Sunday Sermon Manuscript – February 22

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“Our God! The God of Grace”

Matthew 4:1–11

Into the Wilderness, Right After the Baptism

Dear beloved congregation, as we enter the first Sunday of Lent, we stand before the Word of God from Matthew chapter 4. The passage opens with a striking scene: Jesus, led by the Spirit, goes into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
The placement of this text is remarkably intentional. Just one chapter earlier, in Matthew 3:17, God publicly declares over Jesus, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” His identity is announced before heaven and earth.
Yet immediately after this glorious declaration, God does not lead His Son to a banquet hall of celebration, but into the dry and desolate wilderness.
We often assume that if God truly loves us, suffering should pass us by. But Scripture tells a different story. Even the Son of God had to pass through the wilderness — a place of testing.
God does not offer us a faith that reigns comfortably and ends the moment we believe. Just as the Son of God entered the wilderness and faced the devil, we are invited to recognize that our own lives will encounter similar moments of testing.
In reality, our lives are constantly accompanied by trials, hardships, and suffering. “Why must I face this if I believe in Jesus?” Yet if we understand that even Jesus suffered, we would ask this question differently. God’s plan was to send His Son into a life like ours, so that through that shared humanity we might witness how God brings salvation among us.

The Devil, and “Coming and Testing”

In this passage, the devil appears as the tempter. But the Gospels do not describe this being simply as an object of fear. Rather, they personify an antagonistic force that relentlessly probes the vulnerable parts of human life.
Even more interesting is the verb that is used. “He came, and he tested.” This verb is not unfamiliar in Matthew. It is the very action the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, and the teachers of the law did to Jesus. They also came to Jesus to test him.
This gives us a very uncomfortable insight. Those who tested Jesus were not all atheists. They were the most religiously zealous people.
They were people who knew Scripture, kept the law, and preserved tradition. But their zeal became something that turned into a place where they tested Jesus. Therefore, we must be careful.
Because the zeal of faith can change—not into the path of following Jesus, but into the path of verifying and controlling Jesus.

The Question James Talarico Raised

Recently, a Democratic primary candidate for the Texas State Senate named “James Talarico” has stood out. He is a 36-year-old unknown politician, yet within a few weeks he has drawn enough attention to be discussed as a potential Democratic presidential candidate.
Talarico, who graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, studied at Harvard, worked as a middle school teacher, then went to seminary, and is now known as a politician—something he said in a lecture at a church caught my attention.
“Jesus proclaimed a gospel that far surpasses and overwhelms any political ideology or party. It was radical, and it seems to make us today still wrestle with what it means to follow Jesus and what role the church should play.
Jesus went to the root of the world’s fundamental problems and called us into a deeper justice, a deeper peace, and a deeper love. True Christianity has always challenged empire, and it has challenged feudalism, slavery, and racism.
I believe that Jesus’ calling like this is still valid for us today.
But in our time, Christian Nationalism makes faith a tool of power and reigns as if it were the true church and true Christianity.
If we look at their purpose, they seem to have no interest in following Jesus and only an interest in protecting power. What they want is not the values of Christianity, but the expansion of Christian domination.
Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God means laying down what is familiar to us and turning our eyes to the new order God has prepared. The kingdom of God is certainly to be realized on this earth through those who believe in Jesus—through the church. The order God has prepared is a country without poverty, a country without discrimination, a country without war—namely, a country where God’s grace comes first.
God is not a distant ruler who reigns far away, but the One who is with us within relationships. The mystery of the Trinity shows us exactly that. Through us, God reveals that mystery on this earth, and through the church community God works zealously to bring God’s order into reality.

How Should We Respond?

While dealing with fairly theological content, we are also warning against Christian nationalists. It felt similar to those in Jesus’ time who were zealous but “came” and “tested” Jesus.
The church never promotes attacking or hating the world, and God is the One who is with us only by grace, yet for far too long we have treated the yoke of judgment as the center of faith.
“Believe in Jesus and you go to heaven; don’t believe and you go to hell” has given us a fear that, in an extreme way, teaches the doctrine that if you do not believe in Jesus you cannot be saved, and that you will be thrown into the fiery pit of God’s judgment.
As these thoughts keep leading to more thoughts, I wondered whether we are living in an age where the picture of who God truly is is becoming more and more vague.

Is God the One Who Judges Us?

Here a question arises. Is God really the One who watches us in order to judge us? Some people believe in Jesus to avoid judgment and to possess heaven. If that is not the case, then is it okay not to believe in Jesus? Some people ask questions like this.
This too can be called a rather extreme, selective question. We need to understand the essence of God well. We must always remember God’s decision that God determined to save us by sending the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, into this world.
Before today’s passage, God had already said that Jesus is the Son of God! Yet now God leads Jesus into the wilderness, makes him fast, and today’s passage records the scene in which Jesus is tested there.

