A masculine man is a temperate man

Let's go to Psalm 103 in honor of fathers, men, fathers or not, in our congregation. You can be a biological and spiritual parent, and you can be a non-biological parent and a spiritual parent. Both fathers are equally powerful, make sure you are a father to someone. Those words come to me, there you have the first point of the sermon, make sure you are a father to someone, a mentor to someone, there is a lack of role models in our society today, manly, terrible, and an abundance of destructive role models and negatives.

Humanity needs men nourished by the Word of the Lord, formed, sculpted blow by blow by the Word of the Lord. Men saturated with the principles of the Kingdom of God, who give their warmth to someone, to a young man, fearful, insecure about his masculinity because he has not had healthy models, of an adequate masculinity, the models he has are athletes and musicians of rock or whatever, movie actors or whatever that many times do not model the values of reality, and above all the values of the Word of God.

We men have the privilege of continually seasoning ourselves in the Word of the Lord, slowly cooking ourselves in the Word of the Lord, and I hope that this Word is penetrating our lives, our sensitivity. And so we have a great treasure within us, and be good stewards of that treasure, share it with our children, with our Church, but there is also a lot out there, perhaps in the same building where you live, or on the street too, a child in your extended family who doesn't have a dad or the family isn't complete, and you can be that man. Open your eyes and be attentive to the needs around you, and you will find someone whom you can mentor, for whom you can be a tutor, a mentor.

Thank God our Church is doing an excellent job through the Tutor Center, mentors, for dozens of children, we hope that one day it could be hundreds of children, and the city of Boston is taking notice of this, our program enjoys a very high respect in the city in terms of mentoring, providing healthy values to our youth through the Passport program, the mentoring program, and you have to get out. God has given us so much, he has blessed us so much that we cannot be less than being spiritual parents of someone, and above all being parents of our children, of our families, our extended families in our Church and also in our community.

So, even if you are not a physical parent, you do not have physical children yet or that time has passed, you can still be a mentor for someone, a tutor, a model, a source of good advice for someone, for a young person, a young lady, and some young men need godly men, men of God, who can see what a man is, because girls in their feminine formation also need not only the mother, the woman who helps them develop their femininity, but also the man There is a part of a woman that needs to relate to a man, how to associate with a man, how to give herself to a man, and that is why it is so important that they find men who do not abuse them, do not exploit them, and men who can exemplify a fatherhood, a healthy sexuality, that is necessary, we have a great privilege and a great responsibility as men to exemplify the character, the masculinity of Jesus.

I don't think there is a more masculine being in the history of the universe than Jesus. I'm sure he was a manly man but also a tender man, he could take children and bless them and play with them and welcome them, and children were drawn to him, and he could also rebuke a proud and pretentious Pharisee, and take a whipping and protest against the violation of the House of the Lord, he could speak the truth with total clarity and also tell an adulterous woman, go and sin no more, I do not condemn you either.

What balance, right? That is a masculine man, a temperate personality, I have admired the character of Jesus for that balance, that balance that I see in Him, for me that is true masculinity, I see it in the Father too , I see that love and then also that strength, that justice, that clarity that is in Him. And that we men have to try, to do everything possible to exemplify that masculinity, a healthy masculinity, modern society is desperately in need of men who embody, exemplify a healed masculinity, why do I say healed?, not just healed, because we are all wounded, and all of us in one way or another have a degree of disease in us, and we have to continually submit to the Word of God so that it goes like a piano out of tune, tuning us again and getting in tune again with the tonality of the Father and his masculinity, and his Being, which is neither masculine nor feminine, but we are men because God has a You have a male part, and you are female because God has a female part.

It is not called that, we call it that, but there is a music that He plays that resembles that of the woman, and a music that He plays that resembles that of the man, and he bequeathed that tone to us too. But when we enter the world, the world goes out of tune, like when a piano plays a lot and needs to be tuned again, and we have to listen to the Father's tonality, and tune with Him, and that is a lifelong process, and the Word of the Lord, as it penetrates our life, and we listen to that Word, being obedient to it, holding onto it, it tunes us up again, and then we get out of tune again, and it tunes us up again, that's how it happens, we have to be continuously listening to the tonality of God so that it helps us to be well-tempered men, well tuned, so that we play exactly in the perfect tonality of the Father.

