Woe to me if I don't preach the Gospel

What I have been doing these last few Sundays is helping all of us to see the biblical, theological foundations of the evangelistic call and we have been looking at it from different perspectives. That the Gospel, for example, with the theme of the demoniac of Gadarene, the Gospel is spiritual warfare, it is liberation, it is to free people from the moorings and ties of the enemy. That the Gospel is something that has been entrusted to us and that the very nature of the church and of the Christian is to reproduce, the mustard seed, the yeast.

By the way, after I preached the sermon yesterday I started making bread and the recipients, two of them are here, because I was interested again. I said, I'm going to revisit about yeast and bread, so we made bread and I think we're physically reflecting it. But leaven that leavens the whole lump.

The invasive nature, in the most beautiful sense of the word, of the Gospel, contagious. Every believer must be a contagious person that everything we touch is leavened by the Gospel. Is the nature. And all this is again designed in that direction.

And today I want to talk about the same idea again and I want to show you how through scripture we clearly see that from the very beginning of time God's idea has been that the principles of his kingdom be incorporated into all activity of his town. This is not an option, it is an obligation, it is the very nature of the believer, the call to evangelize.

And if you asked me for a title for my sermon I would say, "Woe is me if I don't preach the Gospel." Woe to us if we do not preach the word of God. And I want to invite you to go to First Corinthians 9, verses 16 to 23. Paul speaking about all the benefits that we have received and how glorious, how privileged it is to announce the word of God. In verse 16 he says:

"...Well, if I announce the Gospel, I don't have to boast..." In other words, when you spend the day preaching the Gospel and you make efforts and give everything and do everything you can, don't make yourself ah, I am the great thing, what a good Christian I am. Did you know? It says here, useless servant I am. After you've done everything and you've spent the whole day… it's not like the Lord says, oh, great, how can I serve you. He says no, you did what you had to do.

Paul says, if I have preached the Gospel I have no reason to boast. We must understand that, that everything we do to advance the Kingdom of God, when you serve in the church so that those little children receive the word, because that is evangelism, you know? When you preach to a child, they say that you are saving a soul twice. Do you know why? Because you are saving her from all the mistakes that person can sometimes make as an adult and you are also saving him for eternity.

So in a sense the activity of educating children is one of the most evangelistic things. We are sowing the word of God. So when you serve and help in that, you don't see it as something extraordinary that deserves special praise, it's just what I do. I'm not going to glory in it, I'm not going to see it as something extraordinary. Everything I do to advance the Kingdom of God is simply part of my job description. That's there on my resume.

So, he says, “…because necessity is imposed on me…” It is a sophisticated way of saying it is obligation. They have imposed it on me, they have forced it on me, they have imparted it to me in an imperative way. And look at what it says, "... and woe is me, if I do not announce the Gospel."

And that is something that I want to impart to your heart and your spirit that first, it is an obligation, second, if we do not do it, it has negative consequences in our lives. I do not want to use scare techniques to encourage them, on the contrary, I believe that the satisfaction of seeing people come to know Jesus Christ and see the impact on their lives, the transformation that the Gospel brings when it truly enters a home or a life , that is more than enough satisfaction for us, and encouragement. But the reality is that next Sunday, if God allows me, I'm going to talk about that sombre dimension of not preaching the Gospel, about the importance of God seeing it as something very serious, which should take away that sense of complacency, that good, if I do it, very well, if not that is optional. It is an obligation and it is like something that you as a citizen of the kingdom have to carry out. But we leave that for later.

But Paul is very clear here. "Woe to me if I do not announce the Gospel, for which if I do it willingly I will receive a reward, but if the commission has been entrusted to me unwillingly."

In other words, even if I don't feel like doing it, and if I'm doing it because I have the commitment and the commission. Now, the good thing is that one obviously does it willingly.

“What then is my reward? That by preaching the Gospel I freely present the Gospel of Christ so as not to abuse my right in the Gospel…”

In other words, Paul is saying here, I consider it such a great privilege to preach the Gospel that I do it for free. Do you know that Pablo was bi-vocational? In other words, Paul built tents to pay for his evangelistic work. For him, he saw it as a privilege, that he did not want to say that nobody robs me of the privilege of preaching the Gospel for free. And he adds in the rest of the passage that I'm not going to read, how Paul humbled himself and he did whatever it took. If he was speaking to Gentiles, he spoke in a certain way; if he was talking to Jews, pious, self-righteous, he spoke to them differently.

