-Transcript-
00:29 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:32 Welcome to the cafe. Pastor Clark Covington here with another message. Hopefully you’re doing great, having a great day.
00:38 Got your Bibles handy if you’re not in the car, but if you’re in the car, then just go ahead and listen. We just ask the Lord to apply this Word to our hearts and our minds here today.
00:48 Today we’re in the third part of a three-part series on, When It’s Time to Go, Will You Be Ready? The idea is the judgment is imminent.
00:59 The Lord’s going to return soon and unexpectedly. The Bible writes about, or speaks to the Lord coming as a thief in the night.Revelation 16:15, behold, I come as a thief.
01:13 Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked and they seehis shame. You know, think about this. You know, God himself says he comes as a thief, right? And so think about that for a minute.
01:26 Just take a step back and say, okay, when would a thief come? Hmm. A thief, I think often comes at night and they come like at a time that’s very unexpected, right?
01:39 They’re going to come at a time, uh, maybe when you’re sleeping, take you by surprise or when you’re not home, right? And it’s going to be sudden, you know, you’re not, you know, you don’t imagine it to happen and then all of a sudden, whoo, God’s here. And then once, you know, this happens where the Lord returns.
01:58 Now you, if you’ve been watching, you’re saying, oh, hey Lord, I’m so glad to see you. I’ve been serving you. I’ve been, I’ve been, um, doing your will.
02:10 I’ve been living for you. I’ve been studying your word. I’ve, I’ve, I’m in fellowship with you.
02:20 And so I mentioned this years ago, I remember one of the opportunities I had to preach at our old church. I just said, um, you know, it’s like you go from life where you’re fellowshipping with God and praying to God and spending time with him. It’s like that conversation you’re having with the Lord just carries on right into eternity.
02:31 And that is the way I believe God wants us to be. That’s the idea of being clothed, having our garments on, being ready. And then you have this aspect of Revelation 16:15, where they, the, you know, the public or God himself sees your shame as in someone that has not lived for God.
02:48 That is totally in their own way, living how they want to live, chasing after worldly things, that individual, they’re going to be ashamed when they see God, because it’s too late at that point to do anything else.
03:01 And Jesus tells us in his, uh, in his word that every word that we speak here on earth will be judged.Matthew 12:35-37, a good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things.
03:16 And an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. But I say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment for by thy words, thou shalt be justified. And by thy words, thou shalt be condemned.
03:34 Now we’re going to get to the context of this verse in a minute, but just to, just to look at it, just as it is, think about this, what words could we speak, right? That we’d be justified by.
03:47 In, in, in looking at the prior verse that a good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things. Now, what could we speak that would bring, that would justify us, right?
03:58 That then was coming out of our heart, right? Because we know that’s what the scripture said, that out of the heart comes that treasure.
04:07 What good thing could we speak? I mean, I’m just thinking here out loud as we’re, as we’re talking here, as I’m talking on the radio, I suppose Romans 10:9-10, this is a founding verse.
04:15 This is the founding verse of our ministry that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth, the Lord Jesus, that confessing the mouth, confessing with your mouth, that be speaking and shall believe in thine heart, that God has raised them from the dead. Thou shalt be saved for with the heart man believeth under righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
04:37 Well, there you go. That’s it in a nutshell. Amen.
04:41 We almost could back it up and go home. That’s it right there in our heart. We believe, what do we believe that God has raised them from the dead.
04:48 So we believe in the cross. We believe what Jesus did on the cross, that he didn’t just die on the cross and was buried, but that he died on the cross was buried and was resurrected for us, that he bled, uh, shed his precious blood for us, for sinners and all have sinned
05:03 and come short of the glory of God. So for all mankind, Jesus died on that cross, but we have to believe it because just cause Jesus did it doesn’t automatically appropriate it to us.
05:13 We have to accept that free gift of salvation. If I knock on your door and say, Hey Bob, Hey Cindy, I’ve got a free gift for you. And you say, wow, there’s this large bearded man at my door, uh, saying he’s got a gift now, your, your reaction may be no, you know, this is a weird thing.
