Crowned with glory and honor

Brothers, I invite you to open your Bibles in Psalm 8, please. Psalm 8. the word says:

“.. O Jeovah, our Lord, how glorious is your name in all the earth. You have put your glory above the heavens from the mouths of children and from those who suck you founded the fortress, because of your enemies to silence the enemy and the vengeful. When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you formed, I say, what is man that you have memory of him and the Son of man that you visit him? You have made him little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him lord over the works of your hands, you put everything under his feet; sheep and oxen, all of them, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, everything that passes through the paths of the sea, O Lord our Lord, how great is your name in all the earth ....”

Father, thank you for your word. Thank you that you are majestic, Lord, and you want to reveal your majesty in ways we would not have expected. I ask you to speak to us today, Lord, that you use the word of my mouth, that you put a little more gasoline in this tank and that you bless this church, Lord, that it be your word speaking to all of us this afternoon, We ask you in the name of Jesus. Amen and amen. Guess what? I remember one day I was visiting Guatemala, in the Petén, I don't know if anyone, we have some chapines here, some chapinitos. I was in the Petén seeing those ruins there and I was walking in the jungle with all the strange sounds that there are in a jungle, I looked up and saw monkeys in the trees, real monkeys, monkeys. And I was there and I had never been in a real forest jungle, jungle, jungle and I was all sweaty, but happy. And leaving there I said to a young man I met there, wow, how can one see all that and not believe in God. And the young man told me, easy, he was an atheist, so we started to talk a bit. And I said, but how can you see all this? We argued a bit, I hope I left a seed.

But I don't know about him, but wow, think of a beautiful place that you know, a sea, aquamarine, so beautiful from your country, it can be; a green field, mountains, a lake with volcanoes around it, in South America, beautiful places and you think, wow, Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. How come you did all that? Looking at the stars and thinking, wow, but I can't count them. There are so many and then one thinks, and how is it that you are going to listen to my prayer? I am a little ant, a little bit of dust in the universe, and I am also bad, I am a sinner, small and bad, how are you going to listen to me?

This psalm says that God reveals his glory, not only throughout the universe but through the testimony of his servants. Yes this little message and I'm going to do it very to the point, but if this message had a title I would say, Crowned with glory and honor.

Do you know that you have a crown that God has made for you? From your conception God crowned you with glory and honor just for being a human being and carrying within you the image and likeness of the living God. You are crowned, crowned with glory and honor. This seems bad. No, God you're the only one with the crown. He says, no, I like to give little crowns to my children and clothe them with dignity and honor.

You know how much we don't talk about honor these days? But I think it's important that we talk about it. Honor, being an honest person, a person who can walk with his head held high and have self-respect and dignity. When I think about it, I think about the military who are taught to walk like a serious person, to have their cap. I shared in the morning that the Santiagos, Mary and Chago, invited me to the house and gave me sacred permission to put on the military cap that Chago wore when he was young. And I put it on and looked in the mirror and felt an electricity, an electric current run through my body. Pretty good, I feel good. I feel good. And it was like a scare, it was a scare and Mary was, aha, sign up, look, you're going to be a chaplain, I don't know what. The cap of authority, dignity.

God has such a crown for you, for each one of us that when you put it on you feel an electric current running through your veins that will let you know that you are alive, that you are a person of inestimable value, created in the image of God himself.

I think of the people, the grandparents among us who have served the Lord, and the word of God says that the light of the just is like the light of dawn that increases until it is full day. And I believe that the grandparents who serve the Lord and the light is in broad daylight. And one can look, although the bodies wear out, one can see the glory of Jehovah resting on them.

I remember visiting Doña Toñita when, the pastor's mother, when she was on her last legs and the only word I could think of was majesty, majesty, like a queen there, a dignity there surrounding her. I think of Mrs. Anastasia, 99 and she didn't leave the house without her clean and good dress and maybe cheap, but good and pretty and her Calvin Klein perfume, she even made the ambulance wait sometimes when she fell, wait, wait, get out the cleanest dress, the doctors are going to see me. Because? Vanity? Well, more than vanity, he is talking about dignity, self-respect, knowing that I am the son, daughter of a king and I can walk well, because God has crowned me with glory and honor. I am not garbage, I am not a zero to the left, I am a woman of God, a man of God and I respect myself and others should also respect me because God is with me, who is against me.

I think, even babies are crowned with glory and honor. How many can know? You look at a creature and you think, but Lord, how. Maybe this creature can't do anything but cry and eat and relieve itself. The dog can do more than the baby in the house. The dog is trained, the baby is not yet trained, but what a difference. You look at the baby and you are looking into the eyes of God, you think, Lord, wow, how did you make this being, how did you do it. It is a wonder.

