The 42nd Bible Study Meeting 6     This sermon is taken from the evening sermon on July 28, 2010 during the 42nd Bible Study Meeting for All from Home and Abroad.      Not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. (Philippians 3:9-12)      An Image Without Life - The History of Mankind   Let's take a look at the Book of Daniel chapter two. Daniel was of the tribe of Judah among the twelve tribes. Split into the northern and southern kingdoms, northern Israel was destroyed in 722 by Assyria long before the southern Judah fell in 586 B.C. by Babylon. A lot of people were taken captive to Babylon, along with them a young man named Daniel who was part of the royal family of Judah. He grew up as a eunuch in Babylon. But he was a prophet who served God.       One day King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has a dream. He sees a great image in the form of a man in his dream, and wanted to know what it meant. He called all the astrologers and the magicians to interpret his dream, but no one could. Angry and very furious, he gave the command to destroy them. When the captain of the king's guard was about to kill them, Daniel came forward and said that he would interpret the dream if given some time. And the meaning of the dream was revealed to Daniel in a vision at night. Daniel went to the minister and told him to spare their lives and that he would interpret the dream if taken before the king, and it was done so. Daniel answered in the presence of the king, and said, "The secret which the king has demanded, the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, and the soothsayers cannot declare to the king. But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream, and the visions of your head upon your bed, were these: As for you, O king, thoughts came to your mind while on your bed, about what would come to pass after this; and He who reveals secrets has made known to you what will be. But as for me, this secret has not been revealed to me because I have more wisdom than anyone living, but for our sakes who make known the interpretation to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your heart. You, O king, were watching; and behold, a great image! This great image, whose splendor was excellent, stood before you; and its form was awesome. This image? head was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. This is the dream. Now we will tell the interpretation of it before the king. You, O king, are a king of kings. For the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory; and wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven, He has given them into your hand, and has made you ruler over them all―you are this head of gold. But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours; then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron, inasmuch as iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything; and like iron that crushes, that kingdom will break in pieces and crush all the others. Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter? clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile. As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay. And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold―the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure." (Daniel 2:27-45)You've probably heard about this part of the Bible at least once. The important verse is 38, where it says at the end, "you are this head of gold". There is also "But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours; then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron" in verse 39, 40. These verses tell about the nation that will appear first, second, third and fourth in this world.       We humans think about history as a single timeline. There was something in the 18th century, and other things in the 19th and 20th centuries. And now this, this and this are happening in the 21st century. We think about history as a passage of time.       But God showed history with an image in the dream of a man named Nebuchadnezzar. That is why they could not interpret the dream using their own heads. The image in his dream was that of a man. God explained it through the mouth of Daniel. He said that a first, second, third and fourth nation would arise. We know through history that after the Babylonian empire came Persia, followed by the Hellenistic empire and then Roman empire. But this history was explained through an image. He used an image that resembled a man to explain the flow of history.       As Daniel explained, "The secret which the king has demanded, the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, and the soothsayers cannot declare to the king. But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days", we must first think about how God looks at the world. We shouldn't make the mistake of only thinking about what country that part of the dream means, and what country another part, and when the world is going to end, and such things.       We humans don't think very deeply about how grave the sin of making and worshiping idols is before God. We must confess our sins clearly before the law that says, "Do not be idolaters," but we don't. God said that mankind who was made in His image should not worship and bow down before anything He made, whether they are in heaven or on earth. But an image appeared in the dream that God revealed to Nebuchadnezzar. This image did not have life. The Babylonian empire arose, then after a while another king destroyed Babylonia, and another empire took its place. In this history, in the centuries of war for the dominance of the Middle East and the Mediterranean shores, to God there was no life in this history.       Why did God see it this way? God sees the history of this region through Israel. He explained this history through an image. It's not that the peoples who populated the nations of the region were lifeless, like the image. They were definitely alive, and as nations and empires they ruled and were ruled. But this history, before God, was nothing more than a giant image that is silent and without life.    What Humans Created in the Image of God Must Not Do - Idol Worship   In God's eyes the people of Israel grow as if they were an individual. They pass through childhood and grow through its history into a nation. The chosen people of God existed in the Old Testament times as an individual, and other nations much larger formed another flow of history. It was the growth of these great nations that God showed through an image in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar.       When we read these passages, we have to think about bowing before and worshiping creation or carven images and idols that God did not breathe life into. Why? Because the individual that is "I" resembles Israel. I as an individual was made in the image of God. The Bible says, "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse" (Romans 1:20). We think of creations as such things as mountains, fields, oceans, and the sun. Of course these were all formed first, but our flesh was made to most closely resemble God.       The Bible says, "The life of the flesh is in the blood" (Leviticus 17:11). The blood that holds the life of our body flows through blood vessels. The oxygen that we take in through our lungs is attached to the red blood cells in our blood and is sent to the heart. The blood conveys what the cells need. The heart pumps the blood to the farthest capillaries to supply what cells need, and then the blood is returned through the veins. It enters the lungs and carries oxygen again throughout the body. This circulation of blood proves that our body is alive. When this process stops, we say that life has ended.     