The Correct Word with God’s Mission (Deut. 31:1-13)
Now we will share the grace of God with Deut. 31. The content we are reading today is Moses’ last message he is delivering once his mission is complete. In Deut. 31:1, it says, “Then Moses went out and spoke these words to all Israel,” and if you look in the last verse of Deut. 30, Deut. 30:20, it is a promise to give the land He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
It says here, to love God. Once you realize that, even before God loved us, God loved us first, then you are bound to love Him naturally. The evidence of God’s love for us is His salvation. As evidence of God’s love for us, He sent us Jesus Christ, His only Son, to finish the fundamental problems of mankind that we cannot solve on our own. And we must be able to confirm God’s love for us in this order for us to love God. Otherwise, our love would become conditional. However, when by the grace of God, we’re able to believe in the love of God that has saved us unconditionally, then we can begin to love God. As a reaction to the grace God gives us, we naturally love Him. Any other kind of love is not the love that is in God’s Word. It is a conditional love, a love humans give for each other, “If you do this for me, I will do this for you.” We cannot call that a walk of faith.
He also says to obey His Words. God is His Word, we cannot see God, however, through all of history, God has delivered all of His Word to the Israelites through His Word. If I’m receiving God’s guidance, it means I follow His Word, meaning I let go of all my thoughts and experiences. The reason why people cannot follow God’s Word after listening to God’s Word is because they are blocked by their own thoughts, plans, and experiences. This doesn’t mean we don’t believe in God; we believe in God but instead of following the absolute Word of God, we follow our own plans, thoughts, benefits, and their calculations.
It says in Deut. 30:20, “Hold fast to Him.” The only thing we can rely on in this world is the Triune God. If there are any of you who think there is no one you can rely on or hold fast to, that’s better because you can rely on God. If you think you have no abilities of your own, that’s good, because then you can rely on the abilities of God. It’s okay even if we have no abilities on our own. The world teaches you to gather your own abilities but God never told us to do that. God only tells us to hold fast to Him.
So, if you live your walk of faith with the things you’ve heard and seen in the world, it will become complicated. Isn’t that the reason why we study and try our best, that we can gain more abilities? That’s not what we’re talking about. The answers come to us as natural answers to fulfill God’s will. We are not studying our very best in order to gain success in the world, but our studies come as natural answers to fulfill God’s will.
It continues in Deut. 30:20, “For the LORD is your life,” our lives belong to the Triune God. “Life” means the fundamental source or beginning of all things. However, if we lose hold of this, everything begins from death. Adam and Eve were created to be with God in life, but they separated from life. If we separate from life, it’s not as if we are not able to eat or study, you may still live a very good life, but you will be dead inside, living in a state of death. Because your life is dead, you can diligently study and succeed, but later on, you will be destroyed. If you’re separated from life, it means you’re in a state of death, and in that state, you may succeed in life, you may be misled by physical success, but later on, the signs of death will reveal themselves.
But people are under a misconception, “I’m good at studying, I have a good job, and I make money well,” but you have no life. If you don’t understand what it means to not have life, you won’t understand words like that. It is like a fish which receives its fundamental source of life from the water, but it lives outside of the water. But even outside of the water, momentarily, it is doing everything it has to do. Even though it is doing whatever it has to do, there is something strange. There is something about life that feels dry and empty, and these are the signs we are lacking life. There seems to be something about my life that seems blocked. I’m not able to see my future in a clear way, and these are all signs that my life is dead. I’m using the fish as an example, but for humans, maybe I’m lacking some spiritual or religious influence. So it goes and finds a religion, or it bows down to some idols or a rock.
But as evidence there is no life, the more they do these things, the more emptiness they feel inside, the more mentally frustrated they become, and the more stress they take on. Until that point, they are just enduring through it because their studies and their business are not heavily influenced. But later on, either the visible things are destroyed or the things inside of me are destroyed; either way, I come to a point where I can no longer live my life like this. These are the things that are happening right now. There are people who have succeeded but inside, they are completely destroyed, or there are other people who are spiritually destroyed and the physical, visible things are destroyed as well, but they’re not able to find the answer.
