-Transcript-
00:27 Amen. Welcome to the program. Welcome to Cafe.
00:31 Pastor Clark Covington here with another episode of KJV Cafe. Hopefully you’re doing well. Maybe you got yourself a cup of coffee.
00:36 I’ve already had mine for the day. Kind of wish I had another one. Maybe I’ll chase down some decaf later.
00:41 Amen. That’s in your 40s. It’s like, cut it.
00:45 You know, you got to cut the caffeine down, I guess. And in my 20s, it was cut, you know, amp it up. Okay.
00:50 Anyways, let’s get to it. I don’t know. I just, I’m here there and everywhere today.
00:55 It’s one of those days. Amen. But thank God and truly thank God for His Word and thank God for who He is and His love for us.
01:02 I love preaching on God’s love. I’m sure you love hearing about God’s love and I like to talk about God’s love in detail. I’ve been in sermons that I love these preachers, no pun intended, but I’ve been in sermons where they’ll say, God loves you.
01:08 God is love. God’s love is great. And they’ll move right on.
01:19 Well, someone like me wants to know what is that all about? God loves me. How? Now, of course, the greatest example is giving us His only begotten, Jesus Christ, John 3:16.
01:34 God gave, that word gave is so amazing and beautiful. He gave us Jesus Christ, His only begotten, God in the flesh, sinless and perfect to die on the cross for our sins at Calvary so that when we believe on His death, burial and resurrection as outlined in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, we believe on that we’re saved.
01:54 And the Bible says that we’re born again. Jesus Himself in that very book of John there, John 3, speaking to Nicodemus tells Nicodemus, to get to the kingdom of heaven, you must be born again.
02:10 Nicodemus is like, what? I can’t go back in the ladies, my mom’s womb, can I? And Jesus kind of says, wait, you know, you’re a ruler over the Jews and you don’t know this simple thing.
02:18 But the truth is being born again is how we become children, sons and daughters of God. That’s how we become. And every episode, we’re in part three of a five-part series on God’s love, His love through us, our relationship of son to father.
02:34 But every single part, I have mentioned the salvation experience as a predecessor, a pre-resequit. I went to college many years ago and yes, that was a tough one just to get there. I mean, man, I got there and I said, oh, I’m in over my head.
02:51 Went in the guidance counselor’s office, sat down and said, what do you want to major in? And I’m thinking, what’s easy? You know, I went to a very small school, they didn’t have a lot of majors and guess what? None of them were easy.
03:03 So I was plumb out of luck, but they said, I said, well, what about this thing over here? Whatever it was, right? And they said, oh, well, you need pre-resequits for that. Oh, pre-resequit, what does that mean? Well, that means you need to have done something first before you can go do that.
03:17 Or you must have taken this class before you can take that class. Well, in order to be a son or daughter of God, the pre-resequit here is you need to be saved. You need to have accepted Jesus’ free gift of salvation.
03:29 Some denominations will tell you, you need to do good works. Others will tell you, you need to give. Others will tell you that you need to be a member of a church.
03:37 Others will tell you that you need to be from a certain group. But the Bible says, amen, that those that call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And the call upon the name of the Lord isn’t just saying, hey, Jesus, it’s understanding our need.
03:51 Romans 3:23 tells us that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. It’s understanding our need, that we are sinners in need of a savior and understanding that that price has been paid for us, that it’s already been done past tense. Jesus Christ already died on the cross one time for all humanity, for all time.
04:07 And all we have to do is accept that free gift of salvation. And when we accept his free gift of salvation, we’re saved. And Christ doesn’t have to keep going back to the cross.
04:17 So we’re saved one time for all time. That’s called eternal security. We don’t have to keep, and again, I know the brothers, Free Will Baptists or whoever may get a little offended by this, but I can’t find it in the Bible where we have to keep getting saved.
04:32 Now, I know, I believe the bar for being saved is higher than a lot of people think. I believe you truly need to recognize your need as a sinner and truly accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord in order to be saved. And I believe the Bible says to work your salvation out with fear and trembling.
04:49 So those that casually walk the aisle or go to the altar, yeah, I accept Jesus and go right back to living like the world, and they think that they’re saved, that’s between them and God. But I question that. The Bible says, by their fruits, you’ll know them.
05:03 And if they have no good fruits and their fruit is all carnal and worldly, and they have no interest in evangelizing, they have no interest in soul winning, they have no interest in the things of the kingdom, then to me, I start wondering, was that salvation real?
