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 Sermon > Sunday Morning Service |
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Title |
God Measures Our Faith(9) - God Measures Our Faith (9) |
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Speaker |
Rev. Jaerock Lee |
Bible |
Ezekiel 47: 1-5, Exodus 20: 14 |
Date |
2011-08-21 |
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Passage
Ezekiel 47: 1-5
"... When the man went out toward the east with a line in his hand, he measured a thousand cubits, and he led me through the water, water reaching the ankles. Again he measured a thousand and led me through the water, water reaching the knees. Again he measured a thousand and led me through the water, water reaching the loins. Again he measured a thousand; and it was a river that I could not ford, for the water had risen, enough water to swim in, a river that could not be forded."
[Exodus 20: 14]
"You shall not commit adultery."
Introduction
Maybe you have had the following kind of experience.
On a sunny day, you dress up and leave the house for an important meeting.
You glanced through your outfit when you came out of the house, and you find a dirty stain.
The stain was not found in the house, but you came to see it with the sunlight outside.
But you are relieved that you still have time and you can change.
But the day of meeting our Lord will be different.
Revelation 19:7, 8 says, "Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready. It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints."
When the Lord comes back in the air, the light of His glory will shine brightly.
And imagine that your fine linen is not as clean or shiny as those of other people.
Or, suppose other believers are being caught up in the air one by one, but you are not given the garment of white linen. How shocking would it be for you!
You cannot prepare fine linen or make it cleaner at that moment.
Right now, God the Father is shedding the light on your heart with His word and the original light, so that you can prepare your fine linen well in advance.
You have to thoroughly check now whether you have any stains and how clean it is.
If there is any stain of sin, I hope you will wash it quickly with the water of God's word.
Also, rely on the original light and pray fervently to remove the old stains with the fiery baptism of the Holy Spirit.
The original light, the aurora-like lights will let you discover the stains on your clothes, and it can also clean the stains and make it look like a new garment.
I hope you will rely on this light and prepare bright-white and shining fine linen.
In doing so, I pray in the name of the Lord that, you will confidently be at the side of the Lord.
Main
Brothers and sisters,
This is the ninth session on 'God Measures Our Faith'.
Adultery is one of the sexual misconducts.
Sexual misconduct is when people who are not married to each other have a sexual relationship.
There are two major kinds of sexual misconduct.
One of them is when people do not keep their faithfulness to their spouse but have an affair with somebody else.
I already explained about it in the last session.
But sometimes you might commit sins because you do not know the word of God very well.
This prmarily concerns divorce and remarrying.
The leaders in particular should understand this clearly and be able to counsel the church members properly.
Nowadays, there are many divorces and remarriages.
So, sometimes even the believers make a choice that is not in accordance with the will of God.
One of the examples of adultery is the adultery committed by divorce or re-marrying without knowing the will of God.
The Bible tells us the will of God about divorce.
But what is actually done in real life situations?
Even the believers in the Lord neglect such words of God.
In Mark Chapter 10, to test Him the Pharisees asked Jesus, whether it was lawful for a man to divorce a wife.
According to the Law of Moses, men could write a certificate of divorce and send his wife away.
What did Jesus say about it?
In Mark 10:5-9, He talked about the sanctity of marriage saying, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and the two shall become one flesh; so they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."
Namely, He told us that it is not the will of God to separate from marriage once united before God.
Of course, God does not unite all the married couples of the world.
But those who have faith must consider their spouse as their own body according to the word.
Also, Jesus spoke to His disciples in private about divorce and re-marriage.
Mark 10:11-12 says, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery."
If you divorce for your own benefit without a proper reason in the sight of God and remarry another person, it means you are committing adultery against your previous spouse.
Then, it also means that there are proper reasons for divorce in the sight of God.
The Bible considers mainly two cases as acceptable reasons to divorce.
Matthew 5:32 says, "Everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of unchastity, makes her commit adultery"
From this verse, we understand you can divorce if your wife is unfaithful.
Of course, if you really understand the will of God, you would want to forgive your spouse even if he/she is unfaithful.
You would want to pray for them so they could be saved.
But Matthew 5:32 says, "And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery."
It tells us if you marry a divorced woman, you are committing adultery.
This is not my word but the word of Jesus, namely the word of God.
If this verse applies to you, you might become afraid or disheartened.
Now, you know the will of God, so if you repent truly, God will forgive you.
I am not delivering this message to rebuke you and point out your sins.
I am delivering this message so that, if you have anything to repent, you can repent of it and you will not have any hindrance in receiving salvation.
Brothers and sisters,
The second acceptable reason is when you have a problem receiving salvation because of your spouse.
1 Corinthians 7:15 says, "Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave; the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases."
Namely, your unbelieving spouse does not accept the gospel that you preach and he/she doesn't want to live with you.
Furthermore, your spouse persecutes you for attending church by beating you or locking you up.
In this case, it is OK to divorce your spouse to save your soul.
The first priority for God's children is the salvation of our spirit.
Of course, the will of God is to guide the unbelieving spouse to have faith and receive salvation.
1 Corinthians 7:15-16 says, "But God has called us to peace. For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife?"
It would be the best if you can give out the fragrance of Christ and move the heart of your spouse with your heart-felt service to lead them to the Lord.
In the next session, I will talk to you about the sexual misconduct between single men and women.
Brothers and sisters,
The will of the Lord is that believers keep the sanctity of marriage.
The Lord wants His believers to care for and love their spouses, who are one body with them.
But nowadays, so many couples take marriage very lightly.
They easily break their wedding vows to care for and love their spouses all their lives.
They divorce to seek their own personal benefit.
