Who is Jesus for you?

Luke 9, 7 to 9, says: "Herod, the tetrarch, heard of all the things that Jesus did and was perplexed, because some said, John has risen from the dead, others, Elijah has appeared; and others, some prophet of of old has risen. And Herod said, 'I have John beheaded, who then is this of whom I hear such things,' and he sought to see him."

That passage takes place in the middle of Jesus' ministry. The Lord has already spent considerable time walking through all the places, the villages, the towns, the cities, ministering to the needs of the people, teaching them about the truths of the kingdom, the principles of the kingdom, teaching them how to live according to the principles of the kingdom so that they could please the Father, healing the sick, freeing those who were oppressed by evil spirits.

It had been a while since the Lord had been doing that. And an example of that let's go to Luke 6, 17 to 19, to see an example of that, of the Lord's walk.

“…And he went down with them – that is, he went down with the Apostles, with his disciples – and stood on a level place with his disciples and a great crowd of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem and from the coast of Tyre. and from Sidon, who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. And those who had been tormented by unclean spirits were healed, and all the people tried to touch him because power came out of him and healed everyone..."

That was the ministry of Jesus that was repeated over and over again wherever he went. So what Jesus did is he shocked all of Palestine. Palestine was no longer the same as before, because Jesus was there doing all those things that we have just read about.

He had performed miracles, healings, people were set free, he had confronted the hierarchy and the religious system of his time, which were teaching things contrary to the word of God. So that didn't go unnoticed by anyone, least of all the main ruler of Galilee who was called Herod, the Tetrarch.

And who was this man? He was the son of Herod the great, and if you remember Herod the great, he was a man, a most bloodthirsty ruler. He had no problem with killing crowds and he did, and it was the same ruler who ordered the killing of all the children of Bethlehem, from two years old and under. Because? For the simple reason that the kings of the east had said that according to their Scriptures this was the king of the Jews and that he had been born more or less at that time. So Herod made a calculation, it's more or less two years, well, we're going to kill all the children two years old and under. So that was the father of this Herod that we are talking about, Herod the Tetrarch.

And like father, like son. The Herod we are dealing with today was not a good person like his father either. And it was the man who, by a simple whim of his illegitimate wife, Herodias, had John the Baptist beheaded. So he was not a good person.

But he had been piqued by curiosity. He had heard about Jesus, about the miracles, about all this commotion in Palestine, and his curiosity was piqued. Recognize that the works that this Jesus is doing are not natural and normal things. There was an element of the supernatural in what Jesus was doing among the people. Because I imagine that Herod was thinking, but how is it that this man makes the paralyzed stand up so that they can walk? How come the blind see? How come the deaf hear? How come the dead have been raised? In other words, this obviously cannot be the work of a common man.

And reason about what some say about it being John who has risen. They remember that he had beheaded him. On his conscience is still fresh, I believe, the blood of John the Baptist. He still has it here… because it hadn't been that long before that. And he declares perhaps for his own peace of mind, to be calm, he says, this Jesus cannot be John, since I myself had him beheaded, he cannot be the same.

And then not finding an answer that satisfies him, he asks his question, a crucial question, he says, "who then is this man?" That is Herod's question, who then is this man?

Herod asked the right question, but unfortunately his motivation was wrong. He was a bloody, tough, hard-hearted man who didn't really want to make changes in his life. It was a question like who says, let's throw it in the air but I really don't want them to confront me. I had no real interest in what Jesus was doing, but rather a morbid curiosity, as many people have about God's move, a morbid curiosity.

Throughout the Gospels too many people have asked who is this man? For example, when the storm in which Jesus appeared and ordered the water and the wind to calm down, the disciples asked, who is this man who still commands the winds and waters and obeys him? The disciples wondered who is this?

The Pharisees also wondered who this man Jesus was. They asked, who is this man who speaks blasphemies and even forgives sins? So we see that time after time in the Gospels the question arises whose is this man.

