We have never been here before

Joshua 3:1 says: “Joshua rose early in the morning, and he and all the children of Israel set out from Shittim and came to the Jordan, and rested there before crossing it. And after three days the officers went through the camp, and commanded the people, saying, When ye see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the Levites priests that carry it, ye shall go out of your place and march after it, so that you may know the way by which you have to go; because you have not passed this way before now. But between you and her there is a distance of about two thousand cubits; you shall not approach her. And Joshua said to the people: Sanctify yourselves, for the Lord will do wonders among you tomorrow. And Joshua spoke to the priests, saying, Take the ark of the covenant, and go before the people. And they took the ark of the covenant and went before the people.”

Then Jehovah said to Joshua: From this day I will begin to magnify you in the eyes of all Israel, so that they may understand that as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. You, then, will command the priests who carry the ark of the covenant, saying: When you have entered to the brink of the water of the Jordan, you will stop at the Jordan. And Joshua said to the children of Israel: Come near, and listen to the words of Jehovah your God. And Joshua added: By this you will know that the living God is in the midst of you, and that he will drive out before you the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Gergeses, the Amorites, and the Jebusites. Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth will pass before you into the midst of the Jordan. Now take twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one from each tribe. And when the soles of the feet of the priests who carry the ark of Jehovah, Lord of all the earth, sit on the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan will divide; because the waters that come from above will stop in a heap.”

And it came to pass when the people departed from their tents to cross the Jordan, with the priests before the people carrying the ark of the covenant, when those who carried the ark entered the Jordan, and the feet of the priests who carried the ark were dipped to the water's edge (for the Jordan usually overflows on all its banks all the time of the harvest), the waters that came from above stopped like a heap far from the city of Adam, which is on the side of Sarethan, and those that descended to the sea of the Arabah, to the Salty Sea, ended, and were divided; and the people passed in the direction of Jericho.”

“But the priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood dry, standing in the middle of the Jordan until all the people had finished crossing the Jordan, and all Israel passed dry.” Bless the Lord His holy Word.

“We have never been here before.” Some four or five days ago I began to meditate, to ask the Lord for direction regarding the sermon that I was going to preach this morning, and again, as it happens to me, sometimes those words from the Bible came clearly to my spirit and mind "because You've never been here before." I didn't hear exactly word for word, but from the content it was a Bible verse that was what I was getting, and I started looking up the Scripture and found the passage, and since then I've been ruminating and meditating on what exactly the Lord wanted to tell us with these words.

As sometimes happens to me with a very brief passage like this, I always wonder, well, how to give it meat, how to develop that message, will it truly come from the Lord as prophetically or is it something that just sounds good? because I have never preached on this passage ever, I have never gone through that passage before in my life.

I had never preached on that expression "you have never been here." And I've heard that expression before, usually it's Christian groups that are a little bit more liberal that are talking about how God is putting the Church in a time of letting go of some of the things of the past, some of the moral ideas of the past and entering a new era of seeing the Bible in a different way, that is the only thing I have never heard, although later I understand that it is a well-known passage.

Thanks for editing a few things there (laughs), no, perfect, you said it much better than me, that's why I love it when Gregory translates for me (laughs) he's my alter ego, I always say that. He is Obama's translator but in another way, in reverse (laughs).

Actually, when I began to meditate on that passage, I clearly felt that the Lord was giving us and he was giving me an evidently prophetic Word for us, and I must confess that there has been a struggle within me because what God is saying to us only It can be expressed in prophetic terms. I have great respect for prophetic statements and this one in particular terrifies me in terms of its possible application to our Church.

And it is that those of us who respect the prophetic Word so much have to be very careful when we make New Year's declarations and promises and tell people: everything is fine and God has beautiful things for you, etc., and we do it in a prophetic tone but I think that sometimes we have a little lack of responsibility in simply promising people a blessing without any complexities. Do you understand what I mean? so my fear in using the prophetic Word does not come from not believing in the prophetic Word but because I believe in it so much that I want to use it in a very responsible way. I feel like we sometimes brag too much and state things too simply without taking into account the complexity of the Lord and His sometimes unexpected way of blessing us. And so now what I want to say is this: that the reason I am afraid to speak in a specifically prophetic tonality is not because I am afraid of what the content of that prophecy might express.

