Through the prophet Hosea, God tells us why the people of Israel were being destroyed. He says that His people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Why did they lack knowledge? Because they had rejected it. It was not that they had no knowledge from the beginning, but that God had given them knowledge and they had rejected it. They did not treasure what God had given them. So God also says, “I also reject you.” Then, the purpose God originally had for His people—that they should become priests—could no longer be fulfilled. What God desired was to give them knowledge and make them priests. Through this knowledge, God wanted them to serve as priests, as mediators between God and people.

“…Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children” (Hosea 4:6).

God must remember our children. When He remembers them, even when they face a crisis, He can help them. Even when things seem to be going wrong, somehow a way opens up. Sometimes we see people who seem to enjoy far more authority, honor, or position than their own ability, character, or skills would suggest, and yet somehow things keep going well for them. Such a person may even come to exercise great leadership.

Why is that? Later, we may find out there was a reason: perhaps the person’s parents served God faithfully, or the family has been Christian for four generations. One of my fellow workers had an unbelieving father, yet all of his children were used by God. Later, I learned that theirs was actually a fourth-generation Christian family. It was only the father who had not believed, and even he later came to believe; in any case, they were a fourth-generation Christian family. There is always a reason. When I was in seminary, there was also a professor whose siblings had all become successful pastors, doctors, and professors. Later, I found out that not only his siblings but even his relatives and cousins were doctors and professors. I thought, “Ah, that explains it,” and when I asked, sure enough, his family had been Christian for three or four generations. When there are ancestors who faithfully kept the Word of God, God remembers their children. Even if you do not see the result immediately, think of it as part of a process. God will surely remember them. It only feels otherwise because we become impatient and want to see results right away, but everything has a process. Even if we do not see enough of it on this earth, we will receive what is eternal in heaven; so do not be impatient, but remember and obey the Word of God faithfully, and God will remember our children as well.

And this is true not only of our physical children but also of our spiritual children. When we serve faithfully according to the Word of God and the will of God, our disciples become our spiritual children. They too do well because God remembers them. On the other hand, the disciples of those who disregard the Word of God while using it for their own purposes often come to a bad end. But among the disciples of those who truly love and serve God, many excellent people continue to arise from generation to generation. It is remarkable. When we first began our ministry, these things were not visible to us, but after about twenty years in ministry, I have come to see just how consistently this holds true. There is a striking difference between the disciples of those who minister while sincerely keeping the Word of God and the disciples of those who minister out of selfish desire. Even though they receive the same knowledge, they come to resemble the very character of their teachers. Even when people receive the same knowledge on the surface, the whole person becomes different depending on whether or not they truly know it. So what is important is this: what keeps us from being destroyed is truly knowing what God has made known to us.

Then we must know God well, but how can we know Him? We can know Him only if He shows Himself to us. If God does not reveal Himself, there is no way for us to know Him, because He is invisible. Then how does God reveal Himself to us?

If God had chosen to reveal Himself in some other way than the way He has shown Himself until now, it might have been better for the Son of God to come now, in the twenty-first century. Just imagine if Jesus came to this earth today. Would there even be any need to write things down? We could simply record Him and upload the videos to YouTube. People all over the world could hear Jesus speak in real time. We could follow Him with a camera as He walked along the Sea of Galilee and chose His disciples, and when He walked on the water, Peter could be there trembling as he filmed it and uploaded it for everyone to see. If it were streamed live, even more people would be able to watch.

But God did not do it that way. Why not? Because He did not intend for people to believe simply by what they saw with their eyes. If we could see Him, we would start paying attention to things that do not really matter: “Oh, He is handsome,” “So that is what His face looks like,” or “So that is how He dresses.” People might even have carried around a picture of Jesus in their wallets and thought, “I know Jesus,” simply because they had seen His picture. But God did not want to make Himself known in that way. He wanted to make known what He had done. He makes Himself known through what He does. So to know God does not mean knowing what He looks like; it means knowing what He has done.

When we speak of knowing God, there are always two things to consider: God’s character and God’s works. Theology also speaks of these two things, His character and His works. But how do we know His character? We know it through His works. We know it through what God has done. We do not know His character from what He looks like or from the expression on His face, but through what He has done. We come to know both God’s will and God’s character through His works. Therefore, to know God is to know Him through what He has done, and the knowledge we need to have is the knowledge of how God works.

Then what does the Bible record? It records what God has done, and through those works, it naturally reveals what kind of God He is. When we see how He has worked, we come to know His character: “He is merciful,” “He is full of love,” “He is strict.” So we need to know well what God has done, and that is what is recorded in the Bible.

And when Jesus finally came, what He did was the very work God was doing. The Jews persecuted Jesus, saying, “Why are You working?” because He continued the Father’s work and worked even on the Sabbath. So Jesus said, “My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.” In other words, the Father had been working all along, and so Jesus was working as well. God is a God who works.

