-Transcript-
00:39 Welcome to the program. Welcome to the cafe. Hope you are doing well today.
00:44 Hope everything is going well with you. I thank you for joining me Pastor Clark Covington here at KJV Cafe. Today we are talking about something that affects many people, especially young people.
00:56 You know I have been around young people a little bit more lately. Of course we’ve got a teenager here and taking him to school or going to see his soccer games, you see a lot of young people. And taking our younger ones out and about, you see a lot of young people.
01:15 I don’t know, it just seems like lately I’ve been around a lot of young people and the Lord had just kind of given me a burden for them because I can think back to that time of being young and how feelings of just not adding up, not matching up, not being who I wanted to be, not sure who I was and what that led to, the behaviors it led to, the sadness and frustration it led to.
01:41 And I see so many young people today walking around trying out different personas, trying to feel like, see who they are, trying to figure out who they are. And they struggle with it, Amen.
01:56 I think if young people are honest, they’d mention that. We all struggle with insecurities and problems, but you especially see it with young folks. And so at the same time, you know, what do we desire deep down? We really desire peace and acceptance.
02:09 Is that not true? And does the Bible not have something to say about this matter, about what is God’s perfect plan for solving this problem? I believe the Bible does.
02:17 You know, 1st Peter, the whole chapter, if you read 1st Peter, it’s all about Christian living or right living for God. And let’s find out what it instructs on the matter of this feeling that we get, which deals with pride and humility and peace.
02:34 The idea that we as individuals, especially those younger folks, are dealing with pride, humility, or lack thereof, and a lack of peace, Amen. Our text verse, 1 Peter 5:5-7, Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble, Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time, Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.
03:12 So you see here, I mean, right in 1 Peter 5, it says here in the latter part of the verse, after the colon, for God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble. You know, if that were the, if I could give a subtitle to the message, that would be it.
03:31 And I think that we look at pride as something that is like evil. Pride is not necessarily evil. Pride is natural.
03:35 Pride is earthly. It’s fleshly. It’s cultural, amen.
03:43 And so it’s not that people, kids are, young folks, especially, it’s not like they’re inherently, they have some bad evil plan. They just don’t know any better, right? And so pride can creep in, right? And God will resist that. And for the humble, God gives grace.
04:00 So the problem with pride, you know, God resists the proud. Why? What is pride? The way that I would like to put it is this. Imagine you created a people and they became proud.
04:16 They didn’t do anything to deserve to be proud and you had created them. They aren’t following your rules, the law, which then exposes their faults. And so can you imagine if you created people and you had a way of a book, let’s say, that they should follow, and they never followed that book.
04:30 And you as a creator would look to them and say, this is my creation. I created them and they’re rebelling and they’re acting all different kinds of ways that are contrary to the way that I want them to live. That is, in a nutshell, what pride is like.
04:44 And because pride is this idea that we can do something or that we can make our own rules or we can live as we want, which is in rebellion to God, we are living naturally as a natural man would live. The Bible talks about the natural man being enmity or warfare with God. So we’re literally becoming at war with God.
05:05 And again, I would like to make the argument that this is being done without knowing, you know, this is being done without like, uh, a lot of the young folks, it’s not premeditated. Amen. Deep down.
05:19 They don’t think that they’re big stuff, but they, they don’t think that the Bible’s right for them. They don’t think the Christian life is right for them. They don’t think morals, uh, and good behavior is right for them because well, everyone else is doing it.
05:36 Everyone else is living against God. Imagine a movie in the movie theater and all their friends go see it. Well, the whole crowd is doing it, right? So it’s, it’s, it’s very subtle.
05:44 The devil is very subtle in the way he tricks young folks. And then you have pride and it leads to shame. Proverbs 11:2 when pride cometh, then cometh shame.
05:55 But with the lowly is wisdom. So we see a theme here that when you’re humble, God gives you grace. When you’re lowly, God gives you wisdom.
06:01 When you’re proud, you’re going to fall. When you’re proud, God is far from you. When you’re proud, you, you get shame.
06:13 Proverbs 16:18 pridegoeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. And oftentimes that’ll be shortened to pride goeth before the fall. Right? And these Proverbs are books of wisdom written by Solomon, the wisest man to ever live.
06:25 Amen. We should think about this. You know, when we’re proud, we are headed for destruction.
06:34 God hates pride. Proverbs 16:5, everyone that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord. Though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished.
06:42 This goes back to the idea that even though people together are proud, they’re groups of people that are proud. There is literally a pride parade rubbing, putting a thumb in the eye of God saying, we are doing it our way. We will pervert your way to do it our way.
07:00 You know, you say, don’t do this. We’ll do this. And the Bible tells us well, one to them that call evil, good and good evil.
07:09 Even though a group of people act proud like the world, it won’t stop God from rightly judging them. It’s an abomination to God. It’s an abomination to God.
07:18 We see that in Proverbs 16:5, what is an abomination? It’s a thing that causes disgust or hatred. Now we don’t want to make God disgusted. There are many people that are living proud lives that want to please God.
07:36 They just don’t know how, because they’re too proud to open up their Bible. They say, oh, I don’t need that. I’ve got the worldly books or the internet or my phone or whatever.
07:42 I don’t need the Bible. Proverbs 29:23, a man’s pride shall bring him low, but honor shall uphold the humble in spirit. So all we’re seeing here over and over again is pride leads to destruction, shame, lowliness.
