Hey, men, glory to God. Welcome to the program. Welcome to the cafe, Pastor Clark Covington. Here is another episode of KJV Cafe, and we are going without music, and I'm not going to keep announcing that we're going without music, but, you know, maybe you missed a few days and then you tune in. So we don't have music anymore. Just for the heck of it, just change a pace, amen, no introduction here. Because for most people, I think they listen often and they don't need the introduction. So there you go. Welcome to the program, and thank you for listening, amen. We're going to dive right in. We're moving along here to Genesis 22, 13, and 14. And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and behold, behind him, a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. And Abraham called the name of that place, Jehovah Jairah, as it is said to this day, "In the Mount of the Lord, it shall be seen." Okay. So we spoke of the obedience of Abraham and the willingness to sacrifice of Abraham. We spent several episodes on that, and we talked about the modern day application of living for God, being a sacrifice of ourselves, the idea of taking up our cross, of bearing the reproach of Christ. So one good mark of how if you're living for God or not, or are you doing what God wants you to do, one good example or sign would be, are you facing opposition? Is it hard? Like, is it challenging? Is it discouraging? I mean, I don't know how to say it. I know the scripture says 2 Timothy 3 12, yay, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. All, all everyone that lives godly in who in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. So if you're not facing any kind of headwinds in the ministry, just either buckle up and wait or keep doing more whatever it is. But that is, that's the telltale sign. And I remind myself of that, because it seems as from day one, being in the ministry, there has been problem and snare and trial and opposition and almost at some points, comically, like, you know, literally comically, you're having a family over with a presentation of the gospel. And, you know, the fire alarm goes off stuff like that, but not just that, but every day, you know, every day. And that is a biblical sense of Christian living. So if when people hear me explain, the Bible is telling us to live in the sacrificial state to take up our cross, to show agape love, to live as Christ lived, to obey his commands. And people hear that and they may think, well, you know, I just want to be happy and live good. Now, the Bible says all that will live godly will suffer persecution. And so if you've made it so that you can acclimate in the world and everything's going great in the world and you don't have any persecution when it comes to the ministry, then therefore that tells you what you need to know. All right, so moving on here, we see a very clear picture of Christ with this ram stuck in the thicket. This is a picture of Christ and the atonement, which we're going to get to we come back from this break. So stay tuned. Hey, it's break time around here. Thank you for listening to kjv cafe. If you haven't already, visit kjv cafe.com for more information. All right, so we see here probably not new to anybody who spent some time in the Bible, but still incredibly important. Abraham, he lifted up his eyes. So he's over you picture Isaac bound up on this altar laying down you picture Abraham stretching forth his hand with a knife. Right. So looking down, presumably Abraham is standing up Isaac is laying down. And then you see the angel, the Lord called unto him out of where out of heaven. Okay. And so heaven is also referred to as the sky in the Bible. So you have three heavens, the first heaven where the birds are clouds are, etc. Second heaven that would be like our space where the planets and stars are. And the third heaven were God resides. Okay. So the Bible actually speaks the idea that God's place is the third heaven. And this is where it is. And some believe there's a body of water or ice in between the second and third heaven. For time's sake, well, I think it's all that in another time. But safe to say Abraham looked up. Amen. He looked up. And when he looked up verse 13 says, and Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And so if you imagine that, it's looking up his attention is on God through the voice of this angel. And he must hear some, you know, rustling or something of this ram. Now, what are the odds, you know, that that a ram, right? And what is a ram? You know, what is what is what is a ram? I think it is a male baby sheep, I think. And so I want to make sure I look that up. Yes. Yep. In terms of sheep, this is from Purdue University, they must know, right? In terms of sheep, a baby sheep is either called a you lamb, if it's female or a ram lamb, if it's male. All right. So there you go. A young male lamb. Jesus is the lamb. What are the odds? The lamb would be there at that point. God is able to do anything he wants. He's fully sovereign. And this will change the way you view the world. If you really think about it, God has ordained everything to happen as it has and he's fully in control. He's fully in control. Like, so where you are today is because he's allowed you to be there today. He's fully sovereign. Nothing happens without his knowledge. There is no panic in heaven over what's happening. It is completely in line with what he knows is to happen. And if you read the Bible a lot, you spend a lot of time in there, you'll notice there's mentions of this. God allowed you to be kept, you know, captured as your punishment, right? By the Babylonians, the captivity, right? Or the judges, you know, they were here. God put the judges in place to do this to you. God gave you salt rule over you because you want an earthly king and not the heavenly king. Over and over again, it speaks to God doing this. God doing that. The whale swallowing up Jonah. God did that, right? That wasn't a coincidence or an accident on and on. God allows it. Bring that all the way down to modern times. The archeological discoveries that seem to happen more and more frequently of biblical antiquities. And I don't even know if I said that correctly, but Bible stuff in Israel and around there. God allowed it. You know, think, have you ever asked yourself, why does God allow the seal of David to be found or the cylinder of Cyrus to be found, which backs up these biblical accounts, but not the Ark? Maybe it's because if the Ark was found, and I'm speaking of Noah's Ark in that case, but you could also say the Ark of the Covenant, but maybe it's because if these things were found, faith wouldn't be as applicable. And he wants people to believe. And so God is all powerful. God is in all control in every aspect of our life. And again, if you do research on Bible passages to get context on them, oftentimes you'll, you'll find something was discovered and it looks like it's totally coincidental or serendipitous. It's not it's God sovereignly