John 8:31-47
Former Headquarters Church
Seoul, Korea
Prayer
Father! Do not abandon Your sons and daughters who prostrated before You. Guide us not to hesitate in offering our entire mind and body to You. We have many points of dissatisfaction before You, but we dedicate our minds and bodies, relying upon the historical shimjung with which You worked hard to find us. Please have dominion over us. I sincerely desire that at this time, You will burn our shortcomings with the fire of the Holy Spirit and consecrate us so that we can dedicate our minds and bodies as a whole and acceptable offering to You.
Father! Your sons and daughters have taken the trouble-filled steps to this place instead of Your tearful course, filled with sorrow and stabbing pain. Please take note of our determination and actions. Lead us at this time to Your deep and loving shimjung, and let no one fall into Satan's accusation.
We know that You want to spread the new word to the nation through us, but we are anxious that we may fail our responsibilities due to our disloyalty and shortcomings and bring sorrow to You. Father, I earnestly pray that You look at the faults with which we have served Your will and fill them with the power of Your life and love. Bless us so that we can take on any mission and responsibility. There is a myriad of satans in our path. Father, lead us so that our determination remains intact and we become an offering of life before You, enduring until the end without losing to Satan. I sincerely pray that You will guide us to proceed with our initial determination and fight for the sole purpose of revealing Your glory.
Have pity on Your children who are gathered here, and lead them to Your loving heart. Remove all elements of darkness. Allow us to serve You with the authority of life and as one body. Let us sing glorious hymns and show gratitude for Your blessing of glory. Keep Satan away from this gathering from the beginning to the end, and reveal only Your glory through our mind and body. We pray in the name of the Lord. Amen.
The title of the sermon I want to reflect upon with you is "The Freedom, Liberation and Unification God Seeks to Attain." I will speak briefly upon this topic.
The Place of God and His Hope
I will speak about "The Freedom, Liberation and Unification God Seeks to Attain" from the standpoint of faith. You think that God is omnipotent and nothing is impossible for Him. God has so many abilities. Yet if one asks, searching deep down in his shimjung, whether God's heart is free, I cannot say it is. If one asks if God is amid the joy of liberation with a promising providence in front of Him, that is not true either. Moreover, if one asks whether the activities of man and all things are motivated by God's shimjung, that is, whether they are in a unified position in which they move with the movement of God's heart, we cannot but discover that this is not true.
It is the original character and original shimjung of God to want to be free. God also is the Father who should dominate the universe from a liberated position. The fact that He cannot do so is the grief of God, all things and history. Although He should bind the created world with the unifying ideal and dominate it, He cannot do that. We cannot but acknowledge that this is God's sorrow, pain and grief.
When God first created the world, the original ideal was the garden of freedom, liberation and unification. Yet you cannot deny that there was a reason God's ideal was not fulfilled. That became the source of sorrow for God, humankind and all creation. What was this source of distress? We know well that it was the fall of man. In restoring humankind, God must have an ideal for this society, and we must also have that ideal. What is the standard of this ideal? You should know that freedom for the sake of God's shimjung, liberation centered on God's situation, and unification centered on God's ideal are God's hope, our hope and the standard of the ideal.
It is written in the Bible, "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." (II Corinthians 3:17) The Father is a spirit of freedom, liberation and unification. How can the shimjung of freedom, which transcends any trials, be instilled in your shimjung, you who serve such a Father? How can the point of liberation be found which can overcome all the walls of suffering? When will the peaceful moment of total unification be found, which our center of ideals desires? These are questions you should seriously consider.
Since God is not free, liberated and unified, the freedom being advocated on the earth today is not true human freedom. The liberation being proclaimed is not complete liberation, and the unification being promoted is not complete unification. Humankind has progressed from a clan, to a tribe, to a nation and a country, but such partial unification is not true unification.
The Standard of True Freedom, Liberation and Unification
Since we were created by God, the complete freedom, liberation and unification which we desire can be realized only when God becomes free and becomes the master of liberation and unification. Thus, we cannot deny from a logical standpoint that God's freedom, liberation and unification are the standards for the freedom, liberation and unification humanity desires.
