-Transcript-
00:29 Welcome to the cafe. Pastor Clark Covington here with another episode of KJV Cafe. Thank you for joining me.
00:37 So good to be here today. Amen. As we dive into God’s Word, why are we studying God’s Word? Because when we get into His Word, and I mean we as in together, but then as you get into His Word, even apart from this program, and you dive in and study His Word, you’re richly blessed by what we learn in His Word specifically about Him.
01:02 Sometimes we look at the Bible as a book. We look at it as a religious book, but we need to look at it as the living Word and a guidebook for our lives and a love story about Jesus Christ to us.
01:21 It’s a love letter to us, amen, if we really read it and understand what God is up to.
01:28 And as we learn in the Word, we are blessed because we realize that there are so many truths in this life that we would never know.
01:39 For example, if I saved, right, and I’m not really reading the Bible, but truly I gave my heart to Jesus, okay, I’m not really reading the Bible, I believe I’m still saved. I mean, you know, God does, there’s no variable of shadow of turning with God.
01:57 He doesn’t change, right? So I’m saved. And I’m walking around ignorant. I don’t know what’s going on.
02:02 I don’t know, you know, someone tells me, hey, you know what, God’s in control of everything. I’d say, maybe, I don’t know, maybe He is, maybe He’s not, I don’t know.
02:11 Well, how can you know? You know through His Word that God is all powerful.
02:17 The Bible word is sovereignty, that He has sovereignty. And then through His Word, you understand, whoa, God’s got a lot going on here that I need to know.
02:26 And next time, say, something happens in your life that isn’t great, all of a sudden, instead of looking at it as a bad thing, you start thinking, well, you know, this actually is for my good.
02:37 Romans 8:28 tells me everything that happens for those that love the Lord, those that called according to His purposes for their good.
02:42 So this is for my good. And nothing happens without God’s permission, without God allowing it.
02:51 So this is of God. And you see how it completely changes the complexion. It changes, really, the idea of any situation and how you deal with it on a day-to-day basis.
03:01 So the Bible is not just God’s living Word. It’s not just how we are to live, but it’s practical, it’s applicable, it’s what we can use each day as we go through life. I read about a celebrity that had an awful anxiety attack, and a lot of celebrities deal with that.
03:17 And I can identify with that. If I was a celebrity, I think I would struggle with that, too, because there’s so much expectation and pressure. And in the age of social media, you’re pressured to give a performance of whatever celebrity you are, musician, or analyst, or columnist, or movie star, or whatever.
03:35 You’re pressured to perform at such a high level, and you’re critiqued almost instantly. And it’s just, it’s gotta be hard. And they were having these anxiety attacks, they were writing about it.
03:45 They were just writing about how it’s really hard, but they didn’t have the solution. And I will tell you this, that God’s Word brings peace. To understand, think about this.
03:56 Think about this on two levels. One, God’s sovereign, okay? So understanding in His Word that it completely reinforces the idea that God’s in control, that can release some pressure and stress from your life when things start to happen that you didn’t expect and you feel anxious.
04:13 And then number two, as we seek God, and in His Word, there’s a promise there that says He’ll give us a peace that surpasses all understanding.
04:21 So as we seek Him, right? We get that peace, and as we seek Him, we seek Him, what? Through His Bible, through His Word, Philippians 4:7.
04:28 And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
04:39 Here we have this promise that we’re gonna have the peace of God, and guess what? It’s gonna keep our heart and our mind, the deepest part of us, our soul, the deepest part of us, and our intellect, it’s gonna keep us through who? Through Christ Jesus.
04:52 And there’s another promise in there that Jesus, He prays to God, and tell me that God doesn’t hear Jesus Christ’s prayers, I’m sure He does very clearly, because right now Jesus is at the right hand of the Father, and they’re three in one, the Godhead, they’re all God, amen.
05:04 Well, Jesus prays to God, keep everyone that’s mine and everyone that comes from those that are mine. So we’re trying to essentially keep the disciples, keep them safe, okay.
05:14 And then keep those that are saved from the disciples. Well, who would that be? That’d be us, right? We read the book, we get saved, we go through Romans Road, et cetera, we get saved.
