Call-In Classic Christianity Radio – Bob George P524 (03-27-20)
Synopsis
Listen as Bob George answers practical questions in the world today, about Christian psychology, excuses of men, and turning your back on God, false converts, false teachers, denominational creeds or persuasions rather than the truth of the word of God, and what is it that Jesus spoke about in the sermon on the mount. Bob addressed in more detail why Jesus came to earth, what his mission was, and why Jesus taught what he taught as someone born of a virgin, under the law, to fulfill the law and to uphold the law for us. I thought this was worth repeating so I will quote what Bob had shared.
Bob: Most people do not understand the purpose of why Jesus taught on this earth. He taught because he was headed to a cross to bring salvation. His teaching prior to salvation did not bring salvation. It identified the condition of man and therefore prepared them for salvation. His goal was the cross and the resurrection. He went to the cross to take away the sins of the world and then the resurrection to bring life from the dead, to bring the solution to the wages of sin, which is death, by the resurrected life of Christ Jesus. Insomuch as that what he came to do and that he was headed for, his teaching was preparing us. What did he have to do to prepare us of? For salvation of dealing with forgiveness and life.
Bob: First of all, he had to convince people they were sinners. If I am going to a cross to take away the sins of the world and people do not know they are a sinner, they will not pay attention to the cross. If people do not know there is a consequence to sin called death, they will not be prepared for the resurrection. This whole ministry was preparatory. It was not so much of an attack on how bad we are, but showed us what true righteousness is, righteousness in Himself, and in so doing showed us our own unrighteousness.
Transcript
Rick from Hanford, California
Rick: I work in the California state prison, where there is a policy where inmates have to cut their hair. One inmate says he is a Nazarene. Is that a valid excuse or not?
Bob: No, not a valid excuse at all. What else do you do as a Nazarene?
Rick: He does not do much of anything.
Bob: Then that is just a smoke screen. Prisoners will say anything so they do not have to cut their hair. If prison had a policy to cut hair, you cut your hair. If someone said that in the Army, they would laugh their heads off. What is spiritual about whether you have long hair or short hair? The issue is you will always have people who make such claims, but what else do you do? Do you have a pastor? Are you talking about the Nazarene church or the old Nazarene? The fact of the matter, you do not do anything. You just use that as an excuse.
Bob: You have a company with a policy of a certain dress code. You do not have to work for the company, but if it had a policy when you did, you are going to wear normal clothes and they came in robes, you either get some clothes on or do you not accept the job. Those are traditions. They have nothing to do with spirituality or the bible. They are traditions.
Colossians 2:16-17
16 Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.
William from Colorado Springs, Colorado
William: I had a discussion with a co-worker concerning friend of hers who had chosen the wrong path. He was saved, accepted the truth, that Jesus died in his place. What happened after that? He turned his back on the cross, on what Jesus did, and has rejected the teachings, and is living the life of the world. That is a shame. He is worse off now if he never came to Jesus, according to 2 Peter 2. She said the grace of God is so great that even though he now rejects Jesus, he still has a place in heaven. Really? Where did you get that? That is what I was taught. She could not give me a reference. I thought 2 Peter was clear, but maybe you had discerned something else?
2 Peter 2:17-22
17 These people are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them. 18 For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of the flesh, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. 19 They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity – for “people are slaves to whatever has mastered them.” 20 If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. 21 It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. 22 Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,”[g] and, “A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.”
Bob: The issue with someone like that is what John said.
1 John 2:19
19 They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.
Bob: That does not mean he was not hanging around with you, acting like a part of you, but in his heart he was never a part of you. You cannot reject Jesus. What is there to reject Him? If you reject Him, you never repented to begin with. Like in Hebrews, you cannot come back to repentance.
Hebrews 6:4-6
4 It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age 6 and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.
Bob: Why? You cannot come back to where you have never been. You cannot come back to repentance. You never repented to begin with. You just gave lip service to it. If you are in Christ Jesus, you can reject religion, and probably rightly so. You can reject some of the teaching of the church you had been involved in, and walk away. Did you walk away from Jesus or did you walk away from the church? Are you in Jesus? If so, then go find a place to grow in grace, not to feed your flesh. But if you are walking away by the fact that you rejected Jesus, it is because you never accepted Him to begin with.
Rick: Is that what 2 Peter is talking about? Entangled, worse off than before?
Bob: No, that is talking about people, where you are worse off and when you know the ways. That is talking about false teachers.
2 Peter 2:1-3
1 But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2 Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. 3 In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.
Bob: That would be like those teachers on television, when talking about the way of salvation when as lost as they can be. They are false prophets, deceiving people, that just verbalize words. They know the way of salvation, but have never taken it. They would be better off not to have known the way. These kind of guys, the Tiltons, are phony as ever, and there are many like him. They verbalize all their lives things they have learned. In their mind they know the way of salvation, but in their mind they determine to deceive people to get money. That is all they talk about. They claim to have this word of knowledge, but it is nothing but deception. To such a person like that, they would be better off to not know the way of salvation than to have known it. They continued rejecting it.
