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You are listening to the Patriot
Pastors Podcast, where we talk about today's issues from a pastor's
perspective, as well as calling America back to the faith of
our fathers. Without God, democracy will not
and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we're
one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.
Here's your host, Wade Lentz and Harold Smith. All right, welcome to the Patriot
Pastors Podcast. We have a special edition because
I have my friend Harold Smith with me. Harold, we don't get
the opportunity very much to do a podcast together. And so when we have the chance,
we always enjoy it. And we hope that you guys enjoy
it as well. He's been in town this weekend.
at, was it Central Baptist College? Yes. It's the BMA of Arkansas,
Baptist Missionary Association of Arkansas state meeting, and
they hold it at the state college that the BMA Arkansas has, which
is Central Baptist College here in Conway. You pastor just outside
of Conway and your office, you know, it's probably the most
well-decorated office. I mean, they have a portrait
of me right behind us, right over our shoulders. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's, it's pretty
intimidating to do a podcast with Spurgeon. Yeah. Right. No, you do, you got a nice office. I mean, even if you do have a
Cathedrals Quartet album hanging on the wall, four of them, I
guess, on the wall. That's heaven's music right there. Yeah. See,
that's what, you know, he puts this Puritan image on the podcast. He's got Calvin Spurgeon and
Edwards over there. He's got this portrait of Spurgeon
behind us. But if he were to turn his desk
around where he really looks, he's looking at Southern gospel
music, what it sees. Yeah. It's like Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde in here. It's like two personalities.
I've never seen a quartet singing Jonathan Edwards band. That's
funny. You just got back from Georgia,
right? Back in October. Yes. Preaching
a revival. Yeah. How did that go? It went
great. I feel like the Lord really did
work above and beyond just me preaching. I preached through
five of the Beatitudes in Matthew 5. I covered five of the nine,
and the people responded well. Seemed like the Lord really did
a work in the congregation. The pastor was very encouraged.
The people were very complimentary. I saw a lot of evidence of just
people getting things right in their life. And so I came back
from that. I preached in a couple of conferences
around, Saturday meetings. various things, and this was
the last thing on my calendar. I don't have anything else other
than church work day tomorrow at First Baptist Rowland. I've
got a clean slate. Well, there's Thanksgiving and
Christmas coming up. Yeah, but I mean, I'm talking
about me traveling off preaching. I'm going to be home for a while,
and I'm ready. Wow, that's great, man. Mike Stone texted me and
said, man, how he got so much out of one verse, I do not know.
The Lord really helped me, and I think he really helped the
people. Pastor, I've never been to that church before. I've never
met Pastor David Marshalls, the pastor there at Pleasant Valley,
and he's just a sweet church just outside of Waycross, Georgia.
And David and I had only talked on the phone. But I'm telling
you, once we got to know each other, it was like we've been
friends forever. We had the same interest, same mindset, same
approach to ministry. And that's kind of the joy of
my ministry is I travel around, I meet preachers that I've never
met before. And it just seems like the Lord
knits our hearts together. And you and I have known each
other for years. And yes, but I make new friends every year.
I go to new churches and I meet new pastors every year. And it
just the Lord just I don't know how he uses me, but he does.
Wow. That's. That's a blessing for
sure. Since Harold and I have recorded
a podcast, a lot of things have transpired in our world. One
being that Hamas attacks Israel and now there is a ongoing war. And it seems as if that the stage
is being set for the U.S. to be involved. And I know that
there are several U.S. representatives and those in
the Senate who really are calling on the U.S. to do something dramatic
to Iran who funds Hamas, which would, if we did so, it would
be World War III, no doubt. And so, man, that's just a difficult
thing. what is transpiring just in that
alone. Our world is so volatile right
now. We have a president that is so
wishy-washy on so many things. We are showing weakness just
in the administration alone. Our military is weak, and it
seems as if that we are just set for more war. Here we have given Ukraine $100
billion and that still is ongoing with our giving to them. Now
we just have given Israel $14 billion. Where does it end? When does it end? And with our
administration, it seems like that they are wanting to end
up somehow in a World War III. Yeah. The only thing I would
say is when you have war in Israel going in the same sentence, even
the casual non-Christian once a year church attender all of
a sudden goes, And there's some stuff in the Bible about that.
