-Transcript-
00:24 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:26 Welcome to the cafe. Pastor Clark Covington here. The second part of a two-part series, looking at faith, hope, and charity.
00:33 Oftentimes you hear it as faith, hope, and love in the King James’s charity, which just means love and more specifically that sacrificial love, that agape love, that love that you give and you don’t necessarily, or you certainly don’t get really anything in return.
00:48 That kind of love. And that’s the love the Father gave to us.
00:55 That’s love we’re looking at here today. And this whole week I’ve been jumping right into the message, had some allergies and stuff, so I’ve just been skipping the intro.
01:02 But same person here, in case someone’s been listening like, man, is this the same guy? Usually I’ll sit here and talk about coffee, this, that, or the other, but we’re just getting out of business this week.
01:11 But yeah, I’m here. I’m just a little allergic, but I’m here. And I’m so thankful for God’s Word.
01:16 I’m so thankful for the Apostle Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, for giving us this beautiful description of what comes from an earthly faith dependent upon this resolution, you know, the accomplishment, the finish line moment of being in heaven for eternity with Christ.
01:37 Because there, once we’re there, we don’t need faith and hope, right? You’re there, you don’t need faith. When you’re with the Lord, you don’t need to believe that He is who He is.
01:49 You’re right there. You can see Him. Amen.
01:53 You know, we went to Showmars for dinner. I don’t have to believe that Showmars is in Shelby. We went there.
01:59 You know, you don’t have to believe in Jesus once you see Him. You look at the nail scars in His hand, you say, oh, okay, this is the Christ. But what did Jesus say to Thomas? He said, Thomas, blessed are those that have not seen and believed.
02:11 And why are we blessed? Because we have faith and we have hope and we realize or understand the sacrificial love and then we have that kind of love too, because we have God living within us and we’re saved.
02:24 We have the Holy Spirit. Last episode, we spent a lot of time talking about charity as seen by Paul and making all things profitable.
02:34 Or we’ve kind of spent the whole time on the inverse, like the lack of profitability in all these things that the world would think is great, like knowing everything and having all prophecy and all faith and giving everything to the poor and, you know, being a martyr for a cause.
02:52 All these things that the world would say, oh, it’s amazing. We know that without love, they’re bankrupt.
02:59 And we spent a lot of time kind of looking at that. And here from that, we got this conclusion or this idea that as we look at the world through the lens of seeing God not completely clearly,
03:12 but knowing somewhat who he is through his word and through his role in our life, we see his great love, this characteristic of God that is beyond description. And the word love is frankly overused.
03:30 The word love in church is overused. You know what? But the fundamental church, people say, I love you, brother, I love you. You know that people throw that around a lot.
03:40 And right growing up, I didn’t, you know, I didn’t have a lot of that, I guess, told to me. So it was difficult at first. Also, you know, if someone doesn’t know me and so you love me.
03:52 And so what is love? Right. I mean, you know, you’re a teenager and you tell your girlfriend, your boyfriend, you love them and you get into your dream school
04:05 and they don’t get into the same school and your dream schools across the country and you say, I love you, but, you know, I’ve always wanted to go here. And I, I, I, and me, me, me, you know how teenagers think.
04:17 And next thing you know, hey, you love them, but, you know, you’re doing your thing, you know, how that’s a different kind of love than we’re talking about here.
04:24 This is the kind of love I use example last time of like an organ transplant. You know, I always look at the people that give the organ is just saints of God because they gain nothing like, you know, physically speaking, they’re literally losing one of their organs.
04:41 They’re cutting short their own life to give another life is absolutely incredibly sacrificial and heartwarming to see that. And just incredible. It was incredible.
04:46 I mean, even blood donors and all the rest, you know, it’s really amazing, you know, you don’t gain anything from that. You know, as far, as far as I can see in terms of giving, that’s the kind of sacrificial love we’re talking about here, but not just organ donating, but I mean, how about giving your child?
05:05 I mean, I look at, you know, my children, I have a son, the youngest son. I have a CJ that’s Clark Jr. by the way.
05:16 And he’s six. He just turned six and he’s just the most precious kid. And honestly, he’s kind of a mama’s boy, but he’s kind of a daddy’s boy.
05:25 He’s certainly one that stays close to the parents and I was kind of the same way. And so he’s very dependent on mom and dad way more than a six-year-old should be.
