-Transcript-
00:25 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:28 Welcome to the cafe. Pastor Clark Covington here with another message on calling on Jesus, who the question is who’s calling on Jesus. I hope you are today.
00:40 We’re looking at this principle, this idea, this is the second part, probably in about three or four part series as we go along here. And if you didn’t make the first part, I’ll recap it for you, no problem.
00:53 It’s a real blessing because we’re looking at God’s love being unmatched, being saved by his grace.
01:01 But Jesus, the Lord wants us to call upon him. He desires a relationship with us. He doesn’t desire to leave us as we show up to him, poor beggars of this world.
01:14 He wants to shape us and mold us into being more like Christ each and every day. Christian means Christ like we are to be mirrors of Christ. How can we be mirrors of Christ if we won’t even look at him?
01:24 Why aren’t more people calling on Jesus? And I usually don’t wade into these waters of lumping in saved and lost people into the same group and being like, OK, well, everybody has to do this.
01:41 It’s different, OK? But there are reasons why both the save and the lost should consistently be calling upon Jesus, and they’re not. I’m very passionate about this. It’s not about me.
01:51 It’s about the Bible. And our text here is Psalm 86:5, for thou, Lord, are good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee. Psalm 86:5, for thou, Lord, art good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee.
02:11 And so we see that God is good. We see he’s ready to forgive. We see he offers plenty mercy to those that will seek him.
02:20 And that is, I think, wholesale salvation and sanctification. The idea of being saved and then being cleansed.
02:28 The idea of that closeness with God to both seek him for being saved from this world and from death, hell and the grave and from our sin debt that we couldn’t pay on our own, as well as sanctification for our day-to-day needs.
02:47 The idea that we are human. This pastor is human. Ask my wife.
02:53 I mean, I’m definitely the furthest thing from perfect you can imagine. And so basically every day, I say basically because I know I’m not being perfect. I don’t do it every day like I should, but I try every day to ask God to forgive me of my sins.
03:10 I ask, I repent. I know I’m saved. I know I’m not under the law.
03:15 I know I’m not under condemnation. I know I’m going to heaven. I know there’s a reward for me in heaven.
03:19 And every day I say, God, please forgive me of my sins. Point them out to me so that I can draw closer to you. I don’t want to have anything standing in way between us.
03:31 And the Lord will give me forgiveness. And sometimes something will come to mind. Sometimes it won’t.
03:37 Sometimes, you know, I feel like, hey, okay, cool. God did that. And other times I’m like, ouch, all right, yeah.
03:44 Okay, there’s this thing creeping in, you know, whatever it is. And I guess that’s between me and the Lord. But I’m urging you to have that level of relationship with the Lord.
04:00 Once you’re saved, the Holy Spirit living within you. The Bible talks about not grieving the Holy Spirit. How about enriching the Holy Spirit? Would that not enrich the God himself living within you?
04:06 To seek him in his ways and to call upon him for forgiveness? Because what the Psalm is saying, and this is written by David, by the way, is he not, was he not close to God?
04:13 Was he not a man of God? Was he not flawed and sinful in many ways as well? You see all of that in the picture of David.
04:22 And so David is saying, Lord, you’re good. You’re ready to forgive. And you’re plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee.
04:30 Not some of them that call upon thee. Not just that group that call upon you that has a prestige that could pay you back or something like man could pay God back. They can’t.
04:40 But God’s not picking and choosing. God’s not a respecter of persons. So whether you have a million bucks or you have negative $100, God loves you just the same.
04:49 Whether you’ve committed heinous crimes or whether you’ve been a perfect citizen, God loves you just the same.
04:56 But many people, regardless of where they are, what their lot of life is, they don’t call upon God. And so last episode, we talked about God’s goodness.
05:05 We looked at some scriptures, which I won’t just sit here and repeat, but we looked at Nahum 1:7, Lamentations 3:25. We looked at Psalm 34:8, Psalm 107:8. I’ll read Psalm 107:8.
05:27 Oh, that men would praise the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men. You know, if we knew how good God was, we should all praise him.
05:30 My prayer oftentimes is for our high school, Kings Mountain High School, that a young man there would get on fire for God.
05:38 I said, oh, God, if one would get on fire for you and start praising you, one young man, just one young man would just sell out completely and throw out all the trappings of that life, you know, of that high school life. Get rid of all of it. Delete all the social networks.
05:53 Get rid of the video games. Get rid of all these things. And just 1,000% sell out to God and every single day praise him.
06:01 How many eyes would that open in that school? That could create a revival in that school. And I wish that for the corporate office. I wish that for the senior center and everywhere in between.
06:13 Amen. But oh, that men would praise the Lord for his goodness because God is that good. And we see in the other verses and many verses throughout the Bible, God’s good, he’s safe, he’s help, he’s perfect to those that trust him, to those that seek him, to those that love him, to those that desire to know him.
06:35 The Bible says in Hebrews 11:6, it’s impossible to please God without faith. God wants us to know him. I tell my kids, look, the only thing we can do to earn favor with God is believe.
06:47 And I look at belief as an action step. You know, if you come to me and you say, okay, the sky is purple and it’s raining cats and dogs. Now, I am going to either believe you or not.
07:02 And in that case, even though I’m simple, I’ll be like, no, I don’t think so. Maybe a purple sky here in North Carolina, but no cats and dogs. So I’m not going to believe you, right? I’ve taken action on that in my mind.
07:14 I’ve said, I don’t believe you. And then I’m probably looking at you like you’re a little crazy and everything else. I’m going to be like, I don’t know.
07:20 That’s just how I am. Okay. I’m in the business world sometimes in order to keep things afloat and provide for my family.
07:27 I have to work in the business world. You got to be sharp out there. Amen.
