Spiritual warfare (part 3)

I want this message to be sort of a check and balance to the message I preached last Sunday. Because I think we need balanced attitudes. The Kingdom of God is balanced.

I was saying last Sunday that the writer of Ecclesiastes says that there is a time for everything: a time to destroy, a time to create, a time to tear down a wall, he says, and a time to build walls; time to be silent and time to speak. He even says time to kill, he says and time to heal too. Everything has its time and what we need is God's discernment to know what time it is in any situation in life.

There will be times for you to be silent. When someone is talking nonsense or speaking ill to you, for you to walk on and not talk back to the fool, and not feel that your courage is being diminished in any way because you chose the path of peace.

There will be other times to confront. There will be times, I believe that war is necessary. I believe that armies are necessary. I am not a pacifist. I thank the Lord if I am running from a group of people who want to kill me in an alley and a well-armed policeman comes and pulls out his revolver, I say "amen, go ahead, Lord." yes or no?

I would like many people who are pacifists to find themselves in such a situation so that you can see how they forget all the principles of pacifism for the moment. Very easy to talk about pacifism when others are paying blood for your peace and for your freedom to be a pacifist in fact.

But I also believe, Christ is the prince of peace. And I believe that, as the word of the Lord says, we have to overcome evil with good. And that God has given us weapons of light to defeat evil. Violence usually only brings more and more violence. Look at the Middle East how it is. Even the Arabs themselves, within their own bosom, cannot stand each other, they are killing each other in a terribly violent way.

That is why only love is going to be the solution to marital problems, to the problems of parents and children, to all things. We know that. We understand that.

There is a balance. There's a balance that you have to have.

Last Sunday I spoke about the need to confront. You remember, this prophet who refused to hurt the other prophet who asked him to hurt him to put on a blindfold to appear before King Ahab and confront him. That second prophet refused to do it, even by the word of God and in disobedience God hurt him, because there are times when we will have to hurt a loved one to heal him.

You know that? Sometimes you will have to say a strong word to a son or a brother who is, for example, abusing drugs and asks for money, and you give him money and he continues to destroy himself. And sometimes you will have to let a disobedient son reach the end of his rope, of the rope as the wise father did with the prodigal son, so that he can learn. Because if you're always reaching in there and helping him out and getting him out of trouble, he's never going to learn. Sometimes love has to be strong, you know?

And you have to face, you have to hurt, even. And there are times when you have to hurt. I believe that we are in a culture where sometimes you have to hurt people in order for them to know the word of God. Not always passing warm water wipes all the time there. They will never learn. Sometimes you have to hurt before you heal. You have to confront before you heal.

But, we have to be careful with the attitudes that are inside our hearts. I believe that the Christian, if he hurts, should do it clinically, he should do it out of principle and not out of carnality. He should not do it vindictively, he should not do it simply to get even or to get out the anger that he has inside, but to hurt as a doctor wounds, who takes the scalpel and opens to heal, or amputates a leg because he knows that clinically, medically It is what the patient needs, because if he does not do it, he is not doing him any good.

Then the Christian confronts. The Christian speaks the truth, sometimes with inclusive pain and does so with a spirit of mercy and always wishing for reconciliation.

Guess what? the believer's first choice is to seek peace. The Apostle Paul says that in everything possible, he says, that we try to live in peace with all men.

Look, it tells us to do your best, which means that sometimes there are some with whom you don't... even if we do our best, we won't be able to. So there, I leave that to your discretion. What is the next step to take? But, whenever possible, the believer's first choice is to seek peace. We are people of peace and love.

I say that because this passage, its conclusion is a different conclusion from last Sunday's conclusion. That's why I'm looking for balance, right?

Last Sunday the Lord faced King Ahab and told him 'because you let the man escape from my anathema, now you are going to lose your kingdom and you are going to lose even your life. Your life will be for his life and your kingdom for his kingdom.’ Because Ahab refused to carry out the order to destroy this man who had become anathema to God because he had confronted God directly.

So Ahab falsely exercised grace with that man that God had told him 'you have to scrape him off the ground'. Let's make sure, as I said, to obey.

