Classic Sermon #6063: Strangers and Pilgrims

I want to talk about our relationship with the world, chapter 4, and in my Bible I have a heading that says, Friendship with the world, and the Apostle Santiago rhetorically asks a question, he says, and remember one thing, he is addressing to Christians, converted Jews who already know the Messiah, and he is addressing a congregation or several congregations under his apostolate and his ministry, so this is a message for the church, it is not for the unconverted, so do not get too comfortable with me . This is for you and me on this day. Says:

“…Where do the wars and lawsuits among you come from, is it not from your passions which you fight in your members? You covet and you do not have, you kill and you burn with envy, and you cannot achieve, you fight and you fight but you do not have what you want because you do not ask. You ask and you do not receive because you ask badly to spend on your delights. O adulterous souls, you do not know that the friendship of the world is enmity against God….”

Therein lies the heart of our meditation. “… anyone who wants to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, the spirit that has made it dwell in you longs for us jealously, but he gives greater grace, for this reason he says, God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble….”

So far this is quite a strong attack, quite direct, it is something negative to a certain point, accusative to a certain point, but now comes the medicine, now comes the prescription for our life. Says:

“…Submit yourselves then to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you, draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Sinners, clean your hands and you double-minded, thank God that there is none here in this congregation, purify your hearts, grieve and lament and cry, your laughter turns into tears and your joy into sadness. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you….”

Brethren, we have talked about many different things. We have talked about the need to embrace the truth as part of the sanctification process, to marry the truth, to love the truth above all things, to welcome the truth in all the ways it manifests itself in our lives, not to walk with disguises, not going around hiding, not going around giving names to our sins that soften them and make them look more attractive than they are, seeing things as they are in the light of God's spirit.

We have spoken of the need to submit to the word of God, which is the source of all truth. We have said that the word of God must govern our lifestyle, it must govern our values, it must govern our ethical decisions, it must govern our family structure, it must govern our thinking life, it must govern our interpretations of what is beautiful, what is well, which is kind. The word of God even if we don't like what the word says, we have to hold on, submit to the word. The word is the source of life for the people of God and the people of God need, you and I, we need to be based on the word.

We have talked about the need to submit to the discipline of a congregation, to establish long-term relationships, because the holiness of God materializes, let's say it that way, the word occurred to me, the holiness of God materializes and manifests itself through through his Church as a capital “I” and through the congregations and churches that are in different cities and countries and parts of the world. We cannot grow apart from the family of God. I don't believe in lone ranger Christians over there stuck in a cave, developing a vain mysticism. I believe in the people of God there loving each other and pulling their bows at times and struggling with each other like little brothers in a family, learning what it is to truly live the Christian life and embody the gifts and the fruit of the spirit in the daily life of a congregation.

I believe that God manifests his grace through the life of the congregation and that if we do not permanently incorporate ourselves into the life of a church, and we submit to his treatment, in the long term, without jumping from one place to another but saying, Lord, here I believe that I am going to grow, here I am going to stay, no matter what comes, I am going to grow and you then see the growth and see the blessing of God. God wants to sanctify us and wants to express his holiness in us through congregational life.

That is why the Apostle says, do not stop congregating as some have out of habit, but invite us to join life, routine in a positive sense of the word, the program, the ministry of a congregation and thus the character of a congregation is completed. Christ in our lives.

It is important, brothers, that we serve the Lord in the context of the family of God and of a particular church, and we believe that where God has placed us, he has placed us to receive life, to prosper, to grow and to give fruit, to the glory of his name.

We also talked about the need to submit to God's direct treatment, to the direct ministration of the Spirit in our lives, when talking about God, to God's deep treatment of us, not to close doors, not to have secret compartments for God, not have safes where only we have the key. God requires total access to all areas of our being and only when we have reached that point of completely submitting ourselves to God without barriers, completely abandoning ourselves to the love and ministry and treatment and discipline of God, only when the Holy Spirit distinguish and discern that in us all resistance and all pride have been broken, and all distance we can truly prosper and grow in the ways of the Gospel.

And today I want to talk to you about one last concept in this regard, and it is the concept of the world and it is the idea, brothers, that we have to reach a moment of crisis as well. God's holiness cannot be realized in our lives until we have reached a point of giving the world a bill of divorce. I believe in divorce, I believe in divorce from the world, I believe in divorcing ourselves from the world and declaring our total love only to Jesus Christ and to God and to things of the spirit.

