-Transcript-
00:37 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:40 Welcome to the cafe. Pastor Clark Covington here today. So glad you’re here with me.
00:47 Hopefully you got a cup of coffee. If you do, man, I’d love to have one with you. I’ve got my tea here, which is getting kind of cold.
00:55 I guess my wife calls me a coffee snob, so I’m not gonna let the coffee snob come out today. Lord knows, amen. He’s able to do all things, including bring me some coffee.
01:04 But hopefully you’re enjoying some, listening to the program, doing well. I’m praying that you are. And we’re so blessed by the message here today in God’s Word, not by anything that I could do or say, but by God’s Word itself.
01:20 Amen. And the message today just simply deals with God being a high tower, God being a strong tower. What does that mean for us? He’s a high tower.
01:29 Okay. Well, what can we gain from that? Amen. This message is all about us being blessed by God, an almighty God, and a God that loves you very much.
01:42 Proverbs 18:10, the name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runneth into it and is safe. Well, that could just preach itself, couldn’t it? The name of the Lord is a strong tower.
01:50 The righteous runneth into it and is safe. Kind of a three-part message right there. The name of the Lord, he’s a strong tower.
01:53 The righteous, what do they do? They run in it and they’re safe. And I wish we had time to go through all of it. Last message, we talked about what a strong tower is.
02:09 We went through some scriptures here that I’ll reference again. In the Bible, there’s over 100 references to the word tower in the Bible. My word search from the University of Michigan, King James Bible word search brought up 111.
02:23 And again, you could do one on a different word search, it may bring up more or less. But we’ll say over 100 references to a tower in the Bible,
02:34 like 2 Samuel 22:3, the God of my rock, in him will I trust. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my high tower and my refuge, my savior. Thou savest me from violence.
02:45 Psalm 18:2, the Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my strength in whom I will trust, my buckler and the horn of my salvation and my high tower. For thou has been a shelter for me and a strong tower from the enemy. Psalm 61:3.
03:09 You see there, we can go on, but you see here between these three verses in our text verse, Proverbs 18:10, you see God being referred to as this fortress, as this shield, as this fortified tower, as this high tower, as this strong tower, amen. And that is our God.
03:26 And we talked about last episode that first and foremost, we are saved by Jesus Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, we are saved.
03:37 And so we’re saved by his power. What are we saved from? The devil, death, hell, the grave, all of this. We’re saved from the little G God of this world, the devil.
03:47 I’d rather be on the winning side, amen. I hope you would be too. And if you want to be on the winning side, if you go through your Bible, you get there to the end there in Revelation, you’re going to see that God is victorious, amen.
03:57 The new Jerusalem comes down, amen. There’s a new kingdom and Jesus Christ is the head of the kingdom and how he has so graciously invited you to be part of it. All you have to do is accept that free gift of salvation.
04:07 And when you believe that Jesus Christ truly died for your sins, I’m talking about you here today, because you know what? I had to deal with it personally as well.
04:18 I went to a church, an old fundamental independent Baptist church years ago, and I sat there and a preacher was yelling and spitting and getting red-faced, talking about the sinners in the room. And I looked around and said, man, there must be a lot of sinners in the room.
04:29 I’m glad I’m not like them. And oh, how the Lord must have laughed. And after month and month and year and year, the Lord had convicted me and convicted me until I realized my state.
04:40 And I asked him to come into my heart once again. I had been saved and I was living in the world. And this must have been, I don’t know, many years ago, 10, 11, 12 years ago.
04:52 Ever since then, the Lord has just worked a right spirit about me and shown me my condition and my need for him. And so we believe here in eternal security, once saved, always saved.
05:05 And we believe that when you trust Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, he will come into your heart.
05:18 And when you realize that, you know what? You had a sin debt that you could not pay, but that Christ being perfect and sinless, born of a virgin, amen, living 33 and a half years without ever sinning on earth.
05:22 Where have you ever read or heard that Christ was a sinner? I have not seen anything that would say that. And if it was, it certainly would be slanderous because there is no proof that he ever sinned.
05:32 How many people with a hatred for God have opened his book hoping to show that he was a sinner?
05:37 There’s a great movie and a great, well, a great book that turned into a movie called The Case for Christ, where a skeptical atheist journalist would write, wanted to write a story so badly in this newspaper, this worldly newspaper about how the, about Christ not being real and about him, all of these things. He goes to investigate and guess what happens?
05:57 He’s gloriously saved and he’s called into the ministry and oh, praise God how that has had an effect on many, amen. He wrote this beautiful book and the movie is fantastic.
06:09 It’s on Pureflix, I believe, called The Case for Christ. And so many people wanted to disprove the salvation, but they couldn’t. And what we see here is that God is a rock and a high tower that when you face the obstacles of life and you say, Brother Clark, I don’t know how I’m going to get through it.
06:29 I don’t know what I’m going to do. Well, the problem here is you keep saying, I, I, I, I, and he is saying, don’t trust in yourself, trust in me. So in yourself, what is good besides me?
06:41 In yourself, what can you do without me? The Bible clearly says we can’t do anything good without God.
06:46 But with God, amen, as we go to this high tower, we find safety, we find security, and most importantly, we find salvation. You know, I recently did a study on how you can’t be a Christian and another religion.
07:00 This one was Buddhism, but it would apply to any other religion.
07:07 You can’t be both because, and the verse I was using was no man cometh to the father, but by me, Jesus speaking this. Okay, well, if no one can come to the father, but by Jesus and Jesus himself is God and God himself in the Bible calls himself a high tower, then we must go to that high tower, amen, to be saved. We must go to that high tower.
07:21 And when we go to God and we say, Lord, I’m going to give it to you. Okay, Lord, I’m going to trust you. Okay.
