I’ve got the Bible with me right now. For us Christians, the Bible is the standard for our lives and our faith. So if a Christian does not read the Bible, it is quite unusual. We must read it often. Our faith is not blind obedience. It is not, “Just believe, even if you don’t understand.” If you do not know, you will be deceived—by people and by many other things. That is why you must read the Bible carefully. The problem, however, is that the Bible is very thick, and even when people read it, they often do not understand. Many do not know how to read it, and so they make many mistakes.

You’ve probably heard the words “cult” or “heresy” many times. That’s why people are very cautious when they go to church. “Could this be a cult? Could this be heretical?” Perhaps when you first came to Sungrak Church, you also heard someone say, “Ah, that church is heretical.” Such words are often heard. Why is that? It is because there are many denominations in Korea, and each one has its own doctrine. There are more than 260 denominations here in Korea. Each denomination takes its own doctrine as the standard. Now, if someone finds that another denomination interprets things a little differently, it would be good to say, “Oh, they just understand it in another way.” But instead, people very quickly say, “That’s a cult!” Of course, there are real heresies. A group becomes heretical when they deny the essential truths, the core values of the faith. And what are these essentials? Jesus Himself made them clear, and so did the disciples. The very core of our faith hangs on this question: “Who do you say Jesus is?” Our confession of faith is this: first, that “Jesus is the Son of God,” and second, that “He is the Christ.” We believe in that. I’ve summarized it briefly here, but the meaning contained in these two truths is so profound that one could spend a very long time explaining them.

 Yet salvation is not given only to those who fully understand every depth. Even the man hanging beside Jesus on the cross said simply, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom,” and he was saved. Why? Because, though his understanding was small, he believed that Jesus is the Son of God and Christ. So at the very least, if we hold to this confession, we must not go around calling one another heretics. No matter what people may say around us, if someone truly believes what the Bible proclaims—that Jesus is the Son of God and the Christ—we should never make careless judgments about them.

Then why is it that Sungrak Church is labelled in this way? There are several reasons, but one is this: Sungrak Church became known as a place where people actually encounter God. And it is still known that way today. It is not simply, “I believe in Jesus.” For us Sungrak members, it is, “I have met Jesus.” That is how we see it.

Not long after I started my life of faith, I finished my military service and got a job. I worked at a social welfare center run by the Methodist Church. On my very first day there, they held a welcome dinner for me. And what do you think happens at such a dinner? A toast, of course. I thought to myself, “Well, since this is a Christian welfare center, surely I won’t be pressured to drink anymore.” But even there, they drank. I thought, “At least they won’t force me.” And that was true—they didn’t. So when it was my turn to introduce myself, I said plainly, “I don’t drink.” But they laughed and said, “Hey, we’re all Christians too! Go ahead, drink!” Still, I didn’t. And then, as I continued my introduction, I said, “In August 1992, I met Jesus.”

Time passed, and the next day my department head—a woman about fifty-five years old—called me over. She said, “You said yesterday that you met God. What do you mean by that? I’ve been a believer since birth, but I’ve never heard anyone say they ‘met God.’ We usually just say, ‘I believe in God, I believe in Jesus.’ But to say you met God—what does that mean?” She had believed her whole life, while I had only believed for a few years. Yet there I was opening the Bible and explaining the Word to her. Why was that? It was because she had hardly read the Bible. That was simply the culture of her church. But in Sungrak Church, we are taught to read the Bible diligently. The Bible is taught to us well. So after I showed her the Scriptures, I led her to receive the Holy Spirit.

