Happy Father’s Day! In my homeland, one of the most desired inheritances parents want to leave for their children is land. The population of Korea is around 50 million, and its size is approximately 100,000 square kilometers, which is a bit bigger than New Brunswick, one of the maritime provinces. Since the land is limited, people invest funds to buy it. Over the years, it has been proven that even green belts or countryside areas can be developed at some point, filled with houses and buildings, and lead to fortunate wealth for their descendants. In the last four or five years, I have seen a similar situation happening here in Canada. Due to the recent global pandemic, property prices in our country have significantly increased. Consequently, rental costs have risen as well… According to recent data on rental prices, a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto costs around twenty-five hundred dollars, and a two-bedroom apartment is around thirty-five hundred. I don’t know about you, but, in my opinion, something is not right with this situation. It is not easy for me, as an immigrant to Canada, which is the second largest country by land size at around 10,000,000 square kilometers, coming from a small peninsula nation with more people living with much more affordable housing prices.

I have recently reflected on the term landlord. We usually call a person who owns properties a landlord, landlady, property owner, housing provider, renter, etc. The word landlord originated in the English Middle Ages, around the 12th century in Europe. During that period, there were feudal lords who owned large areas of land. Tenant farmers worked on that property and, instead of paying rent, received protection from the lords who provided knights for their defense. Over time, the term “Lord of the Land” gradually evolved into the more familiar term “landlord” that we often use today. As far as I am concerned, the concept of the landlord still implies significant power in our society. I believe that, due to this economic and political implication, people would like to be landowners and accumulate more properties.

In our scripture for today, Moses shared the relationship between the Lord and the land with the people of Israel, who were about to inherit God’s blessings in Canaan. Their ancestor, Abraham, received a special call from the Lord. In Genesis 12:2, God declared to him: “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.” With this promise, Abraham left his hometown, travelled through various distant places, and finally arrived in the land where the Canaanites lived. At that time, the Lord appeared and said to Abraham, “To your offspring, I will give you this land” (Genesis 12:7). Even after this divine encounter, God visited Abraham again and again to assure him of the Promised Land, which would be given to his descendants through him, even though he resided there as a foreigner (Genesis 15 and 17). Over the years, this assurance had been passed down to the following generations through Isaacs, Jacob, and Joseph. Due to God’s everlasting covenant, Joseph, a prime minister in Egypt, who was given a secure place to live and even be buried, expressed his desire to return to his homeland someday. In Hebrews 11:22, it says, “By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions concerning the burial of his bones.”

One main purpose of the book of Deuteronomy in the Bible is to provide guidelines for the people of Israel when they moved to Canaan and enjoyed all their God-inherited blessings there. On behalf of the Lord, Moses instructed the people of Israel on how to live in their God-blessed land. Foremost, Moses asked them to love the Lord their God with all their being and diligently pass on God’s teachings to their descendants. The crucial chapter in this book helps the people of Israel, who would be considered the first settlers in that land, think about what legacy they could leave for their future generations.

On Father’s Day Sunday, I want us, particularly those of us who are fathers, grandfathers, uncles, and influencers in our families and/or in our connecting groups, to reflect on this sacred text. Let us explore these divine principles and strive to leave great spiritual legacies for our future descendants and the people around us.

As I have stated above, firstly, God wants us to have a more intimate, loving relationship with Him. Someone once said, “Christianity is not regulation but relationship.” In the Bible, we can find many of God’s decrees, laws, stipulations, and instructions for His people to follow. What is the first and foremost commandment from the Lord given to us, His children, to observe in our faith journey? Moses stated it in the Old Testament: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and will all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). Our Lord Jesus Christ made an almost identical proclamation in the New Testament. One day, a religious leader asked Jesus, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” He replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment” (Matthew 22:34-40).

Think about a time when we fall in love with someone. We want to know about what our loved ones like, and we also want to do these things for them out of love. Jesus also mentioned this principle in the Gospel of John: “If you love me, keep my commands… Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit – will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching…” (John 14:15, 23-24). Likewise, our love for Christ should come from our relationship with Him. That is why Jesus also commanded His followers, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34). The love in Christianity is firmly and deeply connected to the love of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Influenced by this Agape love, the Covenant, Committed, and Communed love I preached two Sundays ago, we can love the Triune Lord with all we have, not because we have to, but because we are willing to.

