-Transcript-
00:26 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:30 Welcome to the cafe. My name is Pastor Clark Covington from Heartland Community Baptist Church, currently based at Kings Mountain, North Carolina. Amen.
00:40 So good to be here. So thankful you tuned in. We are talking today about adoring Jesus.
00:45 He is worthy to be adored. We’re looking at the scriptures, at why Jesus Christ is so worthy to be adored, both in his birth and his earthly ministry, as well as his highly exalted place in the heavens forever.
01:03 And this is the third part in a three-part series on adoration, amen, picking up on adoring the gospel, adoring the simple gospel message that has led literally thousands,
01:16 if not millions, to salvation for an eternity that was only by God’s design and it was carried out by the person of Jesus Christ here on earth so that we could be saved.
01:26 Praise the Lord. And so what we’ll do is we’ll pick up here in the message, and we’re going to wrap up this message today. Again, if you want to hear the beginning of it, look us up on YouTube or Facebook, look up KJV Cafe, and you can hear the whole thing on there.
01:41 But here we are. We’ll dive right in. Again, thank you for listening.
01:46 Let’s get after it. And so we see this and we say, Lord, thank you for this simple gospel.
01:54 Thank you for providing us with something that we can grab ahold of, you know, that a five-year-old or six-year-old, seven-year-old can understand.
01:59 And it’s so powerful, it has power to save all. The most cruel, wicked person on earth, could they be saved by God’s gospel, by Jesus Christ’s gospel?
02:08 Yes. The best-behaved person on earth, could they miss this because they’re proud and they think that their works will get them into heaven? Yes.
02:16 It is that simple and yet that powerful that a five-year-old can believe it, and someone with three PhDs and an MD can’t believe it. It’s incredible. But we should thank God for his gospel.
02:26 We should adore him for what he did. We should adore him for going to the cross at Calvary, for that finished work. We’ve looked at here, we’ve looked at adoring him in birth.
02:37 We looked at adoring him in his earthly ministry, and I feel like I should paint a better picture of that because there was 33 and a half years that he lived here, and he didn’t even have a place to lay his head, he says in the Bible.
02:51 There’s talk there that Jesus says he has to ask Peter for a penny when he’s got to pay his taxes or for a coin or whatever it was, amen. So he doesn’t have any earthly money, he doesn’t have any earthly status.
03:00 The Bible says he was from Nazareth, and I think it was Nathanael that said, what good you can come from Nazareth. He has no earthly status, he has no earthly riches. He doesn’t even have a home, amen.
03:15 He goes through this life of sorrow and heartache, having perfect wisdom and knowledge and power. It’s seeing people not believe, seeing even the disciples not believe.
03:26 He feeds thousands and then gets in a boat, and what happens? The disciples are saying, oh, there’s a storm, wake Jesus up, we’re going to sink.
03:35 He’s like, did you guys not remember what I just did? He sings unbelief from the ones that he chose to follow him. Can you imagine the unbelief that was from the Pharisees and from the scribes and from so many others?
03:47 And he was grieved, I believe, not because they didn’t believe him. He was grieved because their unbelief was sending them to a very dark place.
03:56 Because I’ve talked about heaven, I’ve talked about Jesus, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention hell. Hell is a real place, amen.
04:04 And you’re saying, Brother Clark, you’re going to mention hell on Christmas? I will.
04:09 Because there is a real hell, and people that don’t trust Jesus Christ go there. And if we want to talk about the birth and we want to talk about adoring him being born, we have to talk about why he was born, why he came here, why did he come in such a low estate?
04:20 You know, someone that doesn’t preach like this, someone doesn’t believe like this, ask them that question. Why was he born in a manger? Why was he born during tax time?
04:35 You know, why was he born of these earthly individuals? Why did he live this life of hardship? Why was he tortured on the cross? Why was he on and on and on, you know, given a mock trial and all these things, why?
04:42 It was, the Bible says it pleased the Father, I believe it was Isaiah 53, it pleased the Father that he died for our sins.
