-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:42 Welcome to the cafe. Thank you for joining me. So great to be here at the cafe today.
00:47 Hopefully you’re doing good. Hopefully you got yourself a seat somewhere. The fall’s coming.
00:56 Maybe you got a sweatshirt or a blanket there and you’re ready to just study God’s Word or maybe you’re in the car and you got the heated seats on if you got a deluxe car or if you don’t, maybe you got a seat cover, something nice like that. It’s just good to be cozy and all snuggled in on these cool fall days. I’m so glad to be here.
01:15 Amen. And I’m trying to present a picture of a comfortable way to study God’s Word. And the reason why is because it’s great to study God’s Word and we should make ourselves comfortable.
01:27 We should enjoy studying God’s Word. In the Word it says that, let me grab the verse here to share in Job 23:12. Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips.
01:38 I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food. Job here is saying that God’s Word, and we have that in the Bible, amen, that God’s Word is better than our necessary food. Well, that will preach, amen.
01:54 And I remind myself of that because if you know me, you know I love a good meal, amen. And in the morning I remind myself, hey, you know, whether the food comes first or last, either way, let’s focus on God’s Word and make that the priority. And oh, how he blesses in that morning study time.
02:11 So again, hopefully you’re comfortable, you’re doing great, you have a high esteem for God’s Word. And today we’re going to talk about something very critical, and that’s the idea of what, if anything, is standing between you and God. And I want you to imagine here today a parent that has a child that they love very, very dearly.
02:31 And that parent, unfortunately, has been let down by this wayward child. The child has gone astray and forsaken the things that you’ve taught that child and the ways that you’ve taught that child. And here’s why the parents are distraught, not for their own pride, not for their own sense of importance, but they’re distraught because it’s to the child’s own destruction that they have gone astray.
03:00 A child joining a gang and the gang is committing violent crimes, and the child thinks they have acceptance and love and popularity. And the parent knows that the wages of sin is death. The parent knows that that child in that new gang will fall into great problems and turmoil and hurt because of the life that they are living.
03:20 That, my friend, is how the Lord feels about His children who have forsaken Him, who have not returned to their first love, who have gone the way of the world. Amen. And that is a big statement.
03:35 And certainly not everyone has gone astray. But take a look around in the churches today. Take a look around and see who’s there, but see who’s not there.
03:44 Or see who’s there, but they’re not paying attention. They might as well not be there. Have you seen that, amen? Have you been in church and seen people scrolling on their phones, looking at their watch, if they have a watch, thinking, hey, when am I going to get out of here? Skipping the night service or the Wednesday prayer meeting, not really involved.
04:07 Or maybe they used to go to church and now they don’t go except for a special occasion like Easter or Christmas. Look, many of God’s children, those that have been born again, those that have been saved by the blood, the precious blood of Jesus Christ, have turned and gone astray. And I want you to think about that.
04:25 That’s why I gave you that example of the parent. I want you to think of the parent that is hurting. You know, how much more so does it must grieve the Lord after giving His only begotten Son on the cross at Calvary when His beloved go astray? The one that He sent His beloved to die for go astray.
04:41 And I mentioned a gang that did sin. Well, maybe the gang that these children of God are hanging out with aren’t in some kind of violent gang, so to speak, but they’re going to an R-rated movie. Maybe they’re going to the bar to drink.
05:02 Maybe they’re listening to profane music. Maybe they’re blaspheming God. Maybe they’re gossiping.
05:05 Maybe they’re cheating on their spouses, on and on and on. And the ways and the things of God are so far from their mind that they could care less. And here in this little time, the Bible calls it a vapor, in this little poof of time that we have here on earth, instead of giving our devotion, our heart to the Lord as He desires for us to do, we go our own way.
05:25 So what I want to do today is again, paint that picture of that parent that is just hurt, not just hurt because of what they poured into the relationship, but also hurt because they’re seeing their child being hurt by the choices that they have made. And if you have had a wayward child, you know exactly that feeling. And it is like a punch in the gut.
05:45 It is a absolutely awful feeling. And that is a picture of how God himself feels when the church turns their back on him. But I want to take that broad picture and I want to zero in or narrow in a little bit more on what happened or why things got that way.
06:04 And I love turning to the book of Proverbs. Oh, I love preaching out of the book of Proverbs,Proverbs 1:5, a wise man will hear and will increase learning and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels. A wise man will hear and will increase learning and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels.
06:16 And what I want to talk about here today for the bit of time that we have is the idea of hearing, hearing. And we’ll look at the other aspects of this message in a later date, in a new message, I should say, but hearing, you know, we are to hear like children, Proverbs 1:8. So just three verses down in the same chapter, the first chapter of Proverbs, by the way, look at the real estate in the Bible. You think this is important to God.
06:47 You open up Proverbs. You know, it’s the book of wisdom. You know, it’s written by Solomon, the wisest man to ever live.
06:53 It’s King David’s son. Amen. And you open that book up.
06:57 And in the very first chapter right there in the first eight verses, you have this, a wise man will hear counsel will hear and will increase learning and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels.
07:06 And then verse u, my son, here are the instruction of my father and forsake not the law of thy mother. And I think when it’s addressing son, yes, it could be Solomon writing to one of his children, but why don’t we look at it as God writing to his children here, the instruction of thy father and forsake not the law of thy mother.
07:24 You know, when we put ourselves into the context of a child, then we can think how child think children think, you know, that’s why I’m messing up words here today. Cause I’ve got children who keep me busy. Amen.
