I began my life of faith at Sungrak Church, so from the very beginning I was able to hear the Word of truth and grow well in faith. Those who have attended other churches may not be familiar with this, but do you know what the original lyrics of the hymn “Let Us Return to the Lord Jesus” were? Originally, they said, “Let Us Return to Jehovah.” “Jehovah” is a traditional rendering of YHWH, the divine name usually written as “the LORD” in English Bibles. Does that not sound a little strange to us? Of course, the intention is to say that we should return to God. But for us now to speak of returning to Jehovah seems somewhat unfamiliar.

Even in the Old Testament, there are times when Scripture refers to God as “God” and times when it refers to Him as “the LORD.” When “the LORD” is used, it refers to the One who manifested Himself and appeared to people. When Scripture speaks of the absolute God, however, it simply says “God,” that is, Elohim. So when Scripture says, “God created the heavens and the earth,” it means that Elohim created the heavens and the earth. It does not ordinarily say, “the LORD created the heavens and the earth.”

But when Scripture says, “the LORD said,” it is because He appeared before people and spoke to them. YHWH was the name by which they could identify the One who had appeared to them. It was a name used to identify the One who had appeared, not a legal term. Without such a name, people would have had to say something cumbersome like, “You know, the One who appeared to Abraham, Isaiah, and Jacob.” The name gave them a clear way to identify the One they were speaking about.

So when Moses heard the name YHWH, he would have pictured the One who had appeared to him. And when the Israelites heard YHWH, they would have thought of the One who appeared at Mount Sinai.

But God the Father, whom we believe in today, is not the One who appeared to them in those days. God the Father is the One who sent Jesus. And Jesus is one with and equal to the Father, and our faith is that He appeared as a man. So today, the One to whom we are to return is Jesus. We are not being called to return to Moses or Elijah, but to Jesus.

Then what about all the words that were spoken through YHWH in the past? They were all speaking about Jesus Christ. “They testify of Me.” We have come to know this secret—the secret of how to read the Scriptures. The words spoken through YHWH, as well as the Scriptures later written by men under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit—all of them testify of Jesus.

In the past, when people studied the Scriptures, they placed great importance on the historical background. They would focus mainly on the circumstances surrounding a passage: “This was said for such and such a reason in such and such a situation.” As a result, the history behind the Scriptures became more important than the Scriptures themselves. Reading the Bible then became largely a study of history. This approach remained predominant in theological scholarship around the world through the 1970s and 1980s.

For example, even when people read the Psalms, it may never occur to them to look for Jesus Christ, of whom he Psalm speaks. Instead, they focus only on questions such as, “Why was this Psalm written, and under what circumstances?” They may say, “David wrote this while he was suffering and fleeing from his own son,” and concentrate entirely on what was happening at that time. Then the Psalm becomes no more than something David said because he was being pursued in those days, rather than the Word speaking to us today. At most, we end up drawing a lesson from it.

But Jesus did not leave us there. He gave us a principle for reading the Scriptures: “These are they which testify of Me.” Of course, those who wrote the Scriptures in the past may not have understood this fully. Some may have known, while others may not have known at all. Even those who did understand would have understood only in part. But once we read the Scriptures according to this principle—“They testify of Me”—we begin to see, for example, that the Passover was about Jesus. If the people who actually experienced the Passover had later heard this, they might have laughed and said, “We went through that event ourselves. How could that possibly be about Jesus fifteen hundred years later?”

Isaiah also said, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). Yet those words were spoken in a particular historical situation. There was a king, there was a war, and the question was whether he would prevail in that conflict. The sign that was given was this: “The virgin shall conceive and bear a Son.” But people outside the church may look at this and say, “Why do Christians take something said about that situation and make it a prophecy about Jesus?” They think this way because they remain focused only on the immediate historical situation.

But God was the One directing all those circumstances from behind the scenes. This is what is so remarkable. God did not merely use human words. He used the events of human history itself, taking what people actually experienced into illustrations of what He would later fulfill. When we give an illustration, we usually take something from the world around us to explain a principle. But the illustrations God used were actual events that took place in history. Such events could not have been produced by one person alone. They came about through the combined actions of many people, and whether they acted willingly or unwillingly, everything was within the hand of God and became a prophecy. This is remarkable. Through this, we can see that our God is the One who governs history.

So when we read the Scriptures today, we believe that all of that history ultimately prophesied about Jesus Christ. Rather than remaining focused on the past, we see that through those events the Scriptures were continually pointing ahead to the coming of Jesus Christ and to what He would do when He came.