He didn't care because he was a salesperson who wanted to win over his potential Gospel customers so that the Gospel would come naturally into his life.

So we see here, I want that expression to be engraved in your heart, woe is me, if I do not announce the Gospel. Every institution on this earth, be it a corporation, be it a university, be it a hospital, be it a non-profit agency, every corporate institution has a vision, it has a reason for being, and it has a modus operandi, something that gives it meaning. to its existence.

The hospitals' vision is to heal the sick and increase people's quality of physical life. A university ultimately exists to educate people. Nike serves to offer physical resources for all kinds of athletic activities. Each institution has a reason for being, a vision, a goal, a purpose that animates its activities.

I would define vision as a unifying principle that guides and determines the various actions of an individual or an institution. In other words, every institution, every individual has many different activities. In the corporate world there is a principle called alignment, which means that the activities of any institution need to align and ultimately reflect the reason for being of that institution. If in one way or another they do not contribute to the fulfillment of that vision, they are off base.

All the various activities of a corporation and the church in a way is a corporation with eternal and divine nature, but it is a corporation, it needs to align its different activities to the purpose for which it exists, to its vision. And I hold that the vision, the mission, of the church of Jesus Christ is to win souls and to impact the world for Christ, and to impart to the world the nature, the essence of the Kingdom of God.

The church of Jesus Christ gets its vision and mission from God himself. He is the founder and he has imparted his vision to the church. And we cannot, none of us have the authority, to substitute another vision, no matter how exalted or praiseworthy, the only one who can change the vision of an institution is either the original board of directors or the founder or the owner. principal of a corporation. And a church can do many things but the question is how those things fit with the ultimate vision.

As I was saying, the children, for example, we do a number of activities for the children and we invest a lot of money, tens of thousands of dollars in personnel and program and energy from many of you. Right now there are adults there giving of their time to educate our children. That is wonderful, but if we focus exclusively, okay, we want to be a church that is known and that prepares children to be good evangelicals. Yes, it's fine but there are many other things.

Their activities must lead to children who love the Lord and to adults who will one day be healthy members of the Kingdom of God. So, in a sense, as I was saying, that is oriented towards the evangelistic vision. The social work that the church does here, we invest a lot of money and space for a number of things, immigration efforts, efforts to educate young people for the university. And we believe that all this is also part of that leaven that penetrates the whole dough. People come to León de Judá and come into contact with Christian people who serve in those positions. They breathe the air of a Christian institution when they come to receive information about immigration.

The secular political and social powers of the city realize that there is a church that is doing activities to serve and bless and their hearts are softened and prepared for the Gospel.

I stumbled across some papers this morning looking for something from when we were the ground for Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker's inauguration service, that was last year or two years ago. And I was reading an article in the Boston Globe that was dedicated to León de Judá and to me specifically for reasons that take a long time to explain, and I was reading that very extensive article in fact, where they talked about our church, our theological positions and the fact that it was serving as the base for that great event in the state of Massachusetts. And again, free publicity, free publicity for the Gospel, people had to read about our identity. Look for him in the Boston Globe, Charlie Baker opening service. Ways of preaching the Gospel.

Everything has to be oriented in that direction. If we can't link it to the evangelistic call given to us by God, then something is wrong. Very good, very beautiful, one can do a number of works... In fact, there are churches that, by abandoning the biblical Gospel, have simply had to become a place of social services, because since they do not have that spiritual, eternal, supernatural content, Well, they justify their works rather by doing social works, good jazz concerts, working in society, different ways... that is not the mission of the Gospel.

One can use those things and one must use them but ultimately how many people are we winning for Christ. How we are growing, what impact we are having, how we are raising up the Son of man so that everyone who looks to him is saved. So, all of these are very important, but the main vision has to be that.

Do you know that since ancient times evangelism is not something new when Christ enters the scene? Evangelization is not only from the times of the primitive church, evangelism was already embedded in the DNA, in the genetic code, of the people of God in the Old Testament. You know that God called Abraham to be a light to the nations.