Looking back upon history, freedom, equality and love were promoted centering on humanism after the Middle Ages. Original freedom, equality and love are the attributes of whom? They are God's attributes. If the Christianity of the Middle Ages had stood centered upon God in the position of freedom, liberation and unification, through which they could connect with the heart of God, words such as revolution or reformation would not have been needed on earth. Since Christianity did not achieve complete freedom, liberation and unification centered on God, the movement for freedom, liberation and unification was transferred to the outside world. This is what we now call the Renaissance.
Afterward, the ideology of freedom revolutionized monarchies and fought against imperialism, but all eventually became shattered. Though they brought revolution to find freedom, they did not completely overcome imperialism and finally collapsed. Afterwards, there were many ideologies and political ideals, but they are all being dismantled.
People, who long for freedom, insist upon external freedom, instead of seeking and possessing the perfect ideal of freedom. They lose true freedom by that. Though they call for freedom on the levels of the nation, the society, the family and the individual, they have repeated the history of losing true freedom. The kind of freedom being advocated now is not a freedom that can be eternally enjoyed by the original mind. Those who call for freedom often become excessively individualistic and isolated. You cannot deny this. Thus, it is clear from the trend of the present age that, unless the complete and unchanging ideal of freedom is established which can connect with the heavenly ideal of freedom and resonate with the freedom desired by the universe, the more one seeks freedom, the more one moves toward the dearth of freedom.
Thus, the question is whether there is the shimjung of freedom in our hearts which can harmonize with all. If we stood in God's freedom, our shimjung of freedom would be at the level at which we could rejoice with all the people of the universe. Today, people do not stand in such a position of freedom. Though they proclaim freedom, they form a view of freedom within the boundary of themselves.
Freedom that departs from the Principle is not true freedom. Freedom that avoids responsibility is not true freedom. Freedom that produces no results is not true freedom. Thus, any act of freedom must be within the Principle. It must carry responsibility and produce results. If one seeks freedom without these conditions, naturally he will become far removed from the heavenly way. Thus, imperialism appeared after the Middle Ages only to fade away. There will soon come a time when all the ideologies hitherto presented will collapse upon the advent of the true ideology of freedom. This trend is gradually touching individuals. With a focus on your individual self as you work for freedom, you will feel the need to transform society and the family. The flow of history is such that it now separates, even my mind and body.
The Freedom Pursued by Man and the Essence of True Freedom
Democracy takes its ideal from Christianity, while it is saturated in science-centered individualism in regard to daily life. Thus, though democracy is based on freedom, it is fundamentally opposed to Christianity. When Christianity calls for freedom, it calls for the freedom of the whole universe. When Christianity pursues liberation, it pursues liberation of the whole. When it demands unification, it demands unification for the sake of God's shimjung, that is, from the standpoint of Heaven's rejoicing with the world. Since the people of the democratic world understand freedom based upon individualism, when they insist upon freedom, they eventually wind up denying their country, society, organization, and even their families and conjugal relationships. Eventually, they fall into a situation where they even deny the center of their heart. What will remain for them then? Loneliness.
When loneliness reaches its peak, they will become people of distrust, unable to trust either the other or the self. When the self becomes lonely and suspicious, it will be swallowed by cosmic fear and finally will be destroyed. This is the trend of current history.
Therefore, when we proclaim freedom, it should not be the irresponsible freedom advocated in the past and present. It should be true freedom, which is accompanied by God's love and ideal which connect to shimjung. It must lead to the world in which it operates like an unchangeable iron rule along with your power of life. It should follow free law, which must make motion.
Where is the original spring of happiness which all people desire to possess? With this they are assured of being delivered from sin, and they can experience the joy of liberation. At the end of history, we have never possessed the ideal which should surely be possessed. You should know that unless you search hard for the ideal, you will have nothing to do with the world of the ideal and the garden of freedom, liberation and unification to be created at the end of history. Since this is our hope, we believe that God's hope is also like this. When will God's and our hope be realized within myself? When will the heartistic foundation to represent God's shimjung be prepared so that I can discover within myself the freedom, liberation and unification that God feels and hopes? You should realize that, unless you discover this, you will generate historical sorrow and become a victim of judgment.
