What Is Unseen

Genesis 28:10-19a, Romans 8:12-25, Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43, Psalm 139: 1-12, 23-24

 1. Episode

The movie “The Pursuit of Happiness" is about the real life of Chris Gardner, a stockbroker who lived in San Francisco, the U.S. Gardner, a medical device salesman, had a tough life. When the monthly rent is delayed and the situation is so bad that it is impossible to pay taxes, even his wife leaves. Then he starts his internship to become a stockbroker.

Intern life is difficult then and now. It was a process where the company looked at 20 interns for six months and then picked one after taking the test. He takes his son from place to place without a home. There are moments when he wants to give up his life, but he clenches himself for his son. Perhaps the result of such efforts, Gardner became a stockbroker through a competition ratio of 20 to 1, and lived a leisurely life afterwards.

This is a very typical success story. But while I was watching the movie, there was a part I thought about, and what was the power that made Gardner overcome the difficult reality at the time? The situation you see is desperate and bleak, but what is it that has made him through tough times?

The movie talks about hope from beginning to end. Hope that the future will be different from what it is now. Although his son and himself are suffering like this now, the expectation that their lives will eventually improve is incessantly driving Gardner endlessly.

Hope leads Gardner to work and study internships during the week, and to make a living selling the remaining medical devices on weekends. It's about overcoming the reality of invisible hope. His love for his invisible son is causing him to contradict his efforts and will.

We live as if what we see is everything, but when we look back at our lives, we find that what is invisible is more important.

What I want to meditate and share with you today is about invisible things.

2.1. What is invisible gives us fear.

The text of Genesis that we've read tells us what's invisible. What is invisible in this story is what shakes, threatens, and fears Jacob's life. The invisible sometimes gives us the fear of shaking our lives.

Jacob's story starts from Chapter 25 of Genesis. If you look closely at the following story, Jacob had never personally experienced God before the experience in Bethel we read today.

I feel every time I meditate on Jacob's story, but Jacob is a very selfish person. He coveted his eldest son's birthright and bought the birthright with a single red porridge, and he took advantage of Isaac's invisibility to intercept the blessings Esau would receive... It is a record of the incident that took place while fleeing to the home of Laban's uncle in Haran.

We experience God in a castle called "Luz," and later in a place called Bethel. It was a confirmation that the promise God gave Abraham was continuing to Jacob. After this experience, Jacob confesses in verse 16.

“When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”

But the reaction of Jacob in verse 17 that follows is interesting.

He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”

Normally, when you experience God, you should be gracious, good, just beautiful, and the first reaction after Jacob's experience is “Fear”. What does this mean?

The Hebrew expression for “Jacob was afraid” is “א ֙רָיִיַּו” “way·yî·rā, Beira). The verb “fear” used at this time is “ראֵָי) “yare” (yare). This expression is used in Exodus 2:14 when Moses feared that Egyptians would find out the murder by Moses and in 1 Samuel 18:12 when Saul feared David as he realized that God was no longer with him, but with David. In other words, the feeling of fear that you feel in your life or in a situation where your position is shaking is the meaning of this verb. Taken together, these are the emotions Jacob now experiences and feels about God.

"Oh, this God can end my life. May God destroy the ambition, my thoughts, my plans that I have dreamed of!"

"How I'm going to manage my life, I've all had plans...I thought, "God could turn this upside down." Until now, I've had my own, my possessions, my plans and my life, and the fear that all of this could change forever. Jacob faces these fears.

When the invisible God was revealed, Jacob thought that what he saw would change.

A religious scholar named Rudolph Otto, who was active in the early 20th century, talks about his experience with God as an experience of "mysterium treadum." When we experience God beyond all our experiences and reason, which cannot be captured by reason, the first raw emotion and feeling that arose is "fear." Because God is completely different from us, all our thoughts, thoughts, habits and directions of life are shaken before this God.

Matthew 20:22 “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?”

We must stand before the invisible God. And we shall put down the direction and values of our lives before God, who can shake our thoughts and lives completely and humbly and day by day experience God, who causes feelings of fear. In this way we can abandon our selfish selves and follow the invisible God.

