-Transcript-
00:25 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the Cafe.
00:28 Welcome to the program. I’m Pastor Clark Covington, here with another episode of KJV Cafe. Oh, it’s good to be in the Cafe today.
00:36 My wife walked downstairs earlier and said, it smells like a coffee shop in here, which I take as a compliment. Amen. Got a little bit of Colombian coffee today.
00:43 They actually roasted it at the farm. This is so cool. They roasted it at the farm.
00:51 And I’m sure I’m going to butcher this word, Riz Ar Alda Columbia, Riz Ar Alda Columbia. And it is delicious from Finca La Riviera. Okay.
01:03 I know Spanish here, but I can barely speak English sometimes, but yeah, it’s great, man. It’s awesome. Got some coffee going here.
01:12 It’s cold and got that mountain fog, whatever it is outside, that North Carolina. I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t seem to go away here in January and February, but it’s nice and cozy in here. And I’m just so glad to be here today talking to you about God’s word.
01:26 Oh, we love the Lord here today. And you know, an interesting thing about our God is that he’s sovereign. You know, I was talking to the congregation last night about God’s mercy, but I also included the sovereignty aspect in there as a characteristic of God, right? So I included, well, I mean, I didn’t make it up.
01:48 I’m describing a characteristic of God, whether it be mercy or sovereignty or love or justice or whatever it may be. And you know, I always love when you hear people say, Oh, I just wish I could know God.
01:59 How could, who could ever know God? There’s no way to understand who God is.
02:03 Now there is some truth to that. There’s no way to fully understand who he is or to, there’s no way to understand his ways fully, but truly we can understand the characteristics of God deeply by simply studying the Bible. We can understand who God is in a very rich and meaningful way.
02:19 And why is that so important? Well, once you know who he is, you kind of can apply that to your life. Could you not? I gave the example, you know, if I had a teacher or a coach or something growing up, right?
02:33 I would get to know who they were and then I would understand how I was supposed to live under them. And you’re saying, well, brother Clark, that sounds like a master servant relationship.
02:45 Well, isn’t that how our relationship is with God? Isn’t he our master? Don’t we call him Lord? Paul himself calls himself a prisoner of Christ. I believe the translation is bond servant or bond slave. So I’m not too far off here.
03:02 Does the servant not want to know who the master is? Does the servant not want to know what would please the master? We’re quick to say, I want to make Jesus Lord, or I guess we’re somewhat quick to say that. But do we think about what that means? Who is our Lord?
03:16 What is he like, right? What are these characteristics about him? Because once we understand that, I had a coach one time that was very serious. I always loved playing sports in high school and he was very serious.
03:31 And so I tried not to tell too many jokes around that coach because I knew as his pupil, as his player, that he didn’t appreciate all the humor, amen. And so he was a serious coach and on and on. It’s a silly example, but it gives you an idea that, you know what?
03:49 My relationship got better with that coach, amen, I would say, because I understand who he was and he wasn’t playing around, okay? And if we understand who God is, I believe we can grow in our relationship with God.
04:01 And one aspect of God, the aspect I want to speak about here today and the next several episodes as well, is God’s powerful preference, that God is sovereign and that he has a preference.
04:16 You know, this is going to blow up the whole idea that God is some kind of ambiguous figure that just doesn’t care, right? He doesn’t, he’s just, oh, I’m aloof and I’m remote, I’m far away, I don’t care. God cares. God has a preference.
04:35 God loves righteousness, amen. I could go on and on. But the idea of God’s preference and his power, the upper part of this kind of the view from the sky is his sovereignty, right?
04:47 That’s the Bible word, sovereignty. Romans 9:18 says, therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will, he hardeneth.
04:58 Romans 9:18. He’s saying, look, you know, I’m gonna have mercy on who I have mercy and I’m gonna choose to, I won’t have mercy on, right?
05:07 Exodus 33:19, and he said, this is God, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, pass before Moses, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.
05:25 Well, that sounds very similar. That’s God speaking directly to Moses, Exodus 33:19. How about Hosea 2:23 And I will sow her unto me in the earth, and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy.
05:42 And I will say to them, which were not my people, thou art my people, and they shall say thou art my God. So we see here when God is speaking, whether directly or through the prophets,
05:53 we see here, as Paul mentions in Romans 9:18, and I believe Paul’s paraphrasing in Romans 9:18, the idea is that God is sovereign, that he is a preference.
06:01 And now some people will say, well, that’s, you know, that’s awful, and oh, well, I guess God didn’t pick me and all this stuff, because I’ve heard that before.
06:11 We have a lost person that wants to argue about that, the idea that God is a preference. That’s very, very offensive to them. In a world where everything must be accepted or you get fired.
06:23 Young man, young brave man at, I believe, Georgia had a post that marriage was between a man and a woman, because that’s what the Bible says. Essentially, that’s what his Facebook post said, something to that extent. And guess what? That guy got fired.
06:36 Yeah, he got fired. It’s really sad. I got an email about it from the American Family Association, the AFA.
06:44 He got fired for that belief. Because in this culture, what’s communicated there is, okay, you’re a public servant, and in this culture, you can’t say anything that is divisive. You can’t say anything that has a preference.
07:01 You certainly can’t say that God has a preference. But guess what, folks? That young man wasn’t wrong, amen. Just because people want to fire him, just like they wanted to stone Stephen, amen, doesn’t mean that they are wrong, amen. They’re not wrong. Okay God has a preference.
07:12 Get in the Bible, and it is crystal, crystal, crystal clear. Pray for Holy Spirit discernment, and you will have a crystal clear understanding, if the Lord allows it, of course, that God has a preference.
07:24 You have people say, oh, you know, just don’t know what to make of the Bible, or I’ll just like pull out these few books, but I’m going to ignore the rest.
