Sermon(Mt 11:12): Can men of violence take the kingdom of heaven by force?

The original Korean text: https://blog.naver.com/stevision/50025221354

 

 

Scripture reading:

세례 요한의 때부터 지금까지 천국은 침노를 당하나니 침노하는 자는 빼앗느니라. (마11:12)

(From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and men who invade the kingdom of heaven can take it by force. - Korean version of Mt 11:12)

) --> 

From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and men of violence take it by force. (Mt 11:12) - English Bible

) --> 

These days, quite a few saints go to church in other cities. A pastor who was in charge of a new small church in a city of Gyeonggi Province met with the pastor of another church in the nearby city, a big church which belongs to the same denomination. He asked the pastor of the big church a favor, saying, "Please give me some of your saints who live near my church, and they will be much help to us." But the minister of the big church flatly refused, just saying, "No!" I remember until now what the pastor of the small church said to me later, "I was too naive then not to ask such a favor!"

) --> 

The church is a pure and innocent (naive) bride before Jesus. Who among men would like a wife of a cunning and crooked heart? The church is the bride of Jesus the bridegroom. But we can not deny that the Korean church is not innocent. The verse of the Bible chosen here has been the ministry-motto of most ministers of Korean churches. This verse has made some pastors enthusiastic about preaching the gospel and about their ministry. And it was a little successful. But it was also this verse that some ministers used to destroy the innocence of the church and to rationalize it. Based on the verse (Mt 11:12), some pastors made grand churches having hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of believers, but didn't care if other churches failed or starved because of them. They thought such successful(!) ministry to be God's special blessing given them.

) --> 

In general, the Bible teaches us that we should give what we have and love others. Is this instruction contradictory to the verse? Is that so? Are there some exceptions in the Bible, so that the Bible allows using all means to expand the church without limit just because it is the matter of enlarging the church? Is it really so? But there are no exceptions with the Bible.

) --> 

After Jesus had been baptized by John, John the Baptist in the jail sent his disciples to Jesus to confirm again if he was really the promised Messiah. Then Jesus showed them that he was the Messiah, by giving them these evidences: >the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.< Jesus told his disciples that John the Baptist was the greatest man of those born of women and was a great prophet. And Jesus added this word: "From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and men who invade the kingdom of heaven can take it by force. (Korean version of the text)" (The Korean text allows the word ‘can’.)

) --> 

Most Korean believers reinterpret this verse like this: From the days of John the Baptist, the gate of the kingdom of heaven has been opened to all, so anyone, if having faith, can enter the heaven. This interpretation is not so bad. But the problem is that there are many who take the verse as follows: "Expansion of the church (= my church) is the work of the heaven. It is God's work to extend the church to infinity regardless of reasons and means, which is just and good because it is based on the verse of the Bible."

) --> 

I'm sorry to introduce the verse of English Bible to you in order that you might know that such an interpretation is wrong. “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and men of violence take it by force.” It seems to me that the German Bible has better meaning than the English Bible. I've used what knowledge of German I have, so you must be generous if I mistake. “Als der Täufer Johannes auftrat, hat Gott angefangen, seine Herrschaft aufzurichten; aber bis heute stellen sich ihr Feinde in den Weg und hindern andere mit Gewalt daran, sich dieser Herrschaft zu unterstellen. (Cited from a German Bible)” The interpretation is as follows: >As John the Baptist appeared, God began to exercise his sovereignty (i.e., to establish the kingdom of heaven). But to this day the enemies interfered with the reign of God, and have prevented others from submitting to this reign.<

) --> 

I think that German Bible is the best translation of the three. It is consistent with the whole context. When God sent John the Baptist and let him say, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is near," namely, when God began to establish the kingdom of heaven and restore his sovereignty, the enemies of God felt a threat of deprivation of their position so they got down to a full-scale interruption. The high priest with religious authority, the Sadducees and Pharisees with political power did not acknowledge him (John) as a prophet, but furiously prevented people from going to him by power near violence. King Herod confined John the prophet of God in the prison and cut off him from the people, and at last he killed him. As we see in the Bible, the high priest and his men worried very much that the heart of the people would turn to John and Jesus. In short, what Jesus says is that the kingdom of God has been attacked by robbers (enemies) so far and that this situation remains the same.

) --> 

What the Bible clearly points out to us is that he, who defies God's authority over the church for self-interest and destroys the purity of the church to seize the religious power, is the enemy of God and the man of violence that Jesus himself defined. I'm afraid that perhaps there are, in the church, those who hate reformers crying out for the righteousness in the church, who, using the shield of God's authority, silence those like John the Baptist, who in the end get rid of the righteous men insisting on right things. They should not do so. Why does this happen? Because those, who are not ruled by the Spirit of God but have the paralyzed reason by self-interest, have taken control of the church (the kingdom of heaven) for a while. Because those violent men consider their works more important than God's works, their glory than God's glory. once an organization becomes a servant of selfishness, its members collectively disobey God's will, and each of them does not think seriously about the sins as his own sins because he thinks that the sins were committed by all members. But the sin is serious, whether it is done by an individual or a group. In the Bible a group of men committed sin and were all destroyed together in a day.

