-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to KJV Cafe.
00:39 Great to have you here. Hope you’re having a wonderful week, wonderful day. Hopefully you got yourself maybe a hot cup of coffee, tea.
00:47 If it’s hot outside, maybe you’re going iced coffee, iced tea. I’m not mad about that. Amen.
00:52 Oh, how good that is. Oh, you know what? You could go decaf. I’ve been doing a lot of decaf lately, Lord willing, to make sure I’m getting my sleep at night and not getting too overwhelmed.
01:03 But whatever you may have, hopefully you’re comfortable here today. And I’m just, I’m excited to have you here as we get into God’s Word, discover these great truths from God’s Word.
01:12 I’m so thankful and grateful that Lord’s given me this opportunity and I thank you for tuning in.
01:18 Today we’re talking about an individual that I met the other day named Jeremiah. Homeless young man, couldn’t have been more than 20, 21 years old. Salisbury, North Carolina.
01:30 Asked for some change, was struggling hard with life. I don’t know what his story is completely, but I know that he had one. Amen.
01:39 I could tell he had been through the ringer, whether it was drugs or mental illness or something else. Abuse. I have no idea.
01:48 He was just a young, young guy. And I talked to him outside of a restaurant, tried to find a rescue mission in his area and was able to find one for him. But then he was gone when we got back outside.
02:06 My son and I got back outside and while he was gone, I couldn’t see him anymore. He’s still in my mind, in my heart, in my prayers. And I believe seeing him and encountering him brings up a good question.
02:23 Why are we here? And why is he there? And that question I believe is answered somewhat in Genesis, uh, or excuse me, in Jeremiah, the actual, the book of Jeremiah had to do it.
02:37 His name was Jeremiah. I had to go to the book of Jeremiah here and see if I could make connection.
02:46 And I believe the Lord working the Holy spirit has Jeremiah 2:14 is Israel a servant. Is he a homeborn slave? Why is he spoiled?Jeremiah 2:14. The context here is that Israel, they were in the Babylonian captivity, right? They were, they were slaves.
02:56 They were, they were no longer a servant of the Lord. They were no longer, um, uh, uh, in power. They were no longer free.
03:06 They were no longer under God’s blessing, but they were in captivity and it grieved Jeremiah to see this greatly. He’s known as the weeping prophet. Amen.
03:15 And he was asking earnestly, I believe, what is going on? What has happened here and why is it happened as anyone would?
03:24 Can you imagine being in America, uh, and one day waking up and you’re alive, but you are now in captivity and you are now a slave to a foreign nation and you’re now having to speak their language and follow their customs.
03:38 And you are now mocked and ridiculed in the lowest of society. And you’re now maybe fearing for your health and your life and all of these things.
03:48 And you look to God and say, is this what happened? I mean, we’re your people. We trust you Lord. And here we are.
03:52 Right? But then we look here today and we see a man, a young man that’s begging on the street and we read Genesis 1:27. So God created man in his own image and the image of God created. He, him male and female created.
04:06 He them. And we see a man that is created in the image of God, a young man, this whole life out of them. And he’s down as low as you can get.
04:14 It seems like. And so what do we know? What, what do we take from this? Why are we here? Why is he there? Amen. It’s a great question to ask.
04:23 Like Jeremiah is asking, what, what has happened here? What is going on? And this young man was named Jeremiah. So I believe his mom or his dad, they gave him a Bible name. Amen.
04:33 Oh, how we have to care for those that don’t have a lot. Oh, how God wants us to care for them, to, to show compassion to the needy. How blessed we’ve been.
04:45 There are more storage units in America than there are McDonald’s. That’s what I’ve read. And I believe it.
04:53 There’s a massive development coming up. I told my wife on our road, right off of our main road. I said, that’s gotta be houses.
05:01 And guess what? It’s not houses. It’s storage units. Why am I talking about storage units? Because people have so much stuff.
05:05 They need storage units. I’m not criticizing storage units. We’ve got two for our, for my business.
