Radio Broadcast Monday 12/11/2023

Classic Christianity – Book of Hebrews P44 (12-11-23)

Focus on Jesus Not on Yourself

~ God is the initiator, we are the responders. We don’t put our coins in the forgiveness vending machine and out plops forgiveness by God. Yet that is the way most people lead their lives and they are more than likely to listen to pastors that teach the big lie of ongoing forgiveness. For 99.9% teach that big lie. And the people who listen to them do not have any discernment today. And that right there should be a red flag for people, because more than likely the Spirit of Discernment does not actually live in them. Some of these false pastors will even teach the lie of one time asking for forgiveness from God. It’s a subtle form of one point Calvinism. For they do not not even believe that Jesus forgave the sins of the whole world. And folks, you don’t need someone to call out each and every false pastor today. For if the Holy Spirit is alive living in you, He will tell you to stop listening to the lies of Satan and quit passing those lies on to others.

The Word of God says that your sins were forgiven. Behold the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world at the cross. Do you believe that? How do you respond to that?

~ “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” ^{Matthew 7:24-27}

~ “And He is the propitiation for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world.” ^{1 John 2:2}

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~ “We are responders and meant to be so. Religion comes along and continually tries to tell you how to do what you ought to be doing, instead of what he is doing, so that you can be responding. So as we’ve talked before, if you’re going to grow in the grace of God, then you’re going to have to grow by keeping your eyes on him and what he’s doing in the midst of you, and whatever you’re doing. Because if you’re going to grow, you will never grow by a preoccupation with you and what you’re doing. As John the Baptist said, I must decrease and he must what? Increase. Focus your eyes on Jesus not become introspection introspective on yourself. Our focus is on him, not on you. This Bible was written to let us know about him, and in so doing, to teach us about him so that we can respond now to that stimulus rather than the stimulus of the world out there. And we’ll show how that works in just a moment.” ~ Bob George

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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 0:27
Well, let’s turn to the book of Hebrews chapter four. And we’ll pick up where we have left off. In chapter 12, there, excuse me, verse 12, the word of God is living. It is active, it is sharper than any double edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit. In other words, it will show you the difference between your soul and your spirit, the spiritual things, and your soulish things we’ve talked about before that your body, your soul, your spirit, we are also made up as a trinity. And each one of those three have different needs. And the Word of God will divide those to show you which ones are the needs of the spirit and which ones are the needs of the soul, and also show you the cleverness of Satan in deceiving us, and what the effects of that deception can be. And we’ll hopefully we’ll get into that today. If we don’t get into all of it. We’ll certainly get in it by next week. So it penetrates dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow, it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. In Second Timothy 3:16, you just turn forward a few pages, you’ll be the Second Timothy, you’ll see in Second Timothy 3:16, that the Scriptures tell us that all scripture, all of it is God breathed. And as useful to you for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training and righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. In Ephesians, it tells us that God gave some to be apostles, some of the prophets, some to be evangelists, some of the pastor teachers, for the equipping of the saints, for their work of ministry. So if the Word of God is to be used to in order to be thoroughly equipped for the work of ministry, why then a pastor, teacher and Evangelist, a prophet, an apostle, all of those, their job was to be teaching the Word of God. And the work of the ministry is what? What is the work of the ministry? To believe on Him. So the work of the ministry is teaching people, the faithfulness of God and His Word, so that we will respond and believe on him. Folks, one of the things that we run into is the fact that we forget that we’re responders and we’re always wanting to be initiators. What do we do? You’ll hear that question constantly. What do you do when you sin? What do you do? What do we do? And instead of realizing that when we are preoccupied with him and what he’s doing, we will be responding, not initiating, if God made you and me as the creative being, and he is the creator, and Jesus Himself, although he was never less than God walked on this earth, and He said, In my humanity, I’m gonna teach you how to live as a human whereby everything you see me do, it’s a result of the Father telling me to do it and everything you hear me say, it’s the result of the Father telling me to say it. In other words, I’m gonna walk in dependency upon you and be a responder to the Father, not an initiator. And so us and our humanity were developed by God to be responders. And religion shifts that emphasis off his off of us being a responder to God and puts us into a position of always being an initiator to God so that he will respond to us. And we so we’ve got God up there in heaven. And our whole prayer mindset is that way that that’s what prayer is, is there’s God, the big responder in the sky. You know, that’s who he is up there was waiting on me to push the right buttons and exercise and conjure up the enough, enough faith. And if I do that, why then he’s gotta respond to me in that kind of how we think God is? He’s the responder folks. It’s a very opposite. That’s what religion will teach you. Religion will teach you that But Christianity came just to put us back in our place to say you’re the initiator created beings. God said Where were you when I created the hippopotamus? Probably standing there looking like him. And, and we are the responder. And when we understand that and get our perspective back, then we understand the word of God and what it will do. It is the initiator in our lives, it is the thing that is dividing truth from error. It is the thing that God said in Second Timothy, therefore, that it is there for teaching you and me It teaches we respond. It rebukes we respond, it corrects, we respond, it trains us in righteousness, thus, we respond. You know, if you’re hungry, and you put food in front of somebody, you don’t have to sit there and say, Now you ought to eat. You ought to, you ought to get your stomach growling. You ought to feel hungry inside. Would that be stupid to have to tell somebody that? When something inside of you tells you you’re hungry, and you put food in front of someone, you automatically respond. That’s why you really don’t need a lot of instruction on your honeymoon, you will respond quite naturally. We are responders and meant to be so. Religion comes along and continually tries to tell you how to do what you ought to be doing, instead of what he is doing, so that you can be responding. So as we’ve talked before, if you’re going to grow in the grace of God, then you’re going to have to grow by keeping your eyes on him and what he’s doing in the midst of you, and whatever you’re doing. Because if you’re going to grow, you will never grow by a preoccupation with you and what you’re doing. As John the Baptist said, I must decrease and he must what? Increase. Focus your eyes on Jesus not become introspection introspective on yourself. Our focus is on him, not on you. This Bible was written to let us know about him, and in so doing, to teach us about him so that we can respond now to that stimulus rather than the stimulus of the world out there. And we’ll show how that works in just a moment.