I believe, brothers, that until we have that experience that I call the crisis experience, that confrontation in ourselves, of the fact that the world cannot give us anything we need to please God and that there is Enmity, brothers, there is enmity between what is the life of the spirit and the life of the world. They are incompatible substances, mutually exclusive. You cannot have the world in your heart and have Christ in your heart. You have to make a decision which of those two Lords you are going to serve.

The Lord Jesus Christ says very clearly, a man or a woman cannot serve two Lords, because they will end up loving one more than the other. And you know what, brothers? The Lord does not believe in bigamy. The Lord is monogamous. The Lord says, either all or nothing. The Lord comes looking for a wife, not two wives. Nor will he look for a wife who is already married. The Lord wants, brothers, that you completely seal yourself in your heart against the attractions and offers and seductions of the world. If you trace the word world in Scripture you will find that it is normally a negative word, it is the word cosmos in the original Greek which is what we use for cosmos when speaking of the universe, but in the Greek, when the word is used cosmos refers to the world.

Now what is the world? Well, in a basic, material sense, the world is this terrestrial orb, this spinning ball that travels thousands of miles a minute through the universe and is part of the solar planet. It is a concept of the world, the creation of God is another concept of the world.

But brothers, in terms of Scripture, especially in the New Testament and in the language of the Apostle Paul and the Apostle John, the word world is a negative word, the word world is that which is against the interests of the Kingdom of God. There is total opposition between the Kingdom of God and the world, and the Kingdom of God has come to subdue the world and establish its superiority and sovereignty over the world.

The person who has not been redeemed by Christ, the person whose heart has not yet been given to Christ, is a citizen of the world. For me the world according to Scripture is that culture, that accumulation of customs and efforts and daily efforts that are not subject to the life of God, that are not subject to the dictates of the spirit. It is the life of culture and society outside of the redeeming grace and transforming power and lordship of God.

The world is that life that has not been redeemed. The world is the society that has not been touched by the word of the Gospel. The world is that crowd of people that you see in big cities, if you go through the financial center of Boston, for example, you go to Time Square, in New York City, those huge crowds and you get up at 7 , at 8 in the morning and you get on, and you go to Park Street here in Boston or 42nd Street, to Pennsylvania Station in New York, and you see this crowd of well-dressed people, with their briefcases, going to their banks and their industries and their academic institutions and you look at their faces and you see vanity and many times you see those totally secularized faces, which are not aware of the life of God and that Christ has come into the world to establish a new kingdom, decent people, people with good intentions, but those people have not subjugated their will to Jesus Christ, that is the world. It is the people who get up in the morning to make their life within time and space and who strive to have elegant clothes, and to have big cars, and to create a name for themselves here on earth, like those of Babylon and to have houses , and be philanthropists sometimes and do good things in quotes, but they don't do it in the name of Jesus Christ. That is the world.

It's not necessarily something criminal, something sexual, something base, something immoral. The world is simply everything that refuses to submit the will to the lordship of Jesus Christ. That is worldly, that is demonic, that is carnal, that is animal as the Apostle Santiago says and that unredeemed substance, that substance not touched by the life of God cannot be part of our life. You understand? That is a dead body, that is a graft that when it tries to get into the body of Christ is rejected because it does not have the same genetic identity, spiritually speaking.

My brother, we have to understand that that life out there, that life in that world with its interests, with its vanity, with its eagerness, with its desire for achievement and merely historical, merely temporary, has nothing to do with us. When you enter and I enter the ways of God, we have a sense, we say to God, to that world, do you know what, brothers? Unfortunately, for many of us, that operation does not take place, that transaction does not take place. We many times accept Christ and as we say, we marry a new lover. We have been married to the world for years, we have given our allegiance to the world's culture or values, to the world's interests, and we fell in love with Christ too. How nice! And we say, I want to marry him too but we don't give a divorce letter first, but we simply sign there, I accept Christ, but there has not been a revolution in our hearts or in our minds.

We try to incorporate the values of the world and simply live with two lovers in the same house, or rather, put the other lover inside our house. And brothers, there has not been a separation, there has not been a separation, and unfortunately I tell you the churches are full of people who are committing bigamy. And I have always told the Lord, Father, my desire, I do not want to be ministering in a church made up of adulterous souls, of double-minded people. I see several people getting up, but it's not because I'm saying anything nasty.

