Call-In Classic Christianity Radio – Bob George P557 (07-30-20)
Synopsis
It is so vitally important to grow in discernment, in grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Otherwise, you are so easily led astray by every wind and doctrine. Things can look good on the surface, sort of like the tree in the garden of Eden, that looks pleasing to the eye, having an appearance of wisdom, but leads to destruction. Such is the case that goes on even more so in the world today, as Jesus told us, to let no man deceive you. You have every religion that seems to be merging into one, with mysticism, tongues of fire, song lyrics without truth to them, catering to the emotions and to the flesh.
A person calls in and says they see nothing wrong with being involved in a Catholic service. How do you know they teach error? Read the word of God, and allow the Spirit to teach you truth. If you are born again, then the Lord will teach you. So when you walk into such a mass, as they call it, and you observe the worship of Mary or that Jesus indwells a wafer, you know it is not true. Do not believe the lies that say they just reverence Mary when reverence is a synonym for worship and you see a statue of her and someone bowing down to kiss her feet, or to give her characteristics equal to God, such as sinless, immaculate or co-redeemer. If you are in Christ, those lies and deceptions should become obvious to you. When truth is revealed to you, you no longer want to remain where there is poison to your soul. When you are a child of God, you want to worship Him in Spirit and in truth.
Bob says he does not tell someone not to be a Catholic. He tells someone to become a born again believer. When you are a born believer, then you are able to walk in truth that sets you free. You have something better than religion, that could never offer you life. You have the Lord Himself living in you guiding you into all truth. It makes no difference whether you are a Catholic, a Baptist, a Presbyterian, or whatever you might currently be attending. That is not who you are, a Baptist because you go to a Baptist church, or whatever you so identify yourself. You are a child of God. That is your identity, the identity God gives you.
As you grow in knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, things you have heard before, but have not fully understood because you were taught correctly, you begin to understand. You begin to understand what God wants you to understand. Take the story of the prodigal son, for example. You once thought it was about a believer getting back into fellowship with God. But that cannot be true as you have come to understand the New Covenant of grace you are under today, and that the Spirit is sealed in you and will never leave you. You are either in fellowship, saved, or out of fellowship, lost. You will never find in scripture ever that someone goes in and out of fellowship.
When you think of the parable of the prodigal son, it is really a parable of the lost son, one who was dead and is now alive. It is a picture of someone who came alive. He left because he thought it would be more fun to listen to the voice of Satan than his father’s voice. In the story, he is a son of a father. He came home because he is a son. He came home only after he came to his senses, after living wildly among prostitutes and now eating bread from a pig trough. He planned what he would say, but the heart of his father is a picture of the heart of God, who was there waiting for him. He did not even wait for him to give his 1 John 1:9 type of speech. He threw a party for him and exclaimed, he is dead and is now alive again. We must celebrate.
But there is more to the story. The just as equally important part of the story is that of the older brother, who was so angry that his father would do this for such a lousy son. He was acting self righteously, saying I have never done what your other son did, and you never threw me a party. This story reminds you of the Jews and the Gentiles. There were those Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, but came to faith in Christ and were saved. Many Jews pursued a righteousness of their own, by way of the law, and the truth was hidden from them. They did not receive the righteousness of God that can only come by faith in Christ alone.
Listen again as Bob explains the gospel in Christ Jesus that saves. You have to agree with God in regard to what He said about you and your condition and about Him and His provision. What is your condition? You were born dead, without the Spirit of God living in you. Any one sin you did, whether a lie or an immoral thought testifies about you that you have sinned, and that you are a sinner. This reveals a deeper condition that Paul testified about, this body of death he described as a condition of wretchedness. When I tried to not covet, I coveted all the more, and that there is something wrong with me.
