-Transcript-
00:26 Amen. Welcome to the program. Welcome to the cafe.
00:31 My name is Pastor Clark Covington, pastor of Heartland Community Baptist Church here in Kings Mountain, North Carolina. Good to have you on the program today. I’m so blessed to have a chance to talk to you today about a very important topic.
00:43 One that I believe is very close to the Lord’s heart. And that is who’s calling on Him or Jesus, if you will, to forgive them today. Who’s calling on Jesus for forgiveness? You know, I want you to think of two groups.
01:02 You have the group of people that we would call as believers, the unsaved, the lost. And then you have Christians, those that have accepted Christ as Savior. My question for both groups is who’s calling on Jesus today?
01:14 You know, I think that we really need or will benefit from looking at this topic.
01:22 God’s willingness to forgive is unmatched. And we’re going to learn about that today, about His great love, His willingness to forgive. But here is the other aspect of that.
01:36 People have to call upon Him. You know, they have to seek Him. They have to desire to know Him.
01:44 We are saved by His grace. But to call upon Jesus is an act of faith that we all must actually do. And God’s program does not change.
01:52 He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. So the same God that we’ve seen throughout the Old Testament scriptures, that was so frustrated by the Israelites, not calling upon Him, not seeking Him,
02:05 not turning to Him, not believing Him, not believing His word, His promises, not believing even after seeing miracle after miracle.
02:14 That same God is still frustrated today by both the lost person that refuses to accept Him as Savior or even consider it, and the saved person that has just frankly given up on seeking the Lord.
02:28 They’ve turned to the world. They’ve turned to an earthly gratification that may have a short-term satisfaction, but will certainly disappoint in the long-term.
02:38 And so what we see here is that God is looking for those to call upon Him, to seek Him, so that He can forgive them and He can help them.
02:50 Psalm 86:5 is our text verse,For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee. For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee.
03:15 Well, that’ll almost preach itself, won’t it? God is good. That’s where we’re going to start here today. You know, God is good.
03:21 And people say God is good in the strangest ways sometimes. You know, they’ll say, God is good. I just got a promotion.
03:29 And they don’t ever spend a minute with God. They don’t even know if that promotion is really going to be good for them or not. But they just want to call God’s name out.
03:38 God is good. You know, God is good. He’s giving me another day.
03:47 But the day that He gave you, you’re choosing not to get into His Word or to pray to Him or to repent of any sin in your life or to spend any time with Him in devotion or praise and worship. But you’re saying that He’s good. I mean, it’s kind of contrary.
04:01 It’s weird. It’s like we know mentally that God is good, but we don’t show with our actions that He’s good. And yet, truly, He is good.
04:06 A beautiful characteristic of God is that He is built for and with a readiness to forgive. It’s who He is. Nahum 1:7.The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him.
04:26 Lamentations 3:25.The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.
04:38 Psalm 34:8. O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him. Psalm 107:8. Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!
04:50 Can you see a theme here?Know God, trust God, seek God. This is a relationship between God’s goodness and man seeking God.
05:02 You know, think about that because we often will, again, acknowledge sometimes ignorantly God’s goodness without really understanding what that means.
05:16 And yet, we won’t really be inclined to seek Him. You know, we’ll be inclined to go the fleshly worldly route.
05:22 We’ll look to the internet for answers. I was going to say the bookstore, but I know better now. We’ll look to the internet for answers.
05:29 We’ll look to man for answers. How about asking God, amen. As I’ve spent more time this year in prayer, I’d say I spent a little bit more time in prayer this year than in years past. And I try to have a strong prayer life.
05:45 I’m not going to get up here and preach on the radio and say, you need to be praying to God, pray without ceasing. And I don’t pray. I’ve been praying, amen.
05:51 I’ve been praying a lot ever since I can remember really, but certainly ever since the Lord called me into the ministry over a decade ago. I’ve been praying a lot, but I’ve been praying more this year.
06:03 And this year I was spending more time in prayer asking God, what about this? God, what about that? Now people may think I’m crazy, but you know, I’m trying to seek the Lord with a belief that he has all the answers.
06:19 There’s a billboard in town, well, in Shelby, the town next to us. And it says, Jesus is the answer for all your problems. And I love that billboard because number one, it’s true.
06:29 And number two, it must drive the lost people nuts because they feel like, oh, how dare they say that? Oh, Jesus is the answer for all their problems. Oh, you know, blah, blah, blah, because it’s such a powerful name and it’s so true.
06:43 And Jesus is God and God, the father, God, the son, God, the Holy spirit are the three in one triune living God, a God that is alive and well.
06:57 Amen. A God that sees your conduct and your character day in and day out. A God that knows you and the God that made you, by the way, a God that saved you if you’ve been saved and a God that knows you very well.
07:08 And he is good. Nahum 1:7, the Lord is good. A stronghold in the day of trouble.
07:14 Man, when you’re in trouble, you want to go to a place of refuge. I recently battled with a illness that was pretty severe for a little bit there. And I said, oh man, I don’t know where I need to go because I stay so busy, you know, with the kids and with the ministry of the world.
07:31 I said, okay, let me go to my bedroom. I don’t know. That was my place of refuge, right? Physically that helped a little bit, but you know what really helped going to the true place of refuge, my Lord and savior, Jesus Christ, the great mediator and saying, Lord, I give this to you and I trust you and you are my stronghold and you are my refuge.
07:50 I would even in my mind, as I was sick and just laying in bed for days, I would imagine a structure, maybe a big wall or one of those buildings you see in Europe that are made out of massive stones and concrete.
08:02 It looks like nothing could ever take it down. It’s been up forever.
