Grapevine Ministries
Messages from the bible to uplift and encourage those that need a word from the Lord, to strengthen their faith. Ps Phillip Barker is an itinerant pastor in Perth, Western Australia.
Grapevine Ministries
From Earthly Gains to Heavenly Riches
Our exploration of Proverbs 2 invites listeners to consider what treasures they store within their hearts, stressing the significance of wisdom and knowledge in shaping their lives. We discuss the transformative power of words, the importance of prayer, and how acts of kindness reflect God's love in our interactions with family and community.
• Understanding the importance of storing good treasures in your heart
• The transformative impact of immersing in God's word
• Emphasizing the power of prayer in strengthening relationships
• The significance of authentic communication and love within families
• Encouragement towards acts of kindness and community support
• Evaluating the foundation we build our lives upon and its eternal value
Good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are in the world - Welcome to Grapevine Ministries.
Today we're going to commence our reading from Proverbs 2, from Proverbs 2, 1 to 22, and this is in the New King James Version.
Speaker 2:Proverbs, chapter 2. My son, if you receive my words and treasure my commands within you, so that you incline your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding, yes, if you cry out for discernment and lift up your voice for understanding, if you seek her as silver and search for her as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom. From his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk uprightly. He guards the paths of justice and preserves the way of his saints. Then you will understand righteousness and justice, equity and every good path.
Speaker 2:When wisdom enters your heart and knowledge is pleasant to your soul, discretion will preserve you. Understanding will keep you. To deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perverse things, from those who leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perversity. Of the wicked, whose ways are crooked and who are devious in their paths. To deliver you from the immoral woman, from the seductress who flatters with her words, who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God, for her house leads down to death and her paths to the dead. None who go to her return, nor do they regain the paths of life. So you may walk in the way of goodness and keep to the paths of righteousness, for the upright will dwell in the land and the blameless will remain in it, but the wicked will be cut off from the earth and the unfaithful will be uprooted from it.
Speaker 1:Now this is something new that I'm doing. Please let me know. You can send me feedback. At the bottom of each of my messages you'll find that there is a place where you can send me emails, or fan mails, as they call it and send me emails, or fan mails, as they call it, and I just thought this year I wanted to start doing things differently, and part of that is in relation to my messages. Especially when I have to read long links of scripture, I want to make sure that it's clear and audible, because I'm not the most articulate one around.
Speaker 1:So the essence of Proverbs 2, 1 to 22 is all about storing good things in your heart. You know we're trying to ascertain how it is that we can actually do things in line with what Jesus wants us to do, because Jesus gives a strong warning on how to keep our heart storage in a good shape or have it filled with good treasures, is one of my favourite passages. It comes from Matthew and the Sermon on the Mount, knowing that the New Testament is basically a type of the shadow of the Old Testament. So a lot of people sort of like they want to do all their teaching and preaching from the New Testament. But they've got to understand the importance of the Old Testament and this is why, in the Sermon on the Mount, jesus spoke of how to correctly spend your energy, and it says this do not lay up yourselves treasures on earth where the moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroy and where thieves do not break in to steal, for where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. That's Matthew 6, 19 to 21. You see, god's after our hearts. Our hearts are the places that hold our thoughts, our ideas, our motivations and actions of what we have done. Jesus is here. He questions us to look to the heart and to question what things are to do in relation to that have eternal life and they have eternal value Only those things that are imperishable and will be counted by God as lasting. So here Jesus reminds us that those things are a reflection of our heart to him and what we truly value.
Speaker 1:So I'm asking you today what is it that you truly value, what is most important for you? Because it also says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks and words are very powerful things. A lot of people don't realize just how devastating our words can actually be if used in the wrong context. By the same token, if you speak out of your heart, it talks about in 1 Corinthians 13,. It's the love chapter, and that's like speaking out of your heart. So that is where you need to store up your treasures. These thoughts beg further investigation, I think. But what I'm doing that has eternal value is more important than what I do of things that are fleeting or of no value. So I've come up with a few ideas to get you thinking about what is an eternal value?
