Call-In Classic Christianity Radio – Bob George P570 (09-11-20)
Synopsis
You cannot escape troubles in this fallen world, and many people have gone through horrendous things in this life, abuse of all kinds, beaten and rejected by a spouse, or molested by a close relative, and they carry hurtful and very painful memories and scars. But God wants us to be set free with truth, to turn our eyes to Him and live in His wonderful grace. We choose not to recall those painful memories, except to the degree that we can comfort others, who are going through the same things we did, with the same comfort we received from God.
So let go of the past so you can live in the present. And at times, even the present circumstances you are in, you are an overcomer in Christ, who promised to cause all things to happen for the good to those who love Him and are called according to His good purpose. It is not that he will make bad good, but He will cause all things to turn out for your good. For example, if someone is so hard of heart, such as an unbelieving spouse, and he does not want to live with you, then let him go, as scripture says. You are not bound in such circumstances. Then entrust yourself, if you have children by him, to the Lord, to work all things out. You are no longer under law but under grace, and God wants you to live in peace. Let God work in you those qualities in you that can never be taken away.
So as you grow in Christ, I would advise you to get into the New Covenant, for years and years, before you even crack open the Old Covenant. It is vitally important you understand the grace you are living under today, you who are in Christ. God ushered in a new covenant with men, that started after his death, not at the start of the book of John. Look at Hebrews and study the epistles to learn doctrinal truth on being made complete in grace, your identity in Christ, the difference between law and grace, and the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant. As you do, you will be able to walk in the newness of life, a life of peace and joy in the Lord.
And if you are not in Christ, and others see you as a good person, who treats your wife with respect, but consider that the reason all that is said sounds foolish to you is because you are a natural man, without the Spirit of God in you. The spiritual man understands spiritual things because he has the Spirit of God living in him to explain things to him. If you cannot see Spirit, how then can you understand Trinity. None of us can. But God made Himself known in the person of Jesus Christ, so that even though you will not understand Trinity, you can apprehend it, because Jesus explains it to us.
Would you be willing to accept Christ as Lord and Savior, and understand no more than the fact that Jesus went to the cross to take away your sins and was raised from the dead to give you life? Not just any life, but His life living in you, your hope of glory. Are you willing to accept that? If you are, then God will give you wisdom and the ability to understand spiritual things. If you do not accept that, you will never understand spiritual things.
Transcript
Dianne from Irvine, CA
Dianne: My husband has left me and is divorcing me because he did not know what he was getting into when he made his vow to me. He told him that as a Christian he has no grounds to divorce me. If he does, I will be committing adultery. He says he has been dreading this for years because he cannot stand my voice, my faith, my personality and he does not want to be with me. I have been 22 years with him and he used to be physically abusive and now he is verbally abusive and wants to put all the blame on me and takes no responsibility when he puts me down. If I try to point it out and repeat what he said to me, so he will hear himself, he will not listen. I do not know how to get through to him.
Bob: Again, there is nothing I can do on this because you are dealing with a one-sided situation. What you are dealing with is someone who does not want to be married to you anymore. The only thing you can do is realize, if that is the case. Incidentally you will not be committing adultery if you divorce. Divorce is not an unpardonable sin. If that was a sin, was that sin put on the back of God never to see again?
Dianne: I do not know.
Bob: If you get divorced, is that a sin that Jesus forgot to forgive at the cross, or did He take away all sins of the world?
Dianne: I do not know. It seems like an unpardonable sin?
Bob: No, that is not true. You do not want to be hung up on that. You cannot have a free mind when you are believing what is error. Here is truth.
2 Corinthians 5:19
19 God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting people’s sins against them
Bob: Do you believe that, as a child of God? Do you believe that to be true?
Dianne: Yes?
Bob: You do not sound too convinced. What did Jesus do on the cross? Did he die for all sins or just some sins?
Dianna: All sins.
Bob: Now, did he just die for past sins or future sins or were all of your sins in the future when he died for them?
Dianne: All of them.
Bob: Exactly. There is no such thing as past and future sins. Jesus took away the sins of the entire world, back to Adam and forward to eternity. God is not dealing with you on the basis of sins today. He took them away from the eyes of God, never to see them again.
1 John 2:2 (KJV)
2 And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
Bob: That is what propitiation means. God says “I am satisfied. Your sins have been judged. The verdict is guilty, the punishment is death, and I took it all.”. Jesus paid it all. He took it all for you and me. The only sin attributable to man is the sin of the rejection of that truth. That is what Jesus said.
