Category: New Testament

Lose Your Life to Gain Your Life

Matthew 12

9 Jesus left and went into one of the Jewish meeting places, 10 where there was a man whose hand was crippled. Some Pharisees wanted to accuse Jesus of doing something wrong, and they asked him, “Is it right to heal someone on the Sabbath?”

11 Jesus answered, “If you had a sheep that fell into a ditch on the Sabbath, wouldn’t you lift it out? 12 People are worth much more than sheep, and so it is right to do good on the Sabbath.” 13 Then Jesus told the man, “Hold out your hand.” The man did, and it became as healthy as the other one.

14 The Pharisees left and started making plans to kill Jesus.

Richard: The world will generally oppose you when you move aggressively to do what is right. Notice here that it is the very Jewish leaders that Jesus came to as their Savio whom they had been waiting for that are opposing Jesus.

Jonah 4

9 But the Lord asked, “Jonah, do you have the right to be angry about the vine?”

“Yes, I do,” he answered, “and I’m angry enough to die.”

10 But the Lord said:

You are concerned about a vine that you did not plant or take care of, a vine that grew up in one night and died the next. 11 In that city of Nineveh there are more than a hundred twenty thousand people who cannot tell right from wrong, and many cattle are also there. Don’t you think I should be concerned about that big city?

Richard: We should rejoice when our lost brothers and sisters return to God, not complain that their destruction did not come about.

God’s Will Which We Must Untangle

Rev. Sun Myung Moon
June 14, 1959

Matthew 10

34 Don’t think that I came to bring peace to the earth! I came to bring trouble, not peace. 35 I came to turn sons against their fathers, daughters against their mothers, and daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law. 36 Your worst enemies will be in your own family.

37 If you love your father or mother or even your sons and daughters more than me, you are not fit to be my disciples. 38 And unless you are willing to take up your cross and come with me, you are not fit to be my disciples. 39 If you try to save your life, you will lose it. But if you give it up for me, you will surely find it.

Matthew 18

15 If one of my followers[a] sins against you, go and point out what was wrong. But do it in private, just between the two of you. If that person listens, you have won back a follower. 16 But if that one refuses to listen, take along one or two others. The Scriptures teach that every complaint must be proven true by two or more witnesses. 17 If the follower refuses to listen to them, report the matter to the church. Anyone who refuses to listen to the church must be treated like an unbeliever or a tax collector.

Prayer

Father, we know that Your ideal of creating the original garden and embracing the original true children with the original heart never appeared on this earth. Please forgive humanity. We have not sung to You with our original hearts from the time we were seized by death until today.

Please forgive us, the miserable ones who were unable to call You from the glorious original position. Father, please have compassion on us, for we did not attain the original heart and were unable to call You “My Father” with yearning.

Humanity lost the original garden, fell into the world of death and struggled against the darkness. We have been in the midst of lamentation and hopelessness, entrapped in the hands of the enemy. However, we long for the original homeland in our consciences, the remnant of the original mind. With Your touch, which we felt hour to hour, we have sought the stream of heavenly life. Father, even as You persevered through the historical battles, You helped us. We are so grateful.

Father, You know that being immature and unworthy, we are tired from this course. I ask You to spread Your hands of compassion over us. Please grant the power of re-creation and restore our original hearts. My Father, I sincerely ask that You hold us so that we may approach You with our original selves.

We must go toward the original world for which You long, even if we have to cut away everything of this world. Therefore, Father, please allow us to be totally immersed in desperate longing for the homeland. Please drive us so that we may run to the homeland, even if our bodies and legs become exhausted.

Continue reading “Lose Your Life to Gain Your Life”

Jesus Did Not Come to Die

Acts 13

13 Paul and the others left Paphos and sailed to Perga in Pamphylia. But John[d] left them and went back to Jerusalem. 14 The rest of them went on from Perga to Antioch in Pisidia. Then on the Sabbath they went to the Jewish meeting place and sat down.

