How does God view death and life? - Beheading of John the Baptist

I want to share with you the continuation of the message that we started last Sunday, and this time to stick to the words and the concepts that I want to share with you, I made a Power Point presentation so that you can follow me, because I believe that the concepts that I want to share are a bit complex.

Let's go to the word of the Lord first in the Gospel according to Saint Mark, in Chapter 6, see 14. How does one begin this sermon after a time like this, because this would seem to go in the opposite direction, but it is the same, it is the same Pentecostal energy, I assure you.

We are talking in this series of messages about complex faith. You will remember that we have chosen several texts. Last Sunday there were about 5 passages of Scripture that tell us about that God who often behaves in ways that are a bit strange and difficult to explain easily.

We remember the text when these boys mock Elisha and Elisha curses them, a bear comes out of the jungle, out of the forest and kills 42 youngsters who behaved in a disrespectful way before the man of God. and one wonders how is it possible?

After that we saw another text where Ahab sends a captain with 50 men to capture the prophet Elisha again, and they treat him with disrespect and Elisha says, well, if I am a man of God as you say I am, let fire fall from heaven and consume the captain with his 50 men, 51 are destroyed by the fire of God that comes down from on high.

Another group of men comes, 50 more with their captain, they give the same order to Eliseo, Eliseo reacts in the same way, 50 more men, plus their captain are destroyed. Finally this other captain arrives with 50 men, kneels before the prophet, treats him with respect and then the prophet allows himself to be brought before the king.

We also saw another text where God commands Israel to destroy all the pagan nations they find on their way when they enter the land of Canaan. And he says, because I, your God, move like consuming fire.

And then we turn to the New Testament so that there is no doubt that God works that way throughout all of Scripture, and we see there when Ananias and Sapphira are lied to by the Holy Spirit about the price of the property they just sold and they fall both struck down instantly, so they won't do it again.

And we also saw the case where Paul, in First Corinthians, Chapter 11 talks about the Lord's Supper, which many or some in the church are treating with disrespect and who are not discerning the deep and holy meaning of that moment and are simply eating as they please and believing that they are behaving as if they were in any kind of comel, dishonoring the presence of God and the sanctity of those symbols. And Paul says, "That's why there are people among you who are sick." Between whom? In the church. People who are sick and some sleep, in quotes, it's not that they were taking naps after eating, no, they were dead, they had been... God had also sent punishment on their lives and they had died of some disease, we suppose. They were Christians and God had sent his discipline upon the church in that way.

So, what I wanted with these texts is to present the fact that God sometimes moves in sinister ways and that sometimes he does things that do not fit with that image we have of a merciful, kind, gentle, loving God. He is loving, gentle, tender, forgiving, compassionate, but the Bible also says that he is a consuming fire. And sometimes we do not know what is going to fall, if it is the fire of blessing or the fire of extermination. And we have to walk very carefully.

The Bible is full of complex passages like this, which invite us to have a complex faith. I believe that we have to come before the presence of God, yes, and ask with power and authority, but also reserve space for God to be God.

So, I want one more text before I get into the core of the sermon. Mark, Chapter 6, verse 14 where we have what happened to the prophet John the Baptist. It says here that King Herod heard of the fame of Jesus because his name had become notorious and said, John the Baptist has risen from the dead and that is why these powers act on him. Others said, no, it is not John the Baptist, Elijah, and others said, it is a prophet or one of the prophets. Upon hearing this Herod said, "This is John whom I beheaded who has risen from the dead."

You are making guesses, who is this Jesus, does all these miracles. Will it be a reincarnation of Juan? Who is it? Is he a prophet, as the Bible says, who would rise again in the last days? Because? Because Herod himself had sent and arrested, seized John and chained him in prison because of Herodias, the wife of Philip, his brother, because he had taken her as his wife. Because John was telling Herod, "It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife."

As a prophet of God, John was denouncing that public scandal that Herod had taken her husband's wife and taken her as his wife. And she seems to have consented to that kind of treatment. And Herodias stalked John and wanted to kill him. It seems that the lady was not an easy thing. But he couldn't, because Herod was afraid of John.

Herod, even though he was a bad man, but he recognized something of the presence of God in John. He feared John, knowing that he was a just and holy man and kept him safe, and listening to him he was very perplexed, but he listened willingly.

In Herod there was something like he knew that this man had a different word from the others, and he knew that there was something of the presence of God but in his wickedness he could not break with his sin and accede. But he also respected this man.

But an opportune day came when Herod, on his birthday party, was giving a dinner to his princes and tribunes and to the principals of Galilee, the daughter of Herodias entering, danced and pleased the king. And the king said to the girl, “Ask me whatever you want and I will give it to you,” and he swore to her, “whatever you ask I will give you up to half of my kingdom.”

Herod was intoxicated with the beauty of this girl, her spectacular dance, in front of all the companions of her party. He had probably had a few extra sticks and was a little drunk and euphoric.

"Leaving her, she said to her mother, what shall I ask of her?" She thought, my mom is going to tell me a new suit, a trip to the Bahamas, a plane trip with my friends for her graduation day. No, but look at what his mother asked for, he says, “And she told him, ask him for the head of John the Baptist. Then she quickly entered the king and asked, saying, I want you to give me the head of John the Baptist on a plate right now. And the king was very saddened but because of the oath and those who were with him at the table, he did not want to throw it away.

