Do not be a respecter of people

Chapter 2 of James, verse 1 to 9. It says: My brothers, may your faith in our glorious Lord, Jesus Christ, be, and here is the key to this segment, be without respect of persons. We are going to be Pentecostals, tell your brother next to you “Do not be respectful of people”. Tell someone there.

Do not accept What does it mean to be a respecter of persons? Let's see it because the book develops that. The word here is a respecter of persons, a very fancy way of saying 'discriminate'. Let there be no discrimination. May there be no racial, economic, ethnic, national discrimination among the children of God. There is not, there cannot be, it is a contradiction that the Lord hates. When God's people discriminate or discriminate against each other, or with people who are all created in the image and likeness of God. Because if a man enters your congregation, so to speak, with a gold ring and splendid clothes, a three-piece suit, and a poor man with a tattered dress also enters.

Think about that rich man and Lazarus, from the parable of Jesus Christ. And you look with pleasure at the one who wears the splendid clothes and you say to him: “come, boy, sit here, in a good place”, and you say to the poor man: “you stand there or sit here under my dais. Step aside, man, you have to give preference to decent people, good people." Don't you make distinctions among yourselves and come to be judges with bad thoughts? In other words, you are making a distinction, a judgment about the quality of that person and you are distinguishing in the quality of one person or another, and we do not have the right to do that.

We are all created in the same image of the Lord. We have the stamp of God in our hearts, in our lives, in our spirit, and we cannot be discriminating or judging, saying "this one is better than the other". That is not for us to do. Then he says: my brothers, beloved, listen. Has not God chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Don't the rich oppress you and aren't they the same ones who drag you to court? Do they not blaspheme the good name that was called upon you?

If you truly fulfill the royal law, according to the scripture, you will love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well. But if you do, again the term, if you show partiality, you commit sin and you are convicted by the law as transgressors. Definitely that word. It is that Santiago does not mince words. Santiago is a shepherd, and that is something that we have to understand. Sometimes, I thought about that this morning as well as today, and then I already started to go into another but that's okay, that's part, I thought this morning that in this country we have like an epidemic of essence in the pulpit where the people He comes to the Church and they demand from the pastors a kind of preaching that does not offend or confront or bother. And we pastors have fallen into that trap, many of us.

We have fallen into the trap that each day we have been tightening more and more the walls of the possibilities that we can preach and of the things that we can touch from the pulpit because it is like bad etiquette or bad pastoral ethics or protocol, talk about things that make people uncomfortable at lunch after they leave church on Sunday, and that's a devil's trap. When I look at the style of writing, first, that prophetic, clear, direct word. When I hear Paul's tone, for example, when he speaks to the Corinthians, the clarity. When I also hear Jesus Christ, speaking directly to his disciples and to the crowds, saying: you are looking for me because you want to eat the loaves and fish that I offer you.

And the disciples say: Look, they all left. Do you also want to leave? go away It is not that we are either aggressive or abrasive in preaching, but I believe that our Churches have to train themselves to come and sit there and receive the unadulterated word of God, wherever it goes and whatever breaks it breaks. It touches us and it splits us in half or passes long and it touches the one behind me or to the side, but we have to get used to it as a Church. A mature Church, a spiritual Church is a Church that is coming and that gives rights to its pastors and leaders to speak the word of the Lord, even if it goes against the prevailing culture, rumors, current culture or The nation doesn't matter.

The Church has to preserve the right of pastors to speak clearly. And we pastors have to fight and retain that right. The moment we sacrifice the right to speak clearly to the people of God we have abdicated the call to be a watchman, or people of the Lord. And that is why I appreciate Pastor Santiago so much his way of writing. When you read, the tone of this book is eminently pastoral, down to earth. There is clarity, there is a direct style, there are themes that have to do with daily life, like this theme of the congregation. And Santiago doesn't care who gets offended, and it's not like he's meant to offend.

But he simply declares the word of the Lord, no matter where he falls, and if someone can fit the shoe, let him put it on. I ask you, my brothers, that as a Church we always get used to having that form, that ethic, that concept. We come to the house of the Lord to hear the word of God. And if we come out uncomfortable, Glory to God. We conform to the word of the Lord. And if the word of the Lord offends us, then that is my problem, not that of the pastor who preaches it. If you are preaching the word of the Lord, you are not direct, or expressing your carnality, or that the woman burned your food before coming to Church, then you have to receive it no matter what and you have to adjust to it.