And the world needs this, the world needs that kind of masculinity at that time, and the only place we are going to find the reference point for that masculinity is in the Word and the values of the Word, of the Kingdom of God. May the Lord wish that we can always go to that Word to be truly men, in this case on Father's Day, that we give the world an example of what a healthy masculinity is, because this world does not know, without the Word of God, sexuality gets out of its fence like a wild steed that suddenly breaks, kicks the fence and runs away, destroying everything around it. When man gets out of the fence of the Word of the Lord, forget that he is going to destroy a lot of things, and one of the first things that the devil is going to want to damage is the sexuality of men and women, their masculine and feminine identity as we see in this time.

Because the devil knows, sexuality is the very center of the life of a man, a woman. Freud said it and they didn't believe it, I think so, it is the greatest force in the universe, it causes wars, and it also inspires poems, it is an incredibly creative and destructive force, it is a divine force and it can also turn demonic, the The devil knows that force and that is why when he wants to deal a death blow to a society, he first goes to his sexuality, and begins to give wires and inspire man to start playing with that delicate mechanism, it is so delicate that he knows it, Once you destabilize it, how do you put it back in its place? Because He who did it only knows how to do it again.

And then the more they try, the more they experiment, the more they try to find their way, the more they undo it, they start as an ignoramus trying to deal with a latest model car, and then they start doing what they want, like a society bleeding into its sexuality, everything else is destabilized, the family, paternity, the government, moral, ethical, and religious values, and chaos is sown in society. We have, for example, I create a society to a certain extent, forgive me if this offends my sisters, but it is a society where femininity has gained an unbalanced degree of preponderance. Before, in this country, masculinity became demonic and oppressive like the countries of the Middle East and other parts of the world, where the man perverts the woman by literally putting her in a sack, and literally hiding her.

But society can go to the other side, where femininity is preponderant, there is a feminine sensibility that penetrates not obviously but it is there, it manifests itself in homosexuality, castrated parents, a ridiculous masculinity as we see it on television in Hollywood, and then it also enters into religion, and God made women and men for certain things, and when men do not occupy their place and women take that space that men leave, then destructive models begin to emerge, and society loses his course and his sense of direction. And that is why at this time the Church has to be a place where there is a healed masculinity, because we all have to heal ourselves, women have to heal themselves, men also have to heal themselves.

We have to ask the Lord that our Churches be places where we can work first with the problems of sexuality or gender, sexual identity, what is a man, what is a woman, what is a husband, what is a wife ?. And then when we work on that, that problem according to the values of the Lord, rectify our home, rectify our masculinity, rectify our femininity, then we can be fit for our society out there, seeing our homes functioning according to God's model, When seeing masculine and tender men, when seeing feminine and firm women, and sure of themselves, and when seeing a man and a woman living together and giving each other their place in a beautiful dance of complementarity, society is going to say wow, I i want that too. Then the values of the Kingdom of God will be able to offer a valid, attractive, credible alternative to that world out there that needs those values.

So there you have the first point, I don't think it's going to be very short, but I'm going to do it. But what I want to talk about is about the mercy of God, and of the parents, for us that we have to exercise towards one another, as the Father exercises mercy towards us. But I want to explain that sense of mercy specifically related to fatherhood, motherhood and being children, and I am going to explain why mercy is so important in these times that we inhabit parents and children.

Then the Lord led me to Psalm 103. And in verse 8 of Psalm 103 it says there: "The Lord is merciful, slow to anger and abounding in mercy. He will not contend forever nor will he ever hold his anger, he has not done with us according to our iniquities, nor has he recompensed us according to our sins. For his mercy is great as the heavens are high above the earth." Look at the preponderance of the word mercy in this reading. "He magnified his mercy on those who fear him, when the East and the West are far away, he made our rebellions move away from us, as the Father pities the children, the Lord pities those who fear him, because He knows our condition, remembers that we are dust." I will leave there.

And I want to say it, this comes from the heart of God, this comes from some reflections that I did in the morning when I got up, and that, the importance of mercy and forgiveness in the life of the family. And for us first to be merciful to ourselves, and to be compassionate to ourselves, and to forgive ourselves in our failures, as fathers, as mothers, and as children. And I believe that there is a serious lack in the Christian family and definitely in the secular world, of mercy and compassion towards each other. And we need that.

And just yesterday in the time of ministry, a beloved sister, several spoke about their sense of, because one of the topics that was discussed is about forgiveness, and of course, because you have to forgive yourself, you have to forgive others, You have to ask God for forgiveness, you have to ask for his mercy, there are four things that occurred to me, I'm going to write it down before I forget.