If you read what God tells Abraham that he was going to be the father of the entire Jewish nation and therefore the progenitor of the human race in its relationship with God, it was already assumed that God was raising up a people that was surrounded by pagan nations. and idolaters was to be an example to all those nations. Israel worshiping the one God, instead of many different gods, one holy God, instead of impure and sexually active gods as were the pagan gods, and were part of supposedly sacred prostitution, were origins of human sacrifice and origin of sacrifice children and great violence, this holy God that the Jews were going to adore, unique, not multiple, one, a prosperous, blessed, healed people, with great ethical values of service to others. All of that is in the original law.

Israel was supposed to be an example and an evangelistic resource in the sense of preaching the truth to a world that was in darkness. But what happened? Israel took that privilege for itself and then became God's chosen people. They did not share the Gospel in the sense of this God who wanted to be lifted up before the nations. They became perverted, they allowed the nations to corrupt them, they became an idolatrous, materialistic people and left their reason for being, that God wanted them to be his witnesses.

Look at Isaiah 43, how God sees the call that he has extended to the Hebrews. Isaiah 43 verses 10 to 12. It says:

"You are my witnesses, says the Lord..." By the way, there are groups out there that have taken this as for themselves only, but if you read in the original context, God is speaking to the Hebrews and by extension to all his people in general, not just a small group that claims the right to use that verse for their own purposes.

“…You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen…” What is that servant? The Messiah, Christ. “…so that you know me and believe – that is what we have to do, each one of us, know him, believe in him – and understand that I myself am. God was not formed before me nor will he be after me..."

In other words, the first thing one has to do is get to know the God one serves, have a personal experience with Jesus Christ, imbibe that sense of personal relationship with God. Who is God, and then from there, it says, verse 12:

“…I have declared and saved and have made people hear, and there was no foreign God among you; you are my witnesses, says the Lord, that I am God…”

In other words, we are called to testify and demonstrate the nature of God. Of course, now in Christ Jesus that divine nature becomes much more complete. The Hebrews knew certain dimensions of Jehovah but they did not know how they should know that humble, personal, immediate, accessible, generous, forgiving, gracious God, who becomes a man to experience our condition and intercede before the Father in the mystery of the Trinity. Now we understand God in a much deeper way, the immanent God, the God who is in us. Emmanuel, God with us.

The Hebrew world knew that God more as outside of creation, although he was obviously part of creation, but that God was fearsome to a certain extent and distant. Christ comes to teach us a much broader God now. We have known him, we have experienced him, we are witnesses of his mercy, his grace, his forgiveness, his generosity, his provision, his healing power, his enlightenment, his complete word, and now we are supposed to reveal that nature to those who don't know him.

Verse 21 says, “…I have created this people for myself, I will publish my praises – and verse 22 says – and you did not call on me, O Jacob, but you were tired of me, O Israel…” The pain of God, that his people, whom he had commissioned to be a witness and a voice, a spokesman for the Gospel message, had left him.

But that was the mission of Israel, to be a light to the nations, and what happened? That since Israel did not fulfill that mission, what did God do? He took it off. When you do not use the gifts that God has placed in you, when you do not use the grace, the energy, the endowment of God in your life to do what God has called you to do, the Bible says very clearly, if the branch it does not bear fruit, they cut it down, throw it into the fire because it is useless. If the salt loses its flavor, it must be thrown away in the trash. If a Christian is not reproducing, if they are not investing in the kingdom, if they are not being a resource for the Kingdom of God, if they are not being used in some creative way to advance the interests and purposes of the Kingdom of God, they are a failure. useless servant, it is a vine that does not bear fruit and if it does bear fruit it is sour fruit.

It is a barren fig tree. Why was Jesus so offended when he put his hand into this famous fig tree, barren, many leaves but when the Lord searched for fruit on it he found nothing and cursed it. Because? Because he trusted in it a symbol of a nation that had an immense religious apparatus, as Israel had, but it did not bear fruit, it did not advance the interests of the Kingdom of God.

And so every believer who does not use the gifts in some way to advance the Kingdom of God, in some way, bearing fruit can take many different manifestations, but ultimately the fruit that one bears is to advance the interests of the Kingdom of God and bring souls to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

If you don't use your gifts, your gifts dry up. The Bible says that those who have much will be given more and those who do not have what they have will be taken away. That is a rule that we see over and over again in the word of God, and we will see it very clearly next Sunday.