) --> 

What was God's judgment on this (on the violence of the robbers)? God forsook the temple and the Israel that are taken illegally by the gangsters, and created a new place for him to be worshipped. Israel and the temple therein, the priest system, and the Sanhedrin, that is, the core of the religious and political power of Israel, disappeared from the world history by the invasion of Rome in 70 A.D. Instead, Christianity came on the world stage.

) --> 

What is, on earth, the goal of the church today? The expansion of church or the mission? There were three large churches in a city in Gyeonggi Province. The city began to develop a new housing site. Believers of each church prayed God for a ground of 3,000 pyong for the construction of new church building. (One pyong is 3.3㎡.) They prayed to God to give them a tenth of the population of the city. Of course, each church meant to bring that number of people to church by evangelizing them. But what's the reality? In fact, the prayer of the three churches was that God should give all Christians of the city to those three churches. Does it make sense? Meanwhile, a minister of a new small church in the city did his best but failed in ministry (or church business), so he committed suicide in despair. Someone, hearing this, will say, "He had no faith. The kingdom of heaven is his who invades it. He cannot have prayed to God." In fact, who would pray to God more earnestly than the pastor who ministered in that new small church? Wouldn't it be better if a pastor who had had a hard time during the period of a small church gave some believers of his church to the pastor, for he knew that the ministry of a small church is very hard? The words of a janglo (an elder) sounded like the words of the Holy Spirit given to today's pastors. "Pastors crying out love make less concessions, but strive to rise to higher positions illegitimately. Korean politicians are always criticized for being far below the political expectation of the people. The church is in a similar situation. Isn't the church incurable already if pastors use money for the election in the denomination? Some (accursed) pastors boldly and resolutely carry out to the end the inheritance of the church to their sons although almost all the saints of the country object to it. (The three brothers, Sun-do Kim, Hong-do Kim and Guk-do Kim, are the typical antichrists today who privatized the church.) Inheritance of a (very) small church could be somewhat tolerated, but some of the large churches that had more responsibility and attracted public attention should have been a better example.

) --> 

I'm not saying that the large church itself is wrong. The problem is this. The number of the saints of the country is limited, so some pastors suffer if other pastors, trusting in their ability to compose good sermons, make their church buildings bigger and bigger so that saints attending small churches, if having some trouble there, go to the large churches. I saw a pastor, who has ministered in a small church for about a decade years, weep with sorrowful tears of despair when one of believers of his church went to another big church. Some pastors of small churches are sad that their sons and daughters, having passed the college entrance examination, says to them, "You are an incompetent father (because you have no money)!" Why does a pastor establish several churches in several places and live like a tycoon, an emperor of business? He establishes a big church and gathers a large sum of money. He builds a big church wherever a new city is constructed with the money. Every new big church prospers because believers prefer the big church. So he runs many churches he has built. (Mr. Cho is the pioneer of the religious tycoons in Korea. His family live like royal family. He may be a world-famous pastor, but he is despised by most Christians in Korea. I think even his sons do not respect him! He is just a man who succeeded in capitalizing the saints and becoming an owner of chaebol.) How can this happen? Unfortunately some church pastors still have the mentality of chaebol although it has already been a long time since some chaebols of our country were disbanded. once or twice is enough for the worship serve on the Lord's day. Why should some churches have daytime church service four or five times on Lord's day so that the spirituality of the church of Korea is injured? The church itself must keep Lord's day holy. Why should it do business four or five times on the day? If they hold the service about four times, the church becomes a mess itself. Can the saints meet the God in such a mess? The worship will be like this: mechanical sermons, guest believers, worship like theater plays, attendants like audiences watching a play. In the fourth daytime service on Lord's day, the pastor is exhausted, the sermon is a compulsive speech, and the saints hear the preaching used many times. The sermon is dead if the preacher does not gladly give saints the new sermon that was prepared with the love of God to make the saints spiritually healthy, but mechanically preaches what is in his head or in his manuscripts. No matter how wonderful the contents of the sermons are! You, Greed Incarnate, how much more must your greed be filled, then your greed ceases? The greed makes the worship a dead service, and the sermon a dead sermon. Why do the pastors who preach that saints should be poor in heart covet honor and respect so much?

) --> 

I hope that there are no more hypocrites who misuse what Jesus said to the enemies who did violence to the heaven, in order to rationalize their greed. There is no exception to the word of God. Love has warm heart. A good heart is a good soil. It's not love if you make others cry. That hasn’t been directed by the Holy Spirit. The enemy of God devastates our heart, and makes us eager to harm others with the destroyed heart. The Holy Spirit makes me think of others more than me, makes me feel the pain of others as my pain. Indifference and coldness are words for the dead. It is a blessing to the saints when a pastor whose spirit and conscience are healthy takes charge of them.

