-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Thank you for joining us. Welcome to the Cafe.
00:41 Hope you’re having a great day, a great week. Hope all is well with you. Today we are diving into God’s Word as we always do and we are in the second part of a three-part series on the training of Paul in Arabia, the importance of time alone with the Lord.
00:57 And our text verse is Galatians 1:17, neither when I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me, but I went into Arabia and returned again unto Damascus. And we see in this section of Scripture that Paul is being sent to Arabia, to this foreign place by God himself to get time alone with God without being influenced by the culture and the ways that he was used to. And what we’re gonna pick up in the message here is me talking about this idea that the devil will distract and get us off kilter when we’re comfortable in a culture.
01:42 Isn’t that what the devil does today to man? Getting him to think and wait and put stuff off? Isn’t that what he does? Maybe the Lord’s put something on your heart and as soon as the Lord’s put something on your heart, something will happen to distract you. I remember being a young man and I was reading the Bible and at that time I didn’t do a lot of Bible study. I was more interested in chasing girls and going out and hanging out with friends and I was not living right, Amen? And the one night I purposed, I said, I’m gonna get in the Bible tonight.
02:08 You know, I’ve been at church, you know, I’m gonna start to do this. You know, I was 22, 23 years old and I opened that Bible and I read a couple of pages and I heard bang, a crash. I went outside and some man had driven down my residential road in his pickup truck and wiped out, literally totaled, my Chevy Malibu.
02:26 I cannot make this up. I was parked just where I normally park in front of my house there, the rental house I was renting with my roommates as I was finishing school and he wiped it out and it was a big distraction. Oh, what are we gonna do? And I’m gonna, you know, the car’s totaled, I gotta get it paid off and all this stuff and, you know, there goes the nightly Bible reading, you know, and like I said, it’s very fascinating how the devil works.
02:47 He’s very subtle, you know, he’s not gonna burn up the Bible, I don’t think God would let him do that, but God will let him test you and me and a lot of times we’ll get distracted. And so the timing of God’s will is very important and has profound implications because God is sovereign over all. So when God calls you to do something, do not tarry, do not wait, do not get distracted, but do it.
03:08 What is the devil doing today to man? Getting him to think and wait, put things off. How about when we quench the spirit? What happens? Logic will creep in, intellect will creep in, and that’ll keep us hemmed up in the world. I believe that God is purposefully extraordinary.
03:24 You think of Noah’s Ark, that one can be a little hard for some people to wrap their head around, that there was just these few family, you know, Noah’s family, his kids, and their wives on the boat, and that’s it, and every kind of the animal, one or two, and that’s it, and they all survived on the water, and then they repopulated the earth. That can be hard to grasp. Have you ever thought that God did that that way? That He did things that way to see if you have the faith to believe like Noah believed at that time they never even seen rain? Have you ever thought that God is purposely extraordinary in what He does? Have you ever thought that his ways are not our ways? You know, that man is sinful, and that man will look at something like that and and have unbelief, right? God’s plan for this man was great, and He did not confer with flesh and blood, because if he had intellect and all these other things could have crept in, and it’s God’s will alone that has to come to fruition through us seeking God and going out there into the wilderness, into a foreign place, and spending time with Him.
04:32 Think about how you can carve out time with God. You know, how long was Paul in Arabia? He says here in Galatians 1, he was there three years. Okay, so we think about the number three.
04:41 You know, numbers in Hebrew, they have significance. The number three, shalosh or shalash, I’m sure I’m butchering that, but this is the Hebrew word for three. That word has a meaning beyond the number, and that means harmony, new life, and completeness.
04:58 We see the number three in the Bible often. We see the Holy Trinity, that’s three. Amen.
05:05 Holy, holy, holy, that’s three. Three days in the grave, Amen, and then being risen from the dead, that’s three. These are examples of new life, harmony, completeness, and we see there’s so many examples of three.