Interestingly, the demons have no doubt who Jesus is. Men yes, men doubt, question, ask themselves questions, but the demons make them know that Jesus is the Christ and they tremble before his power. So here are the human beings doubting, but the demons know very well who this is, the Christ.

Later in the same chapter 9, we read about a conversation related to this very topic of who Jesus is between Jesus and his 12 disciples. And by this time, again more or less the same time, more or less 18 months of Jesus' ministry have passed, `more or less in the middle of his ministry, and the disciples have been with him all this time, especially the that we call the Apostles, very closely with him.

They had witnessed healings and miracles all over the place, imagine, multitudes. They had listened to Jesus teach the crowds, they had listened to the sermon on the mount, with all its beatitudes and all the guides on how a child of God should live. They had heard parable after parable about Kingdom truths, explained in a way that people could understand. They had been with Jesus, they had dined at the same table as Jesus time after time. And they had also been commissioned, as the word says in Luke 9:1 to 2, it says that they had been commissioned by him with power and authority over all demons and to heal diseases. And he sent them to preach the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick. And verse 6, further on says:

"...And leaving they went through all the villages announcing the Gospel and healing everywhere..."

It is no longer an ignorant group that has just met the Lord, it is now a group that has spent at least 18 months next to the Lord, following him everywhere, serving him, accompanying him in everything, seeing how the Lord ministered and being commissioned for them to do similar things.

Later, in the same chapter 9, verse 18, there is the other question that I want…it is a follow-up to the previous question that Herod himself had asked. Verse 18 says:

“…It came to pass that while Jesus was praying apart, the disciples were with him and he asked them saying, “who do the people say that I am?”

Could we, I imagine, perhaps the Lord elaborated, perhaps told you, when you went from one village to another, what did you hear the people say about me? When you were distributing the loaves and fish in the baskets in groups of 50 by 50, what were people saying about me? asks the Lord.

And in verse 19 is the response of the disciples, they responded, the question is, who do the people say? The disciples' response is:

“…Some, John the Baptist, others, Elijah, and others that some ancient prophet has risen.”

Have you heard this before? The same options that he considered that Herod, the Tetrarch, had heard, exactly the same. As he searched for a superficial answer, that was the answer that people brought him. People say so and so. Well, the disciples had heard the same thing and they report to him, they inform the Lord about that answer.

Many times we ask a question as an introduction, but really we want to get to a deeper point. And so it happened in this case. This question preceded a second essential question. In verse 20, Jesus told them:

"... And who do you say that I am?"

You who have walked with me, who have seen me heal multitudes, who have seen the lame dance, who have seen the blind see, who have seen lepers healed, who have seen the demon-possessed set free, who have seen all these healings, who have heard the principles of the kingdom that I have taught, and who do you say that I am?

Then look at Peter's response who said:

“….The Christ of God…”

Typically Pedro was the one who always came out ahead, a little impulsive. In this case his participation was correct, he recognized because the same spirit of God had revealed to him, he is the Christ of God. So the question for us that we have to ask ourselves every day of our lives, is who do you say Jesus is? Who do I say that Jesus is?

And the answer to this question cannot be found in our imagination, nor in our intellect, it cannot be the result of our needs and our fantasies, nothing like that. Because anyone can invent a religion, that's not where the answer to that question of who do you say I am is. It's not there. It can only be backed by the word of God.

The Lord leaving this world, what did he do? He left us, the Holy Spirit came to guide us into all truth. So we are not alone in learning who Jesus is. The Lord has all kinds of resources for us to learn who Jesus is. And more than anything his word. When we read the word we can know more and more about who Jesus is.

That is why it is so important that we study the word seriously, especially the Gospels that tell us about all the works of Jesus, what he did in this world, why he did it, so that we can feed our spirit with the truth of the Gospel of who Christ is.

