This transcript is organized from YouTube’s automatic captions. Names, Bible references, and specialized terms may contain recognition or translation errors.
Please stand up and stay there, and after the piano performance ends, you may pray. I have arrived. Yes. It is okay. Microphone test. Yes. God, who so earnestly desired to be with the people of Israel. We give thanks to our Father in heaven, who is with us here today at this Seobuyanghaeng. We thank You for granting new life to all our attendees and for the grace of bringing them to this place. Father, we thank You for sending about a thousand of Your sons and daughters to this campsite and for feeding them with Your word hour by hour, and for opening the doors of our hearts to Your amazing grace. We especially pray for the young children, middle and high school students, college students, and the young adults in their 30s, 40s, and 50s gathered here; how precious and valuable they are as Your children. Please remember each and every one of them, help them to truly know You, and raise them up to be the leaders of this church tomorrow.
Amen. Please protect the health of Your various servants who guide them, and by granting them heavenly wisdom, enable them to lead all Your precious sheep on the right path. Please oversee the mouth of Pastor Kim Jung-gun, who will proclaim Your precious word today, so that this may be a time of grace that can pierce the hearts of Your people who have bowed their heads here. I pray all these words earnestly in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Peace be with you. Amen. Amen. I truly wish that were our daily life. In the peace of God, that complete and lovely fullness. Actually, as we live our daily lives, there are times when we cannot do that. Where is the critical point where we maintain our humanity or our Christianity? Have you ever worried about it? There were days when I wanted to enjoy peace in my daily life, be joyful, and live in the fullness of God's love, and I have lived that way. However, it was when I was working at the training center, at the critical point of enduring through typhoons and hardships. This day, the work seemed a bit overwhelming.
It was not just the work, but the spiritual burden was so great that I was exhausted from the training process all day, so I was climbing the mountain and praying. I prayed like this by accident. God, please give me a way to escape. If one is at that training center, one should be a person who is fully prepared to go to heaven, but there are times when that is not the case. I was so busy that I couldn't even eat properly. Yes. And then, exhausted, I finished all the evening chores, came to my office, and was about to organize my day and pray, and when I entered the office, a meal was set on my desk. That restaurant—well, that meal was not from then; it was taken from the internet, and someone came and... oh, what was it? Like that, someone put it on the desk, and it was a moment when my heart felt warm as the heat instantly went down from that critical point. But there was a note attached to that table. It said this on the note: 'I will protect Dad.'
At the time, my daughter, who was attending college, had taken some time to come and was volunteering by playing the piano to help her dad, who was working as the director, but when she looked in the cafeteria, she didn't see her dad. Yes. Since her dad was walking around the mountain without eating like a crazy person, the daughter thought she should at least take care of something, so she brought the food and put a note there: 'I will protect Dad.' She ended up getting married and moving to the United States, but now she is back at our home in Korea to give birth. Ah, those who don't have a daughter might not know this feeling well. But in fact, who is protecting whom? Actually, I am the one who is clearly sleeping in my residence that day, and she is eating because of her dad, and I am still paying for her tuition—in Korea, parents often pay for college students' tuition. I am paying for it, and even the transportation money from Seoul to Wonju, she says, 'Dad, please send me money,' and I send it so she can come. But with this one line, all the fatigue of that day was forgotten; it was God's grace.
When we reach a critical point, in what way does God bestow grace upon us to keep us calm and humble so that we do not cross over to the next stage? In Ezekiel 1:1, there is this verse: 'In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the Chebar canal, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.' Ezekiel was a pastor who experienced that adversity with his whole body in the midst of the history of Judah's destruction. However, while his historical and external suffering was suffering, his daily life, his actual personal life, was also suffering. It was an era where open rebellion was being committed by beings like dry bones. Furthermore, the message he received was not a popular one. It was a time when God's warning was rejected by the people of Israel, who were in the midst of open rebellion and crime at the time, as he pointed out sin and called for repentance. Moreover, his life in a foreign land, away from his hometown, was difficult, and his wife, the only source of comfort he rejoiced in, died young.
