Cast away all filth and all remnants of malice

Let's go to the word of the Lord. Santiago, as you know we are studying the book of Santiago, some specific moments, some specific points. We are not in a hurry, we are going little by little as long as we take advantage of that word of the Lord that is so rich and so dense.

In verse 21 of chapter 1, last Wednesday we were talking about James saying, "... for which" and that for which he means, as a consequence of what was previously said. And James has spoken about the generosity of the Father, his love for us, his goodness, he says that every good gift, every perfect gift comes from him and then he says, as a result of all these things and the fact that we have to be careful how we speak, how we behave with others and be slow to speak, slow to anger, quick to hear, etc., because of all these serious things, we then discarding all filthiness and abundance of malice.

Listen to me, there they killed four or five of me at once, all filth and abundance of malice. I hope no one here falls into that category. Like I hit someone there, they're laughing as if to say, will it be me, Lord?

And I used to say, if I'm not mistaken, that sometimes you have to take things off before putting things on, you have to discard before receiving. And it occurs to me right now, notice how the Holy Spirit is, right now as I say this I get a new illumination about it. Discarding is a very strong word, very intentional.

We have to reject, it means like repudiate, renounce, rejecting. You know what? Unless we make a radical decision in our life, I believe that the essence of what remains of that passage, of that chapter 21, is the call to holiness, it is the call to a life that pleases the Lord, it is the Called to a life of integrity, it is a difficult call for all of us but it is the very essence of the Christian life.

Until we are confronted with God's call to be different from the world, to live a lifestyle different from what we lived before, until it becomes a passion in our hearts and a great desire, in reality, we do not we have arrived frankly. We are just religious people, but we are not spiritual people.

So I believe that God is calling all of us at this time as a church to embrace holiness so that he can do what he wants to do in our lives and in our congregation. You will remember that when in the Old Testament when the Hebrews were going to cross from the desert to Canaan an angel of the Lord found Joshua, who is now the main leader after the death of Moses, and told him to circumcise all the people because of From now on I am going to do great wonders among you.

And that circumcise meant that they were consecrated. Circumcision was a sign of total belonging to the Lord, it was the mark on a man, and by extension to his women, that human being also belonged to God. It was like a cow being struck with a hot iron, for the man was circumcised in his most strategic place, so to speak.

In the very center of his personality they marked him as that man belonging to God, and for the rest of his life in his body he was going to have the mark of his belonging to the Lord. No other tribe or nation had that mark. Nowadays it is used for hygienic reasons but at that time the Hebrews were the only ones who did that and it was a mark that that person belongs to the Lord.

Notice that God tells you, before I can do the wonders that I want to do among you, you have to consecrate yourself to me, seal yourself. And I believe that this happens in our lives, before God can do anything in us, he has to sanctify and purify us.

I call you and myself right now, brothers, in this season of our life as a church, to redouble our purpose to live lives pleasing to the Lord, to be a congregation that is distinguished by people of integrity and that anyone who does not living in that integrity is deeply uncomfortable.

I am speaking in very radical terms and God help me also to do this on Sundays, it is a pity – the truth is that we should also be preaching these meditations on Sundays. It was our turn on Wednesday and I ran into her and got involved in this process, but I know that we are also going to have to do it and I have the intention.

God wants each of us to make a commitment to consecrate ourselves so that God can then do what he wants in our lives. I am talking about something difficult, brothers, it is not easy, I fully understand how difficult it is, I understand what the fight against the flesh is, the fight against the temptations that exist in us and our normal biology, and therefore - to unless one does not discard, I want to stop there on that word, discarding.

We must renounce sinfulness, we must renounce impurity, we must develop an aversion, a strong aversion to sinfulness in order to achieve holiness.

If we do not come to repudiate and hate sin, we will not be able to live adequate lives. We have to ask the Lord, Father, to develop in me an active aversion to a sinful life, so that it truly hurts me to offend you and violate your will.

I believe that we have to repudiate, before being able to please the Lord. Job's words also come to me. This man, Job, made a resolution to live a life of integrity and that is why God honored him the way he honored him, and that is why he actually suffered what he suffered, because he was a threat against Satan, and that is why Satan tells God wants to discredit Job before God.

When we make a pact with God and a resolution to live a life pleasing to the Lord, forget that the enemy will do everything possible to try to discredit and defeat us, but we have to persist. But I like what he says, I made a pact with my eyes. You have to make a pact with your mind, make a pact with your heart, make a pact with your body, I made a pact with... That means that I made a commitment with my eyes, like looking at a young woman, but it could be any other Life's things.