Not Judgment, but the God of Grace

Here it shows well what kind of plan God is carrying out to save us. It is not about revealing the power of a God who reigns, and it is not about telling us that if you believe in Jesus, that’s the end of it. Rather, in the scene where even the Son of God passes through the place of testing called the wilderness and faces the devil, Jesus lives out a life similar to ours, and we will come to know that we too will face a life like this.
In fact, we know well that our lives always include trials, difficulties, and suffering. So the most common question is: If I believe in Jesus, why do I face such a hard life?
If we clearly knew this fact—Jesus also suffered!—it seems we would stop asking such questions, yet the reason these questions never leave our lives is that we do not know God and Jesus that well.
To that extent, we can say that God’s plan was to send Jesus into this world to live a life like ours, so that we might witness how God will save us.
It means: Look closely at the plan God established by God’s own zealous effort—different from what we think.
Then should we feel at ease about God’s judgment? No, we should not.
The passage tells us that we, too, can become like Christian nationalists, the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, religious leaders, and the Sadducees. Like the devil, those who come forward and put others to the test may find that judgment is already standing at their very door.
Put another way, it means we must be on guard against those who drive us into the yoke of judgment. Judgment is not the grace God gives; it is clearly given to the one who has chosen the life he or she wants.
On the last day, God will examine us—as one separates wheat and weeds—whether we have lived in awe and gratitude for grace, or whether, when we speak of judgment, we condemned others and came near to make them stumble into temptation.

The Annual Conference Fund Presentation — Why I Prepared Excessively

Last week I went to a presentation to apply for a ministry fund at the annual conference. About eight teams participated, and the total budget of the prepared fund was about $300,000. Among them, our Yeolin Church received a $100,000 fund. It is something to be thankful for.
Why did we receive so much? You’re curious, right? For this presentation, with the help of our professional lay member Park Byung-joon, we filmed and edited a video.
It was not simply a few slides. We conducted interviews, captured the field, structured the story of the ministry, and tried to communicate the message clearly.
Some people watched the video, and the editing was well done too. Rev. Sam Yoon, who serves at the San Ramon church and watched the video, called me.
He said he wanted to lay down the church he is currently serving and lead English worship at our church—so much so. As I received that call, I felt it: when we prepare something seriously, God surely grants fruit.
Here is a question. Why did we prepare that much? Why did we work to an excessive degree? Do we really have to do that?
When I return home every Sunday, I am completely exhausted. I do my best not to waste a single week. But why do I do that?
The reason this zeal has taken root in my life is that there is fruit to the extent that I work hard and labor. Why would I have a heart to work this hard? To be recognized? That can be part of the motivation, but I do it with gratitude because God saved even me and made me a pastor.
Sometimes I feel sorry toward my children because the church comes first and they are pushed aside. Now, when I come home late, my children seem to take it as normal—they know I’ve been doing an event and packing food to bring home, and they even ask, “What did you bring home today?” It seems they roughly know that this is how they live.
One day I asked myself too. Do I really need to do this much? A colleague in ministry says this: Just do it roughly… no one is going to notice anyway…
Sometimes I do feel a bit wronged. Looking at other pastors, it seems like they don’t do much, but I have to sell a building, I have to do a lawsuit, and I have to learn a real estate development process I don’t even need to know.
I wrestled with it longer than I expected. Why am I this zealous? As I read today’s Word, I found the answer. God too was excessively zealous—and as a result, I came to believe in Jesus and became a pastor..
In the Bible, God brings the people of Israel out of Egypt with zeal. When I see God forcibly pushing Moses, who didn’t want to go, and making the exodus happen, I think God is persistent.
Whenever times get hard, prophets appear from somewhere, and in the end God directly sends the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, into this world to save the world.
God did not only send him; God even sent this precious Son into the wilderness and had him pass through the test. Why? It means this was not meticulousness for judgment, but that God worked meticulously, with effort, for salvation.

The Meaning of Lent

From last Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, we have entered the season of Lent. Lent is not a time to meditate on suffering and pain; it is a time to see that God loved us this much and drove the Son toward suffering.
And it can be seen as a time to pay attention to God’s grace more than ever and to reset our life up to this point.
God is not One who monitors us, but the One who comes down with us even into the wilderness—the site of suffering—and rescues us. The conclusion is not judgment, but to save us!
During this season of Lent, I earnestly bless and pray that you and I will deeply experience the great love of God who works so zealously that God becomes utterly exhausted in order to bring us to life, and that we will live the best life in response to that love.
If even the Son of God passed through the wilderness, then our wilderness too is within the story of salvation. So if you are in the midst of a life that feels hard and difficult, that path will surely be passed through, and it will be God’s plan of salvation.
Also, we must always be careful. So that religious zeal does not become a place where we test Jesus, so that faith does not become a tool of power, we must continually examine our identity.
Beloved congregation, the wilderness is not a place of failure. The wilderness is the place where being the Son of God is confirmed. And I hope that Lent will be a time when we too, following the path of the Son, confirm that we are standing within God’s plan of salvation.