What is God’s Plan for Sex Leadership Training Seminar, July 15th:  http://www.urbanlifetraining.org/index.php/273-what-is-god-s-plan-for-sex-seminar-announcement

Exodus 20

²⁶ And don’t build an altar that requires steps; you might expose yourself when you climb up.

Richard:  God emphasizes the importance of modesty and sexual purity before marriage and faithfulness within marriage.

Ezekiel 44

²³ Priests must teach my people the difference between what is sacred and what is ordinary, and between what is clean and what is unclean.

Richard:  We have to teach the Divine Principle so people can know the way to live.

Let Us Be Israel, the Chosen People of God

Sun Myung Moon
February 9, 1958

The title of the sermon about which I would like to share my thoughts with you is “Let Us Be Israel, the Chosen People of God.” I will speak briefly upon this subject.

The story of Jacob is recorded in Genesis. He was tested representing Heaven even after he had gone through a course of atrocious troubles. During the course of those trials, Jacob kept in his heart the thought that he was the blessed, chosen person. He fought to the finish with an angel who was trying to hold that will in check. He then won the victory and was granted entry into the realm of a person chosen by God. Because Jacob attained victory after struggling against all kinds of difficulty centering on God’s will, God granted him the name “Israel.” We use the word “Israel” frequently today.

This is not a simple noun. This word represented an historical life. This is the noun of victory that concluded the 2,000 year history from Adam to Jacob. We should not forget this. Furthermore, we must realize that after setting up Jacob and granting him the blessing to be called Israel, God felt happiness. At the same time, He was sad.

The reason God carried out the dispensation of toiling for several thousand years looking for Jacob is because Adam, the ancestor, had fallen. Owing to his fall, Adam lost the blessing God gave. That blessing had to be recovered, but the historical course of recovering God’s lost blessing was indescribably sorrowful. You must understand that the God who blessed Jacob with the name Israel had this kind of sorrowful Shim Jung.

When God granted the blessing of “Israel”, the word was not to be limited to the one generation of Jacob. It represented the ideology and ideal of the whole creation. This one word was fraught with God’s Shim Jung in its entirety.

Jacob was exhausted from toiling for several decades at Laban’s house. He had come through a difficult life course to establish the land of Canaan God had granted. Then he went looking for Esau in the country of Edom, losing everything he had for the sake of carrying out the will of Heaven, which had blessed him through the uplifted hands of Isaac.

However, the homeland he returned to was not the original homeland in which he could have had joy in his own time. It could not be the seat of joy for him. Even as he was going back to see his homeland, for which he felt affection, and his brother, Jacob was anxious and worried. You must not forget that this is not a state of affairs only Jacob, one individual, had to endure. This is a course all of humanity must walk.

The Jordan and Jabbok Rivers blocked the road that led to Jacob’s hometown. With the blessed land in front of him, Jacob could not sleep. Instead, he had to pray shedding tears. The ancestors had left behind this state of affairs. This was the situation of God, who was conducting the providence of the heavenly principles. We should know that Jacob felt this in his heart more deeply than anyone else.

This situation was not limited to Jacob’s generation. It recurred in the course of the history of the chosen Israelites. All the prophets and sages who appeared in association with God’s will had to bear this kind of Shim Jung. In order to enter into the bosom of the Father, they had to cross the hill of struggle with a barrier of darkness in front of them. You should bear this in mind.

God granted the blessing through the hands of Isaac and urged Jacob to abandon everything and go back to his homeland. Why could God not make Jacob’s path smooth? Why did He let the kind of heartless circumstance develop in which He sent an angel and let the angel hurt Jacob? Why did He not give a word of advice to Jacob who was appealing all night before Heaven, bearing the will of the heavenly principles with a fretful Shim Jung on the banks of the Jabbok River?

We should not forget today that this was an indescribable state of affairs and a fretful Shim Jung of vicissitudes incomprehensible to man. As he returned to see the homeland God had granted, Jacob’s road was a wilderness one. We must realize through the course Jacob walked that there are twists and turns like this in the course we walk today.

Why could Heaven not help but pose these kinds of circumstances? Needless to say, selecting one person and setting him up is the will of God’s providence. Yet establishing a foothold behind the scenes through which people can push out Satan is a more important will of providence. These are the kinds of ups and downs whereby God could demolish a wall of turns and twists in the invisible world humans know nothing about, but which God and Satan know well. In order to set up such conditions, Heaven could not help but put Jacob through extraordinary circumstances. You must understand this.

From the day he was blessed by Isaac until he returned to the homeland where Esau lived, Jacob did not have one day of happiness. This shows us that if a person receives God’s blessing representing God’s will, he cannot but go through a life course of anxiety until he settles all before Heaven and earth from the position of a sacrificial offering.

Because such a course of history remains, when you march forward today bearing the responsibility, you will have to go to the enemy’s world as Jacob did and walk the course of struggle where you too fight alone in a difficult environment.

If Jacob had fallen down exhausted in the course of the struggle, then the name Israel would not have been given to him. The grace of blessing through the name Israel would have had nothing to do with Jacob. In order to attain the blessing Heaven had bestowed through the hands of Isaac, Jacob rendered devoted service toward Heaven with a burning Shim Jung that could overcome any difficulty or hardship. You should understand that was how he built a victorious foothold after fighting valiantly in a wrestling match with an angel at the Ford of the Jabbok River.