-Transcript-
00:38 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:40 Welcome to the cafe. Thank you for joining me. Pastor Clark Covington here.
00:43 Another episode of KJV Cafe. If you’ve been listening recently, you know we’ve been talking about God the strong tower. So spending time on discussing what it means that God is a strong tower and how these names come about.
01:01 And I’m not going to recap a lot of that because I’ve already done that in previous episodes and I’ve kind of got off on tangents here. I started talking about the Tower of Babel and I never got to my point on last episode. So we’re getting right to the point here today.
01:12 Your God, if you’ve been saved, your God is a strong tower. He is worthy of running to. He’s worthy of running to.
01:20 And he’s fearful and many run from. Proverbs 1810, the name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runneth into it and is safe.
01:24 Proverbs18:10, the name of the Lord is a strong tower. So one of God’s many names is strong tower. Think of a big, like a rock tower that’s fortified, that is structurally so sound it cannot be knocked over,
01:45 that gives you leverage over the enemy, that will protect you from all foes, that allows you to see what’s happening ahead because the Watchman Jesus Christ is going before you and is all that you will ever need.
02:00 That strong tower, that’s Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. That is who we should run to and if we do we are safe. But what do we know about this tower?
02:10 We spoke about again last episode that not all run to the tower and that many will go to towers, faulty towers made by man.
02:19 And that’s when I went off on a tangent, didn’t even realize how quickly time went by. But we started talking about how there’s a pagan tower. People today are still turning to towers built on that sinking sand.
02:29 Think of Matthew 7:24-27, when Jesus Christ is talking about what foundation you’re gonna choose. That solid rock foundation that is Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, the precious Lamb of God.
02:43 Or sinking sand, the world, the little g God of this world, the devilish things of this world.
02:50 Is that how we’re gonna put the carnality of this world? Which means natural, right? The natural living, sensual, lustful living. If we’re living that way, that foundation will sink.
03:01 And yet many people turn to that and the consequences are grave, amen? The Bible tells us the wages of sin is death.
03:12 In this case, if you’re dealing with towers and we talked about the Tower of Babel or Babel, I kind of vacillate, I call it both and I don’t know which is right, but you can pick.
03:17 If we’re talking about that, we’re talking about the end, the death of a single unified language. And as a child, I wondered, you know, why are people in Japan so far away? And the reason why I say Japan is I had neighbors that had moved from Japan.
03:33 Or Korea, or Saudi Arabia, or Mexico. And I wonder why are people, these people are so far away? And the map almost, you know, you look at a global map, it almost looks like puzzle pieces that could be kind of put together to create one continent.
03:47 But then we read about this man trying to build a tower on their own to reach the heavens and God shook everything up and separated man and confounded man and created many languages.
04:00 So they couldn’t all unify like that. And what is behind this? It’s a rebellion against God. Man hates the ways of God.
04:06 And I quoted, and I quote, but I referenced a major cable network that did a story on how they found a tablet of the Tower of Babel or Babel.
04:18 And it was correctly dated and it was inscribed correctly to the individual that had commissioned it. And that it was given, it was made out of the brick and the mortar of that time that was referenced in the Bible.
04:33 And they said, well it must, the Tower of Babel must have existed. And then at the end the narrator says, so some of the Bible is true and some of it is not.
04:43 And something a little bit more poetic, but that’s basically what they said and my jaw just dropped.
04:48 They literally had a clip about how this is true and then they wanted to deny God in the same sentence. And God will go ahead and repay them for that. And if they’re not saved, amen, I pray that they will be.
04:58 But that wicked person that wrote that script and everyone else involved in it, they’ll have to deal with God on that one. But that is the world we live in. There is a great rebellion against God.
05:08 I heard a preacher give an example and I don’t know if it was original to them or not, but I think it’s a fantastic example. Lift up a rock, like a big rock. So go to your backyard, you lift up a rock.