Now, look at this case here, how interesting. Because in this case we see the opposite. In this case, Elisha captured the Syrian army, or this band, this Syrian group that entered Israel to capture him through divine intervention. And we're going to talk a little bit, we're going to go back in a moment. But, Elisha, instead of... now that he has these people captured, inserted into Israel itself, surrounded by the Israelite army, and the king wants to kill them, the Lord directs Elisha to what in this case? To exercise mercy and spare these men's lives.

And perhaps why? Perhaps because they were simply soldiers under superior orders. We don't know what the specific reason is, but at that moment the holy spirit put Elisha in a modality of mercy and very high, very great grace, because he not only spared their lives but also made them a great banquet, a great meal and then after they ate he sent them away in peace. And the word says that armed bands never returned to Israel after that gesture.

They know that grace, mercy has a tremendous power many times, more powerful than the same violence, the same confrontation. So I believe that, brothers, we have to ask the Lord to give us wisdom in life, how to balance one thing with the other. Because I see in the Gospel, that is what often gets me into trouble with so many people that I know as time goes by. Because what I try to do is maintain the balance that exists in the word of the Lord.

I believe that sometimes the word of the Lord speaks, calls for confrontation and sometimes calls for mercy and peace. And so, we have to talk about both things. We have to ask the Lord for a balanced spiritual personality in life and we have to ask the Lord, as a church too, as a congregation to be a balanced church. And we have to ask the Lord to raise up a church with a balanced universal capital “i”, that knows how to mix the truth of God with the grace of the Lord, the justice of God with the mercy of God.

Because God is like that. God is love and he is also a consuming fire. God is confronting but he is also nurturing and loving. God is man and woman at the same time so to speak, it is neither of the two things, but the woman loves, the woman gets in tune with the pain, the woman feels what the other is feeling and tends to be more merciful and most forgiving. Man is more legalistic, more let's say judicial in his way of seeing things, because God has done it that way, he has given him a different approach.

God in his personality mixes the two things, mixes justice and mixes love; mix clarity and also mix the embrace. Both things are... and we must imitate God in that same attitude.

When we confront evil in society, in the world like in this time where there is so much evil and so much evil teaching, and so much corruption that is coming from the highest places of society and culture What should be the behavior of the church? Are we going to always be there with the bat in hand, pointing the finger, criticizing, prosecuting, pointing, sending fire, throwing stones from our fences, inside inside the lot there throwing stones at the unconverted only? Or are we also going to exemplify in our life the goodness, love, grace, prosperity of God and with that convince others that it is worth it and obey and walk in the ways of the Lord?

The church has to walk a balanced path. I ask the Lord, 'Father, help us to be as a community and as individuals and as families,' so blessed, so prosperous, so full of life, so aggressive in our joy, in our hope, our joy, our laughter, the quality of our relationships, that people are looking out of the window with envy, saying 'wow, if only I had what those evangelicals have' and that they come to the Lord simply for the quality of our life, for the joy and blessing that we have.

Now, when they come looking for that, we have to say 'look, you see us like this, very beautiful and everything, but we have paid a price, you know? We have had to obey the Lord, we have had to clean up our lives, we have had to put our house in order; We have had to not do many things that we wanted to do and do others that we did not want to do, so if you want the same thing, you have to continue..... look, here is the recipe: it is called the Bible, the word of God '. Don't do what God says not to do and do what God says to do. And you are going to have the same peace and the same joy that we are going to have.

Do you see? Because a lot of Christians want people to come to our church, but guess what? that people are always going to come to church with conditions. They will tell you, we are going to be in your church if you do this and that or if you don't tell us this and that. What will be the behavior of the church in that case? We cannot, because what doctor is the one that the patient comes to his office and only tells the patient what he wants to hear and does not give him the correct medicine? Bad doctor.

So, we have to ask the Lord for that balance between the two things. I see here that Elisha used mercy with the enemy in this case. Last Sunday I spoke about confrontation that sometimes you have to do, sometimes we have to have a vertical and clear position and you don't come through here. You have to do what the word of the Lord says and you have to speak the truth to people.