And may the Lord want this Church to always retain that commitment to the word of God, whether who likes it or whoever doesn't like it doesn't like it. It is a purpose that we make before the Lord and that is my first sermon of the night. There's a little ñapita for you but I like how he talks. He speaks clearly and that is so important, because the letter of Santiago, as I have always told you, is the letter of a pastor, and so he deals with many different topics, many different topics as we pastors do, that we touch on a number of different themes about life, and as it says, there is a passage that is like a person who takes a treasure out of a sack, and takes old things and new things. And so we do with the word of the Lord.

So James is taking a very, very important issue here and it is that of making discrimination, and evidently, he is talking about something that he has seen and experienced, because in verse 6 he says: But you have insulted the poor. You have insulted it, you have disregarded it, you have shamed it, you have neglected it, you have despised it. I don't know who he is talking to. Obviously he writes to a specific community. Some say it was a Jewish, Christian community. But it is also a universal letter to the entire Church of Jesus Christ wherever it is and through all times.

But he's talking about something he had experienced. I imagine, you have to imagine yourself in this time of the Church. I imagine it is before the end of the first century, where it has to be. He is writing about things that he himself has seen and heard about Jesus Christ, but James is a brother, he is a brother of Jesus Christ. This is a brother, one of Jesus' brothers. So he's talking about a period in the transitional Church, where yes, the Church is made up, for the most part, of poor people. If you read, for example, in the first of Corinthians, where... let me see if I can get it quickly, where the apostle Paul talks about not many of you being wise or rich or important but... How?

1:26, that's it. “Well, look, brothers, your vocation, that you are not many wise, according to the flesh, nor many powerful, nor many noble, but the foolish of the world chose God, to shame the wise; and the weak of the world chose God, to shame the strong; and what is vile in the world and what is despised God chose, and what is not to undo what is." Who were the first to accept the Gospel, in the first century? They were the poor people.

At the beginning, the Church was made up of poor, simple, ignorant people, according to the world's values, because the poor have always been the first to accept the word of God, those who have nothing to lose, those who need the good news of the Gospel, that there is a God who is no respecter of persons, a God who loves us just as we are, a God who wants to lift us up, a God who takes the weak and makes them strong, the poor and makes them rich and prosperous and blesses him.

Those are the people. The rich are still in love with their money, which is why the Lord said “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven”. Because? Because the rich have so many things, and not only rich in money, but rich in knowledge, prestige, influence, elegance. For example, a university professor may not be rich, but he is rich in influence and he is rich in elegance and intellect. So from that intellectual wealth that that person has, an artist or whatever a writer is. Perhaps you do not have material money but you have intellectual capital, and elegance, influence, prestige.

All people who have something that attaches them to this world, who have some kind of capital in this world, have difficulty entering the kingdom of heaven, because entering the kingdom of heaven requires you to leave behind a lot of baggage. That is why Christ told the rich young man: "Look, get rid of your money, go to that ATM you have and take everything out and give it to the poor, then follow me, and you will find the rest you need." The rich man could not do that. The young man could not do that. He couldn't shake off his influence. So through the centuries we have always seen that. It is the humble people, the simple-hearted people who first embrace the Gospel. They are the sediments that God uses, the foundation that God uses to build the Church and to build any movement.

This is the case in all our countries. In the Dominican Republic, where I come from, who were the first to accept the Gospel? The poor. The rich, no. When the poor converted, the good people of the family kicked them and threw them out of the family. Those poor people were the ones who then, little by little, were establishing the foundation. They were the weak, thin sticks used to start a fire. And then then come the big trunks. The artists, the rich, but when it is easier to enter the Gospel, when the poor have paid the price, then they begin to come, that ah, so-and-so. Yes. Colonel so-and-so is there.

After he robbed half the world, and hurt them, then he comes now to sit there but he hasn't given the money he stole from the people. That's another topic, forgive me. The judges, who took money from people, the contractors who robbed people in construction. Now yes, now they come because it's easy. You understand? Amen. Glory to God that they come, but those who paid the price were the poor, those who first introduced the Gospel. Then the others when they see the blessing. Sure, who doesn't like that? As the meringue says. Then they come too.

So I believe that at that time Santiago is seeing a Church perhaps that is beginning to attract, from time to time a rich person comes, God touches them. Like those first women of the Ministry of Jesus Christ, like a Nicodemus, like a Centurion. Every once in a while someone comes in that God touches him in some way. Cornelius, people of distinction and power. Something happens in their lives and they decide to visit a Church while they are alive. What happens now? That when that person comes, obviously dressed in an Ives Saint Laurent suit or an $85 or $500 tie, the pastor sees him from the pulpit. A rich! An important person! Glory to God! Hallelujah! Excellent!