05:16 You’re gonna see ants scrambling, maybe some worms, and they’re all running. What are they running from? They’re running from the light. They hate the light and they were living under that darkness and they want nothing to do with the light.
05:29 And that is very similar to natural man or carnal man. The Bible says, I believe Paul writes this, that the natural man is at enmity or warfare with God, amen. Our Bible tells us that if we are not for Christ, we are against him, amen.
05:39 The Bible tells us that no man really can know the Lord unless they’re saved, amen. We don’t have a reconciliation with the Lord. We don’t have peace with God until we’re saved.
05:52 How are we saved? By the blood of Jesus. Jesus atoning blood for our sins, paying our sin debt. And so we see many run to this rebellion, this false tower made by man, this pagan tower.
06:03 They’re showing rebellion against God and there’s consequences of this. And the reason why I’m kind of banging this drum loud and clear here today is because I want you to be weary of groupthink or the herd mindset, okay.
06:18 Number one, be weary of it because, you know, and I work in marketing, my day job, amen.
06:26 I work in marketing and marketing can, you know, marketers and advertisers and creative folks can create a false movement. That’s number one. So Hollywood could want you to think something is wholesome and great and shove it down your throats all day long.
06:38 Like Disney, right? They put Disney plus on, on ESPN. They put Disney plus on here and there and everywhere.
06:46 They put the cartoon faces up and then we’ve all seen that the true colors come out more and more that they are absolutely in rebellion against God and hatred of God.
06:53 I keep saying cancel Netflix. You need to cancel Disney plus if you have it. But Hey, if you sign up for a smartphone, they’re going to give you free Disney plus.
07:00 If you buy a bottle of water, you can get it, whatever it is. And you say, well, look, how bad could it be? I mean, it’s everywhere, right? Be weary of groupthink.
07:09 Think of a teenager and all their friends are smoking or vaping or drinking or doing drugs, you know, because they’re all doing it.
07:17 Does that make it correct? No. So think about the idea that if many are running to a false sense of security in the world, don’t be one of them. Don’t be one of the group that goes astray.
07:27 And biblically, there’s a lot of foundation for this. We are called, those that believe are called the remnant. Amen.
07:34 Look, take, if you don’t believe that God deals with the remnant or the minority, take a look at a global map and then try to find Israel. This is God’s chosen people. This is the Holy Land.
07:45 You know, heaven, it’s called the New Jerusalem. Amen. This is where Jesus will rule and reign during the Millennial Kingdom, as I understand it.
07:52 Look, try to find that on a global map. That is a picture of what God is dealing with when it looks at the remnant, the small group. So be weary of groupthink and herd mindset.
08:02 Be weary of like, hey, everyone went and saw this movie. That doesn’t mean you need to go see it. If there’s something that is in rebellion to God, if there’s something sinful in there, and surely it is if it’s Hollywood made it, then stay away.
08:14 Oh, and then what will happen? Oh, well, you’ll be a peculiar person. You’ll be a little bit different. You’ll be set apart.
08:20 You’ll be one of those. Amen. Do you see what I’m saying? To trust God and to live for God and to be in that strong tower has nothing to do with acceptance in this world, materialism, or anything about this world.
08:32 It has nothing to do with popularity. In fact, it’s the opposite. We must be sure to focus on the only indestructible high tower, which is God.
08:42 The quality of the individual, in our text verse, and I’ll read it one more time here, Proverbs 18:10, the name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runneth into it and is safe. What is the quality here? Righteous.
08:54 What does righteous mean? It means right living, and to me, the only righteous that was ever here on earth in the form of man is Jesus Christ, and as my Bible tells me, to be righteous is to live like Jesus.
09:06 Now doctrinally, we follow Paul because the Pauline epistles or the letters from Paul teach us, the Gentiles, those in this age of grace that are allowed to be saved, allowed to be grafted in, even though we are not God’s chosen people.
09:19 We can be saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and Jesus Christ alone.