08:06 I imagine just being inside of there and being like under God’s fiery protection and say, yeah, that feels good. That’s calming. You know, that’s who God is.
08:16 That’s real. Amen. That is real.
08:21 You know, I pray for protection over my family. I imagine God having angels at the doorposts. Amen.
08:26 I’m serious. I believe the Lord is serious too. The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble.
08:34 And he knoweth them that trust in him. Well, there’s that word trust in him. What is trust? Is it not having faith in God, believing in God, taking God at his word?
08:46 Lamentations 3:25. The Lord is good unto them that wait for him to the soul that seeketh him.Didn’t I start off here saying that man in this world oftentimes is seeking instant gratification. They’re not going to wait on God.
09:04 They’re going to run to whoever is going to give them something that they want right away. Sometimes we just got to wait on God. Look at all the great men and women in the Bible that waited on God.
09:15 Can you imagine if Rahab had run away instead of hiding those spies, the Israelite spies and Rahab ends up, the harlot ends up in the Hebrew’s hall of fame. Amen.
09:21 Ends up her and her family being saved because she waited on God to be delivered from the impending doom.
09:30 Amen. Imagine Noah, if he hadn’t waited on God and he said, no, I’m not going to build this boat. No, I’m not going to put two of each kind on this boat.
09:38 Can you imagine? But he waited on God. Imagine Abraham. He goes over to Canaan land, the promised land.
09:49 God had told him, get rid of your family, your parents and stuff. You got to get rid of them. They’re worshiping pagan gods.
09:50 You got to go just you and Sarah. Well, that’s not easy. And he goes to Canaan land, Canaan, there’s famine.
09:55 Amen. You imagine if he had just said, I’m not going to wait on you anymore. I don’t believe you’re going to give me a son anymore.
10:01 We wouldn’t have the 12 tribes of Israel. He had to wait a hundred years. Amen.
10:06 I mean, a hundred years of his life, you know, to have that child on and on. You see these ideas of, of seeking, of waiting, of trusting and understanding that God, his nature is goodness. It’s who he is.
10:20 And sometimes we hear that God is good or we read it in a greeting card or see it somewhere and think, okay, what does that mean?
10:29 Well, the depths of what it means is, is, is hard for this preacher to even grasp a hold of, but clearly I’ve got a book with, well, I’ve got a 66 books in what’s called the Bible.
10:39 Amen. That point me to a, a, a theme over and over again.
10:44 And that is the goodness of God. And here we go back to our, our topic here that God wants us to call on him. He wants us to call on him.
10:50 Amen. And yet we’re not doing it. So the question is, how can you call on God? That is so good.
11:01 If you don’t know that he’s good because you don’t spend time with him. Well, it becomes a lot harder, doesn’t it? And the world’s kind of view of God often, and I really believe this is last resort.
11:14 You know, you jump out the plane, the parachute cord isn’t working.
11:18 Then you say a prayer, you know, last resort. You’re already drowning. And now you start deciding to start praying to God.
11:27 How about starting to pray to God when nothing is going on? How about just getting up and saying, okay, I’m going to pray right now and make it a priority in the most dull time of the day when it would be the easiest to not do it.
11:37 I’m going to go ahead and do it. Then to number one, show God that I put him first.
11:42 And then number two, to have that relationship and rapport with God that when something does go wrong, you’re ready to go. You’re ready to go. You already have that closeness with God.
11:53 Let me give you an example here. A rich man had a great treasure and he purposed to give it simply to the ones that asked for it. This is just a sentence here.
12:04 Think about this. A rich man had a great treasure and he purposed to give it simply to the ones that asked for it. Well, number one, in order to get in on this great rich gift, number one, you’d have to know the rich man.
12:15 Now, if you don’t know the rich man, certainly you wouldn’t know that he was purposing to give away his riches to those that asked for it. Okay.
12:24 So number one, you got to know the rich man and then you got to know him well enough to know that you need to ask.
12:32 And then you have to actually ask. And this is really a lot about how God is. Number one, he wants us to get to know him.
12:38 And I wish I had time to tell the story. I tell it all the time that, you know, there’s a, I love seeing these signs. There’s a yard sign that says somewhere, if you don’t know God, seek him in his word, he’ll reveal himself to you, something like that.
12:49 And it’s a beautiful little picture of scripture that, look, if you don’t know God, and many of us don’t, amen, and how can we know the living God? But if you don’t know him at all, get into the word and ask him to reveal himself to you and God will be faithful to say, absolutely.
13:03 And as you do that, as you approach that, that book with a childlike faith, you will be blown away by this God that you learn that is alive and well, that has great love.
13:15 So, so much love they gave us only begotten Jesus, the cross at Calvary to save us from our sins for all that would accept that free gift of salvation.
13:25 And then you’d learn that all you have to do is simply ask. You simply have to say, Lord, save me. And for those that have been saved, Lord, forgive me for my sins.
13:35 I repent of whatever sins I’ve caused today. Lord, help me to grow closer to you. Lord, help me to be in a constant calling mode with you.
13:42 Oh man, I wish I had more time, but I’m running out here today. We’re going to run this series a few episodes this week.
13:50 So continue to tune in here to KJV Cafe as we really drill in on this idea of calling God, calling upon God, seeking God with kind of framed up by the idea that we need forgiveness, consistently, honestly, and he is able and apt to forgive us and he’ll cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
14:10 And we get saved one time, we’re saved by grace alone through faith alone and Jesus Christ alone saved one time for all time.
14:17 Okay. So salvation that just happens once, but then sanctification, that’s what we’re gonna talk about this week.
14:23 So stay plugged in. Check us out online if you haven’t already and tune in next time.
14:28 Thank you for listening. Take care. God bless and amen.