His wife passed away. Wouldn't you say this reached a critical point? Socially, politically, and religiously, the whole country was destroyed and the church was burned, and even though God led me and called me as His servant to serve a church in a place called America, even my wife died; what should I do in this situation? What does God do at times like this? If you add the noun-forming suffix 'm' to 'bom' (spring), it becomes 'gamsa' (thanks), 'gamsaham' (thankfulness). 'Bom' (seeing), the heavens opened and He showed me visions of God. This is the most difficult and arduous adversity in Ezekiel 1:1; when he left this autobiographical record in the Bible, the first memory of his memory was that he saw. What did he see? He saw the appearance of a shining radiance, and it was like a rainbow, and he left a record that it was the likeness of the glory of the Lord. His life, his environment, and his daily life today were as difficult and hard as they could be, reaching a critical point, but at that time, God bestowed grace upon him so that he could see. The Bible records how the experiential understanding of this 'seeing' was achieved: 'The Spirit of the Lord lifted me up.'
The reality of this pastor at the time was a truly difficult and hard situation. However, in the midst of that, he left a record saying, 'I had this experience.' Even when having the highest spiritual experience, it is hard to do, but 'the Spirit of the Lord lifted me up.' But in reality, this verse says in God's command before it: 'Son of man, stand on your feet.' God's command was originally this: 'You stand up on your own. It is hard and difficult now, but stand up.' This was the Father's word. However, he left an experiential record in the passive voice, not the active voice, when writing it. This was written in another Bible verse like this: 'The Spirit of the Lord raised me up.' God's command seems like, 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, don't speak ill of others, don't covet, endure. If you endure and do all this, I will take you to heaven,' but in reality, what Ezekiel experienced was that God lifted him up. God raised me up.
The word is that I did not do it, but God's Spirit did it to me, and he experienced it in his 30th year of ministry, and when his daily life was most poor, lonely, and difficult, he experienced it by seeing. God says in that process: 'Do not be afraid of this adversity he is experiencing, and do not be afraid of the words they say, and the cruel and stubborn things in those words.' Ah, Ezekiel fully experienced how spiritually important it is to look, and he recorded it, and that became the Bible. This great expression, this great revelation, wheels within wheels. Although I thought I was going on a strange path that was not the right way in the midst of suffering, when I look at it in the midst of God's great providence, I realize that my life is ultimately going on God's path within God's great wheel. This vision, which inspired so many people and gave hope to their lives, was shown to him by God when he was in the midst of the most difficult adversity.
And He says, 'You live.' Ah, what is the best thing a parent can say to their child? Even this sinful human being, just saying these words to their children makes their heart tremble: 'You, live.' You all remember what is in the ellipses, right? 'Even in the midst of adversity, even if you are covered in blood, you must live.' Seeing and seeing. Ezekiel saw the likeness of God. That was the experience like living water that cooled the heat of the God who bestowed grace upon him as he endured. He saw something like a rainbow, everyone. I think we need to pay attention to this Bible. Was it only Ezekiel who saw it? God was also watching. In Genesis chapter 9, this text is recorded in the Bible: 'The rainbow shall be in the clouds, and I will look upon it and remember the everlasting covenant between Me, God, and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.' After God finished all the adversity and sin problems that Noah and his family were experiencing, He showed the rainbow as a symbol of showing His likeness and holy covenant, and the 'look' here is not Noah looking, but God was looking at that rainbow.
When we see something, one day I took the young people to a retreat and was spraying water to cool down that hot place, and a rainbow appeared. As I was looking at the rainbow and saying 'Wow,' someone was watching that. And they took a picture and later sent it to me as a gift. Because I say I see God, we experience a lot of grace, joy, and the experience of God raising me up in our faith life like Ezekiel, and we are thankful and happy, but in fact, at that same moment, God is also watching. Just as I am looking at my life from this side, from the other side, our Father is watching me. He is watching the covenant and saying He remembers it, and 'seeing' means it was that grace. The fact that I can look at God was a scene where mercy was revealed within the healing justice, not in a therapeutic, violent, or punitive sense, as a teaching in the midst of the adversity of a pastor who was driven to that critical point. The church commentary writes it that way. How is God looking at the adversity we are experiencing now?
It is not scolding as a teaching, but therapeutically, and while He maintains justice, He expresses mercy in the midst of it. The image of Jehovah as a strict judge that someone keeps thinking of is not the image Ezekiel remembers, but God approached him as a true teacher who teaches what is desirable, expects everything from me, takes responsibility for my future, and loves me. And 'the heavens were opened,' and this 'seeing' was premised on the fact that the heavens were opened. The heavens were opened; this was an event Ezekiel experienced. And among the expressions that the heavens were opened, including the Desire of Ages in the Bible, there are not many protagonists. This pastor is among them. He gained the opportunity to see while the heavens were opened. It is seeing the sign of grace. Even if you are in or will be in the storm of adversity in your daily life that you might have experienced this morning, during the past time, or will experience when you go down this mountain, I pray in Jesus' name that we all experience the amazing grace of our God opening the heavens and showing us the sign of the covenant in our daily lives this morning. Amen.
