Watch the latest Richard Urban show with Stephen Downward: True Father’s Words Have Been Adulterated: https://youtu.be/8h9AhTg10kQ.

Mark 14

⁵³ Jesus was led off to the high priest. Then the chief priests, the nation’s leaders, and the teachers of the Law of Moses all met together. ⁵⁴ Peter had followed at a distance. And when he reached the courtyard of the high priest’s house, he sat down with the guards to warm himself beside a fire.

⁵⁵ The chief priests and the whole council tried to find someone to accuse Jesus of a crime, so they could put him to death. But they could not find anyone to accuse him. ⁵⁶ Many people did tell lies against Jesus, but they did not agree on what they said. ⁵⁷ Finally, some men stood up and lied about him. They said, ⁵⁸ “We heard him say he would tear down this temple that we built. He also claimed that in three days he would build another one without any help.” ⁵⁹ But even then they did not agree on what they said.

Nehemiah 4

4 When Sanballat, the governor of Samaria, heard that we were rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, he became angry and started insulting our people. ² In front of his friends and the Samaritan army he said, “What is this feeble bunch of Jews trying to do? Are they going to rebuild the wall and offer sacrifices all in one day? Do they think they can make something out of this pile of scorched stones?”

4 When Sanballat, the governor of Samaria, heard that we were rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, he became angry and started insulting our people. ² In front of his friends and the Samaritan army he said, “What is this feeble bunch of Jews trying to do? Are they going to rebuild the wall and offer sacrifices all in one day? Do they think they can make something out of this pile of scorched stones?”

³ Tobiah from Ammon was standing beside Sanballat and said, “Look at the wall they are building! Why, even a fox could knock over this pile of stones.”

⁴ But I prayed, “Our God, these people hate us and have wished horrible things for us. Please answer our prayers and make their insults fall on them! Let them be the ones to be dragged away as prisoners of war. ⁵ Don’t forgive the mean and evil way they have insulted the builders.”

⁶ The people worked hard, and we built the walls of Jerusalem halfway up again. ⁷ But Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites, and the people from the city of Ashdod saw the walls going up and the holes being repaired. So they became angry ⁸ and decided to stir up trouble, and to fight against the people of Jerusalem. ⁹ But we kept on praying to our God, and we also stationed guards day and night.

¹⁰ Meanwhile, the people of Judah were singing a sorrowful song:

“So much rubble for us to haul!
    Worn out and weary,
will we ever finish this wall?”

¹¹ Our enemies were saying, “Before those Jews know what has happened, we will sneak up and kill them and put an end to their work.”

¹² On at least ten different occasions, the Jews living near our enemies warned us against attacks from every side,^[a] 13 and so I sent people to guard the wall at its lowest places and where there were still holes in it. I placed them according to families, and they stood guard with swords and spears and with bows and arrows. ¹⁴ Then I looked things over and told the leaders, the officials, and the rest of the people, “Don’t be afraid of your enemies! The Lord is great and fearsome. So think of him and fight for your relatives and children, your wives and homes!”

¹⁵ Our enemies found out that we knew about their plot against us, but God kept them from doing what they had planned. So we went back to work on the wall.

¹⁶ From then on, I let half of the young men work while the other half stood guard. They wore armor and had spears and shields, as well as bows and arrows. The leaders helped the workers ¹⁷ who were rebuilding the wall. Everyone who hauled building materials kept one hand free to carry a weapon. ¹⁸ Even the workers who were rebuilding the wall strapped on a sword. The worker who was to blow the signal trumpet stayed with me.

¹⁹ I told the people and their officials and leaders, “Our work is so spread out, that we are a long way from one another. ²⁰ If you hear the sound of the trumpet, come quickly and gather around me. Our God will help us fight.”

²¹ Every day from dawn to dark, half of the workers rebuilt the walls, while the rest stood guard with their spears.

²² I asked the men in charge and their workers to stay inside Jerusalem and stand guard at night. So they guarded the city at night and worked during the day. ²³ I even slept in my work clothes at night; my children, the workers, and the guards slept in theirs as well. And we always kept our weapons close by.^[b]

What Belongs to the Father Belongs to Me

Rev. Sun Myung Moon
August 30, 1959

John 14:11

1 Corinthians 13: 1-13

The title of the sermon I am about to give today is “What Belongs to the Father Belongs to Me.” To expand the scope of this, it becomes “What Belongs to the Father Belongs to Us.” I will speak briefly on this topic.

Until now we have thought that we have infinite value. We do not know the nature of our value; we only know that we are valuable. However we feel, that cannot establish our complete value and remain till the end. We cannot confidently and with dignity take pride in ourselves before the great universal reality with the mere feeling that we are valuable.

We cannot deny that because this is the state we find ourselves in, we long for the precious being, the precious one, the relationship of value and the valuable world. We are to seek for these. When we recognize what needs to be done and we look at the great universe, we cannot help but have an intense feeling of emptiness.

Hence, we seek something we can depend upon. We sense deeply through our consciences and in our lives that it is our fate to pursue this. From this standpoint, even if there were no God, we would have to create a fictional absolute being. If we understand that we live in such a situation and that there should be some order in our actions, including our feelings, our rejoicing and singing, and if we reflect upon ourselves as to whether or not we can forge a valuable relationship with that and be happy, we can probably conclude on our own that the answer is negative.

Because this is the miserable situation of human beings, if there were a God, He would have some responsibility to establish a relationship with us. If God is the subject partner of absolute value and the origin of value itself, then we cannot logically deny that if God does nothing to establish that valuable relationship, there is no way to attribute love and other such characteristics to God.

We know that human beings fell. We know that they lost their original position. Human beings lost their original value. We should look at the whole world. If there is a God, then we should call out “Heaven.” If there is an absolute being, we should call out “Absolute Being,” and if there is something which has the form of goodness, we should appeal to it to manifest itself in concrete form. We should ardently long for such an absolute being, a God, or being of goodness.

Because Heaven understands the situation human beings are in, He has not hesitated to exert Himself to the utmost and sacrifice Himself to recover us. He did not hesitate to exhaust Himself in clinging to humanity. He has been searching for the value of the whole and of the ideal. If we accept this, we should have a humble heart. Pressing our hands together, we should bow before Him.

When we fathom this movement of the whole, the flow of history and the sway of our hearts, we find that even if we are not aware of it, some force has been pulling us and prodding us in the background of history and in the depth of our hearts. We have to understand that some force deep inside our hearts prods us to pursue some value. We should not ignore this as a coincidence or phenomenon, because it stems from an inseparable relationship inside each one of us. When we decipher this relationship and examine its value, we find that therein lies something which is connected to God, the epitome of goodness. This relationship has to be built.