So that's why it says, from the mouths, verse 2, from the mouths of children and those who suckle you founded the strength....

How cute, that's why when you do this dance of children, and there'll be more than Sunday school, when they worship God, oh, that's from the Lord. Guess what? When I read that I got a little confused. Look what he says again, from the mouths of children and those who suck you founded the fortress.

I want you to go with me to Matthew 21 and we're going to do a little study here. awake. Matthew 21, 14. He is talking about Jesus healing the blind and lame in the temple, he says:

“...the blind and lame came to him in the temple and he healed them. But the chief priests and the scribes, seeing the wonders that Jesus was doing and the boys acclaiming in the temple and saying, Oh heal the Son of David, they were outraged and said to him, listen to what these say. And Jesus said to them, yes, you never read from the mouths of children and those who suckle, Jesus had memorized the verse, he actually wrote it in the spirit, from the mouths of children and those who suckle you perfected the praise ....”

Wait. Psalm 8 what does it say? Put your finger here and we go back to Psalm 8 again, and it says, you founded the fortress. So what's wrong, Jesus didn't memorize the verse right? Forgot, maybe. No, no, no Jesus, you founded the fortress. And Jesus says, no, no, I know what I'm doing. He is the Creator of the universe, he inspired the Bible. Jesus knew that the word praise and the word strength will have something in common. What do praise and strength have in common? Think about it.

Think of a time when you felt weak, you felt that there was nothing left to go on, life had given you tough struggles and challenges, you didn't even want to come to church, but you forced yourself and came here singing Everybody happy, and you feel, but I'm dying inside, how can I sing, how can I raise my hands? I don't want to be a hypocrite. But you know, God commands me to do it. And you raise those hands by faith and you start to sing and what happens? The spirit begins to flow in you, something of what the Bible says begins to arrive, those who hope in Jehovah will have new strength, they will raise eagles' wings, they will run and they will not get tired, because they have decided instead of living in self-pity and the complaint, they have decided to praise Jehovah the Creator of the universe and sing and dance and say, I know that my redeemer lives and works, works. You start doing it and wow and you start to feel more alive, there is force coming in.

What happened to Silas and Peter in jail? There, what would you do in jail? I would complain like I don't know what. They instead, there singing praises, singing to the Lord because they knew, there are chains but we are free of heart. You cannot chain the heart, we are free in Christ, where the spirit of Jehovah is, there is freedom. They sang hymns and there it fell apart, the chain broke and they were able to miraculously get out.

Brothers, when we sing, when we praise, the Lord does prodigies and wonders. You have to do it. This is part of what I would like to talk about today about wearing the crown that God has given you. You know what? God has given you the crown but we don't know it, we don't use it, maybe we think it's lost. When we enter the house of God and begin to sing, we are declaring, I am a child of the King and I am going to adore Him with all my heart and God puts on this crown and you begin to feel good, like I did when I had the cap on. put. Amen. So we are called.

And children can worship God. Because it says? In verse 2 of Psalm 8, from the mouths of children and those who suck you founded the fortress. Because of your enemies to silence the enemy and the vengeful.

You know that when I see the children dancing and singing I am thinking of happy things, I am not thinking of Satan. But the Bible says that when children worship God or the smallest person among us, the enemy has to shut up because he has nothing to say to it.

How is it that this person going through so many struggles can give glory to God? He has no answer for that. That is why the Bible says, Psalm 23, you prepare tables before me, not in the easy field, it is in the fight in the presence of the distressers, God prepares the table before you, and you eat, and you sing and you worship to God, and you say, I have the crown on, I am the son of the King.

So, brothers, God has called us to that dignity, this self-esteem and also having the crown means that there is majesty. Also what does a crown mean? What does it mean? If someone has a crown, it is not worn today, but in the days when crowns were worn, what did that mean? Power, that you are a person who is called to rule the world. Adam and Eve were called to rule on earth. This meant for them, cultivating the land.

Brothers, you are called to use the gifts that God has given you for his glory, because when you do what God has given you, God glorifies himself, you are reigning. You know that this morning I shared a testimony of a movie that no one had seen, but I am going to try one more time, Olympic time. How many have seen the movie Chariots of Fire? One, two, three, four, six. We already beat those in the morning. So one in a hundred has seen it.

It's a Christian movie, very good movie, Libyan movie, not very common nowadays Libyan movies. It's about an athlete in the Olympics in the old days and this man was a Christian, a missionary but he ran in the races and he wanted to participate in the Olympics but he had to run instead of serving in the church, sometimes instead of carry out his missionary work. And his mom and dad saying, but my son, you are called to be a missionary, what are you doing running in the field, wasting time with that? And he says, but mom, when God made me he made me, when God made me, he made me fast and when I run I feel his pleasure. When God made me, he was fast, but I don't know if this translates into being able to run fast, and when I run I feel his smile on me.