What I'm saying, I hope my brothers didn't feel bad, I'm just playing. But what I am saying, brothers, is that I do not want, I do not want to minister and pastor in an Odyssey-type congregation, where there are many well-dressed people, with healthy values, with the desire to have an orderly and bourgeois life and for That's why they come to church, because the bourgeois is respectable and the church is part of respectability, and that's why they go to church, but something hasn't happened inside, there hasn't been an explosion. His bowels have not been stirred by the presence and touch of God's spirit. You just gummed two things in there, and that's it. But the substances have not been confused, there has not been an internal chemistry.

That is why I believe that the world is as it is, sometimes we go to neighborhoods where there is a church on every corner, but nevertheless the neighborhood is full of crime and the community is destroyed and the very families of those churches are up their sleeves and one wonders where is the power, where is the authority of the people of God, what is happening. Is it that Christ has no power, is it that God's word is not fulfilled, is it that God is exaggerated and promises more than he can fulfill? I believe, brothers, simply that the conduit that we are is stagnant, it is petrified, the conduit is full of substances, we have arteriosclerosis of the spirit, the blood of Christ, the life of Christ is not running through us as it should. . There are lukewarm churches.

When the Apostle John writes through the Holy Spirit to the church of the Odyssey, read it in chapter 3 of Revelation, you say, I am rich and yet you are miserable, he says. He says, oh, I have everything, and he says, you have nothing. Because you are lukewarm I am going to vomit you out of my mouth. He says, I wish you were cold or hot but you are neither one nor the other. You are neither with the devil nor with God and you want to be with both and you make me nauseous, says the Lord.

And brethren, we have to do everything we can to escape that kind of Odyssey type of church destiny. We long for a church of men and women who have had a total experience with Jesus Christ, who have bowed their heads at the name of Jesus and who have recognized the lordship of Christ in all areas of their lives and who have said to the world, I turn my back on you, I have nothing to do with you, I am going to live for my God and for the interests of the Kingdom of God. A church, brothers, that all its desires and that all its energies are consecrated to the interests of the Kingdom of God.

Brothers, the nationality of the world and we reject it and we have a passport that says, heaven, Kingdom of God, we are working to establish a new Kingdom here on earth, to declare the Kingdom of Christ wherever we go, to declare, The Kingdom of Heaven has come near to you. And that can only be done by people who have a new nationality, the nationality of the spirit.

We have to say to the world, to the interests of the world, to the worries of the world, goodbye, I have nothing to do with you and I have to live now for the kingdom. My life, my energies, my emotions, my time, my talents, my money, everything is dedicated to building the Kingdom of God. I am continually planting sticks of dynamite wherever I go, I am leaving them to blow up the world and for the Kingdom of God to come to establish the order of Christ on earth.

My brother, Christ is looking for people who are radically committed to him, but we cannot be radically committed to him without first turning our backs on the world we come from. That hymn that says, the world cannot be my home, speaking of the brother who loves old hymns. That is a beautiful hymn. The world cannot be my home, that is the motto of the believer. The world can no longer be our home. And until you have reached that point of dying to the world, you do not know what it is to truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ. I'm sorry to say it in that way, brothers, radical, because the Lord is radical in his things, the word is clear.

The Lord says, whoever loves father or mother, brother or wife more than me does not deserve to be my disciple, does not deserve to be my disciple. Where is your love? Where is your loyalty right now? Is it in your career, is it in your marriage, is it in your children, is it in your social reputation, is it in anything else? If you are not radically committed to Christ and his claims and the success of the Kingdom of God on earth, you are not, unfortunately it applies to you, adulterous soul, double-minded man, woman.

The word says, the double-minded man or woman does not pretend that he is going to achieve anything, because it is like the wave moved by the wind, it goes from one place to another, the waves are moved by the wind and have a continuous fluctuation, they are never stable compared to that sea of glass on which the feet of the Lord are planted up there, completely stable.

