Radio Broadcast Monday 09/09/2024

Classic Christianity – Book of Galatians P19 (09-09-24)

Serve One Another in Love

~ ‘For you, brothers, were called to freedom; but do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. Rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is fulfilled in a single decree: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you keep on biting and devouring one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another’

The new law that Jesus left us with is to serve one another in Love. And there is only one way that can be accomplished, and that is through the Love of God, Jesus, living in and through us. And that only happens when a person has the Holy Spirit living in them. Most people are still out there in the energy of their flesh, trying to produce love. But only God is Love. We cannot love with the same Love apart from Christ living in us.

A child of God is free to do things one way or another, but we are not supposed to use our freedom to react in our flesh. Our flesh is that which swells up inside of us when we ourselves have been wronged by someone else in the flesh. Flesh wants to respond with flesh responses. The Holy Spirit is saying to us, “Hold on a minute. Remember how much I loved you, I want you to think about them the same way I think about you. Forgive them as I forgave you.” God wants us to serve each other in love. And He is talking about those who are in Christ Jesus. A person that doesn’t have Christ Jesus living in them cannot serve in Love. It’s an impossibility. So the first thing is to make sure a person is in Christ in the first place. And don’t assume they are. Ask them what their understanding of the gospel is? Share with them the Truth of the word of God. And if they get upset at you in their flesh, then that is on them, not on you. For the word of God is sharper than any two edged sword, dividing soul and spirit. But allow the Holy Spirit to guide you at each step along the way.

“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever rejects the Son will not see life. Instead, the wrath of God remains on him.” John 3:36

“For Christ is the end of the law, to bring righteousness to everyone who believes.” Romans 10:4

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not be encumbered once more by a yoke of slavery.

Take notice: I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I testify to every man who gets himself circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by the law have been severed from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.

But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. All that matters is faith, expressed through love.

You were running so well. Who has obstructed you from obeying the truth? Such persuasion does not come from the One who calls you. A little leaven works through the whole batch of dough. I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is troubling you will bear the judgment, whoever he may be.

Now, brothers, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. As for those who are agitating you, I wish they would proceed to emasculate themselves!

For you, brothers, were called to freedom; but do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. Rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is fulfilled in a single decree: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you keep on biting and devouring one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another. Galatians 5:1-15

Pray to God:

Do you really want to know the WHOLE Truth of what is going on today?

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7

Lord Jesus, teach me the truth of the world today and give me the wisdom to know the truth and identify the lies of the devil. Thank you God.”

~ “Now he says, now you have been set free. Now I’ve got a choice. First of all, I had a choice to come to Christ. I could have stayed in my lostness, but the power of God working in your life and in mine was so was such that we responded and we said, I do, and I want you Lord, to be my Lord, my Savior, and I want you to come and live in me. I want to get off the throne and quit running my life. I don’t want you to be my savior. Is that not what happened to us? What did we respond to? Love. What we responded to is God so loved you that He gave His only begotten Son. That’s what we responded to. Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so not complicated. That’s what we responded to, and he set us free. Now he’s saying to us, now you got another choice. You can use this freedom that you have and you are free to indulge the flesh, or you can use your freedom to serve one another in love.” ~ Bob George

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Join Bob George in this chapter by chapter exposition of the letter to the Galatians. Available for download the complete series on the Book of Galatians. The Letter to the Galatians is key to understanding Law and Grace, the new covenant, and being one in Christ Jesus.

Announcer 0:12
Welcome to Classic Christianity Radio with Bob George Bob’s clear, timeless teachings on the complete forgiveness and unconditional love of Jesus Christ will transform your life as you learn about God’s amazing grace. Let’s join Bob as he teaches us from God’s Word.

