-Transcript-
00:27 Amen, welcome to the program. Welcome to the Cafe, Pastor Clark Covington, here with another episode of KJV Cafe. So glad you’re here alongside me.
00:41 Hopefully you got a hot cup of coffee or tea right now. It is nasty outside when I’m recording this. It is cold and windy and rainy.
00:46 It’s like mountain weather. Amen. I mean, we’re not, we’re kind of in the foothills here, Cleveland County, Kings Mountain, but man, it is not nice out today.
00:55 Thank you, North Carolina. Though, I have to say, I shouldn’t be sarcastic, say thank you, North Carolina, because North Carolina is pretty moderate. It’s not like a blizzard or anything like some mountain towns or whatever it may be.
01:08 Hopefully you’re doing good. I’ve got my Charleston coffee roasters, some Matra here in my mug, looking at this beautiful mug that was handmade by somebody. I don’t know who, but it’s really nice.
01:20 Makes me think of the potter who molds the clay. Amen. Amen.
01:27 Yes, you knew there was a segue coming. The potter that molds the clay, that’s our God. Amen.
01:32 And we love the Lord, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ for who he is and what he’s done for us. Amen. And today’s another opportunity to get into his word.
01:39 And what I’m going to do is read our text passage first, and then we’re going to look at what this means to us. Okay. So we’re in the book of Corinthians,
01:48 1 Corinthians 9 is where we’re at, and this is the second episode, and I say four to five part series, we’ll see how long we go here on evangelism and what Paul did to set the example for us that we can use in this new year to do what God wants us to do, which is win souls.
02:08 1 Corinthians 9:19-23, this is Paul writing here, for though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all that I might gain the more. And unto the Jews, I became as a Jew that I might gain the Jews and to them that are under the law as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law to them that are without the law as without the law being not without the law to God,
02:36 but under the law to Christ, that I might gain them that are without law to the weak became I as weak that I might gain the weak. I am made all things to all men that I might by all means save some.
02:53 And this I do for the gospel sake that I might be partaker thereof with you. Amen. What a beautiful passage of scripture there.
03:04 And Paul here is succinctly saying that he has a strategy for winning souls and he caps off this passage of scripture saying he’s doing it for the gospel sake that he could partake with others,
03:17 that his work would be fruitful and that he would see those people in heaven, not just there in heaven, but them also winning souls and seeing that fruitful cycle that God so desires for us to partake in. And so Paul is reflecting the desires, I believe of Jesus Christ. Amen.
03:32 Paul says, follow me because I follow Christ. And so we see here a method. We see a strategy and we see something that really could have us thinking very deeply.
03:43 As I mentioned in the last episode, this passage of scripture had me thinking and kind of meditating and chewing the cud a lot, you know, for several days, really focusing on it and thinking about it.
03:55 And that may not sound like a long time, but hey, when you’re preaching on the radio constantly and you got three, four services a week and you know, several days of just sitting on one little, little passage, Hey, I think this could be preached on for years. Amen.
04:13 That’s how, how powerful it is. But for, from, for my simple mind, I said, I kept thinking, who could I become weak to, you know, who, who could I build a bridge with, you know, who is it that, that what’s my heritage. Right.
04:22 And we’re going to get to all that this week, but starting here, evangelism is, I believe beyond being saved the most important thing we can do in this life. So the most important thing we can do is accept the free gift of salvation that Jesus Christ has so graciously and lovingly offered us by paying for our sins on the cross at Calvary with his shed blood.
04:44 And as Christ died on the cross at Calvary and shed his precious blood for sinners like me and for sinners like you, when we understand that and we understand that he was fully in the grave for three days, there’s a lot of significance about that.
04:59 Number three, I did a message years ago about the significance of number three, and there’s a lot of significance in the culture, the Jewish culture. Three days was like in the Jewish culture meant fully dead. Amen.
05:10 And so he was fully dead in terms of what the Jews believed. Of course, we know he was down there and the bottom part of the earth, but he was dead in the eyes of man and he was risen again miraculously the third day,
05:22 according to the scriptures as 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 tells us, and he walked this earth 40 days and 40 nights. It was seen by over 500.
