-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:41 Welcome to the cafe. Hopefully you’re having a great day, a great week. I’m so glad to be here today.
00:46 Pastor Clark Covington, Heartland Community Baptist Church here today with another message for you. Today we are looking at God being a high tower. We have spent a total of four episodes talking about God being a high tower.
01:02 Pretty much every episode, oh the Lord, the working of the Holy Spirit stirred me up where I had to just kind of say, okay, I got to stop. It’s over and go to the next episode.
01:13 Can I say that we cannot spend enough time thinking of what God chooses to call himself in the Word? There’s not enough time, not enough allotment of time.
01:24 It reminds me of the scripture, I think it’s in Revelation, mentioning Jesus. If it was written in the books about everything he did in his earthly ministry, there wouldn’t be enough pages in the world to write those books.
01:37 And really that’s kind of how it is when we look at God calling himself even just a strong tower.
01:41 And I think I mentioned this on a previous episode, certainly I mentioned it to our congregation when we had this message in front of them. Look, is God only a strong tower?
01:56 No. He compares himself to a rock in one of the Psalms.
02:07 Is that the most accurate description? No. He compared himself to the hardest substance known to man so that man could understand it. He was giving us something that we could understand.
02:12 And so if you take that, then you know twofold. One, it’s fascinating to look at what he’s giving us to understand, to study the Bible, you know, to ask that question, well what is a high tower?
02:23 You know, or even we talked about in previous episodes, what does it mean to name someone in the Hebrew language? You know, God’s chosen people. What does that mean? And how did Bible names work? And you start looking at that.
02:36 You’re looking at the many names of God. Again, that could be a great study. And then looking at why he calls himself a high tower, what a high tower looks like, what it looked like then contextually, you know, what it looked like in the village.
02:50 There are still remnants of these towers that we could see. The idea of the walled city and the importance of the tower in the city. And then we start thinking about it in our own life, applying it to our own lives.
03:00 What that means that God is a high tower. Our text verse here, we’ll get to it right there. I’m sorry I was getting my notes.
03:11 Proverbs 18:10, there it is. The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runneth into it and is safe.
03:22 Proverbs 18:10. The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runneth into it and is safe. And we know Solomon wrote the Proverbs, Solomon being the wisest man to ever live.
03:35 He prayed to God, not for riches, not for power, not for vengeance, but he prayed to God for wisdom. And God said, I’m going to give it to you and I’m going to give it to you abundantly.
03:37 And so here we have in the book of wisdom, by the wisest man that ever lived, King David’s son Solomon writes, the name of the Lord is a strong tower.
03:45 The righteous runneth into it and is safe. And so we know that who God is and we know our role running into it and we know that we’d be safe there. And there’s many other scriptures and I’ll just mention a few.
03:58 2 Samuel 22:3, the God of my rock and 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.
04:11 Psalm 18:2, the Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my strength and whom I will trust, my buckler and the horn of mysalvation and my high tower.
04:21 And then Psalm 61:3, for thou has been a shelterfor me and a strong tower from the enemy. According to the University of Michigan, King James Bible search tool on the internet, there’s 111 results for the word tower.
04:37 And if you use different King James word search, there’s apps and there’s tools that you can use. They all come up with different numbers because some of them include the Apocrypha and different books and some of them don’t and so forth. But generally speaking, there’s a lot of real estate in the Bible given to this word tower.
04:58 And I think it’s important to God. That’s why I believe the Lord, the Holy Spirit put it on my heart to preach on it here all week long. Amen.
05:06 And we realize that when you go to the tower you have salvation. It’s a picture of salvation. We realize the tower is a rock that strongest substance that we’ve known to man.
05:15 Also referenced like that rock foundation Jesus mentions in the book of Matthew. That we’re delivered when we’re in that tower. We’re safe.
05:23 We’re delivered from the enemy. We have leverage over the enemy in that tower. We’re no longer vulnerable to the world in the tower even though we may appear to be.
05:29 That the watchman is in the tower. How God goes before us. We talked about that verse from Deuteronomy 31:8. We talked about how man tries to make towers like the Tower of Babel and that didn’t work out.