That is the condition of man, spiritual death. What is God’s provision? His provision is two-fold. There is a wage, or consequence to sin, called death. The punishment of sin must be paid in full in order for life to be given. That part of taking sin away was provided by the shed blood of Christ. God said that was propitiation, meaning it completely satisfied the wrath of God against all sin. Man has been reconciled to God by his death. The just punishment for sin for the entire world, all the way back to Adam and all the way forward to the man yet to be born, was paid in full. God will never ever see sins again. They will be remembered no more. It is done. It is over. It is finished.
The second part of God’s provision is life, God’s life. The same life that raised Jesus from the dead can also raise you and me from the dead. That same life that is in Christ Jesus can now be placed in you, now that sins will never be counted against you. In Him, you have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. In Him, you have life forevermore. The Spirit is placed in you the moment you believe in God’s provision, having realized what Jesus accomplished for you by his death, burial and resurrection for you, and so you invite the Lord Jesus to come live in you. That is what being born again spiritually is all about.
When you accept the life of Christ, the Spirit of God comes to live in you forever. That is what eternal life is, to know God and His Son Jesus Christ. You have become a new creation, with a new identity. You are now a child of God. If there has never been a time in your life where you have come to Christ to receive his life, let that be today. Join the fellowship of Christ Jesus today!
Transcript
Ted from Indianapolis, IN
Ted: I met this young lady. She is very special to me. She goes to a Catholic church. I was raised Wesleyan Methodist. I have been going to that church with her lately, and I do not see anything wrong with it.
Bob: The reason you do not see anything wrong with it is because you do not know the bible. I do not mean to discredit the Wesleyan church or anything else, but neither the Catholic church or the Wesleyan church teaches the depths of the bible. That is what the two of you need to get into. If you do not know what the scriptures say then any place will do. If you know what the scripture says, and what the bible teaches, then you will know if you are in a place that teaches you truth or error. So the issue is not where you go to church, but do you know the truth of the word of God.
John 17:17
17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.
Bob: You know Ted, the craziest thing in the world, in my lifetime, before I came to Christ as my personal Lord and Savior, somebody would come up to me and ask, “What are you?” I would say, “I am Presbyterian”. “Well, what do they believe?” “I don’t know, but whatever they believe, I believe”. Well, that is intellectual suicide. It is really ridiculous. You are really just saying, “I do not care. I park my car in the parking lot and drop my dollar in the plate and I really do not care what they teach”. But when you come to Christ, and you have the living Christ living in you, He will lead you into all truth.
John 16:13
13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.
Bob: It has to start with a born again experience, of coming to know Christ as Lord and Savior. In order to do that, you have to agree with God in regard to what He said about you and your condition and about Him and His provision. What he said about us, Ted is this. He says all of us have sinned and all of us have fallen short of the glory of God and there is not one who is righteous, not one. Our hearts are desperately wicked above all things and who could know it.
Romans 3:23
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
Romans 3:10
10 As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one”
Jeremiah 17:9
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Bob: By the time I was 36, I had no trouble arguing with the Lord on that. I had no problem agreeing with God that I was a sinner. Next, you have to understand there are wages, or a consequence to sin, called death.
Romans 6:23
23 For the wages of sin is death
Bob: We tend to think of that as natural death. No. It is spiritual death. Death is the absence of life, and the life of God does not live in us. We are not born with the Spirit of God living in us. That is why we are always looking for something. You are always looking for the next go-cart or hoola hoop. Our life is never fulfilled. The consequence of sin is spiritual death, and that means God does not live in us. That is the meaning of the resurrection, that resurrected life of Christ.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Bob: The reason he was raised from the dead was so that that life that raised him from the dead can raise you from your condition of spiritual death into spiritual life. When you and I were dead in our sins, in the uncircumcision of our sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all of our sins.
Colossians 2:13
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins
Ted: I can’t wait until the next time I go to church. I love being there. I love reading the bible.
Bob: Have you come to that point, though, of spiritual new birth, Ted? That is the key.
John 3:5-6
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.
Ted: What I am saying is, a couple of years ago I got filled with the Spirit.
