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 Sermon > Spirit, soul and body |
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Title |
Spirit, soul and body(32) - The 3rd lecture on - Spirit, soul and body(11) |
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Speaker |
Rev. Jaerock Lee |
Bible |
1 Jn 2:24-25 |
Date |
2005-02-13 |
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[Scripture]
[1 John 2: 24-25]
"Therefore let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. 25And this is the promise that He has promised us--eternal life."
[Introduction]
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, in the book of Acts, we read that when the apostle Paul commanded in the name of Jesus Christ, diseases and weaknesses were healed and demons left.
Even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.
Many were amazed by this, and some of them tried to imitate the apostle Paul.
It was the case with seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest. They tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, "In the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out."
Then, the evil spirit answered them, in Acts 19:15-16, "Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?" Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.
Not everybody can receive the power of Jesus Christ just by imitating outwardly.
Only when you have the faith in Jesus Christ, can you receive His strength as God's child, and only when that kind of person commands will the enemy devil and Satan tremble with fear.
But today, so many people who profess their faith in God cannot drive away darkness with the authority of God's children but live in tests and trials. Why is this? It is because they live in sins although they profess they believe.
In farms or countryside, where do worms and dirty insects gather? They gather at dirty places like toilets or at a heap of manure. In the same way, if you still commit sins and do not throw away flesh that is dirty and stinky while professing your faith in the Lord, evil spirits will not leave you.
As God said to the serpent that tempted Eve, "You will eat dust," the enemy devil and Satan have the authority to control men of flesh who are made from the dust while they are being cultivated on this earth.
But as you listen to the gospel of holiness and throw away your sins one by one in this church, what happened? You experience bad things turning into blessings. As your soul is prosperous, everything is prosperous with you and you become healthy.
And once you cast off all flesh and go into spirit completely, God's blessings will come on you much more greatly and completely.
You will receive blessings whether you come in or go out, you will be head, but not tail, and you will lend but not borrow. You will receive whatever you ask for in prayer, and when you pray for other people, you will receive the power and authority to drive away their diseases and trials.
I hope you will cast off all sins quickly and come out as complete men of spirit.
I bless in the name of the Lord that you will enjoy the authority of being God's children and receive all the blessings.
[Body]
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, members who are attending the service through the satellite all over the country, members of branch churches, local sanctuaries, Light and Salt mission, Restaurant Mission, members who are attending the service on the Internet all over the world, [children of Sunday school]
In the last session, I explained to you the method how you could cast off flesh. In order to cast off flesh and go into spirit, you first have to cut off the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.
Then, you have to stop all works of flesh and remove even things of the flesh one by one. But throwing away flesh cannot only be done by human strength.
Along with your effort to cast off sins, you must receive God's grace and strength and the help of the Holy Spirit. You can remove all the fleshly elements in you when these four things are combined.
In more detail, to cast off works of the flesh and things of the flesh, there are many commands of God in the Bible that say, "Do this" "Don't do that" "Throw this away" and "Keep that." There are commands like pray, love, be humble, serve others, do not judge, do not be jealous, do not murder, cast off adulterous mind, throw away pride, keep the Sabbath, and so on.
If you keep in mind and obey the commands that say and 'don't to this' and 'throw that away' it is to throw away flesh.
If you obey the commands that say 'do this' and 'keep that', the knowledge of spirit, namely truth, will be filled in you.
For a farmer to harvest abundantly, he first has to pull out the weeds and plant grains. If you obey the words that say 'don't do' and 'throw away', it is like pulling out weeds from the field of your heart.
If you keep the words that say 'do' and 'keep', it is like sowing the seeds of truth in your heart.
You sow the seeds of truth while pulling out the weeds of untruth, and if you continue this process with faith, you will begin to bear the fruit of Spirit. You will bear the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit, the fruit of love in the 'love' chapter in 1 Corinthians, and the fruit of light and so on. Then, you will soon find that you have become a man of spirit.
Some people just want to give up from the beginning saying, "I have so much flesh that I cannot throw away, and when can I throw away all of them?"
But you do not have to be discouraged. No matter how many kinds of fleshly things you have, you can just aim for the biggest one and cast it off.
You attack the greatest root of evil that you think you have and work on it.