But, we have to know that the Lord is also a God who will often use the weapons of love and grace to bring others to the knowledge of God and that if you put yourself there to hit people hard before they even enter the house of the Lord, then they will never enter.

You have to love the fallen. You have to love the one who is involved in drugs, the one who is involved in homosexuality, the one who is involved in vices. You have to love them and when they enter the church you have to thank God that they are there and you have to make sure that we extend them, as Elisha did the best banquet.

If you have to get out of your chair for that person to sit there, do so and God will bless you. If you have to take it in your car back home, do it because it is an investment in the Kingdom of God. If you have to sit down and talk to him and argue with him and try to convince him of the arguments of the word of the Lord, do it because the word also says that we must be mild so that we can convert the unsaved to the knowledge of the Lord.

That is, we have to be very compassionate and very gracious to fallen people because their minds are crooked. The word says that yes, as it says, if the Gospel is hidden in those who are lost it is hidden, it says, because the enemy covered up their understanding so that the truth of Jesus Christ does not shine for them.

There are a lot of people out there who are people who want God and love God in a sense, but they are confused. The devil has blinded their understanding, he has filled their minds with diabolical arguments that they have received in the Universities, in culture, through the media, and their mind is twisted. And then they need someone to speak to them the principles of the word of the Lord, with a mixture of clarity and grace.

How nice it is when grace and clarity come together! And then one speaks the truth of God without an agenda without a sense of superiority, that I am better than you. None of that, when you speak the truth, communicate the truth with a sense of humility and brokenness knowing that you are the first to need God's grace and that you are in the Lord's ways by God's mercy and that If you enter the Kingdom of God it is because God is incredibly merciful and you have to extend the same grace and the same mercy to another.

We have to know with what heart we tell the truth and with what heart we confront. There is a very mysterious and almost funny passage also in the Gospel according to Saint Luke, where the Lord had an encounter with the disciples.

Let me see. The Gospel according to..... I'll find it in a little while, don't worry. And if not I'm not going to waste much time on it. Yes,.... in the Gospel according to Saint Luke, Chapter 9, verse 52 let's say, 52.

Luke 9:52 says: “...the Lord prepared to go to Jerusalem and sent messengers before him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, who remember that the Samaritans and the Jews hated each other. The Jews did not want to know about the Samaritans because they were, according to them, impure people, who did not deserve God's grace. They had a mixed religion, go figure. They were people who taught heretical doctrine and the Jews said that these people do not deserve the mercy of the Lord. And the Samaritans equally hated the Hebrews as well. As today many people hate Christians and there are many Christians who hate even the people who are out there, and we must never fall into hatred against the unconverted, but love them with the love of Christ.

Then he says that “....they entered a village of the Samaritans to make preparations for the Lord so that... I imagine, that he would stay and lodge that night, on his way to Jerusalem. But they did not receive him....”

Look, the Samaritans snubbed the Lord. They did not receive it. They told him: 'this man doesn't come in here, let him look for a hotel elsewhere. There's a Holidad Inn over there, in the other town. So go there. They despised the Lord. They did not receive him because he looked like he was going to Jerusalem.... Another word, they saw that he was a Jew. We don't want you here. They returned him with the same coin.

“.....seeing this his disciples, James and John, said 'Lord, -I imagine that while they were saying that they rubbed their hands- Lord, do you want us to order fire to come down from the heaven as Elijah did and consume them?"

That's where knowledge of the Bible came in handy, right? What does that refer to? It says, for those who don't know, the Bible says in the Old Testament that once some soldiers came looking for Elijah, because the king sent for him to take him prisoner, and 50 soldiers came and the captain of the soldiers came and told him thus very imperiously to Elijah 'we come to subtract you because the king commands that you appear before him'. And Elijah told him "well, if that's the case, let fire fall on you and consume you." And fire fell and the 50 soldiers were burned. And another 50 soldiers came, now upset about what had happened, and they wanted to arrest Elijah and Elijah said again, "well, fire will fall from heaven and consume them all." And he returned and consumed them.

There is the part of judgment and confrontation and fire and brimstone that God has. God has that modality too and can do that.