05:30 Amen. And he sent it up to heaven and is at the right hand of the father here today. When we believe on Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, and we believe and understand that’s for our sin debt that we could not pay, when we trust Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we’re saved, we’re born again.
05:47 You don’t need to be a member of a church. You don’t need to be rich. Amen.
05:53 You don’t need to be connected. You don’t need to go to seminary. You don’t need any kind of special designation.
05:57 You know, the Bible tells us that God desires all to come to repentance and all to be saved. You know, the Bible tells us God wants everyone saved. And the Bible also helps us understand that we all fall short, right?
06:08 We’ve all sinned while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
06:15 We all have fallen short. Our righteousness is as dirty rags, the Bible tells us in the book of Isaiah. And so we understand these principles to be true.
06:25 We believe on Christ. We get saved. Once we’re saved, once we trust in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, by simply going through that exercise of understanding our need for him and accepting him, believing on his death, burial, and resurrection.
06:38 Once we’re saved, the most important thing we can do is be fruitful. And not just fruitful as in like, okay, well, we’re Christians and we had kids and we’re raising them right, though that is good. Our kids are in church every time the church doors are open, so to speak.
06:53 And we have Proverbs, we try to do Proverbs, our family altar at night. And we have Bible lessons in homeschool during the day. I mean, they are rich in the Bible.
07:03 So I’m thinking in my mind, you know, these kids may, everything may turn out okay. I mean, biblically, we’re told if we, you know, we raise them up in this way, they won’t depart from it. And hey, I mean, you know, they’re going to know their Bible.
07:15 They’re going to know the gospel, you know, they’re going to know it so well they can teach others. And I think God holds a high priority on that. But that’s not what being fruitful I think really in this context is about.
07:25 It’s about here winning souls for eternity. It’s about here being fruitful and saying, okay, I’ve planted these seeds and whether I harvest them or not, the Lord is going to get the harvest and there’ll be more in heaven that’ll be saved. God is a God of love.
07:40 God does not want to condemn. I don’t believe if he doesn’t have to. He’d rather show grace than vengeance or something to that extent.
07:49 That’s in the Bible somewhere, I promise you. But God, you know, he wants to save us, but at the same time, he gives us free will and he’s not going to change his holy ways. He’s not going to compromise his holiness.
08:00 So the only way for us to be forgiven of our sin debt is accept the free gift of our Savior, Jesus Christ. And so Paul is saying that he’s becoming all these things to all people, amen. And where we left off last time was this idea that Paul was doing this.
08:16 He was writing this letter because there was a kind of a huddle about, oh, do we eat meat offered idols or not?
08:24 And if we do, is that okay? And Paul’s saying, look, an idol is basically, is a dead, dumb thing. It’s made by man. It’s nothing.
08:31 That meat is fine to eat. But if somebody is not okay with that, and they’re a new convert or they’re seeking God and they haven’t been saved, don’t go and do that to discourage them.
08:45 And we see in first, this is in the previous chapter to 1 Corinthians 9, 1 Corinthians 8. It starts, it’s a short chapter.
08:52 It just starts out with, now is touching things offered unto idols. We know that we all have knowledge, knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth or love, right?
09:00 And if any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know. And so Paul goes through in chapter eight, telling us that, no, it’s not illegal.
09:12 You’re not under the law. You’re saved if you’ve trusted Jesus as Savior, but don’t go and eat that meat in front of weak believers, if in fact that will hurt them.
09:19 And we see here as he caps off the scriptures here, verse 12, but when you sin so against the brethren and wound their weak conscious, you sin against Christ.
09:31 Verse 13, the last verse of chapter eight, wherefore if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.
09:40 He doesn’t want to, he doesn’t, he doesn’t want to send somebody to hell because he wasn’t a proper witness because he was so proud in his knowledge. And that kind of is the root of what you see in chapter nine,
09:54 that next chapter of Paul saying, I’m becoming all things to all men, becoming a Jew to the Jew lawless to the lawless week to the week.
10:04 So I can win some for God. Amen. And so we see here that this is something that we have to number one, look at as our end goal that we have to have an end goal of winning souls.
10:16 So we have to wake up. Amen. I believe this and say, Lord, please help me win souls.