When you pull out a big tree, you do not have to pull out all the small roots. Once you pull out the main root, then the other small roots will be pulled out together.
In the same way, if you cast off the biggest sinful nature in you, you can throw away the rest easily. For example, if hatred is the biggest sinful nature in you, you can pray fervently and sometimes fast about that, and accomplish love, which is the opposite of hatred.
You act with love toward those whom you used to hate, and sow the seeds of truth now.
You hold their hands and smile at them once more, and you can try to find what they need and serve them first even though they do not ask you to.
If your hatred is cast off and if you have spiritual love in this way, you will find that your other untruthful things are also thrown away. You will not either be rude or judge other people.
Since you pulled out a big root called 'hatred' and accomplished love, other fleshly elements like small roots are also pulled out.
If you throw away evil one by one like this, you will one day find that you have already become sanctified.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, once you get rid of all fleshly things, namely untruthful elements, your body will also become a body that belongs to spirit, not flesh.
You will not have a very healthy body, not a weak body that becomes ill and that cannot overcome tiredness and hunger.
Before he received the Holy Spirit, Peter could not overcome sleepiness. The night before Jesus took the cross, He went to Gethsemane with Peter and two other disciples.
Praying for taking the burden of cross, Jesus asked His disciples to be awake with Him. But the disciples fell asleep, not being able to keep watch for just a couple of hours.
Matthew 26:40-41 says, "Then He came to the disciples and found them asleep, and said to Peter, 'What? Could you not watch with Me one hour? [41] 'Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.'"
The phrase, 'flesh is weak' does not mean that the body of Peter was weak as most people usually think. Rather, Peter used to be a very strong fisherman and had more strength than other people.
What, then, does this mean? This means that Peter, who had not received the Holy Spirit yet, had not thrown away all his sins, and he had not accomplished the body belonging to spirit yet.
If you cast off flesh and go into spirit, your soul and body will be under the control of spirit.
So, no matter how tired your body is, if your heart wants to stay awake, you can keep yourself from falling asleep. Although Peter was a strong man at that time, because he had not thrown away his flesh completely, he could not control the elements of flesh like tiredness and laziness even though he wanted to keep watch.
Also, after Jesus was arrested, he even denied Jesus whom he loved due to fear. This was also because his flesh was weak.
If he had been able to control his soul with his spirit, he could have overcome the fear, but because he could not do it, such a great offense was committed.
Some people try to justify themselves giving the example of Peter in this example.
They say, "Even Jesus' best disciple Peter could not overcome sleepiness, and he even denied the Lord three times, so I can make mistakes any time." But this does not make sense because it was before he received the Holy Spirit that Peter's flesh was weak.
After he received the Holy Spirit and cast off his flesh, he was not tired or sick due to weakness, but rather, he healed the sicknesses and infirmities of people, drove away demons, and even brought the dead people back to life.
Until he volunteered to be hung on a cross up side down, he was changed into a strong and brave man who could take all kinds of hardships without any fear.
You, who have received the Holy Spirit, will also have body belonging to spirit to the extent that you accomplish sanctification in your heart.
Even though you have not become fully sanctified, as much as you change into spirit, God will give you more health. The word "you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers," is fulfilled for you.
There are many members in this church who testify that they have become healthy like this. There are many who were healed of diseases and disabled bodies, and also among elderly members, there are many who gained youth after they began to attend this church.
They often used to fall down having no strength in their legs, and many parts of their bodies were sick, but since they began to attend this church, they rather became healthier and stronger as they got older.
Some of them say they have no problem climbing up high staircases that even young people would feel tired to climb, to deliver the church newsletters.
As they cry out in prayers, cast off flesh, and are filled with the Holy Spirit everyday, their weak bodies become healthy, proving that the word of God is true.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, in the third lectures of spirit, soul, and body, I explained about elements of flesh that will perish and that we have to cast off.
After you throw away untruths that belong to flesh, your body will also become a body belonging to spirit, so that you will be healthy and full of the Holy Spirit. Now, we have finished with the aspect of body in the 3rd lecture on spirit, soul, and body, and let us go into the aspect of soul.
In the aspect of soul, we mostly learn to change the soul that belongs to flesh into the soul that belongs to spirit.
First, let us briefly review what soul is. We have memory device in our brains.
