44th International Bible Conference, July 28, 2012This People I Have Formed for MyselfThese days, I have in my heart a song that is not really a song. As I am busy working on various projects alongside other brothers and sisters, there is something that re-echoes in my heart. It tells me again and again that the work we do, the work that is given to me as I come to understand more about the Bible, all the brothers and sisters with whom I become connected through these activities, and the many people who will find salvation through the words that proceed from our lips, all of these things belong to God and I have nothing at all of which I can boast. We gather to sing hymns and read the Bible together. The person relaying God’s word does so through his own lips and the people listening to those words do so with their own ears. Let’s think of the words spoken by the speaker as the thread, and the ears of the listeners as the needle. In order to put the thread through the eye of the needle, we must look at both objects at the same time, and our hands must move together. Once the needle is threaded it can be used to sew with. When one person speaks, another person listens, but not many people think about how they will account for these words in front of God. So let’s think about this. Who is holding the thread, and who is holding the needle? There are many people in the world who read and teach the Bible. There are also people who teach from various other religious texts. These people say that what they teach is correct and they even claim that these teachings will guarantee life after death, but, among the many teachings you may have heard, there has probably been one particular one that was conveyed to you personally. The words set out from somewhere and arrived at your ears. Have you ever thought about the fact that there must have been some power controlling those words, and some power that set them in motion? It is easy if you think about this purely on a theoretical level; since our ears are always open, they will hear the words that are spoken by any person who opens his mouth. In this world, there are many words and many hymns, and the Bible tells us clearly who the subject is of all these. Let’s turn to Isaiah chapter 43 and read from verse 15.   “I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King.” Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea and a path through the mighty waters, who brings forth the chariot and horse, the army and power. (They shall lie down together, they shall not rise; they are extinguished, they are quenched like a wick): “Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The beast of the field will honor Me, the jackals and the ostriches, because I give waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, to give drink to My people, My chosen. This people I have formed for Myself; they shall declare My praise. But you have not called upon Me, O Jacob; and you have been weary of Me, O Israel. You have not brought Me the sheep for your burnt offerings, nor have you honored Me with your sacrifices. I have not caused you to serve with grain offerings, nor wearied you with incense. You have bought Me no sweet cane with money, nor have you satisfied Me with the fat of your sacrifices; but you have burdened Me with your sins, you have wearied Me with your iniquities. I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; and I will not remember your sins.”  Isaiah 43:15-25   We all have fixed ideas about certain things in our daily lives. When we read passages like this as well, we tend to understand them through the filter of fixed notions that we already have about singing hymns. So, many people think this is telling us that we must be diligent in singing hymns in order to glorify God. This is, of course, true, but let’s take another look at verse 21.   This people I have formed for Myself; they shall declare My praise.   In this verse, there are three pronouns that refer to God. This brings to mind John chapter 1 verse 1 where “the Word” appears three times: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Is “the Word” here a reference to idol chatter? “The Word” includes both the One who spoke the words and the One who is the substance of the Word. The God who is proclaiming the Word definitely exists. This verse introduces us to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. It is telling us who the Word is in a clear and simple way. Let’s think once more about the passage in Isaiah. It says, “I have formed for Myself.” Forming something involves bringing certain materials together. The verb, “to form” is also to be found in the book of Genesis, where it says that “the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground” (see Genesis 2:7). Through these words in Isaiah, God was acknowledging the nation of Israel as a perfect living being. This is a very important key to understanding the Old Testament and it relates to what the New Testament says about the Church. It is not easy, however, to understand what it means when it says, “to declare My praise.” This is because we tend to think of praise as something we do. Even if we try thinking of “My praise” and “your praise” as being separate this is not easy to understand.   They shall declare My praise.   