And all of a sudden they call the only person they know that's
a Christian or a preacher or, you know, and there's just all
of a sudden there's a heightened interest in what's going on. I mean, doesn't the Bible mention
these things? And so then now we're starting
to look at eschatology. Yeah, you know, you've got certain
people depending on their eschatology, like, well, this means absolutely
nothing. This is another day. And other people are like, no,
no, no, no, no. This is they're reading their
newspaper in 1 hand and a Bible in the other. And they're getting
all worked up. And the only thing I would say is. It's like the
Lord knows what's going on. My calling as a Christian has
not changed regardless of what's happening in the pages of the
paper, what the news is talking about. We live in difficult times,
or we live in times of plenty. We ought to go to the book of
Esther and say for a time such as this, Harold and Wade were
put into the gospel ministry to preach the word of God to
shepherd churches. And that's kind of what I think
we ought to talk about is quit trying to read your eschatology
either in or out. Because let's be honest here.
If this is kind of contradictory to where you want your eschatology
to go to, you're going to get in the ditch over here of, oh,
it means nothing. No, it's really something. The
world's fixing to go to war. That's a big deal. And if you're
over here on the other side of the coin and you're just like
every little headline, you're trying to figure out if it's
the third toenail on the second dragon and what the color red
means, In between that is a sound biblical position of our God
is in control of the events of the world. Everything's happening
according to his plan. We are his children. Win, lose,
or draw, we end up in heaven regardless of what happens on
the earth. If you can take that mindset and face, call this the
end times if you want, You can walk through the end times with
win, lose, or draw. My journey ends in heaven. Then
you can be like Stonewall Jackson on the battlefield. I'm as comfortable
here as if I were at home in bed. I'm alive till my work's
over. That's the mindset we were talking
about in 1 Peter 1 earlier. And you were pointing out some
things in there, and I think you're spot on. Yeah. We're God's
people. Sure. The world's falling apart. I always go back to when I was
working for Frito-Lay, our warehouse had a big billboard right out
on the highway that the sign company would change every month.
And there was a weatherman on it one time, and he would stand
in there, and he was looking up in the sky, and he had his
finger pointing up, and it said, so-and-so weatherman said it
would be this way today. Of course, that was a lie. Every
time he said it was going to sunshine and it rained, we would
throw rocks at the billboard, calling him a liar and stuff.
But I can honestly say my God said it would be this way. Nothing
has surprised him. This is not out of the scope
of what he intends to do with his planet. And if I believe
in him and I trust him as sovereign, then I can go forward with a
smile and the message of the gospel because This is why Harold
Smith and Wade Lentz were put on the earth. Yes. And let me
just read to you that passage in 1 Peter 1, verses 1 and 2,
where it says, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who
reside as aliens scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia,
Asia, Bithynia, who are chosen, who are elect according to the
foreknowledge of God, the Father, by the sanctifying work of the
Spirit, that you may obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with
his blood. May grace and peace be yours
in fullest measure. You know, the church right now
is going through some hard times. And I understand that the church
has in history gone through much harder times than what we're
going through right now. But that doesn't mean that we're
not going through some difficult times. And certainly as this
is new to us, if you are living in America, seeing some things
that we've never seen in our generation as it seems as if
that persecution is just not very far away, but we can take
courage in the fact that this is nothing new under the sun.
Peter is writing to individuals, he's writing to certain churches,
that are undergoing hardship. They're undergoing persecution.
They're undergoing isolation and ostracization from the Roman
Empire, who has absolutely belittled them in society. But Peter writes
into them to be encouraged. You say, well, what's so encouraging
about what he wrote? Well, He writes into them and
tells them that, hey, you are the elect of God. You are chosen
of God. This phrase right here, elect
according to the foreknowledge of God, that foreknowledge means
God already knows. Right. That is the key thing. I remember one time I came into
the office back when we had answering machines, you know, you'd have
to rewind the tape and hit play. That's how long I've been in
the ministry or that's how out of date our church was. We still
had the old, but I had a message and I hit play and it said, why
is God doing this to me? This lady got a ticket and the
cops were sitting in our parking lot at the church. She comes
speeding by the church and got a ticket. So fast forward to
this. God, doesn't God know that I've got stuff to do today and
I don't have time for a ticket and yada, yada, yada. And I was
like, lady, if I'd have answered the phone, I would have said,
lady, not only does God know what you have to do today, he
knew you were going to get a ticket too. He knows everything. He's
all knowing. He's not waking up in the morning
and rubbing his eyes and stretching and saying, wonder what's happening
on the earth today. Oh my, I didn't see that coming.