If you do not make a pact with holiness, you will not reach it, and it is hard, it is difficult, but we have to do it, brothers. And we have to make a deal with God. I call my brothers, I call my own life to that, and God help us and free us from the cynicism and bad intentions of the enemy.

That is why I believe that Santiago says, therefore rejecting... and that is what the Lord has given me. Let's throw away, make a deal with our life and with God not to live lives that discredit the Gospel. And if we are fighting, brothers, don't take it as a condemnation to add more pain to your fight. If you try your best and are struggling, then trust the grace and mercy of the Lord, because God is also merciful, but let's not use that as an excuse. But I don't want to either, if you are struggling in your life, or in any situation, don't leave here in despair either.

The Christian lives in the tension between the justice of God, his holiness and his grace and mercy. That allows us not to become neurotic, because there are also people who become so obsessed with holiness that they become neurotic. So they are continually whipping themselves, that's why the monk comes with his whip in a cold cell, beating himself to drive out the demons from his body. This is not functional.

We have to live between the holiness of God and his grace and if we fail, we get up again but we have the purpose, we do not abuse the holiness of the Lord because the Lord has to be just, even if he does not want to, he has to do it, because he cannot violate his holiness. And the devil is a horrible accuser who won't let us go.

We have to discard, that is why he says, discarding all filth, that is, filth is all impurity, filth, sinfulness, things that do not suit the Lord, everything ugly, everything vile, all impurity, all concupiscence, all those things. There are many things that qualify, what's more, I don't think they are only sexual things, every sin, every dirty thing, every vile thing that is contrary to God's nature, we have to discard it, reject it, throw it out of our life.

And all abundance of malice – because there are people who are not unclean, but they are malicious. So here we all fall, whoever does not fall into one falls into the other. There are people who are not unclean but are gossipy. Oh, Lord, thank you that I am not, but they are gossiping over there, sawing people's sticks and criticizing and driving away the new sheep that come to church with hurtful words.

The idea is that it is character flaws, behavior flaws, let's discard it, and get it out of our life, let's reflect the character of Jesus.

Discarding that, and receiving... then we have to receive with meekness, we discard and then we open ourselves to receive actively. That word receive is an active word, it is like welcoming to actively open ourselves to something, to say, come, come in, I am open to you.

And receive meekly. Look at that, that idea is interesting, to receive with meekness. Here the Christian is presented to us as in a feminine form, where he receives and the word penetrates, excuse the sexual image, I'm talking about purity, I shouldn't even go into that matter. But the idea is that we are as if impregnated by the word, we open ourselves to the word and the word penetrates and implants us and gives birth to its life. It is like the image of a man impregnating a woman. We open to the word with meekness, we say, Lord, I will not resist your word.

That idea of receiving it with meekness means that we don't struggle with it, we don't try to rationalize the word. How many people are there and when the pastor is preaching and he preaches something, they are trying to see what clause I get to escape from what he is telling me, like a lawyer. And it shouldn't be like that. What we have to do is, okay, he told me that and it's true, I receive it and apply it to myself.

We have to be fertile land, land open to the penetration of the word of the Lord. I love those Christians who are like children. You tell them anything and they receive it and believe it and are looking for it. I am enthusiastic about those people who are in love with the Lord, in love with the word and are trying to please the Lord and submit their lives to the Lord. and you tell them anything and like children they grab you and run with it.

What happens is that with the passage of time, we become very sophisticated as Christians and we stop having that hunger and that simplicity of spirit. How nice it is when people are with their first love, actually we should live in our first love every day of our lives. There is no second love, there is only one first love, the rest is indifference, there is nothing else.

But those people who are in love with the word of God and receive it like children, with meekness, then God can do his work in us. God loves the meek and humble and simple Christian with the word, he does not fight with the word, but opens up to its penetration.

Then he says, receive the implanted word with meekness. The last time we talked, we talked about that, implanted is like the graft, the grafted word. That then I said that what a graft does is that it imparts the nature of the graft to the tree, it almost genetically enters it and then the fruit that comes out is a fruit that reflects the genetics of the graft.