In that process, they give their heart to people other than their own spouse and even have sexual relationships with them.
Following their lusts and passions they one-sidedly want to divorce their spouse to take another person.
Moreover, they don't understand or bear with each other even in little things.
It says the number one reason for divorce for last 10 years is 'personality differences.'
This shows us that the love has cooled down in the hearts of people in this generation.
What is the thing that God ultimately wants for His children?
It is to love your wife or husband wholeheartedly with the love of the Lord.
I urge all of you to cultivate this kind of true love and spread it in this generation of darkness with the love of the Lord.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, and viewing audiences,
I said that the first kind of sexual misconduct is when a married person has a sexual relationship with someone other than their own spouse.
The other case of sexual misconduct is when single/unmarried persons have sexual relationships.
Today, the world is so full of sins that it is something commonly accepted for unmarried persons to have sexual relationships.
Most young people think keeping their chastity is something outdated or unreasonable.
But, whether thousands of years ago or in this age, the truth stands as the truth.
It is clearly sexual misconduct for those who are not married to each other to have sexual relationships.
It is a sin that deprives of salvation.
Deuteronomy 22:20-21 says, "But if this charge is true, that the girl was not found a virgin, then they shall bring out the girl to the doorway of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death because she has committed an act of folly in Israel by playing the harlot in her father's house; thus you shall purge the evil from among you."
Some people commit fornication and ask me to pray for their forgiveness saying, "We slept together because we were going to get married."
But being engaged does not mean you can have a sexual relationship with that person.
You are not yet husband and wife.
You can officially become a married couple when you have the ceremony before God, your parents, and your friends.
Becoming one body after such a ceremony is appropriate in both a moral and biblical sense.
But of course, there are some married couples who could not afford to have a wedding ceremony.
And I am not talking about such cases.
But if you can, you can at least have a little ceremony before God and be officially announced as husband and wife.
If you take another person's body before becoming man and wife just because you cannot control your lust, how can we say you are holy children of God?
How can you say it is true love if you cannot keep your beloved just because of your lust?
In Matthew 5:28 Jesus said, "everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
Therefore, having sexual relationship before the marriage is not an expression of love but only a sin committed by following lustful passion.
In the Bible, we can clearly see the will of God from the Virgin Mary and Joseph.
Joseph did not sleep with Mary not just when they were engaged but also even after they got married, until Mary gave birth to Jesus.
Just a couple of decades ago in Korea, people's consciences were much better than now, and they hardly broke their engagements.
Many of them did not even hold hands before the marriage.
In Korean tradition, the bride and the groom met with each other for the first time on the first night of wedding.
But how is it today?
Most young people have sexual relationships before marriage, and yet they don't have any guilty consciences about it.
They think it is nothing. They say that everyone is doing it.
They are not ashamed even when they have a baby before marriage.
They consider it trivial thinking things can happen.
In this case, even if they keep their heart and marry each other, it is still a sin before God. But if they recklessly have sexual relationships and change their minds, what a great evil this is!
They committed fornication before God and also betrayed one or the other. What an evil heart this is!
Of course, some couples agree to break up, but in many cases one person just betrays the other.
Furthermore, these days, they date somebody and have sex with them, even though they do not have any intention to get married.
In pursuit of satisfying their physical desire for sex, they change partners many times.
This is the reality. So, even though the other person promises to marry, you cannot be so sure that he/she will certainly become your spouse.
There are so many people who flatteringly lie to each other saying, "I can't live without you. Let's get married" only to take the body.
Therefore, you must not be careless in allowing your precious body to be given to a person you are not married to.
You have to keep in mind it is such a grave sin before God.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Today, the world is so full of sins, and the sexual relationship, which is allowed only for married couples, has become a means to fulfil people's physical desire.
It is really difficult to find true love and to care for the other person with a true heart.
They love lustful love and betray the other person, thereby hurting them so much or driving them to destruction.
Also, so many other sins are derived from sexual relationships outside marriage.
There are so many abortions taking place saying they didn't want any baby.
Last year, we heard some shocking news from a country in the Southeat Asia (Thailand).
Near the morgue of a Buddhist Temple, two thousand bodies of aborted fetuses were found.
This is one of the aspects of this sexually corrupted age.
How heart-broken must our God the Father be seeing all these things?
In this kind of worldly trend, even children and young students are having sexual relationships at such young ages.
Some girls do not react to their boyfriend's request appropriately. They get pregnant and abort the baby. Or they become single moms.
They quit school or run away from home and they cannot pursue their dreams any more.
Some of them raise the baby alone, but it's not economically and socially easy.
Some of them have to give their babies up for adoption to in a different country, or to total strangers.
One might understand how unbelievers might do these things, but it is so heartbreaking to hear that believers are doing the same things.
To fulfil their lust, they tempt a brother or sister, who is a member of one family in the Lord.
They cause the other person to commit sins and become distanced from salvation, as well as they commit sins themselves.
They cause others to run in the opposite direction of Heaven.
Then, some punishments, such as illnesses, come upon them or the other person, and they suffer again.
Of course, those who just came into faith and try to cast off adultery and fornication might repeat what they used to do.
In this kind of case, God will forgive them if they thoroughly repent.
Our God is love after all.
God the Father knows how sin-stained the people are living in this sin-filled world.
Thus, even though they commit sins due to weak faith in the process of casting away sins, God does not immediately punish them.
But if you clearly know the truth, that sexual misconduct is a sin, and if you are one of the leaders in the church and commit such sins, it is a totally different situation.
Furthermore, if you keep on committing these sins, it will become a sin leading to death, and it will be extremely difficult to be forgiven.
I will talk about this again when I will explain about the sins leading to death. |
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