-Transcript-
00:26 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:32 Welcome to the cafe. So good to have you here today. Beautiful day outside.
00:36 Hopefully you’re doing good, living right. Amen. Diving into God’s Word here today.
00:42 That is what we’re trying to do, and that is what we’re always working to do is study God’s Word and rightly divide His Word. Amen. And when we do that, we’re blessed by what we learn.
00:51 And I’m telling you, I mean, I’m a pretty simple person and I study the scriptures for preaching at church and for the radio ministry and the podcasts and so on.
01:02 And I’ll think on it and I’ll say, okay, this sounds good. And I’ll try to apply it to my life and I see fruit from it.
01:11 And then I preach more and testify about it. And it’s a pretty awesome cycle. No, life isn’t perfect.
01:13 We all encounter problems and snares. As a matter of fact, when you live for the Lord, you’ll see a lot of those issues come up. The devil will fight you hard and it’ll be a difficult, challenging life.
01:23 But that’s why they call Christians overcomers, because you overcome those things through the strength, not of yourself, but of the Holy Spirit living within you of God Himself.
01:30 And what we see here is this principle that I love, because I personally really desire to live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. I’m somebody that does not mind speaking in public, and at the same time, I’m not one that would love to spend every day around a bunch of people, wherever that would be.
01:56 I kind of like working on my own. I enjoy that. And I enjoy working on my own and studying, and I enjoy working on my own for the business.
02:01 And I just enjoy the kind of simple way of life. And I ask God for that, a quiet and peaceable life. And I want to have one that’s lived in godliness and honesty.
02:15 And I realize as I’ve gotten older here, that in order to have that, you need a government that’s going to be friendly to such a thing. And so we look at our text verse here, 1 Timothy 2:1-3.
02:27 I exhort, therefore, that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior.
02:50 And you know, I mentioned I, a lot in the introduction, I want to live this. But you know what? Maybe it’s the Holy Spirit living within me, and maybe the Holy Spirit living within you that makes you want to live that way. And so that’s a good thing to think about.
02:59 And what we want to understand here today is that when we look at authority, who is in charge of authority? Who put authority there, right? Who put authority there?
03:07 You know, God put authority there. You know, the Lord put those people where they are today for many different reasons. And you say, well, I can’t stand so-and-so leader.
03:21 Well, I wonder why God would have put them in there. Maybe to repay everybody for their wickedness? You know, I don’t know.
03:33 Maybe to teach man a lesson? Maybe to nudge somebody else to run for office or whatever it is? I don’t know.
03:38 I don’t know. Only God knows. But He has the hearts and minds of the leaders.
03:42 His will ultimately is done. He does things that are supernatural and unbelievable. You see that all throughout the Old Testament there with the writing on the wall, amen, and the prophecy there.
03:52 You see it with King Hezekiah and God granting him more life when he was sick and about to die. You see it in so many different ways, amen. And what we see is that God is in full control.
04:07 And so therefore, if God is in full control, and if we need a certain level of peace or government, lack of government hostility to worship God as we want and as the Bible tells us to, then we should pray that the God that’s in full control grant us this prayer for those in leadership.
04:24 Again, as I’ve said, this is the third part of a four-part series here. I’ve said this over and over again.
04:31 We’re not praying that God grant us a Christian nation that is 100% requiring everybody to go to church and live Christian. We’re not trying to do that. You can’t legislate sin out of the world.
04:42 Paul said that you cannot depart from sin unless you were to actually leave the world. And so we know that sin is ingrained in man ever since from Adam and Eve all the way down. It’s hereditary, amen.
04:54 And so we aren’t asking for something that’s like a communist government by any means. We’re simply asking for religious liberties to go and worship. Again, we should be interested in making sure the Jews have a liberty to go to their synagogue.
05:13 We should make sure that the Muslims can go to their mosque. I see a mosque, and my stomach may turn a little bit because I say, well, that’s Muhammad. That’s a false god.
