Continuation (Acts 2:46-47)
Those without the law will wonder, “Why does the gospel have to be like this?” Matthew was written to those with the law, but if you don’t know the gospel, the longer you live your life, you’ll be oppressed by the law. Before dying on the cross, Jesus Christ gave the Sermon on the Mount. In Mt. 28, He says to teach everything He has commanded. We must teach what Jesus taught in Matthew 5 so they come out of the law and enjoy the gospel. The thing we learned today is to not resist an evil person. We received salvation and the gospel, but if we don’t know this, we become enemies of others. That’s why it’s important for us to listen to the Word carefully.
Satan (John 8:44)
Satan deceives us, and Jesus says, in regards to the law, “But I tell you,” He tells us to come out of the incorrect interpretation and follow the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you don’t know this gospel of Christ, you cannot enjoy freedom. Either you become oppressed by the law or think you don’t need it at all. That’s why Jesus Christ asked His disciples to teach and to obey everything he commanded. That person can also share the gospel to others so they come to life as well.
Christ
Sin, Original Sin
Curse, Hell – Suffer
Buddha tried to answer this question of suffering and Buddha had no answer. “No matter what I try, I cannot find the answer,” but the Bible gives us the Word; we must know it and relay it. This problem of Satan, sin, and the suffering of hell, continues to be passed down to the next generation. The only way to come out of this is through Christ; without Christ, our life cannot work out.
Christ
The Old Testament is a foreshadowing of Christ, and Christ came, ultimately Christ’s words are God’s words. If you don’t know Christ’s word, then you live according to what you decide, or the ways of the world. Christ already fulfilled God’s will, planned specifically for you and the entire world.
Prayer – Will
Can our lives follow the way we want it to go? You ultimately lose; that’s what we call suffering. That’s self-failure. You say you failed as it didn’t go your way but it’s not real failure. The physical suffering can become an opportunity to discover God’s will. But you must realistically enjoy this so you can raise other people to do the same.
Only Christ (John 19:30)
Is there anything that is a problem to you now? In the past, when we lived in the law of sin and death, even if we didn’t have problems, we considered everything to be a problem. Why? Because we didn’t have this answer of the gospel, so we didn’t have an answer to life. Now, because we’re being ruled over by life, everything becomes an answer, and this must become the imprint of every remnant, so when a problem or incident arises, you discover and pray about God’s will and plan. That’s the answer. If you say that you are not receiving answers to prayer, it means you’re holding onto what you desire.
Matthew 6, God’s Kingdom, Word
How could He rule over us? Even Satan rules. It is just through our feelings? It is through the signs we see? Or emotions? It’s through the Word and that’s why Christ gives us the Word. As I hold onto the Word, God mobilizes the heavenly armies of angels. That’s the work of the Kingdom of heaven. If you hold onto the Word correctly, God will mobilize His heavenly armies to fulfill God’s will in advance. In Rev. 8, it says when you pray to God, angels are mobilized to give you answers from heaven.
Mission
All things of the Old Testament talk of Christ. If Christ has come, then this word of Christ must be relayed for evangelism and missions. Alpha and Omega. If you don’t know this, your life won’t take place and this won’t take place in your life. God has come upon you with His Spirit to do this, to fulfill the mission, to establish His Kingdom. The Old Testament talks about Jesus Christ who will come, and has Christ come? Yes, He has, and that’s why all the words of this world are being mobilized, whether you’re a captive, colony, or slave.
If this has nothing to do with you, then the Bible has nothing to do with you. You may live your life with the law, but this law cannot overcome Satan because all the Word is for Christ. If Christ has come upon you, you live the rest of your life to proclaim Christ.
Holy Spirit (Filling)
The Holy Spirit must be with me as my background. Even if you just say these words but don’t realistically have the Kingdom of God and the Holy Spirit upon you, that’s like Matthew 16 where Simon Peter spoke the words of “Christ,” and He fails in Matthew 17 and while Jesus Christ died on the cross. Christ is not our Master, is that person wrong? No, but their time schedule remains within Matthew 16. That person doesn’t know anything about the Kingdom of God. With the name of Christ, they dream of their own kingdom and in Matthew 10, He makes incidences arise so your Master changes. He brings you to the cross. You will never die, but you don’t want to die, so you run away.
