Restoration with the Covenant (Ezekiel 36)
Ezekiel 36:37
God is now delivering through the prophet Ezekiel the restoration of Israel. When God called the Israelites, it says He called them as a nation of prophets for the LORD, and He made a covenant with them, “I will be your God and you will be My people.” But how is it that the people of God are taken as captives to the people of the devil? God has so much power, so why must the Israelites suffer like this? They have a covenantal relationship with God and broke the covenant.
God is a God of the covenant, and even our relationship with God is because we believe in the Jesus Christ who was to come, who has come, and now we are Father-son. If we threw away that covenant and chased after something else, it means we don’t know the value of the covenant. Humans were created in the image of God, so God must be within us. It means that the word of Jesus Christ’s life must be within us. The breath of life, the Holy Spirit, the Word of Jesus Christ must be within us. Then, we are bound to receive the blessings of God that reign over this world with the word of the covenant and the power of prayer.
However, this “image of God” has changed into the image of humans, the image of Adam. We are now separated from the covenant of God, and all human beings are born in the image of Adam, the image of mankind, as sinners. There, we have to live a life that is restless like a slave who has no covenant. In that life, our work is laborious; we work just to live. We have to raise our child just to try to raise them. That is the suffering that follows where Adam has to work and toil for labor, and Eve has to suffer in childbirth.
Because the image of God has been broken, no matter what we do, that is a curse; that is Gen. 6 and Gen. 11. That is why in Gen. 3:15 God promises to send us the offspring of the woman, the offspring of the Virgin Mary, to crush the head of Satan and solve this problem. That Jesus Christ must finish everything on the cross, and He must come into me through the Holy Spirit and life. Then, everything is finished, that is how the image of God is restored. We are bound to live with the life and the Holy Spirit’s power. Then we will receive the answers of Gen. 1:28 where we reign and rule over the earth with the power of God.
Without Jesus Christ, we can never restore this. Only within Jesus Christ can everything be restored, because within Jesus Christ is everything like our past, present, and future. All of our suffering, scars, and failures of the past are restored within Christ. When you discover who you are within Christ, there’s no reason to be enslaved by the scars of your past. I’m the one who walks the path of the remaining one, the pilgrim, the conqueror, so your identity is changed within Christ.
But what happens if, instead of living your life as one who remains, you live as one who wanders, lost? We were supposed to live our lives as the pilgrim or sojourner, but you try to force your way through life with all your struggles, but you have battles with your spouse and children, but we have something that transcends ourself and our field; whatever problems you come, you overcome easily. You live that life because the image of Christ has been restored within you.
But what happens if you’re constantly centered on yourself? You’ll get into conflicts with others and break. No matter what scars or conflicts or unbelievable things happen to you, you must transcend that. It is not something to overcome with positive thinking or mental strength; only when God is within me can I overcome. You must learn this prayer well. Even if you’re not able to do this well, you must know what the correct prayer is. Christ has finished everything on the cross and now the Holy Spirit is connected with the Throne of Heaven and Christ is within me. Continue to pray so He can do His work within you.
If you’re not praying, it means you’re doing the work yourself, and even the work you’re doing is your work that you’re doing with your thoughts and your will, but if you’re able to pray, you allow the Lord to do His work. If you’re not able to pray, it means you live your life with tremendous, heavy burdens. The Lord has come into me as life and as my God, and we have to continue to entrust our life to Him. From my perspective, it may seem like a problem or circumstance, but that’s my perspective; when the Lord moves, it’s different. That prayer must take place.
If you’re not able to pray, you have to live according to your level. The level is according to your family line, exactly as it has come down. Whether you’re well-educated or not, regardless, you have to live according to that level. Your level is the level of your parents, nothing more. You might have a better education than your parents if you try hard, but the level inside of you is the exact same. You’re not able to overcome yourself so you need to understand prayer well.