Knowledge that we gain as we continue our lives, namely many contents that we have seen, heard, learned, and experienced are stored in this memory device.
When we retrieve the stored data, namely the contents that are remembered, we call it 'thought'. Also, we say a person is wise when he utilizes his knowledge well.
The memory device in our brain, the knowledge stored in it, and the operations or retrieving those things are called, 'soul' as a whole. Let us think of computers. They have memory device and we can store data in the memory device.
Later, we can search the data and find something or use the data for some other purpose.
The memory device and the data of the computer and the process of searching and using the data as a whole can be compared to soul of men.
The ways people see, hear, input things, what kinds of knowledge they have, and how they retrieve this knowledge and how they use it are all different.
Their environments in which they were raised are different, and what they saw, heard, and learned are different.
So, even in the same situation, people think and react in completely different ways because they have different kinds of operations of soul.
To divide this operation of soul into two general categories, there is operation of soul belonging to flesh and that belonging to spirit.
In other words, people have 'fleshly thoughts' or 'spiritual thoughts'.
What, then, is fleshly thought and spiritual thought? A thought occurs when people retrieve their stored knowledge and make use of it.
At this time, the thought is different according to whether they use the knowledge of truth or the knowledge of untruth.
When the knowledge of truth, that is the word of God, is used, they have spiritual thoughts, and when the knowledge of untruth is used, they have fleshly thoughts.
But just knowing the truth in our head would not necessarily lead us to have spiritual thoughts.
We will have spiritual thoughts to the extent that we have knowledge of spirit in our heart, namely to the extent that we have cast off flesh and accomplished spiritual heart. The truth in our heart will be retrieved and utilized so that we will have spiritual thoughts.
Let me give you an example. Suppose that a person has insulted you so much in front of so many people.
He is threatening and cursing at you for something that you absolutely have nothing to do with.
At this time, those who have knowledge of truth in their heart will first have spiritual thoughts like meekness, peace, and compassion. They would think, "I should not make this person have discomfort. I will answer him in a way that his anger will calm down."
Also, they would not hate that person, but only have mercy and pity for him because he has to show his evil like that.
If he strikes their right cheek, they would want to turn to him the other also. Because they want to have peace even by humbling themselves, they would not have any anger or fight back against him.
But those who have fleshly thoughts will have anger thinking, "Why should I bear with this kind of thing? I have to show him something."
Immediately, they raise their voice and argue, and fighting will be caused.
But not only non-believers, but also among the believers there are so many people like this. They know in their head very well that they should give the other cheek if somebody strikes one of their cheeks, and that they should not get angry but pay back evil with goodness.
But because they have not accomplished those words in their heart, they first have fleshly thoughts just like the worldly people.
They can have spiritual thoughts as much as they have accomplished the spiritual heart, and this can be applied in the opposite way.
Namely, only when you break all your fleshly thoughts can you go into spirit and receive blessings from God. Romans 8:7 says, "the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able [to do so]."
It even says it is hostile toward God, so with these fleshly thoughts, you can never go into spirit or receive God's blessings.
But people do not even clearly know what fleshly thoughts are.
Their lives are full of fleshly thoughts using their wrong knowledge, framework, and theory, but they do not even realize that they are having fleshly thoughts.
What kind of fleshly thoughts are there then? I will continue with this in the next session.
[Conclusion]
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, if you cast off fleshly thoughts and have the operation of soul belonging to spirit, you will be able to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit clearly. The worldly people cannot see even the nearest future, and even though they make plans for their lives, nobody can guarantee the success of their plans.
Even though they seem to be prosperous at one point, everything might fall down at a moment.
But the Holy Spirit searches even the deep things of the heart of the Almighty God and lets us know His will clearly.
Only if we listen to what the Holy Spirit lets us know and obey it, will we be prosperous in everything by walking on the path of blessings that God has prepared for us.
To receive this kind of blessing, we have to diligently fill our heart with the truth of knowledge and operate our soul only in the truth by keeping and obeying God's commands that say, 'do this', 'don't do that', 'keep this' and 'throw that away'.
I bless in the name of the Lord that you will be able to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit and receive His guidance, so that you will dwell in the blessings of God who leads you to the way of prosperity. |
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