Radio Broadcast Monday 02/28/2022

Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at The Reality of The Resurrection P39 (02-28-22)

An Eternal Inheritance – We’ve Been Made Perfect in His Sight

We are continuing along in our bible study book, A Closer Look at The Reality of The Resurrection. Let’s listen is as Bob teaches from the An Eternal Inheritance chapter.

Bob: We’re picking up on our lesson called An Eternal Inheritance, and it’s probably one of the most disputed doctrines in the scripture. It is amazing when you take a look at the totality of what is called the Christian faith of the terrific high percentage of people that teach that you can lose your eternal inheritance. Which is kind of a contradiction of terms to lose eternal inheritance, but there are a terrific number of people who teach that. It’s an interesting thing, in my opinion, that you also have a large group of people who not only teach that you have to work for salvation. So you’ve got a whole group of people teaching you have to work to get saved and then you’ve got a whole bunch of people teaching that once you do (get saved), you can lose what you worked for and a very small percentage of people that teach that it is finished or justification by faith and by faith alone.

So it is a wonderful thing from God’s vantage point, that first of all, that He doesn’t grade on the curve. And it’s also a wonderful thing that in that case, the majority doesn’t rule. Then on top of that, why you have all of the other religions mixed in among in this world believing that Buddha saves you or Muhammad saves you, you have a whole huge group that church membership in your particular membership saves you.

So it is an amazing thing, isn’t it? How Satan has been so unique and diversified in his way of getting people to call God a liar? When God said I came to do it all and it’s all of Me and it’s none of you. And he (Satan) has been terrifically effective in getting people off of the true message of the gospel of Christ. Well, I think there’s a number of reasons for that. I believe that indwelling sin is that thing that is stuck in us at the time that man fell. That gives us a propensity to want to believe a lie rather than the truth. There’s something in us that we migrated to believing a lie, that incidentally, is why we are so anxious to listen to rumors. And it’s interesting that you have gossip columns. You have people on television that have programs that are, we’re going to gossip. And everybody just can’t wait to tune in and listen to the gossip. And you have the National Enquirer, whatever those things are that you see that everybody buys in the millions to read gossip in the Christian world, extremely anxious to hear gossip. So there’s something inside of us that is in our flesh that gives man a propensity to want, to believe a lie, and never come to truth. And so you can look at that and see that all of this is as a result of the fall of Man which indeed it is. But at the same token you have to look at it and see this is the result of the fall of man and deal with the fall of man. And that’s the resurrection of the Man, and that’s Christ Jesus, our Lord.

And so we see that in the world and you just take the total population of the world, that when Jesus said, only a remnant will enter, that gate is narrow, you can begin to see what it’s being talked about because the deception throughout the world is absolutely rampant and the deception today within the Christian world is also rampant.

Now, when you’re dealing with this thing of the eternal inheritance, many people perceive salvation kind of along this line and let me give you some examples of that. Some people come along and say, well you’re saved, you’re going to save people by your good example, and that sounds so good and so noble. So we got and try to act like a Christian so we’ll be a good example, and everybody’s going to come out and say, what is it that makes you so wonderful? And then I’ll be able to Proclaim Jesus to them as to why I am so wonderful and it’s kind of like a person out in the middle of a lake and all of a sudden they’re bobbing up and down and going down the third time and yelling for help and you pull up in your motor boat. And say, somebody says that guy is drowning. He’s bobbing up and down. He’s drowning, how are we going to save him? Say well, by example. And so you jump out of the boat and say now watch me and you do a very, very smooth breaststroke showing them how to swim and and as you are demonstrating by your ability to swim and buy your wonderful life, and look around, they’re gone permanently. You haven’t saved them. You’ve just shown them that you know how to swim. Well, and another situation would be how do you save people where you just need to get them into the word? And so when you see that person bobbing up and down while you throw them, this book on ten steps to successful swimming and you throw it in the water right in front of them. The guy even grabs that book with one of his hands. And says, now I read that thing, and you will be saved. And after a while he’s gone again.