Finally another captain came, this one was much wiser. Already having seen what had happened to the others, and he came and knelt before the prophet of God very respectfully, and he said 'Sir, wouldn't you like to appear there before the king?' Elijah said 'well, that's fine. , well then I will go'. How good is a soft word at the right time!

That's why I tell him, they say over there, better say that he ran here than he died here. Says the writer of Ecclesiastes, better to be a living dog than a dead lion. This soldier understood and so Elijah went. That stuck with these disciples of Jesus Christ, so when they snubbed their Lord, the biblical scholar in them came out and said, 'Lord, do you want us to make fire fall on them like Elijah did? And the Lord instead of telling them 'yes guys, go ahead. Let's burn them all. We are going to destroy here with all.

Look at what he said: “... Then turning he rebuked them, he rebuked them saying 'you do not know what spirit you are because the son of man has not come to lose the souls of men but, for what?, to save them'” And they simply left, they went to another village.

See, what happened here? That the Lord discerned that what was in the hearts of these disciples at that moment was carnality, a desire for revenge, an underestimation of the life of those Samaritans whom they despised. They were pure carnality, pure ethnic enmity, pure self-righteousness, pure lack of understanding of not understanding that these Samaritans were simply hurt, they felt despised. They had not been understood by those Hebrews who should have known better because they had the word of God at their disposal and who were reacting to their wound, to their pain.

Then the Lord wanted to give them a chance and said 'okay, I'm going to another place'. And that's why he said 'no, don't you dare'. Because? Because the Lord Jesus Christ had given the disciples power, He had given them authority but not to use that authority in a carnal way. You see, God has given us prophetic authority, brothers, and I believe that in recent times, God is going to give the church more and more prophetic authority to close and to open, to tear down and to build, as he told Jeremiah .

But, that is why the church has to first be filled with the spirit of Jesus Christ, know the word of God very well, because it is very dangerous to put the power of God in the hands of an immature person and carnal, because then.... That's why God doesn't give his power and grace to many because we can't handle it as God wants.

The day there is a mature church, that has the proper and balanced character of Jesus, then I believe that the Lord will give the church more power and more authority because then the church will know how to handle power of God in a balanced and precise way. An appropriate intervention.

Imagine if an ophthalmologist operating on your eyes, you go into the clinic and all of a sudden he pulls out an electric saw and turns it on to operate on your eye, you're going to run away and leave your gown behind , he is going to drop everything and he is going to run out of that office. right yes? Because it's not the right instrument. Now, if it comes with a tweezer or something simple, you say 'okay, we can work better that way'.

And he's also the Christian there will be times when he's going to need a Freddy Krugger-type saw and sometimes – I haven't seen the movie just in case, I've just heard about him – they told me about it. But, sometimes you're going to need a very simple laser beam, a little cotton thing to just dab over the eye in order to heal the person.

You have to have balance in life, brothers. You have to know when the Lord wants you to speak clearly, firmly, vertically, to confront, and you have to know when the Lord wants you to use, he says, the subtlety of the dove or the subtlety of the serpent, because there are also times when one must imitate the serpent in its cunning to bring people to the knowledge of God.

The Apostle Paul said that with the Greek one acted as if he were a Greek, with the slave one acted as if he were a slave, and with the free man as if he were free, although he was also a slave of Jesus Christ. So I can draw everyone to the knowledge of God. But that same Apostle Paul also sometimes spoke in tremendously sharp and confrontational ways that one is shocked. If it were not the Apostle Paul one would say 'this man needs to be saved and know Jesus Christ'. Because I was in that moment of God's confrontation and truth.

Balance, brothers. God's balance in life is required for one to be a man, a woman completely fair and precise in their interventions, because otherwise....

Imagine yourself with the children at home. A father says 'I have the right because I am the father, I bring the food home so they have to do exactly what I say. And they are always there struggling with the boys and the devil comes into the home and there is never peace. Sometimes parents have to lower our guard, keep quiet a little, wait and refer our cause to the Lord until he works in the heart of that child. Because if we start to struggle, the son is going to get more rebellious, tougher; the devil is going to get deeper into his heart, we are going to shut down communication, there is going to be no peace in the home and everything is going to be a cold or hot war, one of the two, continuously.