But it does not end there. If everything ended with Jesus Christ alone, we would simply say, “Wow, that is amazing,” and leave it at that. But today we actually experience these things. Why do we experience them? We need to be careful here. We may begin by saying, “The Scriptures are about Jesus,” but then, before we know it, start saying, “The Scriptures are about me.” The senior overseer spoke somewhat pointedly about the way people take verses such as, “Fear not, you worm Jacob,” and say, “This is God’s word for me!” They use such verses for encouragement and comfort as though every word in the Scriptures had been given directly to them. In other words, they take the Scriptures and apply them however they please. But that is not the point. The Scriptures are about Jesus Christ.

Then what do the Scriptures have to do with us today? This is the crucial point. What have we become? We have become one with Jesus Christ. This is important. Without this, the Old Testament would actually have nothing to do with us. It would simply be about Jesus, not about us. But because we have been baptized and have become one with Jesus Christ, everything in the Old Testament has now become ours. It is in Jesus Christ that those words are now fulfilled in us.

Without this understanding of the blessing promised to Abraham, people would not understand what we mean when we say, “I am a blessing. You are a blessing.” If we were to say outside the church—or even within the church—“I am a blessing,” people might respond, “How can you be a blessing? It was Abraham whom God called a blessing.”

But God called Abraham a blessing, and in that same sense, we too have become a blessing. He was a blessing, and so are we. In fact, this promise was fulfilled in Jesus. Because this word was fulfilled through Him, Jesus is the blessing. And because we have become one with Jesus, we too become a blessing. So all the words of Scripture become ours in Jesus Christ. Now we can boldly lay hold of them.

People may wrongly think that the words of the Old Testament have been done away with. On the other hand, they may also receive the Old Testament merely as a set of ethical and moral teachings. Koreans have a particularly strong need to see themselves as good people. There is a very strong sense that one must be a good person, along with the assumption, “Of course, I am a good person.” If they are put in a situation where they have to admit that they are not good, they become very upset. “What?!” they say. I find that rather strange. Does that mean they had thought all along that they were good? What is so good about them? No matter how good they may be, they are still people who killed Jesus. Being good in the eyes of other people only means being good before those people. The standard is Jesus Christ. No matter how good a person may be, no one is good before Jesus Christ. We are all people who killed Jesus. Yet now people try to act as though they are good. They carry a great burden that they must be good. It is enormous. Perhaps the burden of having to be good is even greater than the burden of having to survive. It is remarkable. I do not know how this became so deeply ingrained. As a result, people tend to receive the Law in exactly that way: “You must be good.”

But what the Law says is not simply, “Live a good life.” The religions of the world also have laws, and they too emphasize ethics and morality, but the Law does not speak only about ethics and morality. More importantly, the Law is the set of covenant terms concerning how God would fulfill the blessing He promised to Abraham. Those terms contain more than ethics and morality. They include matters concerning God, and they even include killing. There are cases in which a person is put to death. There are even cases in which a mother would have to stone her own child to death. How is that simply about being good? How is that ethics and morality? As I said earlier, all these things in the Old Testament testify of Jesus Christ. Yet God attached a condition to these covenant terms: man had to keep them all in order to receive the blessing of Abraham. But man cannot keep the Law perfectly. From the beginning, God arranged this so that man would come to realize his own limitations. For those who come to realize their own limitations, confess, “I am a sinner,” and submit themselves to God, God sent Jesus Christ to fulfill the Law, and now the Holy Spirit fulfills the requirement of the Law in us. In this way, the blessing of Abraham has come upon us.

Because the Law reveals the nature of God, it gives us valuable instruction and teaches us how to draw near to Him. In 2 Timothy 3:16, there is a verse that says, “All Scripture…” The Scripture being referred to here is not the New Testament, but the Old Testament: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” After believing in Jesus, this is what we need. We need doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. When those who have been saved read the Old Testament, they can receive instruction and reproof. They can realize, “Ah, I should not do this,” be corrected, and gradually become more righteous in their conduct, bringing their lives more into accord with the will of God. This is no longer about being saved. I do not even want to describe it simply as “being sanctified.” Sanctification itself is not the goal here. The point is to become more like God—to become more like Him in His character.

During the early years of my marriage, my wife and I argued a lot. We argued quite often during our first year because there were so many things we had to decide together. Life was difficult for her, and it was difficult for me as well. I got married at twenty-five, at an age when I was just beginning to understand the world and still had so much to learn. On top of that, I had to manage married life, earn money, and work at my job, so there was tremendous stress. Naturally, we argued often. But time passed, and now we hardly argue at all. Over time, we learned how to avoid the things that would cause conflict, because we have learned from each other and gradually become more alike. Our ways of thinking used to be very different, but now they are quite similar. Sometimes it surprises us. More than once, we have looked at the same thing and said exactly the same thing at the same moment. Because we see the same things every day, hear the same Word, and eat the same food, our ways of thinking have gradually become alike. Sometimes one of us says exactly what the other was thinking, and it surprises us. There are even times when one of us is about to send a message and the other says, “I was just going to send that!” As we gradually become more alike, we also come to understand more of what the other person is thinking.