Bob: They know the way but they have deliberately chosen not to take the way. They know it but concluded it is false in their mind. They are the kinds pleading ignorance on the other. I do not know. As a lost person, I do not want to study the bible too hard because I can always plead ignorance. Remember the W. C. Fields comic. This old codger man, anti-God and was on his death bed. Somebody walked into his room seeing him read his bible. He asked, “W.A, what are you doing?” “I am looking for loopholes.” There are people who know the way of salvation and have rejected it for scamming people.
Charles from McClain, Virginia
Charles: As far as the different faiths, they have different creeds, Nicene Creed and other creeds. Which one are you supposed to believe?
Bob: Those are put out by different denominations. As far as different confessions you are talking about, the denomination is saying we believe this and this. As years have gone by, they have stopped believing those things. You would be amazed at the number of pastors in some seminaries today, and the teachers that do not even believe in the virgin birth or the deity of Christ. So what you do is look at what the scriptures has to say. It is not that you look at what the Presbyterians or the Episcopals believe or what so and so believes, but you go and look what I believe. What confession? I do not have a confession of a denomination. I have a confession of the scripture. I believe Jesus is the Son of God. I believe he was born of a virgin. My confession is that he died on a cross to take away the sins of the entire world and there is no more forgiveness to be executed on our behalf. I believe he was raised from he dead on the third day and today is seated at the right hand of God, interceding on our behalf. I believe he is coming again. I believe all of those things. You can put those things down and say that is the confession of People to People.
Charles: Everyone likes to argue about this or that. Those things are what man has written down, but it is best to just go ahead and read the bible yourself.
2 Peter 1:20-21
20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. 21 For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Acts 17:11
11 Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
Bob: I do not want a long list of something, even though they may be right on. I do not want to make a list and say I believe in that list. That is intellectual suicide. I want to believe what God has revealed to me in the word of God.
1 Corinthians 2:9-10
9 However, as it is written:“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”[Isaiah 64:4] –
the things God has prepared for those who love him –10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
Anna from Houston, Texas
Anna: When I read throughout the Old Testament, talks about different people, who keep going back to idols. You have some that were good leaders and others were bad leaders. In Timothy, it says what will happen in the last days.
2 Timothy 3:1-5
1 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God – 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.
Anna: I have friends in different states, it seems like everybody that goes to a counselor in one of the churches is getting bitter with parents. Oh, we do not believe in psychology. I have never seen so many bitter grown ups. I grew up in a non-Christian home. When I became a Christian, I wanted parents to be saved. I did not blame them for every sin I did. If I did I would have comitted them anyway.
Bob: I guarantee you would have committed them anyway. All of this stuff is utter nonsense. What we have done is gone into the world to grab what we called wisdom, which is foolishness to God, and dragged it into Christian and call it Christian counseling. Just because Christian does not mean you are a Christian counselor. You may be Christian who counsels but you are not a Christian counselor when you are bringing psychology into the word of God.
John 2:24-25
24 But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. 25 He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.
Bob: Jesus did not need Freud to come along for people to figure out what is wrong with us. He told us what is wrong with us. We are sinners. When a child is in rebellion, three things are involved; drugs, alcohol or sex. What is there to rebel against?
Bob: A teenager came in for counsel, and said “I want some freedom”. Bob replied, “I agree with you. Mom and dad, I want you to give this child freedom. He needs freedom to go to the library, to get in on time, and to be free to come in at 10:00 o’clock. If that is the kind of freedom you want, give it to him.
Anna: These children are already grown and married. When they have a problem with marriage, they run to the church and then tell them it is their parent’s fault from 30 years ago. That is abnormal.
Bob: This is nothing new. It has been going on for years. I was in the Lord since 1969 and it was prevalent back in those days, and before then.
Anna: In the church?
Bob: Absolutely. The church sucks it in like a can of milk. We are as dumb as mules. Most churches have no competence at all.
Anna: I have seen people, adults in their 40s or 50s, who had good relationship with the Lord, and then come out of this counseling, and then some bitterness starts coming out toward parents.
Bob: These people are morons. I get so tired of people comingling this stuff. There is no basis for it at all. Just because you call yourself a Christian does not even mean you are born again. Then they learn psychology and drag it into Christian counseling. If you want to teach truth to people, you find it in the word of God. Sanctify them by tyhe truth and your wrd is truth.
If I am set apart from the world by truth, that means the world does not have truth. If the bible says sanctify them by truth and your word is truth, that means the only truth is the word of God and anything outside of that is error. Why are we dragging error into Christian thought and trying to counsel people with it?
Anna: None of that is in the bible. I do not see people blaming parents. Am I missing something?
Bob: You are not missing anything. I do not blame you for being irritated. I have been irritated for 40 years.
Anna: When Christ fulfilled the law, is there a difference between Christ fulfilling and dying for the law?
Romans 13:10
10 Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
Romans 6:23
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
2 Corinthians 5:12
12 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Romans 8:14
14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.