Today, God tells you the answer, the LORD is your life. If the Israelites were able to hold onto this answer well, they would receive all of their answers from this. Deut. 30:20, “He will give you many years,” so God is the One Who gives us a long life. You might struggle to prolong your lifespan but that’s in God’s hands. “And God will give you the land He swore to your forefathers.” This was the content that Moses relayed to the Israelites as the final covenant, and then in Deut. 31:2, after Moses gave these words, He said, “My mission is complete.” He had to cross the Jordan river to go to the land of Canaan, but Moses wasn’t able to. Even if we want to live longer, we want to do more ministry, we are not able to. There is a finite limit to the life and the ministry God has given to each person. Even for Moses, even though he may have wanted to be used by God more, God limited how much He would use Moses.
Once your mission is complete, that is when you face death. But if someone has still not found the mission of their life, it means they have not found the meaning of their life. God has determined the end of your life, but you’re going to live that whole time, wandering and struggling on your own, then you’ll die without a mission. How unfortunate is that?
Deut. 31:3, “The LORD your God Himself will cross over ahead of you and destroy these nations before you,” just “as the LORD said.” God gave the Israelites the mission to conquer Canaan, but God said He would do it ahead of them. So, God fights all the battles, and after that, we go in. It’s not as if the Israelites are not fighting; they are battling in the war, but God has already finished it, and then we go in. God already prepares the people in the field who will receive salvation, and then He guides us into the field. If you are holding onto God’s mission, God will send His heavenly angels ahead of you to fulfill God’s mission, and then He will send you in afterwards.
Then, just according to God’s mission, “You will take possession of that land,” and “Joshua also will cross over ahead of you.” The leader after Moses is Joshua. In Deut. 31:4, “the LORD will do to them what He did to Sihon and Og, whom he destroyed along with their land,” so He will do exactly as He did in the past. Deut. 31:5, “The LORD will deliver them to you and you must do to them all that I have commanded you.” God said He will deliver them to us. If God attaches somebody to you, there’s nobody who can block that.
If God attaches somebody to you to give salvation, then saying, “This isn’t going to work,” those are the strange words of disbelief. If you say, “This isn’t going to work,” yes, that person may have their own time schedule, but it also means they lack their mission. God is not attaching people to you because you lack the mission to save the future generations and 237 nations, but if you just imitate the mission, God is not going to attach people to you. We have to actually go into Canaan to fight the war. But if you’re not going in and you’re just pretending to fight the mission, then God will not deliver these people to you.
After this point, I hope you will let go of all your words of unbelief like, “Evangelism will not take place.” It’s not that evangelism is not taking place; it is that God is not attaching people to you, and if God doesn’t attach people to you, there’s no other method and it will not work. Then why is God not attaching people to you? You need to look at yourself in that situation. God is bound to work according to His covenant, to those who hold to the covenant, then why is He not working? You need to look at yourself and examine yourself. It’s not that it’s not working; it’s my state that is preventing it from not working.
If I do have the right state, why is it not taking place? If you have the correct state, then just wait because that is in God’s hand as well, but there are not a lot of situations like that. A lot of times, it’s because you lack the mission. It means you lack the mission regarding the land of Canaan. In the wilderness, these people were saying other words. All of them said words of resentment and complaining, “Why do we have to go to the land of Canaan? We have so much to do,” It’s the same thing as saying, “Why do we have to proclaim the gospel? There’s so much to do. I’m so busy making a living and living my own life; why should I go out and evangelize? That’s something the pastor should do,” that’s like the Israelites talking back to Moses.
When I talk to people who go to churches outside, many have this ideology, “It’s possible for the pastor,” but don’t misunderstand. God gave this to you through Moses so you can relay it. God gave you this Word and this mission through the servant of the Lord so that you can relay it. So, if someone says something like that to me, it’s so frustrating. It’s not that the pastor does it by himself. But the Lord gives you this message and mission through the pastor so that you can relay it. But that person just avoids it by himself.