And in the movie when he was running, running, he would raise his head because he was running for God. I don't know if you are an athlete, I don't know what God has given you, but God has called you to do something and to do it well, and to do it with excellence and to do it for him because God has made it for that.

When the singer sings he gives glory to God. When the athlete runs, he gives glory to God, when the artist paints, when the farmer sows, when the child plays, when the doctor heals, we give glory to God who has made us. When the mother takes care of the child, when the father is there, when we do what God has given us, we are reigning in the world and saying, God has made me and I am here to give glory to him. Guess what? Brethren, this is not pride. We talked before about pride. Pride is a serious sin, it was Satan's own sin, pride. So we are not talking about pride, we are talking about recognizing what God has planted for me, what God has done to me and I can rejoice in it, he has crowned me with glory and honor, he has put everything under my feet and I am called to great things. That is not pride because the glory is not mine, it is his, the blessing, the capacity is not mine, I have nothing that has not been given to me, it is his glory and I am glad that God receives the glory when I have the crown Well set. Amen.

So we're talking about something very different, a reflected glory of the Lord. How many know after spending time with God you feel different. Moses, this happened to Moses. Moses went up the mountain and came down electric, nuclear power coming out of him, face glowing, people say, look, cover yourself, cover yourself, we can't see you. He had the glory of Jehovah that stuck to him and brothers, when we are in the presence of God, when we adore God, when we recognize that he is with us, we reflect his glory to the world. It is a testimony, it is a way of saying, God is with me and it is a way of showing the world what God is capable of doing. The glory, the crown that God has given you.

But you know what? We know that the enemy is not happy with an army of little kings and warblers, he is not happy with us, with the crowns on. Not happy. He wants to get dirty, I talk about it a lot in messages, I've said it before, but it's a theme in my life in my ministry, we are bearers of the image of God, as if we had a beautiful painting of God inside me and it shines through your personality, your character, your culture, your sense of humor, everything that you are, God shines through it and Satan hates God like that when he looks at a person who reminds him of his deadly enemy, and who he has a crown on ruling the world, he wants to take this crown and he wants to mess this thing up a bit. He wants to dull the glory that is there, he wants to make it lose its shine and he manages to do it many times, he does it by tempting us to sin many times.

That's why the enemy wants to not only tempt us, he wants to humiliate us because it's out of pure malice. That is why the ministries that do evangelism, social work, is war because we are dignifying the human being, evangelizing but also lifting them up, saying, God has great things for this person.

So, and it does so by tempting us to sin many times. Every human being here has sinned at some point and when we do we are dirtying the crown that God has given us, we are overshadowing the glory that is there.

As the letter to Timoteo says, that in a big house there are many glasses, some dishes are fine dishes, porcelain. You don't take out the china for my one and a half year old or he's going to hurt things. I promise you, quickly. We give her plastic things that aren't worth that much, but there is porcelain that you take out for your mother-in-law when a visitor comes, because it's worth, it's worth a lot. There is.

God says, look, you are called to be the fine china, you are not the plastic for the child to throw on the floor. When we are in sin it is like taking the china and using it for something worthless.

You know Christian self-esteem is very different from pride. Having self-esteem is knowing, God is with me, I am better than this. I do not have to continue in the same, God can change me, I am better than this.

We talk a lot with the sisters of the church especially the single ones, insisting that the suitors respect you, why? Because you're old style? Because you are a daughter of God and they know, I am worth it. Look, he has to respect me, if he wants to treat me differently, well, find someone else, I'm better, I'm a daughter of God, I hope for someone who respects me, a man whose friends tempt him to do barbaric things in the street, what whatever, and he says, look, I am a soldier, I am an officer in the army of God and an officer behaves in a manner worthy of his office.

They know that there is a crime in the military called conduct unbecoming an officer, which is conduct that does not look like an officer. Look, you are an official in the Kingdom of God, so I am going to live with honor, with dignity and I am going to insist that they respect me because I am going to behave in a respectable way. So this is the call, sin soils it.

I want to read some Proverbs 31. We all know what's in Proverbs 31, what it's about. You know what? It's about another person too, someone you may not know, a guy named Lemuel. Does anyone know who Lemuel is? Someone knows. A king, he was a young king and his mother gave him a prophecy that says, my son, verse 2:

“... what my son and what son of my womb and what son of my desires, do not give to the women your strength and your ways to what destroys kings. It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, nor for princes, cider. Lest by drinking they forget the law and pervert the right of all the afflicted. Give cider to the fainted and wine to those who drink in a bitter mood and forget their need and their misery do not remember anymore. open your mouth for the mute, in the judgment of all the helpless open your mouth, judge justly and defend the cause of the poor and needy....”

