a man. Glory to God. Welcome to the program. Welcome to the cafe. Pastor Clark Covington here, the another episode of KJV Cafe. No introductory music. Amen. We cut that out last episode. Where have you been? No, I'm just trying to do something a little different here. Still have a break in the program, but no introductory music or anything like that. We're just kind of going straight into it. Maybe gives us a few more seconds of Bible study. Just kidding around. But if you're new to the program, welcome. We are a verse by verse Bible study from Genesis to Revelation, taking our time to really study the scriptures. Amen. And today we are in Genesis 22. We're looking at two verses here. And that is verse 11 and 12. The angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, here am I. And he said, the angel said, lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do do thou anything unto him. For now I know that thou fear us God, seeing that it's not withheld thy son, thine only son from me. And so we see Abraham's obedience and sacrifice. And today we're looking at the idea of how do we bring that into the modern time for the Christian? Like, how can we be obedient and sacrificed to God? What does his words say about it? And we looked in Hebrews specifically at Hebrews, let's see here, Hebrews 13, there it is. Verse 15, by him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually. That is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. And so Jesus fulfilled the law by dining on the cross for our sins. He was the perfect sacrifice, the atonement. And in the next episode, the next several episodes, Lord willing, we're going to look at the atonement. We're going to look at the substitutionary death. We're going to look at that idea because there's a ram on the thicket and Abraham doesn't have to sacrifice his son because God provided the ram. God provides the perfect lamb in Jesus Christ. And we're going to look at all of that very shortly. But before we get to that, I wanted to touch on Abraham's obedience one more time to help us to understand in the Old Testament how people would react to this. This would be a very strong and powerful thing for them, understanding the sacrificial system. So in Bible times, right, they would understand the sacrificial system. What do you see throughout scripture and illustrated especially in detail in the Old Testament, the sacrifice, the labor, the holy of holies, the show bread, you know, on and on, right? And it is an incredibly important thing to God. It is incredibly holy. It is a very perilous thing to be involved in. You see Aaron, that's Moses brother. I think it's his two oldest sons end up being killed by God for offering strange fire. They weren't offering a proper sacrifice. You go all the way back to Cain and Abel, right? And Cain is cursed at a vagabond because he killed Abel because he was jealous of Abel's sacrifice and offering that was accepted and his was not. So throughout humanity, it's a big deal. Again, especially the Old Testament, you see so much about the peculiarities of it, as I understand it, the priests at that time could only go into the holy of holies at once a year. And they had to wear like a hem on the feet of, you know, on their pants, their robe, I should say, they were pants, their robe. And it would have bells on it because they may die if they do something wrong. And you had to listen for the bells to see if they're moving around or not. Very, very serious thing. And now we can offer a sacrifice to God that is so unique and so personal and that is the sacrifice of praise, which we'll get to when 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 kjvcafe.com for more information. So I'll start with a story and I'm keeping it brief. I'm watching the timeline, guys. So I really don't want to get out of lockstep with this because I could go on a tear for probably like 30 episodes or something. We're not going to do that. We're moving around along here. I was in a church, a different denomination. Well, yeah, different denomination. So, and I was a young person. So I say college age. How about that? A little bit older, you know, just out of college at that time. So it's 22, 23. I'd been saved. And there was some hard preaching at this church, but it was a very large church full of, you know, all different kinds of people. And it was a church that had grown so big. There was a lot going on there, right? There was a lot going on and, you know, in a way that may not always signify biblical living. And so, I just thought to myself, what's up here? You know, as someone that had grown up in the world, I grew up outside New York City. So I literally grew up like in the Egypt of this world, you know, the worldly, ungodly things. I'd seen it all done it all. Unfortunately, saved, I guess, a little later in life. And I'm trying to like reconcile, you know, if the preaching is true, we'd have to live so much different than we live in this world. And if not, then why, you know, why is the preacher getting up and saying that? Because everybody, a lot of people, not everybody, but many people in there didn't seem to be living like what he was saying to do, right? And saying, don't do this. Don't do that. You know, apart from this, apart from that, I'm like, well, people aren't living like that. I see these people at the tailgate or at the bar or whatever it was, right? And so I'm just trying to reconcile in my mind, you know, like, who are you God? Like, what do you want from us, right? And this is the modern day Christians obedience, I think, to live for God wholly and fully, to truly sacrifice in that they should take up their cross daily. They should love the Lord with all their heart, mind, and soul. They should depart from the unclean thing. They should live a life separate from the ways and things of this world. And what that means is not engaging in sin, not reveling in sin, not going around anything unholy. God is a holy God, and He calls us to live holy. Now we can't live perfect. Again, I try to reconcile this, like, we're not even able to live perfect, but God wants us to try, right? And what He wants us to try is not to be perfectionists, but He wants us not to use the excuse that we're sinful creatures, not use the excuse that we're saved by grace to live in sin. Because Paul writes that that would be like crucifying Christ, a fresh. And so instead we are to live a life consecrated to God, dedicated to God. And when you do that, that is a sacrifice of the truest sense. There you will face rejection. When you live for God, people will reject you, especially in the church, by the way, especially in the church market down, you will have a lack of people understanding you. You will feel like an outcast and oftentimes downtrodden. You may struggle with depression and frustration in this life of separation, because it's kind of like everyone's at the party, and you can't go even if you were invited, right? Departing from sin and the unclean