05:12 Okay. And yes, I got a few, I got my father-in-law’s bed in there. So it’s not all business.
05:18 He won’t throw out his old bed. So we put it in there, but, um, I’ve got to, I’m not, I’m not saying it’s bad to have storage units. What I’m saying is look at this.
05:24 We’re out in the country. We have all this land. We’ve all, we’ve all these places to store stuff and we can’t store all the stuff we have.
05:31 And so why on earth are there people that are in need? If we have been blessed so abundantly by God himself, why on earth are there people like Jeremiah that are in need?
05:40 And I believe the weeping prophet Jeremiah answers that by alluding to the fact of this Babylonian captivity of God’s chosen people being there because of sin, being there because of sin. Amen. Being there because of the consequences of sin.
05:58 Okay. Because they turned from what God had done from them, that God had delivered them out of Egypt. He delivered them out of bondage.
06:06 And here you say, well, we’re not under the law. We’re not old Testament. We’re not Israelites.
06:12 No, we’re not. But you know who we are. We’re God’s creation.
06:16 We’re living in a sinful world. God gave us Jesus Christ to save us from sin and large at large people have rejected Jesus Christ and even his own church has largely fallen away and turned their back on him. So are we not really in the very similar situation here today? We’re living in a sin sick world.
06:33 Amen. We’re living in a world that lifts up pornography, lifts up perversions like homosexuality that celebrates the killing of children, innocent babies.
06:40 You know, again, people would read the Bible, the old Testament and, and in the old Testament, there was this God, this false God called Molech and they would burn their babies.
06:52 They’d have a baby. They’d throw that baby in the fire as an offering to Molech and people would be repulsed by that and disgusted by that. And the same type of people would then publicly say that they want innocent children killed in the womb.
07:04 What has changed? Amen. What has changed? Solomon said, there’s nothing new under the sun. Amen.
07:13 We’re made for God’s will for his own pleasure. And we should seek to glorify God in all that we do. We are not under the law.
07:23 We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. And yet James, the book of James teaches us that faith without works is dead. If I had sat there and just said, I don’t have time for you to that individual.
07:35 And if I’m honest, there’s times I’ve been approached and I’ll just say, I don’t have anything and I’ll walk away and I’m a pastor and that grieves me. Okay. That I have to repent for that to the Lord.
07:44 Amen. And I keep that in mind more and more as I get older and I, and I, and I encounter people. I said, you know what? This is someone created in God’s image.
07:55 God expects us to do something from it. And he certainly expects the preacher to do something. Amen.
08:04 That’s, I could go a long way with that, but the point is we are here to do his will. Why are we here to do his will? So if we’re here to do his will, then we should be living for him and helping people like that and making it a priority in our lives. And yet we cannot wipe out sin.
08:22 I just finished a series on peace, world peace, all of it only coming through Christ and Christ alone. We cannot wipe out sin on our own, but at the same time we can, through the working of the Holy spirit, make a difference in this world and be a witness. You’ve heard this.
08:37 If you’re in a church, a fundamental church, you’ve heard this. I’m sure. Win them, wet them, work them.
08:43 What does that mean? That means get them saved, get them baptized and put them to work. I always heard that spending some years, many years in the independent Baptist church.
08:53 And there is actual Bible behind that because the idea is that we are to be saved and then we’re changed, right? We’re baptized.
09:00 It’s a public profession of our faith. Amen. We are new.
09:06 We are born again. And then we are to work for the Lord. We are to be his servants.
09:10 Paul calls himself a prisoner to Christ. He’s like a bond servant. We are like bond slaves to Christ.
09:17 Amen. We are literally bought the idea that people were auctioned off and bought. We are bought with a price.
09:23 Christ shed his innocent blood for us and we receive him as savior. We then become like him. And guess what? He suffered.
09:29 He was obedient to the father. We are called to be obedient to the father. That does not mean living for your own pleasures every day, all day.