But several of the people spoke in one way or another about their deficiency, and guilt regarding how they had performed their role as parents and as children. And there is much anguish of the children of God with respect to our parents, and with respect to our own paternity. Sometimes we parents feel inadequate about the role we have played in our children's lives. Sometimes we feel inadequate like that young man who neglected his dad, in how we have treated our parents as well. And sometimes a Word tells us and makes us remember, I haven't called dad, I haven't asked for forgiveness, I haven't put the right things from the past with my parents.

And I believe there is one, since we are moral and ethical people, and we are always struggling with the Word of God that is always reminding us of these things, many times we feel pain, the mistakes we have committed. And that is important that we deal with that issue, because I believe that there is a type of guilt that weakens. The Bible says that there is a sadness that destroys and kills, and there is a sadness that leads to repentance, then it becomes an action that corrects the wrong and leads to a change in behavior. Sadness is not always bad, but if it is something that freezes you and fills you with guilt, it can be destructive in your life.

I believe that when we can rest in the Lord, that releases energy that then allows us to be free to be as God wants us to be. Do you understand what I'm saying? Many times when you have a sense of guilt that prevents you, because then the failure freezes, and I'm like I'm bleeding little by little from a little hole of guilt. And that is why I think we need to think of that Father who, as a Father, pities his children, pities those of us who fear him. And I have a Word for you this morning, father, mother, and I also want to speak to the children for a moment.

To say hey, ok, you didn't do everything right, a sister spoke about a woman who reflects the life of God in her face, and that her children also, from what I've seen, reflects his grace, she spoke of her pain when he was young always trying to give his children the best he always worked too hard, and maybe he wasn't always there, for them, and how many of our parents have had to make the terrible decision between putting good food on their children's table and giving them the clothes they need to look good in front of their classmates, and to be able to have a chat with them and to be able to share with them, go out with them? Because they were the only two options, they didn't earn much money, they had to work two jobs, sometimes on weekends, and their same compassion and sense of duty drove them to work, they wanted to give their children the best because when they were children they didn't have , and they knew how hard it was to arrive at school with broken shoes, and hide it.

And now that they can here in a society that allows them to work, they have wanted to heal that wound by giving their children what they did not have. So they work hard, and maybe they don't have the time to sit down with their children, teach them to play the piano, because nobody taught them to play the piano in the first place, they sat down with them to do those things. And then we reach a certain stage of our fatherhood, of our motherhood where we feel deficient, and that we have not done everything that we should have done. Perhaps others had bigger mistakes than those, perhaps we broke a home, fell in love with another person and left before knowing the Lord, we were disloyal to our wives and our children. Maybe for years we hurt our family with violent behavior, abusive behavior, drinking, whatever.

One day we met the Lord, we gave our lives to the Lord, we repented. But those character deformations were still in our hearts, or the consequences of those wounds were already deposited in the hearts of our family. Like a broken bone, they healed but they were misshapen, a little bit, and when a bone breaks and heals again no matter how long it heals it never goes back to exactly what it was when God designed it. And so our family is always limping a little because of the burden of that past. The wounds are there, God has forgiven them, but they are, we can see them, that also makes us feel guilty, we bleed a little more.

And there are many other things as well that make us burden ourselves with a sense of guilt, and a burden that is there in us. And I think, brothers, that this Word of the Lord is for each one of us, so that we feel as if we have not touched the perfect tonality of the Heavenly Father. We have made mistakes, perhaps we took it so seriously that we hit our children over the head with the Bible, and they rebelled and now we, a little older, more sober, realize that perhaps we should have been a little more balanced with them, also that sometimes makes us feel. I think there are many ways.

Look, no one, no one, no one, who is human can say that they have been a perfect father or mother, the only mother, the perfect father is the Heavenly Father who is up there, we will always have to point to his model, and so that glory be always only to Him. There is no mother, there is no father who does not sin, none of us can say I did not make a mistake with regard to my children. But he knows that God understands that very well, and God already knows that, and God knew it from the beginning. And the grace of God, the favor is extended to you, father or mother. When we feel inadequate let's take two aspirin and take it, and lay our head on the pillow and say Lord, I trust in Your grace, I trust in Your mercy, because that's what we have to do.

