Sermon Preaching at Anyangjeil Church

Sermon Preaching at Anyangjeil Church
Sunday Night Oct 26, 2008
xem bai giang tai: http://www.anyangjeil.org/vodPlayer/moviePlay3.asp?idx_num=41&board_id=subworship&group_name=church&viewOpt=strLink1
Let the Nations be Glad
Bible: Psalm 67
1 May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us, 2 that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.
3 May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you. 4 May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the peoples justly and guide the nations of the earth.
5 May the peoples praise you O God, may all the peoples praise you.
6 Then the land will yield its harvest, and God, our God will bless us. 7 God will bless us, and all the ends of the earth will fear him.
Introduction
Let us pray.
I am very happy to have an opportunity to preach the word of God to all of you tonight. This is in fact an honor for me to stand in front of you on behalf of the Vietnamese.
Basing on the text we just read, I would like to share with you the title: “Let the Nations be Glad”.
Psalm 67 is a prayer of David and an instruction for the readers about how we should pray to God to ask for blessing.
The author of the Psalm said “Lord please bless us, so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations. May the nations be glad and sing for joy. God will bless us, and all the end of the earth will fear him”.
The interesting thing here is that this prayer aims for personal blessing and yet it appears in the context of the nation.
My question is that why the blessing of God has to do with the nations? Why God bless an individual person, a group of people, or a nation has something to do with the whole world? What is so deal about it? What can we learn from Psalm 67 today?
The aims of my sermon tonight are: (1) to present the reason why God’s blessing to us relates very much to mission; (2) to encourage you to do mission more seriously; and (3) to present my vision to serve God.
(1) Reasons Why God’s Blessing Relates very much to Mission
Blessing is understood differently by many people. Normally it refers to material and physical blessing. Because of this blessing, many people find their way to religion.
Vietnamese non-Christians worship idols to ask for blessing. They go from place to place to look for the most powerful idol gods who are able to bless them. If their prayers are answered, they will continue worshiping him/her, and if not, then they will move to another idol at another place.
Sometimes, people ask their ancestor to protect from bad luck and accident, or to support them in business. More interestingly, there are many government officers samonim, go to pagodas to pray for the blessing. Their prayers are that their corruption, their bribes will be covered and protected well.
In the context of the church today, of course, we believe that God bless us in many ways. However, recently, there is a trend of theology who believes that Christians are God’s children, the King’s Kids, therefore we should ask and claim for his great blessings in term of good life, good health, good business and so on. And because of God’s children, we should not be poor, sick or sufferings.
What is the most important definition of blessing? The most important definition of blessing found in the Bible is somehow different in definitions as well as in purposes. The blessing of God for his children is not only at the prosperity, power and fertility, but its meaning goes beyond that.
In term of definition, I believe that most important meaning of blessing we can find in the Bible that are the forgiveness of sin to have peace with God, and the relationship between God and men is restored, then followed by other material blessings.
The primary factor of blessing is the statement of relationship between parties. God blesses us with a benefit on the basis of the relationship. The blessing makes known the positive relationship between the parties, in our case, God and us, the church. I pray that all of you will realize Jesus forgiven us is the greatest blessing.
How about the purposes of the blessing? According to the Psalm we read today, the author reveals that there is a purpose of God’s blessing upon our life.
There are three reasons that God’s blessing to us relates very much to mission. God bless us so that the nation will (1) Know God (v.1), (2) Praise God (v.3), and (3) Fear God (v.7).


First, they will Know God
the Psalmist says:
V1.May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us,
Be gracious to us or have mercy to us means to forgive us. Forgiveness is the way to have our relationship with God restored. Only by the mercy of God, we can come to him and receive his blessing. The author prays to God to ask for forgiveness not only for himself but also for the community, for the nation.
Then he asks God to bless them. The blessing here includes spiritual and physical. How this relates to mission? The purpose of God’s blessings upon us is for our joy. Blessing shows how much his love upon us. God will not bless his people just merely blessing but through blessing he shows his love. Through which, the relationship between God and his children become sweeter, closer and stronger.
Psalm 126:2-3
“Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.”
The joy and gladness that we have, signify to the nations that our God indeed is a good God. Why our blessing has something to do with nations? For they will know the Lord. They will know the way of God saves and bless his people.
All the nations in the ancient East knew that the Israelites people have crossed the Red Sea, crossed the Jordan river, taken over the Jericho and inherited the land, and they all trembled.
I believe God has blessed Korea and Korea churches so much, their joy and salvation are known to the world. People from various countries knew about this, and they wish their churches develop much as the churches in Korea.

Second, they will praise God.v.3
Please bless us so that, in order that, the nation may know your way. The way here is the salvation that God is doing upon his people. The question here is why the nation needs to know God’s salvation, and that they praise God and will be glad.
Are they not being glad at all? Are they in the situation of sadness, tiredness and cursedness? The answer is Yes. They are sad because they don’t have the true blessing. They are sad because they are under the bondage of sin. Their understanding of blessing is just merely worldly things and not the true blessing which means the forgiveness of sin.
They will be glad when they believe in Him. How could they believe in God when no one speaks to them? Telling them about the salvation is the purpose of God’s blessing. “Lord blesses us so that we will tell them about Him”.
After healing the demon possessed man, Jesus told him “Return home and tell how much God has done for you. So the man went away and told all over the town how much Jesus had done for him.” (Luke 8:39)
As we tell them about Jesus, about the salvation, the nations believe. And now they are able to praise God. They are glad and sing for joy because the God they worship is a true God, a just God and a loving God. (V.4). They had heard and knew about God’s way upon his people, but now they are able to praise Him. The reason why they are glad and praise God is because they believe in Him and they are blessed by Him.

