-Transcript-
00:25 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:26 Welcome to the Cafe. Pastor Clark Covington here with another episode of KJV Cafe. Who’s excited? Are you excited? I’m excited.
00:36 Amen. I thank God for the opportunity to be here today to help expound upon His Word. Amen.
00:43 It’s by God’s great grace and mercy that I’m even allowed to be here today. I’ve been given the opportunity. Like I said, it’s an opportunity to serve Him, and I’m thankful for that, and I thank you for listening.
00:52 I’m thankful for you. And today we’re continuing our series, the third part in a four-part series, on traveling. Traveling on the King’s highway, keeping the way.
01:05 Traveling on the King’s highway, keeping the way. What the heck does that mean? It means that we as Christians, we’re traveling through. We are to keep God’s way, and His way is to depart from sin.
01:19 Proverbs 16:17, the highway of the upright is to depart from evil. He that keepeth his way, preserveth his soul. And we look at Proverbs 16:17 very plainly.
01:35 You could think of the highway as the upper way, as the best way, as the most wise way, but you could also think of an actual highway.
01:41 And as someone that likes to travel, as someone that’s been blessed to be able to travel for work in the ministry, I enjoy traveling. I just couldn’t help but draw a bunch of comparisons to traveling and this verse.
01:52 The highway of the upright is to depart from evil. We depart from evil because we are wise to the fact that it is destructive. And you say, well, Brother Clark, I’m a New Testament Christian.
02:06 I’ve been saved by the blood of Christ. I’m not under the law. There’s nothing for me to worry about.
02:11 Well, if you have been saved by the blood of Christ, then yes, you are not under the law, but you are certainly under the magnifying glass of Satan and he’s going to throw every fiery dart your way to get you off track and way off into this world as quick as he can, as hard as he can.
02:26 I got an email from a brother that’s up there in his 70s or 80s. I don’t know his exact age, but he’s getting up there in age.
02:35 And he said, the devil never quits. The devil never quits to tempt you into all these things. And I said, whew, that’s a, that’ll preach right there.
02:43 And that’s a sad truth, but that’s the truth about this life. We have to be on guard at the beginning to the end. Ask those brothers that we read about in the scriptures that were martyred.
02:52 You think the devil quit on them? You know, John the Baptist, Paul, our apostle Paul, Peter, I mean, these brothers are saying be on guard and they had to be on guard all the way to the very end and the Lord allowed them to come home to glory for their reward.
03:04 And so we have the book of wisdom, Proverbs discussing the value of wisdom. And that is the value there is that it’s protective of us.
03:15 It protects us if we follow what we’re instructed. And so I, what I did was I took this verse and said, okay, let’s look at this like we were traveling.
03:26 And so we’ve talked about in general kind of traits of traveling, some of the good things of traveling, some of the bad things of traveling, what could happen.
03:34 We’ve talked about the idea of being a sojourner, a person that resides temporarily. That’s who we are as Christians. The world is not our home.
03:41 Heaven is our home. Amen. Heaven is our home.
03:47 And we talked about temptations that when you travel, you’ll be tempted in different and new ways. And I think that’s so true. I remember Billy Graham once noted years,
03:55 I remember this probably one of the first things I heard about Billy Graham was that when he would go to a hotel or a motel, whatever it may be, and you got to think this is back probably what, in the 60s, 70s, 80s, when all the pay-per-view and all that stuff was just kind of coming out, he would have the workers at the hotel, take the TV out of his room.
04:13 And the reason being that there would be no temptation to watch anything he shouldn’t watch. Now, of course, now there’s streaming and this and that, and all this garbage is accessible at the fingertip from your phone.
04:23 So it’s much harder in that sense, but it would be like, kind of like saying, I’m going to just not bring my phone.
04:30 I’m going to bring a flip phone. I’m going to put my phone in a lockbox, whatever it is. But the example is when you travel, you’ll face temptation.
04:35 You know, I’ve known people that have fallen into grave sin as they’ve traveled. And I mean, and I’ve wondered, I’ve said, does the travel have something to do with it?
04:48 Now, only God knows. But, you know, traveling, it brings up new and difficult circumstances.