The first thing we have to say is hey, what happened happened, I can't go back in time, I regret it, I know I failed, I want to do better, but at a given moment you have to entrust yourself to the grace and mercy of the Lord and know that, being a father, being a mother is the most inhuman task, inhuman in the sense that only the divine can do proper parenting. It is a task that God has entrusted to us that no one gets an A in paternity, no one, paternity is a riddle that God has given us, and at most 70 or 80, or 85%, but no matter how much you want paternity is something that it will never be able to make it perfect, because it's like one of those mirrors in amusement parks that are crooked by themselves, no matter how much you look at yourself, straighten up, try, you're always going to come out crooked.

Because there are too many elements to take into account in a perfect fatherhood, as there is in a perfect holiness or anything else, there are tens of thousands of seasons that have to enter to make that perfection, and in this world it is not possible, so everyone We are going to sin and we are going to offend, and we are going to distort, and we will look to our past and we will see things that were not right, but what we have to do is entrust ourselves to the grace and mercy of the Lord, keep looking at the Word of God , and give therapy to ourselves and move forward in the name of the Lord, trying to be the best we can, yes, always looking to the model of Jesus.

And then being free to recognize that, that we are already doomed to a relative failure. I believe that when one abandons the ideal of being perfect, it empowers one to do the best one can, when we don't use it as an excuse for not improving in our performance as parents. But we have to relax and know that we already have from the Father, even though we do not get a 100, the Father up there gives us a 100, because as the father pities his children, Jehovah pities those who fear him, and the Lord makes sure in one way or another that along the way his nutrients bless our children and they get where they need to go, and then he always takes the credit, and we give him the honor.

So we have to relax in that sense I believe and rest in the Lord. There is another thing about that, and that is that the society we live in, I already told you that it was going to be a little longer, but I think it is important that we listen to it. I would say that the society in which we live is one of the most demanding societies that has existed in the entire history of humanity, because it is the most critically, technologically, rationally, scientifically developed society that has existed in the entire history of humanity. . The generation in which we currently inhabit has the capacity to judge things and dissect them on a table, with a perfectly penetrating phosphorescent light, and to see everything with tremendous lucidity and clarity, and everything it sees can be seen in its deformations and flaws perfectly fine.

But it is also one of the most hypocritical and unpleasant societies that I have seen in my life, it is a tremendously demanding society, it is a paradox, it is a society that prides itself on being liberal and yet it is one of the most self-righteous societies studying to humanity. Very demanding, but also full of flaws and terrible inconsistencies. It is a rare paradox. Modern man has reached a level of competence and capacity in so many things that it is difficult, today we have incredible performance pressure, we have to perform perfectly, we have to perform everything we do perfectly.

Today mothers have to be top executives. They arrive at the office and they have to be Margaret Tacher. Perfect in their, then they come home and they have to cook perfectly well, they have to make five different dishes with dessert and everything, perfectly prepared, and they have to be lovers, tigresses in bed, because it is expected after all, Angelina Jolie, everyone else sets the standard, even though they've been divorced quichihundred times, it can't be that J Lo has to get divorced, wow, what's up, why, if they were that man would be enslaved to her continuously. So there are a number of models, right?

Parents also have to be perfect administrators, perfect lovers, perfect expressors of tenderness, strong as a lion, tender as a poet, and do all things well too. There is tremendous pressure, and Hollywood fills us with these deformed images, of the woman who gets out of bed perfectly made up, it is not known how, she is an indescribable beauty, she has nothing in the corner of her mouth, nothing (laughs). , and they kiss passionately there and one says what a mouthful, what a gargle they are doing there, a person who lasts twelve hours and can get up in the morning.

And so we live with that pressure on us, you know? It is a culture that puts pressure, it is a culture that is highly, there are people who do do incredible things, and when one looks for example, one sees how society has developed so much, let's say when one looks at sports, one looks at the basketball players of today and you compare them to the basketball players of 30 years ago, these ones with little chicken legs, shorts that reached up to here and skinny like that, and you see Shaquil O Neal who is, like, 6: 9, and he's a mastodon, and he moves with tremendous agility, and you see those players who are rickety, they're wimps compared to those of the 21st century.

And that's how one sees Hollywood, the special effects, the artistic prowess, the demand on artists, it's incredible, I think it's an ultra-developed society, today's pastors have to be administrators, they have to be lawyers, perfect advisers, of everything, it's a terrible pressure, and what are our models? so we transfer that to our lives as parents, as wives, as husbands, we live with a terrible burden on our hearts, we continually feel inadequate.

