Radio Broadcast Monday 05/09/2022

Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at Your Identity in Christ P25 (05-09-22)

Without The Shedding of Blood There is No Forgiveness

It’s so vitally important that we understand the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant we have in Christ Jesus. Many people have forgotten that they live under the new will, the new agreement, the new covenant between God and man. Listen in as Bob teaches from the word of God. Trust in the Holy Spirit to teach you what it means.

In today’s lesson, 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.

We are on the most exciting study I believe that we have ever encountered. When you’re dealing with your identity in Christ Jesus, over the last number of weeks, we have been talking about man’s search for identity. Because those age-old questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Those are questions that not only plague people in America. They plagued people all over the world from the most remote jungle to the most dignified city. You have the same questions being asked by man. Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? Where did I come from? And so there is a total search for identity. There’s a total search for significance and meaning and purpose to life in the heart of every man, that will continue right up until his old age, 90, 100 years of age, he’ll still be looking for identity, if he does not find it in the person of Christ Jesus.

We were made by God to be in dwelt by God and God living in His creation. Man is indispensable to the true humanity of the man. You take God out of man and you have a man on your hands, but he cannot function like one because he’s only two-thirds whole. He has a body, has a soul, but his human spirit is devoid of God’s Holy Spirit. And so inasmuch as God created a man in order to be indwelt by God. When we are not indwelt by God we are constantly searching for what is missing. And so that question that the lost man is continually asking himself. Is something missing? The reason for that question is because something is missing and that’s why you feel, there’s something missing, is because there is. And what is missing is the very essence of humanity and that’s deity living in you.

And you God designed you that way. We are made, man was created by God in such a way, whereby God was the living man to be the source of all wisdom. If you want to, if you want to put it this way, it is the downward spiral. In other words, God is the source of all truth, pumping it into our human minds. Teaching our minds, controlling our emotions, directing our will so that our humanity follows inline with deity until we can walk on this earth, literally being a representative of God himself. We can’t work at that. You can’t go out and try to be holy. You cannot go out and try to be Christian. You realize I have plugged in to Christ Jesus who alone can live the life. And now my role is to walk by faith in Him just as Jesus walked by faith in His Father and let the Father as the Father expressed His life through Jesus. Now, Jesus said, so send I you, let your body be an expression of My life in you.

And so, here’s an extremely exciting study to realize that we have been made into a brand new creation. The old things have passed away and behold all things have become new. What is new? I have something new living in me, who is that Christ Jesus in my heart, my only hope of glory. Now as a new creation, you have to understand what that means. What does it mean to be a new creation? You can sit down and say hey, you’re a new creation in Christ and say well praise God. What does that mean? I don’t have a clue. Well you’re never going to spend very much time rejoicing and being a new creation. Because the fact that I am a new creation will lose its excitement, if you don’t know what that means. Here’s what it means. Just some of the things that means and the subject that we’re going to study today.

The first thing it means is you are a child of God. Totally forgiven. You are as a child of God, the lesson after that, totally righteous. You are as a child of God, totally reconciled to God. You are as a child of God, totally sanctified, set apart by God. You are as a child of God, justified by God. You have been made a part of His very own body here on this earth. He is the head. You are a part of the body of Christ at the same time that you’re a part of the body of Christ here on earth, you’re a citizen in heaven. Not only that, but you’ve been given a life called eternal life and not only that but you are eternally and totally loved and accepted by the God of this universe. Now, if that isn’t good news I don’t know what good news is. But the reason that we don’t rejoice in that is because most of us have never learned it.

To those of you who are studying with us in your study book. I’m going to be varying today and I’m going to be amplifying some things that probably your best bet would be to just go into the book of Hebrews with me and wade through this. And incidentally and we’ll make some announcements on this later. I would like to be able to make our study notes available to our listeners across the country, and will be giving announcements of that later on, especially as it relates to the New Covenant.

As we left off and page, I believe 29 last week. We were talking about Hebrews, 10: 17 and 18 and we’re talking about this whole issue of forgiveness. We folks, we are not forgiven because we ask to be forgiven. There was no one at the cross who said, Lord, please forgive me. He looked down and said, Father, forgive them. But no one asked, Jesus forgive me. No one is forgiven because they ask to be forgiven. You are forgiven because you have come to a relationship with the forgiver. Christ is the forgiver and because I am in Christ I am forgiven. I am not forgiving because I asked. I’m certainly not forgiven because I deserve to be. I am forgiven because I am now in a relationship with the forgiver. I have eternal life because I am in a relationship with the one who is eternal life. I am justified because I am in a relationship with the justifier, the just became the justifier. He is the justifier and that’s why I am justified, is because I’ve now come in a relationship with the justifier.