05:34 I don’t want a gift. I’m I’m good. I, I have money.
05:37 I have a job. I’ll get my own gifts. And I say, well, it’s very important.
05:42 You know, it’s very important for you to take it and say, no, I don’t want it. And you close the door. Now you didn’t accept that free gift.
05:47 I was willing to give it. I had already paid the price for it. And all you had to do was accept it, but you chose not to accept it.
05:54 Then therefore you don’t have that gift. And that is how a simple example. I know a simple one.
05:59 I know, but that is how God, I believe sees his perfect gift of salvation that he’s offering it to all, but it is only appropriated to, or only, uh, binded to those that accept that free gift.
06:11 And how do you accept it? You accept it in your heart, the deepest part of your soul, you, in your heart, you say, yes, I believe. And then out of your heart, that good treasure comes, uh, all the way out to your mouth and you confess it publicly.
06:26 You say it. That’s how we see here that we could be justified by our words. Nothing that we do, not our works, nothing else, but by, by our belief in our heart, that Christ has saved us from the sin curse and saved us from eternity in hell and
06:45 allowed us to be counted as worthy of going to God’s heaven in eternity with him and peace with him being reconciled to God by what he, and only he had done on the cross at Calvary and how God himself had raised him from the dead in the latter part of this verse.
06:59 And by thy words, thou shall be condemned. That can bring us to the context of the verse. This is Matthew 12:35-37.
07:06 Jesus is speaking and he is speaking, uh, to the Pharisees who in short order saw him remove a devil from an individual that could not speak and could not hear. And what did the Pharisees do? Did they celebrate? They praise him. No, they said, oh, that’s awful.
07:21 You’re a devil. You did that. Cause you’re a devil.
07:24 Well, that doesn’t make a lot of sense because as Jesus points out, why would a devil, why would the devil remove himself or another devil from a person that’s like weakening what he’s doing? Why would he weaken what he does? That’s that’s doesn’t make sense. That’s that’s silly. Okay.
07:43 And then Jesus is saying, and if it wasn’t the devil, it must be the kingdom of God. That’s at hand. And they hated that.
07:48 So they hate them. They want to kill them. They despise them.
07:54 And Jesus is saying, look, you may have said this idly. You may have murmured it. You may have grumbled it.
07:58 You may have screamed it, but whatever it is. Uh, verse 36 tells us, uh, Jesus said it himself. Your red letter text, verse 36 in Matthew 12, look it up that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.
08:14 And the idle word that the Pharisees were speaking was actually the unpardonable sin. They were speaking blasphemy against the Holy ghost as they looked at a living God right in front of their face. They didn’t have to have faith that God, the spirit was there.
08:27 They saw Jesus Christ in the flesh and didn’t have to have faith that he was God. They saw him work a miracle and yet they still said no. And you want to get into why it’s a deep study into why I’ve done this study.
08:41 The Pharisees were very powerful. They were threatened by what Jesus represented. They would lose their power.
08:47 They would, their pride would be injured. Uh, they, they would lose their status and potentially their wealth. And, uh, they put undue burden on people.
08:56 So they would be ashamed and they weren’t willing to do that. They weren’t willing to die to self. And so that created that conflict.
09:04 And Jesus is plainly telling them that they will be judged at the judgment, but this doesn’t just apply to the Pharisees. All will be judged either at the beam of seat, which is for the believer. That is the reward that we get from Christ.
09:13 And that is the judgment for the believer, which I believe is a good judgment, like a metal ceremony at the Olympics versus, um, the white throne judgment, which is not a good judgment.
09:24 And that’s where the lost go to face a holy, righteous God. And when they get there, they will all of a sudden realize that they’re helpless.
09:34 The example I gave in part one of this three part series, we’re in part three here today was a man that thought it’d be a good idea to represent himself in court and thought that he would have some wiggle room
09:44 and he could convince the judge and, you know, just arrogance and pride, Oh, I’ll get out of this. And then he goes and he realizes the judge is not having any of it. He realizes he’s not quite well-prepared.
