Good morning my brothers and sisters, if you allow me to
start the sermon with a pun. We all know that brothers, Lingo
is a man with a joy in his life, isn't it right Mrs. Lingo?
But today I can claim to be a man with the joy of having my
wife here for the first time. And also my visitors, Brazilian
visitors who are going to start studying the Bible this week. 3
dear people. Among them is my student Gustavo
in Hartford High. So if you knew me better, you
would know that I am a dreamer, not only in the sense of someone
who daydreams, but in the literal sense as well.
Someone who dreams while asleep and who is who often has
remarkably detailed dreams, sometimes with full narratives.
Many times I wake up in the middle of the night and I start
researching the meanings of my dreams and my wife asks me, you
really believe in this, don't you?
And I answer yes, I do. I believe in what dreams bring
for many reasons that my life, my experience has given me
throughout my life. I could tell here one of my
favorite dreams, a dream I had in Paris with my maternal
grandmother on the very day she passed away in Brazil.
That happened before I received the news.
It was striking and beautiful, but not nearly as striking as a
dream I had about Jesus in which Jesus mounted when a White Horse
announced himself to me as the desire of ages, and he told me
that I was a forgiving man. This dream had such an impact on
my personal life that over the years I have come to close my
prayers, always referring to Jesus as the desire of ages.
By the way, The Desire of Ages by Ellen G White is my favorite
book in the English language. It was first published in 1898,
and the book is a sweeping devotional biography of Jesus
Christ, written with theological ambition and literary flair.
He traces his Jesus life from preexistence and incarnation
through ministry, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension.
Yet it is not merely A chronological life of Jesus,
because it's organizing principle is the great
controversy itself, the cosmic conflict between good and evil
seen through the person and mission of Jesus Christ.
At its core, the book argues several things at once.
Christ is portrayed as the clearest revelation of God's
Carter self giving love rather than coercive power.
His miracles are read not as as spectacles, but as acts of
restoration. His teachings are interpreted as
radically ethical, socially unsettling, and spiritually
demanding. The cross is presented as the
decisive answer to the accusations of Satan, revealing
both the justice and mercy of God in a single act.
What gives the book its enduring pull, especially among
Adventists but far beyond us, is its tone.
It blends the Scripture with reflective commentary, moral
psychology, and pastoral insight.
The prose aims not just to inform the mind, but to reshape
the affections. Think less academic monograph
more theological meditation with narrative momentum.
Historically, The Desire of Ages is the most translated and
widely distributed Christian devotional works of the 20th
century. Within Seventh Day Adventism,
The Dissolve Ages is often regarded as Ellen White's
literary and theological summit. In short, The Dissolve Ages is
about who Jesus is, what his life reveals about God, and why
the revelation matters for the fate, humanity, and the
universe. A book to be read, to be
studied, and to be understood as presenting.
Jesus Christ is the absolute center of Christian faith.
The absolute center of Christian faith.
Let us reflect on what it means. It means that there is no
Christianity without the central figure of Jesus Christ.
Nothing that Christians believe, and more specifically what the
7th Day Adventist Church believes, can be sustained
without the promise that Jesus Christ is God and that He is God
with us. When we truly understand this,
our Christian experience tends to change drastically, as
dramatically and eradically as the experience of the apostles
themselves changed after their discipleship with Christ.
When Christ went to resurrection and accession into heaven.
You know, the apostles believed that Jesus Christ was a Messiah
promised in the prophecies, but they did not understand what the
Messiah truly was. The conception of Christ was far
more modest than the reality of an eternal, immutable,
omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient God with pure, pure
love. My dear brothers and sisters,
are you following? Following my line of reasoning
here, Jesus Christ is God, so it would make no sense for me to
begin speaking about Jesus Christ from many starting point
other than John one one to five. The purpose of the Gospel of
John is clear and unambiguous. John wants to convince his
reader of Christ's divinity. Theologically speaking, the
Gospel According to John is an apologetic text, that is, a text
that sets out to explain in a rational way, faith and validity
of a belief. Thus, John used the evidence
produced by the life of Jesus Christ to attest to the divinity
of Jesus Christ himself. But notice that I'm saying John
used evidence. He did not provide concrete
proof of anything because the Bible is an invitation to a
rational faith on the part of the one who chooses to believe.