Brothers, God is looking for people of one mind, monogamous people, people completely consecrated and committed to the Kingdom of God. We cannot look at anything else, if you look for John, first John 2, 15 to 17, the word of God is very clear, brothers, the word of God is totally forceful, he says;

“…Do not love the world, that is, do not love the cosmos, do not love this material, temporary matter, do not love the world or the things that are in the world. He is trying to be as comprehensive as possible. “…Do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world, do not be materialistic, do not love the objects of the world, do not love the agenda of the world, do not love the mentality of the world, do not love the program of the world and that The word love means, do not put down your roots, do not put down your eagerness, do not fix your gaze, do not surrender your loyalty, do not sign the page below that says world, do not establish an intimate relationship with the world or the things that are in it. world, because if anyone loves…”, again the word love, and it is important that we understand why that word, “….if anyone loves the world the love of the Father…”, there is a contrast between love of the world and the love of the Father, are two different loves. The love of the Father cannot be realized in you, the fullness of the Father cannot be realized in you, the good intentions of the Father cannot be realized in you, the transforming grace of the Father cannot have its maximum expression in you if love of the world occupies your heart and your spirit.

The presence of God cannot land within you if the runway is covered with love of the world, in other words. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him because everything that is in the world, again that concept of what is in the world, what is in the world, what is planted in the world, “….because everything in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and the pride of life…”.

Again, the desires of the flesh are everything passionate, everything emotional, everything biological, everything mental, everything cerebral. And brothers, let me tell you, the meat, there are many of us who hear the word meat and immediately think of the sexual, pardon the obvious of the word. But brothers, the flesh is much more than that, the flesh is this material, it is everything, again speaking of the word world, everything that is not redeemed, everything that is not touched by the life of God, everything that has not been kindled with the new life of the Holy Spirit, everything that does not give its allegiance to God and to the things of the spirit. That is the carnal, that is the meat.

"... the desires of the flesh..." the desire of the flesh can be a desire to do good without counting on Christ and the values of Christ. Because brothers, there are many people out there who love humanity but they cannot love humanity as humanity needs to be loved because they do not have the love of God expressing through them. The love of man is a treacherous love, it is a poor love, it is an inadequate love, it is a blunt knife, that is why there are so many social workers, so many philanthropic institutions, so many social welfare institutions that want to redeem humanity but they continually have to confess failure. And what they're doing lately is going back to the church and saying, well, we've already tried but now, there in a hidden way. Well, okay, come and help us, what they don't want to do is confess. Yes, we are wrong, outside of Christ we can do nothing.

Now they are calling the church again to come. Now the foundations that before did not think of the church to give them a penny, are now calling on the churches to give them money to work with the problems of society because they are discovering that the church is truly the one that is doing the work in the cities. from the USA.

Because brothers, good intentions are not enough, the love of the world, if the love that you have for humanity is not redeemed by Christ, it does not have the life of Christ within it, then it is part of those passions of the flesh. If you have a hunger and thirst for justice that is not the justice of God, that is also a passion of the flesh. Because sometimes we think that meat is just obviously immoral and bad and harmful. It is not like this. The flesh is everything that tries to do good or bad without counting on God's will. And first ask the Father, tell me, what should I do? That is the passion of the flesh, the eagerness, the eagerness, which is merely earthly and temporal here.

“…Everything in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes….” How many things brothers, once again, the desires of the eyes is not the man who contemplates a woman and his eyes go after her like Don Fulgencio, in the cartoons in the newspapers. No, the desires of the eyes are also the lady who stands in front of a display case and covets the fur coat, and her eyes fill up, light up and she wishes she had that and she is willing to sell her soul to the devil to to have that damn coat, and kill a few squirrels or leopards or whatever, to have them.

The desires of the eyes is the man who stops at the car dealership and to get that latest model Audi or Saab he works 80 hours and steals the time that belongs to the Lord because he wants to have and possess and be intimate with him. shiny metal of that car and sit on your leather seats and idolize and worship that object instead of paying your tribute to the Lord first, and settling for the little rickety cart, perhaps, but that's going to take you to church In the name of the Lord.

Brothers, the desires of the eyes are all things, when you worship the television more than the Lord, that is a desire of the eyes. Brothers, sin enters through the eyes. David coveted a woman because his eyes filled with covetousness and many of us covet objects, covet things.

“…. the desires of the eyes and the vainglory of life….” That's where everything else goes. People who want to be seen in the right places, people who want the approval of others, people who are very image conscious, people who are always looking for position or looking to be named or enlisted in the country club city, or have merely human achievements. That is vainglory. The woman who adores and loves her body and her beauty and is willing to do anything, sometimes ridiculous to display and promote her beauty. That is part of the vainglory of life, giving too much importance to the things of the world.