thing, it's like not going to any worldly movies, not listening to any worldly music, not going to bars and clubs, not not drinking, not vaping, not doing drugs, keeping yourself pure and unspotted the best you can, not going to the casino, not watching that bad thing on your phone, not downloading that bad app, not coveting everything in this world. Following Christ calling on your life, even when man doesn't think it's a good idea, even when your family doesn't think it's a good idea. How about this? Having others take advantage of you and or disrespect you and you don't respond. You don't get your pound of flesh. You don't even get a word in edgewise. You don't respond. You feel like you're ready for this heaven you've read about. This heaven that God has prepared for you, but you're not that you're not yet there. Paul writes that's that no continuing city here, right? You bearing this suffering and shame as Christ has to live. This life is not easy and that people want to make it black and white and say this nutcase, you know, Bible teacher says everybody should be weird and make a theocracy. I didn't say any of that. I said, you should take Christ at his word and follow him. He says in the red letter text, if you love me, keep my commandments. He said that, you know, the in the 10 commandments, what is like the most important commandment according to Christ to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind and soul. The other one, obviously, to love your neighbor as yourself. You know, God said these things in his word. So what we're really dealing with is, do we take his word seriously? And by seriously, I mean, do we believe? Do we really believe that God is who he says he is in a order of them that diligently seek him? And if we believe such a thing, are we willing to act upon it? I use this dumb example all the time. And I don't know why, but it's not dumb if God gave it to me. But I mean, it's just a simple example. If it's raining out and I tell you it's raining and you come downstairs, say you're in my home, your guests in my home and say it's raining out. And you see the umbrella and you say, no thanks and you walk outside. What is your action showing forth that you don't believe it's raining or you don't care, right? God says all of these things in his word, right, through his word, did to live for him, amen, to depart from sin, to repent before him, amen, to get pride out of the way. And all of the rest, amen, to take up your cross. He tells us these things. And what does man say? No, thanks. And just walks out the door without the umbrella, so to speak, right? And then they get rained on. Now it's not like living for God and living separate from the world is all bad in the sense that, you know, I mentioned a lot of things that are hard to deal with. It can be quite fulfilling. You'll have peace that no man could ever experience, to be honest with you. You'll have God's ear. The Bible says that God hears the prayers of the righteous and is far from the evil. You know, everybody wants to pray when something's going wrong, like that SOS prayer. How about those that have determined to live for God when they pray, he hears their prayers? So you'll have the ear of God. You'll have peace that surpasses all of your standing. You'll have purpose that the world knows nothing about. So the world's purpose oftentimes is manifested through gaining worldly riches or power or whatever. And you can have none of those things and have a much greater purpose and a much greater reward that's eternal, that doesn't rot or decay or whatever. So we see that it's a lot of good things that comes with following the Lord, but it's not easy. And if you read the lives, the biographies of these great men and women of God, one of the things that they have in common is the sacrifice that they make to live for God. And it is not, you know, so another word that floats around is like, "Oh, Pharisaical or something." It's that whatever tense of Pharisee, but no, that was an extra laden burden that the Pharisees legalistically put on people, right? That Jesus could not stand and did not want. This is the opposite. We are not burdened by the law. We're simply attentive to His Word. And by being attentive to His Word, the question is, "God, how much of me do you want?" And His answer is, "All of you, you know, I made you and I want all of you." Like the Bible literally says all things are made by Him and for Him, you know? We are made for His joy. We're made for His pleasure. We are made to praise Him. You know, the idea of vain or vanity, which is throughout the Bible, especially in Ecclesiastes, is mentioning this idea that all these things are vain. That word means improper use, right? So the vain thing is to live for ourselves. The vain thing is to live for man's praise. The vain thing is to live in ignorance to God and the will of God. And yet we see it with the Israelites and we see it today in the world at large and certainly in the modern church. We see it all over the place. And the remedy here is to stay in God's Word, to trust the Lord, to follow Him, to understand that a life lived for God is a life that looks a lot like the life of Jesus, which again, despised, rejected, humiliated, obedient unto death. That's the idea of being an overcomer, right? So you overcome because you do not, you're not in the bondage to sin. You're not living for the world. You're not perfect, right? Like I'm not preaching Christian perfectionism. I'm preaching Christian obedience, Christian attentiveness. The Bible says to study God's Word and to rightly divide it. We shouldn't be ashamed. If we're studying God's Word and we're rightly dividing it, how can we not then apply that, right? If we know how to live, how can we not apply it? And all of this goes to the point of when we live as God calls us to live, it is a sacrifice of praise to God, to a holy God that I believe is very beautiful to Him. Because as we live, as He calls us to live, we are showing Him, we understand just a minuscule amount of how your son suffered for us, how Jesus suffered for us on the cross of Calvary, how Jesus suffered His whole life. It was obedient His whole life so that we could have eternal life. And when we live in that agape love state, that sacrificial love state, when we live in a way that pleases God, which oftentimes will not please man, and oftentimes will not even be comprehensible to man, when we live as God calls us to live, we are blessed and we are offering a sacrifice of praise to God. And that is what Paul is saying, that we don't have a continuing city here, that we are burdened down, that we are bearing their approach, that it is challenging, that it is hard, but it is the proper way to live as a Christian. One church I went to one time, their motto was "Suffer Well," and that's the idea. We are to suffer well for Christ. Thank you for listening. Take care. God bless and amen. Thanks for listening to KJV Cafe, and we'll see you at the Cafe tomorrow.