This particular message says that "you have never passed this path before." I am not afraid of the unknown, on the contrary, I like adventure, throwing the new waters of the Lord over my head, living the adventures that He has for us, much more if I am convinced that the Lord is in the matter. What I do fear is repressing what God would like to do or say between us and thus sadden the Holy Spirit, I am afraid of this, so I confess that I am in that fight, right? I open my heart to you.

But I am going to speak with fear and trembling about this text, and specifically I am going to point out what I believe that God is giving us as a Congregation for this coming year, these next months, or coming years. If I am wrong about the specific part of this text, at least there is good spiritual advice in general terms that will help us a lot as we look towards the coming year. There are principles of life that will serve us for much blessing in the coming year. Although I believe that it is a message in which the Lord blesses us in general and gives us general revelation, I believe that it is a khairos message, a specific message for us today at this time.

We know the history of this text well. Joshua and the Hebrew people are on the other side of the Jordan ready to cross it and enter to possess the land that God has promised them for centuries before even in Egypt.

By the way, it occurs to me here thinking in parentheses, I believe that the presence of our Korean brothers here as part of the Lion of Judah family on this particular day is no coincidence and that God wants our entire family to hear these solemn words. that I want to share with you.

So we understand well, the Hebrews have been wandering around the desert for forty years, and finally the moment they have waited for so long arrives, the moment that will define their identity as a nation. The prophetic Word had come to Abraham hundreds and hundreds of years before God was going to give him the land and commanded him to walk that land prophetically, the existence of God's people was kind of implied in their going in and possessing the land they God had destined that it would be exclusively for them for all eternity. There was a mystical union between the people of God and the specific land of Canaan, it was not a coincidence, the people of the Middle East understand the connection between the people and the land, and for this there is controversy to this day, and the importance that the people of Israel have to enter there to inhabit it, that is why the complexities of the political negotiations for the land, because the land in a real sense is a legacy of God, an inheritance from the Lord, it does not belong to anyone but the Lord and He is the one who grants it.

Now, the desert has been the place of testing for the Hebrews, the place of training, the place of humiliation and trials. In a certain sense, we as the Lion of Judah Congregation have been wandering for years in a time of desert, the Lord moving, struggling with us, training us and preparing us for the promises that He has made to us but we have not yet entered into the complete promises that He has given us. has done.

And it is not that I do not thank or appreciate everything that God has allowed us to achieve in these 35 years of ministry, but in my personal life I confess that I do not take seriously, and I say it with caution, nothing that until Now we have made it to this point because my eyes are on other things that I believe God has destined for us as a family and as a Congregation.

And this sermon is a bit autobiographical because I confess that in these last few months, I am going to share it with him as well, there have been months of great interior agony in my spirit because I feel a terrible restlessness about, it is like a mother who is pregnant for nine months and she is already fed up with the pregnancy, and she wants to give birth, and she is experiencing the most extreme discomfort.

The only thing I can compare it to is thirty-something years ago right when I was doing my graduating studies, the Lord was doing a revival work in my life and consecrating me, and calling me out of all the things that I I lived outside of the Lord before, and I went through such a period of surrender and struggle while the Lord did things in my life, and I had to take a year off graduate school, and I went to the desert, to Lawrence, and there the The Lord did certain things, and when I returned it was when the Lord began to activate the pastoral work that we then began to do after a few months.

And it has always been so. I think that when God wants to get us into something it always has, at least in my life, it has always been like that, when God wants to get us into something it makes us uncomfortable and makes the place we inhabit seem hostile and obviously uncomfortable.

And this is what I believe, we are on the verge of something, I cannot explain it exactly, but I know that it is something that goes far beyond what we have achieved up to now as a Congregation and as a ministry. And by the way, I'm sorry to make the sermon a little longer, I think it's something so important that I ask you to give me that time to develop it properly, not only important but fundamental, so it has to take time.

I would say that all that time for the people of Israel wandering in the desert, preparing before in slavery and now they are ready to enter into reality. Before, what they had experienced was like a prophecy, something to prepare them for the reality that God had prepared for them.