05:14 And again, only God knows. I can’t judge it. But once you’re saved, amen, once you’re saved, I believe you’re saved for eternity.
05:21 Your name is written down in the Lamb’s book of life, never to be blotted out, never to be erased. And now when we sin and we fall into sin, once we’ve truly been saved, we have an advocate in Jesus Christ, our great mediator,
05:35 and we can go through what’s called repentance and we can repent and be forgiven. The biblical word here is sanctification.
05:42 We can be sanctified. The idea that when Jesus cleaned the feet of the disciples, you know, I think it was Peter said, just wash me whole. And Jesus is like, you don’t need to be washed whole.
05:50 You just need your feet cleaned. The idea is we need sanctification. And so I am on the one end of the spectrum, I believe it fully in eternal security of being saved.
06:01 But I also do believe that to be saved, you have to really mean it. And that means you have to really understand it. And I’ve talked to our congregation a lot about how can we evangelize and try to win souls if we don’t fully understand what that means.
06:16 So be saved, accept Christ as Savior, accept that free gift of salvation, believe on what he’s done for you on the cross at Calvary. And once you’re saved, you become a child of God.
06:26 And through these last few episodes, I won’t repeat everything, but we’ve talked a lot about that relationship, the context of what does it mean to have a heavenly father and us being here on earth, but being his creation and now being his child, because we’ve been born again, because those that are born and not saved, take a lost person off the street.
06:46 Were they created by God? Yes, they were. Are they God’s child? No, they’re not. Why? Because they’re spiritually dead.
06:54 They haven’t been born again. When do we get the Holy Spirit? We get the Holy Spirit living within us when we’re born again, right? So to be born again is to be a child of God. Once you’re born again, you become a child of God and all of these traits apply to you.
07:07 And I would like to say this too, you know, we often talk about, I almost every message, you know, like let’s get, depart from sin, sell out to God, serve God, live for God. Let’s say you don’t, but you’re fully saved. Like you actually believe in God.
07:19 You’re still saved. Amen. I believe that God is a God of His word.
07:25 The Bible says there’s no variableness or shadow of turning with God. Okay. And that prefaces, or that’s included in a verse about how every good and perfect gift comes from God.
07:36 Well, like great. The best gift in my mind is salvation. So if you’re saved and you’re backslid, I still believe you’re saved.
07:41 You know, I may not love your conduct, but I’m not never going to preach a message and say, Oh, well, if you’re saved and you’re backslid, Hey, no. Now I did say by the fruits, you’ll know them.
07:52 What I’m saying is if you’re saved and you’re convicted that you’re backslid, Hey, then you know, you know, it’s time to go to God.
08:01 And he is so merciful and loving. I got saved. I think when I was about 22, 23, I know a lot of preachers know the day and the hour.
08:09 And I know, I remember the service and all of that, but I, and I used to have a bulletin with like my picture in it, but I don’t anymore.
08:21 And I don’t know the exact day, but I know that when I was saved, I believe I meant it. I did.
08:25 I meant it. I was ready. I practically ran down there.
08:33 Uh, and I believe I was saved yet for the next five or six years. I was out in the world and I was so, and I would still go to church and stuff, but I just wasn’t living like God would have me to live. Or I wasn’t practicing biblical living.
08:35 I was practicing the opposite of that rebellious living, but I knew deep down something was terribly wrong, right? I was convicted of my sin. When I would sin, I felt guilty. Does that make sense? Okay.
08:47 Moving on here, being born again, being a child of God, yes, it comes with responsibilities, but it also comes with many blessings. We’re related to God. He is our caretaker.
08:57 He’s responsible for us. We’re in co-air with Him. We’re taught by Him.
09:02 We share his traits. We’re disciplined by Him. Uh, he were loved by Him.
09:08 All of these aspects of that role of father is true, both in the sense of what you see in a good father here on earth, in the family ecosystem, as well as what we see from God, the father spiritually as us being the children of God,
09:24 the relationship as sons and daughters of God leads us to become more like him. And so as we’re loved by him and shepherded by him and disciplined by him and taught by him, as we learn about our great responsibility and the great, um, reward we have in heaven, learn about all these things, what happens? We start to become more like him. Now think about a son and a father.
09:49 And again, you can apply this to a daughter and a father that are very, very close, very, very close. You know, what happens there? There is a role of dependency, right?