05:39 That led to the spreading of all humanity but by the confounding of the languages. And even today as we see all these languages and wonder how did they come about?
05:48 It goes back to there. And we’ve talked about in previous episodes running to or from the tower.
05:54 And that is predicated upon are we living righteous or not. And that righteousness is predicated upon us being saved and then us doing our best to live for the Lord. Not being perfect.
06:01 Not being under the law. Amen. But simply doing our best.
06:05 Seeking the Lord. Desiring to know Him. Being repentant before Him.
06:09 That’s what God wants from us. And yes now we look at our role in the tower. That is our subject here today.
06:13 What is our role? Imagine that you’re living for the Lord. You’re seeking Him. You’re serving Him.
06:24 Now what do you do in this high tower? You’re in the tower. What do you do? Well, number one, you rejoice. And I think this is so important.
06:28 Amen. Sometimes when I’ll pray and I’ll just be seeking the Lord and the impression will come upon me. Nothing audible.
06:36 You know there’s not some big sound or anything. But I just the impression will come upon me to rejoice. And that rejoicing is not in my strength or my power but in the power of my God who is Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior.
06:49 Amen. And I’m praying by the working of the Holy Spirit which I receive when I’m saved through Jesus Christ who is the mediator. Amen.
06:56 To God the Father. Amen. So the Holy Trinity is in this picture.
07:01 I’m praying. The mediator is going to God on my behalf up there in heaven. God is saying okay I hear you because of Jesus Christ’s blood applied to me.
07:09 Amen. And I rejoice because I’m saved. I am secure in heaven.
07:15 I am eternally secure. Amen. My name is written down in the Lamb’s Book of Life never to be blotted out.
07:21 Never to be erased. Amen. I believe it’s written in the blood of Jesus.
07:27 Amen. I’m in a heavenly place already. You know I love the idea that Christ died on the cross for our sins.
07:36 Past tense. Like it’s been done. The preachers always talk about the finished work.
07:41 It’s been done. So you can rejoice in the fact that you are already in heaven. Amen.
07:46 That we are in this world and we are not of this world. We are just passing through this world. And if we’re passing through this world you’ll hear Christians say all the time oh this world is not my home.
07:54 You’ll hear that in songs and so forth. Well if this world’s not the home where is the home? The home’s in heaven. Amen.
08:02 The home’s in heaven. It’s already there. Jesus is there preparing a mansion for us.
08:06 I believe he’s about done. Amen. I believe he’s just about ready to call us home in the rapture.
08:11 To meet us there in the sky. The dead in Christ shall rise first. And then with them which alive and remain will be called up to him.
08:18 Amen. To be with him forever. Amen.
08:22 So there’s no fear in the tower. There’s no fear in the tower. We have protection.
08:29 Amen. And all of these things, what are they? They’re an act of faith. Are they not? We are believing God at his word.
08:33 We’re taking God at his word. We’re believing hey God you said it’s true. It must be true.
08:42 We’re trusting God. Then we have so we have this right state of mind. We’re rejoicing.
08:44 We’re not fearful. Then what do we do? We are to watch from the tower. And we are to share the good news and godly principles that we have learned since we’ve been there close to God.
08:53 You know we’re all called to watch for dangers and tell others about it. Mark14:38. Watch ye and pray lest ye enter into temptation.
09:00 The Spirit truly isready but the flesh is weak. That’s Mark 14:38. This is Jesus speaking.
09:09 Watch ye and pray lest ye enter into temptation. The Spirit is truly ready but the flesh isweak. We are in this tower.
09:15 We need to be watching. We need to be proactive. The idea of waiting on the Lord would be like a waiter.
09:20 I used to wait tables. Amen. I wasn’t great at it but I know one thing.
09:26 I did it for years. I know one thing. You’re very active when you’re waiting on someone.
09:31 When you’re serving someone. You’re not just sitting there. Hey do you need a refill? Hey would you like some crackers with that salad? Hey you know and you know guess what the better that you attend to their needs and serve them the better the tip.