So, Israel does not use its gifts and its evangelistic call and the Lord transfers it to the church and calls a people that was not a people, the Gentiles, to provoke Israel to jealousy. By the way I tell you, God is not finished with Israel. There is a purpose but Israel is sort of in brackets right now and what we have now is what the Bible calls the Gentile times, where the Gentile church is doing God's work. At some point God is going to take the brackets off Israel and resume his very intentional relationship with Israel. But meanwhile the church carries out the work of that Israel that refused to accept the original vision that God had imparted to it.

And now he passes, firstly to the Messiah who is going to be the foundation of the work of the church. And Jesus Christ himself also saw his mission as an evangelistic mission. Isaiah 42, verse 1, this is a Bible study also apart from a sermon. Isaiah 42, verses 1, 6 and 7. In this prophetic word of the servant of Jehovah and what his nature and fundamental activity will be, verse 1 says:

“…Behold my servant, I will uphold him, my chosen one to whom my soul is pleased. I have put my spirit upon him and he will bring justice to the nations…”

Divine guidance has always been the nations. Go into all the world, preach the Gospel making disciples of the nations. And the Messiah is going to bring justice to those nations. Verse 6 says.

“…And I will make you a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring the prisoners out of jail and those who dwell in darkness out of prison houses…”

We read that verse before. When the Lord first appears before a group in public, the first thing he does is read from that passage. The spirit of God is upon me and has given me power to do these things that are here. The Lord knew that his mission was that.

There is an instance, for example, when he is in front of that well and a woman approaches who is a symbol of all the souls throughout history who have needed Jesus Christ and what our commitment should be. The Lord is sitting there and the disciples tell him, let's go get something to eat because it's lunch time and we know you're hungry. What does the Lord answer them? He tells them, “I have a meal you don't know about. My food is that I do the will of my Father." And what was his will? There he was at that moment preaching to him.

They were surprised that he was talking to a woman first as a rabbi who wasn't supposed, the Jewish ethos wasn't supposed to have any kind of contact. The Lord loved that soul. She represented an evangelistic opportunity and he put his agenda aside and preached the Gospel to her.

And how interesting, and that's a study that maybe one day we can do in terms of teaching and training, how to lead a soul to Jesus Christ. He starts with an immediate need that she has, she wants to get water from the well. And he talks to her about it, we say, cajoles her, a half-Caribbean expression. He will… ah, you want water. OK. Look, there is a water out there that if you drink it you will never be thirsty. And then he begins and finally stabs him, says, "I'm the one talking to you, I'm the Messiah." He takes her and then turns her into an evangelist.

Notice how interesting, she leaves there and immediately goes to her village and converts the whole world and becomes one of the first evangelists in all of history. The cycle, evangelism, reception of the word, and that person becomes a soul winner.

Do you know what happens in a congregation that becomes a truly evangelistic church? That people from outside, when they come and know the Lord, become evangelists. You know that those of us who have 10, 15 years in the Gospel are practically useless because – and that is a danger, a problem – because we get into the evangelical culture, we speak evangelical, we eat with the evangelicals, and we have no contact with the people who does not know the Lord. And it shouldn't be like that but many times it is like that.

Now, the people who convert and know Jesus Christ have what is called first love, which should not be first love, it should be the love, period, of Jesus Christ but they are enthusiastic, God touches them, they know 20 thousand people at work , wherever they are unconverted and those are the best evangelists of all. And that is the beauty that I see in this, that when a church manages to unleash an evangelistic dynamic, it is an organism that reproduces itself. So, evangelism does more evangelism, does more evangelism, does more evangelism. More souls know the Lord, they bring more souls, and those souls bring more souls and that is the glory of God on earth.

I wish that one day we have to have 4 services on Sunday. They are going to have to be shorter because the throat does not touch… or we are going to have to have more preachers, or you are going to have shorter services and glory to God, everyone wants that. the idea is that we have to exploit this.

But we see the Lord sitting there and he's taking advantage. Because? Because his call, his mission is to evangelize. He said, "I have come to save the lost." Sacking sees him on the sycamore and tells him, “Get down, I need to talk to you. Tonight we are going to have dinner at your house,” and there Plunder brings all his friends, a bunch of scoundrels all like him, publicans, tax collectors, and the Lord does a tremendous evangelistic work there. They all convert to the Lord and Plunder publicly repents of his sins.

The evangelistic dynamic of the Messiah called to evangelize the nations. And his greatest work of evangelism was on the cross of Calvary because there he established the link and the means for men and women to truly reach reconciliation with God.