As I have frequently asked during my sermons, I want us to pause for a moment and think about how many times God has endured us and forgiven our shortcomings, failures, and mistakes throughout our faith journey. When we truly reflect on Christ’s unlimited and unchanging love for all of us, we can genuinely repent of all our sins, whether small or significant, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, run toward Christ, and rededicate our hearts, minds, and strength to God.

While thinking of all this divine love, God also wants us to remember the source of all the blessings we have. Please understand that God honors you who have been working hard and have invested a lot of effort and time to accomplish many wonderful projects. At the same time, we need to recall that all the blessings we are enjoying today have been given by the Lord, our Creator, who has provided each of us with talents, gifts, time, health, intelligence, mind, strength, and more. Many of these provisions may have also been inherited from our ancestors, who worked hard to raise us and support all the necessary things for us in advance.

One frequent warning God gave the people of Israel in the Bible was not to forget the Lord, their Merciful and Mighty God. He cleansed them on numerous occasions. He made many things out of nothing and provided for them. God wanted them to remember Him and be continuously blessed while continuously loving the Lord alone.

Secondly, God wants us to pass on His sacred teachings to our descendants through words. In verses 7 to 9, God instructed the people of Israel to share His decrees and commandments with their future generations in various ways. Whether at home, working, travelling, or resting, they were asked to impress the Word of God upon their children and talk about it. They were encouraged to decorate their homes with visible reminders of God’s Word, both inside and outside. In verse 20, when their children asked about all the divine laws, they were encouraged to explain their meanings.

First of all, who God is? The Lord is, once again, merciful and mighty. Through God’s mercy, the people of Israel were saved from the influence of Egypt and the bondage of slavery. With God’s compassion, the people of Israel inherited His blessings, despite their many failures on the way to the Promised Land. Through God’s almighty power, the people of Israel received all His promises given to their ancestors. With God’s miraculous wonders, the people of Israel were given a land flowing with milk and honey, cities they did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things they did not provide, wells they did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves they did not plant. All these amazing fulfillments came from the Lord.

As far as I know, the nation of Israel has the strongest desire to educate its citizens about God’s laws. The people of Israel have endured many persecutions, sufferings, and problems. Despite these difficulties, they have produced many well-known people in the world. According to many biblical scholars, their outstanding achievements are related to an education system based on the Word of God… I firmly believe that one of the best things we as parents and/or grandparents can do for our children and/or grandchildren is to provide opportunities for them to experience God through His Living Word.

Thirdly, God wants us to show a godly example in deeds, along with sharing the Word. In today’s divine passage, Moses pointed out a couple of ways of living before God. First, fear the Lord. The meaning of fearing is not being afraid of someone or something. Godly fear, I would say, is sacred respect toward God. My favorite quote is that God is in control. On occasion, I recall a couple of incidents I have badly experienced, particularly during my drives.

In 2017, on one cold and snowy Sunday morning, while driving to Knox, Glenarm and almost arriving there… Through that incident, I learned that some things are beyond my control, no matter how much I wish to control them. I also realized that these are the things I need to leave in God’s mighty and merciful hands. Thankfully, there was a lot of snow in the ditch, which I believe functioned as a cushion against the vehicle crash. Moreover, I remember the prayer when I was taken to the emergency room by ambulance; one of the Glenarm members shouted at me that our church would pray for me. God saved my life, and I am deeply grateful to the Lord, my God, for His presence during that accident. As the author of the book of Proverbs indicated, I wholeheartedly believe that fearing the Lord and shunning evil will bring health to our bodies and nourishment to our bones (Proverbs 3:7-8). Again, fearing the Lord means acknowledging that God is God and we are not.

Second, serve the Lord only. According to Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, we cannot choose two masters, particularly between God and money. He stated, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24). Before this statement, Jesus encouraged His audience to store up treasures for themselves in heaven, not on earth, since where their treasure was, there their heart would be also (Matthew 6:19-21). Our treasures can be not only money but also any other things we would like to hold onto in our faith journey. Please understand that money and other blessings are given by God and there is nothing wrong with them. The issue arises when one of these things prohibits us from loving the Lord our God with all our hearts. We may end up following other gods besides God, who should be the only one considered the Lord our God. This is a crucial part of fearing the Lord, and this fact leads us to think about the third point.