Speaker 1:Because when Jesus died on the cross, rose again and now sits at the right hand of the Father, he went down to hell, spent three days down there, took the keys to the kingdom back for us. So after Adam and Eve got kicked out of the Garden of Eden, for that time the Prince of Darkness, or Satan or the devil call him what you like he has dominion over the earth. So what we need to do is we need to make sure that we take his authority away from us, because Jesus has given it back to us so that we can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us. We can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us. We need to make sure that there's no way the devil can take hold of our lives. And by storing things up in your heart, then we know that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And the words that we speak out of our heart are powerful. They're sharper than a two-edged sword. They cut deep and deep into the marrow. So how do we make sure that we have stored things up in our heart?
Speaker 1:Well, I think it starts right with time that you spend in God's word, because God's word has eternal value for your soul and your knowledge of God. So the more time you spend in his word, the more unlikely you are of using the world's words to have conversations, create relationships, speak to family and friends and in general, we well, I don't think it's the correct terminology, I don't think it's the right word, but we need to have Christians speak. So everything we say and everything we do okay has got to be based on the word of God. And it's not just we're like a walking Bible going around quoting scriptures to everybody. No, it's just that it means that the more time you spend in his word, you get that head knowledge gone and it becomes heart knowledge. So you are reminded of the word of God when you're having a conversation with someone and so that you constantly are aware of the tongue. The tongue is a very, very powerful thing. It's like the rudder of a ship. It controls the way that you go.
Speaker 1:Now, when I was in the Department of Corrections I worked there for many, many years I noticed that it is very easy for you to speak to someone in a particular way and they perceive it a different way. Because when we did this, we did these courses on communication skills and body language and all that sort of stuff. And I'll give you an example of that body language and all that sort of stuff. And I'll give you an example of that. Just say, hypothetically, I just got there and I'm talking to my wife and I say I love you, or I can say I love you, or I can just say I love you. Now I've said the same phrase three times, but my body language would be saying something else and the tone and the diction of my words say something again. So you can speak the same words to a person, but it can have a totally different meaning and a different understanding, and this is why spending time in his word is so vitally important, because it will change the way that you speak. You know, if I wanted to and I thought about it long and hard I could probably swear Years and years ago when I was in the military and when I was in the Department of Corrections.
Speaker 1:So in the military I didn't have a relationship with God. Then, when I got into the Department of Corrections, I was a very young Christian. But the thing is it was so easy for me to just have a normal conversation and to have six or seven expletive words in there, like vile words, but they're just normal, they're part of the conversation. My brother in particular. He did nine years in the Navy and he worked for the Department of Corrections for many years. This is well off where my notes are at the moment, so just bear with me. I'm just trying to make a point here, right? So just bear with me. I'm just trying to make a point here right Now. My brother knows that I'm a pastor. He knows that I've been a man of God for many, many years now. He will still talk to me and just like a normal conversation. He's not angry, he's not upset or anything Just in the space of just a normal five-minute conversation. I would say or let's be conservative here probably 40% of his words are profanities and that's just the way that he talks, because he's so used to that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:But when I knew that my life had to change and I came into a relationship with a Heavenly Father by spending time in His Word, without actually realizing it, the content of my conversation when I'm talking to anybody changed. The content of my conversation when I'm talking to anybody changed and it got to a stage where I didn't speak like I was an angry ant. I wasn't actually very rough in the way that I spoke to people and all of a sudden, without even realizing it, I stopped using profanities, and that was because of spending time in God's word. I know the eternal value of that and that got deep down into my soul, into my heart, and this is what I'm saying, my heart, and this is what I'm saying. If you spend time in God's word, then you I don't care who you are it will soften your heart and you will change, and you'll change for the better. The other thing that's important to do is point number two that I'm making is the time that you spend in worship, praise and prayer.
Speaker 1:Now we were at a home fellowship meeting yesterday and we meet once a month just a group of like-minded Christians. They all go to different churches, but we just want to walk hand in hand with Jesus, and so in doing that, I was talking about the importance of prayer. A lot of people don't realize just how important prayer is. God hears our words. Now it's like I give you a classic example of that this morning. And this is where you see things are a God thing. And this is where you see things are a God thing and they're not necessarily something that just someone's just come up with. You see all the dots getting connected.
Speaker 1:Now I'm probably going to have to go over this a little bit more next week because I'm totally off my notes. I'm not even close to them at the moment, but I have a pastor down south from where we are and he always sends me some little making room for the new. He's talking about the sermon that he's going to be bringing today and one of the things that he said this morning that he was actually talking about, you know, getting the tangible presence of God in the meeting today, because he was saying that our words go out and they will not return void to us. And it was strange enough, I actually had to make a point of telling him that this was a scripture that I inscribed into the back of a cross. You know that my wife wears around her neck all the time now and I gave this to her when we were engaged. So this is 41 years ago.
