Classic Christianity – Call-In Bob George p400 (12-14-18)
Welcome to Classic Christianity radio with Bob George. Today we are pleased to present a special radio show, featuring call in listeners from Bob’s original People to People daily radio program that was on the air for over 30 years, offering real answers for real life problems, as he addresses common questions as well as the tough issues of today, directing callers to the centrality of Christ in you, your only hope of glory. We want to remind our listeners that Bob George Ministries needs your financial support to continue to have Classic Christianity radio on the air. Please visit “BobGeorge.net” to find out how you can help support us financially. Let us listen to Bob as he offers practical biblical insights as he helps people experience faith, hope and love in Jesus Christ.
On today’s broadcast, Bob shared some thoughts on grave clothes Jesus folded up neatly with Robert, the first caller. Although an insignificant topic in comparison to understanding the meaning of the resurrection, Bob appreciated the caller and they were encouraging each other in the Lord, with mutual respect for each other in the work of ministry they do in the Lord. But Bob also answered some very serious questions on eternal life in Christ Jesus. In response to the second caller, Bill, Bob spent much time sharing truth. Bill identified himself as a lost person, so Bob was quite firm explaining the gospel message. Bill was hanging onto the Old Testament and thinking that he could obtain his own righteousness. Another caller, R.W. had a question concerning the salvation of Israel. He was looking at two passages of scripture that seemingly to him contradicted each other. Bob explained the context that at the end of the time, at a certain instance where Jesus comes back to earth, at that moment where all eyes shall see him and they will mourn for the one they had pierced, and not before, all Israel will be saved. It is so important to know the context to understand the scriptures. Another caller Cathy was unfamiliar with the beatitudes and asked Bob what that was about. Bob answered her question from Matthew 5 and explained the meaning of the sermon on the mount where Jesus spoke on various topics, referred to as the beatitudes, explaining the heart of the law. He explained why Jesus spoke the way he did, and the message he wanted men to understand and believe. Jesus came so men may recognize Christ’s righteousness and their own unrighteousness so they may come to Christ for eternal life. Tedd, in the National Guard, deployed to Iraq, was able to receive materials written by Bob George to encourage the troops. He called to thank Bob for Classic Christianity and Overcoming Depression. Overcoming Depression particularly went very well with the troops. He called to thank Bob and was so grateful. Bart, a pastor of a church, asked for advice from Bob, referring to him as an elder. He wanted clarification on the meaning of once saved always saved yet those who claim to be brothers in Christ are living in blatant sin. In particular, he also made specific mention of an associate pastor who is into drugs, alcohol and sexual behavior quite contrary to someone who is a minister. He asked for advice as to what to do. Bob first went into great detail about what salvation really is. Bob then addressed practical matters as to how to approach the associate pastor. Certainly he needs to step down as a minister until he gets his life straightened out and can learn to walk by faith. For currently he is living in hypocrisy and is not fit for serving the body of Christ as a minister. He recommended that an elder gets with the associate pastor so as to get him help in renewing his mind. For he is not walking in trust in the Lord so as to live in freedom and not in bondage.
Robert
On previous call in, Robert made reference to a lady who called in and asked about a cloth on Jesus face. Robert called to provide clarity that there was no grave robbery of Jesus body at the tomb. Although not a lot of significance to this, Robert pointed out that the head cloth was folded in an orderly way. This shows proof that there was no grave robbery. When Jesus came out of grace clothes he was in no hurry or anything. Robert does apologetic work so details like this he finds useful. He also called to recommend Classic Christianity to the listeners.
Bob provided his thoughts on the grave clothes. Everyone has a little idiosyncrasy in their life. They may have seen Jesus fold a napkin prior to his death. Could it be that this is exactly the way Jesus would fold something? This is not some accidental thing. God took the time to fold up the head cloth. Nevertheless to know the meaning of the resurrection goes a far lot deeper than knowing what clothing he had. Jesus Christ is alive and well and living in us today.