It’s because you haven’t experienced the cross, so you know Jesus is the Christ, but you run away because you don’t want to die, so you take out your hands. I must die on the cross with Christ, but he says, “I can’t do that,” and that’s the same as the time schedule of Simon Peter and the disciples. After Christ’s resurrection, Christ made them experience this. This is the Biblical time schedule you will also go into.
The moment you experience Christ as the One Who overcame Satan, sin, and the background of hell, your life will change. It’s not just about confessing Christ in Matthew 16. That’s what it means in Gal. 2:20 when I died with Christ and now Christ lives with me. When I concentrate, that’s when the Kingdom of God comes upon me as the Word. “Now, God is putting His kingdom upon me to fulfill His Kingdom.” Jesus told Peter, “While you were younger, you lived as you wanted, but now you will be hooked and led where you do not want to go,” and this is what that means. With the mission and dream of the Kingdom of God, you must wait for God’s power. From then on, there’s Acts 2 where God continues to open the doors for evangelism.
See the time schedule of the Bible accurately. Why do we talk about this? Because this time schedule of only Christ has come and will come, so we receive this answer of the 62 life points. Matthew explains the gospel to the Jewish people who know about the Old Testament, and Matthew talks about the Old Testament laws a lot. But in the book of Luke, it’s to Gentiles and unbelievers, so even though both of them talk about Christ, it’s relayed slightly differently.
The reason we’re doing Matthew in this church now is so the ones who have lived a long walk of faith may receive answers. Those outside receiving the message will receive grace. A large audience are missionaries and pastors who are slowly changing with the words of the gospel. It’s because they try to follow and live according to the Word, but it didn’t take place because they only knew about Christ but not the gospel. But once this becomes an answer for them, they will become a witness and testify about Christ.
Heavenly Mandate, Calling, and Mission. You must talk about only Christ otherwise people will die. According to God’s time schedule. Rightful, necessary, absolute, proclaiming Christ is rightful, then God’s necessary answers will come upon us. Then God will absolutely work upon us through the Holy Spirit. Without Christ, the rightful things will come, and then the necessary things will come. Why is that person like that? It is rightful, it’s because that person has incorrect imprints. According to the time schedule, these things are revealed at a necessary time, then what is God’s plan? That is what we must discover. Then this is the answer we receive and relay to other people, and this is how you must do your Upper Room Ministry and give the answer to others.
You must receive this answer to relay it, but instead, people are focused on other things, they don’t have this answer, they don’t even look to this, but they have this answer to make it better. That’s the time schedule.
One heart, whole heart, continuation
Have one heart. We go all into God’s mission. Do you understand “whole heart”? The things within you are not 100% used, because you don’t have the sense of mission or commission. That’s why everything, all the power within you, is not being revealed, even though you study or work well.
Continuation
People who succeed are people who continue. People who have received Nobel Prizes continued, and people who failed did not continue. It’s not that they can’t succeed, but continuation cannot take place. If you want to go to Seoul National University or Harvard, you must have continuously studied well from a young age. You don’t go there just because you’re smart, you can go there because you have something that allows you to continue. Look at the people who can’t specialize in a certain thing. They aren’t able to do things well because they can’t continue. They may become a pastor or taxi driver, but things don’t take place. If you’re the dumbest person on earth, God allows things to take place, but none of this takes place at all.
The famous Korean figure skater, Kim Young Ah, was the first Asian gold medalist in figure skating. She recently married a pastor’s son, so we may think, “It worked out well for her,” but it’s because she was able to continue,” but why can we not go to that extent? We cannot continue, and the reason is because there are a lot of conditions that aren’t taking place. One is financial support, and it’s also your own willpower. You also need to have the environment and people who can directly support you, like directors and coaches. It’s not just money.
If a person was born and their parents passed away early, they may be very smart, but they won’t be able to go to college. Someone said, they were very smart but their environment didn’t allow it so they couldn’t go to college. Even for your walk of faith, you think you have come this far on your own, but there are systems even in the church that allow you to continue.
Continuation. You can only continue in one area through the works of God. How did the Early Church continue?
Acts 2:46-47
According to the law, if you were Christian and believed in Christ, you would be persecuted and killed, but they gathered together in the midst of this, and they had one heart. Isn’t that the church? We might encounter situations but we cannot continue. For example, if the pastor didn’t give the sermon, how could you listen to the message? If there’s no church building, we cannot gather together. If there are no people who volunteer to serve the church in worship, we cannot have worship, so we must have sincere hearts together.