05:23 That’s a religion where they are dying for their god. My god died for me, amen. And at the same time, if they were restricted from going to their place, who’s to say we wouldn’t be restricted from going to ours?
05:31 And so the whole point is we want to pray for religious liberty.
05:36 And I live in the South, I live in North Carolina, as many of you all know. And we’re very, very blessed in North Carolina to have a state that is very friendly for religious liberty.
05:47 I recently went on a trip to Tennessee and Kentucky, and we’re going to talk about that in a little bit.
05:51 I saw a great amount of religious liberty. And that, I believe, is what Paul is telling Timothy that we should pray for. And Paul is saying here in our text verse, I exhort therefore that first of all supplication, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men.
06:06 This is 1 Timothy 2, 1-3. For kings and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior.
06:18 And so why people of authority? Because there’s a correlation, right? So we’re praying for everyone, but Paul wants Timothy to know you really need to pray for those in authority.
06:26 And as I recently with my family, matter of fact, it was a week ago from today, we departed Kings Mountain, went up there to Lexington, Kentucky to go spend some time up there visiting the Ark Encounter, a great ministry, Answers in Genesis. I’m sure you’ve heard of them or you’ve heard of the Ark. It’s literally built to scale.
06:45 And that was my biggest desire, was to see what the Ark actually would have looked like in Bible times, because I believe the Bible’s true. So I want to see the Ark as it looked like when it was built by Noah.
06:58 That was like the scale, you know, I’ve been on a cruise ship, is it as big as a cruise ship? And certainly it pretty much is.
07:04 Is it really made of all wood? It really was, you know, how they fed the animals and you see they used gravity feeding and all these great, I mean, it’s a wonderful attraction.
07:12 I highly recommend you guys make a plan and go to it because it is a all day thing and there’s a lot going on there to do. It really is.
07:21 There’s a petting zoo, playgrounds, all kinds of stuff. So research it, plan it out, you know, save your pennies. And instead of going to wherever else, spend it there.
07:31 That’d be great. I think it blesses the Lord to see his people go and praise him and see the true life ministry there. But the point that I’d like to make for this message is on that ride, that drive up there, we’ve witnessed a few things.
07:44 Number one, there’s people staying in our hotel that were attending the Asbury University revival.
07:51 You may have heard of that, a big revival going on just outside of Lexington. You pretty much could say Asbury University’s in Lexington, it’s right there.
07:59 And our hotel was near there and there was people that were attending the revival. And at breakfast, they were talking about the revival and this pastor right here couldn’t help it. I put my oatmeal down and turned around and said, tell me about the revival, amen.
08:14 And wow, we were speaking openly. We weren’t being persecuted for it. We weren’t in trouble for it.
08:22 My wife was wearing a t-shirt that had scripture on it. We all prayed before we ate. These things were all acceptable in the great state of Kentucky.
08:31 You know, by the way, in Kentucky, you know, you say, oh, the Ark is there and ministries are there. Man, there is a church on every corner. I thought there was a church at every corner in North Carolina.
08:39 Kentucky may have a North Carolina beat. There’s churches everywhere and big church signs and lots of scripture on signs. And those churches aren’t being burned down.
08:50 They’re not being shut down. They’re allowed to exist. How about going to the Ark? There’s even a sign on the highway that says Ark Encounter.
08:58 That’s kind of like a quasi-government sign. I mean, it’s kind of the government mold of attractions on that exit. And again, you know, that type of sign would be in Orlando if you’re going to Disney World or would be, you know, a universal or whatever.
09:09 You know, that also would be on those kind of signs. But we had that for the Ark. I said, praise God.
09:14 We live in a country that would allow this to be built. Now think about it. When you go into the Ark, it is talking about, oh, everything against evolution, which is taught at the public schools, probably taught in Kentucky public schools.
09:28 You know, what a great country we live in that not only allows but even promotes something being built that goes against what the government is doing. That is free speech, amen. And that is a blessing.
09:41 And I praise God for that. And that is, I believe, what we’re being exhorted here. That’s who we’re being exhorted to pray for is the leaders that would allow such, not a force-fed doctrine, but just allow the free dialogue, allow free worship, allow for a salvation message to be brought forward there.