You see, forgiveness my friends is not something you do, or earn. It’s as a result of something. It’s as a result of being in a relationship with the forgiver. And that is Christ Jesus. So as we studied last week in Colossians 1 and 13 as well as Acts 26: 17 and 18 that you and I have been translated from something. We’ve had a change of identity, a change of citizenship that he turned us from darkness to light. And as we discussed last week, darkness and light is always lost and saved. We’ve been translated from the power of Satan, to the power of God. And the reason that we were translated into that, so that it says we may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are set apart by faith in Christ Jesus. And He’s rescued us from the the dominion of darkness, and brought us into the kingdom of the Son. So we’ve gone out of something into something. And when I go into this Kingdom of His Son, I have something. Redemption and the forgiveness of sins. I don’t get it. I have it. Forgiveness my friends is a possession of yours.

What we’re getting at right now is the fact that the very day that we put our faith in Christ, Jesus, not put our faith in asking for forgiveness. Not putting our faith in just what He did at the cross. Thank God for that. But putting our faith and not only what He did at the cross that provided forgiveness, but that was for the entire world, but coming to His resurrected life because without the resurrection were to be pitied of all people. Coming to His resurrected life in order to receive life. In other words, if the wages of sin is death, now, He didn’t die just for the wages of sin. He died for sins, but the wages of sin, death, and He took that upon Himself when He became like us so that we could be raised in the newness of life identified with Him. And so when I come to Him for who He is, God, I come to Him for when He came to give me life in that resurrected life through my identity, with that resurrected life of Jesus Christ. And without the resurrection we could not say that. It’s that resurrected life of Jesus Christ that I have been identified with a man who was raised from the dead. I don’t know how you could be identified with anyone, any better than that raised from the dead in that resurrected life. It says, I have redemption and I have forgiveness of sins. So, the very moment that I step into a faith relationship with Christ Jesus my forgiveness is complete. The very day that I put my faith in Christ my forgiveness is complete. What does that mean? Means, there is nothing that I can add to it. And there is nothing that I can subtract from it. It is complete. And so, what we’ve asked for people, are we willing to rest in that total forgiveness and that there is nothing you can do to add to it or subtract from it. That’s called the Sabbath Rest.

The Sabbath Rest is talked about in the book of Hebrews and what I’m going to do right now, I’m going to vary from our lesson plan, but I do want you to turn, to the book of Hebrews with me because I’m going to spend the rest of the time today and if not completed, which I doubt it, I’ll do next week as well going through passages in the book of Hebrews that deals with the New Covenant that we stand in today. And until we come to grips and the realization of a new agreement between God and man, we will never experience that Sabbath Rest that God is calling us to. He said about the Israelites, He gave them a rest, they never entered in, because of what? Their unbelief. Folks there’s a lot of reason for unbelief. Sometimes it’s an unbelief because you’ve been taught truth, and just say I just don’t believe it. Other times it’s unbelief, because you’ve been taught error, and you just assume that the person that’s teaching you that error, knows what he’s talking about. And so, you are ignorantly functioning in unbelief, not because you heard truth, but because you’ve been listening to error. And folks the only place that you can go to find out what is truth, is going to be to what Jesus said was truth. And that’s My word is truth.

And that’s why I’ve said to you folks time after time, again, do not take my word on anything. I could be lying to you. Any teacher could be lying to you, and the way you’re going to find out whether someone is telling you the truth or not is to check it out on your own. If Christ Jesus is alive, living in you, then you have been given the privilege of understanding the word of God.
As anybody can read, if you can read, you can read something and say this is what it says. Knowing what it means is totally dependent upon the Holy Spirit of God living in you. If the Holy Spirit of God doesn’t live in you, you’re called a natural man. And the scripture says that natural man cannot understand spiritual things, they’re foolish to it, but it has to be revealed to us by the Spirit. And so the Spirit of God is the one who teaches you what something means. I can help to teach you what it says, but the Spirit of God is going to have to teach you what it means.

