Radio Broadcast Monday 04/18/2022

Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at Your Identity in Christ P16 (04-18-22)

The Wages of Sin is Death, But The Gift of God is Eternal Life Through Jesus Christ Our Lord

When you are born again of the Holy Spirit of God, you receive a new identity. You are a child of God when you are in Christ Jesus. Listen in as today’s broadcast goes over a bit of last week’s broadcast as Bob continues teaching from the Bible study booklet, A Closer Look at Your Identity in Christ, available for purchase from our online Bob George Ministries ecommerce store.

Just as a person’s physical growth is based on proper diet and exercise, so is the Christians’s spiritual growth dependent on regular feeding upon the word of God and application of its principles. With more false teaching, shifting opinions and general confusion in the world than ever before, Christians need a solid foundation upon which to base their beliefs and build their lives. The word of God declares that Jesus Christ is that foundation of truth. With that in mind, let’s now take A Closer Look at Your Identity in Christ.

I’m dead to yesterday. I can’t grab a hold of it. I can’t hold on to it. I can remember it sometimes, but I can’t recapture it. I am dead to it. You see? So when the life of God departed from Adam, his human spirit was not dead. Otherwise, he’d be an animal because if your human spirit was dead and all you’re left with is a soul and a body, why you may as well be a dog. A dog has a soul and a body. But that human spirit is not dead. It’s dead to what left it, and that was life, the life of God living in a human spirit. So that human spirit therefore was designed in such a way to be under the control of God’s Holy Spirit. So that man’s spirit was to be controlled by something. God. So the spirit of man is made with a capacity to be controlled. Not only that, it is made with a necessity to be controlled. So when the human spirit was vacated by God, and the human spirit was made, designed by God, in such a way to be controlled by something. And that something is gone. The human spirit turned to the only thing left for its control and that is the soul of man. And that left the human spirit in bondage therefore to the desire of the flesh of man, totally under the control of humanity rather than under the control of deity, as God designed a man to be.

So here is a man designed in such a way to be controlled by God, does not have God living in him, therefore, incapable of being controlled by God and yet has to be controlled by something and therefore has no place else to go for its control except the world, people, places and things. All of those things that make up what we call flesh and humanity. Just total control by the world and humanity. Now if you say, man was like a benevolent dictator, you’d say well find out if that’ll work, but there’s no dictator that remains benevolent. And so flesh that started out created by God, flesh was not evil in and of itself, it became subject to evil when indwelling sin entered into it. So when the Spirit of God departed for man, man’s human Spirit, not dead, just dead to what departed from it, came out of the control of His humanity. Sin entered into that humanity. So guess what? The demands here became controlled by the sin contained in our humanity. That’s total control.

So Satan had not only that but the wages of sin is death. So now he had man bound up forever. Not only do I end well, man now through indwelling sin, but I got him because the wages of that sin is death. So, I’ve got God’s creation, messed up, really good. And so, all of us are born into this world, not alive, spiritually, but dead spiritually. But with our human spirit, totally alive. But only alive to what it’s being controlled by, and that’s our flesh. Now, when a man is born, and again, that’s his identity, it’s a man without the Spirit of God living as far as God is concerned. It’s called a natural man. It’s also called a sinner because the solution to that condition is faith. And until we’ve exercised faith in the solution, we remain contrary to that faith and its solution. Therefore called a sinner. So you’re lost. You’re called a sinner. You’re called a natural man, and that’s what controls the whole humanity.

Now, with this, with this identity, I have desires and they’re called desires of the flesh. Desires of the flesh can be good desires, and desires of the flesh can be bad desires when good and bad is determined by who? Man. The one who stood at the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil and said, I don’t need you to determine right from wrong, in other words, good from bad. I’ll do it on my own. So from our own man-made ideas, we have good desires and we have bad desires. And so a good desire for a lost natural man could be why I’d like to go to church every Sunday. And we say there’s a good desire.