What does it mean to receive the Holy Spirit? It means that the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the living God, comes into a person. In the world, when an evil spirit enters someone, people say, “That person is possessed,” or “A spirit has come upon them.” In a sense, Christians also receive a spirit—but not an evil one. We receive the Spirit of God. And when the Spirit of God comes in, you begin to do the works of God. You begin to think the thoughts of God. You become a different person. When an evil spirit enters, a person’s character may change to match that spirit. Even the way they speak can change, their appetite can change, and sometimes new illnesses appear. But when the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of God—comes in, the qualities of God begin to show. And what are the qualities of God? They are life. They are peace. They are joy. And God is full of virtue. He continually seeks to share what is good with others. So when you receive the Holy Spirit, you cannot help but want to tell others about the God you have met.

At first, when I said to her, “You need to receive the Holy Spirit,” she replied, “Oh?! I was never taught that.” So I asked, “Well, what were you taught?” She said, “When you first believe, you already receive the Holy Spirit. The moment you say, ‘From today I believe in Jesus. Amen,’ that means you have already received the Holy Spirit.” So I opened the Bible and showed her passage after passage. Then I asked again, “Is that really the case?” After about an hour, she admitted, “No, it doesn’t seem that way. I think I haven’t received the Holy Spirit.” Why did she say that? Because it was all there in the Scriptures. Even the disciples of Jesus, though they said, “Lord, You are the Son of God,” had not yet received the Spirit. And when the disciples went out preaching, they came to certain places where people said they believed in Jesus, but many of them had not yet received the Holy Spirit. So the apostles explained more about Jesus, then those people were baptized, and afterward they received the Holy Spirit. This happened often: people believed in Jesus, were baptized, were saved, and later received the Holy Spirit. After I showed her these things, I asked, “So, what do you think?” She said, “I realize now I haven’t received the Holy Spirit yet. How can I receive Him? I want to receive Him.”

I said to her, “You need to pray. But how should you pray? You must pray out loud. Of course, if you pray silently in your heart, God will still be moved. But then you won’t know whether you have received the Holy Spirit or not. You need to open your heart, open your mouth, and cry out to God.” We must at least show that much sincerity. In fact, prayer was never meant to be just silent. In Jesus’ day, prayer was done out loud—even shouting at times. For example, when Jesus prayed, His disciples were at a distance from Him. The Bible says they were “a stone’s throw away.” If an average adult throws a stone without much effort, it might fly about thirty meters. Yet from that distance, they could still hear Jesus’ prayer clearly enough to write it down in Scripture. It even says He prayed, crying out, “Father!” And when you pray like that—when the conditions are right and the time comes—the Spirit of God enters. So I told her, “If you pray that way, you will be completely changed.” Then she said, “Oh, but I can’t pray like that here. What should I do?” So I asked, “Would you like to come to my home?” She replied, “Yes, let’s go this evening.” So I called my wife: “My department head is coming tonight. Could you come home a little early and prepare a meal?” We welcomed her almost like a housewarming, and after sitting down to eat, her impatience got the better of her. Right in the middle of the meal, she asked, “So how do I receive the Holy Spirit?” And there we were, praying together at the dinner table. And what happened when we prayed?

The most important thing when receiving the Holy Spirit is prayer. But it is not praying, “Please forgive my sins, please forgive my sins.” Instead, it is praying, “Thank You for already forgiving my sins.” To pray this way means that you already have faith. Why is Jesus the Son of God, and why is He the Christ? The word “Christ” means the One who came with authority equal to God, with the same glory as God, yet came down to this earth as the Servant and was put to death. Why? To pay the price for our sins by shedding His blood. Believing this is what it means to believe that “Jesus is the Son of God and Christ.” To confess this is to believe that God has loved us and that the price of our sins has already been paid in full. The reason many do not benefit is simply that they refuse to accept it. But if you accept it, that is enough. So we pray, “I am a sinner, but Jesus has already paid for my sins. And I now receive that. I believe.” Whether you feel it or not, your sins are forgiven. That is why I told her, “Acknowledge this truth.”