04:50 And we have to realize that he died for our sins and was risen again the third day so that when we trust him as Savior, when we truly believe on him, and again, not believing with the mind, okay,
05:00 that’s great that we believe with the mind or the intellect, but believing in our heart, that deep love, that understanding and saying, yes, Lord, I believe, I believe, I trust you, I believe on you.
05:11 When we believe like that, then we’re saved and we’re saved from that real place called hell and we’re given eternity in heaven. We are reconciled to God.
05:23 The Bible word, the natural man is enmity or warfare with God. And now we’re reconciled to God and we believe on Jesus Christ. We are made new, all old things pass away, amen.
05:34 We are new creatures in Christ. We are now able to adore him ever so much more because he saved us from that place called hell. Look, he’s not saving people that don’t need saving, amen.
05:46 He saved me and anyone that knows me, especially when I was younger, I lived a crazy life and I got into all kinds of problems and I got in every little sinful thing in this world pretty much, I think I got my hands on and got into.
05:58 And the Lord said, I’ll save them. Oh, he’s going to believe I’ll save them.
06:05 And if he saved me, he can save you. And if he saved you, how come you’re not telling your neighbor? How come you’re not telling someone else?
06:19 How come you’re not testifying to how good Jesus is? He is so good today. He deserves our adoration.
06:11 And how can we come and say, oh Lord, you are so great if we don’t know anything about him, if we don’t desire to know anything about him, how can we do that? We must desire to know Jesus.
06:23 Finally here, let’s adore his place above every name in the heavens. Hebrews 1:3, who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, he by himself sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.
06:50 He’s at the right hand of the father here today. He’s alive and well, amen.Philippians 2:9-11, wherefore God also have highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name.
06:59 Now why would God do that? God the father did that for God, the son, because of what God, the son did for all humanity. Amen.
07:09 That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow of things in heaven and things in earth and things under earth.
07:15 And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the father. Look, it wasn’t easy. I don’t believe for God, the father to send God, the son, amen.
07:25 I said my son out and to go die for a people that largely will ignore him and ridicule him. That’s not easy for me to see what he had to endure. It wouldn’t have been easy for me.
07:33 And to the glory of the father, all will bow. Those that ridiculed him will bow and they will confess. All will bow.
07:39 Adore Christ as the ruler of all, the highly exalted of God. You know, it’s hard sometimes. I remember a Christmas play years ago, and I don’t remember the brother that was putting it on, but it was kind of like a musical.
07:55 And they got to the part where Mary was watching Jesus being crucified. I remember just breaking down and just tears just flowing down because my heart was broken that he had to endure that brutal death, that he had to drink that cup of sin for all mankind. And I just lost it there.
08:11 And I just didn’t, I didn’t want that to be. And, you know, it was so sad and they had, you know, a child signifying Jesus and so forth and all these things. And it would just broke my heart to see that.
08:20 And yet I understood then, and I’m much more now, that that was first season. But now he’s alive and well at the right hand of the father. Jesus Christ is no longer in pain and agony.
08:35 He’s no longer suffering. He already has suffered for those sins. He already has paid the price.
08:39 That is past tense. That has been done. Amen.
08:44 And now he is highly exalted. And now he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And now he is the one that we can praise and worship.
08:50 And now he can see that praise and worship, and he can know that he is deserving of all praise and worship.
08:59 I believe heaven will be a place where we praise and worship Jesus Christ for an eternity. We will never stop praising and worshiping Jesus.
09:04 I believe the blood of Jesus will be in heaven, that we’ll be praising Jesus, we’ll be praising his blood. We’ll be thanking him for what he did for us forever and ever and ever. He is highly exalted.
09:12 See he suffered for a season, but he’s highly exalted forever. So we need to adore Christ. No longer as that lowly servant.
09:20 We need to adore the Christ that is alive and well with the right hand of the Father. No longer dealing with all that he dealt with here. And we need to adore Christ as one that we will see in heaven above.
09:33 Genesis 32:30. This gives an example from the Old Testament here, first book in the Bible. So Jacob named the place Penel, for he said, I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved. We see this as a picture.