07:39 I’m a homeschool dad. I’m so just blessed to be able to homeschool the kids in the morning before I get involved in the ministry and I get involved in business. And I, every morning, you know, I’ll talk with the kids and the children will look at me, uh, five and six years old, believing what I say.
07:58 Like I, they’re not asking for some, um, proof. They’re not saying, okay, dad, you said it, but can you, can we go Google this or dad, you said it, but I want someone else to say it or dad, you said it, but I don’t want to hear it. It’s oh, dad said it.
08:15 It’s true, right? That childlike faith. And so as they hear my instruction, of course, they’re not perfect. We all know that they’re not perfect, but as they hear the instruction of their father and they’re told not to forsake the law of their mother, right? They understand enough to know, Hey, you know what? My parents love me and have something good for me to hear.
08:39 And I’m going to try to follow it. They’re guiding me in the right direction. They have faith in their parents.
08:46 We as Christians, do we have faith in our heavenly father that we desire to hear from him? And then when we hear from him, we’re tuned in, we are listening. You know, if we look at our text for us again, Proverbs 1:5, a wise man will hear and will increase learning. Well, what’s the implication? A fool will not listen and will not learn.
09:10 And we know that our heavenly father wants what’s best for us. We know that the Bible is full of godly wisdom. We know that God’s word is important.
09:22 It’s fundamental to our faith. So why do we forsake it? Let me ask you a question here today. What comes before God’s word in your life? What comes before God in your life?
09:28 I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but when we’re talking about what’s standing between you and God, what’s standing between you hearing God, could it be something is getting in the way? Earnestly listening to what God is calling us to do with our lives is the most important thing we can do.
09:45 And he tells us in his words, so many things that he is calling us to do, to love him with all our heart, mind, and soul, to pray without ceasing, to depart from sin, iniquity, to go on the narrow path, to be separate from the world, to not be unequally yoked with the world,
10:07 to avoid things like fornication, to stay away from these lusts of the flesh, to do our best to love our neighbors, to forgive others, to forgive everyone. I mean, there’s so many commands in God’s word that are for us to listen to, but we won’t want to hear them.
10:32 And I want you to think about honestly here today, because I’m trying to give this message out of love and not out of a, oh, how dare you? What I’m trying to say is, look, God is hurt if you’re not listening to God and you know who you are.
10:46 And someone’s listening to this saying, brother, I agree with you, but I’m tuned in 1000% to the Lord. Well, amen, glory to God. You need to get up there and preach this one too somewhere, amen, because the world needs to hear it.
10:55 But for those that hear this and they know that they aren’t listening to the Lord, they know they’re not doing right. They know that there’s some things that have kind of snuck in there. Look, understand that God loves you and that God loves you so much.
11:09 It hurts him to see you hurting yourself through not listening to him, just as it would a parent, you know, as parents, anyone that’s been a parent and I’ve got three kids and those three children, when they do something that I tell them not to do and they get hurt, it hurts so bad and it’s incredibly frustrating.
11:31 And that is what the Lord, I believe, feels in heaven. And you’re saying, oh, God almighty is worried about little old me not listening to him.
11:42 Yes, God almighty is worried about little old you not listening to him. God loves you. God loves you so much he gave his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, to die for you.
11:48 God loves you so much that he gave you a way to approach the throne room boldly once you’ve been saved. You know, in the Old Testament, they didn’t have that. They have the tabernacle, they had the Holy of Holies, only like the certain priests could go in only once a year and they’d wear a certain thing.
12:04 And if they did anything wrong, they would die. It was a very serious thing, okay, to approach God. And it’s still a very serious thing to approach God.
12:11 But now the only difference is, is when Christ died on the cross, the Bible tells us that that veil that covered the Holy of Holies was rent in two or torn in two. And now we as believers can approach the throne boldly. God gave you a way to approach him and you say, I’m too busy.
12:26 And you say, I’ve got something else to do. And your phone’s going ding, ding, ding, ding, ding all day long. And that phone’s got you locked up on something or the TV or email or a game or an app or whatever it is.
12:39 We need to get back to our first love, friend. If this is you today, pray to God to ask him to forgive you of your sins, ask him to cleanse you from all unrighteousness and ask him to show you how to listen to him. And the Bible tells us very clearly that faith cometh by hearing and hearing the word of God.
12:59 And so I believe the Lord’s path will involve studying his word, spending time in his word and prayer time and making time for God. And then all of a sudden we can hear God. And once we hear God, oh, how our lives can get better.
13:17 Oh, how we can bear fruit for the Lord. And oh, how we can have that peace he so desires us to have and how we can do things for God that we can’t do when we’re out in this world and we can’t hear him. And there’s tons of scripture on this.
13:25 The Bible says the Lord is near the righteous. He hears the prayers of the righteous. It’s all over scripture, including Proverbs.
13:33 And so we know that God wants us to have right living and God wants us to hear him so that he will then hear us. And we know that that’s very hard in this wicked and fallen world where the pervert of this world, the little g of this world, the devil has messed everything up. The author of confusion.
13:47 Well, God’s not the author of confusion. He’s made it crystal clear how you can listen to him. And when you tune into him, oh, how you’ll be blessed and oh, how you’ll grow as a Christian.
13:57 And you can’t until you do. And so tune in next time as we go into what could be standing in the way of your relationship with God. And then we’ll get into at a later, uh, at the third episode, what God would have us to do once we’re tuned in.
14:12 I thank you so much for joining me. Take care. God bless and amen.