2.2. What is invisible gives us hope.

The second text, which we read in Romans, is a bit different from the previous story about the invisible. If the invisible thing revealed through Jacob's story was a shock that shook our lives, the invisible thing, which is said through the Romans text, comes as giving us hope.

The gist of the text given today is this. "The Spirit of the invisible God makes your children persevere in the midst of hardships, and guides them into the glory that is now invisible but will come."

The Romans text says in verse 20, "Creation is in vain, but is yielding." The original language that is translated “in vain” or “in vain” is “Mataiiotes” (µαταιότης). The word also appears in Romans 1:21. It means “something is in a different state from its original purpose”. What does this mean? God creates all creation at the beginning of creation and seeks to coexist peacefully with them. That is the original purpose of creation. The peaceful coexistence of God and creation starts with recognizing that God is God. However, because of the rebellion between Adam and Eve, the desire to overcome the Creator God and become the master of their lives, Adam and Eve, and all humans and creatures afterwards, are separated from the recognition of God as the Creator. It is that they are separated from their lives of recognizing God as their original purpose as God and having fellowship with God. This is the “emptiness” of the Roman text today.

The vanity of living without God as the Creator... We think that we would be happy to be the owner of our lives, but it is not true. We think we will be free to decide on my own, but I'm telling we are not. So verse 21 points out that such creatures, such humans, are under "bondage to decay.” We have to be free if we become masters of our own lives, but we don't.

Episode, we think it would be nice if we do everything the way we wanted, but it's not.

The text of the Romans says that when an invisible God appears, we will be liberated from this vain, rotting servant. They say you will get the power and comfort to live a hard life away from the futility, vanity, and lethargy of life. True freedom is given when you discover yourself in God.

This is possible when you put the invisible in priority over the visible.

It's nothing if we leave God. Does a person comfort you? Are you happy if you have a lot of money? Can I live a better life if I have power?

Episode.

We must return to God. We must recognize God as the master of our lives and get down to Him. This is because we were originally built to fear God and associate with God. When we experience the invisible God, our desire for God arises in us. There is a desire to be with him and to manage his life in him.

That’s why the psalmist wrote in Psalm 84:

Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.

Jacob's story tells us that when an invisible God appears, our lives and values are shaken. Everything that we thought was true falls apart. But at the same time, when we experience an invisible God, our lives are reorganized around our relationship with God. It's a new direction. Although Isaiah has experienced God and expressed that his existing life has been ruined, just as he has renewed his life with a new calling and mission, we will live a new life.

2.3. What is invisible breaks us down, rebuilds us.

We are talking about the invisible today. The act of “seeing” is truly unusual. We usually think that there are only things we can touch, hear with our ears, and taste with our mouth. But the Bible tells the opposite story. They say that the invisible makes it possible to see. It is that the visible being is possible by the invisible being. What the eye cannot see is first, and what it can see is next.

Because of this irony, we have to give up our original ideas, attitudes and methods of life to know what's invisible. In order to experience invisible things, we have to give up the methods we've been using. That's why we close my eyes. That's why we cover our ears. That's why we cover our mouths, and we bow down.

We call the invisible God a mystery. This mystery comes from the Greek word “musterion,” and the word “musterion” is derived from the word “mueo”. The meaning of the word mueo has the meaning of closing your eyes, covering your mouth, and covering your ears. In other words, even if we use the method we usually use to know something, it is a mystery that we still do not know.

We can never experience God in the way we already have. No matter how hard you go to church, there are many people who die without knowing God. It's not because you come to church and ask for God, but for something else. When you come to church, you seek God in the same way you do in the world, so you cannot experience God.

When we come to God, we must use God's method, not the method we have. We must be able to humble our ways, our thoughts, and our self, and save the face of God. It doesn't work with all kinds of positions, fame, money and power we have in the world. It is of no use if you come before God. You can meet God only after leaving it.

 God, who does not seem so, comes to the center of our lives and shakes our values and lives, and infuses his values and thoughts. This is what keeps us alive. This is what makes us endure the present and wait for the kingdom of God to come in the future.

I pray that you and I will remember this in the name of the Lord.