“Jesus Christ: Manifestation of God’s Word”

The Fourth Sunday Of Epiphany – January 31, 2010

            Jeremiah 1: 4 – 10/Psalm 71: 1-6; 15-17/1 Corinthians 14: 12b – 20/Luke 4: 21 - 32

Bishop Ricardo Alcaraz

We have for our theme, “Jesus Christ: A Manifestation of God’s Word.”  Jesus Christ came and brought forth the Word and the will of God to us. He showed us what it was. According to the Word of the Lord, from the very beginning, Jesus was with God.  He was the Word of God in the beginning. When He came down, He made sure that He saw to it that the heart of the Father was manifested to us.  Jesus Christ spoke in the Holy Scriptures, “From the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.”   We may not be like God in the sense that we cannot see and read the heart even if the person does not speak at all.  However, we might have a glimpse of what fills the heart by the word that comes forth from the mouth.  Praise be to God because from the abundance of His heart, He has given us His Holy Word; and by His Holy Word, we are given an idea or it is revealed to us of God’s thoughts, heart and will.   When it is revealed to us, we can walk with that confidence especially in the day that we live in today.   It doesn’t matter what the situation is right now.  It doesn’t matter what the economy looks like right now.  It doesn’t matter what the political climate we have right now.  What matters is that the heart of God never changes.  The Word of God tells us His Word is forever settled in heaven. He is not going to change His mind.  He is going to say, “Well I have come up with a better idea.  Even from the very beginning, God already gave us His Word.  People in the past centuries were able to trust in that; and even though times are changing today, the Word of the Lord doesn’t change.  We have confidence in the way our ancestors did and the way our brethren in the past had confidence in the Word of the Lord. 

We have heard the different readings of the many things that God could speak to us about.   I believe that God gave us a message this morning, though it is not the only message; and whatever message we may have today, they are not in any way inferior.  There is something that He is emphasizing to us is today: let us respond to the Lord’s Word with a faith that acts.   From the very beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, He spoke His Word.  According to our readings in Scripture, we find that the creative power of God is carried through in the Word that He has spoken.  He spoke and things took shape.  As God has given us His Word today, the same creative power is at work.  As we begin to act upon the Word of the Lord, it is good that we can hear the Word of God.  As we listen to the Word of God, we listen to what God is saying to us. Not just so that we can feel good; not just so that we can be entertained; not just so that we can be amused; not just so that we can be distracted from our day to day living. When we watch a movie we forget the things around us.  Probably for an hour or two, we are entertained, but when the movie ends, we get out, and we are back to reality again.  The Word of God is not supposed to be a distraction.  When we come in and listen to what God is saying to us, we listen to nice things, we listen to good things, and we are encouraged.  We feel good. We temporarily suspend our worries and our cares; but then when it ends and we go back to the world, it is back to reality.  It is not like that.  I believe that as we receive God’s Word, and act on it, reality will change.  God’s Word, the creative power in that, will help change and transform our realities.

Luke 4:21 says, “And He began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” We know that Jesus was referring to the passages of Scriptures that He read beforehand.  He went into the synagogue, took a roll, and read from that.  He sat down in order to teach and said, “This Scripture is fulfilled in our hearing.”  One of the things that we need to understand is that God is always watching over His Word to perform it.  Even in the gospel accounts, especially in the gospel of Mark when the apostles went about preaching the gospel, Jesus said that God confirmed the Word with signs following.  God is not someone who would make empty promises in order to get your attention at that moment, and then later on, he would forget about that particular thing.  The nice thing about the Word of the Lord is that you can always depend on it and you will not be put to shame.  Scriptures says, “Blessed are those who believe in Him, for they will not be put to shame.”  If we believe in God, which is our confession in the Creed that we declare before God, we have to believe in the Word of God.   We cannot say, “Lord I believe in you. But sometimes the things that You are saying to us are so fantastic, so far from our reality that Lord, we will just tolerate that while we are inside the Church, and think about what can be while inside the Church. And thank you at least for the brief moments of pleasure or relief that You have given us. But we’ve got to face reality when we go out.”