Who do you see this person as? Ah, before I went to the army, I read two books. One is a book that records the adversity of seniors, pastors, or elders in Korea who suffered while in the military, keeping the Sabbath, not bearing arms, and keeping their faith. It is this thick. There are names there that are really special names. There are names of pastors and names of elders, and as I read that book, I followed the faith of the ancestors, and after reading that, the second book was 'I Will Die Free.' I read these two books and enlisted. And like the seniors, I also went to prison once. After that, I was discharged, and that year, the Korea ACT invited a lecturer pastor, and they said the young people were holding a rally in the summer, and the author of 'I Will Die Free,' Pastor Noble Alejandro, was coming to Korea as the lecturer. Oh, how happy I must have been!
So, to meet this person, to see this person, there was a place called Cheongsuwon in Gangwon-do at that time. Originally, it was a small rally place that could hold 100 people, but since he was coming, over 400 college students gathered at that time. Because of that, we couldn't hold the rally in the regular rally place, so we held the rally in the vinyl greenhouse in front of it. Have you ever held a worship service for an hour in a vinyl greenhouse in August, everyone? There was no air conditioning, 400 people were inside, and I lived in the front row. It was August, but I went wearing a military uniform in a situation where it was hot even if I wore short sleeves. I wore a field jacket, an outer garment that I wore in the army, which is an outer garment worn in winter. Because I wanted to show, 'There are people in Korea who keep their faith like you.' I went wearing that military uniform, sat inside that vinyl greenhouse in August, sweating profusely, and sat in the front row to see his face, to see this pastor's face. Ah, I was a theology student with no thoughts.
Yes, he was speaking, and in the book, things like this appear. Stories like being locked up naked in a small cabinet in Cuba, being tortured all day long, being hot and cold, being asked, 'Will you believe in Jesus or not?', and having each joint of his hand broken one by one with a hammer, and not being treated—these kinds of stories, the living witness was coming right in front of my eyes. It was truly an experience of the heavens opening. After it was over, I ran over quickly. I ran over to try and touch him. I guess I am a person like Thomas. I touched his hand like this. I am a Korean Adventist young person, and I am a theology student who wants to do ministry in the future. This person looked at me like this, and when he held my hand tightly—at this time, he had already defected from Cuba to the United States—he held my hand tightly, and I also held his hand tightly, and at that time, he held my hand, which was rough and rugged, with joints sticking out here and there because they were broken by torture and not treated, which I had read about in the book, and he said just one word.
Well, it is one sentence. 'Young man, you must become a pastor.' I saw it. God is still alive, and they become the ancestors of our faith, and the value of a pastor who protects the Lord's church even in the midst of that suffering and adversity. Would you like to look around you? There will be pastors here who came out this morning to worship together. Could you look at the pastors with a heart of respect and gratitude and say, 'I love you, Pastor'? Pastor Lee Cheon-wang, I love you. The value of a pastor who burns himself like fire to protect the church and the saints while seeing God's image in the midst of real difficulties, how precious that would be! The amazing spiritual weight of an elder who lives such a life, that God counts—we will know that gratitude when we go to heaven. A prayer of a deaconess who quietly kneels for the church and family at dawn and opens the morning for the whole family. It was written by a Christian woman who experienced that. Graceful protection.
For Ezekiel, the first thing to experience the Spirit that raises him up beyond his own limits to endure that critical point was 'seeing.' And the next was 'praise.' Among the saints I respect, there are two people I meet countless times in such places as a couple here in front. These people never get old. I think I saw them 20 years ago, but then and now, they praise God. But would they have always praised because their praising life was happy? I remember sometimes they were so busy, even in a situation where their jet lag hadn't even been resolved, they came out to the front and conducted a concert for 30 minutes. That person was recorded in the Bible. 'At that time, the Spirit of the Lord lifted me up.' Earlier, I broke this down and explained it like this. But the full text of that Bible verse is this: 'I had the experience of God lifting me up. Then, a loud voice of God rang out behind me, and I... what should I do with the glory in the Lord's dwelling place?'