She had attended church for decades, yet she did not have that kind of faith. So when I asked her, “Do you know for sure you will go to heaven?” she answered, “Well… I don’t know. How could I possibly know that?” “Then why do you go to church?” “So that I can go to Heaven.” “And how do you think you can go to Heaven?” “By living according to God’s will.” “Then are you living according to God’s will?” “Ah… well, not exactly.” That is why she could not have assurance of salvation. Then, whenever she got sick or faced some misfortune, guilt would weigh on her. “What wrong did I commit to deserve this?” That is exactly the kind of thought evil spirits like to use. So I told her, “Do not think that way. The price for your sins has already been paid for. You have already accepted His merit. You are already united with Jesus. Be thankful.” When she acknowledged this and began to pray with thanksgiving, tears and sobbing immediately burst out. I had experienced the same myself—when you receive the Holy Spirit, strangely enough, tears and mucus flow together uncontrollably. But remember, we were at the dinner table! She wept right over the food, and her tears and mucus spilled onto the dishes. And that mucus was sticky—it just hung there. I remember when it happened to me, too. While shaking and praying, the mucus swung back and forth and got all over the place. But in that moment, she wasn’t embarrassed at all. Why? Because she was overflowing with joy. She prayed, smearing her tears and mucus across every dish on the table. After praying for some time, she was overwhelmed with happiness, because she had truly met God. So I asked her, “Now do you understand what I meant by saying, ‘I met God’?” And she replied, “Yes. Today I met God.”

So this experience was not mine alone; I was able to share it with others. That woman had been a churchgoer for more than fifty years, a believer from birth, yet she had never experienced anything like that. But we have. In fact, every member in our church has such experiences. That is why the church flourishes. The Bible is no longer just a religious book. The very words written in the Bible are fulfilled in us exactly as they are. And when people realize, “Ah, this is real!” they are drawn to read the Scriptures. That is what makes it different. Because of this, many people from other churches came to us. Take that woman, for example. If I had pulled her aside and said, “Don’t stay in that church anymore. Come here and live a powerful life of faith,” she might have joined. But if too many people start coming like that, then of course, the other church will look at us unfavorably. Especially if she held some position there, it would have been a great loss to them. One or two might be fine, but if many come at once, we become the target of attack. This is what actually happened to our church in the 1980s. Many believers from other churches in Korea came here because here, they encountered God. And so we were often attacked. People called us heretics and all sorts of things. But if this were truly heresy, I myself would not be here. Yet it was here that I met God.

Cults worship their leader. But we do not worship any human leader. And we never claim that such experiences are possible only for the pastor. Pastor Ki-Dong Kim cast out demons, but he never once insisted that he alone could do it. He always said that anyone who believes in Jesus can do the same. So as soon as I believed in Jesus, I naturally thought, “Of course I can do it too.” Just three months after I became a believer, I went into the army. And when someone got sick in the army, there was no doctor around, not a single physician in sight. The person was in pain right there before me—what could I do? Even though I had believed for only three months, I prayed for the sick. And right there, they were healed. From the very beginning, I thought healing the sick was something completely natural. Two years after I finished my military service, I went to China. There, I continued to lay hands on people and pray for them. And soon I began encountering cases that are rarely seen in ordinary life—blind people, stroke victims, the mentally ill, the demon-possessed. In every village, there were people like this. I don’t know why I had hardly seen such people in Korea, but in China, they seemed to be everywhere. And when I prayed for them, they received it with such simple faith. The blind opened their eyes. The mute began to speak. The paralyzed stood up. Even those who had been crippled from birth rose to their feet.

Seeing these things happen, I thought to myself, “Wow… how did I ever come to be part of a church like this? How is it that the very first church I attended made it possible for me to experience the things written in the Bible as reality? Amazing! Truly, when Pastor Ki-Dong Kim said this was a faith movement, he was right. It really is.” That was the realization I came to.