The Bible doesn't give proof. The Bible call us to reflect on
evidence. If God wanted to prove anything,
he won't already have done so because He is God.
He has the power to do it. But the purpose of the Bible,
and consequently of the Gospel of John is not to prove, but
rather to say, pay attention to this and then draw your
conclusion about this matter. Does it make sense to you?
So back to John 1125. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through Him, and without Him not
a single thing that exists came into being.
And Him was life, and that life was the light of humankind.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has
not overcome it. Later on in verse 14, we read
and the Word became flesh and well among us, full of grace and
truth, and we beheld His glory. Glory is of the only begotten of
the Father. Could it, could it be more
clear, could it be clearer than it is?
In Portuguese we have an expression that if you don't
understand from this I would have to draw because it's clear
Jesus is God. The rest of the chapter is
devoted to bringing the divine closer to the human plane by
presenting. The testimony of John the
Baptist was widely known in the context in which John the
disciple was writing. So here we lay the foundation of
our reflection today. Jesus Christ is God and God with
us. Does Zen One beg to differ?
Does Zen One here disagree? It's important for me to ask
this because what comes next today depends on this
conviction. If you have any doubt about
Jesus, about about that Jesus is God, it would be best for you to
resolve that question 1st and then return to engage with our
discussion from this point onwards.
May we continue. Do you believe that Jesus Christ
is God, good, perfect, because he is?
If Jesus Christ is God, and He is being God already sufficient
in himself, why did he become flesh and dwell among us?
Why in Isaiah 714 was Jesus called Emmanuel, which means God
with us? Why did God come to earth in the
form of Jesus Christ to, as the Brazilian advanced him puts it,
let his feet gather dust in the history of this world?
Let me explain this to you in a very simple way.
Have you ever seen those television programs in which a
boss disguise himself as a worker and goes to do the hard
labor alongside his employees without them knowing who he
really is? The boss becomes familiar with
the workers reality, listens to their stories, feels their
struggles up close, observes the working conditions, and in most
cases ends up humanizing the company's procedures after the
experience. In a very simplified way, this
is similar to what Jesus did, with the crucial difference that
Christ's proposed was not to humanize divine methods, but
rather on a practical level, that is through the power of his
own example to teach fallen humanity the divine methods in a
way that human beings could actually understand them.
Yes, my brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ came to save us
from seeing through the shedding of His blood as well, but before
that he came to teach us the way that leads to eternal life
through His own example of obedience, humility and meekness
as it's written in Matthew 1129. In addition, Jesus gave us his
example of self emptying and submission as it's written in
Philippians 2 five to 11 that was read here by our brother.
But it doesn't hurt to repeat, have the same mind among
yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who thought who,
though He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality
with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself,
taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of
men, and being found in humor form, he humbled himself and
became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him and bestowed on him,
on Him the name that is above every name.
So, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in
heaven, and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the
Father. Beautiful, isn't it?
But there's even more. In the example of Jesus that we
need to hid in the Bible, we see Jesus instructing Peter and the
people to pay taxes to an illegitimate foreign government.
But more specifically, in The Desire of Age in the chapter,
The Kingdom of God is at Hand, Ellen White, inspired by the
Spirit of Prophecy, states clearly that Jesus refused to
become involved in the political disputes, national aspirations,
and revolutionary expectations of his time.
I think that it's good for me to repeat that Ellen White,
inspired by the Spirit of Prophecy, states clearly that
Jesus refused to become involved in the political disputes,
national aspirations, and revolutionary expectations of
his time. This because, as he himself
plainly declared in John 1836, His Kingdom is not of this
world. Do you think that these
statements were unpretentiously made for no good?