Look, for example, at the manna in the desert, the manna was an extremely simple, monotonous meal, they ate it for forty years because there was no vegetation in the desert, there was no food. Now, when they enter the promised land they begin to eat real food, the food of that land that the Lord had said flowed with milk and honey, and all kinds of abundance.

Let's think of the tabernacle, which was a piece of furniture that was assembled as the Hebrews traveled through the desert and was eminently portable, simple, light, but it was a foretaste of the permanent temple that God wanted them to build when they were in the promised land and that Solomon would have to build.

So, the first thing that I think God is telling us is that He is about to unleash and pour out on us that true identity of which we have just been making rehearsals and token efforts until God comes to give us what truly He is. He has destined us to be and to have. What I believe is that what God has for us in the future and I am not going to say months or how long, but what God has for us in the future is something that we have never seen or experienced before. I declare this prophetic Word with fear and trembling but I do it by faith in obedience knowing that the declaration itself has power.

I felt that what Sister Anita shared earlier was confirmation that no Word of God is going to fail as we talked about last week, that everything that comes out of the mouth of the Lord will not return to Him empty, it will have His power, it will have His effect.

What I want first of all is that we have in our minds this clear idea of rehearsals, previews, premonitions that the Lord is now preparing to turn into something real and true, a realization of what God has had for us.

“And they came as far as the Jordan, and rested there three days before crossing it, and after three days the officers gathered up the camp and sent the people to do what they had to do.” The idea of three days off before going into something big was like the Lord gave them a time of rest, a time pregnant with anticipation for them to rest and meditate on all they had done up to that point to Prepare them for all that is to come. The Lord was telling them: Strengthen yourselves, something very strong awaits you now, an extremely long walk, wars await you before you, trials await you, great confrontations with nations much more powerful than you, great spiritual trials, and you need to take time to meditate, to think about everything that has happened to them these years, and to prepare for what is to come later.

Let me tell you something very personal here also at this moment, that's why I tell you this: this time of having completed twenty years of construction of these buildings, I have been thirty-three years, my wife and I have been shepherding this woman for thirty-three years. Congregation. I didn't even speak to Meche or tell her that I was going to say it this morning, I would like to share something that came from a very prophetic conversation with sister Anita this week and that I have been talking to you about because, actually, all these years, three plus decades of pastoring and I've never taken a sabbatical, never taken an extended time off.

In those thirty-five years we've been through trials, hardships, shocks, terrors, lots of financial anxiety from all the construction and a whole host of other things and I've never really taken any real time off for my system to absorb rest. as it should. We have been through many traumatic and difficult moments, and I am not looking for pity at all but just sharing things that have happened in these years, many struggles, things that have happened in the family, in the Church and I have moved on without taking time to refresh mind and spirit in His Presence.

God has put a concern in this sister Anita, she has been insisting: Pastor God is telling me clearly that you have to take time to rest and to heal your system, you need time, I don't know what word you used. So I believe that God is speaking to me, brother, that I have to trust in the Lord because I have never taken myself for fear of getting out and taking my hands off things, but that is what a Saturday is, a Saturday is when one believes that God is powerful enough to take care of things and one honors Him and trusts in His ability.

And before entering that time that God has for us, this time that is there waiting for us, I have, like the Hebrews, to take some time to meditate on this path where God has led us and where he has led me before entering into that moment and this requires time, and what I am asking the Lord is that, I think that what I would settle for and it would be good would be to take about three months, I have to talk about this with the deacons and with the staff, and all that, from a partial withdrawal; I will still be involved, I will still be present in some things, but I will have the freedom to choose the time that I want without feeling guilty or that I have to prove anything to anyone, just that people know, this is a sacred time and I need take my time, because I am my own worst critic.

I just put it there, at some point we will be talking more about it, but I feel that this is from God, so that is a second thing that I wanted. And I refer you later to Deuteronomy chapter 8 where the Lord speaks to the Hebrews to think about the path that God has led them before entering the promised land.

