-Transcript-
00:35 Amen. Welcome to the cafe today. Hope you’re having a wonderful day, a wonderful week.
00:43 Amen. Here we are today to get into God’s Word. We were just a simple Bible study.
00:47 That’s all we’re here to do is to study the Bible. And while it’s a simple study, the truth that we discover together is very powerful and it’s nothing that I do, it’s nothing that even anyone else does other than God. He reveals the truth in His Word by the working of the Holy Spirit that is wonderful.
01:08 And here we are in Psalm 50. We’re in the fourth part of a four-part series dealing with Psalm 50. And Psalm 50 is a very powerful Psalm and it’s, we’ve been talking here about God’s love for His people, how God desires us to be obedient over just sacrificing, to truly realize that He is all-powerful and self-sufficient, doesn’t need us.
01:32 So we should follow His program, Amen, because He has a good program for us. And realize that He is our deliverer. We’ve talked about deliverance.
01:42 Now the idea that He will deliver us and that when we seek Him in that time of trouble, He’ll deliver us and that He should get all the glory. And then as we went through that, we got to where we are now, which is dealing with God’s judgment. And we spoke here, I spoke yesterday in the series here, about the wicked.
02:04 About how people hate His statutes. They hate His instruction. They take His words and they throw them out.
02:20 They go one ear out the other. They don’t want to focus on them. And while God was speaking to the children of Israel through this psalm, He clearly is speaking to the church here today.
02:27 The modern church, it’s very difficult oftentimes for them to preach on sin, and call sin, sin. And get into the blood and the blood atonement. The idea, without the shedding of blood, there’s no remission of sin.
02:42 The idea that we are saved by a sinless Savior that had to take on our sin. That’s the idea of that substitutionary death. That we are sinners.
02:52 That man is depraved. That there is no hope for man beyond Christ or without Christ. That the only way to the Father is through Jesus Christ.
03:01 He is the sheepfold. He is the gate. And the other way will not work.
03:07 And we see that people don’t want to hear that here today. And I remember watching a TV preacher preaching to good old King James and preaching about sin and preaching all right doctrine. And I can’t think of His name offhand.
03:21 And he said that he wondered why His audience was so small and shrinking. And then He realized that he kept preaching about sin and the need for a Savior. He said, well that doesn’t tickle anyone’s ears, does it? But it’s what we need to hear, amen? You could call it tough love, but I call it everlasting love, Amen. I call it sacrificial love.
03:40 Is it tough for us to accept a free gift? Is it tough for God the Father who said it’s only begotten to die on the cross, amen? The Bible says that pleased the Lord, amen? That pleased the Lord to do that. And we have to accept Christ the Savior to be saved. And all we can do is have faith.
03:55 Oh, we’re justified by our faith. That’s it. And we see here in Psalm 50 as it wraps up.
04:02 Verse 18, when thou saw’st a thief, then thou contendest with him, and hast been a partaker with adulterers. Goodness. Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit.
04:17 I mean, think about this. We have people here today that one day they’ll say, oh, we love God, or they’ll sing a hymn or so forth. And then they’re out there contending with thieves and partaking with adulterers.
04:31 You know, think of adultery on a number of levels. Oftentimes adultery is not what we think it to be, that you are all running around on your girlfriend or boyfriend or husband or wife. You know, there’s a spiritual adultery here.
04:43 And God writes about it, or God has it in His Word written through the authors of the books by the Holy Spirit inspiration throughout the Bible, that there is a spiritual adultery taking place where people are turning to false gods and idols, the false God of materialism, the false God of lust, the coveting that comes with living this life of materialism and lust and desiring the things of the world more than you desire God. And you know, the Bible teaches us that anything we put before God in our hearts and our minds is an idol. And so we are committing adultery when we do that.
05:22 And God is very serious about that. And you know, God can use a relationship to help us understand that. So I love my wife very much.