) --> 

Heaven is where the poor in heart and the persecuted for righteousness go. Thieves may rob the earthly heaven, but they can not touch the real heaven. Those who are poor and humble in heart and who are harassed by gangsters in the church may be driven out of the kingdom of heaven on earth. Even Jesus dared not preach in the temple freely, because gangsters were occupying the kingdom of heaven on earth by force. But anyone who is meek and lives in awe of God like Jesus can from now on become a citizen of the heaven with Jesus forever. Let's endure and wait until then. Even John the Baptist was martyred by the gangsters attacking the heaven, and Jesus died on the cross because of them. You must bear your cross if you want to live as a true member of the people of heaven. only those who are crucified can enjoy the delight of resurrection.

) --> 

Finally, let me say one more word to several grand churches. How are those grand churches in Europe now? Aren't only several old people attending the worship of God in an almost empty big chapel? How void and ungraceful it is! (In addition, some church buildings have been turned into bars and others into mosques.) Hundreds of small churches that can accommodate hundreds of thousands of believers are more beautiful than a grand church that can accommodate them. Koreans value religious scriptures because they are imbued with Confucianism. So they just regard any words as truth if they are written in the Bible. The above word of Scripture has been used to inflame and enforce the greed of the local churches. Now you know the true meaning of the verse. From now on, we should abandon the vain glory of the local church, work for only God's glory, and restore the love among the churches.

) --> 

(ps. A pastor with a spiritual insight said: "He who does not evangelize should not criticize the way and result of the work of the evangelists. It is a wrong behavior and a waste of one's intellect to ignore many good works of a man and only to criticize a few mistakes of the man. The criticism without alternative only kills the church. There are some people in the world who do not see the positive sides but manage to live on the profit from criticizing the negative sides." We really need to beware of criticism done for the criticism itself. I think that statement is 100% right.

) --> 

However, what worries me is that the blindly self-interested pastors may value the above exhortation as the Bible and push ahead their false pastoral philosophy to the end. The criticism of the problem of large churches in Korea is not a narrow view of those who envy them, but more than 95% of Korean pastors consider it seriously, and many cultured laymen take it to be serious. It is the problem of super-large churches and the problem of church expansion without control that are hampering the qualitative and quantitative development of the church of Korea. Therefore, it is right to criticize some pastors' church-expansionism for the sake of the quantitative and qualitative growth of the church of Korea as a whole. To suggest a solution, conscientious pastors should divide the members of the churches that have achieved a considerable growth and establish new churches.

) --> 

Let's say that you are a servant of God and are doing something against the will of God. First God will appeal to your good conscience. If you do not listen to him and do it, God will speak to you indirectly through other servants of God around you. Nevertheless, if you still disobey him, you will hear God's rebuke certainly or uncertainly, a rebuke uttered by laymen around you. If you still disobey him, God will rebuke you through people who do not know God. If you still disobey him, you will hear words of God who condemns you in silence, words that are coming from those who are possessed by ghosts or who worship idols. If you still disobey him, God will punish you with various accidents and reprove your wrong idea. If you have gone this far, you must humbly acknowledge your sin and turn away from the wrong way. Now, if you still disobey him, God will take your life or use you as an evil instrument. Saul became an evil instrument that God used to train David. How shameful and sad it is for a human being to be used as an evil instrument! Prophet Balaam came to his senses when an animal said to him. What a shame! God made his servant who had lost his reason by greed suffer shame by making him taught by an animal. The problem of wrong ministry philosophy is already condemned by secular people. Too much is worse than insufficiency. Instructors of the revival meeting of the church should teach at the revival seminars with a more sound pastoral philosophy. The church revival seminar instructors necessary for the church of Korea now are those who are pastors of a church of about 300 members and whose church serves the community well and evangelizes the community well. Pastors and laymen of Korean church must respect those pastors whose churches are well established in the community, revealing the glory of God to the community. And they should love their teachings. Not only the sin specifically written in the Bible but also disobeying the Holy Spirit is sin. The Holy Spirit rebukes sinners by their conscience and by the conscience of others.

) --> 

To monopolize the saints is a stumbling block to the evangelization of the whole nation. To gather saints to one's church to the harm of the whole church is to make the people of God one's possession. Pharaoh, king of Egypt, met ten calamities as he tried to make God's people his possession and his slaves in order to exploit their labor. Some saints also are a problem. Please do not consider the size of the church and go to the nearby church. In such a way you can be a wholesome Christian who really evangelizes the community and serves God and men. Do you think that your pastor who is in charge of a big church with thousands of members knows you? Awake from your dream! You are a sheep without pastor. You have caused it yourself. But if you go to a normal church near your home, you will have a good shepherd who will pray to God for you every day at dawn there. Please be wise!)

) --> 

Chong Tack Kim

) --> 

                                   - Dongtoma Sunshine Church -

) --> 

) -->