Understand this Church: realities are subject to the Word of the Lord.  And the Word of the Lord has been entrusted to us, His Church.  The fact of Scripture is that when God speaks something, it cannot be that it will not take place.   In the testimonies of the Old Testament, when people followed that, not one word of His good promises failed to come to pass, not like some people’s promises.  We are in election time right now; and the air is filled with campaign promises. Somehow many people are thinking – if only one-third of those promises or if only one-half of those promises be fulfilled, we would be happy.  God is not in the fulfilling of the one-half or the one-third or the four-fifths.  The Word of the Lord declares to us that His Word will not return to Him void.  His Word will not return to Him empty.  It will do what He has said it to do.  Not only would it fulfill what He said it would do, it would go beyond that.  It will not just deliver; it will over deliver.  He would do what He says He could do and it will prosper in the things for which He sent it. 

When our former Patriarch Adler was introducing to us this denomination that we are in right now, he said, “Lord God, I am praying that in the end of my life, there would be about twenty churches.”   All that he prayed for is twenty additional churches in this denomination, and he said that he would be happy.  God not only fulfilled that desire. God not only fulfilled the promise that he was standing on.  God even went beyond his own particular prayer.  He even came to the point that he started praying the Jabez’s  prayer, “Oh God, hold me steady because I am feeling so overwhelmed. We are going so fast.  It is like driving a car and I don’t know if I can control this. Lord, hold me steady.  Let your hand be upon me.”  He had to pray that because God was over delivering.  God was not only fulfilling His Word; He was going beyond what He had promised.  Ephesians tells us that He is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above and beyond whatever we ask or think.  What is our highest aspiration?  What is our highest ambition?  What is our highest and wildest imagination?  God can go beyond that.  When it comes to the Word of the Lord, it cannot be that it cannot come to pass. 

In 1996, Patriarch Adler went to Kalibo.  It was on a sudden decision that I had to rushed things – to buy stuff because we were not yet properly set-up.  I had to make sure that when he comes, we would at least have an altar, the pulpits, and our crosses.  It was December and we worshipped and had a Mass there. At the end of that, He gave me a prophesy.  At that time, we were staying at the Liberty Theater, in the plaza at the center of town.  He said, “God is going to move you out of here. He is going to put you in a place where you think you are being set aside because He is moving you out of the center.  He is going to put you in this place, which is quieter, and you would think that you are being moved out of the arena of action.  God says for you not to worry about these things because He is telling you right now that there will be progress. There will be an expansion that will take place there; but before the expansion takes place, God will position you there already.”   The Patriarch said that and I forgot all about it.  We had problems with our landlord in the theater.  The landlord died and we were dealing with the children. They were not of the same mind as the father, so we had to move out.  We moved into this place – in a capitol subdivision, around the corner where things would be happening in the center town. We took a warehouse, and we set it up.  When it was finished, I remembered what the Patriarch said, “When you build your church, there will be pillars.”  We had to have pillars not as decors but to support the roof.  It was shaky and we had to put that in.   At that time we were doing that, I had forgotten that prophetic word; but when everything was finished, and the Archbishop was consecrating the place, I stared to remember all of these things.

I say those things in order to reinforce in our minds and in our hearts that God’s Word will always come to pass.  When Jesus said, “This Scripture would be fulfilled in your hearing,” He was referring to this statement that He said.  We need to understand the principle behind this statement.  There are so many times that we have heard the Word of the Lord. The question is, when we hear the Word of the Lord, how are we hearing the Word of the Lord?  How many times have we heard of God and what is our attitude?  How do we respond to it?  Is it just like entertainment, like a feel good hour or for some others a nap time?  Or are we listening to something that will change our minds, our lives, our character, and our situations?  Are we seeing something that is real to us?  Are we accepting this seriously?  The thing is that the Word of the Lord has to be fulfilled in your hearing.  When you hear it, it is not one of the many messages that you have heard before, and it is not going to be one of the many messages that you will hear in the future.  When you hear the Word, see yourself in the Word of God.