He had given his word, his commitment as king, there were people who had listened to him, he could not back down. “And with deep pain he had to keep his promise. And immediately the king, sending one of the guards, ordered the head of John to be brought. The guard went and beheaded him in jail and brought his head on a plate and gave it to the girl and the girl gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard these, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb."

Juan had been in prison for a while now and he knew that something bad was coming for his life and finally this is the result that we see here. and I chose this text because it is a problematic text, because when one thinks about this man who was chosen by God from before the foundation of the world, he was chosen to be the herald of his Son Jesus Christ, prophecies had spoken of that herald who went before saying, prepare the way for the Lord.

John is born under the announcement and ministry of angels. Christ said about John that no man, son of man, born of a woman was as great in all of human history as John. And John discerned that Jesus was the Son of God and baptized him. God invested so much in this man's life and then apparently at the whim of an evil woman, and for in a moment that almost seems like coincidence, John was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And Herod commits without knowing what he is doing and has to comply.

And this man full of the spirit of God, with so much future apparently and so much weight on his life, goes a random guard, enters Juan's cell. Can you imagine that moment? And he decapitates him right there and takes his head, puts it on a plate and carries it away. And this man dies as if he were anyone. Disciples have to take the job of picking up his body and taking it to bury.

And one wonders why God allows that? Notice that this is where the complex things come from, how God sometimes works in one's life and would John have prayed for God to get him out of jail? Will Juan have thought that yes, God is going to get me out of jail? Because he has done so much for my life, he has invested so much in me, I know he is going to get me out of here. Days go by and they don't take it out.

Look how far the thing goes that one day John, I imagine deeply depressed and full of doubts, sends one of his disciples to Jesus and says, "Lord, I want to know if you are truly the Messiah or if we have to wait for another?

Can you imagine the sadness of that question, when this man all his life had grown under the weight of his prophetic call and saw the dove descending on the Son of God and declared it so publicly and recognized that his cousin was the Son of God, the promised Messiah. And now, immersed in how difficult to explain his situation, he doubts and sends to tell him, Lord, is it you? I made a mistake? Or is it another that we have to wait for?

See, that happens that we don't like to think about it, because it sort of complicates our lives. And the Lord then says that he got into a whirlpool of miracles, healed sick, paralyzed, blind, and told him, “go and tell John, the blind see, the paralyzed walk. I am the Son of God.”

And yet, one is there captured, yet on other occasions God freed people less than John from jail. He freed Peter twice from prison and twice from the hands of Herod. However, the prophet John, who was a highly chosen minister of God, was not delivered.

So, what I want to invite us is that, as I tell you, we retain this idea that our faith is complex. We have adored the Lord, we have cried out to God, we have heard a young man testify that God has healed him. We are a church that adheres to Pentecostal ethics and theology. We believe in fasting, prayer, crying out, spiritual warfare, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the ministry of the Holy Spirit, but as I have told you in this series of sermons, I also want to invite us to keep a open space for the mystery of God many times in our lives.

And sometimes we must be careful with the things we say, presuming that God is going to do this, he is going to do that, when God perhaps has another plan in our life. And that we as a church maintain that balance, again, why do I often preach as I preach? Why do we do one thing one day, another thing we say another? You listen to this sermon and it might seem like a denial of what we did on Wednesday and even on Wednesday I have my questions and my things. A beautiful presence of the Lord and many things there, but in that balance, in that complexity we are involved and faith is like that, the faith of the children of God is a complex faith.

I'm going to summarize what I talked about last week. 1. We will never be able to read the Bible as it is. Do you remember what I said? We will never catch God's message exactly as it was delivered. Because? Because we always read the Bible through cultural, personal, denominational lenses. We never grasp the Bible itself, always before reading the Bible, whether we like it or not, there is some kind of interpretive lens that we have put on. Some kind of filter that doesn't let us see her as she is and we have to settle for that idea. I could develop that a lot more but this is not the time to do it.

What I want to tell you is that the human being and the philosophers of knowledge of ontology, which is the branch of philosophy that deals with being, with reality say the same thing. No one can see reality as it is, perfectly. What you see is an interpretation through your nervous, neurological system, your brain, your culture.

I was watching a series of documentaries recently, about the aborigines on the island of Papua New Guinea, and these aborigines still live in the stone age, and I wonder when one of those aborigines sees a plane pass through their territory, what will they see? We would say it is an airplane. They see maybe an angel, maybe they see a demon, maybe they see God crossing over to go to another planet. They are seeing in the light of their understanding of things. And no one sees reality exactly as it is. We always see it through our culture.

The example of when we see ourselves in a mirror, we never see ourselves as we are. We see each other through our complexes, our culture, our aspirations. You will remember that I used the example of the man with the big nose? This brother that I was in an interview with him, on television, he sees himself on the screen before the program starts, in profile and he sees his big nose. And he whines and says, "My gosh, that big nose I have." And I tell him, "No, that nose is a beautiful nose, I would like to have that pretty nose, so strong, so manly, so eagle." Because it wasn't that big, he was exaggerating.