And the Lord tells us hey, look, I am the compassionate God, do not let yourself be deformed by those models, you are going to water it and that is why my grace is going to be with you, to clean your knees when you fall, and fight, and tear your pants, I will be there to bless you and to make sure that your deformities are not destructive to your children in the future, I will correct them in the future, rest in Me, lay your head down and sleep don't worry, because I am the one who feels sorry as the father feels sorry for his children, just fear Me, and do the best you can, and I will take care of the rest.

And the last thing I think about this is also about the children with the parents, because our culture is a culture that has given children a tremendous capacity to criticize their parents, this society is a tremendously analytical society, the skills of psychology, sociology, psychiatry, have entered into common use, and our children have studied these weapons and these capacities to analyze human processes in a very powerful way, they themselves live with their inferiority complexes that It has given us that tremendously analytical culture, and with its same doubts about its identity and its own performance in life, and its future, and its professionalism, and so many other things because this is a tremendously introspective culture with a terrible capacity to see the failures in themselves and in others, because we have tremendous skills in this developed but also deformed society.

So our children have a tremendous capacity to analyze our fatherhood, our motherhood, our marriages, our churches, the pastors, the religious Christian people, and see all the holes, and all the flaws, and all the deficiencies, and all the inconsistencies with a penetrating and deep light. And it is very easy then to see in our parents what they did not do and in you as an adult of 50, 60, or 40 years, and look back, and you have two options, adopt a narrative of victimization, and of exploitation and harm, and deficiency , and interpret your family, maternal, paternal past with tremendously cold and analytical lenses, and see yourself, see the glass half empty, see what they did, what they didn't do, or a narrative of mercy and compassion, and also then qualify that, that awareness that is probably not false, what you are seeing is real, but if you put other mercy filters on top of those glasses, a little pink, a little light blue, you will see very beautiful things, the love from your parents, going out of their way for you, loving you, being painfully aware of their shortcomings, doing the best they could within limiting circumstances, being locked inside the straitjacket inside the models they received that program psychologically forced to do things that they themselves did not want to do.

And then you can, you have the privilege and the opportunity to exercise mercy, and to choose to love, honor, revere, respect, forgive and bless. You do that then you are blessed, honored, prosperous, because a son does not have the option of not honoring his father, that is a commandment of the Lord. And you know, son, when you grow up you are going to discover that dynamic of being a father, you are going to go through that process also because of that animation, it reminds us that life is a cycle, and those who have mercy receive mercy. So young people, you also have the opportunity, the privilege to honor your parents, and to choose two things in the Mosaic Law and spend your whole life complaining about your parents, or feeling hurt by what your parents didn't do, the mistakes they made. they committed, or bless them even though you know they were not all they should have, you will bless and honor the memory of your parents, and the God who pities the weak will pity you too.

And when you are weak in your moment you will also find grace, and thus you will be psychologically happy, you will be whole, because where there is grace there is health, and there is healing, and there is blessing from God, and there is prosperity from God.

So there you have the half-cooked sermon that God has for us today. I ask the musicians to come in please. Mercy, forgiveness, patience, forgiving ourselves, receiving God's forgiveness, forgiving our offenders, forgiving the defects and deficiencies of our parents, because we are a people of grace, we are a people of mercy, and where mercy runs God's blessing will always be present, amen? So thank you Father, for reminding us that You are a God of mercy, that we are always going to fail the exam, we are always going to fall short, in all the theaters of life, but how good it is to know that our Dad takes us in his powerful arms. , beautiful and perfect, and cleanses us and blesses us, and kisses our cheek, and tells us I understand, and gives us his grace to carry on.

We bless you Lord this morning, I ask that a cloud of peace flood our hearts, that Your grace fill every soul here present, the wounded and those who have hurt, those who have been the object of failure and those who have failed, and those who will fail in the future, that Your grace and Your mercy be with each one of us Lord, thank you for Your grace, thank you for Your goodness and Your mercy, and Father we will never pretend to rely too much on that grace, if not we want to be like You, we want to exemplify the best values of Your Word, help us to be better from generation to generation, thank you for our fathers, thank you for our mothers, thank you for our children, thank you for the Christian family, thank you for the opportunity to exercise Mercy in the sins that we commit and be like You Lord.

I bless Your people this morning, thank you for sending us Your blessing, receive our gratitude, in the name of Jesus, amen and amen. God bless you my brothers, happy fathers day.