-Transcript-
00:24 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:28 Welcome to the Cafe. Pastor Clark Covington here with another episode of KJV Cafe. Who’s excited? Are you excited? I bet you are.
00:35 Amen. I’m excited. I’m happy to be here.
00:39 We love the Lord here today. We’re just diving into His Word, studying His Word, and as we study His Word, it leads to more understanding of who God is, and as you understand more, the God of love, you just have more love in your heart, you have more peace in your heart. I believe it’s true.
00:54 The best anecdote for a grouchy, groggy, whatever kind of mood is God’s Word. The best anecdote for lack of hope, depression, problems, stress, strife is God’s Word. It’s so good.
01:09 It is literally medicine, the deepest kind of medicine. They wrote that book, Chicken Soup for the Soul, you know, no, Chicken Soup for the Soul, that’s the Bible, amen, and that doesn’t even do justice to the Bible. The Bible is good.
01:23 It’s wonderful. Today, we’re talking about salvation, but maybe not like you’d think. We’re talking about the foolishness of preaching.
01:29 Oftentimes people that are preaching God’s Word, they look foolish. I think of the street preacher, not the one, by the way,
01:39 let me just go ahead and clear this up, not the obnoxious one that’s being offensive and saying things that are inappropriate, doing not God’s work,
01:50 I’ll put it that way, but the gospel street preacher who is preaching God’s Word with love and sincerity and kindness, and that can be loud, and that may be offensive, that the gospel is offensive, surely it is,
02:07 but I think of the street preacher, and you see the lost person, they’re just stunned, you know, they’re looking at the street preacher like, what? And then they hear there’s only one way to heaven, and it’s by your God?
02:18 Oh, okay. They grew up in this pagan universalism that the world puts out, and then all this materialism that they’ve coveted after their whole life won’t get them into heaven, won’t do them any good, and that there’s a real literal hell?
02:32 These topics are hard to swallow for the unbeliever, and the unbeliever is looking at the street preacher like, this guy is a fool, and the Bible actually says 1 Corinthians 1:18, for the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God.
02:58 Now, oftentimes a preacher will take that and rear back and start preaching on, you know what? This is salvation, and many people won’t get it, and that is true, but we’re looking a little deeper here today.
03:10 We spent episode one on this series looking at, we read all of 1 Corinthians 1, all 31 verses or so, and looked at the themes to help us understand the context of this verse, and episode two, which is a previous episode, we looked at the preaching of the gospel not involving the wisdom of words,
03:27 and I’ll kind of get a little bit, I’ll recap that a little bit more here, but the idea is that there’s context to this verse, and I believe the verse is both telling us that people are looking at the preacher of the gospel as a fool, but it’s also telling us that we should have empathy and understanding of who we are witnessing to.
03:53 So, think of it this way.
03:56 If you want to connect with someone, it helps to know who they are. As I used to work, my studies in college, graduate school, dealt with communication, public communication, go figure, and I was taught, and then as a teacher for a season I was teaching,
04:14 I taught about knowing your audience, and this helps us to understand our audience, that the preaching of the cross is foolishness to them that perish, and the tells us that God wants all to be saved.
04:27 You know, Christ died on the cross for all that would believe.
04:34 We understand that we’re justified by faith, and so if we understand this idea that God wants to, as the old preacher says, win them, wet them, work them, you know, get saved, get baptized, and then go and witness, be an evangelist, if God desires us to do that, and I believe he does,
04:50 then we need to understand who we’re witnessing to, and in the last episode we talked about preaching the gospel doesn’t involve the wisdom of words.
04:59 It doesn’t even involve, like, big names, you know, 1 Corinthians 1:26, for you see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called.
05:11 The wise, the mighty, or the noble, they’re not called.