Or I’m going to keep my body in great shape. That’s the greatest thing I can do. That’s a good desire according to man. Quite frankly, I don’t think whether God cares whether you’re skinny as a rake or plump. But from our standpoint that is vitally important. And then we go ahead and tell people that they live longer, if they do this, as if we had something to do with how long we live, when the scripture says that every man has a time to be born, a time to die. But we say, no, you can prolong your life this way. No, you may prolong the quality of your life, but you’re not going to prolong your life, my friend one minute longer than God knows you’re gonna die. You had a time to be born, you had a time to die and, and in between, I’ve got some choices as to whether in this container that I live in that I’m going to make it fat as a pig, or if I’m gonna try to keep it in shape. And it, whichever way I decide on there, I’m probably going to live a more of a quality lifestyle, but I’m not going to prolong my life by one minute. Now I know that there are people in the medical profession, come along, say, oh that’s not true. But I have to gauge what I’m saying based upon the word of God, not on a medical book. So we have a, we have desires of the flesh, and they can be good desires according to us and it can be bad desires. But are they God’s desires? And you see, until we are born again of the Spirit, we do not have the ability to determine whether this is God’s desire or whether it’s my desire, we don’t have no ability at all to determine that.

Now, when we are born again, and the Spirit of God comes to live within you, you are made into a new creation. Now, before you were born, now, you’re a creation. What is that creation made up of? It’s made up of a body, that you were born with indwelt with God that you were created by. So you have a God’s creation housed in a body that was given to you by Mom and Dad.

If any man be in Christ, now, he’s called a new creation. He’s born again of the Spirit and that’s a new creation. So you have received spiritual birth from God. And that new man, that knew you, that new spirit is now housed in that same will body of flesh. But you have a brand new identity before that the best I could call myself would be a man or a child. Now I can call myself a child of God. What, where did my new identity come from? Who is in me? It’s like a jar. The best that jar can really do is to say I’m a jar until it’s filled up with something. You fill it up with applesauce and seal it. Now, it’s called a jar of applesauce. Where did Its name come from? What’s in it? Now, as this new child, that you and I are children of the living God, that is our single identity, folks. We don’t have two identities. I’m no longer a child of the devil, a child of God. I’m a child of the Living God, that is who I am. That is my total identity. Now that new creation, Bob George with the Spirit of God living in me, is living in a body, with two sets of desires. You still have the desires of the flesh, and now you have the desires of the Spirit, which you did not have before, because the Spirit wasn’t living in you.

Now I did not say that you could not have had religious desires, that we would have categorized before we took our break as good desires, church. He desires what we call good desires, but that’s not God’s desire. So you’ve got two sets of desires living in you. You have desires of the flesh which sometimes desires to do good things, in order to get recognized, petted on the head, nice thing to do. Nice place to go, good thing to do. All of those kind of things.Or you got bad desires that I don’t care, what’s good for me? I’m going to do it anyway. But neither one of those are God’s desires. They’re the world’s desires. It’s like we’ve talked about with self-image, people say get a good self-image. Other people say get a bad self-image. Say both of those are wrong, you get a proper self image. Not a good one. Not a bad one, but a proper one. What’s a proper one? God’s. See I can have a good man self-image or a bad man self-image. What does that have to do with anything? It’s not God’s.

So, I don’t want a good one, and I don’t want a bad one, I want a proper one. So the proper self-image, your proper identity, if you’re born again, is I am now a child of the Living God. Now, that means that, that the Spirit of God that came to live within me is now joined this human spirit of mine, whereby my human spirit is back now, totally able to be controlled by what it was intended to be controlled by. And that is the Spirit of God living in me. But now with that whole transaction, where those are strictly contained in God’s desires, is the Spirit of God now living in me. Now with having two sets of desires. I’ve got God’s desires living in me. Tells me I literally have the mind of Christ living in me. And I got this old flesh desires and they’re in conflict with each other. It says they’re at war with each other.