In fact the Gospels answer that question. That is the purpose of the Gospels, to teach us who Christ is. That is why it is so important to study them. There is a particular verse in the last Gospel, that of John, in chapter 20, verse 31, that summarizes the purpose of the Gospels and look at that verse it says the following:

“…But these – referring to the signs that Jesus had done – have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name…”

That is the purpose of the Gospel. It is so that we believe in Jesus, know him and then have a new life in him.

Today there are many more than three theories. The theories that Herod mentions and the three theories, the same three theories that the disciples mention, there are many more. There are for all tastes, theories about who Jesus is. Some see him as a great teacher, others see him as an enlightened spiritual being, who knows beyond what perhaps a particular man, a particular woman can understand. Others see him as a great example of a person who dedicated himself to the service of others. Others see it as when we read about it we can learn to be a good person.

But what all these perspectives do is shrink Jesus, it's like putting him inside a little box. And when we reduce Jesus, what we are actually doing is magnifying an idol. Be anyone, I can be myself, I can be my own idol. My career, my finances, my family, anything can become an idol. Because the only one who deserves our worship is the Lord.

So that's why it's so important to truly know Jesus. Recognize that in our limitation we are not going to understand him, to know him one hundred percent as he is, we are human beings. But we can learn from him and get to know him more and more and more. I believe that this is until the last day of our lives, we will still be able to continue learning more about who the Lord is, his power, his grace, his love, his mercy. That's something we can never say anymore, I'm done knowing who Jesus is.

Others say that Jesus is a historical figure with little or no relevance, especially since it excludes other religions and philosophies. Because the word of God says that Jesus is the only way to the Father. And then many can accept that Jesus is good people, that he has something to teach us but that is as far as he goes because he cannot be the center of our lives because we cannot exclude others.

We live in a totally relativistic world, where whatever anyone comes up with is a philosophy and something worth following. And this is the world in which we live. It's been like this since the Garden of Eden.

If we go to Genesis for a moment, if you can't listen to it, chapter 2, verse 16 and 17 and then we go to chapter 3 verse 1. What I want you to see is how from the beginning Satan has been in the business of damaging, dirtying and contaminating the man's concept of who God is. He knows that when he achieves that, he has already won a great battle. So that's the enemy's strategy, from the start. If we look at those two verses, Genesis 2, 16 and 17:

“…And Jehovah God commanded the man saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, because in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die…”

Look carefully at 16 that says, you can eat from every tree in the garden, and then look at what chapter 3 says, verse 1 says:

“…But the serpent was cunning, more than all the beasts of the field, which Jehovah God had made, which said to the woman, “So God has said, do not eat from every tree of the garden?”

In other words, look, the words are very similar, but the meaning was distorted, he put it backwards, downwards, he changed the total meaning of what God had said to Adam and Eve. And do you know that he still does that today? He whispers in our ear when God has told us something, when we have read something in the word that feeds our soul, and he comes to whisper doubt. And the most effective doubt that he can plant in our mind, in our heart is about the character of God, who God is. Again, because he knows that when he manages to win in that department, he has already won the battle.

So we have to keep our eyes open all the time for that. Because our call is not to have an individual concept of who God is, we are not God, we do not have the understanding or the depth for that, only God does. So, we have to get to know him more day by day as he is.

Each of us is on that journey. We have to be looking every day at what I believe about God. I know that perhaps everyone here has made a pact with the Lord. Perhaps you have already accepted the Lord. And perhaps they have dedicated their lives to the Lord, but even so many times the concepts that we bring about what God is like from our past affect us and prevent us from seeing him as he really is. sometimes we see the Lord with contaminated glasses that do not allow us to see him as he is. And many times what we do is that we attribute to God the qualities that other human beings have.

When God is God, he is not a human being. He made us in his image and likeness but he is not a human being. And therefore his plans, his thoughts are higher than anything we can have. And we must never ascribe to him what are merely human qualities.

