-Transcript-
00:37 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:42 Welcome to the cafe. It’s so good to have you here today. I hope you’re doing well.
00:46 Look, I’m so excited to be here today as we dive into God’s Word, as we search the Scriptures to understand His Word and what His Word means to you today, what it means to me, what we can do with it, Amen, how we apply it to our lives. That’s what we’re doing here today. It’s all about God.
01:05 It’s not about me. I’m not bringing you anything new today. Everything I’m bringing to you is from the book, Amen.
01:09 We just study the book. And so we’re gonna dive right in. We are on the fourth part of a series here on having zeal for the Lord.
01:19 Do you have zeal for the Lord? And the idea is that we should have a zeal for God and that being zealous for God is woven through, that theme is woven throughout the Bible. And the idea is that if you’re zealous, you’re passionate, people can tell that’s very important to you, you’re devoted, you’re willing to and ready to overcome obstacles in service to the person or cause, and you’re living it out. You’re applying principles to your life and you’re viewing others in this life.
01:44 I mean, if you’re zealous for God, then you’ll love what God loves and you’ll hate what God hates. I believe that’s true. Definition of zeal is a great energy or enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause or an objective.
01:59 Now, zeal misapplied is really bad, right? And we’ve all seen this, I’m sure. Someone’s on fire for God, quote unquote, and they are on fire for a false Christ. They’re on fire for legalism when we’re not under the law.
02:15 They’re on fire for some kind of worship that is not of God. They’re on fire for some pagan religion or practice. These things are really bad, okay? So we want to have zeal for the Lord Jesus Christ, for our God and Savior, the triune God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost.
02:35 And we don’t want to get zeal applied. We don’t want to mix it up and apply it to something that’s not of God. That’s why I believe each episode I’ve described this as having zeal really isn’t something that we obtain naturally.
02:52 It is something that we receive or it’s a byproduct by being close to God. And so we receive zeal when we draw near to Him. When we get into His Word every day, when we pray, when we seek the Lord, we then develop zeal in our lives, not by anything that we’ve done, but it’s a byproduct of seeking God.
03:11 You know what? If you spend enough time in the light, you’re going to walk away glowing. Amen. And that’s how it is when we serve God and we live for God, we’re going to have that zeal.
03:19 And so if you don’t have zeal today, I’m not saying that you can just flip a switch and get zeal. What I’m saying is draw close to Him and it’ll come. Amen.
03:27 2 Kings 10:16 is our text verse. And he said, come with me and see my zeal for the Lord. So they made him ride in his chariot.
03:34 2 Kings 10:16, as I’ve described here in the past episodes, deals with Jehu as the king of northern Israel at that time. He was a commander before that in the army. He was a mighty man.
03:46 God had really appointed him there in that position to wipe out the rest of the house of Ahab, to finally get rid of evil Jezebel, to get rid of all false god Baal worship, to get rid of Baal worship. And Jehu went a step further and got rid of all the worshipers that worship Baal. And so we read through this story in 2 Kings 10.15-28, where Jehu, he picks up this person, Jehonadab, the son of Rechab.
04:18 And this individual is a very devout individual. He’s kind of a figurehead for the Rechabites. And we learn about the Rechabites in the book of Jeremiah, which is some 200 years later.
04:28 And we learn that the Rechabites are a very devout people. I’ve compared them to the Amish in that sense. Not that they have the same exact beliefs as the Amish, but some parts of the Amish faith are the ones that are the most kind of devout or separated.
04:44 Don’t believe in electricity, and they have all of these rules they follow. And they follow them because they love God and they believe, you know, they use scriptures to back up those beliefs, right? And again, I know if you study the Amish faith, it’s a little bit different than how we believe as fundamental Christians, Bible-believing Christians. But either way, they’re separated, right? Well, the Rechabites, they were separated, and they were faithful to God.
05:11 And so we have Jehonadab, the son of Rechab. That was kind of the figurehead. And we see that throughout all this time that the Rechabites, they didn’t drink wine.
05:24 They abstained from drinking wine. I’m sure that was very difficult at that time. They didn’t build permanent dwellings.
05:28 They lived in tents. They were nomadic. They didn’t plant seeds.
05:31 Can you imagine the time when agriculture was so big? They didn’t plant seeds. They didn’t have vineyards. I liken this to technology.
05:40 It’s kind of like someone saying, I won’t use a computer. I won’t use a cell phone, right? Well, that’s pretty crazy. But imagine then, I won’t plant seeds, and everyone’s planting seeds.
05:50 It’s similar. And they did these things because they were zealous for God. And they love the Lord.
05:57 And the Lord himself tells Jeremiah, go ahead and test them and give them wine and see if they’ll drink it. And Jeremiah 35 describes that they would not touch it because they were faithful to God. Amen.
06:10 And so we see this example of zeal in the Scriptures, of Jehu being zealous for the Lord and wiping out the enemies of God, right? We see Jehonadab, the Rechabite, being an example of zeal in devotion to God and in abstaining and being separate and peculiar and unique and being blessed by God. And we see this throughout the Scriptures that God wants us to be zealous. Last episode, we talked about how God calls us to be zealous and repent in Revelation 3:19, to be zealous of good works in Titus 2:14, and to edify the church.
06:45 We should be zealous to do that in 1 Corinthians 14:12. And so we see all these examples of zeal in the Bible. And the question emerges, where is our zeal? You know, where’s your zeal today? Are you really zealous for the things of God and the ways of God? Or have you gotten to a point where you’re in a hole, where you’re in a rut? You know, I think of the walk with the Lord as one that the Lord allows to be challenging. I mean, think about it.
07:23 God is sovereign, right? If we believe in the God of the Bible, we believe that He’s all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, right? A lot of omnis, right? He’s omniscient, He’s all-present, He’s all-knowing, He’s all-powerful. If we believe in that God,
07:34 and we truly believe in that God, and then we look at our walk with the Lord, and it seems like every time we try to draw closer to God, we hit another snare, another problem. Our weak spots are exposed, we deal with temptations and issues and strife, we don’t fit in with the world, and we can’t take part in the things of the world.
07:57 And we go through all of these hardships, and we realize the Scripture says that in order to be, you know, rewarded with Christ in heaven, we have to suffer here with Him on earth. I get that, but day in and day out it can be hard. And the question I have for you is, what is that doing for your zeal for the Lord? Are you zealous for the Lord? Again, I mentioned the Rechabites.
08:18 Was it easy for them not to drink wine, not to have permanent houses, and not to plant seeds in that time? No. I’m sure it was very hard, and yet they were zealous for the Lord. Jehu was given a monumental task.
08:30 I mean, I was surprised in the Bible to read that Jezebel was still alive at that time, but she was, and he was the one to take her out and to remove all Baal worship. Literally, verse 28 of 2 Kings 10 reads, Thus Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel. He knocked it out.
08:52 He wiped out this false god worship that was so prevalent that just a few chapters earlier, Elijah, he has this altar and calls fire down from heaven and slays 450 false prophets of Baal because they weren’t able to call fire down from heaven with their false god and their fake God. And after that, the people are saying, oh, the Lord, the Lord, he is God, he is God, the Lord is God, and yet we still see it prevalent in the land. And we’ve seen this.
09:24 We’ve seen times in our own country where maybe people have turned to God. A preacher told me I didn’t live in North Carolina on 9-11. I was finishing college in Ohio.
09:35 That dates me there a little bit. I was finishing college in Ohio, but preachers will tell me about 9-11 here and about the kind of the revival that almost took place and how full the church houses were at that time. And maybe at the beginning of COVID, I heard from people, especially online ministries, that were really just seeing a huge increase in people asking about God and inquiring about God, looking to God.
09:59 And now we see what? We see people kind of going back to their own ways despite economic instability and wars and rumors of wars and natural disasters and COVID continuing and all these things. We see people kind of going back to their ways, and we don’t see them seeking God anymore.
10:18 And it just shows us that we’re living in a world that is opposed to God in so many ways, that is operated by the little g-god of this world to deceive people into thinking that this world is meaningful in some way, and that popularity is important, and that material wealth gets you anywhere.
10:35 These are lies from the devil, from Satan himself. And so what they were dealing with then, we’re dealing with now. And we have to ask ourselves, where is our zeal? Specifically, do we desire to destroy the things that are not godly in our own lives?
10:47 Do we desire to depart from those sinful things? Do we desire for God to be vindicated, for God to get the glory? Do we have a fire burning within us where we don’t want to offend God? We don’t want to hurt God.
11:08 We don’t want to bring impurity to God. We don’t want to live in a way that is not like we are supposed to live, as the Bible calls us to live. Because we are in the age of grace.
11:21 We have liberty. Amen. We are not under the law. We are saved by the blood of Christ.
11:27 And so on one end, we believe in Christ. We don’t have to do anything to like curry favor with God in the sense that once we believe, if we truly believed, once saved, always saved. We have eternal security.
11:41 Amen.There’s tons of scriptures in the Bible about that. We are bought by the blood of Christ for an eternity. So on one end, we’re good.
11:48 But on the other end, we are constantly tempted. That’s the idea of needing sanctification, needing a cleansing from God. We’re constantly tempted by the world.
11:55 And when you see this ungodly thing, let’s say it’s a movie, right? And your kids or your friends want to go watch a movie, and that movie is not of God. And the people that made that movie mock God and put perversion in there to pervert God’s way and God’s Word. Do you go and spend your money at that movie? Maybe it’s a website.
12:15 Maybe it’s a brand. Maybe it’s a comedian. Maybe it’s a musician.
12:20 Are you spending your money and your time with these things and ways that are not of God? If you are, where is your zeal? Where is your devotion to the Lord? Where is your backbone to say, I’ve had enough of this way. I’m gonna stand up for what is godly. You know, some people say that we speak with our wallets.
12:41 Well, start speaking with your wallet. Stop spending money with people that mock and ridicule God. Stop going to these things that are not of God.
12:50 Stop going around people that are taking you away from the things of God. Stop pretending like it’s okay to be popular in the world and to let your Christian morals and values slip away. It’s not okay.
12:58 It’s not okay with God. It wasn’t okay with God then. It’s not okay with him now.
13:06 And so what we’re called to do is to seek the Lord. We’re to be zealous to repent as the Bible tells us. We are to get right with God so that we can have a closeness with God and that will make us zealous for God and we will want to live for Him.
13:19 We’ll want to live. You know, the Bible talks about a Christian walk. The idea of a walk is action steps, right? Moving forward.
13:26 This should be our mind state. I hope and pray that you’ve been inspired by this message to get rid of those false idols in your life. Get rid of those things.
13:36 Tear them down. Get them out. Burn them up.
13:40 Get them away. Separate yourself so that you can be close to God. He loves you.
13:43 He loves you so much. It will be well worth it and I pray that you do what God needs you to do to draw close to Him. What if He returns tomorrow? What if He comes today? What if He comes in a week or a month? Will you really, any of these things that are not of God matter at all?
13:59 Will you not be excited to tell Him that you got rid of them, that you stomped them down, that you no longer partake in any of these things? That’s where you should be in a mindset that He’s coming soon because He is.
14:12 I thank you so much for listening. Take care. God bless and Amen.