Do you really think that? Honestly, I don't believe so.
Actually, when I read and we read that, my obvious conclusion
is that the point here is to mark Jesus as someone detached
from the political issues and controversies of his time.
I mean, of course he knew everything that was going on
around Israel. He knew that Israel had been
taken over for years, the Romans were oppressing the Jewish,
there were unfair laws and exploitation all over the place.
But Jesus did not wish to involve himself in such matters
because he understood that all those bad things were mere
symptoms. And his mission was to deal was
not to deal with symptoms, but rather to heal the great and
deadly epidemic that is sin. My brothers and sisters, there's
a false gospel out there. There's a false gospel out
there. Identified by scholar as
scholars as dominion theology, which cause believers to become
politically active in blocks of influence with the aim of
exercising power in order to fix this world.
Fix this wicked and broken and fallen world.
Fix this world by patching up the terrible and shameful
symptoms of human decay through politics coordinated by human
genius. What could possibly go wrong?
What a great plan these naive and arrogant creatures have,
clinging to human hopes, to political messiahs, to agendas
that flirt with coercion, with the disproportionate use of
force, and with the suppression of individual liberties.
All of these went by word and by example.
Jesus Christ, our model, pointed to and walked on a very
different path. No, my brothers and sisters,
this is not the way. He is the way, and the only
acceptable way for a Christian mind is His.
What we do know is that the four Gospels about not in the
examples of Christ's political engagement or even patriotism,
but in his examples of love and in his words on that subject.
And here, my brothers and sisters, the Spirit of God moves
me to appeal straight to your hearts, to your Christian
hearts, to to your Adventist hearts, for the love of God
reared. Study and understand the book
The Desire of Ages, because it will greatly increase your
appreciation of Jesus Christ. The Jesus Christ that you can
see in the Gospels, in the Bible, is explained here in the
most beautiful and powerful possible way.
It is said that most people of all times reject Christ as a
model under the excuse that they cannot do things the way Jesus
did them, simply because perhaps they cannot walk on water or
multiply bread or turn water into wine.
But they forget that before those extraordinary acts, most
of Jesus Christ's actions revolt.
Around things that any one of us can do, like for example, to be
humble, to be kind, to be a friend of peace, to be
charitable, to be forgiving. We can be just like Jesus if we
follow him from clothes. Is that not so?
Don't these things accord with the example left by Jesus
Christ? Don't.
Don't these things show the way we should go?
Jesus was our model. Jesus was our example.
When Jesus speaks about forgiveness, when he forgives,
he's giving us the lines to act just like it did.
However, in these strange days we are living in, when I think
about the things Jesus did, I also find myself compelled to
think about the things he never did and that he certainly would
not support in any way. For example, based on the
example of Jesus Christ left in the Scriptures to us, Can you
imagine Jesus Christ enriching himself and his friends at the
expense of exploiting the poorest?
Jesus Christ perhaps preferring the company of and the
cultivation of the tastes and interests of the rich rather
than identifying himself with and attending to the needs of
the poor? Can you imagine that?
Would Jesus be like preoccupied in having the best clothes?
The best job in making millions of dollars a year to impress
people that that don't matter in the end of the day.
Can you imagine Jesus Christ, he who commanded his disciples?
You give them something to eat like four or five times in the
Gospels. Advocating cuts to fooding for
social programs that ensure food security for vulnerable children
under the pretext or protecting taxpayer taxpayers while at the
same time relocating those same resources to the sponsorship of
weapons of war. Can you imagine Jesus involved
with that? I don't.
Can you imagine Jesus Christ
being racist or persecuting foreigners where in his country
either they are documented or not, or even merely endorsing
any person, authority or power that proposed to do such things?
Can you imagine Jesus involved with these things?
I not. Can you imagine Jesus Christ
neglecting the study of the scriptures in order to ace time
consuming, biased news produced by dubious sources that
specialize in telling half truths so that to mislead the
audience? I don't.