05:38 I mean, this is, it’s gotten bad, like literally, I think a month ago, hey CJ, it’s time to learn how to shower on your own buddy, you’re six, you know, he, everything is dependent on mom and dad.
05:50 And it’s hard for me to imagine, take that young man and say, okay, well, mankind is sinful and you are just wonderful. And so you’re going to have to die for these people.
05:56 And most of these people are never going to recognize you and they’re going to mock and ridicule you, or they’re going to falsely pervert what you say and so forth.
06:06 And so only a very small group will actually accept what you’re going to do for them. But still go do it. And I’m going to have to be a witness to your brutal death and suffering for all the world.
06:20 You know, that’s something I can’t comprehend. I remember our music minister, John Cruz, he was preaching, he used to be a preacher boy.
06:32 I say used to be because he’s a grown man now, but he’s our music minister and praise God, we have one of the best for a very small little group.
06:40 He is fantastic. We just do acoustic instruments and Brother John, God gave him a voice and an ability to play guitar. And I remember the first time I heard him preach on Abraham and taking Isaac there to sacrifice him.
07:01 I remember just, we were at church camp years ago and I heard him preach that, a message about that. And his message was very simple. It was pretty much just reading the scripture, talking about that, that incident.
07:07 And I had just tears just streaming down my face, thinking about what it would be like. And that was before I even had a son, what it’d be like to, to have to do that as a father or for the son, you know, wondering, you know, what’s going to go on being bound up by the father who, by the way, was pretty old.
07:19 He could have clearly gotten out of it.
07:23 So he was willingly giving up his life. And you look at that and you say, this is a sacrificial love that, that transcends our understanding or our ability to understand truly what the cost was, what the price that was paid for it.
07:32 This charity that, that we see from God, this agape love, this love is so special and unique that we need to focus in on it.
07:38 And Paul gives us some traits, amen. He gives us a bunch actually. I want to say 12 here.
07:54 Number one, long suffering. This love is long suffering. Somebody like me, I vary.
08:01 Sometimes I feel like I can be patient and there are times my wife is very impatient. She’ll tell you that. And there are times I feel like she’s rubbed off on me and I’m pretty impatient too.
08:06 But long suffering to me is a, is a miracle. Those that are willing to bear on and on and on and on for the cause. And that’s how God, that’s why we’re here today.
08:20 God has been long suffering. I pray Maranatha. I pray God comes soon at the same time.
08:30 I say, thank God you waited as long as it took for me to get saved because that was 2004 or so, 2003. What if God had come before then? Surely there are many praying that he would. And so it’s hard for me to pray too hard that he comes.
08:40 I want him to come. I desire for him to come. But I want those to be saved.
08:48 Those that were just like me, that the Lord is long suffering, that not any should perish, that all should come to repentance.
08:51 Oh, the long suffering nature of God shows his true sacrificial love. How about his kindness? What great kindness the Lord has.
08:59 I think of kindness as just such beautiful, like polite and wonderful love that is so wrapped up in who Jesus is.
09:10 That is true kindness, kindness, gentleness, God having all power and yet the gentleness of God to love us so much, to send us Jesus, to give us prophecy, to give us the prophets, to give us witnesses and to give us Paul as well so that we could be saved here today.
09:27 Not envious, not envious, another aspect of love.
09:33 I have to kind of speed it up for time’s sake. But you know how many people today envy and it’s so easy to envy that kind of gets caught up with coveting, right?
09:43 That we desire things that God does not want us to have. I’ve got news for you.
09:49 If you’re serving the Lord, that’s the best place to be and he’s going to give you everything you need and then you can kind of just clear your head.
09:57 And as long as you’re not serving the Lord, there’s always going to be things that you feel like you need. You don’t know if you need them or not.
10:03 And it’s very challenging, but, and I don’t mean like going full-time in the ministry. You could be serving the Lord at your workplace, at your school, in your volunteer and wherever. Okay.
10:09 You’d be serving the Lord in any kind of way. But I mean, if you’re living for God, it’s much easier not to be envious. And that sacrificial love is not envious.
10:14 That sacrificial love is not seeking something. That sacrificial love is not vain, showing worth or attainments. I think of social media, God help us with social media.