Bob George 0:29
So people will come down and say, you teach this grace. And there’s a name for that, and they put a big, long name on that, and, and, and they say that, why you’re just one of those. And so we become one of those. Why? Well, because you teach grace, and you’re when you teach grace, you’re just telling a person they can go do anything they want to do. How many have heard that one? Is that what grace teaches, no grace teaches, don’t use your freedom to serve the flesh, but to serve one another in love. That’s what grace teaches. But they come on and say, you teach grace, you’re going to be an antinomianist. Isn’t that a good name an antinomianist? I’m so proud of myself I pronounced that. And what an antinomianist is is someone who takes grace to a license. Does that negate grace? Does that mean freedom is bad? No, that didn’t mean any. Those things, it means that your response to freedom is a fleshly response. Now, if you have a person, and this is one of the difficulties you run into in grace teaching is the fact that people look at Grace as an IT or that grace. You hear people that grace. Grace is not an IT. Grace is Jesus. He is full of what? Grace and what? Truth. You cannot separate truth from Jesus. You cannot separate grace from Jesus. If you possess truth, where’s it come from? Jesus. If you, if you possess grace, where’s it come from? Jesus. So it is not a grace message. It’s a Jesus message. That is what Jesus came to do, was to set you and me free. God looked down at us in our fallen condition, in our condition of spiritual death without hope. It says, bound up under the law, under the condemnation of the law, totally bound up with no hope. We just read that. Did we like a couple weeks ago?

That was the condition of man. He looked down, he had pity, he had compassion upon us, and said, I’m going to I’m going to give a solution to that. Now, his solution was to cure the wages or the consequence of sin, which is death, by the gift of God, which is life. And again, he could have given us any kind of life he wanted, no life, temporary life, eternal life. Which did he choose? Eternal. And in order to give you eternal life, he had to deal eternally with the cause of death, and that’s why the cross is an eternal function. It wasn’t something that happened and then keeps happening. It happened once and for all, and therefore the cry out of the Lord, it is what? Finished paid in full that was back to Adam and forward to eternity, the sin issue has been dealt with eternally. Why’d he do that? So that he could give you and me eternal life. If he didn’t do that, the next time I when I got eternal life, the next time I sinned, I would be what? Dead, not out of fellowship, not going to the woodshed, not getting a little paddling, dead. The wages of sin is death, and so in order for me to have eternal life, the cause of death had to be eradicated eternally. That’s the purpose of the cross.

Now he says, now you have been set free. Now I’ve got a choice. First of all, I had a choice to come to Christ. I could have stayed in my lostness, but the power of God working in your life and in mine was so was such that we responded and we said, I do, and I want you Lord, to be my Lord, my Savior, and I want you to come and live in me. I want to get off the throne and quit running my life. I don’t want you to be my savior. Is that not what happened to us? What did we respond to? Love. What we responded to is God so loved you that He gave His only begotten Son. That’s what we responded to. Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so not complicated. That’s what we responded to, and he set us free. Now he’s saying to us, now you got another choice. You can use this freedom that you have and you are free to indulge the flesh, or you can use your freedom to serve one another in love.

Now, let me ask this question, if I choose, which is pretty dumb for all of us, but that’s why he calls us sheep, because we’re all dumb as a sheep. So as dumb as it is, can we choose to indulge the flesh? To indulge it, freedom to indulge it. Okay, now, when we do, what does God do? See, I’ve initiated now, Lord, I’m going to indulge my flesh. Now, how does he respond to me, or does he respond to me? Or has he already initiated to me? So what did he initiate to you? I love you, But Lord, didn’t you see what I just did? No, it’s behind my back. Never see it again. But Lord, I just did it yesterday. I didn’t that’s my that’s behind my back. Never to see it again. Folks, can you get this into your mind? We’ve had a lot of stuff take place over the last week, over suicide, and we had some lady called up and just was irate. Thank God for Steve Simon. He just cuts them off. Anyone who wants to argue with us on the radio is totally out to lunch because they can’t win. We got the control button, so they got to be pretty dumb to try to argue anyway, because they’re not going to get on. Irate, because I told somebody whose relative had committed suicide that if they were Christians, that they were in the presence of God, just irate over that. Well, is that true, or did I tell a lie? I um, and I put the if, if you are truly in Christ, can you, as a born again believer, get in so such despair, such hopelessness, have your mind messed up so much that the only thing you can see that would get you out of this is to get out of here. You see the lost world says, I’d like to commit suicide. The saved world just says, wish the Lord come back. It’s the same thing. We’re ready to get out of here, just different vernacular, yeah, yeah. How many of you have ever said I’d like to get out of here? So in essence, we could come down to the point where pressures of life are such that as disturbing as that decision would be, we can still get to that point, you can get depressed to that point. Unusual for anyone to get depressed? No, it just as you let it go. You can get so depressed that you lose hope, and when you’ve lost hope, you’ve lost it all. So is it possible for a person who is born again to take their own life? Is it possible for someone who’s born again to take your life? So if they can take yours, they can take their own. Now, would that be indulging the flesh or serving one another in love? Well, maybe serving love. I told you I wanted to get out of here, but in essence, whether it’s indulging your flesh in one man, or indulging it in a horrendous manner, it still isn’t the indulging of the flesh, and it is, and it is possible for any of us to do.