We have traveled a lot as a Congregation, right? We have traveled from being a traditional Congregation to being a Pentecostal, charismatic Congregation, we have traveled from being a Church in Cambridge to being a Church here in this part of the city, we have traveled from being a Church more inward, more closed to being a Church further out with all the evangelistic social ministries, we have traveled from being a Latino Church only to being a bilingual and diverse multi-ethnic Church, we have traveled a lot and we have to take time to meditate on it, to think about it, the meaning of it And why is it that God has put us in a strategic place in a strategic city in a strategic country at a strategic moment in history? God has a purpose for us, we have to meditate on it.

And then the Lord gives them very clear guidelines, He says: "When you see the ark of the covenant of Jehovah your God and the priests who carry it, you shall leave your place and march after it." The Lord tells them clearly: look, now you are going to start moving and here the ark begins to play an extremely important role.

And He tells them: When the ark, the priests and the Levites are going to be carrying this ark, and when you, the different tribes that are in their geographical positions along the way, when that ark begins to move you will leave your rest, and every time the ark passes in front of one of the tribes, in front of some group, you stand up with your things and join the procession following that ark that goes half a mile away from you.

The ark plays an important and symbolic role in this process, it was the symbol of the living Presence of Jehovah among His people, the ark is an instrument of power and spiritual energy. The ark signified the active Presence of God at every moment giving directions and activating the Power of God for the battle that the people had to fight. The ark contained the tablets that Moses had received, it contained manna that they had been eating in the desert, it contained Joshua's rod that had blossomed, all samples of acts of God's Power and divine intervention that they had to memorize and remember. .

By faithfully following it, the people of God indicated that they would let themselves be led and guided by the divine Will, that they would depend on the Power of God and not on their own reasoning to determine the things they had to do and the places they should visit.

And if we are going to undertake great things as a Church, we have to be a people who desperately seek God's Power and direction. We cannot do any of the great things that God wants us to do if God's Power and instruction is not with us.

Moses had a moment of crisis when he said to the Lord: Lord, if You do not go with us, do not take us out of here, and Moses asked him: Lord, give me a sample of Your Power, show me that You are truly with us, give manifestations of Your affirmation, and he asked him: let me have an encounter with Your face, let me have an encounter with Your Power. And God told Moses in Exodus chapter 33, He said, “And My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

The Lord is guiding us and I feel the importance of committing ourselves to seek the Presence of God, to let ourselves be guided by Him, to trust Him and not in our planning, that it be God's Will, even if it is spontaneous, whatever God says We will do.

That is why I tell the brothers in the worship group: we have to learn to flow in the Spirit. Especially worship, right? the Presence of God and adoration, the adoration team learning to flow in the Holy Spirit, to be guided by Him so that He is the one who determines what will happen in our services, that we flow in the Spirit free to be Guided by Him always.

These priests, these Levites direct the worship of the Lord, they are the center, they lead, they go before the Congregation and these Levites, these priests have to be an example of the best values of that people led by the Lord. And that is why we need warriors, we need brave people, people filled with the Spirit, sacrificial people, dedicated people, people who give the best of themselves, people who do not measure the Lord's time and separate the Lord's time from their personal time. , this has to be something completely; If we are going to be led and led, that people who lead and lead must be like these priests and these Levites: directed by the Holy Spirit and totally consecrated to the Will of the Lord.

The Lord tells me clearly that if we are going to be that Congregation that He wants us to be, many of the things that we lead our Church have to change because the form has to adapt to the essence, the form does not define the essence, the essence defines the shape, do you understand?

That is a principle of any institution in general, that the vision, the heart, the destiny, the purpose of any institution has to mark the essence and the form, and structures have to adjust to the essence of the vision and the spirit in the organization, and not vice versa.

The Lord tells them: Follow the ark, leave your place, see? because there is a time to rest, there is a time for the familiar, but there is a time to jump then and leave the comfort, leave the resting place, leave the place of the familiar and jump after the destiny that God has taught us there is. ahead of us. If you really want to be used by the Lord this coming year, you have to get into things that are going to scare you, that are going to terrify you because they are new things that you have never done before.

As the paradigm of Abraham is given that you have to leave your land and your relatives, everything you know and go to the land that I will teach you, you have to trust that the Lord will guide you even if you do not know the way. And by the way I tell you, I have an idea of where God wants to take us, I have had it for many, many decades but perhaps for another time, you have heard me a little here and there, but it is clear that God has something there , a very complex land in front of us and it is something that we have not even conceived or imagined that it is in front of us.

