Passage

Mark 18:23-35
"For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. "When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. "But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made. "So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, 'Have patience with me and I will repay you everything.' "And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. "But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, 'Pay back what you owe.' "So his fellow slave fell to the ground and began to plead with him, saying, 'Have patience with me and I will repay you.' "But he was unwilling and went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed. "So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their lord all that had happened. [32] "Then summoning him, his lord said to him, 'You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. [33] 'Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?' [34] "And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. [35] "My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart."

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Let us give all thanks and glory to God the Father who has blessed us to have this Manmin and Levites' Volunteers' devotional service. I also give thanks to all the devotees who have prepared for this service with all your hearts, minds, and souls.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, you are precious treasure to the church.
You do the difficult and undesirable jobs for the church because you love God and your shepherd.
Whether in rain or snow, you serve the church and the members from early morning to late evening, even when other people are resting.
You are not dispirited by the hot weather of the summer or the freezing wind in winter.
Each area of the church runs smoothly because of your dedication in voluntary works in traffic control, dining facilities, cleaning, and funerals.
When I think of your hard work, I am always thankful. I cannot help but cherish you and I pray for your blessings.
And how much more precious than that you must be in the sight of God our Father!
God also wants to bless you abundantly in body and spirit.
God also wants to make it known that He is so pleased with voluntary works, so that many people can receive this blessing together.
But for you to receive this blessing properly, your voluntary works have to be spiritual work.
This is something I always put an emphasis on, that your voluntary works have to be spiritual work.
It shouldn't just be your physical work with your body but it has to be a pleasing aroma before God offered with a good heart.
And in order to work this way, you have to have truly righteous hearts as in the title of this message.
It shouldn't be righteousness just in the sight of men but in the sight of God; it must not be some righteousness that changes over different situations but is consistent all the time.
I pray in the name of the Lord that you will have truly righteous heart before God through this message.
[Main] Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, in order for you to have truly righteous heart, first of all, you have to remember the grace of God given to you.
Today's reading passage talks about one who owed 10,000 talents and one who owed 100 denarii.
A slave who owed 10,000 talents was forgiven of his debt by the grace of his master.
But after this, this slave went out and met with a fellow slave who owed him 100 denarii.
When his fellow slave couldn't pay back the debt, he put him in jail without having any compassion.
One denarius was one day's wage for a labor. The 100 denarii that this slave lent to his fellow slave was the sum of 100 days' wages.
Thinking one day's wage is about 70,000 won today, it will be about 7 million won.
This is quite a bit of money, but it is possible to pay it back this much if he works hard and saves money.
But the debt of 10,000 talents of which the other slave was forgiven is a much greater amount of money that can't even begin to compare with 100 denarii.
One talent is 6,000 days' wages for labor.
And this slave didn't just owe one talent but 10,000 talents.
This is something that he had to earn for 160,000 years.
About the figures, there are some different opinions, but anyway, it is true that the amount was something that an ordinary man couldn't pay back.
Since he was forgiven of such a great amount of debt, which he couldn't pay back at all, how thankful he must have been!
It is natural for him that he had to pay back the grace for the rest of his life, as long as he had breath.
Also, it is required that he should also share that grace with a generous heart toward those who owed him money.
This grace that this slave received is the grace of forgiveness of sins that we received.
Just like the amount of money that we can never pay back, the problem of sin couldn't be resolved by our own strength.
We were destined to die forever because of sins, and we were forgiven of those sins by the precious blood of the Lord without any cost to us.
Now we can call the Holy God "Abba Father" and have hope for the kingdom of heaven.
We could change ourselves listening to spiritual messages in this church, and also have hope for New Jerusalem.
From the moment you received the grace of forgiveness until you have become what you are today, God has been enduring with you for a long time.
In fact, there aren't many of you who accepted the Lord as soon as you heard the gospel. Nor are there those of you who obey all the words you hear and go into spirit very quickly.

Many of us don't understand the word we hear, or even if we do, the changes take place slowly.
Sometimes you have disappointed God during the process of your refining trials.
But God has trusted you and endured with you with faithful grace and love.
The Holy Spirit who is residing in us helps us and strengthens us to change and accelerate our steps towards the heavenly kingdom.
By this grace of God we who were destined to die could have come forth to life, and we came to have hope in the midst of destruction.
Many of you volunteered to work for God dedicating yourself when you realized such grace.
So, I hope you don't forget your first determination, and let this grace increase as days go by.
You shouldn't just do the voluntary works just because you have been doing it for a long time and just because God says He will give you rewards.
The apostle Paul said he was the foremost of all sinners.
He was a sinner who couldn't be forgiven, for he had been not only an unbeliever toward the Lord, but also was a persecutor of the believers.
But the Lord met with Paul first, and even showed him Paradise in the heavenly kingdom.
Paul was just thankful every time he thought of this grace, even when he was hungry and thirsty preaching the gospel or even when he was beaten and jailed.
Acts 5:41 latter part says that the apostles were "rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name," even when they were severely persecuted for preaching the gospel.
They considered it honorable just to suffer shame for the name of the Lord.
Today, you don't get beaten up nor are your lives threatened.
How thankful it is that you have healthy bodies, and you can use them to do something for the Lord!
I hope you will realize once again how honorable it is that you can work for the precious Lord and you became volunteers in this precious church.
Then you will have happiness in whatever you do. When you sweat cooking the noodles, or when you clean the wastebaskets in bathrooms, you can even sing and feel the love of God.
You can cultivate truly righteous hearts when you work having this kind of grace.
All your works will be accepted by God and they will be paid back as answers and blessings.
Dear devotees, in order for you to cultivate truly righteous hearts, secondly, you have to serve with love.
If you truly realize the grace of God, you will deeply love God.
You will love the church, the pastor, and the church members.
The kind of service that God wants from you is to work with this love.
You should work with a kind of heart thinking, "How can I share with others this love that I received?"
There are those who are hardworking and responsible and can even work without love.
They may be frustrated or complain because of some difficulties, but they still do their job because they are responsible.
But such work cannot be accepted as a pleasing aroma by God.
1 Corinthians 13:3 "And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing."
All your service can become pleasing aroma before God only when you work with love.

