-Transcript-
00:26 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:31 Welcome to the Cafe. Pastor Clark Covington here with another episode of KJV Cafe. Who’s excited? Are you excited? I’m excited.
00:38 Who’s praising God today? I am. I hope you are. If not, you will be after this episode.
00:45 Amen. I shouldn’t promise, but hopefully you will be. It’s just good to be here today.
00:50 We’re looking in God’s Word at 1 Corinthians. We’re going to wrap up. This is the fourth part.
00:53 We’re going to wrap this thing up here today. Looking at the foolishness of preaching and not just how salvation comes about, but for the believer, how we are to be a witness to others, understanding God’s program for our witness, like how God wants us to be a witness, what he wants us to understand. We have to have empathy for those that we are witnessing to.
01:23 I’ve always heard this. I say always. I’ve heard this for many years, that you can’t argue somebody into salvation.
01:30 I agree with that. You can’t convince somebody. I know it’s called, what is it called? Confrontational soul winning.
01:39 Okay. Yeah. I think that is good.
01:44 You can disrupt somebody into thinking about it when maybe they just wanted to block it out of their mind. Yes. I believe that.
01:50 I’m a fan of like, even though I don’t scream and yell, I really benefited from many years of getting yelled at because I needed it and I was hardheaded and stubborn and so forth. I needed it. I think many others do too.
02:00 So again, like a saying, you can’t argue someone and you don’t, you know, oh, well, here’s the gospel. Oh, you don’t like it. I’ll run away.
02:09 You know, I’m not saying that, but at the same time, we have to understand how people are viewing us. And 1 Corinthians 1:18 tells us, for the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but to us which are saved, it is the power of God. And so we understand the preaching of the cross is the power of God.
02:28 We understand that salvation comes by the cross. There is no other way to be saved, but then only by believing that Jesus Christ died for our sins and was risen the third day. Amen.
02:41 And that’s what we believe. You do an altar call. What are you telling people? We were telling people, believe on Jesus, trust on Jesus, not specifically just who he is, but what he did.
02:50 And that means that we understand that we’re sinners, you know, and you get into Romans 3:23 and the rest of Romans road.
02:52 And you look at the idea that we’re sinners, Romans 3:23, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. For all have sinned.
03:05 It can sound like a blank statement. It is, I guess. But at the same time, we have to appropriate that to us, that we’re sinners.
03:12 And that’s, I believe, where salvation really starts to get cooking is when we realize our sin nature. And it’s very, very, very hard to do. It’s much easier to look at someone else and say, oh, look at that sinner.
03:22 It’s much harder to look within. And if you’re not in the Bible, then you don’t even really know maybe what counts as sin. You’re thinking sin is like murder or like, you know, killing somebody or robbing them.
03:32 But sin is much deeper than that. You know, you, you know, you have somebody that’s got a wandering eye that’s looking at people they shouldn’t be looking at. That’s a sin.
03:42 That’s lust. That’s called adultery in the Bible. You know, you got somebody that’s going into Best Buy and looking at all the computers and they can’t afford it or the cameras or the drones or the TVs, you pick whatever, car stereos.
03:55 And they say, I need this to be happy. That’s coveting. That’s a sin.
04:00 You know, on and on and on. You know, you’ve got somebody that is a great citizen and, you know, minds all their P’s and Q’s and has a lot of friends, they’re popular and they can’t stand their neighbor and they want to hurt their neighbor and not loving their neighbor. That’s a grave sin.
04:12 You know, sins are much deeper than we may understand. But once we understand what a sin is, we understand that we’re sinners, we understand we need a savior.
04:23 We realize Christ being perfect and sinless, living in this world 33 and a half years, being born of a virgin, perfect and sinless, goes to the cross and pays our sin debt.
04:32 He dies on the cross for our sin. The Bible says without the shedding of blood, there’s no remission of sin. So Christ being the perfect spotless lamb, sheds his blood on the cross at Calvary, literally sheds his blood.
04:44 And by his blood, we’re then believing on him, appropriating that sacrifice to us. We’re now saved. And God’s hand, Father God’s hand is upon Jesus Christ, the son.