To a person in the midst of adversity, what God said was not, 'I will lift you up and raise you up, so you endure and build.' It was 'Praise.' And the Bible says this: There is a definition of a person who explains Ezekiel in a way that God understands, 'You are like this, and I acknowledge it too.' In Ezekiel 33:32, it says, 'You are a person who sings a song of love.' Just being a person who sings a song. Even this alone looks great. The theme of the song, 'Lord, this sorrow that is surging,' I spent my youth listening to Pastor Kim Hee-sang's praise songs. Even if I only sang songs like this, 'There is strength in trials when living every day, every moment,' even if I only sang such hymns, it would be a 'thank you,' but what kind of person was Ezekiel who sang in the midst of that adversity? He was a person who sang of love. But who said this was God.
Ah, when we look at it, Ezekiel is truly in the midst of suffering, but when God looks at him, he was a person who sang of love. The church commentary explains this to us so kindly: 'Even in the history of suffering and adversity, Ezekiel was a priest who was in the place of praising God's glory.' When the choir praises, if you came early in the morning and prayed, you would have heard all the sounds of Pastor Park Sung's piano praise with a praying heart. Ezekiel was such a person. If a pastor is praising in the church, it means that person is praying in the midst of adversity. If an elder remains and quietly hums a hymn even after the worship is over and everyone has left, the spiritual burden that the week he has to live out is carrying for this church was so great... ah, Ezekiel was like that. This praise is an even more amazing record. It was the same song as the holiness of the beings surrounding God's throne that appeared in Isaiah chapter 6 and Revelation chapter 4.
What value does this have? Isaiah chapter 6 and Revelation chapter 4 are praises in a place without sin. It is not a praise where something sinful is mixed in or where we are repenting among ourselves, but a holy praise in a holy place that only gives glory to God, and Ezekiel's praise was the same as this. He was singing the holiest praise at the most difficult moment. If our praise is like the praise in heaven one day, so when we go to heaven and meet again, and the elders are standing around the right side of God's throne singing such praise, if I can confess that I also sang songs with such lyrics and such melodies in the world, how valuable and endurable a day our life would be today? I pray in the name of Jesus, who is worthy of praise, that our lives will be filled with God's praise this morning and that our lives will be praise to God. Amen. Amen. Ah, the handmaid who loved God writes this: 'If we praise God more today, our hope, courage, and faith will increase.'
I truly wish that the remnant who attended our Seobu-yaeng would become people who praise quietly alone when going to the cafeteria, coming back, or taking a walk. The servant of the Lord expressed such a person like this: 'A person who maintains communion with heaven through song.' Ah, this is truly, I am so grateful that there is a handmaid of God in our denomination. How can one express it like this? People who maintain communion with heaven through song. But a similar expression appears. In the Desire of Ages, it says, 'He maintained communion with heaven through song.' Ezekiel was experiencing grace like Jesus. If we look at the image of God's love through God's opened heavens this morning and live a life of praising Him, we are also living like Jesus. Jesus also praised and went forward even before the cross. If we all become people who sing the song of the cross in harmony with Jesus, the acknowledgment of Jesus Christ who lived praising like that in the midst of adversity, and in His wide embrace, how much would God like it, and how happy would our lives be?
Uh, there was a young man who was experiencing difficulties in life. It seems this young man wanted to have the experience of the heavens opening and seeing God. He went as a 1000-person missionary. And a few months later, he asked me to come to the mission field where he was. When I went, I also saw for myself that God met this young man who was in the midst of adversity and bestowed amazing grace upon him. On the other hand, there was a woman. This person was married, her husband was a professional, they were financially stable, and they were living a happy life having children. But one day, she felt a bit uncomfortable, went to the hospital, and was diagnosed with cancer. Even if you have faith, isn't it inevitable to be flustered? Also, I know that there are people among us who have come to this place and are looking at God together even in the midst of such pain and adversity. I truly wish that God would bestow grace a thousand or ten thousand times more than the grace He gave us upon them.
This person clung to such a God, but it seems it wasn't resolved immediately. However, she didn't worry. There was some financial leeway for treatment at home, and since her husband was a doctor, she didn't worry and thought, 'It will be treated somehow,' and thought it would be fine. But the treatment went on for 1 year, 2 years. And it got worse and worse, and this person reached the point where these cancer cells, which were inside her, burst out of her skin. In the midst of being painful and difficult, one day she was lying down like this, and a family meeting was held. She went out of the bedroom, and her husband was sitting in the living room, and the kids were sitting like this, and they told her, 'You, sit over there.' So she sat down. 'The oldest needs to get married, the second is still in college, and the youngest is still young, so we can't spend any more money on you. Get out of the house.' Uh, it seems there are people who live like that. The husband saw the wife's future.