Finally, they will fear God v.7
Oh Lord, please bless us, so that all the end of the earth, all the nations may fear you. From the stage of knowing, to praising and now is fear God. It is the ultimate purpose of the blessing. God’s blessing to us, finally bring the nations to know, praise and fear God. What it means by fearing God? They will change from worship idols to worshiping God. Before if they worship idols, now they will worship God and fear Him. Fearing here means completely and totally submitting to God.

In order for them to know, praise, and fear God, God decide to bless me and you. Therefore, the author of this Psalm prays to ask for blessing, in God’s purpose. God bless us so that the nation be glad.
I am very moved by one deacon in our church who said that “I pray to ask God’s blessing upon my project and my company, so that I will use the money to do missions and bring the gospel to Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and so on.”
God said to Abraham in Gen.12:2 “I will bless you and you will be a blessing, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” I pray that, God will bless you more, and you will be a great blessing for the nations.

How should we apply this lesson to our life? I would like to use this sermon to encourage all of you to continue your mission work.

(2) To encourage all of you to continue your mission work.
The churches in Korea have applied this principle and they became a great blessing for all nations. Far and wide, the world has witnessed the mission work of your church to them. Korean churches have been a great blessing for Vietnam too for the past 15 years.
Up to now, the churches in Korea have helped to build the churches, hospitals, houses, doing social charity and many more unspeakable works. So far, there have been over 100 church buildings are built by the support of the Korean churches.
I am moved when I see so many Korea missionaries who came to Vietnam with their family, trying to learn to speak the language and they have to face many problems for the sake of the gospel.
I am moved when I see many elders from Korean churches came back to visit Vietnam. Before they came to Vietnam with the gun, but now they came with the Bible and with blessing.
I am moved because the mission team from Anyangjeil who came to Vietnam for the past four years. Though, only a short period, they have brought great blessings to the churches, especially the children. Did you see how much joy they were? They were so glad and sing praises to the Lord. Some of them were so happy that they cried because of your love upon them.
Why your short-term mission for the children at the moment is important for the future church of Vietnam, of Cambodia, of Malaysia, of Russia and so on? The answer is because that group of people, who believed Jesus, will later change the society and their nation.
When the VN war ends, the communist took over the country from North to South, people lived a very difficult life. In the context of chaos of the post-war period, I was born. In the morning I went to school, in the afternoon I went out to pick up the garbage food, vegetables, fish-heads, old carrot, potatoes that people threw away, to feed the pigs, chicken, the rapids that we were raising. Sometimes, my mother took them and tried to look for some part that we might eat before giving to the chicken and the rapids. My mother made ice-creams to sell for student. She also made the caps and then I went out to sell those caps to people. The Lord was still with us and we were happy in that situation.
One day, when I was about 13 years old, there came a mission group from Australia, they came to sing and tried to talk with us. We were happy to see white people came, singing and encouraged us. Before they left, a man came to me and gave me an English Bible. He encouraged me to learn English more to read the Bible and became a pastor. I did not understand fully what he said, but I guessed what he meant. I gave the Bible to my father and he opened it, and you know, there was a hundred US dollar note. I thought it must be a mistake, and then I went out to look for the man. But they left. With that money, our family can live for a few months. That incident has impressed me until now, how the Lord blessed us in those trouble days. Today, I became pastor, not because of that hundred note, but because the Lord have been so gracious to me.


(3) My Vision to Serve the Lord
Therefore, I encourage you to do mission, and do it even more seriously. God blesses us for the sake of the nation. God will bless us as we plan to bless others. I am encouraged to share to you about my vision for the serving God in the future. My vision will base upon the principle that we learn today. May God bless me so that the nations will be glad and sing for joy.
As you know, Christians in Vietnam is more than one percent of the total 85 million people. Vietnam includes 54 ethnics groups with more than 54 different languages. The Viet people are 65 percent and the rest are the minority groups. In the plan how to preach to gospel of the Jesus to all of them, my vision is to establish a mission school to train missionaries and pastors.
I would like to train more missionaries to reach out to the Vietnamese as well as the minority people. In our country, among the ethnic group, there are Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Chinese, therefore, I would aim to train missionaries from Vietnam and send them to those countries as missionaries as well.
In the future, if God’s willing, in my vision, the church of Vietnam would like to help North Korean people and we may send missionaries to there. In the past, as a communist country, Vietnam used to help North Korea economically, in the future, if God’s willing, we will plan to help them spiritually.
In conclusion, I am here, on behalf of the Vietnamese and the churches, to say thanks to God and thank the churches in Korea especially Anyangjeil church who has been a channel of blessing to us. I would like to encourage you to keep doing the good work that the Lord has bestowed on you not only for Vietnam but also for many others nations.
Maybe, Korea is facing the economy crisis. This situation affects the whole society including churches. Your company, your work place, your business, your family may face certain financial problems. I encourage you to ask God’s blessing upon you and your family, your community, your church. The prayer for blessing should be done in tune with Psalm 67 that we learn today. Oh Lord, bless us that the nation will know your salvation. Amen.