They continued to meet together in the Temple Courts. What do you do there? You worship. You continue as you continuously receive God’s grace. It doesn’t stop there. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, having this fellowship and communion together. Even at home, they continued this, gathering together, worshiping and praising in their homes. Praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people, and the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. Who did it? The Lord added to their number daily. Even though evangelism is done by me, it is the Lord Who does it through me. Through those who receive this grace every day. The content is the gospel. The gospel being continuously relayed on the sermon on the Mount can change people.
If you don’t have the gospel and you continue to make enemies, you can’t continue that because you’ll end up oppressing people with the law. You must receive the grace of the gospel every single day. People who can come to the Temple every day should come; otherwise do this in your homes every day. God must give you His power and grace to save other people. This is “continuation.”
For old people, go all into Temple Construction to do your evangelism. Do the Temple Construction evangelism. Don’t try to not evangelize if you can, but for older retired people, who don’t have a lot of unbelievers around them, go into Temple Construction. They just play at home, how would they meet other people? Then, what is the evangelism that will be eternal before God? With my devotion, how can I do this work of evangelism and missions until the second coming of Christ? That’s the Temple of the Church.
Once you die, there’s nothing that remains of yours. There’s nothing. On this earth, you may talk about your physical power or possessions, or your health, but it doesn’t matter; once you die, you just go to heaven, and once you go to heaven, what will remain? The things you’ve devoted to, evangelism, is the only thing that remains; all the other things you’ve succeeded in will not remain. The things that remain in heaven are the things which you used for success in evangelism and missions. Everything else is vain. Why? He thought something was within that, but there wasn’t. He read thousands of books to gain the wisdom of God. He had a lot of wealth. But the only thing that remained was God. Then the Bible says everything is in vain. “I won’t live that kind of life, I will find what is valuable to me.”
Even when you pray, there are prayers that bear fruit. Even if you are enemies with another person, there is a prayer that will bear fruits and answers. Once I prayed for evil within the other person, then God will surely work. That is answers. If you hate those you want to hate, you like those you want to like, what answer is that? Saving your enemies is the real answer. Next week, we don’t need to continue in Chapter 5 because it’s repetitive.
That’s why it’s an opportunity to meet your workplace colleagues and your friends. The people everyone hates are the people you must pray for and hold onto. This isn’t taught in Harvard; you cannot discover this in the world, but only those who have this answer in the gospel are able to do this, because that one person will change the entire flow. That is the way to succeed.
All things are contained within saving people. Look at Joseph, wherever he went, he was able to succeed. He saved Pharaoh and Egypt from famine, he even saved the surrounding nations by selling grain. This doesn’t come from him but the wisdom from God. World evangelization is saving everyone in the world. You need to have something in order to save others.
If you’re filled with the law and go out, “I will save everyone in the world,” you’ll just kill them instead, but the Lord isn’t talking about this. When God entrusted world evangelization to us, He planned everything all the way from Matthew. That’s why in the very end, He gave the power of the Holy Spirit and fulfilled the work through them.
Continuation is strength. It’s the same here. Depending on how you continue here, it’s the same as people continuing in schools. If they cannot, it’s because they have circumstances or they get sick or their boyfriend cheated on them or they’re not doing well, it’s the same for you. This is the answer the ones who are within the life of the evangelist can receive. You can receive grace. You just give worship on Sunday but Jesus said to teach everything He commanded us, so we do this. Those who can continue are those who receive the answer. If there are some people who may not continue, it’s okay. Even if people say something, that is not us.
Once, someone resolved to continue this meeting every week, she slowly began to have joy and peace in her heart. “The first stage of Satan’s attacks have been blocked.” There’s also Sunday worship so she also has a journey because she has conditions and obstacles preventing her from Sunday worship, so she lived that kind of life until now. When she resolved within that, another obstacle of Satan is broken down. She told me herself that one weakness is she can’t continue in anything, her studies or anything.
For example, if a pastor constantly says, “I need to skip this Sunday’s worship to go to Korea and take care of things,” and this continues to happens, this pastor lives that kind of life. The pastor’s responsible for leading people towards God’s grace, but if they say, “I don’t feel good today, I can’t wake up for Early Morning Prayer,” then they’re not able to continue, and that’s the life they’ve kind of lived.