And so it says in the scripture that if any of us see someone who is caught in a sin, and that doesn’t mean I caught you. I caught you. It means they’re trapped in a sin. Is a person who is in a continual, ongoing depressed state of mind, trapped in a sin? Sure, they’re trapped in their thinking. It says you who are spiritual, go to them, but go to them very carefully, because you could fall into the same trap. So I’d say, Don’t ever go to minister to a person with the idea I can never do that, because about the time you say that, as I think God says, I’ll just show you what you can do. So you go with a heart of mercy, that’s the heart of God. Is a merciful heart. You go with a heart of love, that’s the heart of God, which is heart of love, and you minister to that person trying to do what? Restore hope to them. Is suicide a good option? No, it’s never God’s best. God didn’t intend man to commit suicide, but he never intended man to sin. He never intended man to get divorced, but when sin entered in the world, all those things took place, and none of them are the unpardonable sin.

And so we have to understand that. We have to we have to have compassion when we’re dealing with people, you can get in the pits to the point you’d like to get out of here. And our role is to help people, to restore them to hope so that you don’t make that decision, because you’re missing God’s best when you do, if you’ll just hang in there, God’s going to show you something greater than your problem, and that’s what our role is. Lot of times, I don’t know about you, and I’m not totally to that age yet, but I’m getting there. But because I can still jump off of a curb, yeah, I can. I’m very proud of that. My body won’t do what my head says it can do. Have you ever found that to be true? And sometimes you know somebody’s name like you know your own and you can’t bring it up. Does that ever happen to you? Have you ever stood in front of the refrigerator and not knowing what you’re there for? Have you ever put your garbage in the refrigerator and dump the good food? I mean, there’s all kinds of things that we do. That are quite strange. And I want to tell you, the older you get, you always blame that on age, but I’ve seen that happen in the 20s, and that gets discouraging. You’re getting older, you can’t do what you used to do. The old head starts telling You’re not worth anything. You know, can’t do anything for anybody anymore. All those kind of things can start entering into the mind, and you can get in the pits, and our role is to help people to get out of those pits by giving them hope. And so what I’m trying to get across here is God has set you free, but with that freedom, you have choices, and you can start putting your mind on all the negative stuff in the world. You can start serving people in love. You can be one who points out every mistake that anyone ever makes. You ever done that? How many of you ever done that? How many have done that? Or you can be one who chooses not to say something, because that’s what love does. You can bring up every mistake someone’s made, or you can not bring it up, which one’s love not bringing it up. So those are choices that we make. Are we going to serve one another? You’re not serving a person in love. We’re bringing up all their mistakes. Are you? You’re not serving someone in love with said, I remember what you did 20 years ago. You’re not serving someone love, telling them what a lousy husband, a lousy wife they’ve been all these years, and I could wish I’d have gotten along without you. Are you? Are you serving someone who loves doing that? No, you’re not. And yet we think we’re spiritual and continually are doing that with each other. And so we keep looking at the filthy five, the nasty nine, but it’s those kind of things that destroy people. They’re destroyers. They discourage you. They’re destroyers.

