• Sinful mind (2)

    [2 Corinthians10:3-6]
    2002.07.14 | Pastor Emeritus Jaerock Lee
    • [Preface]

      Dear congregation,
      We had a regular seminar for church ministers. last week.
      God the Father was with all attendants like a blazing fire when I preached the spiritual message about the Holy Spirit who works in the last days of the human history. You who didn't attend the seminar of church ministers will listen to the briefing of the message I preached through summer spiritual training program.

      But you must not only listen to the message of the work of the Holy Spirit. You must do according to the spiritual faith and experience the works of the Holy Spirit in your daily life. And you must become spiritual men who have spiritual fellowship with the Father.

      You have listened to spiritual messages for more than ten or twenty years. Also how many works of the power of God have you experienced?

      However you must not regard yourself as a spiritual man only because you have understood spiritual messages, seen spiritual realm in a vision or experienced spiritual works. It is important that you should enter the spiritual realm and become spiritual children of God.

      I wish earnestly all attendants to that seminar for church ministers would make up their mind to enter the spiritual realm truly. And so I wish you all would listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit, be controlled by the Spirit and reveal works of the power of God through the Holy Spirit.

      Accordingly, you must get rid of all kinds of sinful mind and see, hear and think only what is spiritual. Therefore may you all take off all kinds of your sinful thought through today's message and hear, say and do according to the work of the Holy Spirit, I bless you in the name of the Lord.

      [Body]

      Dear congregation, Dear church members, brothers and sisters, Dear congregation, members who are attending the service through satellite all over the country, branch church members, branch sanctuary members, Light and Salt Mission members, Restaurants Mission members, all the members who are attending the service through the Internet all over the world,
      Dear Sunday school children,

      Today I will speak about the second message of sinful mind.

      It is necessary that you have spiritual faith to experience the work of God and be blessed by God. Also you can do your spiritual duty by such spiritual faith.

      By the spiritual faith, you can make what is impossible for men possible through the almighty power of God, and make what is unseen visible. So men of spiritual faith have experienced such surprising work of God. They made the movement of the sun and the moon stop and made it rain after 3 and half years. Sometimes they revived the dead and defeated invading strong troop.

      You must get rid of your sinful mind to have such spiritual faith. Sinful mind is the greatest obstacle to have spiritual faith and hinders the work of God. So [Romans 8;7] says, "7The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so."

      You must know firstly what the sinful mind is to get rid of it, and understand what are sinful nature, sinful mind, sinful desire, sinful action and so on.

      In the previous time I explained to you what thought is. Thought is to reproduce whatever knowledge we acquire since birth through the work of our soul. Our thought is divided into two. One is thought of spirit but the other is thought of sinful mind. The sinful mind is what our body and our sinful nature are united to.

      Human beings are born with all kinds of sinful nature like hatred, anger, judgment, condemnation, jealousy, envy, greed, arrogance and so on, and besides continue to accept such sinful nature since their birth.

      If you think anything according to your sinful mind, it will produce thought of untruth and evil that is hostile to God. On the contrary, thought of spirit reproduces spiritual knowledge according to the will and truth of God. So thought of spirit means that of truth but thought of sinful mind is that of untruth.

      Dear congregation, you must remember that there are thought of truth and thought of untruth in your knowledge. If you think your knowledge according to truth, you will reproduce thought of truth. While, if you think your knowledge according to untruth, you will reproduce thought of untruth, that is, sinful thought. ,

      Some people often think of untruth in spite of themselves because they cannot distinguish thought of truth from thought of untruth exactly. And God doesn't accept what many people think to be thought of truth.

      Let me give you an example. Some books teach us that it is proper to revenge on your enemy. Such books make you think that it is coward and helpless not to revenge on the enemy. So you take it for granted that revenge is righteous if you are impressed by those books .

      However the Bible says differently. It teaches you that you should even your enemy and forgive anyone seventy-seven times. If you listened to such teaching of forgiveness and have the thought of truth in your mind, you will surely try to forgive and love even those who persecute and distress you, saying to yourselves, 'I'll forgive him. I'll love her.' In that way you will have thought of truth and spirit in your mind.