Until now, humankind has been struggling to build the world of freedom. We have been fighting to attain freedom. God, however, did not use the kind of strategy that makes sense to humankind. Though God had to go through strife for the sake of liberation, His method was different from the bloody battles of the nations of the world.
What Kind of Person Is the Master of Freedom?
While achieving freedom, God never used the method of striking others, though He struggled against certain sovereigns to liberate and save the individual. In human history, the quest for freedom involved an individual attacking an individual, a nation attacking a nation, and a country attacking a country. God takes the opposite way. In restoring the individual, before hitting the individual, He allows Himself to be hit first. In restoring the nation, before striking the nation, He personally walked the suffering road to liberate the nation. In restoring the world, before striking the world, He personally walked the arduous path.
What kind of person can be the master of freedom in the future? He is the one who can serve God. To find the ideal of freedom that resonates with God, one must follow God's strategy. That is, in restoring the family, he must strike himself as hard as the value of liberating the family. In restoring the nation and world, he should be able to hit himself as much as its value. For the sake of Heaven, again he must hit himself the corresponding amount, and he should be able to rejoice while being hit. You need to know that only those who possess such a shimjung of freedom will necessarily remain in the last days of history.
Without the master of freedom, liberation and unification appearing on the earth as a substantial being, as God desires, God's freedom, liberation and unification cannot be connected to humankind. Jesus came as a substantial incarnation of freedom, liberation and unification representing Heaven. Thus, with Jesus, you should feel the valuable shimjung which grasped the freedom deep in God's shimjung and realized liberation and unification. Without the shimjung with which one can be delighted simply with Jesus even without any worldly things, one cannot reach the realm of freedom, liberation and unification in which God can rejoice with humanity.
The freedom sought in the world today and that which is sought by God have different directions. In the world, nations attack nations, and sovereignties struggle against sovereignties to gain freedom, risking their own lives. Heaven, however, extends to the whole, willingly being smitten, voluntarily taking responsibility, and finding solutions on its own. You should know that this is God's secret for reclaiming freedom.
Focusing on yourself, if you have the heart of freedom such that you can rejoice even when you have to give up your life, you can be regarded as having the highest freedom. Considering this in light of the providence of restoration, there was a liberation movement in the spirit world at the same time there was such a movement in the physical world. Since God cannot treat a human directly as a child or His representative, the human has to ascend from the position of a servant through the position of a child until he can directly relate to God. Such an historical course has been pursued.
In the Old Testament Age, God built the garden of freedom and liberated the Kingdom of Heaven by using angels as servants. To enter the realm of grace in which one is liberated as a son of God from the position of a servant, one should be able to feel joy even when losing one's life. You should know that only those who have such a shimjung of freedom can go beyond the position of a servant and take the position of a son. Thus, the ancestors who have until now served God's providence had the shimjung of freedom to rejoice even in death. They could boldly overcome all trials and even death. With the establishment of such a standard of shimjung, there could be hope for transition from the position of a servant to that of a son, and from the age of the servant to that of the son. With such a standard established, God could send His only son. Jesus had to rise from the position of a son to that of a father.
Achieving True Freedom, Liberation and Unification
When Jesus came to the earth, he could freely choose between life and death for the sake of God until he was acknowledged by the Father. He could complete the eternal and never-changing ideal of the only son. Thus, before all people, he has been liberating those in the servant's position into children. You must know this well. Because Jesus overcame the suffering course of death and set up the standard of oneness with God's internal shimjung, we can receive the benefit of going to the position of children by believing in Jesus.
If in your heart you desire the freedom, liberation and unification God seeks to connect it to you, you must voluntarily pursue the course from the age of the servant to that of the children and from the age of the children to that of the family in which one serves the parents. You should know that this is determined by the principle of freedom. This is not achieved under a certain command, restriction or by coercion. Only when we overcome the question of life and death and can share a free and joyful shimjung, thinking of God and Jesus, can we make a relationship with God's ideal.