The Word of God. Let’s turn back over to chapter two over there. In Second Timothy, same place. There’s a lot of things you do with the Word of God it was given to, so that we could respond to it and put it into practice. We use it as a book to beat people over the death over the head with and cram it down their throat and to get in arguments with people over. So he reminds us of that again, in chapter two, verse 14, keep reminding them of these things. Why do you need to keep reminding them because we need to be reminded, because we have a tendency to do what it’s about to say, warn them before God about quarreling about words. It is of no value and ruins those who listen, get down and quarrel over words. And that’s exactly what the religious world has become. Today, you’ve got two ends of the pendulum that we’re dealing with constantly one over here a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. There’s a whole group over there and then you got another group over there always studying and never coming to truth. So you got the worders over here, and you got the feelers over here. And what he is trying to say to us is, quit on to the worders quit arguing about words and people get down and want to dissect the Greek and all this and, and get into the words and let’s do a word study and all this type of thing is if God wrote this to do a word study on can you imagine getting a love letter from your girlfriend and saying, I think I’ll do a word study. I wonder what love really means. Man, you want to read the word to find out what it says don’t you? So that you can want? Respond to the love letter. And no one else is asked to tell you how to respond either. So quit quarreling about words. It’s of no value. It just ruins people who listen, you get all hung up on words instead of what are Are these words saying and, more importantly than only by the Spirit, what do they mean? Do your best to present yourself to God is One approved workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. Well, how are you going to handle the word of truth correctly? First of all, you’re gonna have to do it in context. And instead, you’re gonna have to do it with in love. And you’re back to the same thing. You may know everything that Bible says. But if we don’t have love, it doesn’t mean anything anyway. Avoid godless chatter those indulge in, it will become more and more ungodly. And it goes ahead to talk about a number of other things. And let’s go down to 23 don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know, they produce quarrels. You ever known anybody majored on the minors. I mean, I got this little bit of revelation over here that tell you, I don’t think anybody in the world has except me. And I’m just going to make sure that you understand that some little insignificant thing doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. But we want to camp on it, and make sure everybody believes it, just like I do. He said, don’t have anything to do with those stupid arguments, they all they do is produce corals. It’s it’s not basic, it isn’t going to change your life. It didn’t change the life of the people around you. It’s just something relatively insignificant. Have you run into that? That’s what Paul folks was talking about. In first Corinthians when he was dealing with the gifts of the Spirit. He said, Come on, guys, grow up, Quit acting like babies. He said, when you were a baby, you thought like a baby and acted like a baby, it’s time to grow up and quit being impressed with your gifts. The only thing that matters is love. Let me show you a better way. Nothing wrong with the gift, quit being enamored with it like a kid grow up, mature. You’re never gonna grow up. When you’re preoccupied with a gift. You’re gonna grow up when you’re preoccupied with the giver. And that’s what he’s saying. So if you want to find out how you’re doing, instead of weighing and determining how you’re doing spiritually, by the exercising of these gifts, take a look as to how you’re doing by Love, is love flowing through you. And if that isn’t flowing through, yeah, hang it up. You don’t have anything to brag about. And that’s growing up getting mature looking at things realistically, instead of looking at things like a baby looks at them all in enamored with gifts, instead of the giver. So it’s the same thing, get rid of these little things and they’re not earth shaking. The central issue is Him. Christ Jesus. Said the Lord’s servant must not quarrel instead, he must be kind to everyone and able to teach not resentful. To those who oppose him he was gently instruct and there’s an emphasis there on gently in hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth and that they will come to their senses and escape the trap of the devil that has taken the captive to do His will.