Can you imagine the one who presented himself in Isaiah 53
as a silent sheep before its shearers, spewing indignation
day and night on social media, attacking people's honor in the
most disrespectful manner possible, utterly absorbed in
the affairs of this world instead of taking everything in
prayer to the Almighty God? I don't.
This is not my Jesus. This is not the Jesus I can see
in the scriptures. This is not the Jesus the desire
of ages describes. Can you imagine Jesus?
The one who said in Zechariah 4
or 6 not by might, nor by power, but my by my Spirit?
Can you imagine this? Jesus using force and
intimidation to get what he wants?
Let us reason this out. If that were God's method, what
sense would that be? In the great controversy theory,
having dragged on so for so long up to this point, if God's
method was to force people to do what he wants, why are we here?
What's the point of being here? What's he doing?
Why so much suffering still happens around us?
Why doesn't he end with everything right now?
Because he could force his good views on us.
He could do that if you wanted. Unless this is not God's
methods. This is not God's way, Jesus
shows us. What are God's ways if Jesus set
no example of vain? Of these things I question,
should a Christian take as a model, defend or imitate those
who practice them? My brothers and sisters, these
are very honest questions and they are deeply pertinent to the
practical life of every one of the of us in the days we are
living. If Jesus Christ is God, and He
is God as we have established here that we believe that He is,
why and how should we as Christians allow ourselves to be
shaped by examples so radically at odds with His own as those we
encounter in our times? Why do Christians, why do 7th
Adventists, copy the model of people who have nothing to do
with Jesus, who in no way resemble him in the meek?
If the meek and humble one is our example, are we free to
admire, validate or even imitate the example of those who preach
the use of force as a path forward?
Of those who resort to viable aggression and the lowest
vocabulary of accusation in an attempt to humiliate others?
To score likes, as people say? And if I were to say yes, could
I hold my head high and say I am a follower of Jesus Christ?
If I say yes, what am I to do with the uncomfortable passage
of Mass? Matthews 51 to 12:00 That speaks
about to beatitudes. Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up
to the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came on,
came to him, and he opened his mouth and told them, saying,
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of
heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for
they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they
shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and
tears for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure of our in in heart, for they shall see
God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for
they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness
sake, for theirs is united is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when others reveal you and persecute you,
and utter all kinds of evil things against you falsely on My
account. Rejoice and be glad, for your
reward is great in heaven, for so they persecute.
The prophets were before you in If that Christ that has been
preached by many nowadays. That's so different from the
Christ that we can see in the scriptures.
If that man is real. What am I to do with all the
other classic and uncomfortable texts of Christianity, such as
those that command us to turn the other cheek?
Matthew 539. To pray for those who persecute
us and to love our enemies. Matthew 544 Do you understand
that these things are commands from Jesus Christ?
God with us? That it was precisely to teach
these things that Jesus came to live among us?
My brothers and sisters, we need to return to truly admiring
Jesus. We need to study seriously what
he tells to each of us and to obey his commands.
We need to speak more about Jesus, more about what he said,
more about what he did than about anything else, as we need
to do this with even greater passion than that we with which
we defend our secular interests, our basketball teams, our
favorite artists, and of course the pet politicians that some
people have. We have already heard much about
the passion of Christ, but now it's time for us to rekindle our
patient for Christ within the Judge.
When we do this, a heart filled with Christ will overflow in our
conversation and more importantly, in our attitudes in
in our relationships, because it's a fact of human nature that
we are transformed by what we contemplate.
As it's written in Two Corinthians 318, we end up
resembling that we and Him who we chose to gaze upon with
admiration. Where do we want to look?
Who is our Master? Who is the one we call Lord?
May these questions remain with us.
May we reflect on them with great seriousness, and may the
good God grant that our conclusion, our answer be today
and all, is this. Jesus Christ is God, Jesus
Christ is the Lord. Personally speaking, Jesus
Christ is my Lord, my motto for life and forever endeavor, the
desire of ages. May God bless us.