2nd Chronicles 5

11-13 The priests of every group had gone through the ceremony to make themselves clean and acceptable to the Lord. The Levite musicians, including Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, and their sons and relatives, were wearing robes of fine linen. They were standing on the east side of the altar, playing cymbals, small harps, and other stringed instruments. One hundred twenty priests were with these musicians, and they were blowing trumpets.

They were praising the Lord by playing music and singing:

“The Lord is good,
    and his love never ends.”

My New Self and the Heaven Where My New Self Can Dwell

Sun Myung Moon
June 14, 1959

Who are sons and daughters of filial piety? In daily life, if someone just feels happy when he sees his parents happy, that is not a filial son. The real filial son or daughter would not only feel the happiness; he or she would also feel the course of past hardships that went before the present happiness. If a son or daughter only rejoices without knowing everything of the process that led to the happiness, this is not a truly filial child. If that is the case in the human world, it would certainly be true in the case of the heavenly dispensation and of God’s will for the future.

Who was Jesus? He was the substantiation of new resurrection, culminating the four-thousand-year history. The people of that time did not know that he was unprecedented, representing Heaven and earth.

Had the high priests and Pharisees known that Jesus came for the followers of Judaism and the Israelites, they would not have opposed the people going to Jesus. However, they opposed and prevented this, and Jesus lived a heartbroken life on this earth and departed in misery. This is certainly the sin of humanity, not of God or Jesus.

How absurd is the fact that the birthplace of the Messiah, whom God promised for four thousand years through the prophets, was a stable. Think about it. In a stable? Many people today celebrate Christmas as a wonderful day but, actually, it is heartbreaking. Many do not know it is a sorrowful day for which no amount of tears would suffice.

Had there been people at that time who truly longed for and prepared for the Messiah such that their sincerity even touched the heart of Heaven, they would not have treated the Messiah in that way. There should have been people who prepared for Jesus, but there were none.

Continue reading “Jesus Did Not Come to Die”

The Cross Was Absolutely Unnecessary


Acts 3

14 You rejected Jesus, who was holy and good. You asked for a murderer to be set free, 15 and you killed the one who leads people to life. But God raised him from death, and all of us can tell you what he has done. 16 You see this man, and you know him. He put his faith in the name of Jesus and was made strong. Faith in Jesus made this man completely well while everyone was watching.

Daniel 9

A foreign ruler and his army will sweep down like a mighty flood, leaving both the city and the temple in ruins, and war and destruction will continue until the end, just as God has decided. 27 For one week[n]this foreigner[o] will make a firm agreement with many people, and halfway through this week,[p] he will end all sacrifices and offerings. Then the “Horrible Thing” that causes destruction will be put there. And it will stay there until the time God has decided to destroy this one who destroys.

My New Self and the Heaven Where My New Self Can Dwell

Sun Myung Moon
June 14, 1959

What should I, as an individual, do in these last days? To solve this problem, we have to hold onto the Messiah who came for all people. Humanity has progressed until today through numerous historical relationships. God’s dispensational history was brought about through the chosen people God so lovingly chose. This history was for the purpose of embracing His loving sons and daughters.

Therefore, we have to conform with the heavenly content that moved the six thousand years of history to possess the power of life that can push the whole of it away. Jesus drove away the four thousand years of history when he came two thousand years ago by being connected to the historical heart of God. After clarifying everything in the four-thousand-year history, Jesus wanted to build a new garden upon that foundation. Therefore, holding onto that heart of Jesus, we should clarify history and think of the future. We have to think of how much Jesus longed for the emergence of his new ideology at that time.

Jesus told Nicodemus that unless he was reborn, he could not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, I must deny the life I have lived until today. No matter how much I think I have accomplished, I must deny my individual self. Because I am a fallen person, I cannot escape from that realm. My life and my lifestyle should be denied.

What we think of as normal is not indeed normal. We live an abnormal life; we have an abnormal lifestyle, and we die abnormally. The natural place for us to enter would be hell. What is heaven? It is the place where the person goes who lives a normal life, has abnormal lifestyle, and dies normally.

If Jesus came to distinguish between hell and heaven, to close the door to hell and open the door to heaven, to build heaven, then he certainly did not come with an ideology, a life, and a love that can be denied. You should understand this.

