Classic Christianity Radio (03-05-19) – Classic Christianity Part 2
Bob explains the meaning of being filled with the Spirit, to be controlled by the love of God. Bob shared how the scriptures interpret itself, revealing the meaning from context. By looking at Ephesians 3 helps you better understand Ephesians 5. So too with all of the scriptures. Look at key phrases such as “so that” or “therefore”, and look more closely what follows or why it is there for. By learning to ask the right questions and then pondering over the scriptures for the answer is helpful to discern the meaning of God’s word. But widen the amount of scriptures you read. Read entire passages for a wider context while asking the Spirit to reveal truth to you. The wisdom of men is foolishness to God. We need the power of God to grasp truth. We need to renew our minds, pushing out the psychological, religious, and philosophical garbage out. We need error replaced with truth. So let us look to the Spirit to reveal truth to us through His word and allow Him to show us a better way. This is the better way; the way of love, His love at work in us and through us, and not by the energy of the flesh. If Christ is living in you, then you are able to participate in this divine nature.
You cannot live my life for me. That is my life. Only I can live my life. You can live your life but you cannot live my life. So if you want to live my life and you want my life to be manifested in and through you then you are going to have to make my life available to you and to yield your body to me so I can have access to live my life through you. That is what it means to be controlled by the Spirit of God and the love of God. So what is the evidence? If I am Spirit filled then there is evidence. Yes, that is true. The evidence of being controlled by the spirit is love. That is precisely why that we substitute everything what the bible says is love because I cannot do that. We realize that we cannot do that; that we cannot really love. So I say I can’t, so I go and go out and do what I can. So that must be evidence of being controlled of the Spirit because I can do it. No, it is love.
What compelled Paul?
2 Corinthians 5:14
14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.
What controlled Jesus?
John 15:9
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.
What are you and I supposed to be controlled by? The love of God. What is love? It is an action taken on behalf of man. God does not love you if you do such and such. God just loves you. It is His initiation of His love toward you. What is our response to that. Respond to it. I can ignore it, pay no attention to it, or be controlled by it.
We cannot love in our own strength yet we want that. Let us look at love defined in Corinthians 13 in terms of our inner personal relationships. All of us have relationships. If we have someone we really liked then what do we desire or expect to see coming from them if they truly loved us?
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
Let us look at the marital relationship as an example. Suppose you have this conversation with your wife. “Honey, the deepest desire in my life is for you to always be patient with me. And I desire for you to always be kind to me. And I would also like you to never be easily angered with me. I would really be delighted if you kept no records of wrongs. I do not want you to delight in evil. I never want to see you ever like evil in any shape or form. Another thing. I also want you to rejoice in the truth, especially when I already told what I think you should be doing. I always want you to protect me, trust me, hope the best for me, and persevere with me forever.”
So from hearing such a contrived conversation, is there one thing in here that you can say that I really do not desire this from other people. Has there ever been anybody here that would not want to be loved like this? Has there ever been anybody here that has been loved like this by another person?
Ecclesiastes 7:20
Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins.
Yet do we not read that the world will know we are disciples if we love one another. But do we desire this? Yes, of course. I would be besides myself if I found someone like this. This is the way we really want to be loved. The only problem with this is we cannot do it.
But who can? God. This is love that we must go to God for instead of people. I cannot go to people and demand this out of people.
1 John 4:19
We love because he first loved us.
I can desire this from other people but I cannot bring it about. How many of you tried to get our mate to do this, to demand of your spouse what cannot be delivered. That is where control comes in. So you say, for example, “If you are not going to be patient with me, I will see what I can do to make sure you are patient with me.” A lot of us are just like skunks. If somebody does something to us, we just spray all over them. That is the way we keep people away from us. We have all kinds of mechanisms to get people away from us when they refuse to love us as we want to be loved. Defense mechanisms is what you may have heard that describes what we do so we do not get hurt again.
Isaiah 64:6
All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
Galatians 5:16
So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
Where is the natural place to go to find this love. A child goes to a parent. A parent goes to a child. They want kids to love them. You meet a woman, and start courting her, and she tells you she will love you like that. Then after the honeymoon you find out she lied, and you lied too. There is always this voice out there that always says that there will be someone like that. So you go from date to date or mate to mate and never find the perfect love. So, if we do not enter the sanctuary of God, what do we find ourselves thinking concerning life. Everything seems meaningless, does it not? If you cannot obtain what you desire from life, even the ability to love, then the logical question many have asked is this. Why am I on this earth? Is there really any purpose to my being here?