09:36 That means living for his pleasure. Romans 12 to be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. See, we are to be transformed.
09:53 So stop living like the world. Stop getting involved and yoked up in the things of the world and transform yourself and live that perfect, acceptable, goodwill of God. And that’s what we do.
10:10 When we get in the word, we study the word. When we chew the cud, when we ask these questions like, why are we here? And what would God have us to do?
Does that know what Saul, when he became Paul asked Jesus, when he was on the road to Damascus, what would you have me to do? This is what we are to do. We are to seek the Lord.
10:22 And when we do that, and we get in his word and we pray and we seek him, he’ll lay that burden on our heart to serve him and to work for him and to be profitable for him.
10:33 Think about what talents and skills that God has given you. Don’t you think you should use them to bring glory and honor to him, to help him, to help him? What does it say? To serve the least of these is as if you are serving Christ to help them is to help Christ.
10:47 So we’ve been told, we’ve been commanded, what are we doing? Are we using our talents and skills to help those that need it and to bring glory to God?
10:55 1 Peter 2:15, I love this verse so much. For so is the will of God that with well-doing you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. So we see here in 1 Peter 2:15, the will of God is that we’re well-doing, right? We’re doing his will, we’re doing good.
11:12 And we put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. And so most importantly, we need to be spreading the gospel, telling people about Jesus. In fact, that’s what I talked to that young man about, because I said, you need to, when I was trying to speak plainly, get to church, get to the rescue mission, because there they’re going to preach Christ crucified, hopefully.
11:30 Amen. And that’s where you are going to have that transformation. Amen.
11:34 Hebrews 13:20-21, Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead, our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will,
11:43 working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. We need to do what is well-pleasing in the sight of the Lord, and that is to help the least of these.
11:56 We need to make plans and execute those plans, not have good intentions and not do them, but we need to make plans to help and then go and do it.
12:07 What can you do in your community where you are using your talents and gifts that God has given you to be a blessing to those in need? What can you do? And don’t do it just like on the holiday and say, Oh, I did charity. It’s the holiday.
12:19 How about all year round? Okay. How about just baking that into part of your life? You know, you go to the park on Tuesday to go to a walk. Okay.
12:26 Well, on Wednesday you go to the food bank and feed the homeless. Why not? Amen. Oh, I’m busy with work.
12:33 Well, what about in the morning, in the evening? Maybe the work has, maybe your job is a volunteer program. Maybe you could talk to your boss about that. You say, well, I’m incredibly shy or I’m homebound or I have an issue or I’m up in age.
12:41 Well, can you write a card? Can you send a gospel track? Can you call? I know an old Saint of God that would get on the phone and call people, amen, and talk to them about the Lord or pray with them. Only you know the gifts that God’s given you.
12:54 But I challenge you here today to use those gifts to reach the Jeremiah’s of the world in Jesus Christ’s name.
13:01 Forget about all these things about the world or what the world will tell you or distract you or send you on these fruitless missions. Okay. Forget about all that.
13:11 Get in the book, pray, seek the Lord, ask him. If you don’t know what gifts he’s given you, I promise you he’s given you gifts. Ask him to reveal them to you.
13:20 And once you discover those gifts, or if you already know them, commit to using those gifts, not to profit for yourself or for your family, but to bring glory and honor to God by helping the least of these.
13:33 And oh, how that will just move your spirit. The irony of all this is you will look like you’re serving somebody else, but you will get the blessing from it.
13:42 I promise you. Foster care is another one. How many kids out there need a home? Maybe you can foster, maybe you can help foster parents get involved in the ministry.
13:52 They’re Baptist children. Children’s homes is a great organization that we’ve been involved with. You need to seek your, seek the Lord with all your heart on this matter and help the least of these, because that is your purpose here to do God’s will and to be well-pleasing in his sight.
14:09 And one day in heaven, he’ll reward you for fulfilling the purpose he’s given you.
14:13 Thank you for listening. Take care of God bless and amen.