Bill
Bill said he has read the Old Testament. He was referencing some scripture in the Old Testament that stated that “God prefers the wicked man to go away from his wicked ways and God will forgive him”. He asked Bob if that was correct? Bob said absolutely not. In the Old Testament, no one could have ever done that.
Bob pointed Bill to the New Testament scriptures in Hebrews 8:6.
Hebrews 8:6
6 But in fact the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, since the new covenant is established on better promises.
7 For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. 8 But God found fault with the people
Bill, darkened in his understanding, insisted again that God said in the Old Testament law that the law is forever and the law is perfect. Yet Paul says no and that the law is a curse. So Bill asked, “How can that be?”
Bob responded by saying “Why it is a curse is because you cannot obey it. Anybody defending a law is half insane.” Bill, now is clearly lost, for he insists that “If God says you can follow it, who says you cannot follow it.” Clearly Bill has just identified himself as one trying to make himself righteous by his own righteousness, thinking he can obey the law or confess sins here and there and still be okay with God.
There was then a little tension in their communication with each other. Bill reacted to what he saw as criticism by Bob who told Bill he needed to use his head.
Bob : “Bill, use your head”
Bill : “It’s your head, Bob.”
Bob : “I am sorry we cannot talk with each other.”
At some point Bill hung up on Bob. Hopefully Bill was still on the line and got to hear the message of the gospel. Bob then spoke the rest of the time explaining the gospel message.
“You are literally denying the entirety of the teaching of the New Testament. You are hanging onto the Old Testament. If you are going to be saved, you are going to be saved through a relationship with Christ Jesus and Christ Jesus only, the one who came to die for your sins. Why did he have to come to die for your sins? Because you are a sinner. You quite frankly are not admitting that you are a sinner and not admitting that you are dead as a result of your sin and therefore you don’t need Jesus. That is why you said that all you need to do is repent of your sins and you will be saved. That is nonsense because no one has ever repented of all their sins. Besides that Jesus said the world’s sin (singular) is unbelief in Him (John 16:9).
John 16:9 (TLB)
“The world’s sin is unbelief in me”
The sins of the world that you are talking about had been placed behind the back of God never to see them again. That was the work of the cross where He who knew no sin became sin so that you could become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).
2 Corinthians 5:21
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
But you are not going to do that. You want to obtain your own righteousness. I got news for you. You will either go into heaven clothed in the righteousness of Christ Jesus. Or you are going to try to be clothed in your own righteousness. You have no righteousness and therefore have no clothing. So you will be arrested for indecent exposure if plan to go in with your own righteousness. Therefore you need salvation through the only one who can give you salvation and that is Christ Jesus the Lord. I am very sorry your stubborn heart is such that you do not want to listen to truth. You hang up, which is fine. I hope you are still listening. But the issue is that that the kind of mindset is going to send you to no place except where people go who want to go there and that is called hell. There is no place in heaven for self righteousness but only for those who have seen themselves as what they are, dead spiritually and have come to Christ Jesus for His resurrected life.
1 John 5:12
“Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”
So according to your own testimony you have helped to identify yourself. You do not have life and that is why you cannot understand spiritual things. It is foolish to you (1 Corinthians 2:14).
1 Corinthians 2:14
“The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.”
That is why you are hanging on to the Old Testament thinking you can obey the law when James says that no one can obey the law (James 2:10).
James 2:10
“For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it”
You violate the least of these commandments you violated all of it. So you are in tough shape. When the bible says any man who is under the law is under a curse (Galatians 3:10). The curse you are under is the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) because you have never chosen the solution to that, which is life in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:10
“For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.””
Romans 6:23
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
R.W.
The question R.W. asked is how do Romans 9:27 and Romans 11:25 seemingly contradict each other?
Isaiah 10:22
“Though your people be like the sand by the sea, Israel, only a remnant will return. Destruction has been decreed, overwhelming and righteous.”
Romans 9:27
“Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved.”