Bob: There is no one who has got filled with the Spirit apart from coming to Christ. There is no event. You have been conned into that. If you spoke in tongues or rolled on the floor, you had an experience. You had a spiritual experience. Satan can give you a spiritual experience. By faith, and faith alone, were you able to say to God, at a time in your life, that you agreed with God that you are a sinner?
Colossians 2:11-13
11 In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
Ted: Oh, yes sir.
Bob: And Jesus went to a cross to take away my sins from the eyes of God to never see them again. So I have now agreed with Him concerning my condition and I agreed with Him for His provision. It is not an intellectual decision, Ted. You believed by faith in that with all your heart and soul.
John 11:24-26
24 Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
Bob: It also means the wages of sin is death, and Jesus is the resurrection and the life and whosoever believes in him will live, even though they die, and whoever lives by believing in him will never die. It is the heart attitude of saying, “I am dead and I want you to come into my life and to give me life ”. If you have done that, you are born again. It has nothing to do with manifestations. It has nothing to do with experience. It has to do with, by faith and faith in Him alone, that I am born again.
Ted: Brother Bob, I tried my hardest to live by faith every day.
Bob: You do not try to live by faith. You live by faith, Ted.
Bob: In other words, you cannot try to be born again. You have to yield yourself. You have to surrender. You do not commit. You surrender to God. Ted, get this in your mind. God is the initiator and you are the responder of everything in the Christian life. We do not initiate to God, and He responds to me, saying “ I do this and so you, God, have to do this for me ” . No. The opposite is true. God says, “Ted, I have done this for you, now respond to me in faith”.
1 John 4:19
19 We love because he first loved us.
Bob: Now, we are back to the same question, “Have you, at any point in your life, agreed with God concerning your condition of spiritual death and agreed with him in regard to his resurrection, that that resurrected life was given so I could be raised from my condition of spiritual death into spiritual life and I ask you Lord to come into my heart and be my Lord and savior? ”
Ted: I have done that.
Bob: Praise the Lord. Then you are a child of God. You are not a Baptist. You are not a Catholic. You are not a Presbyterian. You are a child of God. God does not save any Catholics, Presbyterians or Wesleyans. God saves people and they are born again. So you are a born again believer.
Bob: Now, you met a girl who is in a Catholic church. I do not understand why you cannot go in there and say you see nothing wrong with that? When you are sitting there worshiping Mary and going down and taking a wafer, and telling people that Jesus is in that wafer, I do not think you have to be a mental giant to figure out that is not true. That is not in the bible. There are a lot of things in Catholicism that are the opposite of what you are told in the bible. So in regard to your girlfriend, I would get a hold of a booklet called A Scriptural Journey to Discover the Grace of God. I would say to her, “Honey, you certainly go to church because of Jesus and I go to church because of Jesus, then let us go through this bible study together and let us learn about what the bible has to say about Jesus. Would you like to do that?” If she has a heart open to go, she will say “sure”. So start studying the scriptures together and the scriptures will teach you what the bible says, and then you will learn that what you are hearing, sitting in that pew, is error. You will see that it is not lining up with what the bible says. I do not tell someone not to be a Catholic. I tell someone to become a born again believer.
Ted: I have been trying to get a hold of you for quite some time to talk about this. I certainly appreciate it.
Hebrews 9:15-17
15 For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance – now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.16 In the case of a will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, 17 because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living.
Bob: Do not neglect getting into the scripture. Understand the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. It went into effect at the death of Christ. Your will will not go into effect until you die. Christ upheld the law by becoming death for us and ushered in a covenant of grace. The law has done its work. It showed that you are a sinner. Christ Jesus has done his work. He took away the sins of the world and has given you life. Now, he says. Now live in a brand new way of life, being led internally by the Spirit of God who lives in you. Let the Spirit of God just work in your life as you read the scriptures. You learn the wisdom of God. He teaches you wisdom. He teaches you the truth and sets you free. And hopefully, get your girlfriend to go along with you on that study with you.