My son, you have a great call to be a king who will defend people in need, so don't waste your time on drinks or things, on the street because you are better than this. Look, drinking, getting drunk or living in sin, that's for people who have no hope, but you are a child of God.

You know that we have a group here on Saturdays that I love many, men coming out of struggles and vices and there are men that I see learning before my eyes, I am the son of a king, I am called to minister, I am called to be a man in my family, a respectable and effective man in life and they get up and I love studying the word with them. But it all has to do with self-esteem.

Satan tells you, look, do it, this you are no better than this. Do it, get in, this is Satan's lie. Satan is an accuser. He comes to accuse but Jesus is our lawyer and he has come to say, no, no, no, you are my son, I have made you clean. It used to be like that, but now you're different. Shame causes us to remove that crown from our heads, it makes us do like Adam and Eve. What did they do after their sin? They hid in the trees, they tried to cover their shame.

God says, this is useless, let me dress you up like the prodigal son. This suit that you have is useless, let me put on a gala suit, let me put the ring on your finger and a crown on your head. But many times sin, shame and pride overshadow the glory we have. Pride is a false substitute for Christian self-esteem, it is a way of thinking that I am better than others. Lie from hell. It is insecurity. I feel bad about myself so I have to prove myself to everyone else. This is not god's.

The Christian knows, I don't have to be proud, I don't have to be like Narcissus, in love with my own reflection. I can reflect the glory of God and feel good without proving anything to anyone. How beautiful, what freedom.

Brothers, God comes to replace the lost crown and to cleanse the opaque crown. Because every human being has it, by being a human being you already have it, and God wants to take it and restore it on your head. It says in Isaiah 61, that he has come to give us glory instead of ashes, a cloak of joy instead of an anguished spirit.

I love to see this transformation before my eyes, the heaviness goes away, the shadow goes away and the person already has glory on his head. He knows that God is with one, who against me.

There is another verse that says, the redeemed of Jehovah will return and come to Zion with joy and perpetual joy will be on their heads and they will have joy and gladness and sadness and groaning will flee.

Brethren, God is in the coronation business, raising up his children and doing that. And this is what he does by faith when someone receives Jesus as Lord and savior. But you know what? There is another crown. That's a bit mysterious, I don't claim to understand it perfectly, but some crowns are earned. I feel bad saying it because we know that salvation is not earned, salvation is a free gift from God, I can't earn anything from God but there are some crowns that are conditional, that come based on how we have struggled and pushed forward. It is not salvation but it is some I don't know what, a glory endowed by the Lord, which awaits us.

The Apostle Paul said that I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. For the rest, the crown of justice is kept for me, which the Lord, a righteous judge, will give me. And he says this about many others, some people say blessed is the man who endures temptation because when he has resisted, in James says, the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised. So it says there is a fight.

There is a text that I am not going to read but I want to summarize from the Olympics as well. We know that last week, Omar who is addicted to the Olympics talked about it. There is a text when Paul says that I want you to run in such a way that you can win the crown, but the person who runs from everything abstains to win the crown. And not a corruptible crown but an incorruptible crown.

Do you know what he gave to winners at that time? Does anyone know what kind of crown? If you were here at 9 you can't tell. Laurels to the Romans, but before that. You know what it was, it was celery. This morning they tried to teach me, celery. A crown of vegetables, celery. Already beginning to rot and they put it, and I think, and this is a reward or a punishment, I don't understand, but it was made by combining celery with perhaps laurels and they put it there, and already falling apart on the head.

Look, there's a better crown than this that I want to win. I live for the day when Jesus tells me, well done, faithful servant, come and share in the joy of your master. I live for that day, but the Lord says, you have done well, faithful servant. And this is receiving the gold medal there, listening to the song and seeing the flag and feeling, yes, the battle was done. I won.

But these people, Olympic athletes, have to abstain from everything, not out of legalism, they don't do it under compulsion, they abstain from certain foods, from certain behaviors, for what? To win. They know that many of us have come from very legalistic backgrounds where we have been told, you have to be a, b, c, d or you are no good and they are so strict that sometimes we rebel against it.

But know that God doesn't call us to be lazy or libertines either. God calls us to abstain from many things, but it is not out of legalism, it is not out of obligation, it is because I have a race to run and I want to win. I don't want any weight or anything to distract me, I want the medal. How can an athlete abstain from pizza when all the friends are doing it? Because he is thinking about the gold, about the prize, and so on for us.