2 Corinthians 3:3
3 You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Bob: He had to fulfill the law before he could become the penalty of the law for our violation. He fulfilled the law by living a perfect life, in perfect love. Perfect love is fulfillment of the law. Having walked in perfect love, he fulfilled the law. Now, he has to uphold the law. What is upholding the law? The wages of sin is death. He did not have any sin, so he had to become sin for us. So we caused him to enter into the death. He fulfilled the law by walking in perfect love. He upheld the law by going to the cross, by dying on a cross for those of us who could not fulfill the law. He ushered in a new covenant of grace. If we are still under law, then we are still under a curse. Dying to the law and being raised again to walk in newness of life frees us now to being led, no longer by laws written on stone, but by the Holy Spirit living in our heart.
Anna: I am not talking about wild teenagers. It has separated families. Some parents getting up in age, and through churches, grown children that should be helping and checking on them, they are turning their backs on them.
Bob: So what are their children going to say about them? So it just gets passed right onto the next generation. If I am messed up because my family, I am going to teach children they are messed up because of me, if I am honest. But I do not have to teach them, since some psychologist will teach them. So sad, an atrocity. How do you like this from Christian counselors, suppressed memory? You cannot remember dad doing anything to you, but he did. This kind of garbage being taught.
Anna: There was a hospital in Houston in court cases for ages. They sold out a pyschiatric hospital and opened it up in a different name. Those suppressed memories are made up by counselors. These so-called Christian counseling.
Bob: We are not going to be accomplishing anything by bashing psychology. We just proclaim Jesus and Jesus will bash psychology for us.
John from Los Angelos, California
John: In reference to previous caller, Jesus even said he came not to bring peace but a sword, and that truth would divide families.
Matthew 10:34-35
34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn“‘a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law –
Bob: Yet, not because of what is going on there. Truth will divide you. Until they resolve issues, then they can have peace with each other.
John: In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is preaching the gospel of the kingdom of heaven or the gospel of the kingdom of God. What was he exactly preaching? When he ends the sermon on the mount, he says those who hear these wwords and obeys them will be like a wise man who built his house on a foundation of rock and when the storm came they were safe. What exactly was he preaching?
Matthew 7:24-29
24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”28 When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, 29 because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.
John had also mentioned about receiving Classic Christianity, and was curious aobut why or how it got that title.
Bob: Classic means return to the original. Coca Cola had their original coke they sold for years and years and went to a new formula. People were not thrilled with the new formula so they returned back to the original and called it classic coke. In regards to the Christian faith, that is what we have done. We have fallen away from the true teachings of the bible and developed our own biases. So we need to return to the original, to Classic Christianity, back to the bible instead of denominational persuasion. If denomination persuasion lines up, hang onto it, not because of denominational persuasion but because it is true.
Bob: Most people do not understand the purpose of why Jesus taught on this earth. He taught because he was headed to a cross to bring salvation. His teaching prior to salvation did not bring salvation. It identifed the condition of man and therefore prepared them for salvation. His goal was the cross and the resurrection. He went to the cross to take away the sins of the world and then the resurrection to bring life from the dead, to bring the solution to the wages of sin, which is death, by the resurrected life of Christ Jesus. Insomuch as that what he came to do and that he was headed for, his teaching was preparing us. What did he have to do to prepare us of? For salvation of dealing with forgiveness and life.
Bob: First of all, he had to convince people they were sinners. If I am going to a cross to take away the sins of the world and people do not know they are a sinner, they will not pay attention to the cross. If people do not know there is a consequence to sin called death, they will not be prepared for the resurrection. This whole ministry was preparatory. It was not so much of an attack on how bad we are, but showed us what true righteousness is, righteousness in Himself, and in so doing showed us our own unrighteousness.
Bob: I said this to many people many times. If you think the ten commandments are tough, try the sermon on the mount for size and see how well you do. All that does is shows me that I cannot do it. Now I am prepared for the cross. If I thought I could then I do not need the cross. His teaching showed me my need for forgiveness and my need for new life. There is nothing in Bob George or you or anyone else that can pull off a godly life. We do not have the capability. We have to be indwelt by the righteous one. There is nothing in you or anyone else that can produce righteousness. Righteousness has to be imputed to us. Until I see myself, I am not prepared to see Him. All of his teaching was preparatory for showing us his righteousness and in so doing showing us our unrighteousness. That is what prepared us for what he came to do, which is dying on a cross to take away the sins of the world and to be raised from the dead to bring life to us who are spiritually dead.
Bob: We are defeated to those teachings. There is not a thing Jesus told us to do we are capable of doing, apart from him. That teaching is that of the Holy Spirit because it is a perfect teaching. Christ was a perfect teaching. Paul said that there is nothing wrong with the law, but when it flows through me, it kills me.
Romans 7:9-13
9 Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. 11 For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. 12 So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.13 Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! Nevertheless, in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it used what is good to bring about my death, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.
Romans 7:21-25
21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Order from our online store: Bible Studies, Books, Witnessing Tracts, Audio Cds, DVDs and More.
Purchase and download Bible Studies, the Closer Look Series & more.
</h4<>