There have been so many natural disasters recently that I am fully convinced that we are now living in the age of sorrow and recently Pakistan was struck by a devastating earthquake. Some villages in Guatemala were wiped out by mudslides triggered by a hurricane thereby disappearing without a trace. The devastation was so bad that the authorities stopped trying to recover the victims and instead declared the sites to be public cemeteries. It’s estimated that about 80,000 people died from the earthquake in Pakistan, but the number of victims is expected to grow even more in the coming months, as the afflicted region, Kashmir, is very rugged and mountainous, and the brutal winter there will extract a heavy toll on the people who lost their homes from the earthquake. We also have some partners in Pakistan, and unfortunately, their safety is not known to us yet. We’ll continue to try to get in touch with them, but meanwhile, we should all pray for them.

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Since meeting you on the day of the Lord, I meet you again today, Wednesday, and the time in between seemed so very long. In recent days, I have been very busy preparing the sermon books about the Gospel of Matthew. I am so glad to be meeting you by taking time out of my crowded schedule. God has allowed us a new translator who will be translating our books into English, and because I have to give her materials to translate, I am busy these days. But, I have discovered that she was translating “the gospel of the water and the Spirit” as just “the gospel” according to the American style of translating, and so I have instructed her to correct some expressions.

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Our Lord said that in the last days when He comes to this earth again with His angels, He will sit on His white throne of glory, gather all nations of the earth, and divide them as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats, placing the sheep on the right and the goats on the left. And He said that He would permit the people on His right hand to inherit the Kingdom prepared for them or, in other words, heaven. The reason that He gives them the reward of Heaven is found in His saying, “For I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me.”

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The Lord said He would come as the King when He comes back to this world. And He said, “All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left.” And the Lord who is the King says to the righteous on His right hand, “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.”

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The Lord will come someday without fail. This world will be destroyed at the time that God has decided, and a new world will come. Even if you think that this can be said by anyone, I say it again. It is clear that the Lord will come in His time. When He comes, He will speak to us just as it is written in today’s Scripture passage.

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Jesus Christ knew everything about what he is going to encounter in the future. So, He said to His disciples, “I will be delivered up to the chief priests to be crucified.” When the Passover was near, the chief priests and the religious leaders of Israel assembled at the Temple and plotted to kill Him. The Passover for the Israelites was the great festive day of celebrating the event that they had escaped from Egypt. As the criminals are released from prison under amnesty in our country at the national holiday such as Independence Day, at that time of Israel, there was a custom of releasing a criminal in such a great festive day like Passover. On the other hand, there might be a custom of executing heinous criminals openly as well. Because of such a custom, the chief priests tried to kill Jesus during Passover. Jesus knew that plot beforehand. So, Jesus said to His disciples, “I will be sold to the people during Passover as the sacrificial Lamb.”

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Jesus said, “Wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.” The reason why this woman poured fragrant oil on Jesus’ head was for Jesus burial. And, she served Jesus Christ by pouring the oil on His head being thankful for the Lord that He has taken on all the sins of the world through His baptism by coming to this earth and has saved all humankind from sins by dying vicariously on the Cross and being resurrected from the dead. This woman poured it on Jesus’ head by breaking open an alabaster flask of very costly fragrant oil. An alabaster flask of very precious fragrant oil was worth a great amount of money comparable to a wage back then that a man in his prime would receive for having worked at someone’s house for a year.

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We took bread and drank wine as we partook in the communion. As we take the bread and the cup, we remember the love and the salvation of the Lord who sacrificed Himself on our behalf. The Lord came to this world and received His baptism, shed blood on the Cross and died to blot out our sins and gave us new life in the exact manner God had promised to all humanity in the Old Testament. God gave the sacrificial system of the Tabernacle to the Israelites and promised to wipe out the sins of all people according to it. And the Lord fulfilled His promise to blot out all our sins from God’s standpoint by coming to this world in the flesh, taking the sins of the world upon Himself by receiving the laying on of hands, and shedding the blood of atonement.

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