09:58 And again, they don’t duck behind corners at the Ark. I saw a very concrete soul-winning effort there, and I saw very concrete answers to very tough questions, biblical answers, and that’s what I love about that ministry.
10:11 They really don’t shy away from any of the objections people would have for Christianity.
10:17 They almost jump at the chance to show, put forth the argument, and they do it very, very well. And I praise God for the ministry, and I praise God for the leaders in Kentucky. At the opening of the Ark, the Secretary of State was there, amen.
10:29 This is great. You know, I praise God for leaders that are supportive of allowing Christians to have liberty, amen. Not just there, but in Tennessee.
10:39 We drove through Pigeon Forge, but anyone that’s been to Pigeon Forge knows that that place is a bunch of fun, and there is some Christian stuff to do there.
10:47 There is a new Bible museum that I’m really looking forward to going to soon. We didn’t have time, but I can’t wait to go there.
10:51 And that Bible museum goes through all the Bibles and goes through different people that were martyred for the Bible and different people that had efforts to bring the Bible all across the world, and they have a printing press, all these great things. It’s promoted by the Chamber of Commerce. It’s allowed in Tennessee.
11:07 Schools in Tennessee and Kentucky, some of them have elective Bible courses. You’re not forced to take it, but you can take it. I could go on and on.
11:14 I wish I had more time, but I don’t. So I just want you to know here today that this is the type of leadership that we should be praying for, that God instills in the hearts of men and women to run for office, that love the Lord, and to preserve religious liberty.
11:29 Not necessarily to, you know, make everyone take part in it, but simply just to allow it to occur.
11:37 And if you allow it to occur and you’re friendly to it, I believe that’s what will allow us to live a quiet and peaceable life. Because if you weren’t friendly to it, then I believe the implication is we would have to rebel.
11:47 We’d have to do it secretly, like the Chinese underground church or churches in North Korea.
11:53 We would have to go secretly and worship God, and we wouldn’t have the same peace and quiet and harmony and honesty that we have when we have friendly leadership.
12:01 Now you say, Brother Clark, how do I pray for these people? Well, here Paul is telling Timothy, supplications, prayers, intercessions, giving of thanks be made for all men. We need to pray deeply in earnest request.
12:15 We need to realize that God is in control and has power and is sovereign and can make a move in someone’s heart and can do what man thinks is impossible.
12:21 We need to pray on that level that the Lord would allow somebody that at least is not hostile to Christians to be in positions of power on every level from the school board all the way up to the president of the United States. We need to pray for religious liberty.
12:44 We need to pray that we can have the opportunities to serve God and to share our faith and to love our neighbor and to praise a holy and sovereign God as one God, being the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, and not have to run from it and not be looked at as the enemy and not be shut down.
13:12 We need to pray that we’re allowed to rent out schools on Sunday to have church services there because other organizations, if they can rent it out, why can’t a church? We need to pray for elective classes in Bible. You know, again, if you can have an elective class in some worldly thing, why can’t you have an elective class in Bible? It doesn’t have to be forced, amen. Just allow children the opportunity to take those classes.
13:28 We need to pray for school choice. I’m a homeschool dad. You know, we need to pray that resources be given to Christian schools and maybe even to homeschool parents, whatever they may be.
13:38 We need to pray for school choice and we need to pray for those that are helping with school choice, like I think it’s the HSDLA, the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, HSLDA, I think it is. They’re great. Pray for those folks.
13:56 Amen. They’re advocating for Christian teaching and autonomy, allowing a parent or a student, a parent and a student, a child to have that at home and that learning and without the school interfering and forcing the kids.
14:13 And you can read case studies on their website of great interference from leaders in the government trying to tamp that down.
14:20 We need to continue to pray on all sides. And as we do that, the Lord, the God of all power, I believe, will bless us as a nation.
14:29 Thank you for listening. Take care. God bless. Thanks for visiting the cafe today.