That is the idea of Santiago, implanted, it is the idea of grafted. We could be here, what a pity we don't have more time, because I'm stuck, for days I've been wanting to enter into that sense of what the living word is, what the power of the word is, the life of the word. You know that this is not an inert book, this is paper but it is also alive. Don't ask me to explain how that chemistry happens, but this word is as alive as a living being. The content of the word of God, the spirit that is within the word of God, is a living spirit. This is not like any other word, the words of men are words like bullets that when fired there comes a time when they lose their momentum and fall dead to the ground.

But the word of God is alive, says the Bible. And over and over again one sees that property that the word has that when it enters a heart full of faith and open to it, it enters and begins to move within the being and does something within us, it has an effect, it changes us. , reconfigures us, transforms us, gradually reorganizing the nature of our being. Over time, that word will change you into something different if you love it, venerate it, respect it, try to obey it as much as possible and are filled with faith when you approach it. That word is going to do a transformative work in your life, but you need people in love with the word, respectful and reverent people before the word and people who receive it with meekness.

So, I want to go into that later, but it's time - I don't want to go into anything else that will take us a long time either. That word, one of the things he says, which can save your souls. Let me finish with that. The word of God, one of the things it does is that it can save, preserve, our souls. That word can ensure that when we die, we go before the presence of the Lord.

All the Bible does is show us how to have fellowship with the Father and how to live such a life that at the end of our days, we can enter into the presence of the Lord and have eternal life with him. That word is so powerful, that word gets inside us, does its work and its final product, what makes it so worthy of respect and admiration is that it can save our souls.

I wish each of us had a serious sense of what is at stake when we are in the Gospel.

One of the most serious, as Christians we need to be possessed by this idea that we move in a very serious thing. It's a matter of life and death, our eternal destiny is at risk and so when we are in the Kingdom we are dealing with matters of eternal life and eternal death and we need to understand that the thing that guarantees our eternal life is that word of God that contains all the teachings that we need for a healthy relationship with God in order to be able to enter into that eternal life at the end of our earthly life.

Many of us, I believe, sin because we do not understand the seriousness of what we are working on here. And we do not understand how serious it is to walk in the ways of the Lord, that it is about life or death, it is about decisions that can affect our eternal destiny and the destiny of many people in humanity. As children of God we are possessed by a sense of seriousness before what we do and we have to cling to that word, cling like a shipwrecked person clings to a board in the middle of the sea, which is his guarantee that he can at least float. in the sea until they come to rescue him.

And the word of God is like a board that God has thrown at us in a dangerous world so that we can hold on to it, it is like a burning torch that shines in the midst of darkness. That word is our guarantee of eternal life and that is why we have to venerate it, receive it with meekness, and work with it. Let's fall in love with the word of the Lord.

I always speak, my mother one of the things she taught us as children was to love the word. She was not a highly educated woman but when she turned to the Lord she gave everything to the Lord. I have hardly seen anyone, I am sure there are many women and men like that, but I have met few people, not because they were my mother, but who loved the word of God so much and who would have given themselves so radically to obey it. and to live it

We live the fruit of that delivery. One could see how that word lived in her and filled her with a natural wisdom, a simple wisdom and produced incredible fruit. And this is what happens when one falls in love with the word. And that kind of bequeathed it to us. All of us have always loved, we know that one cannot be a mature, powerful, fruitful Christian if one does not love the word.

Brethren, new to the faith, if you don't have a Bible run away and get yourself a Bible soon. Buy yourself a good Bible and start reading it and ask the Lord to give you wisdom. The beauty of God's word is that one does not have to be highly studied. If you barely know how to read you already have everything you need to make the most of that word. You know that the irony is that there are people who have doctorates in theology and do not get half the benefit that some people who have almost no education get from the Bible, because the Bible is a book that opens only to the person who reads it. He approaches her with humility and with an appetite of heart and asks the Holy Spirit to illuminate his life and then gives him time to study the Bible.

Brothers, I encourage you in the name of the Lord, do not be intimidated because you do not know how to read much or anything, believe that the Bible is capable of speaking to you if you give it time. And start studying that Bible, don't waste a single day without reading. I know I'm talking to people here who love the Lord, come to church but don't read the Bible at home, haven't developed an appetite for the Bible. You are content, I am not saying this condemningly, but you are content to receive your food from up here and that is not enough.

There is nothing like when one reads the word and eats from it directly. It's the difference between eating canned peaches and going to a tree and picking a fresh, ripe peach from there and eating it right there. It's the difference between drinking that watery milk that they sometimes sell at the bodega and going to the cow itself and drinking it there, foamy and warm. It's a big difference.