Ted: I think I can.
Bob: I know you can. You will just have the greatest joy in the world.
Bob: We will put you on hold and get that information to you.
Ted: Can you do me a favor?
Bob: Sure.
Ted: Can you keep me in your prayers?
Bob: Yes.
Ted: Thank you.
Dale from Corpus Cristi, TX
Dale: I know how you stand on the subject of in and out of fellowship with God. I believe the same way as you do. I was reading a book from a well known pastor who believed in this in and out of fellowship. He used a scripture from the parable of the prodigal son. He says this is an example of a person in and out of fellowship with God.
Take the time to read the full account of the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15:11-32.
Bob: Again, this is an example of people using human experiences, of someone saying, “if this were true of a human experience down here, it certainly must be true of God ”. In other words, “God certainly cannot be any different than us. If that is the way I deal with people then that is the way God must deal”. It is the same argument that people give. “When someone offends me, I will forgive him but he has to come and ask me for forgiveness”. Or, “if you have a son who messed up, he needs to come and ask you to forgive him before you will forgive him”. That is nonsense. If that is the case, my son would probably never be forgiven. I do not remember him ever coming to me and saying “I messed up, Dad. Please forgive me”. No, he just said, “I messed up, Dad”, and we dealt with it. Forgiveness has never been an issue between me and my children. They are already forgiven. It is the same way with God.
Bob: When you put God at the same level as us, or out of a story from the bible, that is the wrong reason for the parable. The parable was the lost son. That is not out of fellowship. That is a lost son. He rejected his inheritance or took it early and went out to squander his life, finding out to the point that even my father’s servants are living better than I do and came to his senses, and returned home. He had a speech in mind, probably 1 John 1:9 (What About 1 John 1:9?). But before he could even give his 1 John 1:9, the Father was there with open arms and received his son before ever hearing a word out of him. He killed the calf, clothed him and threw a party. That was not the case of being out of fellowship. That was the case of a relationship with his father but his son deciding to go his own way.
Bob: In the bible, you are in fellowship or out of fellowship. There is no place in the bible of going in and out of fellowship. So again, Dale, when that is the case, then why do people keep harping on these things? It is like tithing. It is not there. In and out of fellowship. It is not there. Why do people keep harping on that? Why do people keep harping on what is not in the New Testament. What is in the New Testament, is you have been called into fellowship with his Son. If you are in the light, saved, as Christ Jesus is in the light, the two of you have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son continually cleanses you of every sin imaginable, which prohibits you from ever getting in the darkness. Which means you are in the light, and as a result of being in the light, there is fellowship between the two of you.
1 John 1:7
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
Bob: You are called into fellowship. There is no place in the bible where fellowship is used in regards to bouncing in and out. Why then do people use that then? I do not know. What we do say is that a person has decided that he is a son. That is why he came home. He is a son. The pig did not come home because he is a pig. The son went away because he thought it would be more fun to listen to the voice of Satan than listen to the instruction of his father. It was not about being in and out of fellowship. He took off to do his own thing. His father waited for him patiently didn’t he. The son came back. He was already waiting for him with open arms, was he not?
Bob: I think there is a story just as powerful and that is about the jealous older brother. We seldom hear that side of the story. Here is the brother, and he is the self righteous one. He has been in church every Sunday. He is obeying all the laws. He has been subservient to the Father, and he is proud of it. Nothing wrong with being obedient to the father but do not get self righteous over it. That is something you should be doing. This brother gets mad over this thing and voices that. “What is going on, Dad? You are throwing a party to this slob son of yours, wallowing with the pigs and prostitutes and everything else and you have been this good, good son and you have not thrown a party for me”. And he went and pouted. So you got two things you are dealing with. The father chastises him for that. This son was dead and now he is alive! He was blind but now he sees!