I looked them dead in the eye, “Stop lying, I experienced this as a young adult even before I became a pastor, so don’t lie to me,” and then they closed their mouths as I told them about how I evangelized even before I became a pastor, while I was a young adult. I’m sure they’re not saying that out of nowhere, I’m sure they heard it from somewhere, some church and they’re repeating it, because churches don’t talk about missions and evangelism. The church just tells you to live a good life with faith. The churches just tell you, “God will give you the land you have not set foot on, so live a good life and volunteer to a lot of charities.”
Don’t you think that people mostly listen to words from the church that say “Just listen to the servant of the Lord, do a lot of charity and volunteer work, and God will bless you as He said in the Bible”? Don’t you think a lot of people have this ideology, “We don’t evangelize, but we make a lot of money and we send money to the missionaries, who are a separate group of people”? Then I think they will suffer a lot because I’m sure even your charity and volunteering will have an ulterior motive, and I’m sure they only listen to the words of these servant of the Lord because they’re afraid of losing blessings if they don’t.
So they’re just grinning and bearing. Even if they want to rebel, they endure. They think, “If I don’t serve the church, then my blessings will be lost,” so they force themselves to do it. If there are any people who think like that, they are living a religious life and they are legalistic. Charity and volunteering should automatically take place, you shouldn’t force yourself to serve. You should naturally follow the words of the servant of the Lord, but if you say, “If I don’t follow the words of the servant of the Lord, then I’ll be beaten half to death. If I do, I’ll be blessed,” then how difficult is your walk of faith? So if you lose hold of the accurate missions and evangelism, then your walk of faith automatically turns into religion and legalism.
Serving the church and working for the church should automatically take place by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Even the work you’re doing in the world, you should be thankful for that, and through that work, you should be doing missions and evangelism joyfully; however, if you don’t have the covenant of missions and evangelism, then you just have to endure to survive and make a living. Then the young adults just have to force themselves to endure at their work, because if they get fired, it will be hard to live, but that’s not how your walk of faith should be like. You don’t want to listen to the words of your manager or boss, but you force yourself to do so because it’s hard to make money otherwise, so it will be a lot of stress. That person has faith and even goes to church on Sundays, but what’s missing? Because they’re trying to live their walk of faith while they’re missing God’s covenant and mission, their walk of faith becomes so twisted.
In today’s Bible scripture, the mission for that age was conquering the land of Canaan. In that time, it was the Kingdom of God because the Kingdom of God is the place where there is God’s land, sovereignty, and citizens. In today’s age, He is spreading the Kingdom of God, but first, God’s absolute sovereignty must be upon me. If God’s absolute sovereignty is upon you, then you aren’t a citizen of this land. If someone says, “I cannot follow the Biden administration, and I cannot follow the laws,” then you’ll get kicked out because the land moves according to the laws. America’s authority and sovereignty is regulated by the laws, and you say you want to be outside of that. Even if that person is living in America, they are not a citizen and they’re bound to get kicked out. Either they go into jail or they’re deported, why? Because they don’t want to be within America’s sovereignty.
It’s the same thing for us, if we have become children and people of God because of Jesus Christ, we have to acknowledge His sovereignty, but that must be established in your life, within you first. If you don’t acknowledge God’s sovereignty, you’ll only reveal your own assertions. It will be fine if your assertions are correct, but you’re in a state of rejecting God and believing in your own assertions, but that is actually the lies of the devil from Genesis 3.
This week I was talking to someone who is not a member of our church. I was talking to them and they were talking bad about the church. They knew all the gossip and bad things about the church, “The pastors are making too much, the assistant pastors are not doing anything and making too much, and the members of the church are going places without telling me about it. Why are they like this?” So this person didn’t want to give their offering to that church, so they gave offering to the missionaries they liked back in Korea. I listened to what the person said and I had to teach them what is right.
I said, “The salary is determined by the church members and the church board, and you may think about it like this or that, but you must acknowledge it. Even the missions the church goes on are determined by God, so you have to accept that as well. You give your offering before God; you don’t do it by looking at this person. Don’t you listen to the messages of the church and go to the church building? Then this is where you must give your offering. Whether you don’t like that person or not, those are just your thoughts.”