How many times will this man look in the mirror and regret his nose? I think your nose is beautiful. He is a man who measures about 6.4, big bones and a big jaw, and a big body, that nose suits him perfectly, but for him he would like to have a small and well-controlled nose, well-behaved.

The person who looks too fat, too skinny, legs too fat, too skinny. The men would like to have a little more weight and look, he looks very good as he is. Cultures change, we see each other in different ways, and no one looks exactly the same.

I don't know how many have seen that movie, I think Legally Blond, has anyone seen it? confess. Someone has seen? I think it's in that movie that the girl takes a picture to see herself because she doesn't know what she really looks like and she has to see herself in a picture because she doesn't trust herself looking in the mirror.

It's true, you never know exactly what you look like because you always see yourself through your fears, to how you think you really are. There is a person I know who says that he never looks good in photos. I say, no, you look great. We never see each other neutrally, objectively. Each culture views the Bible through its own lenses and biases.

The man of the eighteenth century saw the Bible in a different way than how he sees it... of course, there are some constants that are there, but there are many things that we assemble in different ways according to the culture to which we belong, middle class, upper middle class.

The Park Street church does not see the Bible in the same way that we do, here a group of Central Americans and Caribbean and South Americans see it. Ultra Pentecostal churches see it in a different way. There are things that we share in common but each one has a different Bible although, as I say, there are also things that are always the same. Each culture views the Bible through its own lenses and biases.

For example, how could the Americans, I was saying, here in New England, for example, or in Virginia, or in North Carolina or Georgia, how could they enslave the Africans or exploit the Indians, and sustain a vital Christian faith through the same time. Because? Because they had interpretive glasses that allowed them to do that. They chose texts, like the texts that Paul speaks about slaves, serve your masters with great love and dedication. Don't abuse your faith. And they were like, oh, well, that means slavery is biblically permissible. And very conveniently they exploited their slaves and even prevented them from reading the Bible so that they were not human beings then to have to respect them.

But still, we see that their interpretive lenses allowed them to do these atrocities. The Puritans, how could they take their land from the Indians? Because they interpreted that well, if the Jews entered Canaan and took their lands from those pagan tribes, who do not know God, and by their sin they have offended God, and God gave them the land, we can come here, that we come to preach the Gospel, and to establish the Gospel in this powerful continent, we can do the same and God gives us the land. We are taking it away from sorcerers, from demon-possessed people, from people who do not know God. and we are also going to preach the word here. We are going to create a new society, exemplary for all humanity. So we can do it.

And little by little they began rubbing shoulders and putting and throwing the indigenous tribes out and finally put them on the reservations of the United States. They had interpretive glasses with which they read the word.

The inquisition that massacred Jews and Protestants while they believed they were glorifying God. The key, brothers, to all of this that I am telling you is that they put the interpretive glasses on us before we can always read the Bible for ourselves.

No one approaches the Bible innocently, like it's something they discovered in an Indiana Jones cave and pulled it out, and what is this? And then start reading it. No. You always read the Bible through previous training, it could be a denomination in which you grew up and knew the Lord, a mentor who discipled you, an influential book that served as a starting point for reflection on the Bible that you were going to make in the future, a church in which you grew up and was born, a culture. Those who have known the Lord here in León de Judá and have drunk the milk of León de Judá since they were little or since they knew the Lord approach the Bible in a different way presumably than others. And even those, though, come from a Catholic background and that's built into their program as well and they're kind of grappling with their Catholic background when they read the Scripture and the claims.

And when they listen to me, many times they are listening to the priest from years ago. Some even call me Father, including, from time to time, he gets away from them. No one approaches the Bible neutrally, remember that. And that's important. I want to make a point, we all suffer from this disease in one way or another.

Brothers, there are still things that appear black and white that are not. There are things that seem clear in the Bible, incontrovertible, without a doubt, and if you dig a little deeper you will discover that there are also things that are complex.

For example, the second coming of Christ, how many believe that Christ is coming again? Raise your hand. I think everyone, right? it could come tomorrow, it could come in 30 years, 40 years, honestly we don't know completely. But he's coming soon, yes, and I'll be an old man all down, but I'll possibly see him. I believe it, there is still time. Don't fill out the credit card yet, brother. OK? Because there are things that still...

There are people who believe, for example, without a doubt, Christ comes before the great tribulation. How many believe that Christ comes before the great tribulation? You know what? There are God fearing people who believe differently. There are seminary professors, people filled with the Holy Spirit, I myself have my own different ideas about that.

Now, I tell you, don't be intimidated, leave today with your faith clear in that, if that's what you believe, because I don't have time to explain much about it. One day maybe we can talk about it. There is much more, it is that there are so many prophetic texts in the Bible that if you take them all and put them on little pieces of paper on a surface, on the floor, for example, there are different ways in which those texts can be assembled and they say subtly different things. Of course, if I believe that Christ is coming, I believe that there is going to be a great tribulation, I believe that the church is going to be raised up in heaven, but the chronology of those things, believe in the antichrist, I believe in Armageddon, but the chronology, the sequence of those events, no one can fully tell me that they know it.