And then I got a will, called a willer. Now, one of the desires of the flesh saying to that will, will come over and do this. Why this is what this is where you’re going to get fulfillment. This is where you’re going to get fun. And it is pointing its appeal to my will. Now, on the other hand, the spirit of God that is living within me is also pointing to my will saying, Bob, not your will but God’s be done. That Bob, this is a con job over here. This is not where these desires of the flesh that you have, don’t try to walk in denial of them, there there you have them, there you will always have them, but because you have them they’re real, but they’re not true. They’re real, but they’re not good for you. And Bob, would you stop to think almost every single desire of the flesh I can think of is in total opposition to what’s good for me. And so you’ve got these desires of the flesh, all containing this one complex thing called a human being, Spirit of God living in me now. Before I was born again, I only had one thing to listen to, desires of the flesh. I had no Spirit to listen to, it wasn’t in me. So I had to listen to desires of the flesh. And part of those desires of the flesh were good. Desire sounded, good made him that way. It’s like my dad used to say, only got one on me, I’m gonna make me amount to something. So, he’s hard on himself.

You get people disciplined. Sometimes the most difficult people in the world to ever get into a Sabbath rest are people who are very well disciplined. I’m so we’ll disciplined, man I got my body in shape. I got everything. I got my day planned on, disciplined person and it looks good from a human standpoint, but you can go to hell that way with a real solid body, and a great schedule. Sure to take you right to hell. Because it has nothing to do with salvation by faith. And it has nothing to do with being justified by faith. It has nothing at all to do with righteousness, that is self righteousness, which is an abomination to God.

So we’ve got these sets of desires. Now, when you’re born again, the beauty of that type of thing is that I now have the Spirit of God living in me. The Spirit of God is desiring for me to walk in that newness of life that has been designed for me, planned for me, for my benefit. Everything is for my benefit. And that’s the battle we have within us. Two sets of desires, desires of the flesh. And desires of the Spirit.

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Now, but how many identities? One. One identity. Who are you now? A child of God, But you have two sets of desires living in you. Who were you before? I hate to say this, a child of the devil with one set of desires living in you. But those desires can be good and bad. You see, the deceitfulness of Satan, if he is walking around with a pitchfork, why he wouldn’t be that big of a problem; he does good stuff (sarcasassam). And quite frankly, it talks about in the last days that the greatest deception, it’s going to take place, are going to be people acting good to the point where so-called Christians are going to be killing non-christians, thinking you’re doing something what?, good for God. So we’ve never left the Garden of Eden standing there, eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil saying I do not need God’s mind and his desires living in me. I’ve got my own over here. They’re fantastic. So there’s the conflict now. I want to get that clear folks. One identity. You only got one identity. We’re not a Christian schizophrenic. I have one identity. I’m not an old man, and a new man. The old man’s dead. The Bob George without the spirit of God living in me, that guy is gone. Who am I today? Bob George with the Spirit of God living in me. That’s the new man. Thank God for that. And well, how long will that new guy be there? Forever.

So Bob George with the Spirit of God living in me is an eternal created being now, not just a born person but a created person. And so that creation is eternal, everlasting to everlasting. So that’s who I am folks. And that’s who you are, if you’re in Christ. Now where we get confused is because we still find ourselves having the desires of the flesh. The interesting thing about that is that many times the desires of the flesh are much easier to identify than the desires of the Spirit. Now, isn’t that a funny saying, man, if God is all-powerful, why shouldn’t I be able to know His desires? Well, they’re foreign to you. I mean, literally, and this human body that we live in and this human world that we live in, unless we are sitting around 24 hours a day, programming our minds on the things of God, we get much more programming from the world than we do from God. And with this boob tube that we call television, we have in our homes, we get a ton of programming from the world instead of programming from God.

And so what we have to realize is that there’s two sets of desires that are being created inside of us. Now, God, the way that God works in our desires is that desire, first of all, that we have to be loved by Him. And all of a sudden, he fills that desire in the grace of God. The desire to know, God, to be known by God, the desire to be loved by God and to love God, which was again, created in every human being. It is not just a capacity, a necessity. And that is why a man until he is joined up with his God will spend the rest of his life searching for something. Incurably religious, in search of something, because there’s something missing right now. God works, then in our desires, so does our flesh. And that flesh says, come over here, come over here. Why this will satisfy us.