You may never be named in any record book, but your name will be written in the book of life. Perhaps you will never be mentioned with praise and adoration at the banquets of the city, but when you get up there you will listen, come good and faithful servant, you have been faithful over a little, I will put you over much. You are building for the eternal Kingdom of God and you do not care so much about this vainglory, this vain glory of this world because one day, brothers, those great buildings, those immense masses, those beautiful museums full of works of art, says the Bible , which will ignite and melt and all the elements will be fused together to create new heavens and a new earth. And all the inventions of humanity will be revealed to be just the efforts of a crazy and limited person when we can soar through the air of the universe with the wings that God is going to give us. We won't need planes. Airplanes will be primitive objects compared to what God will allow us to do. And we will do as Startreck from one place to another without having to get on any ship because the Lord himself will be our transporter. We will not need radiators to heat us because the glory of God itself will be our heat. There will be no need for artificial lights because the face of Christ will illuminate all creation.

We cannot love the vainglory of this world. We have to give ourselves therapy and those things that seem so permanent and so solid and so unquestionable, we have to see them with the x-rays of the spirit and understand that they are destined to be destroyed, to be burned, their time is up and there is no appeal. . At the sound of the trumpet one day all these things will cease and we cannot live giving our allegiance to the vain, deceitful glory, to the mirages of the world. We have to see it for what the world is. It is simply a vain glory.

All these things, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, the pride of life do not come from the Father but from the world and the world passes, and its desires, but whoever does the will of God remains forever. Praised be the name of the Lord.

Brothers, what the word of the Lord is telling us today is that we have to look at the world with a certain contempt. And I simply make a clarification, I put an asterisk there and I would like to have more time to develop that. And it is the following, brothers, this does not mean, listen to me, it does not mean that now you are going to go home and call your work and you are going to resign. Please! Don't get me wrong. Okay? And that he is going to leave his children and wife behind and go to Africa to preach the Gospel. It does not mean that we are going to escape our responsibilities.

We are in the world, what happens is that we are not of the world. They are two different things. Okay? We are going to continue until Christ comes and takes us in his flying saucer, we are going to continue working, we are going to continue making an effort, we are going to continue being good citizens, we are going to go to the ballot box and cast our vote for the officials who are going to govern our nation and our state, our city. We will even have a bank account even after tithing. We are going to enjoy the good things that God has given us, why not? We were, my wife and I, a week ago traveling through New Hampshire and taking in the wonderful fall foliage. How nice that sounded, from the state of New Hampshire. And we contemplated the glory of those colors that seem to be illuminated Christmas trees when the sun hits those leaves of so many different colors. I'm even getting poetic, and one sees the glory of God's creation, I admire that, brothers. I enjoy that, I love that. And while we were contemplating that we were listening to beautiful classical music, praise God for the music, for the culture. I love what God has allowed us to create. But I don't put my love into it, brothers, there's a difference. I know that all this has its limit, that its time is counted.

Brothers, we can strive, we can work, we can succeed in life. On the contrary, God has given us the ability to be excellent and we have to be better than the world, we have to be smarter than the world, we have to be more disciplined than the world, we have to make better workers than the world, we have We have to be more responsible than the world, and we have to be better citizens than the world. But our love is not in those things. We work, we strive, we enjoy the things of the world, but we pass lightly, we do not leave heavy footprints on the snow because we are foreigners and pilgrims who are simply passing through, we simply enjoy what it gives us while we are here, but the day God gives us call, our hearts do not stay here on earth, because our hearts are already in that city not made with hands, in that heavenly citizenship that God has called us to enjoy.

I leave you with a thought, Hebrews 11, 13 to 16, where this great list of men and women of faith some of them who suffered great things here and yet lived with excellence before God, their names may not have been mentioned, The world did not know them because they were a different substance from the world, but they were excellent people and look at what deserves God's praise, and hopefully you can be worthy of that praise one day. Hebrews 11, verse 13, says:

“… All these died according to faith without having received what was promised, that promise of God, that divine substance, he says, if not looking at it from afar and believing it and greeting it as we greet the coming of Christ one day, and confessing that they were foreigners and pilgrims on earth because what they say clearly implies that they are looking for a homeland, because if they had been thinking about the one they came from, that is, the world, they certainly had time to return. But they longed for a better homeland, this is heavenly, so God is not ashamed to call himself their God because he has prepared a city for them…”

Brothers, I hope that on this day you will be a citizen of that city that God has prepared. I hope that on this day you see yourself as a foreigner and a pilgrim and if your heart is not defined about that, this is the moment of definition.