There is reason why God used these two names, Jacob and Israel. One of them, “Jacob,” is used to call him as a man, while the other, “Israel,” is used to call him as someone blessed by God. God also calls the believers in the gospel of the water and the Spirit using two names like this. He uses our given names to call us “so-and-so,” but when He calls us as the believers in the gospel of the water and the Spirit given by Christ our God, He calls us the righteous. The name Israel in the Old Testament was given to Jacob as a blessing after he wrestled with God in prayer all night long. It means “one who has struggled with God and prevailed.”

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While we are gathered here today for worship service, many of our fellow saints are unable to be with us due to the social distancing requirements put in place to fight coronavirus. I would ask you to share today’s message with such church members who can’t attend our worship service. The raging coronavirus is extremely dangerous. Earlier today I heard in the news that there was an outbreak at a youth retreat held by a church in Busan, where at least 30 teenagers out of around 150-160 participants got infected. There probably will be more infections from this outbreak.

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I heard that lately visitors to our website have been downloading many of our dual-language e-books. When we first introduced dual-language books, there were at most a couple of people downloading them, but I am happy to hear that yesterday alone, fourteen people downloaded them. Countries around the world have their own unique languages, and we put together dual-language books so that people can read them while comparing the text between two languages at the same time. As these books are very popular with people from all over the world, I would like us to publish more dual-language books in the days to come. There actually are many people in the world who use two or more languages. There also are many countries where the children and the parents in the same family speak different languages, so I think our dual-language e-books will be very helpful for such families. The more we publish dual-language e-books, the more people around the world will download them, and the more enriched their souls will be thanks to the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit. I can’t speak of every case here, but some people have downloaded dozens of e-books, so I have high expectations. After all, what would these people do after downloading our e-books? They will share them with many more people. Those people will then also see their hearts transformed. That is why we work even harder, thanking the Lord for His righteous work.

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The Apostle Paul said here that he went to the Council of Jerusalem with Titus to present to the Church of Jerusalem the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit that he was preaching among the Gentiles in the days of the Early Church. When we examine the backdrop against this gathering, we can see that there were two different gospels being preached at the time: the gospel of the water and the Spirit that the Apostle Paul was preaching to the Gentiles, and another gospel preached to the Jews. All Jewish males were circumcised at birth. They had to practice this Jewish custom of circumcision, and they also had the duty to learn and obey the Law of Moses.

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This world has now entered into the age of destruction and famine. We know intuitively in our everyday lives that the day of destruction is not far away for mankind, as we face worsening natural disasters stemming from climate change, famine, diseases, diplomatic conflicts, and security threats. It is said that tightrope walkers place all their expectations on the rope, for they know that they would die if the rope were to break. People throughout the world are like these tightrope walkers. Humanity is walking into a dense fog, unable to see even an inch ahead and without any guarantee for the future. In times like these, there is One who has shone mankind with the light of salvation and a single ray of hope, and His name is none other than Jesus Christ, who bore the sins of mankind through His baptism and has made the believers God’s own people. Humanity’s hope rests on this God, Jesus Christ, who has delivered everyone from sin.

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Today’s Scripture reading is what God is saying to us the believers in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. When we read the Bible, many of us tend to think rather simply, “God has blotted out just our sins by bearing them through His baptism, and He has not only made us His children but also blessed us to enter and live in Heaven. That’s all there is to it!” However, here in verse 8, God says He will not give His glory to anyone else. There is a profound meaning hidden in this passage. When God created the heavens and the earth, He also created angels, and one of these angels stood against God trying to usurp His throne. We need to realize here that from ancient times to this very day, the angel who rebelled against God and his underlings have stood against God ceaselessly by entering into the hearts of God-made human beings. Even today, unable to give up his desire to become like God, the evil spirit of this fallen angel is still trying to achieve his goal through people. Having turned into an evil Devil, he is misleading mankind with all kinds of deceptions to this day trying to take the glory that belongs to God.

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In today’s Scripture reading, God speaks about the fall of an angel who had been blessed to live in His garden. At first, this angel lived in obedience to God as befitting his status, but when his heart turned arrogant, he abandoned his station and was ultimately cast out by God. There is no record of God’s creation of angels in the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis. The Scripture does not give any detailed account of angels because God wrote the Bible for the purpose of saving fallen human beings from all their sins. God recorded in the Bible that His plan of salvation to deliver humankind from their sins and the fulfillment of this salvation were both achieved through Jesus Christ. Like this, the Scripture focuses primarily on the Truth of salvation to show us how God has delivered fallen human beings from their sins. God is rejoiced to reveal His providence of salvation to all of us through the gospel Truth of the water and the Spirit.

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We just read Mark chapter 2 as today’s Scripture reading, and here we see that people were amazed by what Jesus did to the paralytic. Jesus was staying in a house in Capernaum, and as the news spread that He was there, a large crowd had gathered and the house was overflowing with people. And there, something else was happening as well. Strange, incomprehensible events were unfolding on the roof of the house where Jesus was staying: four men were working hard to remove the roof of the house, so that they could lower the paralytic in his bed into the house. To the people watching this scene, tearing up the roof of someone else’s house and lowering the paralytic to Jesus made no sense, but they must have also found it quite intriguing. As the crowd’s curiosity kicked in, everyone’s attention was all focused on Jesus.

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