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Announcer
If you’re enjoying the book of Hebrews, check out our website BobGeorge.net. There you will find a whole collection of messages from the book of Hebrews as well as other DVDs, CDs and Bible studies available for purchase. That’s Bob George dot net. Let’s join Bob now as he continues the radio program.

Bob George 13:50
So folks, the word of God is not only to take in, but it’s to be used properly. And we it gets used and abused, unfortunately in Christendom. Now we’ve talked about and well backup for just a moment in regard to this whole thing of this word that we hold in our hand today. We’ve talked about before that the validity of whether this word is true and reliable and dependable is totally based upon the testimony of Christ Jesus himself. If Christ Jesus himself is truly who He claimed to be, and that is God, and I assume everyone sitting in here knows that and has a relationship with him. I hope if you don’t, I hope you will. But to know that Christ Jesus is ALIVE, He lives in you. And he is exactly who he claimed to be God because He did claim to be God. We we’ve we’ve covered that. His claims were throughout scripture of His deity. The Old Testament testified to His deity, the New Testament writers all have testified to His deity. So, if Christ indeed was not God, then He was a liar or an impostor, because those are the only options you have available to you. He was either a liar, who knew that he wasn’t God and claimed that he was he was a madman who thought he was God when He indeed he wasn’t. And anyone who wasn’t God and thought he was would be a madman, or he was God. And that’s just all the options you have available to you. And you got to take your pick of one of those three. But as CS Lewis says, let’s not come up with a patronizing nonsense about him being a good moral teacher, he did not leave that option open to us he never intended to. And a man claimed himself to be God is either a maniac, or an imposter, or he is God. That just that simple. So if we have come to Him for who He is God, then we have to go to God to see now what did God say then about this word, so I don’t need to go through an exegesis, I don’t need to go through a bunch of digging up. Dead Sea Scrolls, or whatever it is, although those certainly help some people. Because it just takes the original writings back closer to the days that they were originally written. But my testimony and my belief in the Word of God that has nothing to do with a dead sea scrolls being dug up, or have Noah’s Ark being found or not found I could care less. It is better. It is based and predicated upon the teaching of Jesus Christ. He said, Your word is truth. He said, I tell you the truth, this is God’s speaking that until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter nor the least stroke of the pen, will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished, the whole thing has to get accomplished. And he accomplished it. He said, Heaven and earth will pass away but my words will never pass away. Never. Peter said, All men are like grass, all their glory is like the flowers in the field, The grass withers, the flowers fall. But the word of our God stands forever. And this was the word it says it was preached to you. So the validity of the Word of God rests totally upon the testimony of Jesus and his apostles, doesn’t it?