Mark 4:23-24 says, “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.”  Why did Jesus say that?  Was He talking to a group of people – one group with ears and another group without?  There were no mutants or aliens during His time.  People always have ears even from the very beginning.  Jesus said, “He who has ears, let him hear.”  It is not just hearing with your outer ear.  It is hearing with your hearts.  It is hearing the message of God for you.  Then He said, “Take heed or be careful of what you hear.”  We should be hearing what God is saying to us.  “With the same measure you use, it will be measured unto you. And to you who hear, more will be given.”  How do you hear the Word of the Lord?”  Do you see it as being fulfilled in your life?

I remember the Archbishop talk about our building of a cathedral.  This place has been blessed by God and we are grateful God has allowed us to use this place.  We have seen lives changed.  We have seen miracles, signs, and wonders take place here.  And yes, I may have grown attached to this place. But from the very beginning, the Archbishop had already seen the vision of the cathedral.  One time when we were here and he was communicating that vision to us, this is what he said, “I see myself standing in that cathedral right now.”  He was standing here in the chancel, but he said, “I see myself standing in that cathedral now.”  What is going on?  Was he in denial?  Was he having a nervous breakdown?  Was he hallucinating?  He wasn’t.  The Archbishop has meditated on the promises so much that when he said while he was standing on that spot in the chancel, he heard the Word fulfilled in his hearing.  For him, it is not something that will take place. For him, it is a done deal.  For him, it is finished.  For him, it has been decided.  We are on the way there. He heard it.  He heard the Word and in his hearing, it is fulfilled.   I believe that he is also trying to get to us.  He gave us a list of Scriptures to meditate on.  When we read those Scriptures, do we only see ink on paper?  Do we see statements that sound so good?  Don’t we see ourselves in that?  Or do we see Scriptures that sound so good to be true but does not line up with our reality?  Or that when we begin to read that and confess that to ourselves when we say it, do we hear those Scriptures fulfilled in our hearing?

I believe that God is a Sovereign God.  I am grateful. According to His Word, the sun shines both on the righteous and the wicked alike.  His mercy is on all.  We find in the gospel where people are lined up in a pool where the sick are gathered around at certain times of the day. An angel would come down and stir up the waters; and when the waters are stirred, whoever sees it first, dives in.  It doesn’t matter what their spiritual growth look like.  It doesn’t matter whether they are just beginning nor are veterans in their spiritual life.  As long as they saw the waters stirred up, whoever dives in first, gets healed.  I am glad that the mercy of God is given to us all.  Yet despite that, we find in the Holy Scriptures, where God would say to people when they would approach Him, “According to your faith, let it be done unto you.”   The woman, with an issue of blood, held on to the hemline of Jesus’ garment.  When she got healed and the Lord looked at her, we know that it was the power of God that flowed through Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ said, “I felt power flowing through Me. Someone touched Me.”  The apostles would probably were asking, “How did you know that Lord? There are a lot of people touching you.  We are touching you.”  But this is a different kind of touch.  It is not a touch out of curiosity.  It is a touch brought about by a desperate need and a belief, a faith that lays hold.  “I touched that garment, but that faith touched me.  And when it touched me, I felt power flow through me.”  What kind of power?  According to the Word of the Lord, Jesus Christ had the Holy Spirit without measure. God’s power that flowed through Jesus changed the circumstances of the woman.  This woman was facing a future of pain, probably an early death.  She has been to the best doctors and now she is bankrupt.  It would have been good if she had improved a little bit after she lost her livelihood, but she did not.  She was facing a future that was uncertain, painful – a future of disappointment; but with that touch of faith, the power of God flowed from Jesus into her. It changed her future, changer her reality, changed her hopes.  She became a healed woman.  When the Lord looked at her, the Lord could have said, “God did that to you.  He healed you.”  He could have given credit to the Father.  I am not implying that He is someone who gives credit to the Father.  As you look at the life of Jesus Christ, you know that He only wants to bring glory to the Father.  She said to the woman, “Woman, your faith…”  He did not say, “The combined faith of Peter, John, and the apostles.” He could have said that and He could not have been wrong.  “The power of the Holy Spirit flowed through Me and healed you.” We know that it did, and yet despite that, the Lord brought out the truth and He said to the woman, “Woman, your faith has made you well.  Your faith has healed you.”  Somehow, she heard of this One walking amongst them who had the power to heal, the power to change lives, the power to restore shuttered hopes.  She heard that fulfilled in her hearing.  She saw herself in that and she acted on that. When she did, her faith combined with the grace of God, there was an explosion of power.  She was healed.