04:55 And the reason why I say that is that God didn’t say, okay, now you are saved and you’re going to now live in this earth, which is completely perfect. And you’re saved in this earth.
05:05 God said, when you trust Jesus Christ as savior, when you’re born again, when you’re bought by that blood, amen, you’re one of his, and you’re no longer of this world.
05:13 What did Jesus say? He said, the father of lies is a little G God of this world. The devil’s the God of this world. And he’s got powerful people in high places.
05:22 You doubt that? Look at the movies, look at music, look at culture. It’s all perversion. It’s all sin.
05:31 It’s all against godliness. It’s all confusion. The devil’s called the author of confusion.
05:36 I mean, the way the world is today is a perfect profile picture of Satan himself, because he is the prince of the power of the air. He is the little G God of this world. And so we’re called to travel through this world and to travel well.
05:52 And we are called, frankly, to overcome this world. We overcome this world by the blood of the lamb, amen, by our testimony. We are to be presented to the Lord pure, not corrupted by all the carnal living of this world.
06:06 Again, I’ve mentioned in most episodes, if you read about Paul in Romans, go through Romans, which comes right after the book of Acts. So in Acts, you can read about all the tribulations Paul’s going through.
06:24 And then in Romans, Paul’s writing our path to salvation, that we’ve all sinned, we’ve all fallen short the glory of God, and we all need a savior.
06:27 And Jesus Christ died for our sins, and it’s no longer about works. It’s being saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and Jesus Christ alone. And then Paul exhorts, and he explains so many times over, but yet you don’t go near sin because you know what sin is.
06:39 The wages of sin is death. So therefore don’t go near it. It is awful.
06:46 It is destructive. Don’t go that direction. Stay away from it.
06:53 And as we travel through this life, I believe, if not the biggest temptation, and I don’t know if temptation is the word, but biggest obstacle that we will face in this era, in 2023, 24, 25, whenever the Lord comes back, amen, hopefully before then even.
07:10 What we see is the biggest problem, I believe here today, for Christians, at least what I see, is materialism. You look at globalization.
07:17 You look at how people are living across the world. It’s much different than it used to be, amen, even 10, 20 years ago. People in what quote unquote third world countries are driving electric cars, have smartphones, have iPhones.
07:32 And you say, well, what’s the big deal about that? Well, relative to their wage, it could be six months of earnings to afford a cell phone. That to me sounds a little extreme.
07:41 People in countries around the world are buying luxury handbags or luxury whatever, clothes in certain brands and on and on.
07:51 And you say, man, that sounds crazy. Look around. Look around.
08:02 There was a lady from the Indian version of Amazon and amazon.com, and she was from India and she was involved in the studying what sold on this website and everybody buys from this website.
08:09 India has many, many residents. And she said the number one seller was the new iPhone.
08:15 And I about fell out of my seat because India, you know, as a country has many people that are living very, very poor. And what that tells me is materialism has stretched her hands across the whole world. And I grew up near New York.
08:30 I know all about materialism and no offense to New York City, but it is, it is quite a materialistic city. You have the finance sector there. You have people living very lavishly.
08:36 I think anyone will tell you, even as a little child, I didn’t want to go to the city too often. We were 11 miles from the city where I grew up.
08:41 I didn’t want to go because it was so expensive, you know, but materialism has gone from the cities to the suburbs to all around the world.
08:49 And many in this world are falling into a trap thinking that gold or money or mammon, if you will, will fix things. This is foolishness of the world. Material wealth will never fix spiritual problems.
09:00 It cannot. And a traveler traveling through this world, you get caught in this bondage, like a ditch they never get out of. By seeking earthly riches, Matthew 6:24, no man can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other.
09:16 You cannot serve God and mammon. This is how bondage works. You just want to fix whatever is broken, right? So something’s not going right.
09:25 And so you start serving this God of money and you get on this hamster wheel and you keep thinking if I just get a promotion, if I just leverage this and I borrow this and I take this and I do this, and it never ends.
09:37 And it doesn’t satisfy. You can’t, a material thing cannot satisfy the spiritual nature of every individual on earth.