I myself spent four years in China, traveling through dozens of churches in many regions, leading revival meetings. In a way, I was a revival preacher there. During those years, I saw so much of China—cities and villages, east and west—and the situations were all very similar. It reminded me so much of the days when Pastor Ki-Dong Kim traveled throughout Korea in the 1970s and 1980s, when God was powerfully at work. Seeing that same work in China, I realized, “Ah, these are not words that are fulfilled only in one place, or only in Korea. These are words that can be fulfilled anywhere in the world, in any age.” And through that, I experienced firsthand, “The church I belong to is truly valuable. The Word I have learned there is helping so many people.” As I traveled through China, I often asked the same question: “If you were to pass away today, would you go to Heaven?” And the answers were always the same. “How could I possibly know that?” “Then why do you go to church?” “So I can go to Heaven.” “And how do you think you can get there?” “By doing God’s will.” “Then are you doing God’s will?” “No.” “So can you go to Heaven?” “No.” And so their faith life was always gloomy. They lived in sadness. Even when they were sick, they accepted it as if it were only natural. They would say, “Thank You, Lord,” without ever expecting to be healed. “God gave me this illness to make me humble,” they would say, and simply give thanks. I was amazed—the situation was much the same everywhere.

Everything was just as Pastor Ki-Dong Kim had said. Wherever I went, when the Bible was taught, the same works of God appeared. But then I asked myself, “Is it because these people haven’t read the Bible?” So I would ask them in each region, “How many times have you read the Bible?” At that time, I had maybe read it five times from beginning to end. But when I asked them, they would answer, “Thirty times. Fifty times. Seventy times.” That’s what they said. And yet, even after reading so much, they still did not understand. I hadn’t read the Bible as many times as they had. On top of that, I was preaching in Chinese, not my own language. I didn’t know the Scriptures better than they did. But here was the difference. You know the saying, “A bead is useless if one does not thread it.” These people had plenty of beads—they knew all sorts of Bible stories in detail—but they had no overall picture. But I was blessed in that, from the very beginning, I was taught the big picture. So the pieces I had picked up were strung together into one whole picture. What matters is not how many times you read the Bible, but whether you have that picture. Even if you read the Bible only once, if that picture comes together, the Holy Spirit comes, power appears, and you become someone who truly knows the truth. But if you read the Bible a hundred times and still have no picture, it means nothing. That is just religion. And the Holy Spirit does not work in that.

So this was the situation: a person who had read the Bible maybe five times was standing before people who had each read it fifty times or more. And yet I was the one teaching them, not even in fluent speech, only stumbling along in Chinese. So what would happen? I would say something like, “Ah… you know that passage… where God’s Son humbled Himself…”—fumbling for the words—and someone down below would immediately call out, “Philippians 2:6!” “Yes, that’s it! That verse. That verse is actually connected with Hebrews chapter 1, where it says…” And again I would stammer, “Ah… you know, that one…” and from below someone would recite it word for word. They knew the Bible so well. But what was I doing? I was stringing it all together. I was connecting the verses. And then, all of a sudden, the picture began to appear before their eyes. And when that picture was drawn, they exclaimed, “Aha!” They finally saw it. And from that very day, power began to appear among them.

Then I realized, “Ah, what Sungrak Church teaches about the Picture of God’s Will is not simply to toss the beads of Scripture one by one, but to string them together into a whole. And because people don’t have this, they are living such powerless lives of faith!” That is when I truly understood its value. I saw that this was not something to be done only in certain regions of China—it was something that must be done all over the world. So wherever I went, these works of God continued to appear. But the need was endless. Because the population was so large, I kept going and going—preaching one week here, another week there—and there was no end in sight. I thought to myself, “If I keep this up all my life, how many places can I possibly reach?” It felt overwhelming. And since the people needed not only one-time preaching but also ongoing nurturing, I finally concluded, “This won’t work. I must go back to Korea and begin translating books, so that at the very least they can read them.” So I returned to Korea and translated several very important books, and we distributed them in China. And sure enough, as soon as people read those books, they exclaimed, “Aha!” Just from reading the books, many were healed, and news of this reached me.