04:57 He raised him from the grave the third day and he walked the earth 40 days and 40 nights. He was seen by over 500, amen. Christ is the Messiah.
05:06 We believe on Christ. We trust Christ as savior. We’re saved.
05:11 Okay, that’s the gospel in a nutshell. Again, you can see it 1 Corinthians 15, 1-4. You can see it throughout the whole Bible if you look close enough.
05:19 And this is foolishness to them that perish, to those that won’t believe. It’s not interesting. It’s not maybe, it’s foolishness.
05:30 Okay, we look like fools. And so in 1 Corinthians, we see that the preaching of the gospel, it doesn’t involve wisdom of words. We’re not trying to trick someone into being saved.
05:40 We’re simply trying to present the gospel message as God would have us present it. And we see 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 wise, mighty, and noble.
05:53 They would try to glory in their own flesh, in their own abilities, and God won’t have it.
06:01 He’s calling the base things, the despised, the weak things. He’s calling these people that are basically outcasts to share the word because he’ll get all the glory when those get saved. We can’t do anything good in the flesh, amen.
06:14 And arrogance and pride is crept into the church. There’s many gatekeepers. They want you to think you got to go through them to get the gospel, the gospel being exclusive to them.
06:24 That’s like the scribes and the Pharisees. And that’s an abomination to God. That’s abusing God’s gospel.
06:30 It’s God’s power. It’s his gospel. It’s his program.
06:35 And as we go out and soul win as we should, we must be about the father’s business. David, the king of Israel was a shepherd boy. Moses had a speech impediment.
06:46 Paul had that mighty thorn in the flesh. Gideon was the least in the tribe, the least in his family. These are great men of God that God used, and they were all in this world’s eyes, fools or compromised, or both, right?
07:01 Moses left the riches of Egypt, right? He left the riches of Egypt to go and help his people.
07:09 You know, that’s a pretty bold thing, you know, to have the riches and not keep them. Hebrews 11:26, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward.
07:26 He understood his payment, right, for living in this world would have been sin and the wages of sin is death.
07:34 And he understand his payment, his reward for living for Christ would be eternal glory.
07:40 And so he chose Christ, but he looked like a fool to many. We look like fools today to those that don’t believe.
07:45 This should not make us mad. This should not make us agitated. This should not make us, you know, unseemly or obnoxious.
07:55 This should inspire a childlike faith and humility to earnestly win the lost through empathy and understanding and love.
08:04 You know, we can’t expect a lost person to understand the gospel of Christ unless God moves them. In fact, what we can expect is persecution.
08:13 2 Timothy 3:12, yea, and all that will live godly. It says all here. 2 Timothy 3:12, yea, and all that will live Godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.
08:26 Again, if you’re being persecuted for your faith, you fit the bill. You’re living Godly in Christ Jesus. Amen.
08:33 Congratulations. You fit the bill. Why not make the gospel more believable to the lost? Why does God give us this task of witnessing to the world and the world’s looking us as fools because the gospel is tough to believe? Well, that is something that’s throughout the Bible.
08:52 Look at Noah’s Ark, how upset people get in science and, and so forth about Noah’s Ark that two of every kind could go on a boat, two or three, I should say, go on a boat with one family and repopulate the earth after God floods it.
09:06 You know, that absolutely drives many in the scientific community nuts. Yet there’s a lot of evidence that points to a global flood.
09:13 Just visit the Ark Encounter in Kentucky. We went there recently. It’s incredible how much evidence there are that points to a global flood.
09:19 But Noah’s Ark is something that’s very hard for people to believe. Sarah, Abraham and Sarah had the chosen child. How old? I think Sarah was 90, Abraham being 100.
09:28 My wife is 40. We, we’d love to have another child, but we joke around. It’s just too hard for her to even fathom.
09:35 I mean, she’s, you know, she’s, um, carried four, one in heaven, three here. And that’s a lot, you know, and she’s 40. And we were just like, no, it’s just be so hard on your body, you know, so hard and complications, et cetera.