And immediately what they do is seek to remove the poor from the seat. Let him sit down so he can come back again, so he can sit down. It is one thing from which we pastors suffer, low self-esteem. So when important people come to church, businessmen, this, that, the theology professor, from the seminary, I hope there aren't any here so they don't think I'm dropping hints. But for once we- there is a tendency to want to please, and then how to decrease the anointing, lower the temperature of the church, bring the style of the congregation to a medium level so that more of that type of people come.

It is one of the terrible dangers of this time. There are many intellectual people out there, there are many cultured people who want to enter the Gospel but say: “Before entering the Gospel, you have to change your message. I don't like that style of praise there that takes too long and the people crying in front and raising their hands and throwing themselves on the floor. So if you want…” They don't tell you that directly but it's the idea. The culture is in charge of gradually stealing the option from the church. And since we want to please these people and have them come to our pulpit, rather, to come to our church, and we pastors suffer from low self-esteem and we love to see these people in our churches. Because it is a reflection of our ministry.

Oh, you have so-and-so, you have the mayor, you have the councilor, that means that you are an influential man. So it is a psychology, it is a psychological problem of the leaders of a congregation, who see themselves reflected in important people, so our tendency is subconsciously to go down and remove everything that bothers those people and it is a way in which the The devil seduces the church, kills its anointing, steals its message, neutralizes it, and then checkmates and destroys it.

We the pastors, the leaders, the congregations have to be very careful. We have to do a lot of psychoanalysis continuously, we have to do word therapy to ourselves and distinguish when that seed of corruption is entering our hearts and minds and say: "No, Lord, I am not going to change what is of God." , for pleasing a man or a woman or a culture or a segment of the city or whatever, brothers.” And that is a battle. I am here expressing perhaps the thoughts that I deal with every day, because today there is so much going on in this world, this country is going crazy, honestly.

And the pressure that there is on the pastors, on the churches, on the leaders of the congregations so that we go with the culture out there. Because they want to enter that culture, they need what we have. And but they say “yes, but to get in you have to remove a number of things that we don't like”. And we have to make a firm intention that we will never, ever trade the revelation once given to the saints, Lord. It doesn't matter who doesn't like it. If President Obama wants to come here and visit, he has to face the consequences. Because if the Lord speaks a word that day, cut where he cuts, and we have to make that commitment.

I think that is why Santiago is discerning this process of acculturation of the Church, because since the church began, or if you study the history of the Church, one sees that. One sees that poor church, insignificant according to the world, full of the power of God, with the anointing of the Lord, which begins to manifest the blessing and prosperity that God gives to those who seek him with a sincere heart.

And then the gradual process of growth and then entering another layer of society, another layer of society, more prosperous, more advanced, in quotes, beginning to enter the compound of the Church, and the Church then feeling, and the tendency of the leaders to give preference to those people at the expense of those who paid the price in the beginning, which culminates in fact, the history of the Church, with the conversion of the Emperor Constantine. This was in the fourth century, when the Roman Emperor, when Rome, which had persecuted the Christians so much, Constantine the Emperor converted to the Gospel, and with him converted all of his court, the Roman army, by force or whatever. , much of the Roman society, unfortunately comes the corruption of the Church.

Then comes this immense influx of important people, influential according to the world and overwhelms the Church and overwhelms the purity of the Church. And that is a process that has been repeated through the centuries. In all the countries of the world, our countries now in Latin America are experiencing this process, where 40 years ago, once again, the Evangelical Church belonged to the poor, the Pentecostals there with their bows on top and with their very long skirts, and men without beard or mustaches. They had to be very holy. And then now little by little there is another layer. The Juan Luis Guerra, Glory to God, and seeing that a sincere and precious man came listening to him while he was on the radio. My car was going tum-tum-tum. Glory to God!

I love, I love all that music and glory to God for each artist who converts, and all the important people, I want them in my Church, come a few rich people and give me two million dollars to pay for the temple. Glory to God. We receive them but they sit in the back, and if there is no other seat, they can remain standing in the back. Unless we don't want to because they are new and out of courtesy, let's say they sit down on a Sunday. But afterwards, you already know what you have to expect. But no, I don't want to say that they are hypocrites or anything either. What I want to say is that, that we are now seeing movie stars, governors, presidents, political candidates who want the votes of the Church involved in the Church.