John 16:9(TLB)
9 The world’s sin is unbelief in me.
Bob: The only question that God will ever ask a person is, “What did you do with my Son?” Our sins have already been judged and have already been declared guilty and have already been paid for. There is no sin you will ever be accountable for except the sin of the rejection of the Son of God.
Bob: Let us get that straight before we go on. Otherwise you are sitting under the law that says, “if I divorce and ever remarry I am committing adultery.” That is not true. Jesus was teaching under the law. Under the law, that is the case. But he came to take away the law. We are no longer under the law. You are now under the grace of God, being led internally.
Romans 6:14-16
14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. 15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! 16 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey – whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?
Bob: That is not an excuse for people to go get divorced. But it is because of the fact that is due to the evil of our hearts, that divorce will take place.
Matthew 19:7-9
7 “Why then,”they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
Bob: In your particular case, you have a mate that says, “I do not want to be married to you any more.” In that case, you cannot force them or manipulate him. What do you want back from a person who says that he does not like your voice or what you look like or anything about you. What would you want to be married to him for? If you are going to live in a trust relationship with Christ, that if this is the case of what the situation is, then it says in scripture.
1 Corinthians 7:10-16
10 To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. 11 But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.12 To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. 13 And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. 14 For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.
15 But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace. 16 How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?
Bob: That is, you have someone, who is a Christian, and you are a Christan, and your unbelieving spouse, your husband, does not want to live with a Christian, then scripture says to let him go. That is how you live today, under this side of the cross, under the New Covenant. If you are a Christian and the person does not want to live with you because you are a Christian or for whatever reason, then let him go. That is the biblical standpoint.
Bob: Get off this guilt trip on this. Look at it for what it is. For some reason, after all these years, but for some reason your husband wants to leave, unless he is willing to go to solid biblical counseling, not someone who will put you on a guilt trip, because the power of sin is the law.
1 Corinthians 15:56
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
Bob: If someone tells you that you cannot do something, then it makes you want to do it. So you have to get free from that. Yes, I am permitted to divorce, but as scripture says, that everything is permissible, but not profitable.
1 Corinthians 6:12
12 “I have the right to do anything,” you say – but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything” – but I will not be mastered by anything.
Bob: If he is not willing to do that and is bent on wanting to get out of marriage, then there is nothing you can do except sit back and let him go and get on with your life and you and Jesus will get along just fine.
Dianne: I have been trying to let go. I get my mom telling me that it is all my fault and it is my responsibility to patch things up. She has been calling the whole family.
Bob: Well, that is very bad advice, Dianne. That is pitiful advice.
Dianne: When I try to keep it together, he thinks he is resentful saying that he feels like a fool that he stuck with me. He wants to be free. I tell him that he is free in his marriage. It hurts me because I feel depressed when he is with me, and like you say he really does not want to be with me and he takes it out and snaps and is aggressive and it comes out in different ways. He really wants to be somewhere else, but he does things only out of obligation to the children.
Dianne: I have a hard time. I am stuck in a rut.
Bob: Well, Dianne, the issue is this.
Isaiah 53:6
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Bob: That is a formula for failure right there in marriage unless the two of you want to do what Christ wants you to do.
Bob: Hold on a minute, Dianne. Hold on and listen. If you are a woman, you are not going to be thinking like a man. If he is a man, he is not going to think like a woman. That is why you go to Christ to get His thinking on these matters.
Bob: Number one, a marriage does not break up because it is just one person’s fault. You work things out in a godly way in the way God wants you to do. I cannot help you in this. All I can do is encourage you. If that is the case, he has any thought at all of divorce, and you say, “I am going to stay with you because.” Forget that. The issue is, does he want to get proper counseling in regard to this marriage? If he does, then there is hope for restoration. If he doesn’t there isn’t.
Bob: If a man makes up his mind saying, “I do not want to be here. I am out of here.”, then there is nothing you can do about it except drive a deeper wedge between you and your husband. You do not want to do this if you have children. The last thing you want is for you to drive a wedge between you and your children. He will be in your life as long as those children are alive. He will be in your life as long as he is alive. Those children are between the two of you. You will have to see each other for the rest of your lives whether married or not. So do not drive a bigger wedge, than what is here. If he is willing to work it out, try to do that, Dianne.
Dianne: I am trying. I thought love is a choice. I still love him, and he can choose to love me or he can choose not to.
Bob: But you are talking about you and I cannot talk to him. I hope I can help you. There is nothing I can do to help you. Again, it depends on where he is. Has he filed for a divorce or said he has filed for a divorce?
Dianne: He has already filed for divorce.