allowing this thing to be discovered to help you understand he is real, right? And, you know, someone, there was a picture I saw on social media the other day of a real ornate insect or something had all this beautiful pattern. And then there was a another thing I saw where these two little fish amoeba things in the water deep in the water, if they get hurt, they can like blend in together and share their own, their own internals. And then of course, we're studying trees one time in church. Don't ask why, but it's a long story. But the trees can like their roots can go in and share air. And the plants, the seed is dispersed through the wind. I mean, if you study nature, you will know there is a true God. I came to a firm belief in God just being real in general in freshman year astronomy class. And I'm not a good science student, if you couldn't have already tell, you can't already tell. And I barely passed that really patient teacher was very, very kind to me to give me whatever I got a CRD. But he was very kind to allow me to get through there. But I came to the conclusion as little as I could understand that the precision in which the universe operated, the position in which the sun would light the earth and all these things, I said, there must be a God. Oh, he's an intelligent designer. Oh, look how intelligent this is. I'll never, I vividly remember to say, that's it. There's a God, you know, being 18, 19 years old, and in the world, not even being in church, nature, the Bible says nature testifies to God. Okay. All right. So God is all power. He is purposely putting that ram there. Abraham doesn't need to be told to notice in the scripture that the angel doesn't tell Abraham to sacrifice. He just says don't do anything to your son, your only son. So Abraham just grabs a ram and does it, right? Sometimes God doesn't have to tell us to do things. We just know to do them, right? We just know, like we're convicted or we just he's given us that knowledge. Boom, we're going to do this. And so he sacrificed that ram, that baby boy lamb, amen, picture of Christ in place of his son. Okay. And so this at the simplest way, and then we're going to get into scripture and dive a lot deeper, but in the simplest terms, Jesus Christ is the substitute for us because we couldn't pay our own sin debt. And so the Bible speaks to God being holy. He can't be around sin. He can't stand sin. And sin requires a payment. Okay. There must be a payment and there must be restitution given the biblical word recompense, right? Something needs to be done for sin. We cannot pay our sin debt on our own. That's why our works. The Bible says are as filthy rags and the translation literally is like dirty gauze pads. They're disgusting to God. So if we say we're not that sinful, you know, and we do something we think is powerful. God is disgusted by that. Okay. So our works don't save us. Our personalities don't save us. Our pedigree doesn't save us. Certainly our finances don't save us. If anything that often leads in the other direction, the more you have, the less you want to seek him. But that's another message. Nothing saves us but the blood of Christ. So it wasn't just Jesus coming to earth that saves us. It was him going to the cross and see they're plucking out his beard hair and they're beating him brutally and they're just mocking him and ridiculing him. And he's having to take on the sin of all humanity, past, present and future. He's doing all of that, right? He could have instantly, he could have blinked. He could have had a thought and wiped them all out and leveled leveled them all to the ground and established his throne and then whatever else he wanted to do. But instead, he was quiet. He said not a word. He suffered and suffered and suffered. The Bible says he was obedient unto death and threw his obedience and threw his shedding of his precious blood, him being innocent, him being sinless, him being falsely accused. I mean, when somebody falsely accuses me, I literally get read in the face. I can't stand it. If you've been falsely accused, you know what that's like. The Bible speaks to God, aiding a false witness. And Jesus had plenty of them and he had done nothing but heal and perform miracles and love and show them the ways and truths of God. And that's all he did. He explained that. He said, what have I done? You know, when they came to get him in the garden, he said, what have I done, preached in front of you, have done nothing but taught. And now you want to kill me? He had done nothing wrong. And yet he was obedient unto death. And that death is the taking on of the sin, dying, shedding his blood. The Bible speaks that there's no remission of sin without the shedding of blood. He shed his blood. He died for us in the cross at Calvary. It was risen again three days later so that we could be saved. Walk the earth 40 days and 40 nights was seen by over 500. It ascended up to the right hand of the Father. That's where he is today alive and well. He did that. He suffered that so that we could be saved. When we simply believe on what he's done, we don't have to be a church member. We don't have to do this. Don't have to do that. We simply believe. Say, Lord Jesus, I believe you died for me. I believe I have a sin that I can't pay, that my deeds won't do it, that nothing will do it other than your blood. I believe in you Jesus. If you pray that prayer today, you can be saved. The Bible speaks to the idea that once you accept Christ as Savior, you make him Lord of your heart. You turn from your, you repent. You turn from your wicked ways. You say, God, I want to accept you as Savior. You make you Lord of my life. The Bible speaks to you being a new creature in Christ, of receiving the Holy Spirit, of being born again, of your name being written down in Lamb's Book of Life, never to be blotted out, never to be erased, but you will spend eternity with Jesus Christ and all the saints in heaven forever, that you will never be apart from Jesus, that he will always be with you, that he will never leave you nor forsake you, that all the promises of God will now be applicable to you because you have accepted him as Savior. He now becomes your heavenly Father. That is the idea of salvation through Jesus Christ alone. That's the idea of being saved by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. See, we're not saved by anything else. It's it. We simply believe in Jesus Christ. And when we believe in Jesus Christ, we're saved for an eternity. That means that someone could be on death row and if they truly believe in Jesus Christ, they're saved. And someone could be the President of the United States. And if they don't believe in Jesus Christ, they're going to hell. The Bible speaks to God not being a respecter of persons. God wants all to be saved. And you could be saved today if you trust in Jesus Christ. Thank you for listening. Take care. God bless any men. Thanks for listening to KJV Cafe and we'll see you at the Cafe tomorrow.