Speaker 1:This is 41 years ago and I was reminded of this scripture, and a lot of people don't realize that Isaiah 55, 11 says so shall my word be which shall go forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me void, but it shall do whatsoever I please. It's another way of the Lord reminding us that all the words that we actually speak to him, they're not falling on deaf ears. He hears our prayer. He stores our prayers up in the heavenly places. Now, I don't want anybody getting this confused with the fact that if you pray for something, god answers you straight away. All I'm doing is saying that he doesn't allow those words to be spoken in vain, because he hears your prayers. So you've got.
Speaker 1:Number one is spending time in God's word, and number two is spending time in praise and worship and in prayer. Now, every morning I do my devotionals and I read the Word and I put myself through plans, because you know you can't preach to yourself sometimes, but then when I'm doing a message like this, I know that I am preaching to myself. I always put on every morning praise and worship through my Google Hub and my daughter-in-law that's living with us at the moment, prior to them moving interstate. I've got my son and her here and I know that she works from home, so she's doing Zoom meetings and everything in her room, and I've asked her if it's disturbing her or whether I need to turn it down and she says, oh no, she loves listening to that and it makes her feel refreshed in the morning, and she works for a Christian organization. So we need to make sure that we always get our priorities in the right order, or, another way of saying it, let's get all our ducks in a row. So we've got time spent in God's word and we've got time spent in worship, praise and prayer.
Speaker 1:And point number three that I want to make is time that you spend with family, showing them God's love, taking care of your children, your grandchildren, memorizing scriptures, feeding the homeless, the widows, the orphans, and it goes on and on and on. In other words, what are you doing with the love of God that is shed abroad in your heart? And why is it shed abroad in your heart? Because you've spent time in his word, you've spent time in praise and worship, and you've spent time in praise and worship and you've spent time in prayer, and so you know. Now I've got some of my in-laws. My brother-in-law at the moment is going through some challenges. I won't say what it is, I keep his privacy but we know that we need to keep praying for him. It doesn't matter whether he's not born again or not, but prayer is a very powerful thing, very, very powerful.
Speaker 1:But spending time with your family and showing them God's love is important because, as you know, you know, family has conflict all the time. Brothers and sisters aren't talking. For some reason, you've got your in-laws having problems communicating with another member of the family, and it goes on and on. Because when you get married, you inherit a whole new family and you know you may love your partner whether it be your wife or your husband, depending on who's listening to this but you inherit a whole new family. Now it doesn't mean that automatically you love every one of those and you enjoy their company. Sometimes you are blessed and that sort of thing does happen, but other times no. But you have to realise that they are part of the bigger family and you must spend time together and you must spend time showing God's love through you. Now you're probably going to run out of time.
Speaker 1:Let's go on to step number four. Time you spend taking a cup of cold water to someone in need, or a meal, a note of encouragement, having a cup of tea with a visitor, or sending a card, sometimes even just a text message or a phone call, just a text message or a phone call. Now there's a lot of people I mean, since I've left the church that I was at because God's told me to move on. It's more important for me to do other things to help grow the kingdom of God. A very, very large percentage I mean, even though I go back to the church every now and again. I'm no longer an associate pastor at that church, but so many of the congregation I still have contact with and they ring me and I ring them. I've sent words of encouragement, believe it or not, and I don't know why people say believe it or not, because if you're stating a fact, then you're telling the truth. It's not like you're going to lie or fabricate something. It's just one of those sayings that people say to reiterate the fact that what they are telling you is factual. It did actually happen. But where was I? Oh yeah, that's right, believe it or not.
Speaker 1:Before I started my podcast, we were in the grip of a global pandemic I'm talking 2019, 2020. And there was a lot of people that didn't matter how long they'd been a Christian or walking with God. Fear entered them, not because they didn't believe the word of God, but because of all the hype in the media. They never made anything as oh, this is just what's going on. Never gave you any good news, it was always bad news. And so when you're constantly fed bad news over and over again, it is easy for you to misconstrue what you're hearing and you start changing the way that you're thinking and that fear comes in.