What is salvation? Well, salvation is when you drive up in your boat, see that someone is drowning, reach down in the water for him, totally helpless going down for the third time. If he could save himself, he wouldn’t be calling help. You’d be swimming or floating going down in total destitution. Having no hope at all of survival, reaching down into that water and jerking that guy out of the water and sticking him in the boat. That’s salvation. Or is that salvation? Now, that’s salvation. It should be salvation. But on the other hand, you see there, there’s another side of this story because on the way back to the shore the guy asked for a cigarette and that I mean that really, yeah, it really makes me mad. And then after that, he starts talking about how he was water skiing and fell off of those blankety-blank skis and starts using some pretty bad language. And that made me, even, even more angry. And then the final straw was, he said, could you kind of speed this thing up a little bit? Because I’m anxious to get to the shore and that really hacked me. So I just pitched him back overboard with it.

Now was that salvation? No, that was a reprieve. You couldn’t call that eternal inheritance. You couldn’t call that eternal life. You couldn’t call that eternal salvation. All you could call that was a temporary reprieve. Because on the way back, I didn’t act nice. So I got pitched back in the water.

Salvation is when you reach down to a helpless person, jerk them out of the boat, stick them in the boat. Keep them in the boat and deliver them safely to the shore. That is salvation. That alone is salvation. Anything short of that, friends, is not salvation. It is a reprieve, it is a reprieve that is predicated on a false assumption that Jesus only saved us to see how we do as a saved person. And if we don’t match up to what He wants us to be as a saved person, for sure you’ve admitted, He didn’t like you lost. But now saved, that He’s going to pitch your right back and that’s the end. Now that is totally contrary to Hebrews 7 that says that because Jesus lives forever, He has a permanent priesthood and therefore, He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him because He always lives to intercede for them.

We’re going to pick up in our lesson in just a moment that’s on page 68. If you’re following along with us in our book, A Closer Look at the Reality of the Resurrection, the resurrected life of Jesus Christ, and we’re starting in point 5, but before we do, just want to make one other point.

When we’re talking about an, inheritance, and that verbiage is used in the scripture, we just read a passage talking about that very same thing that he is able to save completely those who come to Him through faith in Jesus Christ. He always lives to intercede for you and me. How folks, an inheritance is something that is passed on to you. An inheritance is not earned. It is passed on to you. It is an act of grace. That is passed on to you. A inheritance comes as a result of a will. And in a will, it is stated, what you will to pass on to, your heirs. A will can not go into effect until the one who made it dies. If you have ever been the recipient of an inheritance, it is because someone died, who left you in their will before they died and when they died the effects of the will went into effect on your behalf. It could never have gone into effect prior to their death. Now that is what a new covenant is all about, a new will and a new testament. You hold in your hands an old will and an old testament and you hold in your hands, a new testament. Your father, if he left you in his will, probably had an old will and he had eight new wills. What is the difference? The new will, is the one that was made closest to his death. The old will was the one that he made before, he made a new one, that makes sense. That the old preceded, the new, that’s why they call it new. There was an old one. Now, there is a new one.

Now, in Hebrews 9 we’re told, in the case of a will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it because a will is in force only when someone has died, it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. That is Hebrews 9:16. Now, where there was a will, then there is an inheritance, and there are recipients. Who are the recipients of this will? Those who come to God, by faith in His Son Jesus Christ are called joint heirs, with Jesus Christ. You are called a child of God and quite frankly, that is normally who you pass your inheritance onto is your children. And so if you are a child of God, to who as many as received Him by faith, to them He gave the right to become a child of God. If you are a child of God, then you are a joint heir with Jesus Christ, and that is given to us in Galatians 4:7. You are no longer a slave but a son and since you are a Sun, God has made you also an heir. So folks, you are an heir. That means you have inherited something from God. That’s what an heir is. They’ve inherited something from God. Now you and I are the recipients of all of the inheritance of God, that came to us in the new covenant, not the old will but the new will that went into effect on the day that Christ Jesus died through his physical death. He fulfilled the law. He lived in perfect love and love is the fulfillment of the law. He fulfilled the law. That’s why there is nothing left for you and me to fulfill, which is a good thing because we could not have fulfilled it had we wanted to. Only a perfect life could fulfill the law. And I don’t believe any of us are deceived enough into thinking that anybody could or has, or will live a perfect life. Only Christ did that so His life fulfilled the law, his death upheld the law because there was violation on our parts, the ones who could not fulfill the law.

And the wages of sin is death Christ, taking our death on Himself upheld the righteous requirements of the law, which is the wages of sin is death, and he who knew no sin became sin for you and me, so that in him and his resurrected life, we could become the righteousness of God.