07:32 So look, that’s an act of faith to say yes or no. That’s an act. That’s something that’s taking that step of faith.
07:38 That’s a movement. Amen. And God wants us to move towards him.
07:45 And who is he? Who does he say he is? He is the father. I love the verse. There’s a verse in the Bible.
07:52 I’m going to look it up here that says, call no man father. And I think that’s so brilliant because you know what? He is the father. Amen.
07:59 He is the father. And that is reserved for him. Now, I don’t think the verse is referring to your earthly father, right? Matthew 23:9 and call a no man, your father upon the earth.
08:13 For one is your father, capital F, which is in heaven. And so I think, you know, for earthly father is a term to the earthly dad that deals with the relationship of the family that is the symbol of what he is to us. So we wouldn’t have that parallel.
08:32 We wouldn’t be able to look at father and son the same way as we look at him being the father and us being the sons or daughters.
08:50 If we didn’t have that as in our family, certainly, you know, in the, I don’t know, 10, 12, 13 years, whatever it’s been that I’ve had kids, you know, it’s changed me a lot. And I look at things a lot differently now as a dad.
08:56 And I look at the children differently. And I can make those references a lot stronger. And yet it says, and call no man, your father upon the earth for one is your father, which is in heaven.
09:06 And it’s a very serious term. And so number one, take it to heart. I mean, I don’t, I don’t know, but people want to say they’re this or that.
09:15 I won’t do it. I want to, I can’t address them as that, that the Bible says not to. And then, so that’s number one, amen.
09:21 Take a stand on that. But number two, if we look at that relationship of father and we look at ourselves as sons and daughters of God, those that have accepted Christ as savior, are we calling upon him as we would a father that we’re very close to.
09:36 Now I’m close to all three of my kids and I expect to hear from them every day.
09:43 Not necessarily on a phone call, but telling me about their day and spending time with them. And, you know, we have family altar time and stuff.
09:51 Look, I want to hear from my kids and I want to have that closeness with them where we’re very close together.
09:57 And that is just me being an imperfect earthly father. How much more so would our heavenly father desire relationship with us where he desires us to call upon him, right?
10:09 And are we calling upon him? And he said, well, what, what would I need to call upon him for? Well, how about mercy? How about forgiveness? Amen. We’ll start with mercy.
10:17 Hebrews 4:16, let us therefore come boldly into the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace in time of need.
10:25 So we are to go to the throne boldly. God wants us to come to him with all our needs, all our concerns.
10:36 Ephesians 2:4-5, but God who is rich in mercy for his great love, wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins have quickened or made alive us together with Christ by grace you’re saved.
10:51 So God is so merciful to us that he loved us even when we were at odds with him. The Bible word would be enmity, or we were having warfare with him.
11:02 We are in this carnal, natural, sinful state. We are the enemy of a holy, perfect God. And that holy, perfect God could have wiped us out like the days of Noah, but he said, no, I’m not going to do that again.
11:15 I’ve given them the promise. I’ve given them the bow in the sky. What I’m going to do is I’m going to send Jesus to die on the cross for their sins and be buried three days and to be resurrected on the third day miraculously and to walk the earth 40 days and 40 nights and to be seen by over 500.
11:44 I’m going to send Jesus as a testimony and he is going to heal many and have many miracles done now that he does to people. He’s going to do all of these things to show my great love for this sinful, sinful humanity that will simply have to only believe that Jesus is the Messiah and that did. He did shed his precious blood.
12:01 It’s already been done past tense. He did it on the cross at Calvary for them individually, understanding that they have that sin that they can’t pay on their own. Romans 3:23 for all of sin and come short of the glory of God.
12:09 And as we understand this principle and our own need for salvation, what do we do? We call upon the father and say, father, we can’t do it on our own.
12:22 A picture of this is in the prodigal son who goes out from a, you know, from the kingdom and lives a riotous life, a very sinful life, realizes the pigs have it better than he has it.
12:32 And if you’ve seen pigs and slop, you know that that’s pretty bad.
12:36 He goes back to the father and says, forgive me. I’m not worthy to be even your son. And the father puts the robe on the fatted, kills the fatted calf, puts the ring on his finger, treats him like royalty all because the son believe the father now understood the father.
12:48 Now went to the father, humbly asked for forgiveness. And that’s what we are to do. We are to accept Christ as savior.
12:57 We’re saved by nothing but the blood of Jesus. And we have to understand that that’s offensive to many people. The atonement is offensive to many people.
13:05 Many people preach a gospel that involves no blood, a bloodless gospel, which is a powerless gospel.
13:15 I mean, Jesus didn’t go to the cross to die for some. He went to the cross to die for all, for all that would believe.
13:21 And so we can’t pick and choose parts of the gospel to believe. If you want to be in heaven with God, you have to accept that you’re a sinner in need of a savior.
13:30 And many, many people have trouble reconciling that and therefore will not go to God and ask to be saved.
13:37 I know a man, a strong man one time, and he said, why would I have to go to God to be saved? I haven’t done anything wrong.
13:46 And that may be ridiculous, but I remember coming into the fundamental church and getting yelled at and screamed at and spit on and all these things. I said, man, this place is intense.
13:53 These people in here must be rotten because I didn’t do anything. And at three or four years in, I said, OK, I’m a sinner. Five or six years in, I’m on the altar weeping, you know, many more years later, here I am preaching.
14:04 OK, look, we’re hardheaded. Us guys, we’re hardheaded. We’re stubborn.
14:09 We don’t want to admit we’re wrong. Yet God desires that we call upon him. And when we call upon him, he is 100% merciful to save us.
14:18 He is so good. Call upon the Lord today for salvation. Ask him to forgive you of your sins, accept him as savior, and you’ll be in eternity with him today.
14:26 Thank you for listening. Take care. God bless. Amen.