Speaker 1:So what I used to do is I would send text messages and I'm not talking about hi, how you going, praying for you, hope everything's all right. No, no, I'm sending like 160 word text message with scriptures and everything, trying to support people and my daughter, my lovely, precious daughter. She did two years of Bible college. She was very active in the youth ministry and everything. At the moment she's struggling being a mum, realising just how big a task it is, but with prayer and support and the love of her family around her. But with prayer and support and the love of her family around her, she will be rejoicing knowing that she is a beautiful mother and wife.
Speaker 1:But the point that I'm saying is that she turned around to me because we were stuck in the bottom end of Australia, in a place called South Australia for those that are from overseas and we could not cross the border, couldn't go into Victoria, couldn't come back to Western Australia. So she said why don't I do a podcast? And I said because I don't know how to do that. I'm old school, I'm not like the new generation that everything is social media. So she turned around and said well, you've got nothing to do, pappy. I said you might as well just start learning. And so I started getting on the YouTube listener tutorials and, as they say, the rest is history, because now you're getting regular podcasts from me, week in, week out and very soon not putting a timeline on it, though we will start being doing video messages uploaded straight to YouTube. So I'm still learning how to do that. Still a time in where we're at.
Speaker 1:So now one more Number five time spent making a gift for someone and praying for them. Now, the reason I say making a gift is because not everybody has the ability to be able to go out and buy someone. You know, just random acts of kindness. Just buy someone a gift and do that. And plus, you've got the love languages right. What are the love languages? And some of the love languages with friends and other family members and that you can't use because it sends the wrong message. But random acts of kindness I've done that A long time ago when I was. Just one that comes to mind right now is I was in line waiting to get fuel at the pump station and I saw this woman struggling to get out of her car because she was obviously partly disabled, and instead of sitting there hitting the horn and abusing her and telling her to hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, I quickly went up to her and I said look, look, ma'am.
Speaker 1:I said, would you like me to help you? And she said oh yeah, that'd be really great. I said so, how much fuel do you want to put in your car? And she said, oh, only $20. That's all I can afford. So I went and fueled her car up. So I went and fuelled her car up and then I come up and I said now, if you pull up over there, you can pay for it. And I'll go and pay for it if you want, and then I'll fuel mine up and I'll meet you over there. And she said, oh, that'd be great. So she just pulled over there. I filled up my car, went over there and she goes oh, here's my credit card, just do the tap and go thing. I said, okay, no worries, right? I said I'm not going to run away with your card. I'm a man of God and I'm doing the right thing here. Just a random act of kindness. She said oh, thank you very much, I'm doing the right thing here. Just a random act of kindness. She's oh, thank you very much. So I went in and paid for her fuel and my fuel on my card and gave her card back to her. And not only she had a full tank of fuel, it didn't cost her anything. That's what they call random acts of kindness.
Speaker 1:These are the sort of things that come out of the abundance of the heart and these are the sort of things that are treasures stored up that God sees. It's basically saying don't tell your right hand what your left hand's doing, you don't go bragging about things. I'm just using this as an example. There was no names, no timeline, no, nothing. I didn't go around telling everybody, except my wife who said how much fuel did you put in the car? And I explained it to her and she was fine with it. Right, but just remember, look, I've run out of time. I've got a lot more to put into this. Maybe I can top this up next week, but these are just a small example. The list is endless, but, as you can see, these things have no monetary value, but are acts of kindness, hope and love done for others and yourself in a relationship with God. Paul talks about the eternal value of the things that we do and exalts us to be sure that our foundation is in Jesus. So just remember that.
Speaker 2:According to the grace of God, which was given to me as a wise master builder, I have laid foundation and another builds on it, but let each one take heed how he builds on it, for no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become clear, for the day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is.
Speaker 1:And that's where I'm going to finish up today, because I want you to get a clear understanding of what I've been talking about, and I may even clarify some of this next week. But 1 Corinthians 3.12-15, okay, is a clear way that we build a foundation in our heart. So my question remains, and you and I are we doing the things with our time that are based upon Jesus, and are these things enduring, or are we spending our time working on things that have no eternal value and that will perish when God examines them? What is he going to be doing? He is going to be looking at your heart. So that's it for today. God bless you and we will talk to you next week on Great Vine Ministries. Bye for now.