That's not how our God operates. So elect means we are His, we're
chosen in Him. According to His foreknowledge,
God has the knowledge not only of who we are, but where we are
and what's going on around us. Yes. Yea, though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou
art with me. This is the mindset that we should have. Right. Yeah,
and you think about, from their perspective, from that context,
to be the elect of God, to be chosen of God, means that God
the Father, before the foundation of the world, set his affections
upon you. He set his love upon you, and
that's so key, especially to these people to whom Peter is
writing, because they're living in a world that nobody loves
them. The world does not love them,
but it doesn't matter so long as the God of this world, God
of the universe, God the Father has set his affection upon you,
he's chosen you, he's elected you, again, according to the
foreknowledge of God. That speaks volumes to me. Yeah,
and just stay right there in verse two, because sometimes
people get all bent out of shape. Well, you're saying that God's
all sovereign and he's all in control. Yes, I am. But if you
read the rest of verse two, it says, through sanctification
of the spirit unto obedience. In other words, Those that are
elect are not the frozen chosen. They're not saved and nobody
knows it, not even them. It's evidenced by their obedience
to the faith. And so Christians look like Christians. They act like Christians. As
the world gets worse and worse and worse, Christians are going
to stand out like a sore thumb. Right. Because verse one, they're
strangers scattered abroad. We're oddballs. Peter goes on
to call us a peculiar people. Right. We're unique. We're different. And as the world gets worse,
that's when Christianity really shines. When there's prosperity
in the world and everybody's having a good time and everybody's
happy, the believer's happy because of who he is in Christ. The world
is happy because of their possessions they temporarily have. When the
possessions fall away, when war breaks out, when people start
dying, when things get dark and funerals increase, the believer
still has a joy that the world doesn't understand. This is why
Paul says, see that you sorrow not as others who have no hope.
When believers die, we don't weep like when a non-believer
dies because we know where that person is and we're going to
the same place they are. When the world starts experiencing
death, at an extreme rate like they do during war. The believer
really stands out because they're like, Peter goes on to say, live
such good lives that though they speak evil of you, they by your
good works will glorify God in the day of his visitation. The
Christian is going to start really distancing himself and distinguishing
himself from non-believers because of his outlook on life and because
of his obedience and the sanctification of the spirit. Verse two, also
false Christians are going to start showing themselves to be
false Christians. They're going to fall out of church. They're
going to, why am I serving this God? Why am I doing this? This
is not benefiting me. That prosperity gospel doesn't
go very far. Yes. In dark days like this. Very, very true. Yeah, there's
so many blessings just by the Christian realizing that they
are chosen in Christ Jesus. I believe it's John Calvin who
asked, he stated, if you want to know who the elect of God
is, it is those who believe upon Christ. It is those who believe
and trust and have repented. So it's not some great mystery.
Am I one of God's chosen? Am I one of God's elect? Well,
if you obey Christ, if you believe the Lord, if you have by faith
trusted him, you can be assured that you are the elect of God. And that Peter was writing this
to encourage the believer. And when he mentions that word
elect and chosen, he is writing not to confuse, but to encourage. And so let that encourage you
because what comes out of that, what flows from our election
in God, Peter goes on to write in chapter three, that we have
a living hope. Verse three. Yeah, excuse me,
verse three, we have a living hope. He might say that in chapter
three too. He probably does. Every good preacher repeats himself,
because Baptists are hard of hearing and have short memories,
right Wade? That's right, yes. In verse three he says, blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according
to his abundant mercy, have begotten us again unto a lively hope by
the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Yes. That thought
right there, he has begotten us. He's brought us to this point. Abundant mercy, not just a little
bit of mercy, abundant mercy, that's full forgiveness. Yes. Everything forgiven. And then
the ultimate outcome of that is the resurrection. Right. So
the key, mankind wants to live forever because he doesn't want
to die. A Christian has no fear of death because he has the promise
of the resurrection. Death is the doorway to glory. When we die, we go to be with
him. We are in the presence of Christ
at death. but there will come a day when
our bodies will be resurrected, reunited with our soul spirit,
and we'll be a full and complete being again with God. Now, this
promise of resurrection, this lively hope or living hope, this
is very real in that we're not just trying to preserve our life.
I mean, nobody wants to die. We all want to live. But the
Christians come to terms with death because Christ has died
for us. And since we, by faith, believe
in the death of Christ, God credits our faith as righteousness. That's
that sanctification. God bringing us along, bringing
us to obedience. We're growing in that knowledge.
And then we're living this way and the world's getting worse.
Well, what if it becomes illegal to go to church, Wade? Right.
What if it becomes the threat of death? Because when Peter
wrote this, it was at the threat of death. Sure. They attended
and met. And they weren't secretly Christians.
