-Transcript-
00:40 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the cafe.
00:43 Welcome to the program. So good to have you here at KJV Cafe. Hope you’re having a wonderful day, a wonderful week.
00:49 Man, this is just a special time here at the cafe as we’re diving deeper and deeper into God’s Word. So excited here to be with you today as we discuss a beautiful topic, the topic of peace. Peace.
01:05 You know, I saw a billboard on the way to a neighboring town in North Carolina here and the billboard said, make this year about, and then there was a peace sign, someone holding a picture of it, someone holding a peace sign.
01:24 And I was just driving, running an errand, and I looked up, I saw it, and I kind of made a peace sign with my hands as I drove by just mimicking what I saw.
01:32 And you know, it got me to think, you know, mankind, they’re not wrong to seek peace.
01:38 I mean, the individuals that made that billboard, it looked like it was a nonprofit of some kind. They’re not wrong to seek peace. I mean, think about this.
01:46 What’s the opposite? Seeking war. Nobody should embrace war, seek war. We’ve seen war on TV, me being in my 40s, 42 now, 42 and a half, I guess you want to get technical with it.
02:03 You know, I grew up with the wars on CNN, right? And all the different wars. I was in college, I believe I was a senior when 9-11 occurred. So I’ve visually seen war, as many people in my generation have.
02:16 How about the generations before me that had to fight in these wars? And of course, some are still fighting in wars, but certainly in World War I, World War II, and Vietnam, there was a great American presence.
02:33 And those that have had to fight in war have seen the long-lasting consequences of war and all the things that come from it. And you probably know somebody or know of someone that’s dealt with PTSD and these other issues that are so serious that come from battle, amen.
02:48 And therefore, we should all want peace.
02:50 And even mankind is right to seek peace. But where is peace found? I mean, that billboard is suggesting that we just get together and go ahead and make peace.
03:00 Another website, a website I was researching on, it said, tweet, make a social media post, make a Twitter post that demands peace.
03:10 Well, I wish it were that simple, that we could get together and just have peace, that we could share on social media and have peace, that we could protest and have peace.
03:21 I wish it were that simple. But you know, true peace is only going to come from the Prince of Peace.
03:27 True peace is only going to come from God Almighty. And that, people may say, well, I’ve heard that a lot and so on, but think about it.
03:35 God is real, amen? We believe He is a real living God.
03:40 He’s alive. He has all power, all sovereignty. That means that He has all control.
03:48 Now, He has chosen to let things happen the way that they have in His sovereignty. He’s let the little G-God of this world run around for a season, but He is in full control. And He is the provider of peace.
04:02 And so how can we expect peace without God? That makes no sense. It’s like two kids in a room full of toys, and they each want to have peace as they play with the same toy, but they’re fighting over that toy.
04:15 And the only way they’re gonna have peace is if the parent comes in and sets it right, amen? Well, our parent, for those that have been saved, is Father God.
04:27 And until Father God shows up—and by the way, He has through His Son, Jesus Christ—until He shows up, there’s no peace, amen.
04:33 There’s no peace. In the Bible, you read about these great revivals of God’s chosen people, especially in the Old Testament, how they get right with God, and they repent, and they get back in order with the way that He’d have them to live, and they have peace around about them.
04:50 Well, how about that? That is God doing it, amen. And I believe with all my heart, mind, and soul, if our country today would get together and seek the Lord fervently, turn from our wicked ways, and seek Him with all our hearts, He would give us a peace like we’ve never seen on this earth.
05:09 He’s able, amen. And He’s able to both give us peace and fulfill every plan that He has at the same time. And once we start getting a hold of that, it really could change how you live, because number one, you become more dependent on a real living God, which is what He wants—obedience, amen.
05:26 And secondly, you start realizing that peace isn’t just found in calming and quelling these worldly conflicts, but peace is found inwardly in Christ alone. And that war inside of us—the idea that the flesh wars against the Spirit, the idea that when we are not saved, the Bible says we’re at enmity, the lost man is enmity or warfare with God.
05:54 We’re at war with God when we’re not saved, amen. We don’t have the Holy Spirit living within us. This flesh is dominating. And so let’s get to the just the crux here today.
06:06 We’re gonna look at the idea here today that we cannot manufacture peace. We can’t. We can manufacture a lot of things.
06:13 We can make a t-shirt if we wanted to. We could make a cup. We could make computers.
06:21 We can make all kinds of things. We can manufacture all kinds of things. But one thing we cannot manufacture is peace.
06:27 Today in the world, there are, according to GlobalCitizen.org, 27 ongoing conflicts. Also, two other websites have backed up that number. And now an ongoing conflict and war is subjective, right? So when you say ongoing conflict, you say war.
06:46 One idea of war is like on the battlefield and, you know, something you would see out of a war movie or something, right? But then you can also have civil war, territorial disputes, interstate disputes, political instability, terrorism, sectarian stuff.
07:04 You have a lot of different things happening. How about like the war on drugs in Mexico? A surprising stat.
07:10 I read that over 80 politicians were killed during the midterm elections as they campaigned. Wouldn’t want to be running for office in Mexico because I guess if you run against the wrong people, they’ll just shoot you. Amen.
07:21 And so, you know, we can’t exactly define how many wars there are.
07:29 But let me get to this. We are living in an age where more people today are educated than ever before. Amen. If you look and you say, well, Brother Clark, is that a statistic.
07:40 Look at the statistics of people getting an education from early in our country’s history all the way through now.
07:47 And, you know, the government can keep track because they’re involved in financial aid and all kinds of things. So they have a good idea, I believe, of how many people are going to school now versus before. We are the most educated people.
07:59 Beyond being educated with school, we have the Internet. And what is the Internet? That is every answer you ever want to know. You want to know how to raise a chicken? Look online.