I told them at the end, “Deacon, you are being your own god. You are being your own god, and that’s the reason why you say what the church is doing is right or wrong, according to your thoughts, but those thoughts are according to the devil. One more thing, the kids who are good at studying don’t care what their school administration is like, or whether there are rabble-rousers in the class or not, because they have a goal for their studies and concentrate on that. But if there’s a student complaining, “Why is my teacher dressed like this? Why is my school like that?” that’s already a student who isn’t good at studying. I’m not saying the school is great; I’m sure you’ll see problems in school and kids will be noisy in the classroom, those are correct words.
The 10 spies out of the 12 spies who surveyed Canaan were not incorrect, they were correct, but the problem is that they didn’t have a mission and direction in which they must go. That’s the characteristic of a bad student. Students who are good at studying don’t care; if they see the path, they just go. If you hold onto the CVDIP, it doesn’t matter what happens, you just go. If you’re certain about the mission to conquer the land of Canaan, it doesn’t matter, you just go.
I told them this and they said, “It feels like I’ve been hit in the head with a hammer.” I told them, “Your negative thoughts and words are being relayed directly to your son, and I’m sure when you go to your church, there will be negative speakers gathering together and gossiping, but the words they speak are not wrong; they speak with correct facts, but that’s’ what unbelievers do. That’s all unbelievers do. If someone is a little bit smart, that’s all they do, but what do you think God is doing? He is fulfilling His mission of His covenant with the people who hold to the covenant.”
Later on I got a Kakao talk message from this person, “I told my son everything you told me,” and I said, “I pray the gospel will be relayed to your family.” I don’t think this person is bad, I think that’s just the nature with which we’ve lived our entire lives, thinking we’re a little smart, but we’re so spiritually numb that even if this is the direction in which Satan drags us, we don’t even realize it, and then we relay that exactly the same way to our children because our point-of-view doesn’t change.
I told this person, “If you don’t want your son’s spiritual problem to become worse, you must receive the answers first, yourself. You might have some control over your son in middle or high school, but once they go to college, they won’t listen to you; they’ll do whatever is imprinted in him. Until middle or high school, their full personality is not yet developed so they have to listen, but once they become a college student, the things they were once wavering about will become rooted in place. We look at the middle and high schoolers and see they are wavering back and forth, but it is because they lack what is their own. What goes into them up until this point is important. Once they go out to college, they become a little more settled down, and they are no longer wavering but they are rooted in what they knew. From the outside, it may seem, ‘They’ve come to their senses,’ but that’s not the case, whatever they’ve heard inside their lives has rooted down, and now they are not able to listen to other people’s words.”
Now, they hear, they listen but they don’t really hear. It’s the same thing for you guys, you’re listening right now for sure, but once you leave, your own things come out. It’s not because you’re bad people, but the things you’ve heard while you were young are rooted more deeply than the words of God, so that’s what moves you, but there is nothing impossible for God. You must keep this into consideration, though, that is why we need to give the correct gospel and covenant to the remnants while they are young.
They might spend 30 minutes in a worship service at church, but even if you take away the praise and everything else, the Word of God is only being relayed to them for 10 minutes. The rest of the time is communicating with their parents, or at school with their friends, and the ideologies of the parents are continuously going into the kids, and while they’re at school, the teachers’ ideologies are going in. Later on, when they go to college, they went to church but inside of them, there’s something else. Then, does that mean they have no hope? No, that’s why we need God’s grace. That’s why we say, “It’s only possible for us if we receive God’s grace.”
What am I talking about today? There is an absolute and definite mission given to us, but we hold onto something else instead. Without a doubt, God has sent each of you out into the world. In John, Jesus Christ says, “Just as You have sent me, I sent them out into the world,” and don’t you think that when He sends you out, it’s with a mission and the authority to fulfill that mission as well? It’s the same thing in Deut., God says, “I will send you ahead but I will do the work ahead of you and I will deliver the people to you,” then what is the work we are doing? It is only going into our field.
There is nothing we do other than holding onto our mission and going out in faith, that is why you must love the Lord, that is why you must listen to His Word, and rely on and hold fast to Him. But if you don’t know God’s mission, then you don’t know what to rely on, you don’t know what words to listen to, you don’t know what to love, so these just become ambiguous words that are just floating around. Then, we quickly change into religious living where we just serve and volunteer at church and we listen to the words of the Lord’s servant, because we think if we don’t, we’re going to be beaten up. We have not been called like that.