The history of the providence of restoration repeated the history of liberation. One pursued the course in which he was liberated from the age of the servant through Jesus and the Holy Spirit and became a child, but now we should become God's sons and daughters centering on God's love, children who can receive God's inheritance as God's family. If you want to establish the living standard of an eternally inseparable relationship with God, you should be able to freely control even death. Only then can you have the authority to receive your inheritance from God as His sons and daughters.
Today this earth wanders around searching for freedom. God also carries on the providence searching for freedom. Just as Jesus fought for God without regard for death, God worked for Jesus disregarding greater difficulties. You should know clearly that if those in the servant's position live with the shimjung of freedom and transcend death for God, God comes to them with the shimjung that can freely overcome the valleys of death.
If you establish the standard of freedom by which you can overcome any hardship with joy, even without God's presence and dominion, you can defeat any previous fear, anger, grief, sorrow and mistreatment, and turn the realm of death into the realm of God's life. Only when the fundamental issue of rebirth is resolved can we freely love God, and God can freely love us. When we become one with God, God's shimjung of freedom and liberation and the ideal of unification will turn into our shimjung of freedom and liberation and ideal of unification.
Though Jesus gave his life for God, there is an area in which Jesus cannot communicate with God. Though Jesus freely went to die for our sake, there remains an area in which Jesus and the Holy Spirit cannot unite. The reason is that since Jesus is in Heaven and the Holy Spirit is on the earth, there is a distance that keeps them apart. We are also distant as we proceed toward the position of children centering on Jesus and Holy Spirit.
The Starting Point of Freedom, Liberation and Unification
To remove this distance between Jesus and God, God should be able to love all humankind as His children and freely hold them. Only then can all the walls between God and Jesus be eliminated at once. Our desire to follow Jesus and freely pass through death for the sake of God should not simply be a concept. A standard of overcoming any toil and a liberating standard of forgetting the pain of death should be established by us. This is because only then can the relationship of freedom, liberation and unification start to be made with God. As we strive for God's will, within God's ideal realm of freedom, liberation and unification, we should be the masters of freedom representing God. We should liberate all the people for God and accomplish unification.
To do this, you should be free individuals who go over the hills of death with a deep and eager heart toward Heaven, not taking suffering as pain, sorrow or grief. Heaven can hold up such a person, disregarding His own pain and suffering, even giving up all His authority and dignity. Only in such a situation can God be our God and we His sons and daughters. Among the many prophets after Jesus, no one was exempt from suffering. Though God has the level of heart by which He can go beyond all His dignity, suffering, ordeals and sorrow for the sake of regaining His beloved children, He has never met anyone who has the same level of shimjung. You should know that this is a condition of great lamentation for God.
The power of love, the grace of liberation, and the principle of unification, which are generated when we pass through the realm of death with the assistance of God, can become the standard for freedom, liberation and unification for the entire world of existence. In this stage, though the son God searched for might be one individual, he would have indemnified all historical grief and death. His value is higher than the entire cosmos. When will such a connection be made between Heaven and earth and between God and us? Without this connection, Jesus cannot stand in a state of freedom and liberation nor can the ideal of unification be realized. Thus, even in the spirit world Jesus has to pray constantly.
Only when such a standard is established in today's Christians can we establish, as an unchanging standard within you, the principle of love, the principle of liberation from all evil and death, and the principle of unification, all of which are deeply cherished in God's shimjung. With such a standard, you can look upon the world with the shimjung with which God looked during the 6,000 years of the providence and with which He endured innumerable sorrows, pain and ordeals to find His beloved son.
When such an individual appears and forms a family, a society, a nation and a world, God's garden of freedom will be created within your daily life. You should know that the garden of liberation and the world of unification desired by God starts from such a standard.
So far, the world of Satan persisted with the sovereignty of false freedom. It looks like freedom, but it is not. It looks as if it is unifying the individual, the tribe, the nation, the country and the world, but in fact it is separated from the principles of freedom, liberation and unification.
The Current of the Providence and the Proper Human Attitude
The more freedom, liberation and unification one has based on a worldly standard opposed to God, the more anxiety, dissatisfaction and fear will swallow one up internally. One may look successful externally, but he is collapsing internally. Externally, he appears unified, but internally he is disintegrating into pieces. How then can such an internal crumbling be compensated for? God is the one who works to compensate this. Without Him, humankind today would be frustrated, would give up, and would finally expire in the realm of death.