08:13 You know, you want to know how to bake a chicken? Look online. Amen? Anything. You want to know very obscure facts? You know, search them up on Google.
08:17 Probably someone’s written about it. Amen? Or done a video or something. So we have the Internet with all the answers at our fingertips.
08:21 Now we have cell phones that are very powerful. I gave a statistic, I think it was last year that I read, that I think it was a phone two or three or four years old was as powerful as the computer in the spaceship going up to space at that time. Something incredible.
08:37 That our phones are as powerful as space gear. Amen? As NASA computers. And yet we have all of this.
08:45 And what’s my point? Amen? All of this. And we don’t have peace. We have many conflicts.
08:50 We have a brutal war with Ukraine and Russia. And Russia’s blatantly just disregarding all kinds of the world standards and laws and so forth. And we have dictatorships and we have civil wars, we have uprisings, we have all manner of problems.
09:06 Amen. Yet we’re so educated. The world should say, I mean, the world I grew up being told that, hey, if knowledge is power, and knowledge is the key to blah, blah, blah, and yada, yada, yada.
09:19 And so we were grow up, we were told this is all going to work.
09:23 And yet we can’t manufacture peace. No legislation or laws will ever bring peace to this world. An example with dogs.
09:28 Amen. Let’s say you got two dogs. Let’s say you got two young pups.
09:34 Amen. And you have a steak. Let’s say you went to Outback and they gave you an extra steak and you brought it home.
09:41 And this is delicious. But hey, you know what, I’m on a diet. I’m gonna throw this steak here to the dogs.
09:46 Now, how often will those dogs make peace over that steak? Never. Now, my little daughter, she’s very cute. She said, Well, Daddy cut the steak in half.
09:50 And I said, That’s good. You know, six years old. That’s good.
09:55 You’re thinking about being diplomatic, cut it in half. Well, I’ll tell you what, that one dog that really likes steak is going to get his piece and he’s going to go after the other piece too. Now, that is essentially how we are as people, right? We are self centered.
10:04 We are self minded. We’re living in a dog eat dog world. Amen.
10:09 We are living in a cutthroat environment. We are not living in a world where you can make peace or make a law. You know, we can put a law on the dog pen that says don’t, you know, you don’t take someone else’s steak, they’re not gonna listen.
10:22 You put laws, hey, there’s there’s rules in childcare, the kids break them. Amen. There’s laws that we have in America that we break every day.
10:30 You say, Oh, I don’t break any laws. Okay, have you violated the speed limit? Let me know. Let me know.
10:36 I’m just, I’m just being honest here. Amen. Have you, you know, slightly turned on red when you weren’t or whatever it was.
10:44 We cannot keep the law, but this doesn’t go back to just us or our generation. This goes back to the beginning of humanity. Adam and Eve, amen.
10:53 They broke God’s rule for them. They ate of the forbidden fruit. They were beguiled by the devil.
10:59 They were tricked. Nevertheless, they did it. They had to do it.
11:03 The devil didn’t force their hand. He was very subtle and he is very subtle and he just kind of kept dropping in that bait, tempting them. And they took the bait, they sinned.
11:13 And when sin entered the garden of Eden, they were expelled from the garden of Eden. Amen. And God clothed them, which shows God’s love for them.
11:19 He clothed them with animal skins because they now knew they were naked. Um, and ever since that time, sin has been hereditary, passed down from generation to generation. Nobody is without sin.
11:32 Uh, you meet somebody that has a hereditary disease. They didn’t pick to have it. It just came to them.
11:39 I have allergies. My dad has allergies. If I had to guess, I’m sure one of my grandparents has allergies.
11:48 We didn’t say, Hey, we’d love to have allergies today. It just showed up and we have to deal with it. That is what sin is.
11:52 Amen. If you see someone sinning, I’ve heard a preacher say it like this. Don’t be mad that they’re sinning.
11:56 They’re a sinner. That’s what they’re going to do. And that is why we need the Savior.
12:00 Amen. The biggest misstep we can make is to think we can make peace on our own without God. That is an abomination to God.
12:08 God did not, uh, he did not come and said Jesus Christ is only begotten son to die on the cross for our sins so that we could find a loophole. Amen. He did it because we needed him.
12:21 Amen. Isaiah 64:6, but we are all as an unclean thing and all our righteousness are as filthy rags and we do fade as a leaf and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away. See, we have all fallen short.
12:37 We’re all sinners. There’s not one person that is good in God’s sight without his son, Jesus Christ’s blood applied to their life. Amen.
12:45 Not one. And there are some people out there that they think they are. And there are some people out there that think others are, but truly only those that have accepted Christ as savior have righteousness living within them.
12:57 And it’s nothing that they did. It’s what God provided for them. And that same personal example of needing to be saved by Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior, needing that salvation upon our lives can be applied to nations as a whole, that without God and godless nations, they will never prosper.
13:15 Amen. They will never prosper. There will never be peace around about them as long as Christ is put on the sideline.
13:24 And yet God in his loving mercy, knowing how rebellious and stiff necked we’d be provided the perfect spotless lamb so that we could be forgiven of our sin debt. So that sin that was carried on from the Garden of Eden from Adam and Eve
13:38 all the way to today, that we could be forgiven of that sin debt and that we could have eternal life with Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior and live in heaven with him.
13:46 Not have to go to hell, not to go to a devil’s hell, but be with God for an eternity because of his love and his grace and his mercy.
13:54 And I wish I had more time here today, but you have to tune in next time as we look deeper at how to have peace, not just peace in the world, but peace in our own hearts and why Jesus is called the Prince of peace.
14:05 It’s a fascinating subject and it will bless you. I promise.
14:09 Thank you so much for listening here today. Take care. God bless and amen.