05:20 Moses’ life was broken up into three sections. Forty years in Egypt, forty years as the sheep herder in the wilderness, and forty years leading the Israelites, that’s three sections. The number three is a great number.
05:33 It’s up there with seven, God’s perfect number, and Paul was there in Arabia three years to get God’s perfect plan, his harmonious plan, his complete plan to save mankind, because we know the Gentiles cover everybody, that that’s that whosoever, it covers everybody that’s not a Jew, and so now anyone that could be saved, and that’s a beautiful thing, that’s God’s plan. And what was Paul going to do? He was going to spend this three years reconciling his encounter with Christ and walking with the Lord, thinking about it. Have you ever done that? Have you ever spent time thinking about what God has done in your life, how He’s changed your life? You know, I’ve done that, and that’s one way to really build an incredible testimony, just to sit and think, okay, who was I before I was saved? If you’ve been saved, now who am I now? You know, if you’ve been saved, I believe there’s a huge change in your life.
06:24 You know, maybe you used to be an alcoholic, maybe you used to be a gambler, maybe you used to do drugs or deal drugs, maybe you used to be an adulterer, maybe you used to be a fornicator, maybe you used to be someone that cussed like a sailor, you know, maybe you used to be someone that couldn’t stop lying, maybe you had a, whatever it was, and you had these habits that you were in bondage to, that when you got saved, Amen, and you started seeking the Lord and living for God, that God really got rid of those habits in your life. You know, if that’s you, Amen, then you got to think about who you were and where God brought you from. I can tell you from experience, as I’ve mentioned, even when I was younger, man, I was messed up.
07:01 I grew up in a broken home. I saw what sin did to my house. I saw what sin did to my grandma’s house and grandpa’s house and uncle’s house.
07:10 Sin was just, sin was everywhere in my life and in my family’s life, and it was a disaster. It was a mess. It was horrible.
07:17 It’s a miracle I wasn’t in jail or dead, to be honest with you. They let me preach at the rescue mission. I’d look at those men that were there in rehab.
07:24 I would tell them this thing. I’d say, I could be sitting next to you, and I will not lie. It is only by God’s grace I’m not right there next to you, because I was very close probably to that place.
07:33 Only God knows, and yet he changed me, and when he changed me, he made a huge difference in me, and he changed all kinds of ways about me, things about me, things I’d be ashamed to admit that God just took away, and now I can say that to you authentically and clearly because I spent time thinking about it, Amen, and you should too, and then maybe as you reflect on those things, the Lord may put on your heart a ministry that you can get involved in after understanding it, like I mentioned the rescue mission. I had a passion for that. I have a passion for that because I know that could have been me, and I could speak to them understanding where they’re at because I had been there 100%.
08:09 Paul spent time with God. We need to spend time with God. Quiet time with God must be a priority and take precedence over conferring with flesh and blood.
08:19 I mean, think about it. How can you get on fire for God if you can’t hear God, and how can you hear God in a world that doesn’t believe God and doesn’t live for God? How can you be on fire for God if you are constantly yoked up in the things and the ways of the world, and you say, Brother Clark, I go to church. I go to Sunday school.
08:38 I go to Bible study. I’m not yoked up in the ways of the world. Well, you got a mobile phone.
08:44 You got social media on there. You got the radio, secular radio on. You go see a movie.
08:49 You name it, Amen. The world, the devil, the little G God of this world is everywhere, and again, he is subtle. Oh, that bait that he’ll use to get you away from God is so subtle, and he loves to get the kids away from God, and I don’t even have time to get into it other than to say we need to get alone with God.
09:06 You need to make this a priority in your life. You got to carve out time and say, Lord, I need time with you. I need that Arabia experience.
09:15 I need time with you for you to show me what you’d have me to do. I need to study your word. This is the recipe for time with God.
09:22 Read His word. Study it. Think on it.
09:26 Chew the cud. Meditate on it. Saturate yourself in the word.