Ecclesiastes 9:9
Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.
So let us go to God for answers to life? What is the meaning and purpose of life? Who is God and what is He really like?
Is God always patient with you? Yes. Are we taught that sometimes he isn’t? Yes. But is that true? No.
There is no desire that you have that God did not intend to meet by Himself. The desire is not bad but who is going to meet it? We have this desire to be loved like this and it is God given. Think of the conversation Jesus had with the Samaritan woman. Jesus, a Jew, asked her for a drink, and that is unheard of because the Jews were known to despise the Samaritans, and would go out of their way to avoid traveling on the road to Samaria. Now, Jesus, not only greets her, but asks her for a drink. Then Jesus told her she has had five husbands and the one she is living with now is not her husband. He was not looking down on her because he already established his unconditional acceptance of her. Jesus told her a better way of life in Him, the living water that she will not have to keep coming to to get. For He, one day soon, after His resurrection, will dwell in her and be her counselor, her best friend for life. He told her the gospel message that changes lives, and she accepted the message.
John 4:4-26
4 Now he had to go through Samaria.
5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?”
8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.[a])
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?
12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,
14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
17 “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband.
18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet.
20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.
23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.
24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
John 4:39
39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.”
Did God ever give up on the Samaritan woman, who had five husbands? No!
Yet through legalism what do we hear about God? “I tell you one thing boy, if you keep doing this God will give up on you.” What is the conclusion you will draw on that one? So you think to yourself, “Not only will I not find people who do not love me, now God does not either.” That is a hopeless situation to be in. Now I am without hope, which is the very first step to suicide. When you lose hope you have lost everything. So a person thinks to himself, “He is not patient with me. He is going to give up on me someday.” That is why we approach God and say, “Lord, I did it again.” God is saying, “Did what again?” “Lord, I did the same sin I did yesterday. How long are you going to put up with me?” God replies, “as long as you are here on earth.” You say to God, “How long are you going to have to put up with me?” God replies, “as long as you are here on earth.” Does God ever say He is through with you? No.
2 Corinthians 5:18-20
18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.
Colossians 2:13-15
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, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross
Isaiah 43:25
“I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.
Hebrews 8:12
For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
It is hard for us to accept that God will never give up on you because people are not like that. We have the tendency to think that God ought to be like us instead of elevating ourselves to be like God. We are bringing God down. You hear that all the time with forgiveness. So a person says, “Well, I tell you. If somebody rips me off I am not going to forgive them until they come to me and ask for forgiveness. If that is the way I do then that sure is the way God does it.” So what the person is really saying is this, “If it is good enough for me, it ought to be good enough for God.” We drag God down to our level of forgiveness instead of elevating myself to His level of forgiveness. And His level of forgiveness is this.
You Are Forgiven!
Colossians 3:13
Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you
Ephesians 4:23
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
It is not only hard but impossible. We cannot do it in the energy of the flesh. So we have a God who is totally patient with you.
How about His kindness? His kindness is everlasting to everlasting.
Jeremiah 31:3
The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.
Titus 3:4-6
But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior
He is never dealing with you on the basis of “I will be kind to you because you have been real good, but not to you because you haven’t been so good”. His kindness is everlasting to everlasting toward us.
Is God easily angered? No.
Psalm 145:8
The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.
Does God keep any record of wrongs? No.
Colossians 2:14
having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.
Could you say this is God’s love toward you if for even 5 minutes He kept a record of your wrong. So what is this about keeping short accounts with God? This is the man-made idea that God is keeping a record of my wrongs until I confess it and when I confess it He takes it off His record. That is not in accordance with the truth of God we read from God’s word. God does not keep any records of wrongs. The only sin that keeps someone from God is the sin of unbelief in Him.
John 16:9
The world’s sin is unbelief in me
1 Corinthians 15:1-4
Now let me remind you, brothers, of what the Gospel really is, for it has not changed—it is the same Good News I preached to you before. You welcomed it then and still do now, for your faith is squarely built upon this wonderful message; 2 and it is this Good News that saves you if you still firmly believe it, unless of course you never really believed it in the first place. 3 I passed on to you right from the first what had been told to me, that Christ died for our sins just as the Scriptures said he would, 4 and that he was buried, and that three days afterwards he arose from the grave just as the prophets foretold.