Even what you believe is absolutely incontrovertible, undeniable, that comes to you from North American evangelical missionaries, who evangelized Latin America in the 30s, 40s, 50s and who were basing themselves on a school of thought that had recently emerged. But today all of us who grew up under that theology believe it as... including our brother Yiye Ávila, whom I love and respect very much, and they believe it as the absolute, incontrovertible word of God. but study the history of it, and you'll see that it's a doctrine that through the centuries, the church believed very differently, through the centuries. This is a recently established doctrine. But many people don't study church history and therefore don't know that.

It is what I say, there are doctrines that seem absolute but are relative. Another question, are tongues the essential evidence to have the baptism of the Holy Spirit. All the red-bone Pentecostals are going to tell me, amen, of course they are. For example, the Assemblies of God still have in their doctrinal statement that tongues are the initial evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. However, only a few believe that. Today most Pentecostal theologians, if they have the courage to say so, say, no, we don't believe that anymore. Some have to say it publicly because they want their seminary job, but they don't believe it.

When you talk to many pastors, including Pentecostals to the letter, with their pants off as they say, you will discover that many of them do not believe that. And most of the Pentecostal and charismatic churches today neither practice it nor believe it. But how does that remain nebulous, indefinite and evolves but is not confronted. I believe there are many ways to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Now, I believe that everyone who has the baptism of the Holy Ghost can speak in a tongue, and should speak in a tongue. Languages are beautiful, important, I speak in language, more than all of you, but I'm not going to say it like that. I believe in languages. But I don't think it's the initial evidence.

Now, those who believe it, there are recordings, CDs that you can buy on Amazon.com that teach you how to speak in tongues in 5 minutes. Because? Because people have to fabricate it to be able to believe it many times. It is not necessarily so.

For many classic Pentecostals this is an absolute truth but currently this is in flux and the position of the church regarding this is changing rapidly.

Another point in my presentation. There are great interpretive principles that we sometimes unconsciously adopt. These are principles that determine how you approach a passage. They are postulated to use a word from mathematics, which you say, when I approach this passage I am going to interpret it in light of this principle. Those interpretive principles govern and determine the way we read specific passages and themes of Scripture.

Those principles determine the moral and ethical conclusions we draw from our readings of the word. Now, these great interpretive principles, in turn, can also be very subjective and conditioned by time and the culture in which we live. They are not absolute, they are not totally objective.

I would like to spend more time but I have promised myself that I am going to finish this sermon today and for that reason I want to go a little faster and I ask your forgiveness. Sometimes I don't preach these sermons because I think I'm going to lose. How many are still with me? are they following me? And if not, make believe that yes, that you are following me.

Those great principles are subjective too and are not necessarily the absolute truth. I want to give you an example of what I'm saying. Here is one of those great interpretive principles, what is the precise relationship between the Old and New Testaments? Where can we say, this is the Old Testament and it does not apply to us, and here now the New Testament begins and this does apply to us? Isn't it true that if you know the Bible, you know that many times it is difficult?

The Bible says, for example, that we cannot eat lobster, or shrimp, or schnitzel, or pork, imagine. I told the brothers this morning, look, there are people who if you tell them, look, you can't wear paint, or a short skirt, or pants, they're going to say amen, that's fine. But you tell them, you can't eat chops or pork on December 24, and they say, well, I'm sorry, I can't go there. If that is what is required, I prefer Catholic or agnostic.

However, the Bible says that. How many have ever eaten a rabbit on fire, with wine or something like that. The Bible says that you should not eat something that does not have open hooves, I think it is, that does not chew the grass or the grass that is eaten. Now, that's to what extent. Because I have met evangelicals who do not eat black pudding. Do you know what blood sausage is? The bloody sausage. Because the Bible says that the blood of the animal will not be eaten because in the blood is life.

And then why do they eat those lobsters and give glory to God for how good they taste? And they eat the blood sausage. Where is the interpretive principle that allows you not to eat one thing and eat the other? Where is the principle that determines a thing? There are many things that we have taken from the Old Testament and transferred to the New and there are others that we have left behind. Because? What justifies one thing and the other?

Sometimes we don't ask ourselves those questions because they are uncomfortable. Tithing, for example, actually some might very conveniently say that tithing ended the New Testament because now we're in grace, we don't have to give, we're not in law. And in a sense, there is no text in the New Testament that says conclusively that tithing is to be given. Now, you know what? After reading so much about these topics, I can tell you one thing, it is true, you do not have to give a tithe, you have to give more than a tithe to the Lord. Because I say that if in the old administration, which was imperfect and limited, you had to give 10 percent, now in this new administration, where Christ shed his blood for you, you have access to the very throne of God's grace, how Are you going to give less to the Lord than what you gave before?

But many times we have transferred these things because it is convenient for the pastors of the church, the tithe. The same with the role of women in the church. Saturday is in ─ one of the 10 commandments is you shall keep Saturday because in 6 days God made the earth, on the seventh he rested. That is one of the 10 commandments. Do any of you keep the Sabbath? We keep Sunday but not Saturday, it is the seventh day, the Saturday that the Jews keep.

However, today we do. Because? There was a historical development in the life of the church, long to explain, and we ended up keeping the first day of the week, not the seventh. But it's not clear why the church made that change. Theologians try to explain it but it is not totally clear.