Bob: There are two stories that are equal in value to us. You have the sinner who comes to his senses and comes home. You have got a brother already home, trying to be good, who is getting mad at the brother who was saved. That is a picture, quite frankly, of the Jew and the Gentile.
Dale: You took the words right out of my mouth.
Bob: Absolutely.
Romans 9:30-32
30 What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; 31 but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. 32 Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone.
Bob: “I have been trying to be righteous in your sight”. Are you saying that the gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have obtained it? And are you saying that the son who did not pursue righteousness has obtained it? Are you saying the son who has been trying to be righteous has not? Yes. You got it. Why? Because the son at home was trying to gain righteousness, not by faith, but by works. The prodigal son received it by faith and faith alone. Those are two types of people we have in the world today.
Dale: That nails it. I appreciate it. Thank you. God bless you.
Bob: God bless you, my friend.
Robert from Alexandria, VA
Robert: My question is about dealing with guilt with people. I have a hard time telling people “no”, even Christian friends, who ask to borrow money or for help or whatever it is. I have a real hard time saying “no” If I do say “no” then I feel guilty. I know we are supposed to love one another and esteem others better than ourselves. I wonder if you have some insight into those kinds of situations.
Bob: People can work the daylights out of people like you because you are in bondage to the acceptance of people. I was in the same boat in having an insatiable desire for acceptance.
Robert: Yes.
Bob: I sought out acceptance when I was in the lost world. Then I got saved, and then I still had that insatiable desire for acceptance of man and sought it out among Christians. You can be easily taken advantage of.
John 5:19
19 Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.”
John 12:50
50 “I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.”
John 12:49
49 For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken.
Bob: When I came to understand this, then I was free. When Jesus, who is God in the flesh, was here on earth, he said, “I am not going to live as God because I would not teach you anything. I am going to show you how to live as a man. I will not do one thing the Father does not tell me to do. I will not say anything until the Father tells me what to say and how to say it”. Here is Jesus, living in total dependency on the Father. Everything he did or said was at the Father;’s initiative. He said, “as the Father sent me, so I send you”.
John 20:21
21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”
Bob: When a person is asking you to do something, and when we learn the truth to that, then I do not have to be in bondage to people, to their acceptance. I am accepted in the beloved. If I am accepted in God, what do I care whether you accept me or not? It is not that I do not care but I do not care. It is because I have all the acceptance in Him. I do not need your acceptance. I would like to have it, but I do not need it.
Ephesians 1:6
6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.
Bob: So you have to come to grips that you are accepted in the beloved. You are not accepted by what you do or do not do. You are accepted in the beloved. So quit working at being accepted by people. They are not worth it. Really, we are not worth it to be in bondage to what somebody thinks about you. Get free of that. I am a child of God. I am accepted in the beloved. I am perfectly loved in Christ Jesus. So I am not going to live that way any more.
Bob: Then, if someone asks you to do something, then you say “I will pray about that”, and so you do, and you say, “I will get back with you and if He says “no“ then “no“.”
Robert: I see the wisdom there, but it seems harsh.
Bob: Not harsh at all. It is harsh of them to be asking you for something. Why should you be guilty because someone has the guts to ask you to give them something?
Robert: Well, see that is what I am talking about. That is what I need to think about and pray about.
Bob: We ask people continually to be involved with us financially. If somebody cannot do it, I do not feel bad about it. I do not want them to feel guilty if they cannot do it. I say, “If you can’t someone else will pick up”. If someone has the guts to ask you for something, have the guts to say “no”. It is not harsh at all. I am not going to do something unless the Father tells me. If the Father tells you to give to somebody, go and give to somebody but do not so with reservation or resentment. You are doing it because God is wanting you to do something. Otherwise, do not do it.
Bob: Leave that guilt behind. Jesus went to a cross to take away your sins and guilt. You should have no sin and no guilt. In the eyes of God, in order to be guilty, someone has to accuse you. God is no longer accusing you. Okay, my bother.
Romans 8:1
1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus
