November 20^th 2011: The Holy Communion Sunday Service Summary & Audio

Scriptures: Luke 22: 14-22

God chose the Israelites out of all the people on the face of the Earth and God had them believe in Him first before all others. God sent His Son, therefore, to Israel. God’s Son came to this earth as the Messiah using the physical body of ‘Jesus.’ The purpose for which God sent the Messiah to the earth was this: the gospel would spread out to all nations of the world, starting from Israel, so that all human beings would come to believe in God and the Savior whom God sent, and receive salvation. Therefore, the Israelites lived with more pride than any other nations, as the believers of God.

God began saving the Israelites through Jesus. However, the Israelites thought that God would come directly and visibly. Instead, God came using Jesus’ body. Even if God, Himself, comes, God is spirit, so He cannot communicate with people. For this reason, God sent His Holy Son and had Him appear to people through the body of Jesus. People are flesh, therefore, God, who is a spirit, had to speak and take action through Jesus’ physical body. Only in this way could God freely communicate, lead, guide, and save those lives.

At the time of Moses, God came through Moses, and at the time of the prophets, God came through the prophets. In the same way, Jesus came to the earth as promised by God. The Holy Son of God Himself appeared in the flesh. However, Jesus is different from Moses and the prophets. It was the Holy Son and the King of kings that came in the body of Jesus. The Holy Son came to this world through the flesh. He came to save all of humanity.

However, the Jews didn’t understand the prophecies of the Bible, and they rejected Jesus and persecuted Him. They treated Him as a sinner. The Jews opposed the followers of Jesus, beat them, slandered them, and fiercely persecuted them. The Jews wanted to kill Jesus and get rid of him to the end. They were the very people, who had waited for God to come so earnestly, but they were ignorant and their hearts were hardened. So they were evil in thoughts and actions.

God’s spirit came through Jesus’ body, but the Israelites who were chosen by God rejected Jesus and didn’t believe in Him until the very end. They all should have believed and followed Him, but the generation was ignorant and evil. So the original will of salvation that God had wanted was not fulfilled. To make it worse, it was the very core believers of God who persecuted Jesus out of ignorance. As a result, even though a small group of people believed in and followed Jesus, the Will of God for that time period had already turned in a different direction. Because they persecuted the Messiah that God sent, they all became sinners.

Because the generation was wicked and it slandered and persecuted the Lord, the path of the Lord inevitably changed to the path of agony. The situation was such that, if those who rejected Jesus had been left alone, they wouldn’t be able to receive salvation and they wouldn’t be able to avoid judgment and destruction because they would neither admit their deeds to be sinful nor repent of them. Jerusalem degenerated into a place of sin and evil. Jesus knew that if they had been left on their own, they would all be judged and destroyed. So in order to save everyone He chose to go back to Jerusalem.

The only way to save sinners is for the Savior to bear their guilt on behalf of them. The Savior could save them only by dying on behalf of them. One party must die for the other party to live. Only the Messiah, who is capable of redeeming all sins, could die for the sins of all humanity and bring the sinners to life.

Jesus went back to Jerusalem, and on the day of the Passover, He called the disciples together and told them, “Let’s observe Passover together.” He instructed them to prepare a place for it. Actually, Jesus’ purpose was not to observe the Passover. His purpose was to meet with His disciples for the last time. That place they gathered in on that day was the place for bidding farewell to Jesus. It was the night when Jesus would leave His last will and testament to the disciples. It was the last time for them to see Jesus in this world before the evildoers came and took Him away that night. But the disciples didn’t know it clearly.

Afterward, around midnight of that day, Jesus was arrested and taken by the crowd sent by the high priests, teachers of the law, and elders. The next day, around 3 o’clock in the morning, after the high priests discussed with the elders and teachers of the law, they bound Jesus and handed Him over to Pilate. Jesus stood in that merciless court. What they were doing was actually treating God in the same exact way. It was truly an ignorant and evil generation. Eventually, Jesus carried the cross to Golgotha and surrendered His body to redeem the sins of the generation, the sins of humanity and to save them, as well as for the sake of the people who were saved by following Jesus.

Jesus could have chosen to avoid death as much as He wanted. However, instead of going to where He was welcomed, the Lord chose to take the path of the cross. Because the generation had already sinned and the situation had turned in the direction of evil, they would perish and could not be saved unless the Messiah took the path of the cross. The only way to save them was for the Messiah to die for them.

Satan uses the ignorant and the evil ones to block the history of salvation. Those people eventually end up in hell with Satan. However, can Satan, evildoers, and persecutors make up for the losses they inflicted on the history of salvation just by entering Hell? Even if they go to Hell according to their deeds of inflicting losses on the history of salvation, the losses that the righteous have suffered cannot be recovered. Therefore, we must not suffer losses but instead fight against the devils and defeat them. We must fight against the evil with good and defeat them and, in this way, we must not be harmed.

Jesus resurrected as a spirit in three days, showed Himself to the disciples, and ascended to the heavens, leaving a promise that He would come again. When He said He would come again, He was referring to the time of the Advent. Now, as He promised, the Lord has come again. He is a spirit, so He has come in spirit. As a spirit, the Lord has come to the center of the New Testament history. Because He speaks and takes action in spirit through a person in the flesh on earth, only those who know this believe and follow.

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