If in marriage one of the two is not silent and each one is insisting, my rights, my rights, you did it to me, you're going to pay me. And all the time, one and the other, and the man, that you have to respect me and the woman, that you abuse me, etc. There will never be peace. There has to be at some point, the man is going to have to give in, at some point the woman is going to have to give in. At some point you are going to have to wait for him to eat before telling him things, because when he is without food he becomes like a monster, so wait for the right moment, ma'am. Be wise in your understanding. And you, gentleman, allow her to buy those shoes and pray to the Lord that the economy improves. And then, then, tell him that you want to buy a sports car and that you already put down the deposit a couple of weeks ago.

We have to.... we have, brothers, to know when to be one way or another in life. We have to have balance, when to confront and when to shut up, and wait for God's timing. That doesn't take away anything. On the contrary, brothers, that is the spirit of Jesus Christ.

God has been doing that all through history with man. God could have destroyed man thousands and thousands of years ago and he hasn't. Waiting, says the Bible, to see if the greatest number possible will be converted.

The Lord could turn us all into robots and make us do exactly what he wants, but he knows that if he does that, he distorts the image of God in us, so he has to try to bring us little by little. How does God work in our lives to bring us into the image of Christ? There, putting fences with his hand, little by little as when driving a herd of cows, that the cowboys go and with the horse they go through different parts leading it little by little until it enters the corral.

And we have to do so. We have to have a pastoral heart. The mature Christian has to have pastoral care, ask the Lord to give us a pastoral heart to be able to discern the condition of the person with whom we are dealing, or the culture with which we are dealing in order to maintain balance.

Some say that the shepherd, says the psalmist David, says 'your rod and your silence will give me encouragement'. The shepherd had two instruments in his armor, in his repertoire of resources to lead the sheep: he had the rod and he had the quiet. And I don't know which of the two, but I think that the rod was simply for when the sheep became a little rebellious, they were given their blow there so they would learn, right? Or it was also mostly believed to defend against lions and bears, the rod was an instrument of aggression and defense against wild beasts.

And sometimes in your pastoral role or in our pastoral roles we are going to have to confront people, we are going to have to speak the truth to them, because if you don't speak the truth there will be no healing. In marriages, in homes, in society, in the church, and pastors have to be firm sometimes, brothers. The Lord was the most firm person I know and with the greatest convictions. So the rod is necessary in life.

A father sometimes needs the rod. Sometimes you have to correct your children. The social workers forgive me if there are any here, sometimes you have to apply authority and the children have to, I think, have holy fear of their parents. I don't think that boys respect a father who does everything ñe, ñe, ñe, as we say, who does everything the child wants. Sometimes you have to apply to the children and tell them 'no, you sit there', and if you stop, go back and sit down, and if you stop again, go back and sit down until you learn who is boss.

But, he says that the pastor was also quiet. The callado was a stick that had the shape of a stick exactly with a broader, longer head and that stick allowed the shepherd to pull out a sheep when it was stuck in a crack, or in an abyss, it was long and could protect it, take her out and take her in his arms and take her where he had to take her. That is the protective part, the loving part of the pastor.

And I believe that we need the rod and the silence in our lives. we have to walk with both and ask the Lord, 'Lord, give me wisdom when to use one and when to use the other,' knowing that both are instruments of power, but of different kinds of power. And the word of the Lord tells us that many, many times.

Look what the Lord Jesus Christ says in Luke, Chapter 6, wonderful passage. One of the most exalted passages in all of Scripture. This is the passage that even the Hindus, the Buddhists, all recognize to be the symbol of the exalted status of the Gospel, of Christianity.

6:27, Luke. He says ".... but I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you..." How hard is that, brothers! I myself who preach it need to apply that to myself and learn how to do that, I am going to tell you the truth. But I know one thing, that I can't get out of it. I can admit that I don't have it completely, but I know that I can't change that. That is the goal to which the word of God calls me. As long as I live I have to recognize the legitimacy of that and ask the Lord, 'Give me grace to reach him and forgive me because I am not reaching him.' But I'm not going to change the call. The sublime call of Jesus is to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us.