If you’re not able to understand this, you’ve learned from a young age that prayer is about begging God, “Give me this, give me that, let me eat that,” and especially for people who come from another religion, it’s even worse because that’s what they’re used to. That’s what they think prayer is. That means you learned prayer when you were your own master and did not have Christ as your Master; you asked for whatever you wanted, but inside of the gospel, that is not prayer. What does God desire? That’s how you receive answers. But you pray for decades and don’t receive an answer?
“I go to so many prayer meetings and I just get possessed by demons.” I’ve been going to Downey for a year, they’ve been getting a little better, but they went to a prayer meeting in Orange County and became completely crazy, so if you go to some kind of prayer event like that without the gospel, you become possessed by demons. With what spirit do you become possessed with? If you concentrate and cry out in prayer, something will come into you. This meeting has been going on for 10 years. This lady was possessed for 20 years, it was okay for the first 10 years, but she started to go to prayers and events and Early Morning Prayer, she started going crazy.
Even the senior deaconess in the Yakima regional church, the wife of the pastor has a Catholic background; she doesn’t listen to the words of the senior deaconess. She’s the pastor’s wife but she cannot give the answer to her son who has a mental illness, but as he was getting healed, the senior deaconess gave the Word. But Catholics are all about idolatry and works. It’s worse with the Hispanic background, but as she did this, she accepted Christ and became the pastor’s wife. Without this foundation, the Catholic background will continue.
At that time, the Senior Deaconess said one thing, “This is not something you can do something about. The fundamental problem must be solved.” She said one thing. The pastor’s wife asked, “The fundamental thing? What’s the fundamental thing?” But people are never interested in solving the fundamental problem, they only heal the outer things as they learned with their background. That’s when the heart of the pastor’s wife opened up, “This is the first time I’m hearing this, what is this?” Then on Wednesday they went to the emergency room and there was no disease; that was the work of the demon.
If you’ve a Catholic background and cannot escape without Christ, you cannot escape the background. You have been set free from the authority of Satan but he will continue to follow you around because you don’t have this clear gospel. Even though she’s been doing Bible studies and worshiping and was a pastor’s wife for decades, there’s an Indian person who had been doing ministry with the pastor’s wife for 20 years. The senior deaconess just said one thing to her. You don’t need many words, you just give them the essential answer to their problem. They don’t have the gospel.
I listened to the Indian’s sermon, and 40-50 minutes was praise, it was 2 hours, and it was screaming with, “Hallelujah,” and I had to listen because I had to analyze what kind of message was going out. If you listen to the message, you’ll know what kind of messages go out and what their spiritual state is. No reason to scream so loud at the top of your lungs, “Hallelujah,” God still receives glory even if you whisper. Think about it, when David was standing before Goliath, he wasn’t speaking loudly, but he said it quietly as if he wasn’t done talking.
You can just say one word. However, if someone doesn’t have the content inside of them, they have to say many words very loudly, and I’m not saying that being loud and shouty is bad, but I’m saying it’s not necessary. Yes, the Bible tells us to cry out in prayer, but people think if they scream out loud, He will hear it better. Even if you say it quietly to yourself, He will hear. But some people keep it in their head so they fall asleep, so you can say it out loud as well. No reason to yell it as if you’re casting out demons with volume.
Some people who really want to do that, that’s how they feel satisfied, so you can do that, but for the people who are pregnant, it’s dangerous because it will startle her baby and the fetus would get surprised and scared. The volume is not the standard; it’s the content. David just said one word, “I come before you in the name of the LORD God almighty.” If you are certain the Lord is working upon you, you can work quietly. However, if you’re doing something the Lord never promised, it still won’t work because He didn’t promise it.
Jesus Christ died and resurrected and now we live this resurrected life, and now we have this promise to no longer live by ourselves, but to live with the blessing of the Lord being within me. Because this is promised, we can just hold onto the promise and ask Him. Even if you don’t shout and scream out, if you say He promised to be your Lord, He works; He has no choice but to answer that because He promised. “I have the promise of being a child of God,” then all your thoughts can be changed to prayers because He will answer.