Did God rest on the Sabbath, then? No. God did not rest. He continued working even on the Sabbath. That is why Jesus also worked on the Sabbath. There was only one day in all of history when God rested—the day Jesus lay in the tomb. Of course, even then, God’s authority was still at work. But that was the one day when, at the very time God ought to have acted, He stood by and did nothing. Apart from that day, He has always been working. That is why Jesus said, “My Father has been working until now, and I have been working,” and He is still working even now.

When we say, “Give Him no rest,” it does not mean that God is resting. It means that He should be at work with you. In other words, you too should take part in the work of God. Even if you do not work, God will still do His work. He will accomplish it through someone else if necessary. So when we say, “Give Him no rest,” what we mean is, “Let Him work with you.” To say, “Even if I do nothing, God will do His work anyway,” means nothing. Of course He will. What matters is that God works with us—that we become fellow workers with God. That is what it means to give Him no rest.

God neither slumbers nor sleeps, but continues working. The devil likewise keeps working without rest. We take days off because it is a public holiday or because it is Saturday, but in truth there are no days off for us. Every day is a day of work. If we think, “I am not a worker on Saturdays,” and go around saying, “I am not working today,” we end up working on the Sabbath in another sense. Yet the reason it is not a sin for us to work even on the Sabbath is that we know, “I am one who works as a priest.” So whether it is a public holiday or any other day, we are always at work, because God is working. God has no public holidays. Regular working hours do not apply to God. God keeps working. So we must work together with Him.

What Jesus did when He came to this earth was this: because God was working, He also did that work. Do you think Jesus stopped working after He went to heaven? He is still working now. He said that He is preparing a place for us. When everything is ready, He will come again. The Lord is working, so I too must work. Since I am a member of His body—like His finger, His arm, His toe, or His ear—if the Lord is working, I too must work. If the head is working while the rest of the body does not, it is like a body that cannot move. Then the body begins to act like the devil. If all the other members are working while one member alone hangs limp and does nothing, that member is not functioning properly. That is why we must know well what God has done.

What are the feasts for? Even if only once a year, by keeping the feasts, the people were to remember something God had done. Passover was a feast for remembering what God had done in the past: “We were in Egypt, and He brought us out. That is what He did for us then.” At the Feast of Unleavened Bread, they ate unleavened bread and remembered, “We really went through a lot when we came out, and we came out with that kind of resolve. We lived in tents in the wilderness.” Later, the Feast of Purim was established. They would remember, “That was when Haman almost wiped us out in Persia. But by God’s grace and through Queen Esther, we survived. God turned it around, and on the very day we were supposed to die, we defeated our enemies instead.” In this way, we must keep remembering what God has done.

But instead of remembering these things, we keep remembering other things, because so many other things happen to us. “That person hurt me back then.” “That was where she and I had coffee together.” We have so many things to remember. We remember, “That person betrayed me back then.” But before all those things, and above all, what we must always remember is what God has done. So even if those memories remain in our minds, what should keep coming from our mouths is testimony about what God has done. When we meet someone, we may keep remembering and talking about some unpleasant thing from the past, saying, “Why is that person like that?” If we talked about Jesus even that much, we would become remarkable witnesses. If, whenever someone came to mind, we mentioned what God has done as much as we talked about that person, we would become truly remarkable people.

If you keep wanting to talk about what someone has done, deliberately talk instead about what Jesus has done. People may say, “Who asked you?” But do not worry about it; just keep talking. Before long, people will simply think, “That is just how that person is.” Then later, when they are going through something difficult, they may come to you and say, “Tell me that story you told before. What was that about?” So we need to keep remembering what Jesus has done and be able to tell it to others. People perish because they do not have this. Rather than remembering what people have done, let us remember what God has done. We need to keep these things always in our hearts.

There are many major things happening in the world. These days, people seem to talk a lot about politics and the economy. Whenever they open their mouths, they say things like, “Why is this happening?” or “Prices went up again? What is going on?” Of course, those may be things to talk about, but we have far greater things to talk about all the time. “Wow, God really did that back then.” May what God has done continue to come from our lips as we remember it and speak about it. People of the world talk about what is happening in the world, but we are disciples of Jesus, so whenever we open our mouths, Jesus should naturally come into our conversation.

There is something I was criticized for when I was working at a company that I am now proud of. One of my coworkers usually said nothing about it, but one day, perhaps because he was upset, he finally told me what he had really been thinking all along. “Isn’t this a bit much? No matter what we are talking about, you always end up talking about Jesus. It is annoying.” He was irritated because even when we were talking about something else, I would somehow bring up Jesus and end the conversation talking about Him. He finally said this when he was angry. I had been talking about Jesus for a whole year, and he had never said anything about it, so when he finally told me, I thought, “Ah, so that is how he had felt.” Later, after I had left the company and gone to China, I came back to Korea for a short visit and received a call from that coworker. He told me that he had come to believe in Jesus. And he said that I was the first person who came to mind. I was truly grateful.

So let us pray that whenever we open our mouths, we will speak about what Jesus has done, and that even when something depressing happens, what Jesus has done will come to our minds first, so that our hearts will be ruled by what Jesus has done.