“This Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. “  Day by day, God is performing and fulfilling His promises to each and every person around the world. The question is: in the midst of God fulfilling His Word, do you hear the Word being fulfilled in your hearing?  Or when you hear it, do you say, “This sound so good to be true.  We are realists.  Maybe that is good and it is easy for him to say that because he is the preacher, he is the bishop, he is the minister.  Maybe it works for him but not for us.”  When you say things like that, or you shrug it off, or you don’t want to face it, you are not hearing it fulfilled in your hearing.  You’ve got to hear it in your hearing

Matthew 8:8 says, “The centurion answered and said, ‘Lord I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only say the word and my servant will be healed.’”  The man was a Gentile. Somehow, he was attached to his Jewish servant, a part of the family in a way, so when he became sick, he went to the Lord Jesus and said, “I have a servant who is sick. Can you come here?”  Jesus says, “Okay, I will go to your house.”  He was aware that a Jew cannot just enter a Gentile’s house because it is supposed to infect him with uncleanness. So he said, “I am not worthy that you would come under my roof.  Besides, Lord, I have seen you in action. You say something, it gets done.  I don’t have to see You  lay hands on my servant.  I don’t have to have the physical reassurance of seeing You there and him there or You speaking the words to him and You touching him and making sure with my own eyes that these things are taking place.  You don’t even have to be there, Lord.  All you have to do, Lord, is speak the Word. That is all you have to do.  Just say the word and my servant will be healed.”  What is going on?  He was hearing the Word fulfilled in his hearing. He was seeing himself in it. He was seeing the Word interacting with him, with his life, and with his community.

In John 4:46-49 it says, “So Jesus came again to Cana of Galilee where He had made the water wine. There was a certain noble man whose son was sick at Capernaum.  When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea to Galilee, he went to Him and implored Him to come down and heal his son for he was at the point of death. Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe. You have to see something in order to believe it.’”  Apparently, Jesus was not happy with this particular situation.  “The noble man said to Him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.’”  In verse 50, “Jesus says, ‘Go your way, your son lives.’”  What He was saying was totally different from the image in the man’s mind. When he left his house, his son was dying. He was in a desperate situation. Now, it looked that the Lord did not want to take the time to go to his house.  Nothing can be farther from the truth because he was willing to go to the Gentile’s centurion house.  But He wanted to teach them a lesson here.  He says, “Go your way, your son lives.  I don’t have to go there.” Scriptures says, “So the man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way.”  He heard it fulfilled in his hearing.  Maybe his faith was not yet protected. Maybe it was a fragile thing at that point in time.  How many can make the jump from sheer desperation to a living faith?  I am not sure he did that but at one point, he believed it.  No matter how fragile it was, no matter how little it was, Jesus was the One who said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say it to the mountain.”  Because the man believed, and saw it fulfilled in his hearing, he heard it fulfilled, and he went his way.  He did not insist anymore, “Lord, I know what you are telling me. Come with me.  I need to be sure.  I need you to be there.” But the Scriptures says, “He heard the word, he believed, and he went his way.” Basically that is what happens when we hear it fulfilled in our hearing.  We are not stopped by fear.  We are not stopped by anxiety.  We do not make excuses why we cannot do it.