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So He upheld the law. He fulfilled it with His life. He upheld it with His death. When He was buried. He buried the law, meaning we died to the law. The law is what killed, as Paul said through the law, I died to the law. The law killed me. And in my death and resurrection, I died to the thing that killed me. So we buried the law so that we could be raised from the dead in the newness of life, being freed from the law. So Christ fulfilled the law through His life. He upheld the law in His death. He died to the law in His burial and freed us from the law, in His resurrection. Now that is good news of the Gospel and that is all included in the gospel and it’s all a part of what was able to bring about this brand-new inheritance. Whereby you are a joint heir not because of what you have done, but because you are a son, not what you have done. But because you became a son.

Now, in that inheritance, we talked about last week, some of the things that are involved in that. First of all, we talked about that you were justified. And that means totally made righteous in the sight of God. Why? Because of what He did folks, not because of what you have done, but because of the grace of God who sent Jesus to do for you and me, what we could never do for ourselves. So we have been justified freely, it says by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ for we maintain that a man is justified by faith, apart from observing the law. Secondly, he said, you’ve been chosen by God to do what? To be holy and blameless in His sight. He chose us in Him before the creation of the to do what? Be holy and blameless in his sight. That choosing as I understand the scripture doesn’t have anything to do with choosing you for salvation and not choosing someone else. If because of God it is God’s will that all should come to repentance and all should come to salvation. So it couldn’t be God’s will that none should perish but all should be saved and then choose some people that aren’t saved. So it was His will that none should perish in all should come to repentance, all should change their mind but not everyone does. But to those who do become of a child of God and are chosen for all people who come to him by faith, He chose before the creation of the world, to make those people holy and blameless in his sight. So that is not something that you earned again. It was the moment you stepped out of Adam and into Christ and Christ having stepped out of heaven, and into you, becoming a child of God clothed in His righteousness, holy and blameless in his sight because of your identification with the one who made you, holy and blameless was in his sight. Now that took total forgiveness, not total for covering of sin as atonement did, but the taking away of sin such as the Life of Christ did.In so doing as we said, canceled the law in His burial so that we could be raised in the newness of life. And that is then the next part of our inheritance saved through His life. When we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son. How much more having been reconciled, are we saved by his resurrected life.

Now, picking up on page 68, we’ve been made righteous in the sight of God. God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. So that in Him in His resurrected life, folks, we might become the righteousness of God. Do you realize right now that in the sight of God, you are as righteous in the sight of God, in other words, right standing as the Apostle Paul? He made you righteous in his sight, His love did that for you. So, right now, you can sit wherever you are standing, wherever you are driving, wherever you are, if you are in Christ, you literally can say I have been made in the righteousness of God. God has given me right standing.

That’s why in The Book of Romans it says, we have peace with God because of our justification by faith. We have peace with God through the access by the grace of God that we entered into His presence, accessing the grace of God. My friends, do you understand what that means? And not because of what you have done, but because of what He has done, you have gained access into the throne of grace, whereby, we as children of God, had the privilege of walking into the presence of God at any time at any place calling Him Abba Daddy Father. That privilege was only reserved and it wasn’t even a privilege for the high priest who went into the Holy of Holies. The only one who could enter in there, and when they did entered in with a rope around their leg, because in the event that they died while they were in there, no one could go get them and they had to pull him out.

But when Jesus died on that cross, that curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from all of humanity was rent from the top to the bottom. It wasn’t ripped from the bottom up, so that man could have done it. It was ripped from the top down, whereby only God could have done it, enabling us to enter into his presence at any time and receiving mercy in our time of need. That is what it means to be made, right. Right in the sight of God.

Hebrews. 10:14 goes ahead to say that we’ve been made perfect in the sight of God, because of one sacrifice. He has (that’s past tense) made perfect forever those who are holy. Now in the NIV, it says, are being made holy, that is not a good translation. You need to go into a New American Standard or the King James. You’ll pick that up. It is those who have been made holy, literally those who have been sanctified, set apart by the grace of God. You can back up to other passages as an example, where in Colossians, where it says we have been made holy in his sight now, so that takes away from the fact that we are being made. That’s not a good translation. We’re not being made holy, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus, the death of Christ once and for all. It also says, we’ve been made holy and blameless, but now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight without blemish and free of accusation. Again we’re talking about your inheritance. What has God given to you? And if he’s given this to you that’s therefore from his standpoint, what you are. And again, we’re just talking about a whole bunch of good news.