Romans 11:25
25 I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, 26 and in this way all Israel will be saved.
Bob replied by stating what does it matter if it is Israel or the Gentiles. The only way saved is way you and I saved, by putting faith in the completed work of Jesus Christ and the meaning of that to us. The end time deal is when the Jews look on the one they pierced and every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess Jesus Christ is Lord. At the end times, when Christ appears physically, all Israel will be saved at that moment, not a time before, at the return of Jesus Christ. So in essence, Romans 11:25 is at a different time period in history than Romans 9:27. Romans 11:25 is after the time of the Gentiles. Israel became a nation in 1948. How many Jews were slaughtered in World War II under Adolf Hitler? Truly only a remnant was saved then. Also look at prophecy of Zechariah 12:1-14. Many more Jewish people will be slaughtered in that day, a time that has not yet been fulfilled. Romans 11:25 is speaking of the latter years of history in Zechariah 12:1-14 right after that slaughter of the Jews, where God Himself intervenes. The Gentile world is coming to a close as more and more Gentiles will be hardened in heart, closing their hearts to the gospel message or the Gentile world that are believers will have been caught up to meet the Lord in the air (2 Thessalonians) and all attention returns to Israel. The church age has closed.
Zechariah 12:10
10 “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.
Cathy
Cathy asked “What are the beatitudes?” Bob directs her to the fifth chapter of Matthew. You will see down in the nation of Israel where Jesus talked to a number of people. If you were to go to Israel and see the spot where Jesus spoke to the crowds. Man can speak in a normal voice and be heard in every place. Natural acoustics on that mount where he spoke. That passage is dealing with how God looks on the heart. The law says what man can and cannot do. But Jesus got under the skin and into the heart. He talked about how he came to fulfill the law. He talked about how the law says do not murder but I say if anyone is angry with someone else then he has also committed murder in the heart. Certainly cannot legislate that. Jesus also said if you look lustfully in the heart you have already committed adultery. Why is Jesus showing us these things. He is showing true righteousness from God’s vantage point not from our feeble understanding and not for our laws to improve upon what God has said. But He is showing true righteousness in Him and by so doing to show us our own unrighteousness. If I do not see my own unrighteousness then I am not ready for the cross. If I do not see that I am dead spiritually then I am certainly not ready for his resurrection. All of that teaching on the mount of the beatitudes; judging others ,worrying, illustrations, he wanted to give to amplify those things.
Tedd
Tedd, in he national guard, was deployed in Iraq. He received materials to send to the troops deployed in Iraq. He called to thank all the listeners and those who supported with books sent over and fundraising. Bible studies, Classic Christianity, victory over depression went very well with all the deployed troops.
Bart
Bart is a pastor and is struggling teaching the people of God so asked for Bob’s help. Bart said “Bible says none are righteous and all have sinned. All of us have hard time denying the flesh.” As a minister and raised in a mixture of denominational systems, he struggles to get people to see once saved always saved is not a free pardon to live in an unrighteous manner. Through resurrection we do have free pardon and free life. In church he is attending, he has an assistant pastor who is overcome by sinful nature; smoking dope and living in adultery. He personally made aware through him confessing to him of these things. So he asks for Bob’s wisdom. wisdom from the elders for direction.
Bob first answers Bart by a thorough explanation of what the gospel message really is.
Salvation – Romans 5:8
Romans 5:8
8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Yet while enemies, we were reconciled through his death. This means you were reconciled to God in regards to the sin issue before you were ever born. Reconciliation is an accounting term meaning paid in full. The sins of the entire world was paid in full. Every sin ever committed from Adam to eternity, Jesus took them away by the shedding of his blood on the cross. That is why no man goes to hell because of their sins. The only sin attributable to man is the sin of rejection of the son of God. The provision for sins to be paid for, to be forgiven, was made for us when Jesus came to go to the cross, where he was beaten half to death, in all he had to go though and to be tortured on our behalf so we can be walking in freedom. That is what the cross did. The cross does not cause a man to be freed from the consequence of sin which is death. Death is the problem. What is salvation? Being saved from the consequence of sin which is death. What is the solution? Life in Christ Jesus.