Today there are women pastors, however, Paul says the street woman in the Congregation, however many theologians find their way of explaining that. And amen, very possibly they are right, but there are people who if you do not believe that a woman should be a shepherdess, you are a troglodyte, a sinner, one who hates women and they think like ─ no, there is a right to think the other way too.

There are different things, brothers, that are very complex in Scripture but each one makes their arrangement as they want, according to the denomination, according to the church and people get the church that preaches as they want. If they want to be homosexual, they look for a church that supports homosexuals. If they want women pastors, they find a church that accepts women pastors. If they want a soft church that doesn't preach holiness, they go to a church that doesn't preach holiness. If they want a church committed to social work and social justice, they go to church like this. If they want a church with well-behaved people, in three-piece suits every Sunday, they go to that church. Each one looks for what is convenient for him many times.

But sometimes we don't ask ourselves why we believe the things we do. I am speaking of one principle only, one of many. This principle of the relationship between the Old and the New.

Paul shaves his head in the New Testament as a promise. How many churches say, brothers, this week we are going to fast, pray, and shave our heads? Do you hear someone? However, Paul did it. Was that Pablo who shaved his head inspired or not? Was it an Old or New Testament thing? Nobody says afterwards that we simply don't have to shave our heads anymore because we are under grace.

Paul did a number of things that we don't do today. Because? It was in transition towards the New Testament, towards the Christian evangelical economy or we have simply abandoned certain principles and perhaps God would want us to continue celebrating it.

What part of a certain Old Testament doctrine should we transfer to the New? Should Jews, who convert, preserve their Judaic rites and customs, even while adopting the teachings of the New Testament? He knows that in America and around the world Jews are turning to the Lord and have been created as different denominations. There are Messianic Jews who believe that they must still keep their rites, they must keep the Sabbath, they must keep the Old Testament festivals, only now they believe that Jesus is their Messiah.

Other Jews say, no, we are going to join the Gentile church or simply, that was not from the old order but not now, we are free in Amashia and now we don't have to use those things. They disagree about these things. There is a lot of nebulosity in all this. Sometimes I wonder, Lord, is there a hidden blessing in keeping the Sabbath? Don't worry, we will continue to meet on Sundays, but it is a question that I have asked myself many times.

And who knows, sometimes it has really worried me. One day with my family we would get together on Friday night, make a good roast chicken like the Jews do and buy a loaf of bread in Newton or Brooklyn and make a Saturday, celebrate a Saturday, a Shabbath. And who knows if there is something there? I am not going to do something religious but who knows if there is a special blessing.

Read all the blessings in the Bible about keeping the Sabbath. What about the different parties? Here in our church there are people who secretly and devotionally, not religiously, keep some of the Old Testament feasts and I say, glory to God, amen. They do. That is a blessing.

I believe that one day, perhaps in the future, when prophecy goes further, perhaps God is going to open things that are sealed now and are closed in Scripture, to our understanding. And perhaps we will celebrate some of those things again and there will be blessings that will come from there because God still has things hidden there in his treasure box.

But today these things ─ the Bible is mysterious and the doctrine of Scripture is mysterious. There's a lot of nebulosity and I'm going towards something, don't worry. Why was it changed from Saturday to Sunday? History intervenes in this. At a time when the Jews revolted against Rome in the 70 or 60-odd year or so, after Jesus Christ, there was a prophecy among the Messianic Jews who believed in Jesus, not to stay in Jerusalem and not to participate in the rebellion. against Rome. And the Jewish Christians got out of Jerusalem before Rome swept in with all its might and completely destroyed Jerusalem. And the Jews never forgave that to the Christian Jews.

And from then on there started to be a gap, ─ this is an oversimplification but ─ there started to be a growing gap between the Jews who believed in [inaudible] and the Jews who still believed that they were in the Old Testament. And the two aspects of the Judeo-Christian world kept separating and becoming more and more distant from each other, until we have the current situation, where the Jews are over there and we, the Christians, are here.

But was that the perfect will of God? I don't know, I see that lately God has been drawing a little closer to the Christian people, his church, to his people from there in Israel, and the clock in Israel is getting a little closer each day to the clock in the church.

The Bible says that when the consummation of the times of the Gentile people ends, God will start his clock again with the Jewish people. We already see it, the prophecies are being fulfilled for the Hebrew people.

There are many mysterious things, which I want to tell you, brothers, regarding these passages. The passages from our reading that I have shared with you show this complex aspect of Scripture, as I already told you. As well as the problematic conclusions to which these readings can sometimes lead us.

I ask you, how does God see death and life? We sometimes try to put God in a box and say, no, God doesn't do this, God doesn't do that. God loves life too much. Look, brother, for God death and life are, I would say, the same thing. God sometimes moves in death and sometimes in life. God is sometimes I believe, in the earthquake, in the hurricane, in the storm, in the explosion of a supernova in space, God is in destruction and the recreation of worlds and planets. God is there when a volcano vomits its lava and destroys an entire jungle and then a few days later the little bushes begin to sprout again from the same lava that destroyed the jungle. And a more fruitful and fertile forest is created again than the first because the lava itself, which destroyed it, fertilizes it.

