The Mind of Christ: The Most Powerful Lesson in Humility

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.

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?

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.