05:15 Who does he use? God uses the base things, the weak things, the things that are despised, and you could say the people, the base people, the weak people, the people that are despised, you know, I certainly feel weak most days for whatever reason, I don’t know,
05:31 and I just, you know, I shouldn’t, but I do. I feel tired, I feel stressed, all these things, and I look to the Lord, and I say, God, I can’t ask you why, really, because as I read your word, your word confirms that that’s who you use.
05:46 So, okay, Paul himself wrote, you know, he glories in his infirmities.
05:51 Why did he glory in these things that he called the thorn in the flesh, that he prayed to God three times that God would remove?
06:03 Well, he glories in them because God’s power is shown through him. As he is made weak, God is made strong. God’s gospel is simple, amen. People are adding to it, complicating it.
06:11 The example I gave last episode was the Pharisees and the scribes, and God just wants us to preach it simply. So maybe another reason why God doesn’t use people with all these skills and talents is God doesn’t need those skills and talents,
06:27 and chapter 1 of 1 Corinthians ends there, and I’ll just, let me find it, chapter 1, 1 Corinthians ends verse 31, that according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord, right?
06:40 And verse 29, two verses earlier, it says that no flesh should glory in his presence. And so the idea is we don’t, God doesn’t want us doing something miraculous in our own power and taking the glory and getting in front of God and saying, look what we did, God.
06:53 That’s not how God works. God’s going to use a vessel that is humble, the idea I’ve heard before from other preachers, I think it was Adrian Rogers that said this, like a horse that’s been broken in.
07:04 You know, a broken horse isn’t a horse that’s not useful, it’s one that is useful because it understands its bounds, his or her bounds, and understands where the boundaries are and what they need to do.
07:17 It’s not that it’s completely weak, it’s power under control. That’s what meekness is. And so we understand here that God uses those folks.
07:25 And you say, well, Brother Clark, you’re saying that God uses those folks. Can you give me some Bible examples? Well, I’m glad you asked, or I’m glad that I hypothetically asked myself. Here’s some biblical examples.
07:37 David, King David, right? Who was he? You know, he’s a shepherd boy, but he had faith. I was talking with Brother Gene up at WHPUI this year, last week. He asked me, what’s the name of David’s brother? I said, I can’t recall.
07:54 He said, exactly, because David was the one that had faith. And he was kind of just hammering home that point. But King David was a shepherd boy.
07:59 He was bringing the lunch to his brothers. He couldn’t fit into the king’s armor. I mean, he was, you know, just the least likely individual.
08:07 And God used him mightily to kill the bear, to kill the lion, to kill Goliath, to rule over the Israelites, to win many battles. He was a man of God’s own heart, far from perfect. But hey, King David is very highly regarded.
08:19 Look at the Psalms and the real estate that King David holds in the Bible. Look at how Jesus describes himself as from the line of King David. Oh, it’s so wonderful that God used a shepherd boy like that.
08:31 How about Moses? He leads Israel out of bondage. Look at Moses. I mean, he was basically orphaned on a raft, amen? He didn’t have anything.
08:39 He had a speech impediment. He had to implore God, say, God, I need some help. I need my brother or someone to speak for me because I can’t talk right.
08:46 Look, in leadership, with a leader, it helps to have quality communication skills. And so with Moses, he had a speech impediment.
08:56 And the great Moses, again, he wrote the, I think you say Pentateuch, you know, the Old Testament books, the first five or six books there of the Bible and the Old Testament that the Jews hold as their Bible, their Torah, amen. Moses wrote that.
09:11 Moses is so highly regarded. He led the Israelites out of Egypt by the power of God, by the working power of God. He split the Red Sea.
09:19 And he had a speech impediment. He had many, many issues. And God used him greatly.
09:24 Paul had that thorn in the flesh that was not resolved. And Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, Paul was the least likely person could have been used. He was a persecutor of the church.
09:35 And yet God used him so mightily. All of these examples, God gets the glory. One more, how about Gideon? Gideon in the 300, amen. That’s a very literal example.
09:45 Gideon saves Israel from the oppression of the Midianites. And Gideon himself says, God, I’m the least in my tribe. I think it was the tribe of Manasseh.