They were openly Christians. And so the only way that you
would continue to serve the Lord under the threat of death is
if you had victory over death. Right. And that's what we have
in Christ Jesus. Yes. That's that abundant mercy that
came to us through Christ there in verse 3. Yes. And then Peter
goes on to say in verse 4 that we have an inheritance that is
incorruptible. It's imperishable. And, you know,
again, context, Peter's writing to a group of people who many
of them have lost their inheritance. In that day, if a child was to
become a believer and leave the Jewish faith or whatever, they
would lose then their inheritance, that which was waiting on them.
But Peter is telling them, hey, You have an inheritance in heaven
that is imperishable. It is incorruptible. And that
speaks to us today that there's a threat of this ongoing threat
of the economy just totally floundering and just going under. And maybe
you lose your 401k, you lose your job, you lose all those
things that maybe you've been setting aside and saving for
retirement or to pass down to your children. But look, our
treasures are laid up in heaven. And as difficult as that would
be to undergo such things, our true wealth is being stored in
heaven where moths and rust cannot eat away. And so these again
are just the blessings that we have knowing that the Lord has
set his affections upon us. You know, this brings up a story,
a new story that happened right here in Arkansas. There was a
man in Northwest Arkansas arrested by the FBI for the January 6,
quote unquote, riots. They went to his home. I mean,
the FBI raided his house like they had raided a drug lord.
You know, they stormed in there and he had a Liberty gun safe.
It's fireproof. You remember the story? Yeah,
I do now. And it had a Liberty gun safe. Well, Liberty gun safes
can withstand a house fire for like, I don't know, 90 minutes,
some of them two hours, depending on how much money you want to
spend on one. So everybody thinks, well, if I put my guns and my
cash money in a Liberty gun safe, it's bulletproof, it's fireproof,
it's safe. Well, the FBI called Liberty
safes and said, hey, we've got this safe model here. They got
the master code. And Liberty gave up this man's
code, and so the FBI just opened his gun safe up, went through
and took all the stuff they wanted out, rifled through it. So all
you people out there that are thinking, I've got a gun safe
hidden away somewhere, and I've got everything locked up, and
fire won't get it, and nobody knows the code but me, the government
can open up that gun safe in about 30 seconds and take anything
they want out of it. You have nothing on this earth
that you can preserve. Some people have their retirements,
as you said, in the stock market. That thing's crashed before,
it will crash again. Some people have everything tied
up in a retirement account. Some people have it tied up in
land and investments, homes. The government can seize any
piece of property it wants. It can shut down any business
it wants. We saw that in the COVID-19 pandemic
where they were just You're a barbershop, you're closed. You're a restaurant,
you're closed. One of our great restaurants
down the road from you closed during COVID and were fined into
oblivion. Everything you have on this earth
is subject to seizure, foreclosure, fire, rust. There's no guarantees. The only guarantee is heaven
for the believer. Yes. And it cannot be touched
with the hands of earth. That's good. And I think the
believer needs to be reminded of that. Right. Having food and
rain, therewith let us be content, what Paul said. If you've got
something to eat and there's clothes on your back, be happy.
Because when you start putting your joy in a home, a retirement
package, maybe a retirement home, You know, you've worked hard
all your life, you've saved. There's no guarantees in life
except death. And for the believer, there's
the guarantee of heaven. Right, right. There's some other thoughts
that I take as just reading the first chapter of 1 Peter is that,
you know, coming from the fact that we have been lavishly, lavishly
loved that the Father has set his affections upon us. We've
been saved. We have a living hope. Our inheritance in heaven is
incorruptible. It takes me to verse 15 of chapter
one where it says, but like the Holy One who called you, Be holy
yourselves also in all your behavior. Because it is written, you shall
be holy for I am holy. These are days that we are to
live a separated, sanctified life, a holy life. These are
very dark days, yes. but the darker the day, the brighter
the light. And that light is shown as the
believer lives in holiness. How does verse 13 read in the
NASB? Therefore, gird your minds for
action. Keep sober in spirit. Fix your
hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation
of Jesus Christ. Yeah, the King James says, gird
up the loins of your mind. Mm-hmm. We don't ever think of
girding up the loins, but this would be to pull up your dress. Sorry, fundamentalists, they
didn't wear pants back then, they wore long robes. And the
only way you could run in those is to gird them up, tie them
around your legs so that your legs could run, you weren't tripping
over the hem of your garment. When you gird up the loins of
your mind, you're basically getting all the obstacles out of the
way so that you can think clearly and hope to the end. And so this
idea of girding up your minds, getting ready to run, think about
it this way. Start looking at your life and
say, does this matter? You know, I love to deer hunt.