09:45 The Bible says that all have some light, amen? We all have a need and desire for God in our life. And God is the only one that will provide the peace that we truly need. But yet we keep seeking money.
09:59 And here’s what the Bible warns us of in Luke 16:11, if therefore you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to you the trust to your trust, the true riches.
10:10 And again, the mammon definition is riches, wealth, or God with riches. Okay.
10:17 So if you cannot be trusted with unrighteous mammon, if you can’t be trusted as in, if you have made that your God, if you have bowed down and served that, if you think that will solve your problems,
10:29 if you are turning to that and you, you have no idea, uh, if you think that, that people don’t serve money or don’t serve mammon, there are some cultures around the world that literally make money.
10:41 They’re God. There are other ones that, that will, uh, literally bow down to money.
10:50 Uh, there are other ones that believe that money can buy you something. I mean, there are other ones where they want to burn up the money, uh, and you know, on and on, look, we must be on guard and understand.
11:00 We have to keep our eyes on Christ and what he would have us to do in this life.
11:05 God is steering us toward a heavenly reward and not an earthly reward. Amen. The Jews, the old Testament, they were promised earthly riches.
11:14 There are promised the land in Canaan. They were going to split it up there with the 12 tribes, amen, uh, which they did. They were promised.
11:18 Abraham was promised the seed. Uh, there was all of these earthly riches, David and his kingdom, Solomon and all of his riches in the great temple. It was all of these earthly rewards.
11:29 Well, us being the Gentiles, amen, us being grafted in us being in the new Testament church, we are promised heavenly rewards. We’re promised the Holy Spirit when we get saved. Amen.
11:39 We’re promised a crown of life in heaven. We’re promised a mansion in heaven. We’re promised rewards at the Bema seat for what we’ve done for the Lord and the working of the Holy Spirit, not our own agenda.
11:49 We’re promised everything spiritually. So if we’re promised everything spiritually, how then do we get yoked up in the things of this world where we think we need a bunch of material?
12:01 And you may say, well, I just need it to do what God wants me to do. How about this? God has all power.
12:08 So maybe he wants you to do something else. If you think that you need a hundred thousand dollars to do what God wants you to do, God may want you to do something that doesn’t cost a dime, amen. Or he may want to work it out in a way that you can’t even fathom.
12:16 The Bible says his ways are higher than our ways as the heavens are from the earth. We can’t comprehend who God is, but we can know enough in the Bible to know that he doesn’t want us serving the God of money. He doesn’t want us being a materialist.
12:28 He doesn’t want us getting yoked up in that trap. Now, I’m not some preacher that’s going to say, you know, live in a shed and don’t own anything and suffer all your life.
12:40 The Bible doesn’t tell me to take some massive vow of poverty, but you have to have your priorities right.
12:46 Amen. And I believe if you get your priorities right and you seek first the kingdom of God, then your necessities will be added to you.
12:54 The things that, you know, God will give you a good, good running car and good clothes and food and the things that you need because he knows everything you need.
12:59 The Bible instructs us of this. So the importance here that I’m urging you today is understand that our priority, our treasure should be in heaven, and that’s Christ, and that when we focus in on him,
13:12 we will then be prepared and guarded and ready to deal with these temptations in life like materialism and not get stuck in that rut where we feel like we have to have what the neighbor has or we start coveting and doing all these things that would not be pleasing to the Lord.
13:28 We simply need to have faith and trust the Lord and realize, as the Bible tells us, that these earthly riches will rust and decay and get burned up.
13:37 Heavenly rewards will be eternal. So that crown the Lord gives you, that reward that God gives you will be eternal. It’ll always be there, amen.
13:49 That’s something we need to keep in mind. Eternal rewards will be so wonderful, but right now we can’t see them, which is why the Bible calls us to have faith, and we know faith cometh by hearing and hearing the Word of God.
14:02 So let’s stay in the Word as we travel through this life to keep from the temptations of materialism so that we can truly and earnestly serve the Lord and have peace in our life and not get caught up in the cares and the snares of this world, and we’ll be so blessed for that.
14:22 Now, tune in next time for the final part of this series on traveling the King’s Highway, keeping the way.
14:26 Thank you for listening. Take care. God bless and amen.