05:32 She’s the love of my life. And we met when I was, I guess, a little bit older for North Carolina standards, at least up north, they get married later. But down south, people get married young.
05:46 So, you know, we met when I was in my early 30s. And that was it, you know, pretty much as soon as I met her, I said, that’s the one I love her. And oh, I would just feel horrible if I ever cheated on her, if I was an adulterer, if I, if there was somebody else in the picture, I couldn’t even imagine what that would do to my wife.
06:02 I would be breaking her heart. And my heart would be broken because her heart’s broken. But is that not what we do here to God, day in and day out, turning to the things of this world and choosing them over choosing God, Amen. We need to get right with God.
06:17 We need to esteem God and the riches of heaven greater than the riches of earth, as Moses did. We need to do that. We have to stop kind of being lukewarm, being kind of one foot in, one foot out.
06:29 Verse 20, thou sitteth and speakest against thybrother, thou slanderest thy own mother’s son. That’s the brother. You know, oftentimes, we’re talking trash about other Christians.
06:41 Where do Christians face the most opposition? From other Christians. You meet a Christian, what do you want to know? Oh, what denomination are they? And where do they stand on this? And are they truly a Christian? We are so critical of people, and we need to be less critical. We need to look at ourselves critically.
07:01 We need to judge ourselves so we’re not judged, amen, and judge ourselves by a biblical standard. But we need to give others that grace and mercy that we hope to receive. You know, the Bible says that if we can’t forgive our brother, God can’t forgive us.
07:13 And we need to take that to heart. If we can’t forgive our neighbor, God can’t forgive us. We need to take it to heart, because God here is teaching us through the scripture that this is happening day in and day out.
07:22 Verse 21, these things hast thou done, and I kept silence. Oh, I love this. Verse 21 of Psalm 50, these things hast thou done, and I kept silence.
07:33 Who’s I? That’s God. It’s written in the first person in this part of the Psalm. God kept silent.
07:38 How much do people think they’re getting away with today because God has kept silent on the matter? Incredible amounts of sin is being put on or put forth in humanity today because God has not enacted an immediate judgment upon them. But look at what happens. Thou thoughtest I was altogether such and one as thyself.
08:03 So they’re thinking, oh, God’s like me. He’s okay with sin. But I will reprove thee and set them in order before thine eyes.
08:12 Uh-oh. God is going to reprove the sinner and set them in order before their eyes. Is that not the worst fear of the sinner, that they would have their sins presented in front of them with God present? Could anything be any worse? They’re hoping that God is like them, okay with sin.
08:31 Then they realize God is not okay with sin. They were hoping that he wasn’t keeping silent. He was just allowing it.
08:35 And now they realize he’s not allowing it. And his judgment’s coming. And now it’s before their eyes.
08:40 Verse 22. Now consider this. Ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces and there be none to deliver.
08:47 And so God is issuing a warning saying, look, he can and will destroy you if you don’t get right with him. Now God is not playing off of people’s fear alone. I think He’s using fear to sober people up.
09:00 Amen. God’s saying through his word, look, if you’ve gotten this far in the Psalms, you’re in Psalm 50, you’re at the lower part of this chapter. Here it is.
09:07 Here’s an ice bucket over your head. Get right with me before it’s eternally too late. Amen.
09:12 That’s God’s grace. Amen. That’s God’s mercy.
09:15 He’s telling you, he’s telegraphing, he’s giving you prophecy, if you want it to put it that way, about what will happen. So why don’t we get right with him while we can. Amen.
09:23 The Bible says to seek him early while he may be found. See, it’s too late when you die. Amen.
09:29 And that can be any minute, any day, especially the day and times we live in. Any day, any minute, God can take your life. Right? And then it’s too late.
09:37 And then there’s nothing to repair. There’s no way to repent. It’s too late.
09:41 You say, Brother Clark, how do you know that? Well, look at the rich man in hell. Amen. He wanted to drop a water and there was that big gulf and that gulf was fixed.