10:01 Where the son realizes the need for the father. So again, if you have an absentee father, now, okay, well, that’s going to be difficult.
10:15 Cause you’re like, well, why do I need him? I’m he’s not around, but if you have a father, good father, that’s there for their child, that child’s going to say, I need that, that parent. Like I have a need for them when they’re young. You know, they need everything.
10:25 Do they not? They need to be fed. They need you to get the snack from the cupboard. They need you to dry them off.
10:30 It’s all fresh in my mind. I’ve got a five year old. Okay.
10:34 He’s actually going to be six on Saturday, but he’s still five. Okay. When they’re older, okay.
10:39 I had a 17 year old. What does he need? He needs a ride to practice. He needs a ride here.
10:45 He needs a ride there. He needs a cell phone bill paid. Okay.
10:46 You know, basically that’s it. Right. Then otherwise leave them alone.
10:49 Okay. Amen. Uh, but they need stuff, right.
10:50 They need stuff. And I was telling my wife too, you know, it’s interesting if you think about this, sometimes it’s not until they’re absent that you realize what you have, you know, like if I just took off for a month, you know, I’m not saying, Oh, you’ll appreciate. I’m just saying you you’ll wow.
11:05 Dad’s not here to do these things. And isn’t that, you know, our relationship with God. You look at the prodigal son who went out and wasted his inheritance and riotous living looks at the pig and says, the pig’s eating better than I am.
11:17 And this slop goes back to the father because he realized what he had with the father. And so we realize how good our father is. We realize that we’re dependent upon our father.
11:25 And that is very good. We become a yoked up with God. Jesus uses that.
11:32 His yoke is easy as burns light become yoked up. The yoke is not like an egg yolk. The yoke is like a yoke of an oxen.
11:38 There’s two of them in that yoke. It’s like that big wood bracket, for lack of a better word. Amen.
11:43 1 John, a 1 John 3:2 beloved. Now are we the sons of God? And it does not yet appear what we shall be. But we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
11:57 And so first, John three, two, this is the very next verse from our text verse tells us that when we see God, we’re going to be like him because he’s going to appear.
12:11 And we are close to him as his child. Because remember the first verse is telling us that we’re loved so much that he’s made us a child.
12:16 And we’ve talked about how the child naturally will take on traits of the father. What traits do we want to have?
12:22 We want to be a good Christian and how Paul writes about this so beautifully being charitable, being giving, being loving beyond measure and so forth. And lastly here, before we get to the end of this episode, how are we led as his children? We are led by the spirit.
12:31 Romans 8:14, for as many are led by the Spirit of God, capital S, they are the sons of God. So we are led by the spirit. Amen.
12:49 And what that means is the Holy Spirit living within us that we get when we’re born again, makes us a child of God.
12:58 And that Holy Spirit leads us. That’s why we don’t want to grieve the spirit.
13:03 That’s why we want to live close to God. We want to live as best we can away from sin. We want to repent before God.
13:12 We want to study his word. We want to get to know his ways. We want to live by his ways.
13:16 Jesus says himself, if you love me, keep my commandments. Not if you want to be in heaven, that’s already secure by believing in him. But if you love him, you say you love the Lord, keep his commandments.
13:20 Do your best. How can you keep his commandments? If you don’t know them, if you don’t study them, if you don’t keep them refreshed in your mind, amen, living in the flesh, it’s very easy to fall into the sin of the world. And Jesus is saying, keep my commandments.
13:32 What do we need to do? We need to steadfast be in the book to understand what those commandments are. And all of this is the great pleasure that we have as children of God. Amen.
13:41 And it’s a great love that God’s bestowed upon us to be a child of him because we have him living within us. The third part of the Holy Trinity. So you have God, the father, you have God, the son, both God, fully God.
13:54 And in the third part, fully God, the Holy spirit lives within you. Amen. And that Holy spirit is so powerful.
13:59 I wish I had more time to talk about it. That Holy spirit is the one that kicked. John kicked in Elizabeth’s womb.
14:06 John the Baptist. When Mary, that’s mother Mary. Amen.
14:10 Mary, the earthly mother of Jesus, her cousin visited her. That’s the Holy spirit. The Holy spirit is incredibly powerful and helps leads us and guide us.
14:17 I wish I had more time, but for time’s sake, you have to tune in to the next episode. As we look deeper into the context of God’s love by being a child of him. Of God himself.
14:24 Thank you so much for listening. Tune in next time. Take care.
14:29 God bless. And amen.