Bob: Then, there is nothing you can do. He has made up his mind and has gone to an attorney, filed for divorce. So unless God does something to change his mind, then you will be divorced. If that is the case, do not drive a deeper wedge. But he is making a mistake. If you have children, he is not thinking of them. He is thinking more of himself or he would not want to be breaking up a marriage. But if he has made that choice and has gone to an attorney, then I would say the chances are slim. I am not saying God could not do something to get his mind changed, but I say the chances are very slim. You have to prepare yourself that you will probably go to a divorce. If you do, then you and God, working together, will have a brand new problem on your hands raising children without a man in the house. He is going to have to run into the problem of trying to see his children, who are wondering why he divorced his mom. That is not a good thing. There is no good thing in divorce. But if a person makes up his mind to do it, there is nothing you can do about it. Resolve yourself to the fact of putting this in the hands of God. “I am through. I am not trying anymore. If I have made mistakes to cause them, then I am sorry for that.” But the issue is, “I am out of the picture. I am putting this in your hands. I will trust that whatever happens, that you will cause it to work together for good. I know one thing is true.”
Romans 8:28
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Bob: He will not make bad good, but He will cause it to work together for your good by drawing you closer to Himself.” If he is willing to talk and listen and get a hold of marriage tapes, which are excellent counseling tapes, and see if the two of you would go through them together. If he won’t, then that is as much as you can do right now. If you two do that, if he is willing to listen to it, but if not, get your hands off and leave it in the hands of God.
Dianne: I do not know. Sometimes, he has come back before. Twice a month he goes to a second home or hotel. On again, and off again.
Bob: Dianne, I know you love to talk about this, but this is just not the place to continue on with this. If there is any chance, like I said. You will either have to let go of it. If he comes back, fine. Leave it in the hands of the Lord. If he comes back, I will send you marriage tapes. That will help tremendously. You have to quit trying to control this. That is a problem many women have, to try to control men in marriage. That can drive a person away. I am sure there are problems you have that have manifested in marriage and there are problems he has. That is what a good biblical counselor will do, to get to the root problem, so a person is not pointing fingers at the mate. “Hold on a minute, I have something to do with this.” At any rate, I would be more than happy to put you on hold and talk to one of our counselors and see if there is material we can send. We would be glad to help any way we can. Sorry you are going through such a problem.
Delores from Sandia, TX
Delores: That woman, that other caller, I can relate to her. I can have peace in my heart. I was sexually molested by my grandfather when I was 6. My grandpa lived with us when he was 90. The memory was there, but I never held a grudge. I never told my mother, for he was liable to kill my grandfather and the whole family would be destroyed. I kept that secret until my mother died. When my mother died, I was free at last. I carried my mother’s#8217;s coffin. Because of what happened to me, I did not go out on a date until 23. Every time I went on a date with a boy, I would throw up. I prayed, when am I going to get married, to find a man who treated me with respect. My sisters thouht I was going to be gay because I did not get married until 33. I have peace beyond understanding that God gave me. I can relate to that woman. My father said I had the devil. Both my parents are gone but my mother loved me beyond condition. She died without knowing what happened to me. They took me to every kind of person, even a witch doctor. The psychologist never even asked if I was sexually molested. If they asked me, I would not even have to tell them. They would know in my expression. All the psychologists gave me pills and that drove me crazy. No one knew until mother passed away.
I never mentioned what pain was until. He threw those papers. “Dad, do you know why I was really sick, and because of your father?” He said it was my fault. I said, “what about me? I was an innocent bystander.”
Bob: Delores, there are so many problems in the world today. It does no good to sit around and rehearse these things. Until she is able to get the peace of God in her heart and quit thinking about them.
Delores: Nobody can do it for her.
Bob: No one can do it. You have to get to the point that enough is enough.
Delores: I am 51 and I rest in the Lord every single second. But she hasn’t. Until she comes to the point. Well, I hope she puts that away.
Bob: Well, I do too.
Delores: But the question, though, I wanted to ask you. Though he was God, I know God is Jesus, but on verse 9, it says because of this God raised him, and I have so much trouble trying to explain to my husband that he does not understand the trinity.
Romans 10:9
9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Bob: No one does, Delores.
Delores: I know. That is what I tell him. If we deny it, we lose our soul. If we try to explain it, you lose your mind. He says that Jesus is not God. Well, he has to learn on his own.
Bob: Delores, let me explain it. God is Spirit. If you can understand and see Spirit, then he can understand God. But the Spirit of God existed in the person of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, that was never revealed carefully to us until Jesus came. But Jesus came and explained it to us. Until we come to the point and accept the testimony of Jesus concerning the Father and the testimony of the Father concerning His Son, we will remain lost and the natural man cannot understand spiritual things. It sounds foolish to him.