There’s a reason why people cannot continue, why? Something happened, and for this person, that incident was a priority for them so they must figure this out first. When we help others and diagnose them spiritually, you must have this standard. This is the same works that arise in your field, whether it’s your workplace or school. That’s why failure in worship is failure in life, they cannot continue as Satan attacks them in the most pivotal moment. This is just an example, but what if the pastor said, “I can’t give the Sunday message, my child has to go to the hospital. My wife is sick so I must tend to her side, someone else must give the sermon today,” are those words a pastor should say? This person has something else he values more, so that’s why he cannot continue.
Satan makes you not continue through your weak points; that’s how you fail in continuation. Being able to continue is power. Not anyone can continue. I went to UC Irvine every Tuesday for 10 years. Try asking someone to do that for 10 years. It’s because I had the grace of God. If a pastor says, “Let’s skip today. It has nothing to do with me, it’s not a part of my church, it’s just what I want to do,” then they cannot continue. During that time, all the college students received grace from the Word, and they’ve grown up, graduated, and are now young adults, so a lot of the similar things the students said was, “Through this time, I was able to receive grace even through my hardships in college.” If no one could continue this, this place would become empty. Realistically, that region of UC Irvine has nothing to do with me, but let’s say we can do it for one or two years? “Let’s continue.” Pastor Lee took over the college department, and I took over the Young Adult Department, so I stepped back, and this was about 10 years ago.
There’s nothing else for me to say, experience this first. Then, there are a lot of things you must sacrifice. You must value and prioritize that to sacrifice something else; you’re able to continue because you have something that allows you to continue. It seems like I’m talking about one simple thing but it incorporates so many things. I had a friend who was in the military for a long time, and became a starred general. When you specialize in one area, you succeed and get a star. Even principals succeed that way. When you continue, you become a parent with children and grandparents. Continuation.
Why can’t I continue? It’s a spiritual challenge so I must pray about it. Not being able to continue, that has been passed down from your ancestors. Some are able to continue playing, they don’t sparkle at these kinds of things, but they go one heart, whole heart, and continuation into that. You need to continue even in playing, you must have something even in continuation. The forces of darkness must be broken.
How can we break down the forces of darkness in LA? Will it be broken down just by saying the name of Christ once? Then it would be gone by now, but they’ve established their own system, then even if you say, “Go away in the name of Jesus Christ,” they’ll go away like that. They leave once they realize, “This person is someone who will continue until the very end.”
That person is only Christ, only Kingdom of God, only Holy Spirit, so they can’t do anything against that person, so they leave. The people in Mark’s Upper Room who couldn’t continue was because of this. They become discouraged by others’ actions, but ministers must fight against the inner evil spirit not allowing them to continue.
Anna came after not coming for a couple of years. “How did you come?” “I had something in me that said I had to come to church.” I prayed for her in concentration last week. “I came according to your calling.” When you pray, God works transcending time and space. Don’t be discouraged by actions, but once you pray for the spirit that doesn’t allow them to continue, the Holy Spirit will change people.
Even here, beautiful Aiko is sitting here. Tiffany knows well. I had so much interest in her because God gave me the grace to continuously pray for her, even as they moved to so many different places. I would have given up, and if she were an adult, I would have given up, but as a remnant, she needed grace so I kept praying for her. That’s why when the grace of God comes upon someone, they’re able to continue.
The Early Church continued. There was nothing else for them to do; within the continuation of God, the wisdom and treasures of God are hidden. I hope you will continue in Hollywood, see it to the very end. It’s the same for all your specialties. You must continue until the end, not waver and fall halfway, because when the Holy Spirit works and the forces of darkness are broken, answers come. God will work until the very end.
The Early Church went all the way to Rome, but they couldn’t continue with God’s grace, so all of the 62 life points become our answer. That’s why, regardless, continuation. Even if you die, you die there. Even for swimmers, they say, “I can’t die in the pool, I must continue swimming.” Break the forces of darkness and from there, we can continue.
Prayer
Father God, thank You. May the 62 life points of the evangelist be continued in our lives. May you work so the 237 nations and 5000 unreached people groups be saved. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray, amen.