In our first reading, God spoke to Jeremiah and said to him, “You are going to go and become my prophet.”  In the past, it used to be that God spoke to the elderly; but now, He was talking to a youth.  Those things never intimidate God.  Those things never limit God.  When God was speaking to Jeremiah, I could understand what he was feeling.  “You want me to say these things and you want me. Lord, I don’t think I can.  I am just a youth.”  The Lord said to him, “Jeremiah, don’t say that you are just a youth. Don’t give voice to your fears. Don’t verbalize your insecurities and make that as the reason why you cannot do what I am asking you to do. Don’t say that, but instead, say what I have told you to do.”  I believe that we’ve got to learn what God has spoken.  We’ve got to hear it fulfilled.  We’ve got to hear it fulfilled in our hearing, and we’ve got to learn how to say it.  It is the words that we say to ourselves when we are facing situations.  Do we say what our fears are telling us that we will go under, we won’t make it?  Or will we serve what God has spoken to us that with His help, we can do it?  Because when we say that we established that as our own, we accept that.  

In Deuteronomy, God said to the Jews, “I have set before you life and death; blessing and cursing. You choose and just in case you don’t know what to choose, I am telling you: choose life.”  He is saying, “Your attitude toward what I have given you in My Word will determine what you will have in your life.”  How do you choose?  It would be easy when God says, “How many of you like blessings? How many of you like life?” It would be so easy if it were that simple.  If only we would only raise our hands, it would be so simple. But it is not the way that He told us to choose.  He said, “When you hear My covenant, My words and you apply them and live them out of your lives, then you are choosing blessing in your life.” We make our choice through our obedience before the Lord, our God. 

This is something common to us.  How many of you have ever asked a favor from someone? We all have. If you are going to take a family vacation, and you want that someone would watch over your house when you are out, and when you’ve got neighbors, before you leave, you ask your neighbor, “Is it okay that while we are out, once in a while, can you can check on our house?” Your neighbor tells you, “Don’t worry I will check on your house. If you want, every night or every other night I will do that.”  We say, “Thank you.”  We don’t say, “Neighbor, I will reserve my thanks until I get back here.  I will see first if you really did what you did, then, I will give you thanks.”  You said thank you even before he did what he said he will do.  He said, “Don’t worry about this.  I will check your house every now and then.  Put your mind at ease, let your mind rest, and I will do it for you while you are away. You have nothing to worry about.”  And you say, “thank you.”  You are thanking him for a future event that has not taken place. You are thanking him for a promise that has been given but has not yet been fulfilled.  But why did you give thanks to him at that moment?  Because when he said, “Don’t worry about this, I will do it for you, you heard it.  It was fulfilled in your hearing.”  It was fulfilled in your hearing and you acted on that and you left.  If someone asks you about your house, you would say, “I don’t worry about it.  My neighbor is watching over our house. If there is any problem, he would call us.”  If you can do that with a person who can forget, a person who can fail to keep up his promises, surely we can do it to our God.  If God says, we must see it fulfilled in our hearing, and that we need to see, Church. 

Romans 4:17, “As it is written, I have made you a ‘father of many nations.’  In the presence of Him who he believed, even God who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did.”  There is not problem with us thinking that God can do that. He calls those things that do not exist as though they already existed; but then, we find this about Abraham.  He was old, and as Scriptures says his body was as good as dead.  His wife, Sarah, was barren. They were both old and according to natural law, when you put two elderly people who are both impotent and barren, you are not going to have children.  But when things looked like it was impossible, God came to them and God made a promise to Abraham that he was going to have a son.  God did what He did at that time.  Abraham believed what God said.  God changed his name from Abram to Abraham.  His name contained a part of God’s name because he was in covenant with God.  The meaning of Abraham’s name was “father of many nations.”  I can imagine that after the deal has been made, and Abraham was talking to Sarah, he would say to Sarah, “You know what Sarah, this Abraham thing, just call me Abraham while we are inside the tent. When we are outside, call me by my old name, “Abram.” People might think we have broken down, became senile. Why am I going out there calling myself the “father of many nations” when everybody knew we failed to get a child?”  But that is not the attitude of Abraham.  The Scriptures was fulfilled in his hearing; so even when they were outside, people would call him, “Abraham.”  It sounded foolish or stupid to many others but he was doing what God said.  He called himself, “the father of many nations,” even before he became the father of a single child.  Just like God, he was calling those things that were not as if they were; not because he was basing this on his imagine but because he was basing this on the Word that the Lord has spoken unto him. 

