Millennial Kingdom to be unfolded like this. God will make the new heavens and the new earth and allow us live in it eternally.
As we read the Word in the Book of Hebrews, we can see that it contains lots of amazing truths. I taught the Word from the Book of Genesis during the previous session of our Mission School, but I am going to teach the Word from the Book of Hebrews during this session. Then, who do we want to learn about and who do we want to know as we study the Word of God in this Mission School? We study here because we want to know Jesus Christ and we want to learn the Word Jesus Christ has spoken in the Scriptures. For whom have we been called to this Mission School and for whom have we been called as the workers of God? It’s for Jesus Christ. Then, who should we who have been called as the soldiers of Jesus Christ please? Without a doubt, we must please Jesus Christ. We must want to do something if He wants it to be done; we must also dislike it if He dislikes it. If we are lacking in following Jesus Christ, then we need to reconfirm the fact that Jesus Christ has given us the remission of all our sins and follow Him by faith. It’s because we can follow Jesus Christ only when we have such faith.
I do not have anything to boast of even though I have been serving the gospel so far. I can preach the gospel before you only because God has given the Word to me prior to you. And serving this gospel is my joy. I also want you to become like me. What other joy is there in the world besides serving the Lord? People are born from their mothers’ wombs and then go to school, do military service, get married, have children, and die of old age or sickness after living a trivial life like this. That is life. What other things could we have if we just lived for ourselves instead of serving for the Lord? Nothing! As humans living in this world, people just cannot but live enslaved to life and gradually minimize the dreams they had and also increase the greed for material things.
Life returns to just a handful of dirt like this. That life is just a handful of dirt means it is meaningless. To be born in vain and die in vain is what life is all about. A life not living for the Lord is meaningless like this. As we can feel when we look at the lives of your parents’ generation, life without Jesus Christ is just an empty shell and is really nothing; such a life is likened to becoming weary from the turmoil’s of this world and eventually become sick and then die. For us, only the life for Jesus Christ is meaningful. Only when we live for Jesus Christ, we will be blessed and be prosperous. On the contrary, a life not for the Lord is truly a cursed life.
Therefore, we must please the Lord who has called us. We must please Jesus Christ who enlisted in us as His soldiers. The Lord who has enlisted us like this will bestow much blessing upon us if He is pleased with us. Even if we give our everything to the Lord, we can receive even more things from the Lord and live even more prosperously. We can live more affluently if we live in the gospel of the Lord. This is the secret to leading our life of faith well. I will end this sermon with the hope that we will all live our lives for Jesus Christ well.
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