07:33 Think about how beautiful this is. You go to God, to God, I’m going to trust you. I’m going to believe that Christ was risen from the dead on the third day, according to the scriptures as 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 points out.
07:45 I’m going to read this and be very careful with this so that everyone understands what the gospel is and in a condensed form in the Bible.
07:53 Cause again, if we had time, we could go down Romans road, but 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 is the clearest picture in the Bible of the gospel from what I’ve been taught and what I’ve found.
08:02 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you, the gospel, which I preached unto you, which also you believe received and wherein you stand by which also you’re saved.
08:15 If you keep in memory, what I preached unto you, unless you have believed in vain for, I delivered unto you, first of all, that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures.
08:29 And we see that’s the gospel. That’s the gospel that he died for our sins, according to the scriptures and that he was buried.
08:37 And the third day rose again, according to the scriptures, that’s the gospel. And when we believe on that, does God not come through? You talk about a salvation experience and it may not be a fireworks and it may not be some crazy testimony that would be in a movie or anything like that.
08:55 It’s simply can just be the quiet peace that surpasses all understanding that you trust him.
09:07 And all of a sudden you just have peace. All of a sudden those anxieties and those cares of this world just start to fade away. I remember being saved and it was just a beautiful, it was like the birds were singing and there was just joy in my heart.
09:23 And I remember just, you know, living, going back to the ways of the world and just realizing I wasn’t the same anymore and that God wanted more. Amen.
09:34 And then when we look at God in this light and we seek him and we seek his strength in that high tower, all of a sudden we just are different.
09:45 We are protected from the bondage of sin of falling into that trap. We’re given discernment over that. We realize that his truths are real.
09:54 We realize his love for us. We’re given discernment over the scriptures. You know, there are many miracles that happen that the lost person would never even be able to comprehend or understand when we’re saved.
10:08 The biggest one being that we get the Holy Spirit living within us. We get God himself living within us, which helps all of these things to occur. I used to, you know, deal with a lot of problems.
10:19 And when I was saved, the Lord cleaned a lot of those up. Some took a little time, but a lot of them very quickly, he cleaned it up. Now tell me, was it something that happened to me? Did I just mature overnight? No, it was God.
10:30 Amen. He is a strong tower. He is a high tower.
10:34 Who is in this tower? A watchman. Who sees what you’re about to face more than God? God goes before you. So think of the high tower.
10:42 God references himself as a high tower. There’s a watchman in that tower.
10:46 Deuteronomy 31:8. And the Lord, he it is that doth go before thee. He will be with thee. He will not fail thee, neither forsake thee. Fear not, neither be dismayed.
10:57 What a picture of God. He protects you because he is all-powerful. And also because he knows what is ahead of you.
11:10 Think about that. You are proactively protected. We don’t deal with a reactive God.
11:07 There’s no surprises in heaven. God isn’t alerted by what’s going on in your life or in the world. Amen.
11:14 There’s a hurricane on the horizon. Can I tell you, we would worry about that hurricane. The soccer coach is canceling a game or moving games.
11:21 The tent revival may need to go inside. These are things we’re seeing here in this world. Does God not know exactly what will happen with that hurricane? Has he not seen the future? Does he not know? He does.
11:34 And so the best thing that we can do, of course, he expects us to be prepared. Or as my wife says, use your brain. Okay, we got to use our brain.
11:43 I agree with that. And at the same time, we just have to trust God. And it could be a literal storm like a hurricane, or it could be a figurative storm.
11:47 It could be something happening in your life. And God is saying, yes, go through the preparation, do what you have to do. Take care of your body, get sleep, so on and so forth.
11:56 But at the same time, trust me, because I see ahead. I go before you. I am a watchman.
12:01 We are not to fear. Think about this. What does fear typically root from? I always tell my congregation, our small congregation, they probably get very sick of me telling the story.
12:13 I must’ve told it a half dozen times over the years. Then I read an article or blog post or something years ago about someone that made scary movies. And they said, there’s one secret to every scary movie.
12:24 And by the way, I don’t like scary movies. I don’t really, I don’t, yeah, I’m not going to mess with it, but definitely don’t like that. But I know some people do.
12:31 And those that are fans of these movies, I think they would agree with this. I mean, they’d have to tell me, but I think they would. The key component to a scary movie is not revealing the character, but keeping the character hidden because people fear what they don’t know, what they can’t see coming.
12:54 And then I started, so I read that and then, um, and I was much younger at the time, you know, teenager, whatever it was, 20 something where I was dragged along by a friend to a scary movie or something. And I always remember that’s so true.
13:02 They always kind of hide these characters in the shadows are always kind of lurking there, or these situations don’t, you don’t quite know what’s going to happen.
13:06 And so that, that, that, that idea from that worldly director who probably isn’t even original to him is the same as what we would deal with when it comes to fear.
13:16 And the Bible tells us that God has not given us the spirit of fear. I believe it’s the book of Timothy, but of power of love and of a sound mind.
13:24 And so how could God tell us that? Because he goes before us. So how could we be afraid of something that we don’t know if God has already seen it already knows how to help us.
13:38 And as goes before us to work out what he would have be in our lives, like Romans 8:28 tells us that all things happen for good, that those that love the Lord, those that are called according to his purpose.
13:48 So that is the point that we have a watchman in this high tower and it is God himself. And God is saying, don’t fear. Just trust me, just stay secure in me.
13:58 And don’t worry. You know, you don’t have to worry. The Bible says, what qubit, how much growth do you get from fearing from worrying? Nothing.
14:05 It won’t help at all. Trust God. He is a high tower.
14:10 Tune in next time as we go deeper into what it means for God to call himself a high tower.
14:14 I thank you so much for listening. Take care of God Bless and amen.