10:20 I deleted my profiles four or five years ago on, well, just a one moment, just delete them all. I was listening to some preaching, I was talking to a preacher of mine and I said, I’m done.
10:33 You know what? Be real careful with it.
10:40 Of course, our church has a page and we’ve used it for business and all this. So I’m not saying don’t ever get on there. And you know, people in our church have social media.
10:48 I’m not, you know, on them about it. Again, we’re not under the law. I’m just saying not vain, not showing worth or attainments, amen, that sacrificial love is not vain.
10:54 It’s, it doesn’t, we’re not trying to gain anything. We’re not puffed up. We’re not arrogant and we’re not, there’s no pride in sacrificial love.
11:04 There’s no sneakiness or shadiness or unseemly behavior. Again, sacrificial love, it doesn’t have this awful agenda.
11:12 You know, have you ever been in a relationship where someone had an agenda? All that’s so sad.
11:18 Amen. You read about these rich folks and one locks the other out of the house and they go to court and they got lawyers and it’s insane. But someone has an agenda.
11:22 I don’t know who, but someone’s got an agenda. Maybe they both got an agenda. That’s not love.
11:29 Amen. That’s not agape love. That’s not Christlike love.
11:34 Not seeking her own. Again, I’ve heard before, I mentioned many times that lust is taking and love is giving. You know, what are we? Are we lusting? Are we loving? If we’re loving, then we’re giving.
11:41 Not easily provoked. You know, I mentioned to our congregation, some people just walk around looking for a fight. I know that some people do that because I used to be one of them when I was a young man out in the world.
11:49 Oh man, daddy was never at home and mommy was sick and I had this problem, that problem. I had a lot to prove. I thought I was somebody special.
11:55 I’m lucky I didn’t get shot and killed, to be honest with you. In today’s age, I really believe I probably would have got shot. Everyone’s walking around with a gun now.
12:00 But back then, thank God they weren’t. It was more of a knife era back then. But some people are looking for a fight.
12:07 Sacrificial love is not easily provoked. You know, that sacrificial love, you might get insulted and you still do it. You know, I think of a young man I was working with one time, he wasn’t exactly nice to me.
12:23 And I was really trying to help him and thank God the Lord helped him, not me, the Lord helped him. And I was involved. The Lord used me a little bit.
12:32 And you know, sacrificial love, that’s that moment when you say, okay, I’m not going to be easily provoked. I’m not, I’m going to understand where this individual is and I could be there too. And I’m going to love them even if it hurts me.
12:44 Thinking no evil. We shouldn’t have any kind of manifest, you know, we shouldn’t have anything in our heart that manifests into our actions. You know, we shouldn’t be thinking evil.
12:55 Sacrificial love thinks the opposite. Rejoicing not in sin, but in truth. I mean, think of the world today.
13:00 The world today does nothing but rejoice in sin. Again, go back to social media, look what’s popular. The world does nothing but rejoice in sin.
13:04 We need to depart from sin. That means we need to depart from the world and get rid of Netflix and get rid of Facebook. A lot of these things, TikTok, just get, get it gone.
13:10 Amen. Get rid of it. Bearing, believing, hoping, and enduring all things.
13:15 Nothing is too much for this love. You know, never failing love means that we have to bear and endure all things. We can’t say, God, this is too much for us because God didn’t say it was too much for him and it was a whole lot for him.
13:25 There was a grave cost for him to send his beloved Jesus to die for our sin on the cross of Calvary. And you see the world today walking around, strutting around in their sin, boasting their sin.
13:34 Never forget a few years ago, there was Super Bowl commercial boasting of what the Bible calls an abomination.
13:44 I looked at my wife. I said, this is it, honey. The rapture is coming soon.
13:49 Sure enough, COVID came. I thought that was it. But here we are still, I believe we’re in the end of the end of the end times, but it’s not God’s bearing the sacrificial love at one point will end.
14:00 And when it does, we’ll wish we appropriated that love to our life and lived for him because that love, once we accept Christ as Savior is never failing and we will benefit from it for the rest of our lives
14:12 and we’ll have great peace in our life and we can be useful to God and have purpose in our life as we live out that sacrificial love that Paul writes about. And one day we’ll see God face to face and no more have to have faith and hope and that love will endure forever.
14:27 Thank you for listening. Take care. God bless. Amen.