Israel called to evangelize. The Messiah called to evangelize. The church of Jesus Christ, what was the vision of the early church in the book of Acts? They knew that their main mission, their identity, lay in preaching the Gospel and they had no other choice. Look with me, Acts chapter 4, a famous image where we see the council, the Sanhedrin, they arrest Peter and John upset because these people are setting all of Jerusalem on fire and there are thousands of people who are converting to the Gospel. They are concerned about their religious hegemony in the city and in Israel and they arrest these men and threaten them not to preach the Gospel under pain of imprisonment or worse than that. And watch how Peter and John respond to them in Acts 4:19.

“…More Peter and John responded by saying to them, “Judge whether it is fair before God to obey you rather than God because we cannot stop saying what we have seen and heard…”

How about we say that all together. Because we cannot stop saying what we have seen and heard. That is both a confession and a commitment. It's an assignment too, we can't help but share what we've seen and heard. If God has done something in your life, if you have experienced some measure of transformation, of joy, of profit, of being a child of God, you have to share what you have seen and heard. Like gadarene, you see to share it. The Gadarene wanted to stay with Jesus, enjoy this powerful man, and dedicate his life simply to living in company with the Lord. And he said, "No, no, go home, to your friends, to your relatives and tell how great things God has done for you."

That is the message of the church. Then Peter and John, speaking throughout the church, told him, look, we can't, that's our identity, we have to preach the Gospel. The early church, how it begins its career in history. Pedro gives his first sermon. How many were converted? 5000? And after he preached another sermon, 3,000 more were converted. Hear me what an evangelist, full of the Holy Spirit.

And the church set all of Jerusalem on fire, in one they called it those who are turning upside down Jerusalem, they were bothering and upsetting the life of all of Jerusalem. His impact was so great. Wherever they went they preached the word of God. Read the first verses of the book of Acts. The Book of Acts records the Gospel rushing through the early Christians like wildfire. And you know what? God even used persecution. There was a great persecution in Jerusalem and these Christians had to flee from Jerusalem and they went to different regions of Israel and there they preached the Gospel.

You know that I believe something is happening in this nation right now, where there is in a sense so much persecution. It is not a violent persecution but it is a sometimes institutional, political and social persecution of Christians and I believe that what it is doing is warning believers and creating in us a sense of urgency and emergency to preach the Gospel because We have rested on our laurels. Whenever the church of Jesus Christ becomes strong and socially influential as it did in the time of Constantine in the fourth century after Christ, whenever the church acquires a position of social hegemony it falls asleep and becomes a formalistic religion. And sometimes God uses persecution to awaken God's people.

God uses all means and if we do not preach... you know the best way to avoid persecution, start preaching the Gospel, because that way you will evangelize those who persecute the children of God.

So the early believers knew, and if they weren't going to do it themselves, God was going to use other means to get them to preach the Gospel. They knew that their mission came from Jesus Christ himself. In Acts 1:8 the Lord told them, "You will receive power and be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and in all regions of the earth."

The Lord entrusted them in the great commission, Matthew 28, “All power has been given to me in heaven and on earth, therefore go and practice the Gospel, making disciples of all nations and teaching them to observe all the things that I have told you.” and I have commanded you.”

The Lord left his testament to the church and it was to preach the Gospel. The clarity of these people regarding their mission. Sometimes it went to the point of being specialized, not only did they know they had to preach the Gospel but they knew they had to preach it strategically.

Inspired by the Holy Spirit, Paul understood that he needed to go to the cities and that is why we see him preaching in Corinth, in Rome, in Ephesus, in Philippi, they were key cities and he knew that if he seized the cities he would also possess them. all the surrounding villages. That was one of the great insights that the Holy Spirit gave the disciples. And Paul preached the Gospel in some very strategic and very targeted ways. That is why he says, "I deal with the Hebrews as if I were a Hebrew, with the slaves as if I were a slave, although I am free, with the free as if I were a slave of God although I am also a son of God." He did all the shapes.

They were very specific. Paul knew, he said, "My calling is specifically to the Gentiles," and that's why he preached in the places where he preached. Peter was the Apostle called to preach to the Hebrews and his letters, for example, reveal his inclination towards the Hebrews. The letter of James is addressed to Jews in the dispersion.

