Welcome to KJV Cafe. Thanks for taking time out of your day to listen. Each episode of the Cafe is dedicated to studying the Bible, verse by verse, from Genesis through Revelation. Your host here at the Cafe is Bible teacher, Clark Covington. Looks like the coffee is hot and ready, so let's get started. Amen, glory to God. Welcome to the program. Welcome to the Cafe, Pastor Clark Covington. Here with another episode of KJV Cafe. What a blessed day it is. A man's son is shining. I'm assuming the birds are chirping out there. It's a beautiful day. So thankful, Lord's giving us another day. And welcome to the Cafe. If you're new to the program, we are a 15-minute Bible study daily, going verse by verse through the Scriptures. And so, if you wanted to start from the beginning, we are on episode 282, I think. There was researching yesterday. There's not a lot of places that show the episode number. So that's just is what it is, but we're on episode 282. So you literally can start from day one. And then you can kind of work this through your mind. If you listen to three episodes a day or four episodes a day, how many days you'll get caught up in? I was using an AI tool to calculate that the other day for a project. So, yeah, you can use this as your daily Bible study, at least a kind of introduction to it. And they say moderation is key in life. And I agree with that. The Bible were to be temperance. But when it comes to Bible study, I wouldn't be moderate. I would be very abundant in it. So the more that you study God's Word, I believe the more peace you're going to have, the more Holy Spirit discernment you're going to have, the more purpose you're going to have. It's really good to get into God's Word. So my hope and prayer is that this is a entry point for your Bible study every day. But at the very least, hey, you know, this is something that gets you in the Word. We have couple, we have the weekend edition and we have the truck driver's hour. And so we have two other podcasts that you can look up on your favorite podcast app. And also two, we've got a couple of things that have been in the works for a while. And one of them is a kids podcast. And that is, I've already kind of made an episode and had some stuff done there. But we're just kind of, I'm just praying for the right time to get that going. And the other is a worksheet going back to the idea of a Bible study. We're just starting that now where they'll be for each episode starting with the first one. Genesis 1 1, we aired back in January. Every episode is going to have a companion worksheet. And we'll put that in the show notes. We'll put that in the YouTube notes. We'll put that on a blog and we'll share that on social media. And it's just a short, illustrated, somewhat interactive worksheet for every episode that just deals with the scripture. So we're just focusing on God's Word. It's kind of like a touch up, a reminder, a way that we can work through these ideas and concepts visually. I'm a visual learner. So that is coming soon. And we're going to be deliberate, but we've got a great talented individual working on that that had helped me on another educational project. And so she's going to do a great job. And as we get those out, put those on starting the first episode. And I'll make a couple more announcements about that. It adds another layer to it. So when you're listening to the podcast, if you are, you know, hey, you got your Bible in front of you. You're at a desk. You're at a table. You're at a cafe. You can just click a link and go through that worksheet while we study or afterwards or whatever times convenient. You also can like grab that link and text it to people, share it and so forth. So we're real excited about that. So lots of good stuff happening at the cafe. And now we're getting into our text verse here, which is from Genesis 22. We're literally turning the page here. We're on a new chapter, Genesis 22. And we're just going to look at two verses really. We may peek a little bit into the third, but we're just going to look at two verses for a little bit here. And it came to pass after these things. The God did tempt Abraham and said unto him, Abraham, and he said, behold, here I am. And he said, take now thy son, thy only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Isaiah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains, which I will tell of thee. All right. So now we have Abraham being called to sacrifice Isaac. And it says, after these things, we remember we spent a good bit of time in Genesis 21, looking at those three themes there in Genesis 21. The birth of Isaac, the miraculous birth of Isaac in Abraham and Sarah's old age, the spelling of Ishmael, because he was mocking Isaac, right? And then the peace treaty or covenant with Abimelech, King of Garar, King of the Philistines, and that dispute over the well. And so we spent a bunch of time talking about that. And then the scripture says, after these things, and you have to remember, chapters weren't initially in those original manuscripts. So when it says, after these things, the scripture, in a way is assuming you just read what I just described in 21. And if you are a writer and you wrote a book, each chapter may have kind of like a fresh start. But in the Bible, it's all fluid. And so we see here, after these things, those three incidents, we have God calling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. What we'll do is we'll take a break and we'll dig deep into this when we come back. So stay tuned. You're listening to KJV Cafe. We encourage you to look us up on your favorite podcast app and subscribe to our channel on YouTube. Now, let's get back to some more in depth Bible study. So let's take a deeper look here. Okay. So there's a lot to unpack first. And it came to pass that after these things is verse one of Genesis 22, the God did tempt Abraham and said unto him, Abraham, and he said, behold, here I am. Okay. Now, I think a better word than tempt would be test, right? So, you know, there is a lot of scripture that says God won't tempt man. James 1 13 would be one of them. Let no man say when he is tempted, I'm tempted of God for God cannot be tempted with evil neither tempted he any man, right? And then, but every man is tempted when he's drawn away with his own lust and enticed. Okay. James 1, I've spent many messages using as an example of how our number one is not a sin to be tempted. Okay. So Jesus was tempted in the wilderness by the devil. That's number one. It's not a sin to be tempted. Okay. Not a sin to be tempted. Number two, that we can't blame God when we fall into temptation because he is not tempting anyone. Let no man say when he is tempted, I'm tempted of God for God cannot be tempted with evil neither tempted he any man. Okay. So God can't be