We talked to some lady the other night. I was talking about, she’s a Christian dating a non-Christian knew full well, he wasn’t in the Lord. Why, you could hear those desires saying all come on over here. It’ll be okay, why? Of course, would be, why, how could that person be less than wonderful? You say, well, wait till the day after the honeymoon and find out, and you see, so all of those desires, well, she gave into that. And, now finds herself with, and so she gave in to this we can all give into that. All of us have the capacity of doing that. We come over and here’s God’s way. Bob this is what I desire for you to do. Here’s how I desire for you to respond to this situation. I want you to trust Me. I desire for you to do that because it’s good for you and we hear the desires of the flesh say no. No, you know, you got to get even, you’ve got to fight it with the weapons of the world. You got to do this, you’ve got to do that. And this makes so much sense because this over here takes faith in what you don’t see. And the desires of the flesh there, I can see that. I mean, you know, I’m a man. I can, you know, I see that club, I can put my hand. I can hit that guy in the head and get rid of the victim. You know, I can see that and feel it and do it over here. Gotta trust. I’m not used to that. I’m used to over here. And so this conflict goes back and forth.

Now, what’s the solution to that? Slowly, surely, succinctly, you begin one step at a time. How do you learn how to walk in the Spirit instead of in accordance to the desires of the flesh? The same way you eat an elephant, one bite at a time, and it takes time. And so we start and we find a situation in our life and to the world, it’s just a teeny little thing but to us, it’s huge and the Lord says trust Me. Well, well Lord just makes no sense. Trust Me. Will you be willing to trust Me? And you say okay and you trust Him. Sure enough you find out He was right all along. Then you come up with another situation. And again the old desires, the flesh, they do this, do this. Come over here, do this. And no, the Lord is saying, trust Me. And I’m going to trust You to do it again. Well, after a while, you form a habit. Remember, Enoch walked with God, habitually with God. What a habit to get into. Now. What did he do? He walked habitually with God because he got into the habit of saying, Lord, what are your desires? What do you desire in this thing? Because the flesh is always going to be crying out, over here is where it’s at. Over here is where fulfillment is. Always folks, it will never stop. And the only solution to it is being controlled by the desires of the Spirit.

Now bouncing off of what we’ve been talking about. Then if you are a child of God, then you’re referred to as a saint, no longer a lost natural man sinner, but a saved spiritual man or a saint. You have been set apart. That’s called holy. That doesn’t mean the way you act. It means you’re set apart for a specific function and that is to walk in the newness of life that has been given to us in Christ Jesus. That function, you were made into a new creation was not to free you from the law. It was so that you could walk in the newness of life. Now in order to walk in the newness of life, you had to be free from the law, but we got a bunch of people just excited about being free from law and don’t realize, they know what they’ve been called from, but they don’t know what they’ve been called to. And folks, if you don’t know what you’re going to be called to, before long, you’re not going to know what you’ve been called from. So we have to realize that I was not freed from the law in grace, I was called to a newness of life. And in order to be called to a newness of life and to be freed from the law because well the power of sin is in the law. What does the power of sin do? Keeps the desires of the flesh raging. So it makes your walk harder. So the longer you’re under the power of sin, the more that the power of sin and the law demand your flesh to behave, not according to God’s desires, but according to man’s desires. And when as long as I am trying to get my flesh to behave, I will never be walking by faith, which is the only way the Spirit can work. The Spirit can’t work by works. The Spirit works by faith. And so you see the subtlety of that type of thing. So religion keeps you under the law, demanding your flesh to behave to do good things, not God’s things, good things. And the Spirit of God living in you is constantly, through its desires, calling you to do things God’s way. And that is where there’s your conflict.