As for people like Americans, they have no parents, no children and no relatives. Because of this, many people even desert their country. Furthermore, many people follow a religion purely for their own profit and abandon it when there is no more to gain. Since the world is created, not for the individual, but for the whole, those who live only for their own profit will suffer before the world, which exists for the worldwide ideal. They will suffer in proportion to how selfishly they lived.
Therefore, the society in which individualism and selfish lifestyles are prevalent will finally become a society of isolation, distrust and fear. It will finally give up and destroy itself. You should know that we are entering the age where such a fate sees its historical conclusion.
Looking upon this state of affairs, we should have the ideal of freedom, liberation and unification. Where can we start? If you start from your old ideology of individualism, you will lose the world unawares and inevitably be rejected by the world. Unless something appears which can unify humankind and return man to the original individual, family, society, country and world, it is a big problem for God and humankind. In this age of the last days, God has the responsibility to accomplish freedom, liberation and unification with humankind. Therefore, although the external world has been disintegrating, God has installed in the world one force of the root of the heart and has worked to establish the standard of the absolute principle of freedom, liberation and unification. This is impenetrable by death. God has worked to establish an individual with such a standard, and a family, a tribe, a country and a nation.
Consequently, the Bible describes Jesus as the king of kings, the master of our lives, and the master of the cosmos. He is also depicted as the subject of life, the ideal and love. Thus, until I make an eternal relationship with the subject, Jesus, and that relationship advances into an eternal relationship with God, we cannot fill the gaps between God, Jesus and us. If you have the power of life such that even when distrust, loneliness and fear sweep society, you confidently and freely overcome it, your life will not be destroyed, no matter what world of judgment and destruction comes into being. As long as such a standard remains, you will not be a victim of judgment in the fearful realm of death.
Why God Worked Hard for 6,000 Years
Such a standard should not be established simply as an ideal, but with the substantial unity of mind and body. Whether you will be preserved in the future will be determined by whether you can possess that ideal. Only with this am I entitled to serve God with my life, as God comes to us investing all He has with His life. Only then can God institute a free way of life after restoring me and establish the ideal of freedom, liberation and unification. If you have such a qualification, as long as God exists eternally, we have nothing to do with the power of death.
Now looking at your own self, are there a free shimjung, free life and free ideal in your heart which can rejoice centering on true life?
This is the question. When you have such a shimjung, life and ideal, you will be qualified to freely digest and pass through any path of death and suffering and restore the elements of life. In this way, you can live forever in God's world of freedom, liberation and unification.
However, there are trials and sufferings in the quest for freedom. What can block the ardent shimjung of love from God and the spurting shimjung of freedom? No one. It cannot be shattered even when everything else is. No matter how strong the realm of death may be, it cannot suppress the shimjung that rises. When a living connection of eternal unity between God and you is formed in your life, God's eternal freedom, liberation and unification are established in your heart. Without such a standard in your heart, though the freedom, liberation and unification which are aspired to as ideals may be realized, they will have nothing to do with you.
What is the reason God worked so hard for 6,000 years? It was to find one individual who could carry, feel and establish with God the freedom, liberation, and unification desired by God's shimjung. You should know that just as God is eternal, only when an eternal and unchanging standard is determined can such a world of the ideal come to you. Without such a standard of heart, no matter how well the external world is formed, no matter how it may appear externally that the world of freedom, liberation and unification is realized, it will not be the world of complete freedom, liberation and unification.
Today the power of life, the ideal and love are leaping in our hearts. Unless the firm standard of this leaping force and the standard of the efforts of God, who suffered for 6,000 years, are established in yourself, you will be swept away when the power of darkness and death comes to envelop your life. This power has fought against God for 6,000 years. When you possess the power of your life, ideal and love at the stage of relating to God's love, the freedom based on this foundation is complete freedom. The liberation based on this principle is complete liberation. The unification based on this principle is complete unification.