God has called me to have this crown well on and I am willing to sacrifice everything to win this prize of the call that God has given me in life and this is what God calls us, to know that I already have the crown, but I have to fight if I want it to be put the way God wants it to be. So this is the call that God has for us, to believe that we are people of spiritual royalty. Guess what? That many people when they look in the mirror do not see that. They look at someone they don't like very much, many of us are like that. We are not talking about physical beauty, brother, sister, although this happens. It says that the Lord beautifies the humble person who seeks him, but it is not about that. You know that I have a professor from my theological studies who is a famous preacher, his name is, he is very famous among gringos at least, his name is H. Robinson, he has written many books on homeletics, he is on the radio all the time , very famous, and I arrived at the university studying and I remember, a new student, all nervous studying under a tree, and I look and there he is, next to me. And I... he says, look, greetings, you're studying and he started talking to me. And I noticed that I didn't know before, that he has a face deformity, his face. He had a deformity, he had a very large birth defect on his face and his smile and everything, and I hadn't noticed, because I had only heard him or read his books, I had seen him from far away. But I saw him up close but I saw something else, I saw the glory of Jehovah shining from him, and I thought, that man, anyone would hide but he is called to preach and put his face, his face in front of millions. I tell you, he has preached in stadiums of people, thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people have seen his face and he is there, he is not ashamed because he knows, I am crowned with glory and honor and he leaves he the glory of the Lord and the beauty of the Holy Spirit, because he knows who he is and that his testimony gives glory to God, as much as the stars.

Also a girl I met while studying, who had the same thing, she had a defect in her nose, she only had half of her nose and something else. She had the same, she had the brightest light coming out of her eyes that there was in my entire life, a beautiful girl and I mean it, I don't mean it with eyes, oh, you look at it,... no, no, no, She was beautiful, beautiful in the Lord because she would be Christ, she was a leader in her school and among the others, because she knew, I am crowned with glory and honor, and this is not something from the outside, it is something from the heart. That is not my glory, it is Jehovah's glory and that is a testimony.

I want to encourage you to see yourself like this, because if I know that I have this cap on, I am going to live a life worthy of the calling that I have, but I also encourage you to ask yourself the question, if you really look at each person that you know like this in this way, can you see the crown in your spouse? Can you see the crown in your children, in your friends, in your boss? Because being a human being has a crown, maybe it's not shining but it is. You really look at people like that.

A man came here two or three years ago, he hasn't been back to the church anymore so no one would know him, but he arrived well, very drunk, but ugly. He was drooling, he was all down and he was there in the office with Carolina and he called me in, and I felt the Lord to treat you, not only to treat you, but to call you by a title that I have learned from someone from you. His name was, I'm going to invent a name, it was Paco and I said, greetings, and I used the title that God gave me, greetings Don Paco. And I could see him look at me in surprise and straighten up a little. And I always called him Don, Don Paco, because he was an older man, Don.

Does anyone know the meaning of that, of that title, does anyone know? It is respect, they have taught me, I do not know if it is true, I am a visitor to this culture, I do not know anything, but they tell me what it means, of noble origin, gift, of noble origin. Don, you really believe that you are someone. You are not a nobody. Of noble origin, of noble origin in the Lord, created in the image and likeness of God, called to be for his glory in the world and rule over all this earth.

God has called me, he has given you special gifts, you are the apple of his eye, the son of his right hand. God has called you to be like this, and see others this way. So I encourage you to place yourself within this coronation of the Lord on this day.

Let's pray, I invite you to stand up. Musicians can pass. They are about to start a song.

Father, in the name of Jesus I rebuke the accuser who convinces us that we can live a mediocre life and it makes no difference, who convinces us that we are zero, that it doesn't matter, others will. Lord, I ask you to raise up here from this church men and women who know their dignity, who know that it is the call they have in you, that you are a majestic God in the world, that you are the king over all creation and we are to be the jewel of this creation for your glory in the world. I ask you, Father, that more and more people approach members of this congregation and they are knowing Christ, that they are growing in him and that they ask him the question, are you different than before, what is happening? What is it that you have? And that they can say, I am a child of God and for this, for this reason that you see me as I am.

Father, I ask you to be a witness to the world, to lift up the downtrodden and to give us, Lord, new clothes today. The word says, get up, shine because your light has come and the glory of Jehovah has risen upon you.

Let's sing. Forward. I invite you if anyone wants, while we sing, if anyone wants a prayer in this last song we are going to take time to pray, they can come closer if they want. Forward.