“God, why do I lack strength? Why do I get lazier? Why am I not able to concentrate on the message and I’m getting sleepy?” No need to be ashamed; I don’t have any strength. But the Lord is working. But what happens if you just give up on yourself? You lose the promise and don’t receive answers. “God, we should do Temple Construction, but how should we do that?” God promised Temple Construction, so we don’t just do it haphazardly. You can just ask Him.
“God, I don’t want to live an embarrassing life; how can I do this? I’m a church officer, I don’t want to be embarrassed, how can I do this? God, I don’t want to leave this image of myself to the next generation,” so ask Him. But as evidence that you’re not enjoying the gospel, you remain weak and stressed. “I can’t do this. I don’t have monthly income so I don’t have a chance.” It means you don’t have the promise. We’re told to ask our Lord. The master of our lives is not ourselves; it is the Lord. If the Lord said He would do Temple Construction, then He will do it. “I will carry it out through your faith.” Even the fact that you’re discouraged is disbelief. I hope you will ask Him.
“God, why do I have so many weird people in my life lately?” You can ask your Lord, “Is this truly a weird meeting or is it a blessing?” But you just make your own decision instead of asking Him, “Oh, it’s just strange people,” but this is how you can pray for yourself. At a higher level, you can ask, “Lord, completely reign over and control me.” That’s way better. As soon as you wake up, “May the Spirit of the Lord completely reign over me,” there’s no greater prayer than that. But you pray for everything except for that. “Give me this, give me that,” then the Lord is going to hit you.
It says in the Lord’s prayer, and it also says in Matthew 6 to seek God’s Kingdom first and His righteousness, not to “give me this, give me that,” but humans are always doing the opposite of what He says, instead of that, we say, “Honestly, if I don’t have it, then I have to tell God, ‘I don’t have it,’” but that person doesn’t understand the blessings of heaven. For 40 days, He told them about the Kingdom of God for that answer, so that must be established first.
Instead, the Gen. 3 that Satan has planed inside me moves me instead; my scars move me instead. We’re being slaves to Satan, then, so instead of asking, “Give me this,” pray for the Kingdom of God to be established in you. May God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Some people say, “Because I don’t want this, it must not be God’s will,” that’s what you call sin, being seized by Satan. That state makes your life fail. God’s will is believing in Jesus. Believing in Jesus as Lord is the will of God, and believing in Jesus Christ is revealing God’s glory, glorifying God. Believing in Jesus Christ is the work of God.
So, there’s nothing that can be appropriately applied without the cross of Jesus Christ. You say you want to glorify God, but when you reveal the cross of Jesus Christ, God automatically receives glory. That blessing has been promised to you as the covenant, and praying is just enjoying what has been promised to you as the covenant. That’s why you listen close to God’s Word, and that has to come to hit me in the heart. If this Word doesn’t really strike you, you need to stay here until you do. The Word of God must be established within me for me to pray, “God, establish your kingdom in me,” but otherwise your spiritual state is collapsed and nothing goes into you.
Instead of any of the spiritual things being left with you, you only remember the physical things and the funny examples, then spiritually, instead of having furrowed, ready ground, it is thorny or rocky. Even though the Word of God is given to you, it is either scorched or poked to death. It’s important how I receive God’s Word. I hope you will not stake your life on people but instead, on worship. You need to stake your life on God in order to not follow after people.
If you don’t stake your life on God, you’ll stake your life on unnecessary things. You’re going to stake your life on killing your enemy. When a spouse stakes their life on the other person, they stake their life on not getting a divorce instead of worship. Some won’t stake their life on worship but they stake their life on helping others, they reveal their own righteousness as they do it for themselves, but when the Word of God comes into you, that becomes the covenant and that becomes prayer; you pray because it is the covenant and God keeps the covenant so you need to hold firmly onto the covenant.
The passage we read today talks about the restoration of Israel, and in the last verse, it says when Israel is restored, the physical things will be restored as well. You keep focusing on the physical things, but when the spiritual things are restored, the physical things follow. Ezekiel 36:37, “I will only work when you pray according to the covenant I have given you.” Ezekiel 36:37. “Do this for them,” meaning you pray for what God has promised. If you do not pray to God for it, He will just remain still.