09:53 I’m the least in the tribe. And I’m the least in my family. And he’s saying, I’m the lowest of the low, God, right? And then God said, I’m going to use you, Gideon.
10:01 And Gideon gets his army. And God says, no, we need to keep lowering these numbers because it’s got to be improbable. It’s got to be incredible so that all the glory comes to me, you know?
10:13 And that is examples of people that God has used that weren’t mighty or noble.
10:19 And I’m sure Paul was thinking of some of these examples as he wrote 1 Corinthians 1. So what should this inspire in us? Earnesty, like a child, amen? You know, the Bible tells us we need to have that childlike faith.
10:31 And I think that that’s a point that really could be hammered home a lot in this day and age. That we need to have that humility and earnesty.
10:37 How about this? You know, err on the side of maybe being a little hard on ourselves and more loving towards others. Err on the side of letting God be the one that lifts us up, amen.
10:49 Letting God be the one that builds us up. You know, that’s biblical, by the way, that God would lift up the humble, amen. I believe that.
11:00 I know that that’s in Scripture. Err, let’s see here. James 4.6, but he giveth more grace, wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.
11:07 He resists the proud. There are many proud people that are trying to do something for God, and they’re probably hitting a lot of walls because they’re proud. And God’s saying, I’m not going to use them.
11:18 I love Luke 14:11, for whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased. And he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. You know, that’s, there are times that I get down and out, and the Comforter, capital C Comforter.
11:33 I was reading about that in 2 Corinthians this morning. The capital C Comforter will come and lift up my spirits. Maybe it’ll just be a thought, an emotion, just some sense of peace over things that I can’t describe because I’ve already convinced myself, hey, what can I do, Lord? I’m nobody.
11:54 I’m nothing, amen. We have to have belief that God can and will do mighty things through us if we have that earnesty in us, amen.
12:00 And that earnesty is going to lead to what? Faith in Him. Faith in Him. Are we trying to do things in our own flesh? Cain and Abel is a great example from Genesis.
12:12 Cain was trying to do things in his own flesh. He said, I’m going to bring my offering that I want to bring. And God said, that’s unacceptable.
12:21 And he was so jealous, he killed Abel. He became a vagabond. He became someone that couldn’t go near God.
12:28 He was absolutely a recluse because he disobeyed God because he had pride in his heart and jealousy and envy and coveting and all these things that we need to get rid of.
12:36 And when we do that, how does this all link up with the foolishness of preaching? When we do that, then we have the right attitude to witness to others. We can be used by God.
12:50 The most powerful witness, I believe, is one that is relatable, that you see somebody that is going through something that God has allowed and say, hey, I’ve been there. I’ve dealt with these issues myself. And let me tell you what God did.
13:10 I witnessed a young man one time, and I didn’t know what I was doing, to be honest with you. And he was in a situation that was very, very dire. And I just sat down on the porch with him and I said, I don’t know exactly what to tell you.
13:24 I’m, you know, I’m nobody. I’ve been through a lot of problems myself, but I trusted Jesus and he changed my whole life. He made everything better.
13:34 He did what I couldn’t do. And that’s a truth. And there was sincerity in my voice.
13:43 That was pretty much the whole scope of the witness. And that young man ended up going through the program to get physically back on track. He ended up getting saved, his beautiful family.
13:53 And God did amazing things with that man, that young man. And that witness was simply in humility. And so when we understand that there’s skepticism around the gospel, there’s skepticism around Christians,
14:06 and we have a humble witness about us and we point to Jesus and we point to Romans Row, we point to the cross, we point to what Christ did at Calvary.
14:16 God will do the rest. Amen. We just plant the seeds.
14:20 We spread the gospel. Out of time here, but tune in next time as we get deeper into 1 Corinthians 1 and the foolishness of preaching.
14:27 Thank you for listening. Take care. God bless and amen.