God moves in mysterious ways. I have never put a fence around the Lord and tell him, you only act this way and not the other. This may seem like something very sophisticated to you, but many times our life God is working and I don't know if he is working for life or for death, what I know is that he is good and that his mercy is forever and that he He works as he pleases.

Paul prayed to Jesus three times, Lord, take this sting away from me. And he thought, this man who has rebuked demons, healed the sick, surely he is going to take me away the first time I pray to him. And three times the Lord said to him, my grace is enough for you, Paul, my power is made perfect in your weakness. God works in different ways.

And while I tell you, pray, cry out, fast, come before the throne of God and ask for your healing, ask for your prosperity, ask for your anointing, but also say, but God, you are God and you are in heaven and I I am on earth, your will be done and not mine. We always have to reserve a space for the mystery of God.

And we can never say, no, if you do this, God will do that. I can't tell you when you come to my office that God will surely save your marriage, if we pray, if we rebuke the devil. I can say, it is God's desire but God is not in your wife, or in your husband and God does not turn him into an automaton so that they love you and preserve your marriage. Let's pray that God does it. Fast, let's cry out to God and do everything you can, but I don't dare tell him one hundred percent, no God, he's going to save your marriage. Because many times God is mysterious and also God has his ─

That's why I don't like to preach these sermons, because they get me into trouble. Listen to this, God has his limitations. What do I mean by that? God is all-powerful, but when his power lands on earth and meets the freedom of man, the free will that he himself gave to man, then God has to confine his power to the freedom of that man, that woman who he created. And then God has to bite his knuckles sometimes wanting to do something in that person's life and he says, no, because I believe he is free and I cannot rape. If he wants to go to hell I have to leave him even though my heart breaks into a thousand pieces. This humanity with all its wars, its tribulations, its crimes and all that, you don't believe that God is there in heaven, his heart is torn to pieces, wanting to save this humanity and he says, as Jesus said to Jerusalem, "Jerusalem , Jerusalem, how I wanted to cover you as the hen covers her chicks and you did not want to."

So, I always tell people, look, there are three great protagonists in the world: God, the devil and man. And those three characters relate to each other in very mysterious ways. However, sometimes I hear the evangelists, and the preachers, no, give the Lord 100 pesos, plant him a thousand dollars and he will give you 10 thousand. Plant the car for him and ─ the car is always for the evangelist, by the way ─ plant the car for him and God will give you one of the latest model. It will give you two Porches in the marquee. He is going to fertilize your barren wife so that she has children. Those are empty words, foolish words.

And people who want to be told what they want to hear say, amen, glory to God and live shallow, foolish lives. You will never hear me say that, because I don't see that anywhere in the Bible. Now, people will come here that many times I invite them and they want ─ 90% of what they say is good, and that 10% I do not agree with them, you will see here an uncomfortable smile, well, Lord, have mercy.

And I hope that you are a Congregation complex enough not to be scandalized. What I want is that you ─ that's why last Wednesday, for example, we had that very different Pentecostal service, we need to be a church that when you see things that don't completely agree, look, throw them out to a side. Take what you can get, give glory to God for the mystery and don't lose sleep over the rest. Because we are a church that is always looking for the anointing, and sometimes the anointing comes in a little weird and different packages.

I say that receiving the anointing of God is like eating lobster, you catch a lobster and it dirty your mouth and hands and even your clothes, they even have to put a bib on you so it doesn't get dirty, and you break teeth and they give you like 4 instruments, looks like a surgeon, all for two ounces of lobster meat.

And when you finish your plate it looks like a graveyard, full of pieces of bones and a shell that looks like a skeleton. Listen to me, but that little piece of lobster tasted good. And you're willing to pay $30 for that piece of lobster.

And so it is with the anointing, sometimes the anointing comes in a really weird package and you have to break a lot of bones to get to the real anointing. And the evangelists, and the preachers come with a lot of baggage that they learned from other evangelists, and they recite it like the parrot and they do it as they learned from others.

But within that sometimes mysteriously is the anointing of God. What you have to do is get into the foliage and grab the anointing and stay with it, give the rest to the Lord. And so it is that a mature and powerful church is created.

You think I'm sitting there drinking a teapot, no, no, I know things, but I've learned that to enter into the mystery of God you have to have a strong constitution. What I think God doesn't like is super intellectual people, wine tasters who despise the things of God because they don't come packaged as they want. You have to be very careful. I myself sometimes have to tell him, Lord, take this intellect and put it under discipline, because many times one does not know what God is up to. And a lot of people miss out on great blessings because they are super intellectual and super cultural and super refined and sometimes God's packages come in a baby wrapped in diapers, soiling the diapers and it's the Son of God, imagine that. And whoever believes that God comes with a fine suit and to be born in places of princes, the blessing is lost.

Many of you, of us, need to humble our intellect, our refinement and when there are scandalous things, then we will see what God truly wants us to see. Listen to me.

However, there are also many people in the Pentecostal world saying things that are nonsense like the parrot. And I am neither in one world nor in the other, and I am in both and so should you be too. Because the Bible, the word of God, that is what I want to leave you with, is extremely complex. How does God view death and life? God kills people still.