Yes. I mean, I really, that's, that's a big deal to me. Okay. And, um, I've been so busy traveling,
so busy preaching and working. Our church has had things going
on. Muzzleloading season was all last week, and I really wanted
to hunt, and I just had no time, no time, no time. Sunday evening. All you Sabbatarians are going
to blow a head gasp, but I'm telling anyways. We don't have
Sunday evening service at the church I pastor, so Sunday evening
I got my muzzleloader. It was the last day of muzzleloader
season. I went and got up in the stand.
I saw three bucks, and I killed a 10-point that night. Just a
little humble brag on the Lord here. Listen, in the grand scheme
of things, in eternity, am I going to be in heaven going, hey boy,
this year right here, I killed a 10 point? No. It really doesn't
matter. It's just a personal joy on the
earth, a form of relaxation for me. But as the world gets worse
and worse, deer hunting is going to have to take a back seat to
my limited capacity to minister in the days ahead. And so the
Lord's able to provide you in a deer in one evening. That's
all you get to hunt. But start looking at your life.
Get the right mindset. Is this something I need to be
worried about? In light of what's going on in the world, is this
really going to matter in 100 years? Is this even going to
matter in 10 years? Right. Get the obstacles out
of your mind. Look at the hope. We've got tries
to the end. Focus on that and then be about
what really matters. That's true. Peter goes on to
say in chapter two in verse nine, he says, but you are a chosen
race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own
possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has
called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. And, uh,
you know, just, looking at these few verses. And what we're trying
to do again is just encourage you in Christ to not focus so
much upon the things of this world, but focus on the fact
that you are a believer, you are a Christian, and You didn't
save yourself, God the Father, through His Son Jesus Christ,
the Holy Spirit of God actually regenerating you and justifying
you through Him calling you into the Lord Jesus. Those are things
that you must focus on. These are trying times, but these
are the ways that just focusing on these things is how we can
live in these trying times. Let me give you, I'll just drop
right down where you left off there. It says, dearly beloved,
this is verse 11 of chapter two, dearly beloved, I beseech you
as strangers, that's how we started, verse one, and pilgrims, that
was the verse one word, abstain from fleshly lust, which war
against your soul. We live in a timeframe where
fleshly lust is probably at an all-time high. There are rampant
sexual immorality, rampant lying. I mean, lying is so common, we'd
be shocked if a politician told the truth today. Right. I mean,
just look at the immorality. As a believer, this is how you're
going to stand out. Don't lie. Don't cuss. Live a good moral life. We're
not doing these things to be saved. We're doing them because
we are saved. We're strangers. We're pilgrims. We don't act
like everybody else. When the holiness, as Wade said
earlier, be ye holy for I am holy. This is God telling us
how to live. this lifestyle that we're living
of holiness to God, separated unto him, in a world where they've
gone completely crazy in immorality. Yes. I mean, literally anything
goes sexually in our day, and it's encouraged. I mean, I'm
not even going to list all the sick and evil things that they're
advocating today. The Christian should look drastically
different. And the world's going to hate us because we're different.
The world hates people that look different, act different, talk
different. They're mean to them. Go back to your school days.
Those kids that look different and act different, they were
always picked on by the cool and in crowd. When it comes to
the world, the Christian is the weirdo. And the world hates us
because we're different like Christ. Yeah, he goes on to say
in verse 12, keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles,
so that in the thing in which they slandered you as evildoers,
they may on account of your good deeds, as they observe them,
glorify God in the day of visitation. You're struggling to read that,
because you're thinking King James and reading A&SB, aren't
you? Exactly, that and it says- Bro, if the king ain't on it,
the king ain't in it. And it's also a study Bible, so there's
words in between each word. Yeah, if it's not King James,
it ain't a Bible. That's right. Oh, King Jim. Yeah, that's good. Oh, man. Well, do you have anything else
to say? I think we've given them enough to chew on. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's kind of a sermonette for a Christianette, smokes cigarettes,
drives Corvettes, sleeps in bassinets. That would fit our audience right
here. They know that. I'm sorry if that describes you
to T is the Holy ghost. I was just joking. Oh me. Well, listen, it is a
joy to be back. It's been a while since we've
done a podcast and hopefully we can do one again very soon.
We just wanted to just really encourage you in Christ today.
Yeah. See you on the next one.
How To Live In Trying Times
Series The Patriot Pastor's Podcast
There is so much going on in the world that is discouraging, so pastors Harold Smith and Wade Lentz just wanted to share a brief word of encouragement from God's Word. We trust the Lord will use this episode to help you today.
| Sermon ID | 119231815206289 |
| Duration | 32:28 |
| Date | |
| Category | Podcast |
| Language | English |
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