Young adults, this must go into you well, correctly You shouldnt’ interpret this however you want. The reason God has sent me out into the world, the reason I’m studying right now, is that God is going to give me the answers of talents and specialization, and He is sending me into the field with answers. So, the fourth industrial revolution doesn’t matter to us because there is a field to which He will send us, but if we lose hold of that, the future generations will struggle more without a mission, so just by preparing the bare minimum, it’s not going to pass.
There was a new technology released recently. It’s an AI bot that can write essays much better than I can, and it’s to the point where even Google can’t imitate that technology. This AI has a brain capacity that surpasses beyond many human’s, meaning that many people will be unnecessary, then what do you think is going to happen? If you’re not able to work, you become unemployed, then, can the nation support all these unemployed people? It would be good if they could, but they can’t so all these people will be lost. People are created to enjoy their relationship with God and show it through their work, but if people are not able to work and they just live, they are given money, they play, and that’s how they die.
Then, do you think God is giving us a mission without knowing that kind of future? No, He has a field in mind where He wants to send us, and … because they have to survive even through the fifth industrial revolution. What are you going to do at that point? You shouldn’t look at the future with the things you’ve experienced in the past so far, but the Word of God does not change. So, all the more, you must be imprinted, rooted, and have the nature with God’s Word. It doesn’t matter for adults, they can retire and live their lives. If you don’t have a mission, you enter life into a state of confusion, but it’s different for younger people. The age you live in will be impossible to live in without the Word of God.
Yes, worshiping on Sunday is important but we also must receive evangelism training. You listen to and know a lot of God’s Word but you’ve never experienced evangelism in the field. You heard the word the church relays to you and you even pray, but what is not taking place in your life? You’re not seeing the work of evangelism that Jesus Christ is currently carrying out in your field, and if you don’t see that, it means you’re far from God, and without a doubt, you’re bound to live a religious or legalistic life because you’re not able to hold onto your mission.
Jesus Christ gave us the mission to make disciples of all nations, and that exists even today, and the mission to change the satan’s kingdom into the kingdom of God exists today. Just as the Word God gave us today, God will do the work and deliver the people to us. But if the people are not being attached to us, it means there are a lot of problems with my faith. It means that instead of going into the land of Canaan, I’m going back into the land of Egypt without realizing it and I’m saying it’s not working. The characteristic of going back to Egypt is that I’m always worried about what to eat or wear. Look at the Israelites, they were saying words of negativity, worried about how they eat or live, and talking bad about Moses, their leader, for 40 years. But the people who have a mission are not influenced by those words; they have a mission they must accomplish.
When you go to your work, yes you do make money there, but that is actually the place to fulfill God’s mission, and there are a lot of strange people around you, aren’t there? That shouldn’t be a big problem for you because you have your mission. Looka t Joseph, his older brothers were not a big problem to him, because he held onto the mission of Egypt and world evangelization, he made the confession that the older brothers didn’t sell him, but God sent him ahead of them to save lives.
But what happens if you don’t have that mission? Even if you try to understand what the older brothers did, you can’t understand it. No matter how much you live your walk of faith, you can’t understand people. He went to Egypt as a slave; it’s impossible for him to be thankful. The Word of God tells us to be thankful, but we have no way to be thankful, so on the outside we try to be thankful but on the inside we go crazy, and that’s our walk of faith. If there’s any of you living your walk of faith like this, I hope you will restore your mission, once you restore that mission, everything will be resolved. The words you receive from the Sunday message, “God gave me this word to fulfill my mission.” If you’re trying to force the Sunday message to fit into your life without knowing the mission, that’s just another form of religion.
God is giving you His Word in that direction, but if you lack that direction, you’re forcing yourself to say something during form. Sometimes you receive grace, sometimes you don’t, but most times you don’t, do you know why? It’s because God is giving you the word for the mission, but if you lack that mission, you keep adjusting the word to fit to yourself, so sometimes you would receive grace and sometimes you don’t. Look at the Israelites, God was giving all the words to Moses for the land of Canan, but the Israelites held onto the land of Egypt, so no matter how much they listened to those words; it did not become personalized. On an everyday basis, they are not able to express their resentment, but when the opportunity presents itself, they explode with resentment.