1 John 5:9-11
9 We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. 10 Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. 11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.
1 Corinthians 1:18
18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
1 Corinthians 2:14
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.
Bob: Until your husband comes to Christ as his Lord and Savior, he will not be able to understand or comprehend these truths. You do not have to comprehend the three in one. I do not think we can unless we understand that it is in a different realm than we live in. I do not know what Spirit looks like. But God the Son has testified as to the makeup of God in its entirety, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, then I do not have to comprehend it, but I can apprehend it. That is how I understand the Trinity.
Delores: I understand it. I will just pray for him. He is a good working husband. He has never done anything to disrespect his wife. I guess everybody has their time.
Bob: I think about those types of things. What I would point out to a person. There is a natural man and a spiritual man. The spiritual man has accepted the Spirit of God to live in him. Natural man is one who is not. We are told natural man has not understood these things. If you have identified yourself as a natural man, then you cannot understand these things. Would you be willing to accept Christ as Lord and Savior and understand no more than the fact that Jesus went to the cross to take away your sins and was raised from the dead to give you life. Not just any life, but His life living in you, your hope of glory. Are you willing to accept that? If you are, then God will give you wisdom and the ability to understand spiritual things. If you do not accept that, you will never understand spiritual things.
Delores: Neither are my sisters. My sisters do not even want to talk to me, a holy roller. I just pray for them. That is all I can do.
Bob: Yes, that is all you can do. Thank you for your call. God has taken your mind and conformed it to His heart.
Delores: Thank you very much. Have a wonderful day.
Mark from Eugene, OR
Mark: I have a quick question. I read a lot out of the New Testament. I know the New Covenant is really where you should focus on, and the ten commandments only bring you death. Is there any value in reading the Old Testament? Should we set time aside to study the Old Testament?
Bob: I tell you, you are going to learn. There are many, many stories that amplify the unfaithfulness of man and the faithfulness of God. That is basically what you are dealing with there in the Old Testament.
Mark: It is like a lesson on the human condition.
Bob: Yes. You are dealing with different stories of heroes of old in the Old Testament, and how they exercised faith in what had been revealed to them at that point. How God’s faithfulness was all the way through Genesis to Revelation, is the faithfulness of God.
Bob: Yes, you get some nice stories out of there, but as far as doctrine to live by, outside of faith [of the Messiah to come], they did not have an object of faith in the Old Testament. Today, we have the revelation of God through Christ Jesus. The object of our faith, on this side of the cross is Christ Jesus, the one who said, “no man will ever come to the Father except through me.”
John 14:6
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Bob: So, that is where we live and that is where we should concentrate our time, and incidentally Mark, concentrate our time in the New Covenant that began at the death of Jesus, not at the life of Jesus.
Hebrews 9:15-18
15 For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance – now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.16 In the case of a will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, 17 because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. 18 This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood.
Bob: The New Covenant was ushered in at the death of Christ just like your will will not go into effect until the day you die. Therefore, we see that Jesus, while he was here on this earth taught under the law, under the Old Covenant, and in so doing, buried us, but prepared us for the cross and the resurrection. And his entire teaching was preparatory. Everything that he said was impossible for us to fulfill, but he fulfilled it by himself. He told us to be perfect. How are you going to do that? He made us perfect by that one offering. He told us to be holy. How are you going to do that? He made us holy. We couldn’t justify ourselves. No man will ever be justified in the sight of God through obedience to the law. The old was law. You cannot justify yourself. All of that we have and all that we do and all that we live on is on this side of the cross. That is where we ought to spend our time.
Matthew 5:48
48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Hebrews 10:14
For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.
Leviticus 11:44
44 I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy.
Hebrews 10:9-10
9 Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. 10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Galatians 2:6
6 know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.
Mark: Excellent. Yes. My maturity is able to read the Old Covenant and not get lost in old laws. Do you think that is a bad place to go if you are a new Christian?
Bob: Yes, absolutely. You will be confused. If you are a new Christian, you ought to devote years and years discovering what your inheritance is and who you have in Christ.
Mark: So focus on the New Testament, definitely.
Bob: Absolutely. I say just stick in it.
Mark: Excellent.
Bob: The other is supplemental. It is absolutely supplemental to what God has revealed to us in the New Testament.
Mark: Thanks a lot, Bob.
Bob: Alright, my brother.
Mark: God bless. Talk to you later.
Bob: Okay. Bye. Bye.