      [Romans 8:6] says, "6The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace." So you will be controlled by the Holy Spirit and be filled with life and peace because you have the thought of spirit in your mind. And you will go the way of life that God pleases.

      Thos ewho have the thought of untruth in their mind dioobey God and excuse themselves according to their own ways of thinking or biased knowledge even when God commands them to love their enemy.

      Some of them say, "He committed evils beyond my understanding. I cannot love him at all. It is natural that I hate him because hi is so wicked. This procedure that they reproduce their wrong knowledge or prejudiced ways of thinking is called 'sinful mind' or 'thought of untruth'.

      Thought of untruth is always hostile to God and prevents you from obeying Him. That is the thought of untruth is the enemy to God. If you continue to follow your sinful mind, it will lead you to ultimate death.

      Let us think of an example of King Saul in [1 Samuel 15]. He became the enemy against God because of his own sinful mind. God commanded to Saul, "Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."
      In [1Samuel 15:2] Goid said to him, 'I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt." That is to say, the Amalekites opposed greatly against God and so they had to be punished and cursed. For this reason, King Saul should have obyed the command of God and destroyed everything that belonged to the Amalekites.

      But the king had the mind to spare some of the possessions of the Amalekites thinking it was extravagant to destroy all of them after he won the battle against the the Amalekites. He thought he would rather use the cattle and sheep as sacrificing offering to God or make good use of them for other purpose than destroy them.

      Do you think his thought was smart?

      In addition, Saul thought it would be better that he would take the King of the Amalekites as a captive and reveal him to the eyes of many people than kill him. He expected that his victory would be greater and brighter when he would do so.

      So Saul spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs, namely everything that was good. He came back home taking them alive according to his own thought. Thus, he obeyed everything that God commanded but for several things which didn't agree with his thought.

      Then, what did God reply to him? Did he say, "Well done. You are so smart. You obeyed even just some of my commands according to your own thought."? Never did He.

      Rather God said, "I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions." And He continued, "You have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you as king over Israel!"

      Saul disobeyed the command of God with such wicked thought because it was his sinful mind caused by his arrogance and greed. God didn't command him to destroy the Amalekites and everything that belonged to the Amalekites because He was not wiser than Saul.

      He gave him the instruction because it was proper to destroy them, according to the law of the spiritual realm and the providence of God.

      But Saul chose what seemed better and beneficial to him according to his own thought. That is, it means that he misttok his own thought and wisdom for being better than the wisdom and thought of God. Saul went blind in spirit because of his arrogance and greed and insisted that he had obeyed the command of God.

      So he would not listen to the Prophet Samuel's reproach, nor admitted his fault, nor repented hios sins. From them on, he continued to disobey God and became hostile to God. At last met with a miserable death.

      Dear congregation,
      You have heard uncountably that you should get rid of your sinful mind or thought. But many members have sinful mind or even don't know that they have sinful mind.

      Let me give you an example. Some of you often deliver what I didn't tell as if it were what I told after they listened to me. That's because they think according to their sinful mind. Also they think according to their sinful mind even when I prophesy during the sermon.

      About some prophecies, I mention exact place, time, name, number and so on. On the other hand, sometimes I don't mention those things but give a brief explanation. When I explain roughly, many listeners think according to their own sinful mind. So they say, 'Senior pastor meant this.' or 'No. He meant that.' In that way, they argue against each other because they have different opinions. Or they spread to others what I didn't say as if it were what I said.

      Let me give you an example. Suppose that I prophesied that South Korea would have the close conversation with North Korea in the future when the second coming of Jesus Christ is very near. I said it would happen in the future, not 'after several years' or 'after several months'

      Sinful men ask themselves according to their own sinful mind, "Then, when will Jesus Christ come again?" "It will take some time to build the Grand Sanctuary and another time to preach the gospel of holiness to the ends of the world from now on. So after some years the Lord Jesus will come again.' They do so as if people of the world assemble and analyze data to predict the result of election or the future of stocks.