Then there was a man who, just by reading one of the books, went on to plant a church. He became a pastor simply from reading Pastor Ki-Dong Kim’s books. This man wrote a letter to Sungrak Church. He said that when he looked at the Christians around him, their lives of faith were in terrible condition. Among them was his wife, who attended church but was always sick. Somehow, though he himself was not a believer, he came across Pastor Kim’s book, “My Experiences of Christ’s Healing and Holy Signs.” After reading it, he told his wife, “Look, you go to church all the time, but your life should be full of power like this man’s. What are you doing, always weak and sick?” He actually read it before her and even began teaching her, saying, “That’s not how it’s supposed to be.” And this was a man who hadn’t even received Jesus yet. Later, he himself became sick. His wife had always been ill, and now his back was in such pain that both of them had to crawl around on the floor. Their lives had become unbearable. So he wrote to us at Sungrak Church, “Please help us.” From the book, he had already learned that baptism had to come first, so he asked, “Can I come to Korea to be baptized?” We told him, “No, you don’t need to come all the way here. Where are you right now?” He replied that he was in Fujian Province. So we said, “There is a Berea Church there that shares the same teaching. We will introduce you to them. Go there and be baptized.” So he and his wife hired a car and went. When they returned, both of them were healed. Not only were they physically restored, but they also received the Holy Spirit. Their lives were completely changed. They stayed for three days, and when they came back, they were entirely different people. Their son, who was in the second year of middle school, saw this and said, “I want to go too!” So the next week he went as well. But not only him; his mother’s church friends also went together to pray for the Holy Spirit. All of them received the Holy Spirit, except the son. On their way back down from the ninth floor apartment, the boy suddenly broke into tears. “Why are you crying?” they asked. He sobbed, “Because I didn’t receive the Holy Spirit. Everyone else did, but not me. I want to receive Him too.” He wept so bitterly that they decided to turn back and go up again. They returned to the church, prayed again, and that middle school boy received the Holy Spirit.

Later, they returned home, but that Berea Church was three hours away. Now, by Chinese standards, that might not be far, but for us, three hours is quite a distance. After making the trip for several weeks, they found it too difficult to keep going. So they said, “Why don’t we just hold worship here ourselves? We don’t want to go back to powerless churches nearby, so let’s worship together.” Then came the question, “Well, who will preach?” “You should preach.” And who was “you”? He was still an unbeliever, at least until recently! He had only just received Jesus and been baptized. So he protested, “But I only just accepted Jesus. It hasn’t been long at all!” But the women there insisted, “Yes, but you’re the one with a college education. Just read Pastor Ki-Dong Kim’s books to us.” So during worship time, he didn’t preach; he simply read from the book. At the end, he would say, “Let’s all pray.” And then he would just stand there, not knowing what to do, because he had never prayed before. But the others, who had been in churches before, prayed together. Then, because the book spoke about healing the sick, they said, “Well, now you must pray for the sick.” Sick people came forward. He hesitated, scratching his head, thinking, “I’ve never done this before…” But they told him, “Didn’t you just read it? Just do it in faith.” So he laid hands and prayed. And, amazingly, many sick people were healed. Word spread, and more and more people came. It became a church. Within three years, they even purchased a three-story building, and now the ministry has grown large. It has been seven years since that church was founded, and they recently held their seventh anniversary service. Every Lord’s Day, they listen directly to the message of Sungrak Church. Since we provide interpretation here, the sermons are burned onto DVDs and sent to them, and that is how they continue their worship.

Because of this powerful Word, even an unbeliever could become a pastor overnight. And this is the very Word of power you are now hearing in this church. It is because of this that we also face persecution. But remember, persecution comes from people. Signs, wonders, and meeting God—these things only God can do. So if we are receiving God’s help and His love, then yes, people may criticize us. But that is only because they do not yet understand. One day, when they do come to understand, they will support us.

