The Land of God

Date: 1/22/23

Sermon Title: The Land of God

Context: Genesis 1:23-25

(Genesis 1:23) there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

(Genesis 1:24) Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind:

cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind"; and it was so. (Genesis 1:25) God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind, and God saw that it was good.

Preaching Note  

1. 설날 

설날 is a big holiday in Korea. During this holiday, people gather together with family and relatives. They ask each other how they are, and they spend happy times together. The origin of this holiday can be inferred from Korean history. The Korean Peninsula has had as many as 1,000 invasions and 90 major wars over 4,000 years. In this history, they lost their country, and family. This is the reason Koreans came up with han, which means sorrow and anger mixed, and jeong, which means sticky love each other. When it comes to holidays, they rejoice in the health of their families, thanking them for being safe this year. They spent time together, feeling at peace in the land God gave them.

Q.1 What do you do when you meet family and relatives on 설날 (or Thanksgiving Day)?

2. The Land of God

According to Genesis Chapter 1, God created the land on the fifth day. On this day, when God created the land, God stressed that "after their kind”. It means to keep it pure. God saw the creatures God created and felt good (Verse 25). Just as God gave the Israelites the Promised Land, Canaan, God gave the land so that all living things could live after their kind.

            The land created by God is a place where all life can live respecting its original appearance. However, according to history, people used the land for their greed. In the history of America, White people justified their Gold Rush with the Scripture of Exodus. They said that America is the promised land that God gave us and started to kill Native Americans. Also, based on Paul's epistles, they forced blacks to obey their masters, kidnapping them from their lands and forcing them into slavery. Due to people's greed, Native Americans who lived on the land God gave them lost their land and were confined to the Indian Reservation, and many blacks lived on narrow slave ships as their land for a while.

Q.2 What does land mean to you?

3. The Laws of God for the Land

Laws still exist to protect the land from human greed. If you look at the Bible, you can see that this effort began a long time ago. The first law we can look at in the Bible is the distribution of the Twelve Tribes of Israel (Joshua 19:49-51). By dividing the land fairly, slavery was prevented, and the uniqueness of each people was respected. The second law is the Jubilee (Leviticus 25:8-13). This law freed the slaves every 50 years and returned lands taken as collateral for debts to their original owners. And the third law was the institution of marrying the widowed brother's wife, to prevent the inheritance of the land from being taken away. These laws were to restore lives that had been enslaved by the structure of society and respected for their original appearance.

Q.3 What is the most important law of God to you?