November 27, 2022 Sunday Worship Service (1st Advent/World Baptist Prayer Week)

Call to Worship Isaiah 60:1
Lighting of the Advent Candle ~ Prayer
Hymn JBC # 19 Love divine, all loves excelling
The Lord’s Prayer
The Lord’s Supper
Prayer for the World Baptist Prayer Week
Scripture Revelation 21:22~27
Prayer
Sermon “The glory and honor of the nations”
https://youtu.be/J_ke5vV2lVs
Prayer
Hymn JBC # 563 Come, Thou Fount of ev’ry blessing
Doxology JBC # 674
Benediction

Today, the Christian Church begins the period of “Advent” (the season of waiting and preparing for the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ). Advent is the roughly four week period before Christmas.
Through “Advent,” we hope to renew our thoughts of faith and joy in preparation for Christmas, a time to commemorate and give thanks for the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, into the human world.
Jesus Christ was born into our world as our Savior—thinking about this event of immeasurable grace, we look forward to Christmas with anticipation and gratitude—it is our hope that we will spend the Advent season in such a way.

At the beginning of today's service, the first Advent candle was lit. For the next four weeks of Advent, we will light the candles one by one during the worship service.
The meaning of the first candlelight is “hope.” The birth of Jesus Christ gave us hope. It is a hope that will never disappear. It is a hope that will never change.

It is a hope given by the eternal God, so it will never disappear. And hope from God never changes.
The hope that we humans imagine or create for ourselves, once achieved, may cease to be a hope, or it may change at any time, depending on our thoughts, feelings, or changing circumstances.
But the hope that God gives us through Jesus Christ is an eternal and unchanging hope. It is a hope that will not disappear at any time.
We know from today's Bible verses that eternal, unchanging, and unending hope is given to us through Jesus Christ.

Today's passage is from Revelation chapter 21, verses 22-27. The content of Revelation is a message given to John by God through visions and dreams. The message is said to have been given at a time during intense persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire.
Today's passage describes a vision of the “New Jerusalem” that John saw. At this time, Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, had been destroyed by the Roman Empire in a war called the Jewish War (that occurred in the period after Jesus' death).
In that war, the Temple in Jerusalem was also destroyed. The Temple in Jerusalem was a source of great pride for the Jewish people.
Even in the Gospels, there is a passage where one of Jesus' disciples tells Jesus, looking at the temple, “Teacher, look! What wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings.”

One can imagine how proud they were of the Temple from that scene.

We are currently reading the Old Testament book of Ezra in our Wednesday Bible study and prayer meeting. The book of Ezra tells the story of the rebuilding of the Temple, which was first built by King Solomon and later destroyed by Babylon.
Hundreds of years later, the Temple was restored and expanded by Herod the Great in Jesus' time. However, as I mentioned earlier, the Second Temple was also destroyed during the Jewish- War.
The vision that John sees in today's passage is the Jerusalem of future hope that will soon appear. So, he must have been expecting to see the most magnificent temple to ever be re-built.
But in verse 22, the first of today's verses, it says, “I did not see a temple in the city”.

The reason for this is written right after.

because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

A temple is a symbol of visible hope. And what is visible can deceive our hearts. Our hearts can be stolen by what we see.
The Israelites may have thought as they looked at the Temple, “It's amazing that such a wonderful temple has been given to our nation,” or they may have thought, “It's amazing that our own people built such a great temple.”
However, the Bible says that such tangible and visually spectacular objects and buildings (things that are man-made) are not real hope for us.
If we are not careful, we can think of things like visible temples and man-made objects themselves, as if they are the basis of hope.
Hope in Jesus Christ is different from visible hopes, hopes that are based on man's own thoughts and abilities.

Our true hope is in our God Almighty, who can do anything. Our true hope is in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who gave Himself as an offering to atone for our sins so that they could be forgiven.
The vision presented to John at that time was that “people must not place their hope in the temple or worship the temple,” that “man needs to place his hope in Jesus Christ, the true God, and worship Him alone.”
A temple built by human hands is nothing—in fact, this was clearly admitted by King Solomon too who built the First Temple during the time of the Old Testament.

When the temple was completed, Solomon prayed, saying. “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27).
When we stand before the Mighty God, we realize that we ourselves and the things we make with our own hands are truly nothing before God.
But somehow, we forget that, and we become proud of the things we make by our own hands, our own abilities, and so on.
God Himself does not dwell in temples built by man. Temples built by human hands, or churches as they are now called, are not objects of worship, nor are any human beings. We should worship only the Lord God, the God of Jesus Christ.
Let us always remember to worship only the Lord God, the God of Jesus Christ, and never worship or adore anything (or anyone) else.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. And at the same time, today is the first day of the World Baptist Week of Prayer.
We give our prayers and offerings in remembrance of the national and international missionary work promoted by the Baptist Church congregations.
We also offer our prayers and offerings in special remembrance of those who are working to spread the gospel at home and abroad, as well as in remembrance of missionaries and volunteers overseas.

Once, when evangelist and pastor Billy Graham was asked, "Who do you think is the greatest Christian in the world today?”, it is said that Rev.Graham paused for a moment before replying, and he said the following.
“We probably don't even know them, because they live in the jungles of Africa or in places where anyone notice them. We probably won't even hear their names.”
We wish to offer our prayers, thanksgiving, and offerings for the missionaries and other workers we know, and also remembering that there are many workers for the Gospel that we do not know.
At this time of the World Baptist Week of Prayer, we would also like to remember once again that our missionary work begins with our immediate surroundings.

As Beppu International Baptist Church, a church established by God in this place here in Beppu, let us remember our neighbors who live around our church and sincerely hope and pray that the gospel of Christ will spread in this area.
Let us also remember with gratitude and thanksgiving that our church is filled with people from all walks of life and from many different places in Japan and abroad.
It is such an amazing grace that the vision of today's passage seems to be being realized in our church.

Let’s read verses 24-26.
24 The nations will walk by [the city’s] light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. 25 On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. 26 The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it.

The “nations” are the domestic and international people who gather in our church, and the “city” can be compared to our church.
The peoples of the nations, each one of us, will gather from different places to worship God with “our splendor” and “glory and honor.”
By “glory and honor,” I think it means all the goodness, grace, and happiness that God has given us.

Today's vision speaks of a new Jerusalem, a city where all people will gather to worship God with the pure desire to give all glory to the Lord God.
That new city of Jerusalem will be realized first from each Christian church that worships Jesus Christ— I think we can also hope for this.
We are about to celebrate Christmas again this year as we commemorate and give thanks for the event in which God became man and was born as our Savior, Jesus Christ. The grace of Christ is always with us.
Let us spend this Advent season full of joy and offer our heartfelt thanks to Jesus Christ, the Lord God, who invites us into His grace.