Now, you are a saint. Now as a saint, is it possible therefore for you as a child of God, a saint to commit a sin or to commit sins? Well, let me ask you another question. Is it possible for you as a child of God to have the desires of the flesh living in you? Is that possible? Why of course, that’s what you’re made up of. That’s how you’re made up of. You have desires of the flesh. And you have the desires of the Spirit. So as long as you have desires of the flesh, is it possible to give into the flesh? Well, of course. And people who argue with that, and people who want to say, well now a person that continues in sin. You tell me a person is continuing in sin. I ask how long have you been a Christian? 30 years. How long have you been worrying? 30 years. That’s pretty persistent. We never think of that, we never think of how long have you been slandering people in one form or another. How long have you been gossiping? And those things are in the same line up with homosexuality though. The same deal. How long have you been doing those things? As long as I’ve been a Christian. As long as I have something called desires of the flesh, living in me, I am capable of giving in to the desires of the flesh. Anybody. How long? Just as long as I’m in this body, until I learn to start walking in the newness of life. Now, as I learned to walk in the newness of life and you see, somebody’s been walking in the newness of life for 50 years. Can they still give in to the desires of the flesh? In a New York minute.

So, the things that Paul was talking about, the things I want to do, I don’t do. The things that I don’t want to do, I do anyway. Now, that’s Paul, not a bad Christian. Why did he experience that? Very simply, he had one identity. And also one solution, wretched man that I am, who will free me from this bondage of sin and death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, my Lord. One solution now. But did he have desires of the flesh living in him? Why sure. Did he have desires of the Spirit living in him? Sure. Well, if you had desires of the flesh, living any was he capable of giving in to them? How about you? Yes, you sure are.

Now does the fact therefore that you do give in to a desire of the flesh and sin. Does that determine your identity in Christ? No. Did your doing good and not giving into sin, give you a new identity? Well, if doing good did not give you a new identity then how do you think doing bad’s going to return you to your old identity? You are not you because of what you do. When you have a child, that child is yours. Whether it’s a crying baby, or a sleeping baby or one with a reversible stomach or one who holds his food down. It doesn’t make any difference, that child is yours. And it’s the same thing folks, with you that what made you a saint in the eyes of God is when you came to Christ Jesus as your Lord and Savior. And the very moment that you stepped out of your identity in Adam, stepped into your new identity in Christ, Christ stepped out of heaven into you, putting His mind into you, His emotions into you, His desires into you. I now have a new set of desires living in me. Sometimes I listen to them. Sometimes I listen to the desires of the flesh and I think that’s another thing that we need to clarify. There’s only two sets of desires, flesh and Spirit. It’s not that I don’t listen to any of them. Believe me, you are listening to one of them. Now in either case. It does not determine your identity.

So what is the importance of my knowing my identity? Well, first of all, it’s like a radio with two bands in it. You’ve got an AM band and an FM band. Now, how many radios are there one, but it’s got am in it and it’s got FM in it, and but it’s one radio. Now that FM band, let’s say, is programmed with God’s word, God’s desires. And the AM band is programmed with the fleshly desires, your own desires. You’re not going to change the programming and it can even be pretty unique programming, and you can tune the dial and there’s one station, it really appeals to you. That’s my flesh and not old Bob’s over there, but it’s my flesh. I like this one but it’s all the same. It’s programmed and nothing’s new under the sun. There is no new kind of sin, it’s all been around for years. But it’s all programmed there on the other band, on the FM band, giving as an example, hope that doesn’t offend our AM station manager. The FM band is all programmed with God stuff. AM is all programmed with flesh. If I realize FM, that’s God’s stuff. On this AM, that’s flesh stuff and there’s some good programs on there and some bad programs out there, but it’s not God’s.

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, find more information online at shop.BobGeorge.net. There you’ll also find available CDs, DVDs, and bible studies available for purchase. It’s through your help that we are able to spread the good word of Jesus Christ. Until next time, walk in faith, be good to one another and praise the Lord. Amen.