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.