09:25 Even Paul says, follow me because I follow Jesus. So to be righteous means to be like Jesus, and to be like Jesus means to be Christ-like, and to be Christ-like means to be saved, and to be saved means to accept your sin nature as something you can’t resolve and realize that Jesus Christ paid that penalty on the cross,
09:41 and that when you accept Christ as Savior, you are born again. You are now a child of God, and now you have the capability to live righteous, and so the righteous are the ones that are running to that high tower, amen.
09:55 Well, what’s the implication for the wicked? They’re gonna be running away from it.
10:00 Living wickedly, you’re not gonna want anything to do with God’s high tower. The Bible says, you know, I love this scripture here about drawing nigh to God.
10:10 Let’s look at the scripture here in James 4 :8. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanseyour hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded.
10:17 So let’s look at this. You draw nigh to God, you go close to God, and he’ll draw close to you, and then right here in the same verse here of James 4, James 4 :8, it says, cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded.
10:31 And so the implication here, or that not even implication, but the clear instruction here is we need to be right with God if we expect him to be drawn close to us, or if we expect ourselves to have the ability to draw close to him.
10:45 And we know, as I’ve mentioned, that natural man is at warfare with God. The natural man hates the light.
10:51 John 3:19-21, and this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
11:03 For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, and that they are wrought in God.
11:16 You see here, James 3:19-21, especially verse 20, for everyone that do with evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. We need to make sure that we are right with God, that we are righteous, so that we’re able to run into that high tower. I’m not trying to put you back under the law.
11:35 I don’t mean that you need to be perfect. I just mean you need to be repentant, amen? You need to be the idea of sanctification, the idea that Jesus Christ will cleanse us from all our sins as we go to him, as we confess our sins. He’s faithful and just to cleanse us of all our sins.
11:46 Well, how can he cleanse us of our sins if we won’t confess them? How can he cleanse us of our sins if we’re not even praying?
11:51 How can he cleanse us of our sins if we won’t even get in the Word to find out what the sin is, right? We won’t even seek God into the Holy Spirit.
12:00 You know, how can God do anything with us if we are too prideful to come to him? And so I want you to understand that if you are not running to this high tower, you’re running from it, amen.
12:11 Romans 8:7, because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Romans 8:7 tells us the carnal mind is enmity or warfare or at war with God, against God, because the natural man can’t understand the ways of God.
12:34 Romans 8:7 is telling us that you must be saved, amen, in order to understand anything about God. The natural man cannot do it. And once we’re saved, we need to seek that renewing of our mind because we still live in this sinful world.
12:46 We still live in the flesh, amen. We still are battling spiritually the devil, and oh how he knows how to cast the bait that will get us, amen, that will get us off track, that will get our minds away from him, that will try to diminish our faith.
12:58 So what we must do is stay strong in knowledge of the Lord, strong in prayer, strong in refusing and departing from the wicked thing and from the temptation. I had a football coach and I don’t even know much about this guy,
13:13 I wasn’t that close to him or anything, but I was in middle school and he told us, young men, if you want to go, if you want to, if you don’t want to have a problem with a bad lady, don’t go to this place where the bad ladies are, and that’s the G-rated version.
13:27 And that always struck me as very profound advice, like, you know what, if we want to avoid temptation, let’s not flirt with temptation, but oh how so many of us will, whether it’s because we’re not thinking of that strong tower in God,
13:43 because we’re not turning to God when we are tempted. What did Jesus do when the devil tempted him three times in the wilderness? Did he not turn and say, thus saith the Word of God?
13:52 Did he not turn to God through the Word? And you know, if you look at that passage, Jesus was led to the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. Why? So we could learn from this and so that we could apply this to our lives.
14:04 That’s why Christ was there. That’s what we can do here today. I thank you for listening.
14:08 Tune in next time as we wrap up this message on what God would have us to do in running to this strong tower. Take care, God bless, and amen.