05:25 And so we understand that we are kept by Christ Jesus, but all these promises, all this truth, all of this peace, all of this love doesn’t come naturally, it doesn’t knock on our door, right?
05:36 And if we don’t open it, says, okay, I’ll leave it for you, and I’m gonna go now. But it’ll be here, so anytime you wanna look at it, there’s a knock on our door and we’ve gotta open it, right?
05:48 There’s a time when someone says, here, I wanna give you a Bible, well, you gotta open that Bible. There’s a time where you hear preaching or something, and you say, you know what, I’m gonna study the Bible more, but you don’t, right? You need to.
05:59 God’s sovereign, God’s real, the remedy to all kinds of problems is God. I love that billboard, I see it on the highway somewhere, I think on I-85 somewhere, and it literally says, the answer to all the problems in life is Jesus. And that’s actually very true.
06:15 And I’ll chuckle, because I know some lost person is rolling their eyes or saying who knows what, but it’s true, it sounds improbable that one person, our God, Jesus Christ, amen,
06:26 would have that much power, but he does. And here we are looking at the sovereignty of God today. In past episodes, we’ve talked about God’s plan and how he shows his sovereignty through his plan,
06:42 Romans 9:18, therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will,he hardeneth, that’s Romans 9.18.
06:51 In Romans 9, Paul’s describing how the Israelites have been blessed and all these things, but they won’t turn to God, to the living God, to Jesus Christ.
07:06 They’re still trying to follow the law and live up to the law, and he’s very grieved by that. In Romans 9, he’s saying that the Gentiles are the ones that now God has turned to, through Paul himself, so that they could be saved, because they will believe. So this all comes down to faith.
07:12 It’s a matter of faith. And through these two people groups, we see God’s sovereign plan, power, and preference.
07:20 So what’s God up to? What’s he’s got going on? He’s showing his power through many, many events in the Bible, and that’s what we’re talking about today.
07:29 God’s plan is good and perfect, and it all centers around Christ and his finished work. Amen.
07:45 So before anyone were to say that, okay, if this is a sovereign God’s world, then I don’t understand what he’s up to, understand this, that his ways are higher than our ways, as the heavens are from the earth, we can’t understand them fully, but that God is in complete control. A miracle baby.
07:59 God has creating power. Abraham had a son at a very improbable old age. I think he was 100.
08:02 The start of his chosen people group, God’s chosen people group, came from a miracle, the miracle of Isaac being born from Abraham and Sarah at such an old age.
08:12 My wife turned 40, we kid around about having one more kid, and we are kidding around, because goodness, pregnancy has been very hard for her, Lord knows. She’s gone through four.
08:23 We have three. We got one in heaven, amen. And her sister is pregnant, and her sister is not feeling good, amen. And so she’s 40.
08:26 Well, tack on 50 years to that age, and go back in time 2,000 years, and God said, okay, Sarah, you’re ready to have a child.
08:41 That’s improbable. That’s impossible, but for God. So we see God’s creating power and his sovereignty with a miracle baby, with Sarah and Abraham having Isaac.
08:50 We see a miracle delivery from the enemy. This is God’s freeing power. He takes the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt by who? By Moses, and I’ve described this as the best I could.
09:02 I’m not a scientist, but take a sand bucket, like one of your kids’ buckets, and go over there, or take a gallon bucket, like a work bucket, and go over there to the ocean and try to scoop up some water.
09:12 That’s pretty heavy, isn’t it? Just one bucket, you know? One bucket. You may have to put two hands on that bucket, okay? Now imagine taking all the water and splitting it in two like a zipper and letting the Israelites walk across the Red Sea on dry land.
09:26 That is God’s power. That shows his power. He has creating power, and he has freeing power, and that is a picture, of course, of Moses and the Israelites escaping the bondage they were in slavery to the Egyptians, to Pharaoh and the Egyptians.
09:42 That is a picture of us. When we believe in Christ, God miraculously gets us out, delivers us from the bondage of sin. We are no longer dead to sin.