09:49 He could not get past that gulf. It was fixed. Amen.
09:53 God tells us through His word very clearly, hell is real, heaven is real, the choice is yours, and the choice is to be made today. If you are not saved, you need to accept Christ as Savior today. And if you are saved, you need to get right with God.
10:06 You need to repent before the Lord today and give him every single sin that you can think of and say, Lord, I don’t ever want to do this again. And ask him to change your heart so that he can do something through you and with you.
10:19 Verse 23, Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me, and to Him that ordereth his conversation aright, will I show the salvation of God.
10:32 So here we see hope, right? We see hope. God’s offering hope. Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me, and to him that ordereth his conversation.
10:43 That word conversation, as I understand it, could also mean behavior. His behavior, aright, will I show the salvation of God. So we see here an idea or kind of a part of how we’re saved.
10:51 We realize that we need help, that we order our behavior in a way that shows some form of repentance, right? Because we need help and we believe that we can’t do it on our own. We realize our sin debt. We realize our nature.
11:07 And that can be real difficult to do because we can have pride in our life. We can have a life full of moderation where we think we haven’t done anything wrong and full of good deeds and we think that we’re good enough, but we don’t need God, Amen. We can’t think of any reason why we need a Savior, right? And God’s saying, get real. Realize who you are.
11:27 Your righteousness is as filthy rags to me. Get right with me before it’s eternally too late. And if you do that, you know, if you seek him, if you knock, he’ll open, Amen. If you seek the Lord, the Bible says that he’s willing for all to come to repentance.
11:41 If you seek the Lord earnestly, he says here in Scripture, he’ll show the salvation of God. He’ll give you the ability to be saved. I believe that.
11:51 I believe anyone can be saved and nobody is too good or too bad that they don’t need to be saved or they can’t be saved. Everyone is eligible, yet not all will. In fact, we read about the narrow path and the wide gate in the Scriptures.
12:07 As I understand that or interpret that, most people will not. They won’t be saved. They’ll never take it seriously.
12:12 They’ll say, well, the crowd does this. The culture does this. Good enough for them, good enough for me.
12:18 Look, that is awful logic, okay? That’s terrible logic. You know, in the 50s, the crowd smoked cigarettes. The crowd, everybody did that.
12:26 And I’m sure there are people that were smoking cigarettes, eventually contracting cancer or serious disease to themselves or their children, and they said, well, the crowd did it. You know, that doesn’t mean anything. You know, the wisdom of the crowd is really faulty logic.
12:40 What we need to look towards is our source of truth. Is it the Bible? And if it’s the Bible, we see here in Psalm 50 that God’s going to show us a way to be saved. And we know that 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 is the gospel.
12:52 And we realize throughout reading all of the gospel accounts that Christ died for our sins so that we could be saved. That he drank of that bitter cup of the sin debt of the whole mankind, all the world from past, present, and future, so that we can be saved. And we accept that free gift of salvation.
13:11 We are set free and we’re not going to be condemned with the world. You know, if the world is right, how come the Bible says the world’s going to be condemned? Think about it. We don’t want to be condemned.
13:21 We want to be saved. And the Bible says there’s no condemnation that love the Lord. Those that have been saved, there’s no condemnation as far as I can understand it.
13:30 Even when bad things happen, Romans 8: 28 tells us it’s for our good, for those that love the Lord. Those that love the Lord are those that have accepted his free gift of salvation. And those that love the Lord are seeking his ways each and every day so that they can draw close to him and have that fellowship with Him and give Him that praise that He desires.
13:48 We are fully capable of giving him that praise if we will simply draw near to him and get right with him and live for him. And this scripture in Psalm 50 tells us to fear God. It’s natural to want to be our own captain and be in control, but we must fear God and reverence God and love God with all our heart, souls, and mind.
14:09 And we will enjoy life with him for that. Thank you so much. Take care.
14:13 God bless and Amen.