We live with blood in our bodies as the shadow of God's eternal life. Each part of the body works together to enable us to move and live as a human being. Each part of the body seems to be separate, but is in fact all connected via nerves and muscles, and water fills our entire body. We live through all of these things, and we know that those that seem separate and apart are actually attached.     For us, made in the image of God, the Bible says that it is a great sin before God to bow and worship before something that has nothing to do with God. We must think carefully and specifically about why we are told not to be idolaters.     It is the same with the people of Israel. Why did the people of Israel come to be like that? The people of Judea were taken in captivity to Babylon, and Daniel, who had been part of the royal family, had to live in a foreign land as a eunuch. Before gaining their independence in 1948, the people of Israel had to wander around the world without their own country for nearly two thousand years. For what? Because they had departed from their responsibility to serve God. God chose them and brought them out Himself, and nurtured them in the world as an individual. They were a living testimony to God. But they took in foreign gods, built shrines and bowed down before them. They even erected idols in God's temple, bowed before them and worshiped them. When that happened, God destroyed their country. God punished the people of Israel, who had appeared as a living entity, bowed before lifeless idols worshiped by the people of this world who had nothing to do with God's plan. Israel bowed before idols, and through kings like Manasseh they committed grave sins.     Let's think about ourselves. Whether we know the gospel or not, as are born into this world as a person and we live in this world, and if we serve other things with this body we were gifted with and bow down before them, we will be judged before God for that sin. This problem must be accounted for before God. It is the same with born again souls. Christians, who have had their spirits transformed through the words of the Bible and are set apart from the world and life with God gift, may also submit themselves to the things of the world. But that does not mean they will go to hell. The Bible is warning us through history that we may nevertheless commit the same mistake.   We read the Book of Daniel and interpret what the "feet" of that image means, or what "pure gold" means. But this is God explaining through Daniel. Of course it would be nice if we can understand these things, but if we preoccupy ourselves with the interpretation, we might not realize what the image means, what it has to do with my life, and for what purpose God created our body and why God entrusted us with our body.     God created man in His image thousands of years before He gave the commandment, "you shall not make for yourselves a carved image" (see Exodus 20:3-5), when God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit already conversed among Themselves, as written in Genesis, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness" (Genesis 1:26). Since the dawn of time the Bible records that man can only serve God who permitted him to be created in His own image. History took its course, and even though God gave the words of the Law to the people of Israel, they served foreign gods. Of course they never said: "We wanted to serve other gods." Other gods surreptitiously infiltrated into their lives during the course of their history. The Bible says that "and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son" (Deuteronomy 7:2-3). Why did He say that? If one thing is permitted after another and finally it will come to a point when the seed in them grow to become full-fledged idolatry. God already foresaw this problem, therefore he warned the people of Israel.     Daniel chapter 2 that we read earlier was an image shown to King Nebuchadnezzar by God in order to explain the events taking place during that time and what was to come afterwards. This is how God sees history, and how he evaluates us.     The Flow of History and Its Relationship with the Flesh   It was said that the image that appeared in the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar was not destroyed by the hand of man but was scattered in the wind like chaff by a stone from a mountain. What does this mean? And Daniel chapter 2 verse 44 says the following:    And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.    It says that a stone was cut and struck the image on its feet. This passage states that an event will occur that will overturn the history of the Gentiles that appear in the form of an image. This is the "kingdom of God" that the Jewish people await. It is a nation ruled by the Messiah who comes from God that wipes out all the powers of man.    But Jesus said,   "But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, "Son, go, work today in my vineyard." He answered and said, "I will not," but afterward he regretted it and went. Then he came to the second and said likewise. And he answered and said, "I go, sir,?but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said to Him, "The first." Jesus said to them, "Assuredly, I say to you that tax collectors and harlots enter the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him; but tax collectors and harlots believed him; and when you saw it, you did not afterward relent and believe him." (Matthew 21:28-32)     This passage talks about the first son and the second son, but in the King James Bible the actions of the two sons appear reversed. The Korean translation, however, is correct. If the two are reversed, the relationship between the Church and the Jews is also changed. The Jews for definitely first, and the Law appeared to the Jews. But they disobeyed the law, worshiped idols and put Jesus to death on the cross. After that, the Gentiles, who had lived obliviously like the images without life, experience being born again through the Bible. There were those among the Jews who were born again as well. These born again people form a single body. Jesus told this parable because the appearance of the Church, the group of these born again people was already foretold in history. Again you should make note of the difference in the English King James Bible.     Let's read from verse 33.   Hear another parable: There was a certain landowner who planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a winepress in it and built a tower. And he leased it to vinedressers and went into a far country. Now when vintage-time drew near, he sent his servants to the vinedressers, that they might receive its fruit. And the vinedressers took his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than the first, and they did likewise to them. Then last of all he sent his son to them, saying, "They will respect my son." But when the vinedressers saw the son, they said among themselves, "This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.?So they took him and cast him out of the vineyard and killed him. (Matthew 21:33-39)    It is a foretelling of what Jesus himself will experience, the death on the cross. Verse 40,    "Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vinedressers?" They said to Him, "He will destroy those wicked men miserably, and lease his vineyard to other vinedressers who will render to him the fr

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