So, as we attend church, more than anything else, what matters is reading the Bible. But not just reading it blindly—we must know how to read it properly. That is what is truly important.

You’ve all heard it said, “The Bible is the Word of God,” haven’t you? But to be precise, we say, “The Word of God is contained in the Bible.” In many churches, people simply hear, “The Bible is the Word of God.” But we explain it more carefully, in detail: “The Word of God is in the Bible.” What does that mean? In the Bible, you also find the words of demons recorded. You find the words of men. You find the words of people spoken in faith, and also the words of those without faith. You find ethics and morals, and you find history. All sorts of things are written in it. In fact, even in this holy book, there is the story of a father-in-law lying with his daughter-in-law and having a child. How can such a book be called holy? The reason the Bible is called holy is because within it is contained the very Word spoken from the mouth of God. That is what we must draw out.

So when we read the Bible, we are not meant to take in everything indiscriminately. We must take hold of the very thing God has placed in it. What is it like? It is like eating clams. When you eat clams, what do you eat? Do you eat the shell? Is the shell delicious? No, you throw the shell away. The shell may look beautiful, but it is not for eating. You discard it and eat only the meat inside. And sometimes you see a large clam shell—big and impressive. But when you boil it, the meat inside is shriveled up and very small. You may buy a whole bag hoping to eat plenty, but in the end, you throw away more than you eat. The edible part is small. The Bible is the same in that sense. It is thick, it is full of many things—but what we truly need to take, what we truly need to eat, is very small. And what is that? What God has placed in it, namely Jesus Christ. That is God’s delight. God has put His own joy into the Scriptures, and that joy is Jesus Christ. This is what we must discover.

And to put it more directly—in terms of our own need and the need of those who must be saved—what is essential for salvation is blood. The blood. That is why the Bible contains the blood of Jesus Christ. We can say, “Wherever you look in the Scriptures, you will find the blood of Jesus Christ.”

So in fact, the passage we read today speaks about blood. But remember, this is a story from the past—an event that happened 3,500 years ago between the God who revealed Himself as “the LORD” and the people of Israel. It really happened. Yet for us today, that real event serves as a figure, a symbol. And whenever there is a figure, there must also be a reality. We now have the reality. So it does not mean we are to take every detail of the figure literally. From the figure, we take only the part that points us to the reality.

So this is the scene where the covenant was made. God entered into a covenant with the people of Israel. He said, “If you want to be with Me, then you must keep these things—starting with the Ten Commandments.” And the Israelites all responded, “Yes, we will do it!” Then it was as if God said, “Alright then, let’s put it in writing.” So all that God had spoken was written down as a covenant document, and it was read aloud: “These are the things you have agreed to keep.” Once again, the people answered, “Yes, we will do it!” And now came the signing. But how did they sign it? They took a lamb, slaughtered it, and poured out its blood. Then the blood was sprinkled. That’s how covenants were sealed in those days—with blood.

And where was that scarlet blood sprinkled? In two places. First, it was sprinkled on the people themselves—on their very bodies. This was to declare, “Now the covenant is set between God and the people of Israel!” Imagine it—blood splattered on them. It must have been striking. Then the rest of the blood was sprinkled on the book of the covenant, where the words had been written. And a voice proclaimed, “This is the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you!” What did that mean? Blood! If you take out the blood, what happens? You die. Life is in the blood. So the meaning was clear: to make a covenant with blood was to say, “If you do not keep this covenant, you will die. Your blood will be poured out.”

But did the Israelites keep that promise? No, they didn’t. They couldn’t. They had neither the ability nor the conscience to keep it. So of course, they deserved death. And it’s not only them—every human being fails. By nature, we’re all under death. That’s precisely why the first covenant was given, to show us that truth. Because they couldn’t keep it, they were subject to death. Remember what I asked my department head earlier? “Can you be sure you’ll go to Heaven?” She answered, “How would I possibly know that?” “Then why do you go to church?” “To go to Heaven.” “And how do you get to Heaven?” “By living according to God’s will.” “Have you been living according to God’s will?” “Well…no.” If we were judged by that standard, we would die.