09:51 We are no longer headed to a devil’s hell once we’re saved, amen. We see God has saving power. He sends his own son, a miracle, a miracle son. He sends himself to atone for the sins of mankind.
10:06 God sees where the world is at, and he’s grieved, amen? There’s a picture of that with Jesus looking at the marketplace. We see God is grieved by it. What does he do?
10:17 He sends his only begotten Jesus to atone for the sins of all mankind, and at the same time, the Jews won’t believe.
10:26 They won’t make him king, so the crucifixion happens. That’s all part of God’s plan. When Jesus is raised from the dead, now the Gentiles and the whole world can believe on Jesus, and now we have that atonement.
10:37 We have that substitutionary death applied to us. We have our sin debt paid. A holy God needed that debt paid of our sin, and we’ve had that sin ever since Adam and Eve, and we can’t pay that sin, and so the only way to pay that sin is through what Jesus Christ did on the cross.
10:51 So, when Jesus Christ dies on the cross and is buried three days, and in the Jewish custom three days means you’re truly dead, amen, coming up from the grave, walked the earth 40 days and 40 nights, was seen by over 500, then ascended up to heavens at the right hand of the Father.
11:03 It’s all in the Bible. 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 is a very clear picture of it.
11:08 When we believe on Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross at Calvary, did past tense, it’s already been done. We’re saved. We’re no longer under condemnation.
11:19 The Bible says that we are reconciled to God. The Bible word before that would have been enmity or warfare with God. So the Bible tells us that the natural man is dead, okay, they’re not born again, and they are in sinful flesh, and they can do nothing good.
11:36 The Bible says without Jesus, you can do nothing good. A bad tree cannot bear good fruit. So we are reconciled to God by what Christ did on the cross, and that is God saving power.
11:43 So we see a creating power, a freeing power, and a saving power, and this is all his sovereignty. Think of Jesus’ life. He was born of a virgin.
11:52 He lived 33 and a half years, amen. He was obedient unto death. All of these things are impossible with man, but they’re possible with God.
12:00 Each instance shows God’s incredible power to defy age and nature and even humankind. Each instance that I’ve mentioned shows God’s love for his people. Think of the people I mentioned, Abraham.
12:12 God loved Abraham, and Abraham is the father, amen, the father. Abraham and Sarah is a father of Isaac, and then Isaac has who? Jacob and Esau, and Jacob is the father of the 12 tribes of Israel, amen. Those 12 tribes, they’ll be memorialized in heaven.
12:29 If you are saved, you will see those 12 tribes in heaven, amen. Moses, God loved Moses and used Moses mightily, and Jesus Christ himself, God in the flesh, the second part of the Holy Trinity.
12:42 If a sovereign God can do such acts, is there anything he can’t do? Is there anything he can’t do? Isaiah 59:1-4 behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save, neither his ear heavy that it cannot hear.
12:55 But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you that he will not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.
13:09 None call for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth. They trust in vanity and speak lies.They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.” Well, what does that mean? That means that the Jews could have believed and didn’t, and they were living in sin, and they were living a lie.
13:23 They didn’t understand it, but they were living a lie. They would not turn to God. So what does that mean for us? That means that we just simply have to have faith.
13:31 Have faith that God is a sovereign God. Have faith that God has a true plan. Have faith that God desires all to come to repentance for all to be saved.
13:41 Have faith that God provided a free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ, and all you have to do is believe. And once you’ve believed, have faith that God is still sovereign, that his word is still alive,
13:52 that he still has more he wants to do with you and through you, amen? Have faith that God is who he says he is. God’s sovereignty is as much about faith as it is anything else.
14:02 If we are willing to believe, then we will see his sovereignty in every part of our life, in every part of our life. In the next part of this message, I guess it’ll be the fourth part, we’ll look at God’s preference, amen.
14:16 His preference, and that will wrap up this series. Again, thank you for listening so much.
14:20 Thank you for tuning in. If you haven’t already, check us out online at kjvcafe.com, and we have a podcast. Search for KJV Cafe on your podcast app.
14:30 Take care. God bless. Amen.