Who did Jesus come in search of when he came to this earth? Jesus came searching for the Israelites, whom God has established as the chosen people after indescribable hardships. Jesus was absolutely necessary for Judaism, the religion of the chosen. That absolutely necessary one was hung on the cross and departed. You should realize that Jesus was absolutely necessary for the Israelites and Judaism. The cross was absolutely unnecessary. It should not have been.

God Looks at This World with Judgment

John 4

3 Jesus left Judea and started for Galilee again. 4 This time he had to go through Samaria, 5 and on his way he came to the town of Sychar. It was near the field that Jacob had long ago given to his son Joseph. 6-8 The well that Jacob had dug was still there, and Jesus sat down beside it because he was tired from traveling. It was noon, and after Jesus’ disciples had gone into town to buy some food, a Samaritan woman came to draw water from the well.

Jesus asked her, “Would you please give me a drink of water?”

9 “You are a Jew,” she replied, “and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink of water when Jews and Samaritans won’t have anything to do with each other?”a]

10 Jesus answered, “You don’t know what God wants to give you, and you don’t know who is asking you for a drink. If you did, you would ask me for the water that gives life.”

Richard:  Here Jesus approaches the Samaritan women.  He offers the woman living water.  It is interesting that many Samaritans accepted and believed in Jesus, even though they are not considered true Jews by many Jewish people.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans)

2 Kings 6

24 Some time later, King Benhadad of Syriae] called his entire army together, then they marched to Samaria and attacked. 25 They kept up the attack until there was nothing to eat in the city. In fact, a donkey’s head cost about two pounds of silver, and a small bowl of pigeon droppingsf] cost about two ounces of silver.

26 One day as the king of Israelg] was walking along the top of the city wall, a woman shouted to him, “Please, Your Majesty, help me!”

27 “Let the Lord help you!” the king said. “Do you think I have grain or wine to give you?” 28 Then he asked, “What’s the matter anyway?”

The woman answered, “Another woman and I were so hungry that we agreed to eat our sons. She said if we ate my son one day, we could eat hers the next day. 29 So yesterday we cooked my son and ate him. But today when I went to her house to eat her son, she had hidden him.”

30 The king tore off his clothes in sorrow, and since he was on top of the city wall, the people saw that he was wearing sackcloth underneath. 31 He said, “I pray that God will punish me terribly, if Elisha’s head is still on his shoulders by this time tomorrow.” 32 Then he sent a messenger to Elisha.

Elisha was home at the time, and the important leaders of Israel were meeting with him. Even before the king’s messenger arrived, Elisha told the leaders, “That murdererh] is sending someone to cut off my head. When you see him coming, shut the door and don’t let him in. I’m sure the king himself will be right behind him.”

33 Before Elisha finished talking, the messengeri] came up and said, “The Lord has made all these terrible things happen to us. Why should I think he will help us now?”

Sun Myung Moon
June 14, 1959

John 3: 1-15

Who was Jesus? During the four thousand years of the historical dispensation, no one was qualified to introduce the happiness of God. By the coming of Jesus, however, God’s happiness was to be introduced at last and the garden of happiness which God permitted was to be built. We should understand that Jesus was such a new being in history. The Israelites at that time should have known that Jesus represented the sole substantiation of the hope of their ancestors, the substantiation of the happiness their ancestors had fought to attain. He was the hope for the restoration of Israel’s national sovereignty and the establishment of the heavenly foundation.

Jesus resurrected the hope of the ancestors and of the earth, which was buried deeply in the heart of God. Moreover, he was the representative of God, the one whom God had sent to bring about the world where the ideal of the Kingdom of Heaven could be fulfilled. Jesus was our representative, the representative of humankind who would build the garden of happiness. The Israelites should have known this; however, they did not realize this. Therefore, even though Jesus came to this earth, he had to go without becoming the central person of the new world. He had to go without possessing the people of the new world and without building the society and nation of the new world.