This is the Word God is giving to the Israelites through the prophet Ezekiel. God already gave us the covenant, we are those who have their problems finished on the cross; hold onto the covenant and pray. We’re told it’s finished, then we need to ask, “How is it finished?” If you ask Him, you receive answers, that’s’ why it’s not a problem for me, it’s a covenant, a promise. “If I feel good today, I’ll believe it; if I don’t feel good, I won’t believe it,” but God promised this to you regardless of your circumstances. “It’s raining today and I don’t feel good so I don’t believe in this,” that’s not the covenant. There are people who have depression, “When I suffer in depression, I don’t believe in this,” but the promise is the promise. It is finished, you must believe in that. But instead of believing in the covenant, you believe in your depression, so you’re trapped by it. Stop seeing that, stop being seized by your depression; hold onto what God has promised.
It’s the same for any mental illness. We’re too naïve. If we’re afraid of something, we hold onto that and say, “I’m so scared,” but God never told you to hold onto that. Hold onto the covenant, then God moves, that is His covenant. That is what prayer is. If you don’t know the covenant then you don’t know prayer, either. All the religious prayers are the same, whether it’s the church or Hindu or Buddhist.
I went to Shanghai, China, and there were golden trinkets tied up to the trees for them to make money. If they go there to pray, they give their offering there, they get a golden thing and they hang things on trees and it looks like Camren’s hair style. All the trees look like golden trees, they have drooping boughs and think if they bow down to this golden tree, they get money. It’s the same thing as most church prayers.
If anything, people pray for money even more in the churches because they think their god is the almighty God, but that person doesn’t believe in that because God never said that. That person may use the word, “God,” but the God is not the same God in the Bible. Those are the words of demons, so even in church, there are many demon-possessed people, so when they go to church prayer camps, they get demon possessed. When you concentrate on something, God works, but God gives the filling of the Holy Spirit upon Joel according to the promise. God said, “You need to pray according to the promise I have given you,” and God says, “I will fulfill it,” then prayer is so easy, isn’t it? Why is it so hard? It’s because you’re living however you want, without His promise.
“I’m a Christian so I need what I need, I want what I want,” is that bad? It’s not a bad thing but why are you not seeking the things of God from heaven? Why do you only seek the things on earth? The Holy Spirit isn’t living inside of you, you look exactly like a nonbeliever does, you have your personality, but the Lord must live inside of you. If you live exactly like a Buddhist, you lose hold of that blessing.
Then what must you pray for tonight? It’s simple, but even after this, you’ll pray unnecessary, incorrect prayers as you’re entrenched within religion, but if you pray for the things the Lord desires, that’s the Early Church. For 10 days, they held onto God’s promise and prayed, and God worked. Finances were restored as well and their education was restored, their business was restored, and it says they never had any other problems. Because it said they weren’t bogged down by such things, they did world evangelization. They did face their limitations because the Jerusalem Temple only thought about the Jewish people inside of Jerusalem. The gospel needs to go beyond me, to all the ends of the earth, but they’re stuck in their legalism and ideology, so they couldn’t receive the blessings like the Antioch Church.
Even from the beginning, the members of the Antioch Church were different. They started with Gentiles, so their goal was the ends of the earth to the 237 nations, and Paul was attached to Antioch Church and they commissioned missionaries. So even though the Jerusalem church and the Antioch church had the gospel, it was different; Antioch Church was able to help Jerusalem Church in their abundance. Everyone was facing financial difficulties, including the churches, God allowed the Antioch church to overflow for world evangelization.
Businesspeople must heal their idea. Saving up your money is not the key; use it in the way God desires for it to be healed. Saving your money as much as you can is self-centered, thinking you can do it, but you must be liberated towards what God desires. Right now the church is going to missions in many different nations. Come quickly to your senses and support them with prayers and offering. The more you hold back, the more your finances wither away. It doesn’t matter how nice your thinking is; that’s not really kindness, and it doesn’t matter how upright you try to be, that’s not justice. Stand before God.