Because he had to raise the children. But what shocked the wife even more was that she was so surprised, upset, and angry that she went outside, but none of the children stopped her. They should stop the dad or hold the mom who is leaving and say, 'Mom, calm down. You need to get treatment. Dad is just saying that because he is angry.' Or isn't it normal to do something like that? But the children didn't say anything and just stayed still. 'I need to get married. I need to go to college.' That mom received a serious psychological blow. She was so upset that she wanted to die, so she took a boat from where she lived and went for a few days to a very remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, went to a place where no one knew her, and went to die, but when she tried to die, she didn't have the strength to die. So the method this person chose was the method of starving to death. So she went into the middle of the jungle, just went anywhere and lay down. And she was starving to death.
In the midst of that, one morning, a man who was climbing the mountain, making charcoal from wood in the forest nearby and selling it, passed by, smelled the strange smell of rotting flesh coming from the forest, looked around, and found a person lying there abandoned. Usually, people who live in the mountains have good hearts, right? This person took care of this lady. He said, 'I will take care of your last moments,' and made something like a hut by roughly putting wood together next to her, put the woman there, and a passerby who had never seen a woman abandoned by her family before put her down, and one day this person was in too much pain. So she kept screaming and then offered a scream-like prayer to God. 'God, if You are really alive, please don't let me hurt for just one night.' It wasn't 'Please let me live long,' and it wasn't a prayer for treatment, just 'Please don't let me hurt, just for tonight,' and she fainted. She fainted because it was too painful, and when she came to her senses, it was dawn when the sun was just rising.
But from the east where the sun was rising, an angel with white skin, shining and sparkling, was walking toward her. He came to the parent-child relationship and said words she couldn't understand, and then he tore her clothes. And he put his hand on her chest, and the pain disappeared. On the other hand, this young Korean woman who was having a hard life went as a 1000-person missionary and was assigned to a remote island. One morning, the village chief came and said, 'Missionary, if you cross those two mountains over there, there is a lady whose situation is truly miserable; she was abandoned by her family, her body is sick, and she is dying, and since you are the only person on our island who is connected to God, please go and see her through her final moments.' This book is 22 years old. 22 years old. But because her position was a missionary, the chief came to a 22-year-old young woman and asked her to go and see a dying person through their final moments—how scared and trembling she must have been! She herself was having a hard time living, so she came here to meet God, and trembling, this friend prayed a prayer of prayer and crossed the mountain at dawn. Usually, they move before the sun rises there. Because it is too hot.
And she arrived at the hut in the middle of a jungle at the point where the sun rises. Who is the person lying there? The person who offered that prayer, who wanted to not hurt for just one night. This person went and met that person. Why did she look like an angel? That person expressed it like that, but when I heard it later, because their skin color is black, it seems Korean women look like white people to them. 'An angel with white skin walked toward me. He said words I couldn't understand.' This missionary doesn't speak English well. So when she went and looked, she was reading the Bible in Korean. Since she was reading in Korean to someone who speaks English, from that lady's perspective, she was also singing songs she couldn't understand, but she was singing them in Korean. So to this person, even the songs sounded like the sound of heaven, not knowing what kind of songs they were. Ah, the missionary who met God in the process of meeting and treating her like that called me and asked me to come. So I went there. And I took a picture of that scene. I will show you a video for a moment. Since there is a part where the treatment process appears, please understand the harsh parts, and I would be grateful if you understand it as an expression of God's love.
Let's do it with a bandage. Bandage, bandage, we have to do the bandage first. Bandage is here. Oh my. God's love that started from the beginning bears fruit through our meeting, and how much joy it is to us that you exist in this world, you are a person born to be loved. You are still receiving that love, right? You are a person born to be loved. Even now, a person who was abandoned, a person who was forsaken, a person who hoped to die in the midst of adversity, but God did not give up. These two women met in the jungle in a remote area at the end of the Pacific Ocean. By God's grace, you were born to be loved. While interpreting this, this woman was crying her eyes out. Uh, when I finished the volunteer work and was leaving, this person came to the church next to the man who was next to the uncle. And after the worship was over, she said one word to me. 'Pastor, I want to live.' God knew this heart. 'You, even if you are covered in blood, live.'
This final time was used for repeatedly praising the Most High. The final time when Jesus went the way of the cross while praising. That time is not a time of pain, self-pity, and resentment, but a time happy with praise, gratitude, and infinite love for His children. Look at this work that our Lord did. Look at this work that God is doing, what He will do for us today. My heavenly family, I pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that you will live a wonderful day full of happiness and praise while looking at Him today with the One who is watching over us. Amen. Let's pray together and open the day.