So later on, a few hundred years after the first covenant, God spoke again through another prophet. He said, “I’m tired of this. I am weary. With the covenant I made before, I cannot stay with you. I cannot be one with you. So I will make a new covenant.” About 2,700 years ago, God said this through the prophet Jeremiah, “I will make a new covenant. I cannot go on with the old one.” That was the first time the term new covenant—what we also call the New Testament—appeared in Scripture. Yes, the word New Testament is already found in the Old Testament.

And then, about seven hundred years later, what happened? Jesus came. And when He came, He kept calling God “Father.” That meant, of course, that He Himself was the Son of God. And what did He say about His mission? That He must die. He said He had to go to Jerusalem, and there He would die. In the end, He was nailed to the cross and shed His blood. But He knew all of this beforehand. The night before He was arrested, He ate with His disciples. He broke bread and shared it with them. Then, before drinking the cup of wine, He said, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood.” In this way, He was speaking about what would happen the next day—how He would shed His blood on the cross. And He declared that His blood is the blood of the new covenant, the blood by which God would establish a new covenant with us.

So then, what is this new covenant? The old covenant said, “You must keep all of this. Only then can you be one with God. Only then can you live.” But the new covenant says, “You cannot keep it. Not one of you. In you, there is no love of God. Yet God loves you. And so He will pay the price of your sin. Why? Because you all deserve death. But if you die, God cannot be with you. So I will die in your place. Why? Because I can rise again.” And that is why the Son whom God sent shed His blood. And where was that blood sprinkled? Upon our spirits. In the past, blood was sprinkled on people’s clothes. But now it is sprinkled on the spirits of those who believe. And Jesus declared, “This is the new covenant in My blood!” The old covenant had the blood of the old sacrifice. But this is the blood of the new covenant. That is why even now the blood of Jesus is upon our spirits. Back then, they sprinkled blood on the book of the covenant. But today, Jesus Christ Himself, sent by God, is that covenant. So we fix our eyes on Him. Each time we do, we remember: “Ah, He shed His blood for us.” And when God looks at us, He sees the blood of Jesus upon us and remembers: “Yes, I have purchased them with My blood.” That is how God and we have become one. And so now we simply acknowledge that Jesus has already shed His blood and paid the price for our sins, and by that blood we believe that the promise of the new covenant has made us one with Him.

So, those people who still say, “I must live according to God’s will in order to be one with Him”—they are still under the old covenant. Even though the new covenant has surely come, they hesitate, going back and forth. Why? Because they do not know the Bible well. For us, the New Testament is central, and the Old Testament is supplementary. When it comes to a covenant, which one is more effective, the old one or the new one? The new one, of course. Now, with wine—old wine is better. But when it comes to a promise, the new one is better. Let’s say you and I agreed to meet on Friday. But the next day, I say, “No, let’s meet on Saturday instead.” Which one is binding? Saturday. The new promise is the true one. The old covenant has passed away. The old covenant said, “You must keep all these laws to live.” But now the promise is this: “You cannot keep them. Yet if you believe in Jesus, you will live.”

So we believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the Christ. We believe that He has paid the full price for our sins, and that He shed His blood to keep the promise of God. That is why we are believers of the New Testament, living under the new covenant. When you hold this faith, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and you will meet God. So acknowledge it: “My sins have already been paid for.” The moment you acknowledge this, peace will come. Eternal peace will come. Eternal joy will come. Eternal happiness will come. So I bless you in the name of Jesus, that you will live such a life of freedom, without fear, filled with peace and joy.

I’ll pray.

God our Father, we truly thank You for sending Your Son and for His shedding of blood on our behalf. We thank You that we are no longer under the old covenant but now live under the new covenant. Help us, Lord, so that we may no longer be afraid but simply believe. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.