09:49 1 Corinthians 13:12. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face, now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. So Paul writes it in the book of Corinthians. We see it in Genesis.
10:02 This idea that one day we will see Jesus, we will see God face to face, and we will be able to thank him face to face.
10:09 We’ll be able to praise him face to face. We’ll be able to share with him love and adoration and give him all that respect.
10:17 I think sometimes in my earthly mind, you know, my little mind, so to speak, big guy, little brain. But I sit there and I think, what would I say or what will I say when I see him?
10:25 And I think I would just cover my mouth and just start crying. I don’t know what could I say to the one that saved me.
10:33 What can I say to the savior of the earth? What can I say to one that came for some wretch like me? What can I say to one that did everything that needed to be done to save all of humanity?
10:42 What can I say? Him knowing, him knowing that many would not believe, him knowing that many would mock and ridicule, him knowing how hard it would be that he did those things. How could I speak?
10:54 I don’t know that I could. I don’t know what it’ll be like, but I know that it will bring him honor and glory.
11:00 And let me tell you this, and I’ll be done here today. This is more than a Christmas message. This is more than advice.
11:07 This is more than just preaching. We’re actually commanded to worship him. We’re commanded to love him like this.
11:13 We’re commanded to adore him like this. Matthew 22:37, Jesus said unto him, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heartand with all thy soul and with all thy mind. Now we are to love the Lord with everything.
11:29 Jesus himself is quoting this, amen. We are to love the Lord with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind. Is that not adoration? Is that not adoring Jesus?
11:40 Is that not maybe changing and getting rid of those things in our life that aren’t honoring him? Not because we have to, because we understand that we’re saved by grace.
11:52 Not because we have to, but because we want to, right? This all started with the idea of Nicodemus going to Jesus at night because he wanted to know, right?
12:03 And me telling you here, preaching here, saying we should want to know. You get it? You want to have faith?
12:12 The Bible says faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. You want to have faith? You got to get in the word.
12:18 You got to listen to the word. You got to spend time in the word. These are action steps.
12:23 And the world wants nothing to do with Jesus. The devil wants to get you so far off you forget all about him, keep you in bondage of sin, keep you in misery, but you’ll be blessed when you desire to get to know him.
12:32 You’ll be blessed when you say, you know what? This little Christmas season’s not enough for me.
12:38 I need more Jesus. I need him in the morning. I need him in the night.
12:42 I need him in the afternoon. I’m becoming dependent upon God. I am going to study his word.
12:46 I’m going to live for him. I’m going to forsake the ways of the world for him. I’m going to live separate.
12:52 I’m going to live as holy as I can, being imperfect, but I’m going to go in repentance to him every day. I’m going to seek his will. I’m going to discover this person of Jesus.
12:57 You think that the holy God that knows all, amen, Jesus Christ himself, you think he won’t honor that attitude, that he won’t open up and reveal himself to you?
13:09 The idea here is that the Bible is kind of like a progressive revelation. The more we study it, the more we learn, the more he opens it up to us, I believe, amen.
13:18 For me in the ministry over the last 10, 12 years, it’s been a progressive revelation.
13:23 The more I look into it, the more I study, the more I learn, the more I understand. You too, I urge you here today, friend, to seek the Lord. And as you seek him, that adoration will build in your heart.
13:38 And as you spend time with him, that adoration will build in your heart. And as you meditate on his word, this whole message was based upon many scriptures in his word of who he is, amen, and what he’s done for us. As you do those things, you will be blessed.
13:54 And when you see that Christmas nativity scene, or you see a Christmas sign or whatever it may be, you’ll look past the surface level, and you’ll say, there’s a Jesus there that’s in the Bible that saved my soul, my never dying soul.
14:11 And he desires a closeness with me. And he desires all to come to know him, amen.
14:19 That’s what it will bring forth in your life, I believe it. And so I thank you so much for tuning in today, and I hope to talk to you soon.
14:27 Take care, God bless, and amen.