09:56 He realizes the stakes are very high and all of a sudden he’s terrified of what’s going to happen. You know, there’s a feeling of helplessness. A feeling of lack of control.
10:05 And then, then comes this understanding of imminent destruction. You know, it’s kind of like, uh, you know, the bailiff or whoever you, you know, you go through all of the words that you spoke, you realize you rejected God’s free gift of salvation.
10:17 You realize that, that you have committed grave sin after grave sin, after grave sin, and again, you have all this understanding now that you didn’t have in the world because you were blinded to this sin because the devil had you in bondage to the sin.
10:29 And so you’re now realizing all of this and the bailiff says, come on. And there’s an elevator that’s going down to hell. And you know where that elevator is going and there’s no way to get off of it.
10:39 You’re going right to it. You know, that’s the understanding of that imminent destruction. And that’s going to happen to the lost person.
10:44 They’re going to be terrified. And we say to ourselves as believers, those that have been saved by the blood of Christ, what can we do? Can we stand by idly in good conscious?
10:53 No, we have to do something, but looking at our text verse, we can’t just go run and tell everybody about Jesus. Especially if we aren’t right with him ourselves, we have to model godly behavior and that starts with our own conduct and the scripture tells us that starts with our heart.
11:11 You know, the Bible says where your treasure is there. Your heart will be also right. Well, where is our treasure? Because the treasure coming out of the heart is what we speak.
11:20 And so if our treasure is in the world and material things in carnal things and things of the little G god of this world and status, then out of our heart is going to come wickedness and sin. And it’s not going to be useful to God. It’s not going to be fruitful.
11:36 It’s not going to bear fruit for God. God cannot use that. Amen.
11:40 The Bible tells us that a good tree can’t bear bad fruit and a bad tree can’t bear good fruit. So we have to get our heart right with God and we have to pray to God that he’ll open the hearts of those that we’re witnessing to, to have understanding as he did for Lydia Acts 16:14.
11:55 And a certain woman named Lydia, seller of purple of the city of Thyatira, which worshiped God heard us whose heart the Lord opened that she attended unto the things which are spoken of Paul.
12:06 And so Lydia, uh, was able to understand by the working of God, what the apostle Paul was teaching. And we need God’s power upon us to have others understand what we were trying to tell them about the judgment. Right.
12:23 Our only hope is in Christ, but how can we express that if we’re not a peculiar people, if we’re not set apart, how can we express that if we’re not showing love, if we’re not forgiving others,
12:35 if we’re too yoked up in the rat race, is your job, is your occupation more important than spreading the gospel message? Look, it all comes down to this.
12:45 When the world ends, what will our greatest accomplishment be? Our salvation and the salvation of others. That’s it.
12:53 Nothing else will hold weight at the judgment seat to help. Everything else will only hurt including and especially idle words. Ephesians 2:8-9, for by grace you’re saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast,
13:13 we’re given a gift when we’re saved and we need to understand how wonderful God has been to us and we need to get right with him and we need to provide a strong witness to others.
13:22 Not one that is obnoxious and hypocritical, but one that is loving, that is biblically based, that is persistent and consistent, that lines up with our lives and that hopefully the Lord will open the heart of that individual
13:37 and they’ll be touched enough to seek him and God will save them and you’ll have a part in it and it starts by understanding what is going to take place in the very near future and understanding that our priorities need to be lined up with what God would have us to do
13:54 and that once we have our priorities right, we have our heart right with God, by the working of the Holy Spirit, evangelism will blossom out of this. We will, look, if you study God’s word
14:06 and you get on fire for God, you love God, you pray to God, don’t worry about ministries, they’ll start bubbling up out of your heart because you’ll just have a desire to do more for God and when you witness to people, the power of the Holy Spirit will be upon you
14:19 and you’ll understand that witness and Lord knows some, some will be saved. Thank you for listening today.
14:26 Tune in next time. Take care. God bless and Amen.