That is to say, that each one had his way of preaching the Gospel. Do you know that the 4 Gospels, Matthew, Luke, Mark and John, each one is geared towards a different audience. Marcos, for example, is believed, due to his orientation, to be oriented towards the Roman people, the way in which Marcos preaches. John is a Gospel that contains a lot of Greek language, for example, in the beginning the verb, logos, and the verb was with God. A Greek beginning. And the Gospel according to Saint John is preached as to reach those people who have been Hellenized for the Hellenic Hebrew world and their orientation is in that direction.

Luke is a more Gentile-oriented Gospel. How is Jesus Christ presented in the book of Luke? The Son of man. Each Gospel has… God is so tremendously strategic and that is why we have to ask Him, Lord, teach us specifically how to take this vision of evangelizing and orient it specifically to this city of Boston which is like a type of Corinth. Corinth was an extremely intellectually developed city, it was a very powerful commercial center and it was also a very corrupt, highly intellectually developed place.

Boston is a tremendously Hellenic city in a sense. There are great hospitals here, great universities, great museums like the Boston Museum of Art, the historic center of the nation, a number of Hispanics of all different nationalities. We cannot preach the Gospel as oriented only to the Caribbean or to the Central Americans, we have to be a little more cosmopolitan. So this requires something different, as Paul oriented his preaching of the Gospel in different ways.

And we're asking the Lord, “Lord, give us interventions that are highly tailored to this ultra-sophisticated culture that is the city of Boston.” That is why we are doing these surveys and other things because… I always say, I am healthy, I have nothing against treaties, I think they are a nice gesture. But you know what? Nowadays you give people a tract on the train and they look at it like it has 3 heads. What are you trying to sell me? Sometimes they don't even read it. There are other ways.

Now, if you want to distribute tracts, glory to God, that can be very useful. There are people who have converted. But there are other ways, using other means. We want to develop more drastic means, more attractive, more discreet things but all with the same end. But you have to guide it so that it is intelligent. We want these surveys to help us preach the Gospel in a way that is more focused on the context in which we are living.

That focus that these Christians had helped them to be very effective in preaching the Gospel. We have to say to the Lord, “Lord, teach us.” We cannot be like imitating and simply borrowing methods. I believe that God has no limits in his creativity and there is a way that he wants us to evangelize and we have to find that way because he is infinitely creative and helps us in our purposes.

So, that's the raison d'être. Another thing I want you to keep in mind is, I've already pointed it out briefly earlier, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are specifically to help us evangelize. Did you know that? It is not for you to necessarily display your spirituality, it is beautiful when we adore the Lord, it is beautiful when God heals people, but when you see Jesus Christ healing someone it was always to declare his dominion, be it over the devil, be it over the nature, be it over disease, whatever it was, he performed his miracles to validate his messianic character, to graphically declare his superiority over any principle in the world.

In other words, everything he did was for a purpose. When God gives the gifts of the Holy Spirit to the church or to a believer, he does not give it to them for the mere use of those gifts. If a person is healed, glory to God, that's nice and it's good, but ultimately that's supposed to validate and declare in a very convincing and apologetic way the dominion, the power, the actuality, the validity of the God who is the same yesterday, today and forever.

So, if we do not evangelize the gifts stagnate, the churches stop living. It is what we said before, if the salt loses its flavor, what is it for? If a church is not bringing souls to the knowledge of Jesus I would say, brothers, that it grieves the Holy Spirit and then the Holy Spirit withdraws in a sense and that church is then trying to live with one hand tied behind its back. Because the gifts must be put in course.

Take, for example, a bank. Do you think that a bank receives money simply to keep it in a safe? Banks exist to put your money to work. So that's why they lend money, why? Because they are taking interest, that is why the banks are always developing different types of strategies, that is why they have, for example, a Department of Mortgages, of Mortgages, because they lend money, the community uses it and they grow. They are always developing… they have to put the money to work. That is their raison d'etre.

McDonald's always has to be inventing new things. If McDonald's were only selling hamburgers like they did 40 years ago they would have been dead long ago. No, now you go to McDonald's and you can even buy movie DVDs sometimes. McDonald's has other corporations that make other things, they make fish sandwiches, chicken sandwiches, breakfast sandwiches, now even coffee, lattes and cappuccinos. Imagine, McDonald's, Burger King making cappuccinos, God forbid. But they do it, because their thing is to make money, put it to work.