I put the word kill and I was going to remove it and clean it up a bit but I left it there. Because I believe that if God can still exterminate a person or someone in a church can die because something happened and God takes them to heaven better, who knows. God does what he absolutely wants.

Does God still exterminate entire groups of people? Who knows. Are there Christians who lose their lives due to presumption, sin, offense against the Holy Spirit? Who knows. There will be people that God saves before they get lost and he takes them with him, because he knows that if they continue here on earth they will end up drugged and killing people. He took it with him as a child, who knows.

So why did he allow it to be born? Well, that's up to him. God is mysterious and we have to walk lightly, lightly on earth without losing our faith, without losing our certainty that God is almighty and that he does intervene in our lives.

Can God allow one of his children to die of a disease for lofty purposes, for him to glorify himself, for someone to be blessed and grow in their faith? I think so. The Bible says that the blood of the martyrs is precious in the eyes of God. I believe that there are people who have died so that principalities and powers may be destroyed in a city or in a nation, or in a pagan tribe and that death of that martyr has released the grace of God and has allowed many to come to know Jesus . Who knows.

Does God still expel people from their lands to give them over to others? The Palestinian issue is something very complex, I hear Christians saying, no, it is impossible for God to get the Palestinians out, even though all of that is so complex. Look, God does what he wants. God gave their land to the Jews, that land is irrevocable, no one can take it away. God does what he wants, he is the owner of the atoms of those lands.

Can God have partial deals with a dictator? Look God uses who he wants. In the Bible he dealt with Sirius, he dealt with Nebuchadnezzar, with Ahab himself, Ahab once regretted something and God said, you know what? I am going to forgive him and he had mercy on Ahab, although he continued on his bad path afterwards.

God does incredible things, brothers. I think that who knows if one day I am going to find Fidel Castro there in heaven to welcome me with his beard and his uniform. Cubans, forgive me, brothers, if he repents at the last minute, before his death, God can forgive him and he is God, who knows. God moves in different ways. Do you understand what I'm saying?

You have to repent first. The thief on the cross repented an instant before dying and the Lord told him, "today you will be with me in paradise." Can God use war, natural calamities to advance his purposes in history? I think so. To what extent was God involved in the conquest of America? Yes, entire tribes died, millions of Indians, but I don't believe that this happened outside of God's providence. America learned the Gospel through sinful, exploitative people, but the Gospel entered these Latin American nations. Sometimes the movements of God, of God's will, are like the movements of hurricanes and the movements of the earth that settle the earth so that there is more solidity. They are movements that destroy but also create. There is death but life also comes and so it happens at the level of a family, of an individual and we have to flow with that complexity of God. God wants complex people.

Could God be acting today through the war in Afghanistan, Iran or Iraq, rather to promote the spread of the Gospel? The Arab world needs a shock, those brave and militant and violent people are not going to convert unless it is through powerful movements. Who knows if God is working right now in the Middle East so that when these Western groups enter, the doors to the Gospel are opened.

There is death, true, there is sin, true, but God is doing something in the Middle East. We say, yes, God is doing it, but he can't do it through Iraq and Afghanistan. You do not know. Don't presume you know how God moves. God is mysterious and he does things the way he wants.

And if so, what does this say about the character of God then? What are the conclusions? What conclusions should we adopt that determine the way we relate to the politics, ethics, and morality of our time? These are the questions that we as complex Christians have to ask ourselves. Is God still working in similar ways in our time or has he somehow matured and gotten a little softer after all these years of toiling with us?

Has God abandoned his weird ways of operating in history yet? If you say yes, well, what does the Bible say about Armageddon? A war is coming in recent times and many people are going to die. The Bible says that blood will reach the legs of a horse. The antichrist is coming, it is predicted in the word and he has to come for the word to be fulfilled.

What about the destructive plagues in the book of Revelation where millions and millions of people are said to die? Who sends those plagues? What about the destruction of the earth with fire in the future? What of hell?

Many people say, God is too loving and merciful to send people to eternal damnation. God has declared that there is indeed a hell, there is an eternal judgment, and yet, I believe that even in spite of all that, God is loving, merciful, compassionate, and tender, and that is why he sent his Son Jesus Christ so that no one die in hell. But there is a hell.

And God uses all these means, brothers, to deal with humanity. Look, here I conclude, where is Pastor Miranda going with all this? The practical effect of all this should be to inspire in us a certain humility, an attitude of tolerance in nebulous areas of Scripture.

I want to undermine the confidence of some a little so that they open space for more of God to fit in them. That knowledge of the complexity of Scripture, of the complexity of God's character, of the sovereign way in which he acts in our lives, our families, our nations, our culture, our world, should inspire in us a desire to seek more. , scrutinize the Scriptures more thoroughly, pray more, cling more to God, trust ourselves less, seek `more illumination, be more tolerant of our brothers, be more open to God's will as it wants to manifest in our lives. It must make us more tender towards God, we must say, Lord, more and more, your will be done in me, do with me what you want, use me as your instrument because I don't know myself.

The more I know God, I told the brothers this morning, the less I know him. The more I scrutinize the word, the more God deals with me, I feel like the less I can believe that I know God, the closer I get to him, the more he moves away from me, as he gets closer to me, I feel like he is too big for me and I have to be smaller, more humble, more subdued and lower my hands.