We’re going through our inheritance in Christ. I don’t know how that could get any more exciting but I think it will. We talked about the fact in Colossians 1:22 that we have been made holy, that is set apart and blameless in his sight. Now folks, we need to understand that we’re not holy and blameless in our sight obviously. Otherwise we wouldn’t be criticizing each other. The issue is that’s how God sees us. And the whole intent of His understanding to us is that’s how He sees us. It’s not only so that we can be at peace with God, but that should overflow in being at peace with one another. It’s as it says, in the scripture forgive one another. How? As Christ Jesus forgave you. And until we understand the finality of forgiveness that has been extended to us in Christ Jesus, what do we have to pass on? But folks if we don’t pass it on, what have we learned? In other words, if Christ has totally forgiven me and Christ has totally forgiven you, who am I to hold a grudge against you and who are you to hold a grudge against me? You see that is inconsistent with the teaching of the word of God? If Christ Jesus loves you, which indeed He does, it says love one another. That should be a byproduct of your understanding of the love of God. It’s not that we loved Him, but that He loved us first. And as we respond to His initiation of love, we learn to love God and we receive, we respond to, His initiation. So that in responding, we can take His initiative that He gave to us, and initiate that to one another. That’s why it should not be inconsistent with our own experience of loving one another, because as we have received, give. We’ve always looked at giving as in money. But I tell you it has to do with love. And giving, of course, is a part of an act of love, but there’s far more to it than the giving of funds. There’s the giving of our own lives and our giving to one another. And forgiveness, if it is not passed on, it is sitting there like the Dead Sea, so it’s full of water, but it didn’t go any place. And it’s the same thing, if it’s wonderful for me to be filled with the fullness of the love of God and to be basking in that, but if I’m not extending that love to one another, it didn’t go on any one else, it is just a stinkin Dead Sea.

And we need to understand that when God made you and me, set us apart in his sight without blemish and free of accusation, and that’s why it says in the scripture don’t judge one another. What right do you have to judge another person? And when It comes to judging folks, it comes to judging motives. Because actions are appraised, motives have to be judged. I can appraise your action, just like I could appraise your artwork, but I’d have to judge your motivation for doing the artwork. I may say you’re just trying to make money or I can say, you’re just trying to get praised for your paintings or I can say you’re just deceived, you shouldn’t be painting to begin with. I say all kinds of things like that. But in so doing, I’m judging your motive for what you’re doing. I’m praising your painting, but I’m judging your motive. We do that all the time in Christian circles and it’s unfortunate in the Christian world as we said so many times that we’re the only army that shoots their wounded. And that is that instead of basking in this marvelous inheritance that we have received in Christ Jesus, we become like ritual spoiled brats that we’ve got all this inheritance and instead of using it, and give us a heart of appreciation because a kid certainly didn’t deserve to be living in those environments. Kids certainly didn’t deserve to have a pool to swim in and be in his own bedroom and chauffeured cars to drive around in. There wasn’t anything that they deserved it. But instead of living in appreciation of it, we become spoiled brats. And we want more, and we’re out trying to tear down our brothers and sisters, and make them look bad in the eyes of daddy. So that maybe I might get another steak on the table or something. And folks that is so contrary to why God gave you this inheritance. He gave us this inheritance to give us a heart of appreciation and love and respect, and to pass what we have received on to one another. But instead of that our own pride and ego keeps bouncing away where we want to try to destroy our own family, instead of rejoicing with our family.

All of us are heirs of what we’re talking about, every person listening to my voice that is in Christ has the same inheritance. It isn’t that one has more holiness and one has been deemed less blameless than another. One person hasn’t been made a little less perfect than the other. Man, how could you be less perfect than perfect? If you’ve been made perfect, how are you going to get more perfect or less perfect? You’re just made perfect. That’s all ours. All of us have been declared righteous in his sight. Not more righteous than the other. And here, we are trying to get more out of the family.

Thank you so much for tuning in to Classic Christianity with Bob, George. We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s program. We truly hope that today’s message has inspired you to walk a life of faith in the Lord.