The church, I'm going to talk about it when the Lord says, “do business until I come,” is one of the most profound passages in all of Scripture. Work in a thousand ways, each one of us must be a small work agency, each Christian must be a combat unit, of initiatives. A group of brothers who love each other and are friends must be working. All of us have a gift and the thing is, God says, I give that to you, but you better invest it. Get to work on it.

God has given us wonderful things here. We have an ideal physical plant. We have a community like you are, precious. I see them from here and I say, wow, what a beautiful community. Give me even a round of applause for that. So diverse. We have here, brothers, different races, different nationalities, different socio-economic levels, different generational groups, different parts of the city and its surroundings, it is incredible what is here among you.

Now, you have to put it to work, you have to put it to work. That is why we always have to be inventing new things, because the church has to always be in action, carrying out... because the gifts have to be put to use. If the gifts don't run, they die and stink. Anything that doesn't run stagnates and dies. A water that is supposed to run freely if it stagnates over time it smells bad and stinks and must be cleaned up.

Gospel water was made to run. I say that Christianity is a river, it is not a lake, it is not a locked well. Rivers of living water, says the word. The church is identified with dynamism, with effusiveness, with effervescence, with multiplication, with multiformity, so to speak, and God gives the gifts so that we can preach the Gospel. If you don't use your gift, your gift dies. If the church does not preach, its endowment becomes simply unnecessary and God is not going to invest in something that does not redound in benefits for the Gospel.

The last thing, when you evangelize you then grow, when you evangelize you experience the joy of the Lord, when you evangelize you know God better, when you evangelize the power of God runs through you and stays in you for a moment and blesses your environment and bless your house too. When the presence of God is alive in a life and that life is putting the gifts of the Holy Spirit to flow, that is where prosperity comes, joy comes, growth comes.

Many people say, I do not feel the joy of the Lord, God does not speak to me, it is always the same, I am stagnant, they told me that this would happen if I knew… Well, what are you doing to preach the Gospel? What are you doing to bring souls to Jesus Christ? What are you doing to put God's blessing in motion? The joy of the Lord is something that is experienced when we are restless and we are investing in our lives, when we give, when we serve, when we invest in the things of the Lord, then you grow and the more you give, the more you receive.

John, chapter 15, verses 1-2. The Lord Jesus Christ says, "I am the true vine and my Father is the husbandman." Jesus Christ is the source of all vitality. He is the trunk, he is the origin of your grace, of your power.

Now he says, "Every branch - that is, every branch - that does not bear fruit in me, he takes away." If your life is not bearing fruit for the Kingdom of God, if in some way you are not investing... and that is what I want, get us out of complacency, get us out of the idea that the Gospel is simply being religious and enjoying the good of the position of Christian. It is to bear fruit and to bear fruit is an expression... the most immediate interpretation is to bring others to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, but to bear fruit can also mean investing your life for Jesus, it can be helping those children to know the Gospel, it can be serving as usher and advance the operations of your church in this way, it can be praying for the Lord to give life to his word in the middle of the city where you are. And it can also be giving to a cause to your church regularly, because you know that by doing that you are adding to the solidification, the stability of your evangelical, Christian community, to preach the Gospel. It can be as a teacher and it can also be contributing to someone, talking to someone about Jesus Christ, always restless asking the Lord for opportunities, messages, convictions.

And when you do that then you bear fruit and if you bear fruit you can be calm because you are doing the will of God. If you are not bearing fruit, the word is very clear, it says, "every branch in me that does not bear fruit will be removed and all that bears fruit will be cleaned so that it bears more fruit..." Glory to the Lord.

You know what's up. Many times if a tree does not bear fruit, the farmer says, look, what is it taking up space for? There is such a parable. We're going to cut them, we're going to get him out of there. Now, when a tree bears fruit there comes a time when after bearing many fruits the branches begin to spread and the leaves begin to grow more because the tree, the sap is growing and there is life in that tree.

But many times its excessive branches can divide and dilute the energy that comes out of the trunk. What does the farmer do? He prunes it to make it cheaper, so that its sap doesn't spread through too many branches because then the fruit can be small or split or sour or whatever. The farmer, from experience, knows that by reducing the branches, he concentrates the sap in a more limited number of spaces and that makes the tree sprout more strongly and produce more fruit. There is a lesson there for many of us.