And that is why the Lord tells them: Look, follow the ark, follow behind it, march where the ark is going so that you can know the way you have to go because you have never passed this way before, and this It is the important thing, that the Holy Spirit is our GPS, that is what has to guide us all this way.

So the last thing, the last principle that I want to point out from all this, there must be a distance between the ark and the people that follow it, it seems like a contradiction but it is something very important, and that distance is more than half a mile. We are talking about a distance from here to that back window, that multiplied thirty times, the distance is long. So imagine, God is saying: Follow her carefully, follow her faithfully but keep a distance from her.

Some have said that what the Lord wanted was for people to be able to see it from far away because a crowd of almost two million people following a small group of people in the distance if they were too close they would follow each other and that the idea was: keep the ark well away so that all the people can see it and can follow it. I believe that this distance had another important purpose, which was to maintain a distance of reverence because the Presence of Jehovah is dangerous, the sinful people before the Presence of God have to recognize that He is holy, they must fear Him, like the Presence on the Mount Sinai that does not come near, there in the sanctuary does not come near without sacrifice, that He is holy and we must always reverence the holiness of Jehovah.

And this is something that we have to recognize brothers, and this is the last point, our Church, we have to prepare ourselves, sanctify ourselves, take into account very seriously because if God is going to move among us the terrible Presence of God is going to be moving among us, and we have to be clear as never before that this is serious and we have to be very careful.

Sanctifying ourselves also means a concentration. He separates himself from other things, focuses on the Lord and says: Lord, I live for You and for You alone. We must consecrate ourselves to the Lord, be a people truly separated from the world in the sense that we know that all parts of my life belong to Him. My time, my money, my life, my marriage, my children, my work, everything is from Him.

I will leave you, and I will finish, verse 5 of chapter 3 says like this: "Joshua said to the people: "Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you."" And the Lord also in verse 7 says to Joshua: "From this day I will begin to magnify you before all Israel so that they understand that as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.”

The Lord told Joshua that he had to dignify him with a special power so that he would be respected by the people in order to fulfill the call. We as a people have to be anointed with the power of signs and wonders so that the world sees that what is happening here is not of man but of the Holy Spirit, so I am persecuted, the Pastor says, for this assurance that In order to fulfill what we have to do, it cannot be human, there must be supernatural signs between us, something sacred to Him so that it is known that God is in the matter.

I see a lot of miracle fabrication and a lot of lies within the people of God. If we are honest, many of the miracles within the people of God are friendly miracles for a people who already believe, right? but when outsiders analyze they see that, well, maybe it wasn't a miracle, no, no, no, God doesn't need our help. We want a genuine move that can withstand the scrutiny of a critical world and that can see that this is a move of the Lord.

I know that there are many people who believe that I am a bit cold in that area of miracles, it is quite the opposite, it is that I believe in them so much, I respect them so much that the only thing that fascinates and interests me are the authentic manifestations. of the Lord, I won't settle for less than that.

It will not conform to us, he says, nothing ordinary, there is a chorus that says that, and I think we should sing that chorus talking about unpredictable things, I don't know if you know him, Saúl, we won't like anything ordinary and we are going to sing that chorus like a expression of what we want.

In the Name of Jesus we declare this Word: with fear and trembling, and a little bit of shame I declare this Word. You know my heart Lord, honor Your Word Lord. Honor Your Word, bless us Lord with the destiny that You have for us. Lord, we open ourselves to your insemination, we open ourselves, Lord, impregnate us as you impregnated Mary with that holy life of the Son of God resting on her, so Lord rest on this Congregation now, rest on us Holy Spirit.

We require an immaculate conception, we require a conception that comes directly from Your Spirit impregnating Mary who cannot give birth, but You Lord are the one who takes the sterile and puts them to live in the family. Receive right now the pregnancy of God in your life, the seed of life that Mary received, the supernatural move of God together with the human move that God will not ignore because He needs the human part, our talents, our gifts, our money , our time, all this is needed by the Lord.

We declare Your Word Lord over this town. Hallelujah, thank you Lord.