09:30 Pray and pray some more, and pray and spend quiet time with God, and watch what He does with you and through you, and watch what He’ll show you to do, because I believe it’ll be great if you just spend time with Him as Paul did. We must look to God alone for our purpose in life. Paul did this, and I believe that you can too.
09:52 I mean, think about how you can practically, you know, apply this to your life. Can you imagine this? You know, I mentioned salvation earlier. Can you imagine being saved, and then right after you’re saved, right, like Paul, right after he was saved, you go and you spend three years in a foreign place, in a foreign land in the desert with God.
10:13 Can you imagine what God would do with you and through you? I was saved, and I spent, sadly, years just messed up in the world after I was saved, Amen, trying to figure out what to do next, and I knew I wanted to be saved. Lord had convicted me to be saved. I practically ran down there to the altar.
10:30 I was proudly baptized in church, all that stuff, and I went right back into living in the world because I wasn’t in the right mind frame, to be honest with you, and I couldn’t reconcile the God of the Bible to what was going on in the world, and it took me a while to realize that, yes, it really is that separate, Amen, and it really does come down to a fundamental belief in God’s Word being entirely true, and it took me time, Amen, but I can’t imagine spending three years after being saved alone with God. Oh, what God would have done and could have done through me at that time, and maybe you could think back to the time that you were saved, and maybe some things that happened after you were saved that you’re not proud of, or ways that you were kind of a far off from God, and you say, wow, you know, if I had spent time with God, what He could have done. Well, look, we can’t go back in time, but what we can do is purpose in our hearts and our minds to spend time with God more and more in these last days so that Christ can work through us.
11:25 I always find the best ideas for serving the Lord, for ministry, the most conviction, it comes after spending time with God. Those things go hand in hand. They really do, and, you know, I hear a story of the missionary wants to go overseas to serve God, and the preacher says, what have you done for God over here, and they say nothing, and the preacher says, well, don’t go over there and do nothing, right? There’s no point in going over there and doing nothing if you’re doing nothing here, but there’s some truth to that.
11:49 Before we can do something great for God, we just have to spend time with Him, and I believe the Lord put this in His Word to help us understand that what Paul was preaching was not of man, but was of God, and that what Paul was doing, his mighty ministry, if we look and think about what Paul had done, amen, his mighty ministry came from God alone. Why is that important? Because God’s ways are not our ways. Isaiah 55:8- 9, one of my favorite passages of Scripture,Isaiah 55:8- 9, “for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
12:33 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so aremy ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts”, and so we see in Isaiah 55, 8 -9, God is making a clear distinction. He doesn’t think like us. God doesn’t think as we think.
12:41 God isn’t over here saying, I’m just like man, intellectually thinking of these things in a worldly view. God has a heavenly view, and God has perfect mind, perfect thought, perfect everything. God, by the way, is also omnipresent, so He knows all, He sees all, He’s everywhere, Amen, and so it’s incredible that He’s even condescended Himself down to man, but beyond that, He’s given us His Word to understand and study, but are we studying God’s Word? Let’s be honest here today, it’s difficult.
13:16 It’s difficult for all of us to really get into God’s Word. I’m currently in the book of Chronicles, 1 Chronicles, and I’m going through the genealogies, and I’m trying, Amen, and I’m recognizing some interesting patterns, but at the same time, the kids are running around, and the mother-in-law’s coming in, and the phone is ringing and buzzing, and whatever else it is. It’s real hard, and you know what it tells me, Amen, you know what God’s telling me? Son, you need time alone with Me, time where I can really work in you a right spirit and give you that discernment, and I’m just giving myself as an example.
13:54 We are prone to be entrenched in the world, and as we are in the world, and in the culture of the world, and just looking at God like we would anything else in the world, we’re in danger of not getting close to Him, so let’s study His Word in peace and quietness. Let’s find, let’s make time for God, and He will bless. Tune in next time for the conclusion.