The world we live in today is fallen. Because nothing in this fallen world became the reality God hoped to fulfill, God can rejoice in nothing. God looks at this world with judgment, therefore, our lifestyle, environment and nation cannot communicate purely with His heart.

What does God long for now? He is longing for something new. When Jesus appeared before Judaism and the Pharisees who bragged of being the chosen, he said, “The things you assert and have pride in are not enough.” We should know that Jesus’ three-year public life course was the record of the battle he fought to declare and proclaim that everyone had to go through him, that he was the cosmic new being who brought a new ideology and world view. Jesus hoped that his disciples and the numerous people who followed him would become new people. Nevertheless, among those who met Jesus at that time, only a few believed and understood that Jesus came to introduce and build a new heart, a new ideology, a new life, and new happiness. Therefore, when Jesus came, he could not speak fully about these things and the blueprint for the new world before he departed.

Nicodemus appeared before this agonized Jesus. He was a government officer of Judea, a person in the position of a teacher and leader of the chosen people. Jesus emphasized to him the necessity of being reborn. We are destined to be reborn today, just as Jesus said.

If there is a last days in the six thousand years of history, then God expects to resolve everything at that time. God knows that He should judge and resolve this sinful world at a certain time. Therefore, we are walking our course of faith today fearing the last days. What kind of time is the last days? It is time to liquidate the old and assert the new.

All People Are Within the Fallen Realm

Deuteronomy 14

24 But suppose you can’t carry that ten percent of your harvest to the place where the Lord chooses to be worshiped. If you live too far away, or if the Lord gives you a big harvest, 25 then sell this part and take the money there instead. 26 When you and your family arrive, spend the money on food for a big celebration. Buy cattle, sheep, goats, wine, beer, and if there are any other kinds of food that you want, buy those too. 27 And since people of the Levi tribe won’t own any land for growing crops, remember to ask the Levites to celebrate with you.

Matthew 1

1 Jesus Christ came from the family of King David and also from the family of Abraham. And this is a list of his ancestors. 2-6a  From Abraham to King David, his ancestors were:

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah and his brothers (Judah’s sons were Perez and Zerah, and their mother was Tamar), Hezron;

Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon, Salmon, Boaz (his mother was Rahab), Obed (his mother was Ruth), Jesse, and King David.

6b-11  From David to the time of the exile in Babylonia, the ancestors of Jesus were:

David, Solomon (his mother had been Uriah’s wife), Rehoboam, Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Jehoram;

Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon, Josiah, and Jehoiachin and his brothers.

12-16 From the exile to the birth of Jesus, his ancestors were:

Jehoiachin, Shealtiel, Zerubbabel, Abiud, Eliakim, Azor, Zadok, Achim;

Eliud, Eleazar, Matthan, Jacob, and Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is called the Messiah.

17 There were fourteen generations from Abraham to David. There were also fourteen from David to the exile in Babylonia and fourteen more to the birth of the Messiah.

My New Self and the Heaven Where My New Self Can Dwell

Sun Myung Moon
June 14, 1959

John 3: 1-15

We were born on this earth. However, we did not contemplate whether being born on this earth into our life was a good or a bad thing. There are many people who do not even think about whether this reality is true or not. After being born and living our lives, we are bound to die, leaving our bodies behind. We know well that each of us must go over the valley of death.

The issue of whether we die a truth death is related to us and to our lives. We should not forget that as we began, so must we end.

There may be many who are proud of the fact that they were born on this earth of their parents’ lineage. However, a person with a true parental heart should grieve over the child she has borne. Even if a baby is lying in the cradle of happiness at birth, no one can be certain whether that child’s whole life will be happy. The parent herself should experience a heart of sadness before a heart of happiness.

If we acknowledge that the child is not born in the garden of happiness, then the life he will lead after birth will be the same; the valley of death he will cross after his life will be the same. We must not forget that we are living in this kind of realm. Let us ask ourselves, “Have I yearned for the true life? Have I lived a true life? Do I have the confidence to victoriously face death as I sing of the preciousness of true life?” Everyone would have to say, “No.”

Continue reading “All People Are Within the Fallen Realm”