So if you will turn with me to Hebrews chapter 9 and we’re going to start in verse 16, Hebrews 9, verse 16. Before we start, it is an interesting observation to me that in the world in which we live, where probably 90% of the world or maybe even a higher percentage of that would never acknowledge the truth that Jesus Christ is God. In other words, in the world, in which you live, the Muslim world, the Buddhist world, the semi Christian world, where people just give lip service to religion, Jesus as a good leader as Mohammed, or in the rest of them, so just another kind of a prophet. Probably a good 90 percent of the population of the world does not believe Jesus Is God, and therefore has never truly received Him as their Lord and Savior.

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I was in that condition for 36 years of my life folks. I was in church all of my life, but I was in a liberal church. It wasn’t the fact that I lived in unbelief. I’d ever been taught anything to believe. Did I believe Jesus was Son of God? Oh, of course. I would used to sing about that in choirs, and sit and listen to it occasionally if it ever came out. Did that have any meaning to me? None at all? I was lost. I was in church. I would have called myself a Christian. I wasn’t a Buddhist or a Muslim. So I’ve been a Christian, but I was not a child of God. I was never born again. Never heard that I was supposed to be. And so what I’m talking about, I’m not just talking about from a theological issue. I’m telling you from personal experience in working with hundreds and thousands of people around the country. From all denominations, that there are very few denominations today that are teaching the blood sacrifice of Jesus, teaching the deity of Christ, teaching the virgin birth, teaching the inerrancy of the word of God, teaching people that the only way they’re ever going to know what the Bible means is by studying the word of God on their own and depending upon the Spirit of God to teach them what it means, very few.

Now in the light of that isn’t it strange that our calendars are before Christ and after Christ. It is just amazing to me that here in the calendars of the world BC and AD. BC before Christ. AD, Anno Domini, a Latin terminology for in the year of Our Lord. Now, the problem is when most people think of BC and AD. They think of Christ’s birth before he was born and after He was born. But from God’s perspective that is not so because the BC really should be before the cross, because from God’s perspective humanity and His dealing with humanity was divided, not at His birth, but at the cross. So the BC should be before the cross. And if you remember that, BC, before the cross, why? Well, because before the cross, that was the old Covenant that we were under and then the AD is the Italian word, after-D-cross, so God before the cross, and after the cross, and that means that a new covenant now has come into effect and if you will keep that in mind you’re going to see scripture fall into place.

When you say that, understand God’s dealings with man was divided at the cross, you will also understand that from the time of Christ’s birth until His death, that Jesus, while He was here, physically was Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. He taught under the law. He proclaimed, grace of God, but He taught under the law. It says He was born of a virgin under the law, therefore, subject to the law. Now, He is born under the law, subject to the law, so that He could fulfill the law because the only way that the law can never be fulfilled is a perfect life. And there’s only one man that ever lived, a perfect life, and that was Christ Jesus, from the time of birth until death, a perfect life. So in so doing He fulfilled that righteous demands of the law. Perfection. And remember what Jesus told us when he taught under the law, if you have violated the least of these, my Commandments, you violated all of them. Well, that buries everyone. The law deals with exteriors, but the meaning of the law deals with interiors, what you’re thinking, the law deals with what you’re doing. I’m telling you, God looks at what you are thinking and it buries all of us. He gets what He came to do, but he taught under the law. At his death a New Covenant was ushered in, whereby, it’s the verse that we studied, before we closed our lesson last week, Hebrews 10: 17 and 18, their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more and where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sins.

So the New Covenant is saying, I’m going to deal with the sin issue once and for all. Because I got something new that I’m going to be adding. I’m going to give people life. I’m going to provide a way, whereby, I, God can re-establish My relationship with My humanity and come to live within man once again, never ever, ever with the possibility of My leaving them again by dealing with sin once and for all, I can give them a life called eternal life. If the cross did not take away sin and I gave life, the next time they sin, they would lose their life. Again that’s what the Old Testament was. So I’m going to do something new. They’re going to be a new creation, not only a new creation from an individual standpoint, but a new creation in that a man like that has never been created before. As a matter of fact, if I was speaking, as Jesus say, I was not even born that way. I was born under the law and I sinned, I would have died under the law. But I’m going to provide a way whereby because of what I’m going to do with us taking away sin. I’m going to give you a life that is called eternal life. And the reason it’s eternal is because the only thing that could cause that life to depart from you is sin and I’m going to deal with sin once and for all so that that can never happen to you again. So when you are truly born again, you’re going to be born again, forever, have a life called eternal life. And you are going to have a brand-new inheritance in Christ Jesus. Why did He do that for man? Because of His love and because of His mercy.