For example, you may hear something that is not good even if you do all your best serving others.
A newcomer to the church doesn't like something, and he gets angry with you and raises his voice.
Suppose he is asking you to do this and that, as if you were his subordinate. But, if you don't have love, you may think in the following manner:
"Why should I bear with this insult anymore? I can serve God, but I cannot serve such a person."
Then, your face will be hardened, and you cannot really speak gently.
Or, while you are controlling the traffic under the scorching sunshine, there are church members who do not really follow your instructions.
They just drive as they wish disregarding the signals or they may park where they must not park.
If you are not really filled with Spirit at these times, you may get frustrated.
You may think, "This is too much. They are church workers who are supposed to have faith, and how can they do that?" And you might even speak about them with others.
This is same as the slave who is forgiven of 10,000 talents not forgiving a fellow slave who owed him 100 denarii.
If you are really filled with the grace and love of the Father, you can serve your brothers and sisters with love.
1 John 3:16 says, "We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."
God tells us to lay down even our lives for brothers, and therefore, can there be anything we would not do for them?
Even if the others show anger, your heart will not be shaken at all being as soft as a piece of cotton, and you also believe that person will also change.
You can turn your left cheek if your right cheek is struck, and you can go two miles when asked to go one mile.
When you see some acts that you couldn't understand before, now you try to understand that person thinking he must have a reason for that, too.
It's because you remember that you were a sinner who couldn't be forgiven, but God has loved such a person as you.
That grace makes your heart become greater and deeper.
So, even in difficulties you can smile, and that grace of God will not disappear no matter who you are dealing with.
When you serve others with this kind of love, your voluntary work can be a truly pleasing aroma.
Dear devotees, in order for you to cultivate truly righteous heart, thirdly you have to have peace.
Hebrews 12:14 says "Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord." Peace is crucial.
Rather than a person who works diligently but breaks peace, it is much better to have a person who works a little less but does not break peace.
We can receive the grace and power of God only when the peace is maintained.
Here, peace is not only among the people.
First of all, we must be at peace with God by having no walls of sin.
We also have to have peace with ourselves. If we have walls of sin, we cannot be confident before God and neither can we have peace within ourselves.
For example, while doing your voluntary work, somebody rebuked you before many people for something that was not your fault.
At the moment, you were embarrassed but just shook it off, but as you think about it, you get angrier and angrier.
You come to hate that person.
You remember you were rebuked before so many people and you feel the pain of your pride being hurt.
If you do your voluntary work having so many fleshly hearts, how can your work be a pleasing aroma before God?
Thus, to have true peace, first of all, we have to please God by not committing any sins.
You also have to fill your heart with the truth so it will not be wavering in any situation.
This means that you can have peace with God and with yourself to the extent that you become sanctified.
Nevertheless, even before you go into spirit, God will give you peace if you try your best within your measure of faith.
For example, if you have no improvement in your faith, or if you show the acts of 1st or the 2nd level of faith while you have to be at the 3rd level of faith, then it is not something good in the sight of God.
This means you don't have peace with God, and you won't have spiritual glittering in your face.
But even those who are in the 2nd level of faith, if they are changing, then it means they are establishing a peaceful relationship with God.
If you work having joy and peace in your heart, God can accept it as a pleasing aroma.
You have to have peace with not only God but also with everybody around you.
Usually, those who break peace will judge and condemn others according to their own standards.
If they think something is right, they usually won't listen to other opinions.
I hope you won't be one of such people.
Your opinions may be right and more righteous, but God will not say you are righteous if you break peace because of your opinion.
This is just righteousness in your sight; it's not a truly righteous heart in the sight of God.
You have to discern everything with the truth, but you have to be united as one unless it is evil or untruth.
Romans 12:18 says, "If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men."
We have to try our best to have peace with others thinking from the viewpoint of other people.
Even when others are doing something that is outside of the ways of truth, you should understand them and have mercy on them.
You shouldn't have your own standpoints and ideas as your standards but you should think from the viewpoint of God considering other people's standpoints.
I urge you to have peace in the volunteer's group, when you interact with the church members, and in relation with other departments,
[Conclusion] Dear devotees, the things that you do as volunteers may not be recognized as valuable work in the world.
You have to sacrifice yourselves and humble yourselves in service to others doing such works.
But in spirit, to become the one who is the greater, you have to serve others.
Those who humble themselves on earth following the word of truth will be lifted high in Heaven.
God will never forget when you share your grace with the church members with big smiles on your face or when you sweat doing various works with faith.
All the things that you do in voluntary works with love will be counted by God and will be paid back to you with glory in Heaven.
On this earth as well, you will receive answers to your prayers and blessings in your everyday life.
But once again, the important thing is that your service has to be spiritual service and voluntary work.
It shouldn't be just your body working but you have to serve with your heart, and only when you cultivate truly righteous hearts will all your works be paid back in full as rewards.
For this, you have to remember the grace of God when you do the voluntary works.
Also, you have to serve with love and follow peace in all things.
I hope all you devotees will cultivate truly righteous hearts and prepare your vessels of the heart quickly.
In doing so, in this year of blessing 2009, I pray in the name of the Lord that you may receive abundantly the blessings of God that He has prepared for all your devotees who work so faithfully.

[Amen]