It says, "....bless those who curse you and pray for those who mistreat you, to the one who strikes you on one cheek, turn the other also..."

How difficult is that! Ugh. I'd like to go through there at a hundred miles an hour.

“..... and from the one who takes your cloak, do not even deny him the tunic. Give to anyone who asks you, and to the one who takes what is yours, do not ask for it to be returned to you, and as you want men to do with you, so do you also with them.”

When you are in error and you are confused and you are stubborn in something that is wrong, you would not like someone patient to come with you and enlighten you with patience, with love, with mercy, with tolerance and sit down with you and show you the truth, wouldn't you like that? And patiently guide you to the truth. I think that is what I would like them to do with me.

Then the Lord says as you want you to do with yourself, so do with others as well. We have to take time and be patient with those who are confused by the devil, those who are bent on evil. We have to ask the Lord, 'Father, put a lot of polish on my skin so that insults and things will slip off me and that I can love my enemies, and be patient with them even while I speak your truth and resist them in what they do. they want to do to destroy themselves and destroy others'.

“.....Because if you love those who love you, what merit do you have? Because sinners also love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit do you have? Because sinners also do the same. So love your enemies –verse 35- and do good and lend expecting nothing from them and your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. So be merciful, just as your father is merciful."

That is the word of the Lord, brothers, for us. That is the attitude that we have to ask the Lord, 'Father, help me to reach that, help me to live that. In my flesh it is not possible, in my character it is not possible, but it is what you ask of me and it is what I am going to do with your help until the last breath, until the last moment of my life, I am going to try to reach that goal of overcoming evil with good.'

So, brothers, that's the balance. I ask the musicians to stop by. Now.... I want to leave you with that. There is a lot of cloth to cut. I had other texts that I wanted to share with you, but I believe that this is what the Lord wants. Just that balance and let's leave it there. There is no need to insist much more this morning. A call to balance is the call of the holy spirit to our lives.

Father, help me to be like Jesus. Help me to be like Jesus, that's all. There is a summary of this whole sermon, this speech, this... help me to be like Jesus.

The Lord was confronting, he was clear, he was precise in his judgments, as when his disciples themselves told them 'you do not know to which spirit you belong. Right now you are under the dominion of the devil for wanting to do that, was what he told them.

But at the same time he was exercising mercy at the same time he was exercising mercy towards the Samaritans. Notice that is the balance that I see in Jesus.

He told the adulterous woman, 'Go, and sin no more. I don't condemn you either. He did not condemn her but he also told her, sin no more. What you are doing is wrong so stop doing it. But also at the same moment he was exercising mercy and forgiving her, because perhaps he understood that this woman was a victim of circumstances, or of abuse by men or of a deforming past or whatever.

With the Samaritan woman, she had had 5 husbands and the other one she had now was not even her husband either; an adulteress, a promiscuous. And the Lord sat with her, spoke to her, ministered to her, and made her the first Evangelist of her race.

How merciful is the Lord, right? We have to have the same attitude of balance in life. I ask the Lord, 'Father, help me to be a man of mercy and truth. That's all. Help me to be like Christ. We want to be a church like Christ. We want to have marriages that exemplify the highest quality of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We are going to ask the Lord to put his spirit in us. Let's stand up for a moment.

We are going to ask the Lord to make León de Judá a church of mercy and love that will help us to be able to communicate to the world that balance of Jesus in our lives. He knows how he's going to do it. We can't but he definitely knows how he can do it.

Father, we ask for that balanced spirit of Jesus Christ, a balanced spirit, Lord, a spirit that manifests your grace and your mercy, and also your truth and your justice, Lord. We want to be like Jesus. Teach us your way, Lord. Pour out your grace on this town.

Father, we declare that spirit of peace over the homes of our church, Lord and this community. We declare, Lord, the attitude of mercy and love and patience and forgiveness that you have had with us, towards the unconverted and the needy this morning, Father.

Come, Lord Jesus. Thank you for your word that confronts us, Lord. Thank you for your word that calls us, O God, to a balanced attitude like that of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We adore you, Lord. We bless you this morning, Father. Thank you Jesus. Thank my Lord.