      If the movement of the conversation between North Korea and South Korea seems to begin at the time when they expected, they will conclude, 'Oh! Well, This is the relation between South Korea and North Korea that senior pastor prophesied.' Furthermore, some of them say, 'This is the very time when senior pastor predicted. Look! Surely the Lord Jesus at some time.' They make a bait to be blamed or condemned by wicked people.

      I gave a simple example, but you can get an important lesson from this example. You have listened to the holiness message, prayed for holiness and tried to get rid of your sinful mind. But many of you often think according to your own sinful mind and don't even know the fact. .

      Dear congregation,
      If you don't think according to your sinful mind, you will not judge anything according to your own will. You think anything only according to true mind. For example, you may wonder, 'Senior pastor said Jesus Christ would come in the future. When if the future he mentioned?'

      You must not decide something according to your own thought or knowledge. Rather you have only to try to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit meditating the message I preached on the altar. After all you will get the right meaning of the prediction through the control or voice of the Holy Spirit.

      You can check yourselves through the result whether you were controlled well or not. That is you can know yourselves whether you think according to your sinful mind or your spirit. And you can train yourselves to distinguish the will of God from other things whenever you experience these things.

      Dear congregation,
      I listened to the voice of the Holy Spirit clearly and was led by Him correctly even in my early Christian time. Nonetheless, I had sometimes thought according to my sinful mind at those days.

      One day an idea hit upon me that I should give 30 thousand won to an evangelist. It was controlled by the Holy Spirit. But 30 thousand won was too big for me and I thought I should not necessarily help the evangelist. After all I didn't obey the voice.

      At first I thought it was just my mind. Next day I found it was controlled by the Holy Spirit when I heard that the evangelist's wife had given birth to a baby and he had been troubled in borrowing 30 thousand won for childbearing.

      In that way I listened to the voice of the Holy Spirit at first, but didn't obey His voice because of my sinful mind.

      If I had obeyed the voice of the Holy Spirit and helped him with 30n thousand won, he would not have been troubled. Of course I would have been blessed by God. In reality, I lost the chance of blessing because I didn't obey the voice of the Holy Spirit.

      From then on I trained myself to distinguish the voice of the Holy Spirit from the thought of untruth according to sinful mind. I came to distinguish both of them correctly.
      You must train yourselves to distinguish between the voice of the Holy Spirit and sinful mind. You will listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit to the extent of that you get rid of sinful mind and enter the measure of spirit.
      And it is necessary that you be trained each moment until you listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit clearly. You must get rid of sinful mind when you distinguish between your sinful mind and the voice of the Holy Spirit through your experiences.

      On the other hand, you must continue to obey the voice of the Holy Spirit when you listen to His voice from your heart. You will listen to His voice more clearly and experience greater works of God according to your better obedience. As the result your spiritual faith will grow up.

      How can you get rid of sinful mind that is hostile to God and have spiritual faith?

      Next time I'll preach about detailed examples in the Bible and in your lives and explain how you can get rid of your sinful mind.


      [Conclusion]

      Dear congregation,
      [1 Corinthians 2:13] says, "This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.
      The Father of love wishes He would lead all of you to heaven, and even the best heavenly, the New Jerusalem.

      Therefore He wishes you would enter the greater measure of faith and see the spiritual realm with spiritual eyes. Nevertheless, you will not get the chance of those blessings in spite of God's great grace unless you try to take off your sinful mind and have prepared yourselves for the blessings.

      If you don't listen to spiritual messages or you are dull in understanding them, you will not enjoy those spiritual blessings. You will no longer grow up in your spirituality even though many other people understand spiritual messages and enter the better measure of spirit.

      What is worse, some fall down when they listen to the spiritual messages. They can't overcome the confusion because they think about the spiritual messages according to their own knowledge or sinful mind..

      So Jesus warned in [Matthew 11:6] says, "6Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me." You can understand spiritual messages by the work of the Holy Spirit and will not fall down because of the truth if you are not possessed with the sinful mind. And you will be blessed with spiritual blessings by God as it is written in the Bible.

      I hope that all of you will get rid of every kind of your sinful mind and enjoy the grace of God at will. So may you all become the men of whole spirit who enter the deep measure of spiritual realm and be used greatly for the kingdom of the Lord in this last days, in the name of the Lord I bless you!




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