Furthermore, we should do what is right in the sight of God. As children of God, we need to make decisions based on God’s Word. The Bible can be called a godly manual for us to explore our spiritual race before the Lord. A manual is designed for people to use its device properly. The Bible contains many instructions for our faith journey. We have been taught many righteous lessons and have been educated in many divine teachings. We need to continuously study these sacred guidelines. When it is time for us to decide, regardless of our knowledge of the Bible, the important thing every day and every moment is to remember to live before God and do what is right in His presence, whether the matter is big or small.

Another great commandment given by Christ is to “love your neighbour as yourself,” along with loving the Lord with all your heart (Matthew 22:34-40). I believe these commandments are crucial for guiding us to do what is right before the Lord. First of all, again, we need to love the Lord with all our being more than anything. When we decide something, we should ask ourselves whether He would be pleased with our choices. Secondly, we need to love ourselves. We were all created in the Holy Image of God. That is why we must take care of ourselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually, with the help of the Lord. Since our bodies are the temple of God, we need to look after ourselves in holiness and purity. Thirdly, we need to love our loved ones and the people around us. God wants us to love our children, parents, relatives, siblings, friends, neighbours as we love ourselves. This can be challenging since we all have selfish and self-centered tendencies. However, Jesus encourages us to love one another as He loved us. One more time, Jesus loved us until He sacrificed His life for us on the cross. By remembering His indescribable love, we can find the strength to love others.

These simple but significant principles we have learned today are the sacred directions we need to follow to leave a living faith for our descendants. When we look back on our journey of faith and examine ourselves based on these divine foundations, we may have mixed feelings.

On one hand, we might wish we could have done more and better. Friends, God understands our shortcomings and failures and wants to forgive us for all these mistakes. Today, God encourages us to strengthen our feeble arms and weak knees and start anew, doing these righteous things before the Lord. God is the God of second chances, third, fourth, and unlimited ones.

On the other hand, we may recognize the blessings God has bestowed upon us and our loved ones through our righteous actions. Friends, we need to be thankful to God for bringing us to this point. We must also keep asking God to provide His supernatural power for us to love and remember Him, and to live courageously and confidently before Him until we are called to be with the Lord in heaven.

Some of us might be surprised to hear what happened to the next generations of Moses. Sadly, some of them turned their backs on God and worshiped other gods. Is It possible for the people of Israel, who had been so blessed by God, to turn away from Him? The sad fact is that when Moses’ descendants only enjoyed God’s blessings and forgot the great things God had done for them, they started saying, “Who is the Lord?”

Since the people of Israel were living among inhabitants who had already settled in the Promised Land, they were exposed to the foreign gods known as the Baals. The term “Baals” is plural because the Gentiles believed in many idols. These people served their own gods in various areas and hoped for success and prosperity through them. Interestingly enough, the word “Baal” means “lord,” and those who worshipped these idols devoted their lives to these false gods. Today, we may not bow down to an idol made of physical materials. However, we need to carefully pay attention once more that anything in which we put our trust more than in God can be considered our modern-day “Baal” or lord.

Someone said, “The greatest danger to our children…” Please understand this: I am not against God’s abundant blessings. We need to pray about them. I believe that the Lord wants to bless us and our loved ones and fulfill our God-given dreams in His way. Whether we live in a prosperous life or not, in terms of our material possessions, we need to examine our hearts through the Word of God regularly. Without loving God only with all our hearts and remembering what the Lord has done for us, we can be like the following generation of Moses.

When we fear the Lord, serve Him only, and do right in God’s presence, which are the primary ways of leaving our spiritual legacy for our children, God will bless us abundantly with His continued provision and protection for us and our loved ones. Because of our total and dedicated love for God, which is our greatest legacy for future generations, they can and will go well in their lives and receive their God-given visions in their time. Our loved ones and we can and will all be landowners in our God-given beautiful lands and inherit God’s merciful and mighty blessings in our faith journey. Above all, we can and will all be invited to enter into the eternal and everlasting promised land, called Heaven, when we repent of our sins before Christ, live righteously with the help of the Holy Spirit, and put our whole trust in God.

Once again, today, may all the special blessings from the Lord be upon you, particularly, all fathers and those who have fatherhood or caring, loving minds for the people around you! Amen.

*I have prepared this sermon based on the main text, Deuteronomy 6:1-25.