And we have to have great discernment from the Lord and make a commitment. We, our values, are from another world, from another dimension. And one of the things is a commitment to the equality of all human beings, with the stamp of God that is in their hearts, with that spirit that knows no rags or noble and luxurious clothing. It is the God that is within that person, the holy spirit that is in that person. That is what we have to see, you have to go through the bad smell, the matted hair from the lack of soap and see the spirit of the Lord, the soul that is inside that man or that woman.

That does not get dirty, that is, it is valuable. Now, one day he goes either to hell or to heaven, but what is there is the very essence of God. That's what the devil always wants to dirty and destroy and kill and send to hell. Because he knows that it is the heart of God himself. And we always have to fall in love with the god that is in every man and in every woman, sincerely. The spirit of the Lord that is. And when you speak, be it a poor person, be it a rich person, treat yourself to therapy, take off those ragged, rich, luxurious clothes, or ragged and poor, and simply see that being that is the naked being, the being that God created, the soul of the person. And love that person, respect him, venerate him.

That's why I always believe that we have to, whoever it is, the person at McDonald's who serves you the hamburgers, brother, the one who takes your ticket on the bus, the waiter who serves you the food, is just doing a job but it's a child of God. And you have to treat him with that preference, with that honor, with that respect, because you would treat the owner of the restaurant or the owner of the bus company, whatever. Because he is a son of God, a daughter of God, who is serving you, he is doing a function, that's all. But his soul is not touched by his lowness or his height. Before the Lord that means absolutely nothing.

So I want to transfer that value, brothers, to us as a congregation, as a Church. That is the true diversity, of which this world talks today and does not understand what they are saying, they have perverted the idea of diversity, of pluralism, but I believe that the Church should be the place with the greatest diversity on earth , where the white and the black and the red and the yellow are sitting there all the same before the Lord, reflecting the image of God and the beauty of all races and all types and all cultures. And we are honoring the Lord and rejoicing in our diversity.

The Central American sitting next to the Caribbean, next to the Anglo-Saxon, next to the European, next to the South American, the Indian, whatever, and rejoicing that we all have the image of God in our hearts, in our spirit. Amen. Brother, this must be the value as long as this congregation holds and we are not going to change that. I rebuke anyone who wants to say otherwise about our Church because the value that this Church officially opposes, upholds, is a value of equality, of love for one another. Here I sincerely hope that there is no distinction of persons, respect of persons of any kind. Because I love the idea that our Church is an egalitarian Church, a Church of love for cultures and races and types and nationalities, ethnic groups.

We have to learn to thank the Lord, I believe that one of the great blessings that God has given to this Church is its diversity. In fact we have dozens of nationalities here. And how beautiful. When I look around me and see the colors of all the people of God, the types, the indigenous still with their beautiful features from Central America and the black and the mulatto from the Caribbean and the faded white from Europe and England and the United States and North America, and Asia, praise the Lord for that beauty, that diversity. We have to rejoice in that, we have to celebrate that, and let no one ever dare to think that because he is different from me, I am better than him or he is inferior to me. A lie from the devil, and that is what the devil has used to destroy so much in this world, to do so much oppression, so much persecution.

The German against the Jew, the white against the black, the Baptist against the Pentecostal, Anabaptist against the other who believes otherwise, the Lutheran. And those are distinctions of the devil, they are not of God. And we have to make a radical commitment, to always respect and see the beauty of each race, each social group, each socioeconomic and educational stratum, and see again the God that is in each one of us, the holy spirit that dwells in each man, the beauty of God in diversity, who have made it dwell in our midst. Churches must reflect the diversity of the world, I do not believe in middle class, upper middle class Churches.

There are pastors who go out of their way because they want to minister to the middle class and the upper class. God rebuke the devil. I want to minister to rich and poor, and to North Americans and Latinos and Afro-Caribbeans and whites, whatever, and it is the greatest privilege one can have. Churches should be as diverse as the community in which they are found, just as the human race is diverse. So we too have to be. A representation. And we have to- it costs work and effort to learn to live with each other. It costs work. The Colombian who speaks with his very distinguished accent has to learn the Caribbean who cuts the R's and turns them into i's. And why, instead of saying why. And when you hear it, make a translation there in your ear and appreciate it for what it is.