tempted. He's perfect. And he's not doing that. Okay. People are tempted, drawn away and so forth. So I think a better word for this would be test and it came to pass after these things that God did test Abraham and says, tempt, but I always cut in my mind to swap and test. And I think this is an important delineation. Okay. Uh, you go, you know, think of something that would tempt you to fall into sin, okay. And we can go down, you know, the rabbit hole with that one, right? Whatever it is. Okay. Uh, and I'm trying to think of something very simple. Okay. Uh, let's say you're a child and you absolutely love chocolate, right? And you walk in and there's a massive display of chocolate in the store that you walk into. And the store clerk is across the street helping the old lady put her bags in the car. Uh, we'll call her a senior saint, by the way, uh, and, um, the child's looking around. No one's there and they can smell the chocolate and they're tempted. Okay. So that temptation came from what their desire for that thing, right? And so it is not a sin to be tempted. They were just going to the store because their mom said go buy milk or whatever. It's not a sin to be tempted, but it is a sin to what to, to give into that temptation, right? And so if you look in James one, you look a little bit deeper, verse 15, uh, then when lust hath conceived, bring a fourth sin and sin when it's finished, bring a fourth death. And so we see the result of falling into sin is death, the wages of sin and death. Okay. So God's not doing this here with Abraham. What God is doing with Abraham is he's testing him and God does test a man. God tests all the time. The Lord may put on your heart. I do not want you to be around this group of people. And he may allow those group of people to go knock on your door and say, Hey, come hang out with us. That's a test. Right? Uh, God may desire you to leave your corporate job and go into the ministry and you may get offered a promotion as you're getting ready to resign. That could be a test, right? God knows how this all works, I've described it in very simple terms, but I like making that clarification that God is not the one that tempts. God is love. God is perfect. God is working to refine us. Those that have been born again to make us more like him, like the potter with clay that has that marred, um, piece of clay that is then had to be reconstructed, right? As we're born again unto new life, we are new creatures in Christ. What happens, the old things pass away, the old, all things become new and God is working us, molding us into, into what? Into his image. Christian means Christ like. So we are bolding, um, I said bold, I don't know what bolding means, but we are, uh, being built into, we are being shaped and molded. That's, I think the word I was going for, man, I'm struggling here. We were, we were being molded into, um, Christians being Christ like. And if you look at the life of Christ, he was tempted yet without sin was Jesus tested. Oh, time. And again, he was tested and whether God brought those about sovereignly for our benefit as we read the scripture, certainly he did. How about this example? Okay. We think of the triune God, God, the father, the son and the Holy spirit, read about when Jesus is brought into the wilderness to be tempted. It said, literally says, I believe it's right after he's baptized by John the Baptist. It literally says in that scripture, the Holy spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. That is an example of God sovereignly leading his own Christ, his own. Okay. To be tempted, not because God needed to test, uh, to test the character of Jesus, but rather God is teaching us how to deal with temptation through that instance. And that's how he chose to do it. The Holy spirit led him into the wilderness. And then he's tempted 40 days and 40 nights. He rebukes the devil three times the scripture, the devil flees from him eventually. And what happens? Angels come and minister under him, right? And so this is all ordained by God. It was all allowed by God. And that test wasn't too mold Christ's character because Christ was and is perfect. It was simply an example for us, right? But God will allow us to go through things to test us or the biblical word here, tempt us, but not like a temptation, like in James, but more in the line of building our character, testing our faith, right? Everyone. Look, again, the Bible is just like full of this. Abraham is called to Canaan land. He has to like leave his family, travel hundreds of miles. I believe he was in his 70s. He's traveling hundreds of miles on foot with his cattle and so forth. He has to depart from his family. Very unusual. Depart from all the pagan religion that they had, follow the one true God. He gets to Canaan land. This is supposed to be where God's going to bless them and all. And there is a famine in the land. That's an example of God testing Abraham, right? There's a famine in the land. And I think of that oftentimes we follow God here, there, wherever he might want us to go. And there's problems, so things don't work out as we imagine. That my friend is living biblically. That's living for God. There's so many examples of this, right? That it's riddled throughout scripture that God allows his servants to be tested, David tested, Jacob tested, Joseph tested. It was in prison for a season, right? On and on, all the great men and women of God tested, the disciples tested, and not always passing these tests, but through them being more and more molded into the person of Christ. I've heard it said before, and I don't remember the individual that said it, but it is brilliant. God often provides the test before the lesson, you know? And so typically you go to school, you have a lesson, you study that lesson, then you take a test and try to pass a test. God often will provide the test, and then in light of the test will provide the lesson, you know, as you pray about it and you think over it and you ponder it and you read scripture and you chew the cud and so forth, you say, Oh, okay, so God is working on a different plane as ways are higher than our ways as higher as heavens are from the earth. And we're seeing Abraham presented with a command. It says, Abraham, and he said, take now thy son, not only son Isaac whom thou love us and get thee into the land of Mariah, says get thee in the land of Mariah, doesn't say choose, it says get thee, it's a command. We'll pick up here in the next episode as we spend some time on these two verses. Thank you so much for listening. Tune in next time. Take care. God bless. Amen. Thanks for spending time with us today at the cafe. We would love to hear from you. You can email brother Clark directly at Clark@EnduringPromise.org. See you again tomorrow, same time, same place.