Sometimes I don't even know what to ask of God, but I love him more and I feel closer to him and the more I lack prayer, like the air, and the more I believe in his power, and the more I seek his anointing, and more I have an appetite for it. But I also know that he will never allow himself to be put in my bag and that no matter how much I love him, if I don't take care of myself, he will slap me too, because he is incorruptible and sometimes fire hits me under my feet and I I say, I can't take it anymore, and he says, no, you can take it a little longer, because I want to form the man in you that I want you to be.

And it's the same with you. Do not fit God, do not try to limit him or his word, because his word is much broader than you can ever imagine. Everything I am saying should lead us to an awareness of mystery. I want you to live your life in awe. When you walk, walk as you walk between two immense mountains that are so high that they inspire fear and wonder in you and you feel overwhelmed by the mystery of the universe.

How many have been in a jungle? How many have heard a storm raging around them and how the presence of God becomes so real and the smallness of man so tiny.

So it is that we must walk through life, the sense of the mystery of God and the way in which God deals with us. We have to be modest, not presume more than necessary that we know what God wants and what he is and how he acts and that if we press this lever a little monkey will come out from the other side. Nobody knows. And people that I hear out there preaching today, they preach nonsense. Because? Because they heard it from another and God wants people who think and search and judge the spirits and discern what is from God and what is not from God.

All of this that I say should lead us to keep quieter and speak less, to allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the sense of mystery. It must give way to a spirituality that is less blunt, less square and secure, more open to the complexity of the world we inhabit and the mysterious and unpredictable way in which God relates to us.

I end with this word, the writer of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 5, in a moment of honesty is overwhelmed by the mystery of God. For me Ecclesiastes is the deepest book in all of Scripture. Solomon, a man who was given wisdom by God and who later also made his terrible mistakes, but had so much knowledge and examined science, art, literature, cosmology, philosophy. He was a man who in the end, after knowing almost everything, understood that he knew nothing and after knowing the mystery of God so deeply, he realized that he didn't know anything about God either. And that's why the book of Ecclesiastes is such a difficult book to understand, because sometimes it says things that I would think the man who wrote it was an agnostic. But he was a man who knew the mystery of life.

And I finish with that reading that I don't know if I got to finish it or read it. I'm going to read it again if I read it, Ecclesiastes Chapter 5. The word says:

“…When you go to the house of God, keep your foot ─ listen to this, ─ keep your foot, be careful, and come closer to hear than to offer the sacrifice of fools because they do not know what they are doing wrong…”

There are many people offering the sacrifice of fools to God, many churches, many preachers speaking nonsense in the pulpits of this world. And the law says, be careful, don't blame God for more things than he is really interested in endorsing. Listen a little more than you speak.

“…Do not be hasty with your mouth, nor be hasty with your heart to utter a word before God because God is in heaven and you are on earth, therefore your words should be few, because sleep comes from much occupation and from multitude of words the voice of the fool. When God makes a promise, do not delay in fulfilling it, because he does not take pleasure in the foolish, he fulfills what you promise. It is better that you do not promise and not that you promise and do not comply. Do not let your mouth make you sin or say before the angel that it was ignorance. Why will you make God angry because of your voice and destroy the work of your hands? Where dreams abound, vanities and many words also abound, but you, Lion of Judah Congregation, fear God..."

Let's stand up. And may the Lord fill us with that complex spirituality. Do not lose your faith, do not lose your fire, do not lose your enthusiasm, do not lose your passion, do not lose your trust in the God who blesses, heals, prospers, changes destiny, destroys demons, humiliates powers, controls history, navigates the winds He walks on water, calms storms, lifts up the paralyzed, gives sight to the blind. That God is still exactly as he was before this sermon. Believe in that God, church, but also ask the Lord to teach you when to be silent and when to say, Lord, I am crying out to you, I am asking you, I am yelling at you but your will be done and not mine.

When you give your verdict I will kiss your hand and say, Lord, teach me to live within what you have given me and to be better as a result of what you have given me.

Father, we humble ourselves before your greatness, we humble ourselves before your mystery, we humble ourselves before your word, which we can never fully fathom. Too deep, too wide, too complex, infinite, as is your mind. I ask you to help us to be humble and simple of heart and help us to hold ourselves to your mystery and as a church, help us to walk exactly where you want to take us, Lord. Do not let us look to the right or to the left, but keep our eyes focused on Christ Jesus.

May your Holy Spirit never stop enlightening us and speaking to us and correcting us. While we are here in this place, Lord, your word will never be scarce, that this pulpit will always be used well, that the word that comes out of here determines the sensitivity of your people, Lord, be a word in tune with your spirit and with your personality.

We bless you and thank you for all that you have served us this afternoon. What a great blessing. We have eaten, we have been satisfied and we still take loaves and fish to our homes. Thank you, Lord Jesus, we love you, and we want to live close to you, Lord, every day. Take us in your arms and stick us to your chest, Father. We bless you and we thank you. We bid farewell to your people with the blessing of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen.

Brothers, may the grace of the Lord be with you. blessed. Amen and amen.