What answer do you give to the Lord with that question? And who do you say that I am? I believe that we have to ask ourselves that question very frequently and we have to continue learning more about the Lord because sometimes we can become contaminated. There are ideas that can come to us that can contaminate us and prevent us from seeing God as he is.

When I understood that Jesus, perfect and without stain of sin, died for me, I opened my heart to him and asked him to be my Lord and savior. That happened 31 years ago. The Lord captivated me with his love 31 years ago. I came from a Christian, Catholic family, and I knew about God but I did not have that personal relationship with the Lord.

But something happened: I suffered the first years, I suffered, because I understood that my love for the Lord was intellectual. I couldn't love him the way I sensed he needed to be loved. And when in my analysis of that I realized that my concept of God was wrong. And I am going to share with you quickly what my concept was. I saw God the Father sitting on an inaccessible throne, a long beard that reached the ground, with a cane, a scepter and looking at me with serious eyes, like that all the time. That was my image of God.

Me analyzing where that image came from, obviously reinforced by many other things, that was not the only thing, but in my house there was a Bible that remained on a table, as it happens in many homes, perhaps many of you had a very large Bible, with many illustrations, many paintings, and one of the paintings was precisely that, of that God looking like that, serious.

The point is that this was recorded in my mind and I thought that God was inaccessible, that God took care of big things, the macro, as they say, but not the micro. He could not attend to my little needs. I felt like an insignificant being and God was not accessible to me.

And in many cases there are people who, because they have a father perhaps absent, well, they have this image of God. In my case it is not like that because I have an extremely loving father to this day. I don't have that problem, but perhaps because of what I learned religiously, that was the image that was recorded in me of the Lord.

So there was really no point in asking him, presenting him with my little insignificant issues, injuries, because I didn't think he was going to respond in any way. And when I began to analyze that, to try to understand that reality of how I saw God, then I thought, I have to solve this, because the Gospels are painting a very different picture from the one I have. The Jesus that I see is the Jesus who went person by person, the one who said, let the children come to me, the one who touched, the one who healed the bent woman, the one who healed the woman with the issue of blood, to the lepers, he was everywhere healing, as we have already read tonight.

For me the highlight was when I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. That day I still get emotional when I think about it, that day the scales fell from my eyes and I could see my Lord as my Father, as my Heavenly Father. And that has kept growing and growing and I have never looked back. It was a truly supernatural work that the Lord did in me.

So all of us have an image, a concept of who God is. When we come to the Lord we bring our concept, a concept already formed. It may be that yours is different from mine, perhaps yours was that you did not have a father present, a family present, perhaps you received rejection and that prevents you from thinking that God can value you as an individual, love you as an individual .

It can be many times there are people who have committed so many sins and sins so serious that they think it is impossible for the Lord to forgive them and welcome them and give them a place of honor at the table. So whatever it is we all bring something. And sometimes it doesn't matter that we have known the Lord for years, even so many times when we look at the Lord, at Jesus, we see him again with contaminated eyes, we do not see him as he really is.

So what about that? What happens is that we are wasting the gift of abundant life that the Lord has for us. The Lord tells us, take it, I have all this for you, a banquet and we settle for a few crumbs. That's almost a sin, right? Say no to the Lord, to his gifts. And we can still be saved. Perhaps we have made a pact with the Lord, we have eternal salvation, but we have not reached that abundant life.

I know in my case, I know that in all of you too, if I had not analyzed my situation, I would not have repented of my error in how I analyzed the Lord and thought that he was, if I had not searched the Scriptures to see what was the reality of who Jesus is, my life would be very different.

First, I would not be standing here, because we all bring something from the past and even from the present that prevents us from seeing the Lord. But we have to get over that. The Lord encourages us to overcome that. And what happens when you get over it? Then you enter into the plan of the fullness of what the Lord has for you, of your call, of a personal relationship with him. He is no longer a hidden, distant God, who has nothing to do with me, he is already very different. One can even make jokes with Jesus. Have you made jokes with Jesus? I laugh with him, continuously and I laugh, I cry with him, I feel him so present next to me. This is possible because I understood that what I had before was not the truth of who Jesus is and I began to grow in that area.

All of us have to grow in that area, keep searching, truly knowing who Jesus is. And when one achieves that, overcomes those blocks, then God can use you to help others in their own growth and development of the concept of who Jesus is. You can talk about how it has evolved.

I know that my story of how I saw Jesus before, from a distance, think that at the beginning of my accepting the Lord, I saw people worshiping, saying "I love you, Lord," raising their hands, dancing in front of him , and they saw them in love with the Lord and that saddened me so much, because I understood that I did not have it. And I know that my testimony has been able to benefit others, that this is a process, and that it is something intentional.

God is not going to force you to read the word so that you know who Jesus is. It will not force you in this area, but if you recognize it, that you have to continue growing, it is your responsibility to say, "I am going to see changes by faith, I am going to see changes in this area of my walk with the Lord." .”

So I encourage everyone to do that and help others too. It is like welcoming another who is a baby in these things and helping him, giving him the appropriate milk, guiding him until he or she discovers who Jesus is. And notice that one of the most important things that we can do is to minister to the children in our families in this way.

I don't have to tell you the dangers that exist in this world and the competitions that exist to win the souls of our children and our children, our nephews, our grandchildren, whoever you want, our children with whom we work. And it is our responsibility to guide those children to know who Jesus is.

They know that children have spiritual needs as well. They have a spirit, just like you and me, who are adults, they also have it and we have to learn, we have to take time. We have to put ourselves in the gap for the children so that the enemy does not contaminate them, does not steal their little minds, their souls, their spirits. Before the Lord can speak to them and create in them the fullness of life that he wants to create, and for that he takes time.

One of the things that worries me the most is the amount, the frequency with which children are using the Internet, all these famous game gadgets. I believe that this has its place, I am not saying, 'throw away all that'. I would be ignorant if I said so, but many times I still see in church, children who, instead of perhaps being there, are sitting like that, like everyone else lying down, they are not paying much attention but they are here, and they know that their father and their Mom, it's important that they're here too, and they're playing little games.

I have found them up there, children near a socket so that the battery of their little devices does not run out, while there is a service here, the Lord is being adored. I think that the Lord does not like it, I think it is a deficiency in the formation of these children. So I believe that from the time they are born, from when they are babies, reading the Bible stories to them, even if they don't understand much, but they are read to, they are read to, in their understanding, they are made to see that when mom and dad or someone has a problem, we go to the Lord in prayer because he always hears our cry.

We speak of a God who answers your prayer. A short time ago my daughter and her husband were praying with my little grandson and they wisely asked him…he prayed and they asked him, and what did God say to you? Assuming that he has a spirit and that he hears from God as an adult as well. And the boy with total conviction told them, "God tells me that he loves me." And so well touched because God had told him that he loves him.

If we do not think that this is possible, we are not going to do it. But that is our responsibility, to guide the children early because they are going to arrive at a time when they will already be... their mind, their heart, their spirit will be so full of things that are not of God that it will be more difficult to put it there, not impossible. It is always possible, God can always do the work, but let's not waste time.

And if you have other young couples, young mothers, young fathers, teach them that too so that they also minister to the lives of their children in this way. The home is the most important place where we learn about who God is, where we develop the clearest concept of who the Lord is.

Our children have to know what I believe, what is my answer about who I am? They have to know that and they have to form their idea early on. So let's not waste time, let's not give the enemy room to enter, but rather put ourselves in the gap, speak to the children, to the young people about the love of God, about the forgiveness of sins, about the power that is in God, about that there is a call for them, even from their childhood.

We don't have to wait for them to be teenagers or adults. It is already late, we have to make them see the importance of their call from a very young age, that we believe that God already has a personal relationship with them. So I hope I have convinced you of the importance of having a healthy concept based on the word, not in our own thinking or our own intellect, but based on the word.