07:35 It all points to Jesus, and it all points to Calvary, and what Jesus did for us. This is premeditated, a willful act from a living God. And in Romans 9, Paul is grieved that the Israelites, the Jewish people, his own kin, wouldn’t believe this.
07:55 And he said it was so hard for him, because he was going to share this hard truth, and it was sorrowful. And Paul wishes for the Jews to be saved, but they won’t listen to his gospel. And what does that come down for them? They didn’t believe.
08:04 They didn’t have faith. Think about this. Paul was not that far removed from Jesus Christ himself.
08:10 Paul was probably alive when Jesus was alive, or shortly thereafter. I mean, it was very close to that time. So at that time, you had eyewitnesses to Jesus Christ, like Peter, amen. Peter mentions Paul in the Bible, okay.You have the disciples.
08:27 You have eyewitnesses. You have people that literally interacted with Christ that are still alive. They saw the living God face-to-face.
08:36 Not only did they see the living God, they saw him before miracle, after miracle, after miracle, and they didn’t believe. And what does God say? He says, okay.
08:43 Again, as I read through the prophet Hosea, okay, I’ll turn to this other people, the non-chosen people, what we’ve called the dogs in the past.
08:56 I’ll turn to them because they will believe, amen. And the Israelites, it’s so sad because they have the pedigree to be close to God. They have the law, the promises, the adoption. The last episode I went into that, the idea is the Israelites have the pedigree to be close to God.
09:08 They have all of the reasons that they could be close to God, and yet they’re not. It’s almost like a spoiled child, right? They have all the resources in the world and they go astray. And then you have the runt of the litter, so to speak.
09:22 You have a child that grew up on the streets or something, and they don’t have any resources and somehow they make it in life. Isn’t that interesting? Christ came to be king to them, the Jews, right?
09:32 That was what he was doing on earth. That was his ministry, was to be king to the Jews, and he was rejected by the Jews.
09:38 And it grieves Paul, and as he goes through Romans 9, he’s making this juxtaposition or this comparison of the Jews and the Gentiles and God’s sovereignty.
09:53 You know, we see in Romans 9:20, for example, “…shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus?” Of course not. So we as the creation, why would we say to the creator, why have you made us like this or why have you made us like that? It boils down to faith.
10:10 If we believe that God is sovereign, then we should trust him. If we believe that God has a plan for us and it is good, then we should seek him. And you’re saying, brother Clark, how can I believe that today? Think of the cross at Calvary.
10:25 Think about this idea that God himself saw in advance in the future, because he can see in the future, he’s God, he’s perfect. He saw people fall astray. He saw sin enter the world and he said, I’m not going to leave this to someone else.
10:42 I’ll send my only begotten son. God in the flesh, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross at Calvary. For those that would believe on him, him shedding his own precious blood, him being sinless and spotless, born of a virgin, amen, I will provide that substitution, that atonement for all mankind.
11:01 I’ll do that. That’s God’s plan. Amen.
11:04 He said, I’ll do that. I’ll do that. So before we get worked up that a sovereign God isn’t doing things right or how could he do this or how could he pick this group or that group? Understand that he knows the hearts and minds of people and that he sent his only begotten.
11:20 It pleased him that they bruised his beloved Jesus. The most vicious, gruesome death the world has ever seen was Jesus Christ being crucified at the cross at Calvary.
11:31 His beard being plucked out one by one, him being mocked and ridiculed, him having all power to stop it, yet being obedient even unto death, being unrecognizable when it was over, being in the grave three days, getting down there in the middle of the earth, taking the keys to heaven, hell, the grave, everything.
11:52 Jesus Christ owns it all, by the way. Being raised again on the third day according to the scriptures, being seen by over 500. Again, during Paul’s time when he’s writing this, some of those 500 were still alive and yet God’s chosen people would not believe, the Gentiles did in some respects, and we see through all of this God’s sovereign plan, power, and preference.
12:22 Three Ps for you today, plan, power, and preference, and with a little bit of time left, we’re talking about God’s plan. What’s God up to? What does God have planned through this amazing event?
12:29 His sovereignty is revealed through his plan. Number one, he shows his power.
12:35 His power is shown through the many, many events in the Bible. We see God’s great power, amen. We see his power. It delivers.
12:46 I can give a bunch of examples, which I will in the next episode, but delivering the Israelites from bondage, Gideon and the 300, on and on and on, David and Goliath.
12:56 There’s too many examples to mention, amen, but we see God’s great power in his sovereignty. He chose David to defeat Goliath, amen? He chose David to be king.
13:02 He chose to come from the line of David. This is all his power, but in his plan, in his sovereignty, we also see our need for him. What is that? That’s our lack of power.
13:09 His love desires us to be saved, and we see our lack of power. For me especially, I was out in the world. I got saved in my early 20s, and I was still out in the world, amen. I wasn’t in the word.
13:29 I was in the world, and I had to get to near rock bottom where I basically didn’t want to live, and I had every problem you could imagine before I truly surrendered to the Lord and said, Lord, you have the power, and no matter what I do, I can’t do it on my own.
13:45 I believe I was saved in my early 20s. I believe that I called upon … I truly believe that.
13:50 The Lord said, okay, you have free will. You want to go ahead and live like the prodigal son and waste away everything you have and be in misery? Go for it. Then I came to the Father and said, Lord, I’m sorry.
14:02 What did he do? Oh, he blessed me and blessed me and blessed me, and the rest of my life, even on the worst day now, is better than the best day before. I’m blessed because I know my need for him, my lack of power.
14:16 I’m spiritually poor without him, and his plan is to save those that would believe.
14:20 Simply believe on Christ, and that is his plan. That is his sovereign will, and that is his love.
14:26 Tune in next time. Take care. God bless. Amen.