Now where forgiveness, where true forgiveness has to take place, it really is preceded by mercy. Jesus looked down at the cross and said, father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing. The first part is asking for forgiveness. The second part is asking why I’m asking for forgiveness. They don’t know what they’re doing. In other words, God looked down on us, bunch of dummies, running around down here, and the compassion and mercy of God fell upon us. And He said those poor little critters running around down there, I’ve got indwelling sin living in them. They’ve fallen, they don’t understand God and understand our love. Don’t understand anything about it. They don’t know what they’re doing. And that’s mercy. It’s kindness. And that heart set is what brings about forgiveness. And it’s the same with us until we have and gained a merciful heart from God, we will never have a forgiving spirit. Mercy precedes forgiveness.

Let’s pick up with Hebrews 9 beginning in verse 16. In the case of a will it’s necessary to prove the death of the one who made it because a will is enforced only when someone has died, it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. Now, folks, I hope that you have a will if you don’t, obviously the government has one for you. So it would be to your advantage to certainly have one. A will is not something new. It is not something that was brought in by the United States. It’s been around since the time of Christ. And before Christ, a will was something that could be a document that could be made in order to determine what was going to happen with your assets at the time of death. In other words, who are you going to leave something too. And so, in the case of a will and you know, that today that a will that you have will not go into effect until the day you die. In other words. If I left in my will that Bob Davis was going to receive a hundred thousand dollars, that’d be a joke and having it and of course, but if he was going to at my death, then Bob Davis and have to wait until I died in order to receive that. We have people who have left money to the ministry in their will. They have established in their will that at their death their assets will go to Bob George Ministries. They desire to do that. Now, that will not occur until the day that they die, on the day they die and are buried, proving that they are dead. And then the inheritance will be passed on to whoever it was designated to by the person who made the will. And so that’s not a difficult thing for us to understand. So we’re talking about an old will, an old testament, you know, you have a will and a testament so you have an old will an old testament, and you have a new will a new testament. Now we also know that in the case of a will that you can make a will, let’s say I made 20 years ago. And in that. why I had someone else designated for that hundred thousand dollars, but then 20 years later I made a new will and in that will I had Bob named in that. Now I died. Now which one is going to receive the hundred thousand dollars? Bob, or the one 20 years ago? Well, obviously Bob. You got the old will, and now there’s a new will, and the will that goes into effect is the last one that was made prior to the death of the one who made it.

And so, in the case of a will, as we just read, it’s necessary to prove the death of the one who made it. That’s the burial, because a will is in force only when someone has died. It never takes effect while the who made it is living. It goes ahead to say this is why even the first covenant, so obviously folks, we know that we’re going to be talking here about covenants, a first one called the old covenant and then the last one called the New Covenant. The first Covenant was not put into effect without blood. In other words without death, a sacrifice, when Moses had proclaimed, every commandment of the law to all of the people, he took the blood of calves, obviously, where to get the blood from the death of the calf together with water scarlet, wool and branches of hyssop, and he sprinkled the scroll on all the people and he said, this is the blood of the covenant. In other words, the sacrifice of the Covenant, which God has commanded you to keep folks. That was the old Covenant. It was put into effect with blood. The sacrifice in that Covenant here’s a commandment and God has commanded you to keep it. That’s the old Covenant and we’re going to find out that’s going to be the problem, not in the Covenant, but in the people’s ability to keep it.

Now in the same way he sprinkled with blood, both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood. And folks, if you have your Bible open mark, underline it, cross it to whatever you want to, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. In other words, folks, if there has been a violation of God’s command, forgiveness has to be paid for. God doesn’t just wink at that. It had to be paid for. In the old Covenant it was paid for by the blood of bulls and goats. In the New Covenant, it was paid for by the blood of God himself, Jesus Christ on that cross. And without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. In other words, it’s like a law, a law that had no punishment connected to it would cease to be a law to have no effect at all. And so sin had to be paid for and without the shedding of blood, there would be no forgiveness. That’s what we talked about earlier. It was the mercy of God looking down in pity and merciful heart of God, the love of God that sent his son to be the sacrifice.

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.