We could say what things look like.  Recession is getting to us; we are not going to get out of here. Or you could say what God has already spoken to us, “The windows of heaven are open to me.  The favor of God surrounds me.  Whatever I touched is blessed.”  I heard the Bishop saying, with the presences of other bishops, “I don’t care what the circumstances look like. Whatever it is God wants us to do, no matter how expensive it is, it doesn’t matter whether the prices are high, or if the economy is broken.  All I know is that, and my Bible tells me, “I am blessed, I am blessed. Everyday of my life, I am blessed.”   Again, he was not denying anything.  He was simple saying God had already spoken.  God said to Jeremiah, “Don’t say that. Say what I said. Don’t say your fears but say what I have said.  In your hearing, let what I say be fulfilled.” We need to understand this church.  The homily is not break time before we go to the Eucharist.  This is not time to say, “I like it when the preacher talks for a long time because it gives me more time to sleep.”  This is not time.  This is God speaking to you – the words of life.  If you receive them, they happen.

A few years ago, Bishop Paul Villavicencio and I were privileged to go to a nation to be part of a team.  I talked to the leader of the team and the problem that when we go there, we were to teach them about tithing. They always make the excuse that it is an American doctrine. They say, “It will work in America. It will not work here because those guys are rich, we are poor.”  He said that we will get people like us because we know it worked through those conditions and we are making that work.  We went there, and there was a drought.  When we were teaching, I asked them when the drought will end and they said, “Next year.”  What can you expect while the drought is on?  They said, “Loss of crops, many things, and a lot of suffering.”  I said to them, “Look guys, this is the Word of the Lord. And it should work whether there is a drought or not.  I am not a Westerner, but I have seen this work in my life.”  So I gave them testimonies.  We encouraged them. In the very beginning, they were hesitant, but then eventually, they stared giving their tithes.  I said to them, “One of the things that God promised when we do this is that He would rebuke the devout. We want this drought to end. Let us go, pray, and declare to the heavens to bring forth rain because you have acted in faith.  You did what God said to do.”  We went out.  We prayed aloud. Nothing seemed to happen.  The day ended and we went to bed. The next day, I went back to the campus where we were doing our teaching. When we got there, I saw them looking at the sky. I was wondering why.  As I looked up at the sky, it was divided into a straight line.  On one side were thick clouds; on the other side, not a single cloud – it had clear skies.   I haven’t seen cloud formations like that.  They said that it was not a regular thing and it was the first time that it had happened.  I was asked what it meant.  All I said was, “There is a battle of our faith right now. We can either believe that the clouds would come and bring forth the rain, or we can believe that there will be no rain.  You have given your tithe. We prayed our prayer. We have to make our stand.  We will praise God for the rain. We will praise God as if God has already sent the rain.  We will praise God as if things are already getting wet even though they look brown and it is hot.  We are going to praise God as if the drought has already ended, even though it is scheduled to end the next year.”   For a while, we did not see anything happen. But then, after the Sunday service, we went to a Bishop’s house and while we were eating, it started raining hard. We were just fellowshipping with each other, enjoying the miracles of God, and then one of the members of the church runs to the house and said that we’ve got to get out of our town right away because there are three ways out of the village, and two ways are already flooded.  There is only one way and it is beginning to flood.  We’ve got to get out immediately, and we did. They received the Word of the Lord; it was fulfilled in their hearing. They put action to that.  It did not happen right away, but after three days, the rain came.  The drought ended.

Things changed. Their realities changed because they heard the Word fulfilled in their hearing.  It is the same thing with us. We need to hear the Word fulfilled in our hearing.  This is something God wants to give us.