09:47 And at 50 years to that age, and now Sarah’s going to have a baby. And God says, do you believe Sarah? In fact, was the one that laughed, you know?
09:58 And God said, what are you laughing about? You don’t believe look at Genesis. Amen.
10:04 So the unbelievable is part of God’s program. And we are called to believe the Bible says we are justified. Matter of fact, the Bible says Abraham was justified by faith.
10:11 He truly believed that at a, you know, he didn’t know it’d be a hundred, but at some old age, he’d have a child. The promised child. You look at who he had.
10:19 Abraham and Sarah had Isaac. Isaac has Jacob. He saw Jacob, right? And Jacob is the patriarch, the father of the 12 tribes of Israel.
10:25 Those same 12 tribes. We will see them in heaven. Amen.
10:31 The disciples, the Bible says we’ll rule over those 12 tribes. Okay. So this is the godly line happens in this miraculous way that could only be by God.
10:38 And that same example in the old Testament can be applied to the new Testament with Jesus Christ being raised from the grave. Amen. Again, the Jews couldn’t believe it.
10:48 Their Messiah. He’s coming from Nazareth. They don’t understand that.
10:53 Their Messiah is supposed to be from a kingly line. And he’s, he’s, uh, you know, his father was a carpenter, right? They knew him. They knew who he was.
11:00 They knew his family and said, this is the Messiah. They couldn’t believe it. So how do we effectively witness to people that have unbelief to people that look at us as fools? We must be humble, patient.
11:10 We must endure the shame and reproach like Jesus had, you know, those that will be saved will simply believe. And if we understand deeply enough, it is God that moves them to believe my wife and I talk about this. She’s a refugee.
11:27 She literally was named after the refugee camp. She was born in, in Thailand and she didn’t have any, you know, like a heritage of Christian faith. And she was a high schooler going to Dollar Tree looking for a new Testament.
11:41 You know, I was in a broken home and getting into every kind of sinful problem you can imagine. And I was standing there arguing my friends that the unborn should be protected in high school. You know, where does this stuff come from? Oh, I don’t know.
11:53 How about God? Amen. How about God had foreknew us before the world was formed? Amen. Not just us, but many others.
12:00 So God is going to move them to believe. He is just asking us to plant the seed because he is allowing us to gain heavenly reward. It is an opportunity.
12:08 It’s an honor. Amen. To save them to believe we are justified by faith.
12:15 The idea is that we can be saved only by believing God. We are taking him at his word. And it’s hard in today’s age.
12:21 1 Corinthians 1, 20-21. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
12:38 You see, God’s program is to take man at his wisdom, quote unquote, and flip it upside down to show that his wisdom is actually foolish. And what he thinks is foolish is actually wisdom, which is the preaching of the word.
12:52 The other inverse of this is the Bible says, well, unto them that call evil good and good evil.
12:58 It’s the same idea that in this world, there’s much perversion. They’re lifting up perversions of God’s word. Why and how? By the powers, the principalities, the devil.
13:08 In this world, the Bible calls the little g God of this world, the devil, the father of lies. He’s taking these lies and he’s making people believe them. And it’s making the gospel look more and more offensive and hard to believe.
13:19 But by faith, we’re simply believing God. And that sets us up to be saved. We simply believe, and we’re saved.
13:27 And the other side believes in the opposite. Amen. They believe in universalism and paganism and materialism, all these things that appeal to the flesh.
13:35 And so if you get ahold of this, you say, wow, God, you must be real because these two sides contrast so boldly. See, that’s a mystery of God that if you simply study the Bible and see how God would have it, he has two sides contrast so boldly to believe is this.
13:50 It’s everything the world is against, right? To believe in Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior, the only one being saved by the only true and living God in a world that promotes all these false gods and false religions and false ideals.
14:05 And they’re so highly contrasted. It’s very clear to us, but it’s foolishness to the world. So the power of God is concealed in the foolishness of preaching.
14:12 But if we understand this, we have to be patient and loving and kind and use empathy as we witness to others, understanding that they will look at us as fools, even though it is the power of God to salvation.
14:24 Thank you for listening. Tune in next time. Take care. God bless and amen