There were people who gathered together to support Africa, but they are drying out, so don’t just do this as an act, but hold onto the covenant. It’s not just a short-term program you’re doing; stake your life on this as the covenant. If this is my covenant, and I pour my heart into this, it moves in this direction. The Karin people, church officers pray for the missions field to which you must attach yourself. If God gives you the answer first, you must attach yourself to that field. Mongolian people come to the church so the church officers must see, “If God is bringing them here, I must attach myself to this mission field.”
The blessings are all here but you’re asking for blessings, it means the Word is not going into you yet. That’s why the Word of God has to go into someone for them to hear. Don’t just pray by yourselves but create groups that pray for nations and pray together. For me, “I will stake my life for the future generation because the future generations has many nations contained within them,” if you receive the Word, your body must move in that direction, but you just say, “Yes, that’s right,” that’s a Pharisee. That person just has a huge head, “I think that’s right, I know everything,” and they don’t want to go anywhere. They’re just in their home and they don’t even want to pray.
Because of that, God has no reason to bless your body. You must move your body for God to bless your body, and that’s health and finance. But if you stay still, God says, “Fine, stay diseased.” You need to torment your body, almost. Why would you just leave your body alone? You need to use it. What are you going to do with your body? Become Miss Korea? Become Miss USA? You lose all your strength as God isn’t going to give it to you. Your body is being moved by God’s mission.
What happens if you keep your body still and you die? Torment it and abuse it. Sales people work until they die. They have hope for tomorrow, so they think, “I will do this tomorrow,” but you have no hope and you stay still. Your body becomes weaker and weaker and you have to go to the hospital. If you say you need to do something, you say, “I have a doctor’s appointment, pastor,” or they say, “I don’t have a ride so I take the taxi and have nothing to give to offering,” and can’t meet with anyone because they can’t pay for anyone’s meal. The reason is that they kept their body to themselves instead of using it for the Lord.
I hope that our assistant pastor Bae will use her cane and body for the Lord, because one day, just see, she’ll fly around, use her body for the Lord. But if she just stays still, she’ll say it’s painful. Use your body. If you remain to just waste away, you’ll get a disease. Come to Early Morning prayer. Are you just going to save up money and throw it away when you go? You can use that money to get a taxi to church, but you use the taxi to go to the hospital. If you want to minimize your disease, come here and pray, and I’m going to this extent. I hope you will pray.
We’re going to go to the World Missionary’s Conference soon. Pray the prayer that receives answers. Pray for the missionaries, you received those answers, so pray for them. You do unnecessary things? You’ll just become healthy and pray. Then God is saying that being sick is a blessing because that’s the only way you’ll pray. Having no money is grace because if you have money, you’ll do something else. God is already answering you.
Pray the prayer that receives answers. Starting from tomorrow, we’ll have Early Morning prayer on zoom. There are some people who just stay in their homes, and most people stay at that time. I tested it, everyone is asleep but I hope you will open your eyes early and receive the things of heaven. With the promise of heaven, pray. For the people who cannot come all the way to church, listen to the broadcast along with us and listen to the summary afterwards and pray with us, and I hope you will do the intercessory prayer topics. That is the prayer you do for the Kingdom of God.
Instead of just praying for yourself and going to sleep, pray for the members of the church. Do you understand? Even if you watch from home, don’t just listen to the message and turn off the zoom but pray with us, too because this is the time we need to gather our prayers. That prayer ultimately comes as answers to your region and family. I believe this grace must be upon you.
On Saturday it’s 6am, every other day it’s at 5:30. We’re not doing it on YouTube because we want to confirm who comes in, it’s on zoom, so I hope the church officers will receive the blessings of a church officer. Laypeople don’t have to receive this blessing, but the church officer must receive the blessing of an officer; otherwise you can’t be an officer.