10:20 And that’s, that can be a prayer that we need to make courageously because you know, maybe we’re shy or maybe we’re concerned about what God’s going to throw our way, but we need to trust God that he knows how he made us
10:28 and say, God, please use me to win souls today. Amen. And then number two, now that I’m thinking about that, now I have to be humble because I know that if I’m proud, then there’s problems occurring.
10:40 Amen. And that is the idea of, and you can split this a million ways, but you know, there’s divisions in church, in the church house and the denominations over things that are not dealing with salvation. Amen.
10:52 And because they’re not dealing with salvation, we have to just maybe like cool it a little bit. I mean, look at Paul. He knew he wasn’t under the law.
11:02 He is literally the apostle to the Gentiles. And what does he do? He becomes a servant. He makes a servant mentality and he goes to the Jews and witnesses to them.
11:12 And he says, okay, you’re under the law, right? The mosaic laws, 600 plus laws. Don’t eat this. Don’t do that.
11:20 You know, Paul says, okay, I’m with you. I won’t do any of those things either. But let me tell you about Jesus.
11:24 See, he’s building a bridge through humility. Paul was free, but he made himself a servant. That’s the idea of humility, right?
11:33 The idea of humility or meekness is not that you’re weak in the sense of like you’re physically just, you know, inept.
11:40 It is the idea of strength under control. It is the idea of, of having that boldness in you to say, you know what? I don’t care if I look like a fool. I’m going to do it for Christ’s sake.
11:52 And I will say this, uh, recently I was preaching on the book of Jonah and at the end of the book of Jonah, Jonah’s mad with God after Nineveh is not destroyed.
12:03 And it’s like, what the heck is going on? And I really had to research that because here, Jonah could have easily been destroyed and God spares Jonah’s life and God uses Jonah and it looks like God’s really working there.
12:14 And Jonah is just basically showing up and preaching and people are repenting and getting right before God.
12:20 And Jonah’s mad about it. And as I researched why Jonah was mad about it, some of the commentarians were saying he didn’t want to look like a fool.
12:31 He didn’t want to look like a false prophet because he said, God’s going to burn this place down in 40 days if you don’t repent and you guys probably aren’t going to repent, right? You guys better get right.
12:34 You wicked people. And guess what? They repented and God didn’t burn it down. And now he’s kind of like, oh, well, I look like a fool.
12:38 And I think that was one of the reasons that Jonah was frustrated with God. In fact, in the book of Jonah, Jonah says, look, before I even left to go run, run away, I knew that you were a God of mercy and a God of love and slow to wrath. And, you know, you’d repent of this evil.
12:53 I knew you were going to do that, God. And I ran away because he didn’t like the people of Nineveh and he didn’t want to look like a fool when he said that God’s going to burn that city down. And he doesn’t at that time.
13:04 This interchanges perfectly or this dovetails perfectly. This idea that Paul is willing to look like a fool.
13:12 Can you imagine being there in the wilderness at that time? And Paul’s being counseled by Christ and Paul has this great revelation.
13:19 Let’s say you’re helping him write these letters or something at that time or his journal. And then you see Paul go off to the Jews and he’s condescending to them and he’s following all their rules and their laws. And you’re like, but I know that Paul knows better.
13:32 And you’re looking at Paul like, is this guy a fool? And Paul’s saying, I’m willing to be a fool if it saves some. I love my people. There’s a place in the Bible where Paul says he’s willing to go to hell if his people would be saved.
13:41 Amen. That’s a deep love for his people. And Paul had that at the forefront of his mind and made that a strategy to help win souls by saying,
13:49 I’m not going to go in there and be puffed up because guess what happened if he strutted into the synagogue and said, you idiots, you fools, y’all are doing all this.
13:57 You need to get right with God. I’m going to tell you the truth about the matter. Now who wants to listen to that? Now whose heart is going to be open to that?
14:05 Now what kind of witness for Jesus Christ is that you see in modern day times, we have to look at our conduct and we have to look at what place God has put us where he may want us to be extra humble and meek, which doesn’t mean weak, it just means strength under control so that we can help win souls to him.
14:23 Think about that. And as we go on this week, we’ll get to more.
14:26 Thank you so much for listening. Take care. God bless. And amen.