Now let’s take a look at another one. We have deals like Noah, Noah’s got an ark out there, some people out there looking for it. So okay. But let’s just see what Jesus had to say about that. In case anybody’s kind of wondering whether there was one. Jesus, now who is Jesus? God. So here’s what God had to say about that ark. As it was in the days of Noah, this is in Matthew 24:37 through 39 as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the date Noah entered the ark, they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them away. And that is how it’s gonna be at the coming of the Son of Man. Now, let me ask you a question. Do you think Jesus believed that there was Noah and an ark? You have a clue that maybe he might have believed that? Do you think that he would in any way, shape, or form used a correlation of such an important event as the second coming to some kind of a fairy tale? He correlated it to a human event, just as Noah was in an ark, that event took place. So is there another event that’s going to take place, and that is going to be that I God, I’m going to come back to this earth in the same way. And when I do come back, the condition of the world will be the same as it was in those days of Noah, where everyone was just having a ball and saying who needs God? He said, that’s when I’m coming back. In Luke, same thing, Luke 17:26 to 27, just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. In Second Peter, two, five, it said he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness and seven others. So when we’re talking about something like Noah and the ark, instead of it being some fairy tale, some nice kitty story that they can teach back in the kids department, we have to understand that if Jesus is God, and he said, There is then was an ark, and there was a Noah, then folks, there was an ark and there was Noah. If there wasn’t, he ceases to be God. So you see the question, was there an ark is answered by? What do you say about Jesus? And when people throw these things up as smoke screens, you don’t deal with the smoke screen, you go back to the author. You see people take books and this type of thing, and we make heroes out of books. See, and, and we go to school and study books. No one ever stops. Think who wrote this sucker? What was his character? What did he know? He didn’t hard to get a book out. The issue is, what’s the credibility of the author? Who is the author? What do they know? And when you start dealing into that, you wonder why you read the book. But when you’re dealing with the author of this book, you’re dealing with God. And so you’re not going to see any difference between God and His Word. So a person says, I don’t believe Noah was in an ark. Then they’re saying I don’t believe Jesus is God. So why would I want to prove to them that he was in an art by going and finding an ark? Do you think if you went and found an ark that the whole world is Oh, where’s Jesus? Let me believe in him. What you think they will say, what you, what do you think they’ll say if they find it? Yeah, show me something else. All right, found all kinds of things. You think people are going to be satisfied with that? Folks think about it for a minute as Jesus said if they didn’t come to him when he raised Lazarus from the dead Why do you think people are gonna come to him for somebody find some pieces of wood? That’s what Jesus said Did he not he said you you you people who have your faith in Moses, Moses wrote about me and if you don’t believe him, why do you think you’re gonna believe me? He wrote about me and we have this idea that all we have to do is to go into dig up some of these things and a whole world is gonna come to Jesus No, they’re not and so we’re out trying to prove and that’s okay I guess what you’re trying to prove there was an ark, if you prove there was one what would it matter if you didn’t come to Christ go before God Why do you deserve to be here? I believe there was an ark. Okay. So the people in it so when all relies upon does it not comes back to the question Who do you say that I am?

Well, what about another one that has been criticized Jonah and the whale Jonah and the fish we’ll just call it Jonah and the whale for because that’s what most people do. It’s literally interpreted Jonah and the big fish. Well, what Jesus had to say about that, well, he said, a wicked and adulterous generation asked for miraculous signs in that interesting thing. For a generation today that all you hear about are looking for signs. miraculous signs, give me another miraculous sign, Lord, let me go to another meetings, see somebody’s legs straighten. Let me go to another meeting and see somebody miraculous, give me some more miraculous signs. That’s all I want to do. I don’t want to hear the Word of God. I just want to go to a side show and see miraculous signs going on. You have entire ministries built around not teaching the Word of God just miraculous signs, just healing people just that’s all we do. Say why don’t you to go to the hospital where they’re sick. He said, You’re an adulterous generation. You’re not looking for me, you’re looking for a play thing out there. You’re looking for something else besides a reality with me, looking for a Christian Sideshow to go to someplace to get excited. Jump up and down. Instead of realizing that this Christian life is going to produce something more than excitement and greater than excitement, it’s going to produce something called love. Or anything exciting about that. It’s just quite miraculous. He said, You’re a wicked and adulterous generation. All you’re asking for is a miraculous sign. But he said, None will be given, none will be given except the sign of the prophet Jonah. I’ll tell you something, folks, the Lord cleared, pretty clear there. I’m not gonna give you any more signs. The next miracle I’m going to give you is going to be a resurrection from the dead. And if you don’t believe that you’re not going to believe anything. He said that none is going to be given except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish. So the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. And the men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemned it for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here. Luke 11, the crowds increased. Jesus said, this is a wicked generation. It asked for miraculous sign. It’s all I want, miraculous signs. Remember, when it talked about in the last days what it was going to be like? The days of Noah. It follows into the days of Jonah. It’s the same thing. World out chasing this, the religious world Chase and miraculous signs. Try to increase somebody’s faith with a miraculous sign. He said, My God, how much more of a miraculous sign do you need to get your faith increase? Then when I was raised from the dead? Just how much more signs do you need? How many more miracles do you need than when I was raised from the dead?

Announcer 27:11
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