When we talk about hymns of praise, we think of the hymns written and sung by saved Christians in this age of the Church. We may even think that hymns written long ago seem like real hymns while those written today do not really seem like hymns. Many of the psalms that David wrote have titles in which they are described as songs, and we usually think of them as songs from that era and the hymns that are in our hymnbooks as hymns. Yet “praise” does not necessarily refer to songs. The word “praise” is used here but it is not saying that we are to give something to God; it says, “They shall declare My praise.” The Korean Bible expresses this more clearly saying that they are to sing God’s praise.We need to consider these words carefully. When the hand that holds the twine threads it through the needle that is held by the other hand, the task is accomplished. When one person speaks and another listens, the important question is who is controlling that mouth and those ears? Who is their owner? It is not that there is one principal agent controlling the mouth and another the ears. There is no way that there can be two principal agents here. It is a fact that every person who is born again experiences the word entering their spirits when their ears are open and they hear the word of God spoken by another person. We express this as being “saved” or “born again.”Many Christians in the world read various parts of the Bible with confidence thinking the passages are straightforward and they have no problem understanding what is written there, but we need to know about the One who is holding both the needle and the thread at the same time. Who is this King of kings who says of Himself, “I am the Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King?” When you come to know the answer to this gradually through the Bible, it automatically becomes engraved in your heart that there is nothing more precious than this in the world. It is the same for those who say they are born again. You may say you are born again, but as time passes, the One by the name of Jesus comes to take second place and you yourself take precedence in your heart. The work I am doing may seem precious, the work that has been entrusted to me may seem meaningful, and the work I delegate to other people and the work I am doing with others may seem very important to me, but I have come to know for certain that there is nothing in the midst of all this that I can call mine.God said, “This people I have formed for Myself.” These words are truly amazing. These words are not on the level of a man writing to a woman and saying, “I have some flowers and a ring for you, so let’s meet at this place, at this time.” No person can intervene in what it says here. If I bought a handkerchief for my wife, and someone asked me to cut a piece of it off and give it to him, would it make any sense for me to do this? It would be unthinkable. When God said in reference to Israel (of course, later this is also related to us), “I have formed for Myself,” He clearly explained the reason for their existence.He also said, “They shall declare My praise.” What does “My praise” mean? In English it says, “They shall declare My praise,” but in Korean it says, “to sing My praise.” This is deeply significant. When the Bible says, “They shall declare My praise,” it does not mean that we should write hymns to sing to God; it means that what I have formed is my song. One of the saints who was aware of this significance gave us the following hymn.   Far away in the depths of my spirit tonight Rolls a melody sweeter than psalm. Wonderful Peace by Warren D. Cornell (1858-1901)   There are many places in the Bible that refer to “singing.” I do not know when hymns were first sung, but in the Bible, when Jacob was blessing his sons, he said to Judah, “You are he whom your brothers shall praise” (Genesis 49:8). What does this mean?   The Lord God who Formed Man by His WordWe are all born into this world and live in this world with different talents and personalities, but we are also born with the nature of God to some extent. The fact that man has the power to be able to think and form something is because God created man in His own image. If there were no people and only animals in the world, there would not be any cars driving around and neither would any buildings be constructed, as we have today. The world would be just as it was in primitive times. It is because people exist that the world has developed as it has. They have their own potential for creativity and ingenuity, but where did that potential originate? In the passage in Isaiah it says, “This people I have formed for Myself.” Earlier I pointed out that the verb “form” is also used in Genesis. Let’s take a look at that verse. It is Genesis chapter 2 verse 7.   And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.After God formed man of the dust of the ground, He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. It was God who did all this. It was not that God woke a person from the dead as if by magic. The breath of life that proceeds from the mouth of God passed through the nostrils of the man, who had been formed of the dust of the ground, through his respiratory tract and through his pulmonary alveolus to his blood. It was then that the man came to life and became a living being. First, we discussed the ears, and now this is about the nose.So, in this verse, does the same person hold the thread and the needle? Is it Adam and God? No, it is God alone. This is an extremely important matter. How does God acknowledge my entire life as I walk this earth? God knows everything about me from a single cell to my whole body. We need first to acknowledge ourselves before this God, and before His word. No one is born into this world as a result of their own volition. As I came into this world and began to live my life, I came to realized that I am a human being. Gradually I began to think a lot of myself and as I continued to grow older and looked back on my past, I could vaguely remember my younger days, but I could not remember how and when I first came about. No one remembers the day they were born. No one knows where he came from or how he got here. We lived our lives, wandering round and round, the compass of our hearts unable to point in just one direction, but then one day we came to know the Bible and received absolute assurance of salvation in our hearts through faith in the promise God has made through the cross of Jesus Christ. As we live in this world, however, these things disappear from our sight, and even if they come into view, we regard them as bothersome, because our hearts are occupied with th

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