Without such a standard, when the world is swayed by chaos and fear, you will not be able to prevent it. What can move it is the power of life, the ideal and love. You should clearly know that without the standard of going over this, no matter how hard God has worked in the history of the providence, the freedom, liberation and unification that God has sought to attain through the history of the providence cannot be found.
Prayer
Father! Have pity on humankind, who has lost the garden of freedom, liberation and unification. We thought that all that was lost could be regained in the external world, but now we have learned the sorrow of history: that even with a certain external standard, there have been internal divisions. Let the power of life, love and the ideal of God overflow in us so as to take back the internal world of freedom, liberation and unification so that the standard of shimjung that can laugh at death and overcome pain and sorrow can be planted in our hearts. Help us realize that in the world of shimjung we can feel the freedom of all the saints, feel the whole circumstances, and move with the life of the whole.
Father! Looking at the historical world, it proceeds centered on the material, instigating divisions within and putting on a deceptive form of unification without. Internally, on the contrary, we realize that history has been flowing to avoid poverty of the spirit, life and love. Now that we have arrived at the time when we should reinforce the time of life, the time of the ideal, and Your love, please give us the heart that can rejoice even in crossing the line of death. We should attain the loyalty of heart to be able to call You Father. We should know that You had worries and battles for us. Help us realize that only when we have a change of heart and feel that Your hard work comes to us with a value 10,000 times greater than that of our death can the power of life emerge which can replenish the deficiency of the spirit.
Father! Today not only material famine and urges but also spiritual death and thirst are arising in the hearts of the people on earth. Grant us the fire of the Holy Spirit, Your life and Your love, which can fill this emptiness. Grant us Your shimjung of freedom, liberation and unification which can digest all attainable internal life at the place of its explosion, and the ideal of freedom. Father, we know that You are driving all, from the individual to the whole, to such a place to find us. We also know that from the world, the country, and the nation to the individual, they are driven out to that position in Your name.
Today, when things are flowing toward the final moments, we do not have the standard by which we can eternally keep Your power of the whole and by which our contradictory selves can be connected to the world. Grant us a greater shimjung that can find it and make the connection. Let Your existence, Your life, Your ideal, Your love and true freedom, liberation and unification be realized in my one being as they have been moving internally. We have learned that only then can we have the qualification to call the distant kingdom of God ours, the distant Kingdom of Heaven our kingdom, and the shimjung that can connect with the distant ideal our shimjung.
Since only those who have such a shimjung in their hearts can possess the heavenly kingdom and fulfill the ideal of the Kingdom of Heaven, the Father told us, "I am in your heart." Jesus also told us, "I am in your heart." I eagerly pray that we will see that everything will find resolution only with the heartistic standard that believes that the Kingdom of Heaven is in our hearts. I eagerly desire and ask that we understand and feel Your shimjung as more valuable than my body, my freedom and my life. I pray that we may restore one shimjung that can deplore Your sorrow more than the death of the whole world, and we can stand before You as individuals who can understand it.
With Your toilsome historical course of searching and wandering before us, let Your shimjung explode in our shimjung. Guide us to prepare the foundation of shimjung such that we can realize freedom, liberation and unification based on Your life, ideal and love and fulfill Your desire, saying, "Father! Please receive consolation now. We know Your heart." Guide us to be Your sons and daughters who, singing of glorious life, the ideal and liberation with You, will soothe Your heart which led the movement of freedom to resolve the sorrow, pain and lamentation of restoration. Let the whole of humankind gather around and sing of freedom, liberation and unification with You.
We learned that if we have the shimjung of freedom and liberation, even a hundred million satans and enemies cannot harm us. We have also seen that an ideology cannot restrict us. Once our shimjungs unite with You and move forward based on freedom and liberation, Heaven and earth will automatically unite, harmonize and move. Therefore, grant us such a standard in our hearts. I eagerly desire and ask for it. For the sake of this life and hope, guide us to establish the standard of uniting with Your shimjung, even risking our lives. Save us from the ridicule of our enemies until we receive You in our hearts. Keep us unchanged until Your shimjung is settled in our hearts beyond the persecution of our enemies. Make us Your children who can overcome all fear. We pray all this in the name of the Lord. Amen.