This is how we have to do it in every way, in every way. The Dominican who likes his food with garlic and spicy has to learn to like Central American food, so delicious. It's a toast or a pupusa or whatever, they're tasty things. Okay, that the Colombian sancocho, sometimes they add that cream. One says “Cream? How are you going to do that? It damaged it." The Colombian does not learn to like the sancocho beyond the north of Colombia, and also the Colombian who learns to like the sancocho with cassava and plantains and Dominican yams, and we learn to manage each other, and to love one another in our diversity. That is something special.

And I think that part of what Santiago is saying here is that value, the value of appreciation of races and socioeconomic levels, not being a respecter of persons. May the Lord tonight serve to strengthen our commitment to the Church, to always make a Church of great diversity and of love among us and of acceptance from all the different groups, and let us consecrate ourselves, let us consecrate ourselves to maintaining that as a value and doing the work that requires that, because it is not natural, it requires effort, and it requires an ethic that you put into practice. Every time you come to church or associate, don't look for the person who looks like you and talks like you every day to sit next to them. No. Find someone different.

Say “today I am going to collect a different person, from another stratum, from another culture, from other races, from another accent, and today I am leaving, today I am going to commit myself to cultivating this, brother”. The Lord says: if you only invite your friends, those who can invite you later, then there is no merit in that. Invite the one who can't invite you to his house. Invite someone different from you, feel uncomfortable to affirm the values of the kingdom of God. make yourself uncomfortable And that is why we do not grow many times, because we like what is comfortable, we like the warm water of our people and our culture, but from time to time we have to get out of that, because that is how we grow and culturally we learn other words. , other accents, other foods, other ways of seeing the world, about another culture, another language. It is bothering us.

And I think that is one of the things that God has given him, one of the gifts that he has given to this congregation, is to be able to reach many people. And that, there is a price, because every Sunday when… I would like for us to stop as a rule, that I not have to worry about anything because there are ten new people from another group here today on Sunday visiting us, like every day we have to go back again to hit the handle to feel comfortable because it gets- it's very easy when we all speak the same language, we are the same people every day, every Sunday the same. But then, okay, now we have to translate each other and do this and bilingual and who knows what and who knows how much.

But you know what? That is a great offering that pleases the Lord, that is the Gospel, of a holocaust, that we give to the Lord, of bothering ourselves so that the values of the kingdom of God are manifested through our congregational life and that we have to do a compromise, sir. This Church will always be concerned that the values for which Christ died are always mutely manifested among us. That when you look from above our life, that is our greatest worship. Not the words that come out of our mouth but our experience, the way we treat each other, the way we prefer each other, the way we value each other, the way we love the one we don't it is kind, according to the world's values, but it is eminently precious in the eyes of God.

So a congregation honors the Lord with its experiences, its values, its behavior, its sincerity, its transparency, its humility. That is our true worship, as Romans says, chapter 12. It is not that of the mouth but of the soul that allows itself to be broken and crushed by the values of the kingdom and is reconfigured according to the values of God and not of man. Culture, world society. So I believe that this is all contained in that passage tonight. The Lord wants tonight to reinforce that value. I declare it prophetically as a value for this Church. As long as this Church is here, let that be its hallmark and that be its standard.

Father, in the name of Jesus, tonight, we receive your call to be a Church that reflects the values for which Christ died. He became poor by being rich, he became weak by being powerful, he became specific by being universal in his glory, in his power, he limited himself by being unlimited. So that we, Lord, as the Church, can become uncomfortable as he was uncomfortable and put ourselves in the straitjacket of your humanity, so that your glory may be manifested.

And Father, we believe that in that humiliation of ours, in that discomfort to which we submit, then we will be lifted up, as Christ was lifted up and a name was given to him, above all names. We want our triumph, Father, to be through the cross, through death to self and personal preferences. That if you are going to raise us up, Father, be according to the values of your kingdom, not according to the values of man or culture. May this word remain in us, Lord, tonight, and we declare it, Father, as the foundation for this congregation and we rebuke everything that does not align with that truth that we have declared tonight.

We reject it, Father, and embrace this value of unconditional love for every creature that bears the stamp of your deity on them. Thank you for tonight, thank you for the privilege of adore you as we have been able to adore you, thank you for your visit, Lord. Take us to our joyous homes tonight, Father, renewed. We bless you and we adore you. Thank you, Lord, in the name of Jesus. Amen and amen. Glory to the name of the Lord, brothers, God bless you. Glory to God. Amen.