Colossians 2:13
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins,
You are not saved by getting your sins forgiven. As the earlier caller had said and believed in error : “All you have to do is repent of your sins. I am okay and if I sin occasionally and if I repent I am okay.” No you are not okay believing that lie. You are born into this world dead spiritually, not alive but dead. The only solution is life from the dead and the only life available to you is life in Christ Jesus. When you are dead you are not in the best shape you need to be in. Forgiveness can not bring life to the dead. Forgiveness is what cleared the deck for the divine action of bringing life to the dead, restoring in us what was lost in Adam, that is, the Spirit of God living in us. You do not come to Christ to get your sins forgiven, that is not faith, because your sins were already forgiven. That forgiveness that was provided for you 2000 years ago is only received in the resurrection life in Christ Jesus. You do not come to Christ to get your sins forgiven. Rather, you come to Christ to get life. You come to Christ to get the solution to the problem of the consequence of sin which is death by the gift of God which is eternal life. In Him, in this eternal life, you have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Ephesians 1:7
“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace”
Where is the forgiveness provided received? In Him. Don’t stream people down aisles to get forgiveness. Stream people down aisles, if you are going to do that, to get life. To get Jesus, is not what he did for you, but Jesus living in you, giving the only solution to spiritual life. Buddha, Muhammad, Moses, Abraham, nor any man could give you resurrected life. The only one who could give you resurrected life is the only one who was resurrected, and that is Jesus Christ. When we come to him for life we are a new creation with a new identity, a child of God. As a child of the living God, we must learn how to live as a child of the living God because prior to him we were not living as a child of God but as a child of the devil.
Hebrews 2:14
“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—”
In our former way of life, all our sinful ways and actions are like barnacles now to us as a child of God. It is like we have barnacles hanging off us. There is renewing of the mind that has to take place to have the barnacles, the error, fall off. Scriptures instructs the believer to be transformed by the renewing of the mind.
Romans 12:2
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
When you come to Christ you are like a baby in Christ. He does not call you an adult but a child. A process of unlearning and learning has to occur. If learn from God, then you must learn what truth is. To a person not born again, he is lost. The problem for the lost is death and only one solution for that. It does not matter if you are a good corpse or a bad corpse, you are still a corpse. It does not matter if you smell good or you smell bad. It is not an issue of how good or bad you are but how dead you are. Now when you have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into light and come alive in Christ Jesus then you are in the process of growing. Not a matter of just telling somebody to start living this perfect life because you cannot do that because you have a lot of learning to do. I do believe that a man claiming to be in Christ Jesus but is testifying of using drugs, alcohol, sex and everything else under the sun, then is certainly a question of his qualification as a minister of the gospel. Such a person should step down and be talked to by the elders. He needs to get out of the ministry until he gets life straightened out because he is living a life of hypocrisy and also for the purity of the church. For as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, a little leaven leavens the whole loaf. But that is not the issue. The issue is are you lost or saved. If you are saved, those sins he is committing are behind the back of God never to see them again. So what instruction should the man receive so he can walk in freedom? All he is going to do if he is going to walk by faith is to say “Lord Jesus, thank you for what you did for me. But why I am doing these things is because I am not trusting in you. The root of all those sinful actions, turning to drugs or affairs, is because I am not trusting Jesus. I ask you Lord to renew my mind and teach me truth and set me free from this bondage that I find myself in, but I am saved.”
As for practical matters, which Bob did not address, there is the counsel of the Apostle Paul in the letter written to the Corinthians. The letter to the Corinthians speaks of a man who had his Father’s wife, something that does not even occur among the heathen. Paul instructed the church in what to do concerning him. They followed Paul’s instructions, removing him from fellowship among God’s people. Such discipline was sufficient and he came to his senses and had true godly sorrow and scripture records that he went out of his way to clear himself of this matter. So in 2 Corinthians, Paul provides further instruction to the church to reaffirm their love for him so he is not overcome with grief that he might never recover and also so as not to be outwitted by Satan.
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