In the same way, after we become one with God, we need to learn how He thinks, what He gives priority to, how He works, and what He dislikes. The Old Testament reveals all these things in great detail. Yet none of this is unrelated to Jesus. If we read it apart from Jesus, it amounts to nothing. Scholars may approach the text through what is called “form criticism,” but in the end, that takes us back only to the situations of the past. But when we receive the Old Testament as the Word concerning Jesus Christ, every event becomes a word that is now being fulfilled in us.

Over the past few years, as we went through the division in the church, we happened to be reading passages such as Kings and Chronicles, and they fit our situation exactly. The answers were all there. It was remarkable how clearly they showed us what to do in one situation and what to do in another. If people had read those passages properly, understood them, and received instruction from them, they would not have done what they did. They could have guarded themselves in their life of faith, but because they had not studied the Scriptures properly, they had forgotten these things. Now, as we emphasize the Law and the Gospel, there is a danger that we might misunderstand the Old Testament and end up disregarding it. We must not do that.

Jesus also emphasized that we must not say that even one part of the Law can be done away with or no longer needs to be kept. The problem is that we must not approach the Law as the Pharisees and Sadducees did, because they taught the Law as well. What was the difference between them and Jesus? They taught the Law without Jesus. As a result, they fell into hypocrisy and human tradition. But if we clearly understand that the Law is the Word concerning Jesus Christ, we can become like Paul.

When Paul preached the gospel, he referred to the Law very often. For example, when Jesus is described figuratively, we can understand those descriptions by connecting them with the Old Testament. The expression “Jesus is the Lamb” is connected with the Law. If we do not know the Law, we will not know what it means. If someone says, “Jesus is the Lamb,” we might think, “A lamb? How cute! Jesus is cute.” But those who have learned the Law know what a lamb means. Lambs were offered as sacrifices, and a lamb was killed and its blood shed at Passover. On the Day of Atonement, the priest laid his hands on the scapegoat, placed the sins of the people upon it, and sent it away into the wilderness. So when John said, “Behold! The Lamb of God,” he was probably pointing to the sacrificial lamb spoken of in the Law.

At other times, we say, “Jesus is our peace offering.” But how could we understand what that means if we do not know the Law? The peace offering was an offering presented to God and also shared as food among the people. There was a portion that God received and a portion that the people ate. We do not usually know the sacrifices in such detail. We may not really know what a burnt offering was or what a peace offering was. When the Jews offered a peace offering, only certain portions, such as the fat and the inner parts, were offered to God, while they themselves shared the meat and rejoiced together. So when we say, “Jesus is our peace offering,” it is an expression full of joy. It means that we have been reconciled to God and have all become one. When we say, “Jesus is our peace offering!” it brings to mind a picture of those who have received grace gathering together and sharing a meal. This also connects with Jesus as the peace offering in holy communion. We break it and eat it, remembering His words, “Eat My flesh.” He is the peace offering. In this way, those who know the Law and those who do not understand the Scriptures differently.

When we came to know Berea, we were deeply struck by Jesus’ words that the Scriptures speak about Him, and our eyes were opened to see the Scriptures in an entirely new way. If so, we should be able to read them in that way. The many treasures found there are not without value. They are all there in remarkable detail.

When Paul was questioned after his ministry—“Why do you receive support? Why do you take money?”—he said, “I have never received support. I did everything at my own expense. And even if I did receive support, there would be nothing wrong with that.” His reason was that the Old Testament says, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.” This appears among the statutes of the Law. We might wonder why the Law would go so far as to care even about an ox and think such a command unnecessary. But whom is all of this speaking about? It speaks about Jesus and about all those who belong to Him. In other words, we are not to muzzle those who labor for the gospel. As an ox treads out the grain, it picks up some of the grain and eats it. In a place like Korea, people might strike the ox to keep it from eating or put a muzzle on it so that it cannot take any. But the Jews did not do that. They allowed the ox to eat while it worked. They did not begrudge it that food. The law of God allowed for this.

For example, an assistant pastor may receive a salary from the church and, while working there, also receive a personal gift. Our church does not do this, but another overseer might dislike the sight of it and say, “He already receives something every month, and now he is receiving personal gifts too?!” and forbid him from receiving them. But Scripture says not to stop it. In this way, these passages already speak, one by one, even to matters concerning how the church is to operate. There are many such examples.

So everything that appears in the Scriptures from the past has meaning in Jesus. There is nothing to throw away. There is so much in them, and all of these things are reflected in the New Testament.

We have learned about the Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Firstfruits, the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Ingathering, and the Feast of Tabernacles. When we look for their spiritual meaning, each one can be connected with Jesus Christ. The Passover represents Jesus who was put to death, Jesus who shed His blood—Jesus who shed His blood and died.

Then what does the Feast of Unleavened Bread represent? Jesus warned us to beware of leaven, and He said that the leaven was the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. What they taught was the Law, yet Jesus called it their teaching. This is because the Law without Jesus ultimately becomes a man-made doctrine. So He did away with it. In that sense, He did away with the Law—not the Law itself, but the Law taught apart from Him. Therefore, the Feast of Unleavened Bread can be seen as representing Jesus who fulfilled the Law.

Next comes the Feast of Firstfruits. It represents Jesus, who became the firstfruits of the resurrection. Then, fifty days later, comes the Feast of Weeks, also called the Feast of Harvest. This represents the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit could come because Jesus is in heaven. Jesus promised, “When I go to heaven, I will ask the Father, and He will give you the Holy Spirit.” So this feast represents Jesus who ascended into heaven.

Next comes the Feast of Ingathering. This was the feast when the harvest was gathered into the storehouse. In the same way, Jesus will come again, reap the harvest, and gather those who believe in Him to where He is—to His Father’s house. So the Feast of Ingathering speaks of Jesus Christ who will come again.

Then comes the Feast of Tabernacles. The Feast of Ingathering came after the Israelites had finished the harvest and gathered it into their storehouses, so they had plenty to eat and could feel secure. But at that very time, God told them to live in booths so that their hearts would not grow complacent. They were to remember what their lives had once been like. So they made shelters from branches and stayed in them for a week to remember the past. They were to remember so that they would not become proud or think that they had gained all these things by their own efforts. They were to remember how great God’s grace was, and that even with all of God’s help, our life in this body on earth is still only life in a temporary shelter. Paul therefore said that when we leave this earthly tent, we will one day be clothed with a dwelling from heaven. Our earthly tent is like one of those booths. The home where we truly belong is not this earthly booth, but in heaven. This strengthens our hope that one day we will dwell there. This is the fulfillment through Jesus of what God promised: “I will be your God. I will dwell among you and be your God forever.” So the Feast of Tabernacles represents Jesus who fulfilled the blessing of Abraham and Jesus who is Immanuel with us forever.

All six of these feasts were prophecies. Is that not amazing? These six feasts were all telling beforehand what Jesus Christ would come and do. If these words were fulfilled exactly as they were given, how much more will the words spoken by the One they were all about be fulfilled? Everything He said will also come to pass. So His promise, “I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also,” will be fulfilled. And when that time comes, He will replay each person according to the work he has done.

So what is important for us is first to see what Jesus emphasized. Did He emphasize quality or quantity? God takes responsibility for the quality. But what He asks of us now is how much it multiplies—a hundredfold, sixtyfold, or thirtyfold. He placed great emphasis on numbers. This is where God’s interest lies. Proverbs says that a king’s strength is in the number of his people, and Revelation speaks of the 144,000 of Israel and then of a great multitude from the Gentiles that no one could number. The number is tremendous. We have names for extremely large numbers—trillion and many units far beyond that. The names keep going higher and higher. Many of these names came from India. Yet even with all those units, the multitude would still be beyond counting. No language of any nation or people in the world could number them all. We cannot even imagine how many people there will be in heaven. If people believe in Jesus, most of them will probably be there. Paul also once said something to the effect of, “Though I speak to you this way, you will be given an abundant entrance.”

The problem, however, is that not everyone will be at the same level. Those who have not drawn near to Jesus will weep bitterly. How sad would it be if we had never wept like that on this earth, only to weep that way in heaven? At least for you who have endured to the end and served God faithfully without changing, I do not think there will be such sorrowful weeping. What we should be concerned about is how close we will be to the Lord Jesus. Since He has promised that these things will happen, they surely will.

Just as we look back on the past and say, “Wow, it really all came true!” when we are in heaven and look back on what the Lord said here on earth, we will say, “This is amazing. It all came true. Everything happened just as He said.” For that day, let us receive good instruction from the Word of the Lord. Let us pray that He will fill us with inspiration to understand the Scriptures and help us put them into practice.