07:54 And if you judge yourself, so to speak, if you’re lowly, humble, and not proud, then you have wisdom. Amen. You have wisdom.
08:05 In our text verse here,1 Peter 5:5-7, verse 6, humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of Godthat he may exalt you in due time, that he may exalt you in due time. God will exalt you. Amen.
08:17 God takes pleasure in the prosperity of his saints. Amen. I believe that there is a verse that’s not exactly saying that, but truly God loves the saints.
08:27 If you’re living humble, then you’re living righteous, I would say. I think you can make that equivocation. If you’re living humble, that’s part of righteousness.
08:34 And if the Bible tells me that God hears the prayers of the righteous, amen, that he is near the righteous, amen. Here’s the problem. When we live proud, we’re only fooling ourselves.
08:47 Galatians 6:3, for if a man think himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. And so we’re just tricking ourselves. And I have a simple example, and I know it’s simple, okay? But just think about this.
09:03 Let’s say you want to go to downtown, and let’s say downtown is to the right, okay? And you tell yourself, I am going to go downtown and I am turning left. And I’m going to drive until I get to downtown. And the more that you drive after you’ve turned left, the further you are away from downtown.
09:22 Does that make you right because you think you know the way? No, you’re just tricking yourself. If you’re convinced of something that’s untrue, it still remains untrue. And is that not what is sending many to hell today? Simple pride, saying I don’t need the Bible.
09:39 I don’t truly believe God’s word is literal. I don’t believe in the actual creation of the earth. Is that not what people are saying today? I mean, they are in the schools.
09:49 They’re teaching evolution. Amen. They’re teaching millions and billions of years.
09:56 They’re doing it in the libraries. Amen. I can tell you that.
09:57 They’re doing it on TV. Athletes that are gifted with all kinds of talents and skills, they’re not thanking God anymore. They’re thanking themselves.
10:05 And so this pride, even though you may be tricked or deceived, it’s only going to hurt you. You’re deceiving yourself. It’s not that God doesn’t change.
10:16 The Bible says there’s no variableness or turning with God, shadow of turning. He doesn’t change. The same God that was, is, and will be.
10:23 Amen. And so how do we deal with pride? God’s command for dealing with pride.Jeremiah 9:23, thus saith the Lord, let not the wise men glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty men glory in his might, let not the rich men glory in his riches.
10:37 So we should start by making sure we’re not glorying in anything that we have going for us. We shouldn’t glory in our wisdom, glory in our might, glory in our riches. I mean, think about that.
10:51 Wisdom, you think of professors, experts, professionals. You ever have a doctor talk down to you or a professor or whoever I have, a lawyer, they often glory in their wisdom. That’s not right.
11:02 Glorying in your might, you know, why is it so hard to be humble if you’re in a place of leadership? Amen. Don’t glory in your might. Don’t glory in your riches.
11:07 What can money buy you? What money, what can’t money buy you? Right? What is money? It’s simply something temporal here on earth. And look at what God thought of money. Many, many people in the Bible, great saints of God didn’t have it.
11:24 Amen. And they were highly exalted before God. In the Old Testament, the Israelites had earthly riches.
11:33 In the New Testament, it’s all about heavenly riches. Amen. So don’t glory in money.
11:38 So what should we glory then? We should only glory in the cross. Amen. We should only glory in the cross.
11:42 I love this verse, Galatians 6:14, but God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. So we should only glory in the cross. Amen.
11:56 That should be where we get our sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. That should be where we should be offering praise to God instead of being proud about something. That should be our glory.
12:06 And when we glory in the cross, we’re realizing our place and what Jesus did for us, what Jesus had to do to save us. Amen. He had to die on that cross to pay the sin debt that we could never pay.
12:20 Amen. And when we glory in the cross, we’re kind of putting ourself in the right proper position as lowly, meek, and humble individuals that need a savior. And after being saved, that need God more than ever.
12:34 Amen. And that is gospel truth. Amen.
12:40 That is gospel truth for the young people, especially. So as we wrap up this first part of this series here, I want you to think about young people. And if they just did everything I’ve described, amen, and I didn’t describe it, the Bible described it.
12:53 I just shared what the Bible had to say on it. If they just lived like that and got themselves out of the way and kept their focus on Jesus Christ and what he did for them on the cross, didn’t glory in anything the Lord had given them even at a young age, like riches or wisdom or might, you could take all of those things and you could put them into the context of being a high school kid or middle school kid or whatever it may be. But if young people just put their focus squarely on Christ, they wouldn’t feel that desire to fit in so much in school.
13:25 They wouldn’t feel the peer pressure so much to go along with the ways of this wicked culture. They wouldn’t, again, feel the pressure of the cultures. They wouldn’t even feel pressured as much by the teachers or even the type of grades they were getting because their security, their love, and their peace would come from Jesus Christ Almighty and that they would be focused on him.
13:48 And then when their focus was on him, he would then bless them. He would then exalt them in due time. He would then give them wisdom.
13:53 He would then give them peace. He would then fulfill all the promises in the Bible that are made to those that make God the true Lord of their lives. And I want you to think about that today because that is the prescription, I believe, for having peace as a young person in this tumultuous world.
14:08 So I ask you again, tune in next time as we get deeper into this message. I thank you so much for listening today. Take care.
14:14 God bless and Amen.