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Bob George 14:06
So again, what’s the solution to that? It tells you serve one another in love. Think would I want someone doing that to me if I don’t want to do it to me, Quit doing it to one another. It’s not complicated. It’s just whether we want to serve one another or whether we want to get even. I was in a rest one time. The guy in there, Christian guy, said, I don’t get mad. I’m a Christian. The owner said, No, you don’t get mad you just get even. And that’s really true, and we, many times, try to get even. And so he’s saying, serve one another in love. Now look what he says here. The entire law is summed up in a single command, love your neighbor as yourself. Now what is he saying there? The entire law. Is summed up in one command. So how many commands do we need? One. And this command doesn’t hold a punishment to it. It is if you want to walk in love, here’s how you do it. Love your neighbor as yourself. If you wouldn’t want your neighbor to do to you what you’re about to do to them, don’t do it. It’s not complicated, is it? If we would just think, would I want someone saying to me what I’m about to say to somebody else? If we would follow that, we would be a lot quieter in our communication with each other. Would we not? Folks just like Lincoln said, this country will never be destroyed from without the borders, only from within. We’re over there seeing what to do over there. We ought to be here, seeing what to do here. Here’s where our problem is. We got enemies in our camp, and we’re over there dealing with camps over there that you can’t even see, not that you don’t want to ignore, one for the other. But I want to tell you, this is the important camp, as far as I’m concerned, at home. What we do at home.

Now he says to love your neighbors yourself. If you keep on biting and devouring each other, walk out, watch out, or you’ll be destroyed by each other. What do you suppose causes the majority of divorce? Biting and devouring each other, nitpicking everything anyone does because they don’t do it the way you do. Am I right or wrong on this guys? You see, you can take the marvelous thing of marriage and destroy it by your tongue. Don’t have to destroy it by fighting just your tongue will do just Zoro tongue. Before we speak, we should ask ourselves the question, would we want our neighbor to treat us that way? And what it’s saying is, as you continue to insist on doing that, which is walking in the flesh, you’re going to destroy each other and be destroyed by each other. Why are you destroyed by each other? When someone insults you, what ultimately are you going to do? Do what? Get angry and then do what to me, insult me. Yeah, and you’re going to destroy each other. There’s not too many people that when you get insulted say, Oh, thank you Jesus. Thank you, sweetie, for saying that. I was just waiting for that. That is just not the way it goes. Folks, retaliation is natural, and you say something to me in the flesh, and I’m probably going to respond to you in the flesh. Now you say, Oh, you ought to respond spiritually, that’s true, but normally you’re going to respond fleshly and destroy each other. Now you may change your mind in the meantime and go back and say, I’m sorry, but the damage is already done. And then isn’t it amazing that what you say, Don’t you wish sometimes you could catch it and pull it back, but you can’t. It’s out there.

And so he’s saying the entire law is summed up in a single command, if we want to live in the Spirit, you say, what is it to walk in the Spirit? To walk in love, and we walk around thinking we’re spiritual when we’re devouring each other. They said, That’s not spirituality. That’s flesh. Now it’s nice flesh, and it’s church going flesh, but it’s flesh. He says, The Spirit talks love to one another, acts in love to one another, thinks in love to one another, but you see, I can’t think in love to you if I’ve always got to be right, because nine times out of 10 you’re not right. And right is sometimes can be very personal. It depends on where you’ve come from, what’s right and wrong? That’s because that’s why there’s some situational type ethics. What’s right is what God says, and what God says is right is to love one another. Why do we see so little of it? Because we can’t do it. Why do we see so little love? Is because we can’t do it. But can He? Yeah, and there’s what he’s talking about. Is to walk in the Spirit. Live by the Spirit. What does that mean? Live in love, get your mind set. You know, Amy and I have talked about this many we got habits, and habits die hard. We can get in the habit of being critical, we can get in the habit of being sarcastic. We can get in a habit that anytime anyone says something to us that we don’t like, we just bristle up. That’s a habit. You don’t have to bristle up, but we have bad habits. And what he’s saying to us is ask God to change your habits. Get into a habit of responding in love, of initiating things in love to one another. I can’t do it, but God can. But God is not going to be able to get my attention if I’m not willing to pay attention. And see we go by, we bite, we bite and we devour each other and never think a thing about that being sinful. That’s just being normal. That’s what sin is, being normal. Okay?