There is no Biblical truth that tastes as good as the truth that you have obtained through your own exploration with the word. Yes or no? Those discoveries in the morning, with a cup of tea or coffee in your hand while you read your word, that has no comparison, brothers, that will stay in your life. Love the word, let's become lovers of the word.

I challenge you in the name of the Lord tonight to become an avid consumer of God's word and have your Bible marked, don't be afraid to pick up a pencil, the Bible loves to be marked. Yes. Don't be falsely reverent, oh, it's not the word of God, I can't. No, man, crumple up the Bible, mark it as much as you want to show drops of coffee and tea and latte on top of it, that means you consumed it while it was there – it doesn't matter. What's more, a drop of blood and a few tears wouldn't be bad from time to time on her too.

Amen. There's nothing like a well-marked, well-wrinkled Bible. That means it is being used. If I see a Bible over there that is very clear, I say, this one is not reading the Bible.

Therefore, discarding all filth, indeed, stand up, let's all read that. Prepare yourselves well, fix your shirt, your pants and we are going to read that all together, in the name of the Lord, we are going to make a pact with the Lord right now.

Therefore, discarding all filth and abundance of malice, receive with meekness the implanted word, which can save your souls. Give the Lord a big round of applause. Amen. Glory to God. Glory to God.

You can even memorize a verse like that. A verse like that is very powerful, brethren, and you can memorize something like that and that has incredible power because it gets into your spirit and you can remember that passage, wow, it's telling me this, it's telling me that. Stop over each word, each verb, that is the way in which one consumes the word of the Lord.

Father, thank you for your word that we have proclaimed tonight, Lord, each one of us receives that message in their hearts. We put it, Lord, in our souls, our spirits and we ask you to help us reach that goal, Father. I understand clearly, that I have declared it is incredibly serious, it is a commitment, Father, that I make with myself and with my church and each brother makes with your word tonight.

And we ask that you help us not to fall from that height, Father, that we have declared tonight and that this word reaches the hearts, not only of those who are here but that it runs through our congregation, Father, creating a church similar to the one described in this verse. We receive it in our hearts, Father, now and we thank you for your word.

Thank my Lord. Thank you for this beautiful town that you are raising. Thank you for our service, Lord, that you are giving us. Bless my brothers and my sisters tonight, renew their strength within them, Father, and take them to their homes rejuvenated and strengthened and that tomorrow, Father, and what remains of Friday and Thursday, we can have a good week of work, be it at home, be it in the factory, be it on the bus, wherever, Father, bless and prosper your people.

And Lord, we ask that you fill this church with your power, Father. Nest in this place, Lord. We want more of you, as we said, we are hungry for you, Lord, we are hungry for you. This church is hungry for you. Oh, Holy Spirit, we are hungry for you. Spirit of God if you would rest on this congregation, Lord, if you would visit us, Lord, if you would visit us as you visited those Apostles in the upper room, Lord, if you would make this church a sample of your glory, Father, of the God who is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Oh Lord, if you did something different, something new, something that would attract the attention of the world, Father, for your glory. If you would make this place, Lord, a source of grace for humanity, we dare not ask you like this, Lord, if you would visit us, if you fertilized us, if you would impregnate us, Lord, with your powerful spirit and make us worthy , Lord, to contain your glory and to manifest your power, Father. Flood our service, Lord, flood our meetings, flood our programs, touch our leaders, break out, Lord, in our midst with your power. Oh, God, we ask you, have mercy. Look at our hunger, our thirst for you. We are hungry to see your glory manifested, Lord, and for your church to raise its head, Father, instead of being ashamed as it is at this time, Father, powerless, Lord.

Lift up the head of your people, Lord. And your will be done in the nations, Father. Quiet the madness, Lord, that has taken over this world, Father, and give your church power, a prophetic voice, Lord, in the city. Do something, Lord, in our midst, we offer ourselves to you, we open ourselves to you, Lord. We lie down on the sacrificial table so that you can do something different, Lord, with this congregation. We give it to you, Father, I am not worthy of handling it, but you have the power to take control of it, Father, and that is what we ask of you, Lord, tonight. Glorify yourself, Lord. We need you and we want more of you, we want more of your glory, work, Lord, in us, please Father, we ask it, we ask it, we ask it in Jesus name. Amen. Thank my Lord.