He knows that many times we are going through trials and God is pruning us. Sometimes God is cutting us down to make us stronger and more powerful. If you are sometimes going through difficult situations in your life, don't see it as God disregarding me, who knows if God is using that to make you more fruitful, to humble you by being forced to pray more, to depend more on God, by drawing you closer to his word, by feeling weaker and therefore more in need of God's presence and seeking more of him, God is pruning you and preparing you so that when you come out of that trial you will come out stronger than ever and you can be a more powerful Christian, a more effective Christian, more humble, who reflects more the character of Jesus Christ and therefore can be more attractive to the people that God wants to use you to evangelize.

So, God invests in you. Everyone that bears fruit will cleanse it so that it bears more fruit. Stay close to the Lord. Verse 7:

“If you abide in me, my words abide in you, ask whatever you want and it will be done for you. In this my Father is glorified, in that you bear much fruit and thus be my disciples."

In other words, how is one truly a disciple? Bearing fruit to the glory of God. I want to invite all of you to stand up for a moment as a gesture of commitment before the Lord. Take a few seconds. If you take what I'm saying as the word of God and I think I've been quite convincing, that's why I've been quoting so many verses, because I want to become a kind of kingdom lawyer right now and make a legal argument in front of the God's people.

You and I exist for one thing and it is clear, since the beginning of time it is to disseminate the principles of the Gospel, to disseminate the principles of that powerful God that we know. Adam and Eve received an evangelistic call. God told them, subdue the earth, order it, create culture, create different types of manifestations of my creative grace that I place in you. Take nature and tame it. Create cities, work on technology, make music, create movies, and give me the glory.

He knows what God has wanted is for us to take his great creativity and all his unlimited sap and embody it in different expressions that give glory to him. Man, however, has arrogated glory to himself and has colonized the world in a sense and nature, but he has not given glory to God. We as a church are supposed to colonize the world for the glory of God through tremendously merciful and generous creative work, not to subdue people or exploit them, but to allow God's life to manifest in them.

And we have to disciple the nations. We have to complete that mandate that was given in Eden itself to colonize the world in the way that God has wanted, subjugating it and ordering it in the way of the kingdom and that begins one soul at a time. Tomorrow when you are at work, in the classroom, on the train going to work, coming back from work, driving your truck, punching something, a machine in a factory, in the classroom listening to a teacher and perhaps responding a question in an intelligent, wise way, sharing with someone at lunchtime, remember that you have a commission, you have an identity, you have a call, you have an obligation, you have a privilege, you have a code within you operating, to be a savior of souls, to be a reconciler of souls.

God has given us the message of reconciliation, meaning that there are souls who are at enmity with God and we are the ones who are going to reconcile them through Christ Jesus, preaching the word of reconciliation. Will the Lord

I ask God right now, Father, in the name of Jesus look at this town, Lord, so beautiful, look Father, these physical, material, financial, cultural resources that you have made available to us and to our management and impart to us the life of the Holy Spirit. Give us the authority, give us the wisdom, give us the courage, give us the skills, the strategic capacity, the conviction, the persistence, the sense that there is no other option, there is no other legitimate state than that of winning souls for Christ. And fertilize us with the life of the Holy Spirit. Fertilize us, Lord, with the ability to bring souls to the knowledge of Jesus.

We offer you this ship. We offer you this machinery, we offer you this organism, we offer you this community, we offer you this family, we offer you this body with its different members, Lord. Yours it is, revive it like inert Adam, breathe on us, Lord. Breathe on us, give us your breath of life and make us a living being that proclaims your word.

We reclaim Boston for Christ. Not only the Latino community, Father, we claim African Americans and Asians, we claim Europeans, of different races, people from the Middle East, Indians from different places, Hindus but also from this same nation. We claim the innermost villages, Lord, of northern New England, on the northern border of Maine, Father, and in southern Connecticut, Lord, Rhode Island, we claim these regions for Christ Jesus.

We are salt in this body and we want to give it the taste of the Gospel, Lord. Help us Father, give us flavor to share. I bless this town, Father, I bless this concentration that you have placed in us, Lord, this vision. Give it life so that we are not calm until we see your glory explode, Lord, in this city and in this region and Christ raised on high so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. We receive that call in the name of Jesus. Amen and amen. Glory to the Lord.