There is reason why God used these two names, Jacob and Israel. One of them, “Jacob,” is used to call him as a man, while the other, “Israel,” is used to call him as someone blessed by God. God also calls the believers in the gospel of the water and the Spirit using two names like this. He uses our given names to call us “so-and-so,” but when He calls us as the believers in the gospel of the water and the Spirit given by Christ our God, He calls us the righteous. The name Israel in the Old Testament was given to Jacob as a blessing after he wrestled with God in prayer all night long. It means “one who has struggled with God and prevailed.”

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While we are gathered here today for worship service, many of our fellow saints are unable to be with us due to the social distancing requirements put in place to fight coronavirus. I would ask you to share today’s message with such church members who can’t attend our worship service. The raging coronavirus is extremely dangerous. Earlier today I heard in the news that there was an outbreak at a youth retreat held by a church in Busan, where at least 30 teenagers out of around 150-160 participants got infected. There probably will be more infections from this outbreak.

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I heard that lately visitors to our website have been downloading many of our dual-language e-books. When we first introduced dual-language books, there were at most a couple of people downloading them, but I am happy to hear that yesterday alone, fourteen people downloaded them. Countries around the world have their own unique languages, and we put together dual-language books so that people can read them while comparing the text between two languages at the same time. As these books are very popular with people from all over the world, I would like us to publish more dual-language books in the days to come. There actually are many people in the world who use two or more languages. There also are many countries where the children and the parents in the same family speak different languages, so I think our dual-language e-books will be very helpful for such families. The more we publish dual-language e-books, the more people around the world will download them, and the more enriched their souls will be thanks to the gospel Word of the water and the Spirit. I can’t speak of every case here, but some people have downloaded dozens of e-books, so I have high expectations. After all, what would these people do after downloading our e-books? They will share them with many more people. Those people will then also see their hearts transformed. That is why we work even harder, thanking the Lord for His righteous work.

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