So there’s a principle, if you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out, or you will be destroyed by one another, not by someone else, not by your enemy, by yourself, many times, the very person we’re living with, we will destroy this institution of marriage by biting and devouring each other. So what’s the solution to this? He says, live by the Spirit. Live and love. Remember, in the book of Ephesians. I pray that, out of his glorious riches, that he’ll strengthen you with power and your inner being, so that Christ will be at home in your heart through faith. And I pray that you rooted. Pray that you, together with all the saints, being rooted and established in love, together with all the saints, will be able to grasp how long and high and wide and deep is the love of God, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge. How come? So that you might be filled to the measure with all of the fullness of God. What is that? Living by the Spirit. So what does it mean to live by the Spirit? What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? It doesn’t mean to be standing around babbling in some language that you’ve never learned. It doesn’t mean rolling around on the floor and barking like dogs. It means to walk in love. And the reason people substitute all that other junk is because they can’t walk in love. And that’s what’s going on today. All of this stuff, the showbiz stuff that’s going on the name of Christ today is just a bunch of people that don’t have a clue how to walk in love, so they don’t think they can, so they substitute everything else for walking in the Spirit. If you’re going to live by the Spirit, you’re going to live in love. And he says, And when you are walking in love, there’s a byproduct of that is and that you will not be gratifying the desires of the flesh.

Now, does your flesh want gratified? When you’re hungry? Do you want food? You’re sleepy? Do you want to sleep? I can tell that with some of you, our flesh wants gratified. And so that’s not unusual either. It’s just saying the solution to this is not trying to clean up your flesh. Have you ever been sleepy and tried not to be sleepy? Now there’s one for you. It doesn’t say it says, learn to walk in love, and when you are making your decisions predicated on love, you will not be fulfilling the desires of your flesh that wants to serve flesh. Love wants to serve others. Flesh wants to serve itself. And so it’s a very simple thing. It does not say, clean up the flesh and you’ll be spiritual. It did not say, if the desires of the flesh will go away. Neither one of those are true. It says that in the midst of these sometimes raging desires of the flesh, that if you will learn to walk in love, which thinks, which again, what’s the what’s the funnel? Love your neighbor as yourself, start thinking about that. Would I want my wife to do that to me? The answer be No, then don’t do it to her. Now, if we thought that way all the time, you’d never have devouring of each other. Would you? Never! Do you realize that you would never have the devouring of each other if those were if that was our decision making process. Would I want my husband to do that to me? No, well then don’t do it to him. We never have any problems. Now, some people think that if you never had an argument in your marriage, one of you is unnecessary. I’ve heard that before. I don’t believe that, but some people say that. But the issue is that we want to control things. We’re back to the old control freak. We want to control. Control the world. We want to control everybody. We want to control how my husband acts, how my wife acts, how my kids act, how my grandkids act, and if I live old enough get after the great, great grandkids. I want to control everything. I want to control the government. I want to control everything. I believe that’s what indwelling sin is, folks. Is that insatiable desire that was placed in man to be God. And that’s what God does, is control all things, and to control everything. And we, not we meet. We need to understand that. We need to back off of that, and to realize God is the one in control, not me, to back off of that. And through this funnel. One thing he left us with, he said, forget the 10, forget the hundreds. There’s only one thing that you should funnel your life through, love, your neighbor as yourself. Every decision, every thought, is this what I’d want my neighbor to do to me? If it’s not, then don’t do it to them. Funnel everything through that, and what you’re going to find out is there’s going to be less biting and devouring. There’s going to be fewer divorces. There’s going to be fewer conflicts in your business, in your home, wherever it might be, if we will just learn that simple truth. Live by the Spirit, live in love, and there’s a byproduct you won’t be gratifying the desires of the flesh. How many of you have found through actual experience, it’s more blessed to give than to receive? Have we not all found that to be true? That’s the beauty of Christmas. That’s the beauty of Christmas is giving and experiencing the joy of it, doing something for somebody and experiencing the joy of it. Think of the joy that has come from the firemen, the policemen, people like this in New York, who have sacrificed their lives to help people, the joy that comes from that, the joy from hearing about it that these are people who gave themselves, not got, but gave. And we’ll just learn that lesson. More blessed to give than receive. We’re going to eliminate a lot of conflicts in our lives.

Announcer 27:11
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 BobGeorge.net. There you will 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.