09:43 Well I know that’s a very simple example but as we serve the Lord amen we do get heavenly rewards and I’m not ever gonna compare that to receiving a tip because that’s a crown of glory amen and that’s eternal and the tip is gone in the same night or whatever it is but you get the idea. We are to serve God. We are to be active for God.
09:58 We are to share the good news. We are to tell others about what is coming amen. Tell others.
10:02 We’re not to be I believe we’re called to be appropriate not obnoxious not arguing all the time not screaming at someone but just saying look I love you and I understand through the Bible that this is what’s going to happen here.
10:19 You know I remember speaking to a lost family member and saying I just need to be frank with you. The end is near I believe from what I’ve learned and this is gonna be called the tribulation period
10:31 and it’s going to be horrific and there’s gonna be judgment of sin after that and hey you know right now we’re in what’s called the age of grace and you could be saved and you could believe on Jesus and heaven is real and hell is real and it’s all in the Bible.
10:45 Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not in the Bible and so we need to be doing that from the tower and we need to be immovable. We need to be immovable on Christian principles and on the Bible most importantly where we get those principles and on God’s ways. Immovable.
11:00 School wants to move you. Public school wants to move you in the wrong direction. Culture wants to move you in the wrong direction.
11:07 Workplace all the workplace is very rotten and toxic. They want to move you in the wrong direction. Most of them.
11:13 Almost all of them. They want to move you in the wrong direction and we need to be immovable. Immovable.
11:19 We need to be that anchor. Amen. Where we are in that watchtower we’re saying we’re not gonna budge.
11:25 No God is real. No he really did create the earth in the six days that he said he did and he rested on the seventh. You know marriage is between a man and a woman.
11:32 Amen. Fornication is bad. We are to wait to marriage.
11:36 We are not to lie, cheat, or steal. We are to love our neighbors. We are to forgive exceptionally.
11:41 We are to give exceptionally. We are to be joyful in giving. We are to love Jesus Christ.
11:48 To show him that we love him. We keep his commandments. We are to understand and study the scriptures.
11:55 We are to teach others. We are to raise up our children in the ways of the Lord. Teach them in the morning and throughout the afternoon and in the evening so that they don’t depart from them when they’re older.
12:03 I asked our oldest teenager you know you’re gonna be rock-solid for the Lord. He looked at me shrugged his shoulders and said well I was brought up in this church you know in teenage fashion which again I mean it wasn’t like the most compelling argument but at the same time what he was trying to say is the biblical doctrine
12:18 you know is true I have faith that it’s true and truly I mean it is rooted in deep.
12:24 All my mom did she just lay me down and read that she’d read a picture Bible to me and asked me what it meant that was all my mom did but that was the only book that she would do that with when I was very little
12:33 and I still remember it vividly and oh how she planted the seeds amen I thank God for my mom I thank God for godly mothers amen oh how great godly mothers are amen
12:40 you don’t like seeing women in the ministry why don’t you step up and get involved amen
12:47 once you step up and get involved that’s for another message but we need good godly families teaching the children teaching each other loving each other and being immovable on the principles that God has given us.
13:01 So where are you today can you run to the tower or is something getting in the way you know last night in our prayer meeting I preached a message on what’s getting in the way between you
13:12 and God the idea is we have all not all but many of us now have idols and stuff creeping in we need to analyze that daily do you believe God will bless you there
13:21 or do you need more faith you know if you haven’t run to the tower maybe you don’t believe that God’s Word is true because God’s telling you what he’ll do in that tower you
13:29 if you need more faith the Bible tells us that faith cometh by hearing and hearing the Word of God so you need to get into the word and imagine what God will do once you’re in the tower imagine what he will do
13:38 he will do great things with you and through you as you seek him as you seek refuge in him don’t believe the father of lies amen don’t believe the devil go to God
13:48 seek him trust him be bold for Christ in these last days amen stand up for him stand up for his ways look at the Bible is literally true and look at your life as much much better I promise you
14:00 I testify to the truth of that I wish I had more time but we’re out of time as always you can find us at KJV cafe comm or facebook.com forward slash KJV cafe
14:12 thank you for listening take care God bless and amen