I hope none of you feel that, but even if you are, it’s okay because you can change yourself now. You can just pray, “God, give me the grace for me to hold onto my mission in a specific and clear way,” the people of all nations, through the church, the covenant of the people of all nations, the remnants, and world evangelization must take place, and the Temple Construction must take place. There’s a reason why, to save the 237 nations of the world, to heal people, and to raise the future generations as the summit.
If you’re irrelevant to this, you have no mission. There was someone who gave a prayer topic for his business earlier, and it was from a chapter in Acts where the people of 15 nations gathered together, so he prayed for his business to open to 15 different nations, but I told him it wouldn’t work. You need to see the time schedule of the church well, meaning he didn’t know the church. God fulfills His mission through the church, but you live your life without knowing the mission of the church or the time schedule of the church, so when I say to listen to the words of the church or the mission of the church, it means to listen to the time schedule of the church. You know the time schedule of the church by the Word God gives us. Then, without a doubt, God has already prepared the answers in advance and they will come according to the time schedule.
In Deut. 31:6, “Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid.” when you go out into the field, be bold, be strong and courageous, do not be afraid, “Do not be terrified because of them,” there will be terrifying things to be afraid of in the field, there will be things happening around you to make you lose your strength, mentally and physically, but the LORD will be with you. If you lose the mission in the field, these words are irrelevant to you. All these things happen in the field, but if you lose hold of these words, you’ll be exactly like this, afraid and scared, “I was afraid of people, I was scared of that.”
But be strong and courageous because the LORD will never forsake you. You can’t apply these words if you’re headed back to Egypt. If you’re holding onto your own ambition and success, those words do not apply. If you’re struggling just to make a living, those words do not apply to you. Of course, these words would not apply because that’s not why He gave these words, and that’s why, if you lose hold of the mission of the land of Canaan, none of these words will align with you or make sense.
In your field, there are people who are prepared to receive salvation through you. As you are doing that work, you will face things that make you scared and tremble in fear, but the LORD will be with you so don’t be afraid. “I will never, ever leave you,” so do not be afraid. God will fulfill the mission He has given to you; you need to confirm that in the field. The Word of God that does not have the field will only make your brain bigger, but if you don’t, then the words that don’t align with God will come in, and you’re going to say these words, but you’re going to say words that don’t align with your field.
God has sent you and me into the fields and He will send the future generations ahead of you, so if you keep these words in your mind, they will certainly be fulfilled. May you live within these blessings for the rest of the week.
Prayer
Let us hold onto this and pray, “God let me fulfill Your mission in my field this week. For our future generations, may it be the studies that are aligned with the mission of saving the 237 nations. For the church officers, may we go off holding onto the 70 regions and 70 disciples,” let us pray together.
Second prayer topic, let us pray for the remnants. The remnants must receive healing and stand as the summit, that is how America evangelism will take place, that is how 237 nations evangelism can take place. That’s the reason why church officers have been called, that’s why God gives us grace first. There are also remnants outside of the church. These remnants must be spiritually mature and raised up through our prayers. Let us pray.
Third, let us pray for the Yakima Regional Church. I would like to go up and visit there for a baptism. I think it would be right for the pastor to go and baptize them. The life movement is taking place up there. So please pray for the Yakima and Seattle region to be saved. We need to pray for Mongols ias well. We have mongolian people in the church, but we also have people who are in Mongolia presently, and the message is being translated into Mongolia so we must relay this message. In Africa, there are people from multiple regions joining in on our calls. What we need to pray for the Karen people is for the day for translation to start taking place, then the people from the Karen nation will be able to join into the online platform. Let us pray for these people.
Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the unending love of God, and the indwelling, working, guidance, and communion of the Holy Spirit, be upon all the heads of all the people of God, the people of all nations, and the remnants who desire to hold to the mission of saving the 237 nations, be upon their studies and their businesses, be with us from now until forevermore always, amen.