Radio Broadcast Tuesday 04/18/2023

Classic Christianity – The Book of John P32 (04-18-23)

Follow Jesus to the Cross and Then The Resurrection

~ “And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!” ^{Philippians 2:8}

~ Have you followed Jesus to the cross and then to the empty tomb? Are you going to Jesus to receive His eternal life, or are you going to God as a vending machine for things in your life? Which is more important to you, physical temporary life and things in this life, or eternal Life in Him?

“And so whether it be to a lost doctor or a lost person living under the bridge, they’re lost. And they’re dead. I asked the group the other day, which body stinkith the most, a dead doctor, or a dead person living under a bridge? The stench is the same, they’re dead, and the need of life. And until you give people the gospel of Christ Jesus, the truth of Christ Jesus, all you’ve done is to satisfy a physical hunger, that’s going to come right back again. And you’re going to find people following you for no other reason than to get fed physically, or to get healed physically. Or to get some kind of an emotional experience. That’s a big one today give me an emotional experience physically. But until we have given them spiritual food, we’ve starved them to death. And so that is what Jesus is talking about. And after he was dealing with this area of coming and eating of my flesh and drinking of my blood, which is participating in my life, and in my humanity, in my spiritual as well as my physical. It said, from that time, many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed him. Had they followed him to that point? Yes. Where had they not followed him to? The cross, which is where he was going, Jesus is headed toward a cross, whether it was back then, or in your life today. For until we follow Jesus, to where he went to the cross, to take away the sins of the world, and to the empty tomb, to give life to the dead, we have not followed him to where he was going. We’ve cut short the trip. And such was the case with these people where they no longer followed him. They turned away from him. And they never got to where he was going to the cross, and to the empty tomb.”

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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 0:29
Well guys, we’re gonna talk today about what this life of Jesus is all about. And last week, you remember that Jesus was talking about this very, very strange subject of eating my flesh and drinking my blood. We have to understand that in the Scripture, or in this world in which we live. There are two kinds of man, there’s the natural man. And there we’re told, there’s a spiritual man. The natural man understands nothing, the spiritual man it says, understands all things. You have natural man, you have spiritual man, you have natural desires, and you have spiritual desires. You have natural laws, and you have spiritual laws. You have natural consequences to sin, and you have a spiritual consequence to sin, which is death. You have natural brothers, and you have spiritual brothers. You have natural food, and you have spiritual food. And this was the area that Jesus was addressing in these passages to try to get mankind to see that there is natural food. But there is also spiritual food. And you cannot mix the two. You have to understand that as a natural man, you need natural food. But if you become a spiritual man, you need to feed on spiritual food. And that’s exactly what he was trying to get across here is the spiritual food that I’m going to give you comes from me, I am the bread of life, I am this bread, I am this drink. And unless you come and eat of me, just like you physically come and eat of true bread and water and drink of water, that you’re going to have to come to me and partake of me spiritually if you’re going to be fed. Now you have people who physically are fed over fed, under fed, you have all kinds of people do we not in this world today? You have people that you couldn’t feed enough to. You have other people who are kind of, they get into what’s called anorexia, and bulimia, where people gorge and then throw up, or just starve yourself in order to do what? Look better. And it becomes habitual to them, and it becomes a disaster to the body it is there’s no sense to that type of thinking. Well, spiritually, were the same way. You’re gonna have people that gorge on the Word of God, you’re gonna have people who kind of halfway ignore it dabble with it. You can have people who stuffed themselves with it, and then regurgitate it. And you’re gonna have people who starve themselves to death by never partaking of it. The same way you do in physical food, you can do in spiritual food, totally ignore it, and starve to death physically and starve to death spiritually, because you never go into the Word of God to be fed. We would rather listen to messages. We would rather read books, we’d rather read the Davinci Code, or a novel, instead of reading the Word of God, directly out of the mouth of God, and we become spiritual anorexics. And we have to understand the truth of that. And that was what was Jesus was trying to get across to the people that he was speaking to. That, yes, you understand spiritual food or natural food. And right before this dissertation was, he had fed the 5000. Then the people came across the lake and he said, Well, the reason you’re coming here is not for me. In other words, to get spiritual food, you’re coming to me to get natural food. And folks, you give natural food to a person, you’ve accomplished something until they get hungry a few hours later. But you give people spiritual truth, and you’ve given them a food that will launch them into eternal life. And that many times we spend more time thinking about feeding people than we do feeding them spiritual truth.

And so whether it be to a lost doctor or a lost person living under the bridge, they’re lost. And they’re dead. I asked the group the other day, which body stinkith the most, a dead doctor, or a dead person living under a bridge? The stench is the same, they’re dead, and the need of life. And until you give people the gospel of Christ Jesus, the truth of Christ Jesus, all you’ve done is to satisfy a physical hunger, that’s going to come right back again. And you’re going to find people following you for no other reason than to get fed physically, or to get healed physically. Or to get some kind of an emotional experience. That’s a big one today give me an emotional experience physically. But until we have given them spiritual food, we’ve starved them to death. And so that is what Jesus is talking about. And after he was dealing with this area of coming and eating of my flesh and drinking of my blood, which is participating in my life, and in my humanity, in my spiritual as well as my physical. It said, from that time, many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed him. Had they followed him to that point? Yes. Where had they not followed him to? The cross, which is where he was going, Jesus is headed toward a cross, whether it was back then, or in your life today. For until we follow Jesus, to where he went to the cross, to take away the sins of the world, and to the empty tomb, to give life to the dead, we have not followed him to where he was going. We’ve cut short the trip. And such was the case with these people where they no longer followed him. They turned away from him. And they never got to where he was going to the cross, and to the empty tomb.

And so he asked the other disciples, the 12, do you want to leave too, Jesus asked the 12, Simon Peter, the one who normally had his foot in his mouth, but still was this big, strong lug of a fisherman, who was God’s guy. And Simon, Peter is the one who came forth with this statement, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of what? Eternal life, I can go get food out in the water. I’m a professional fisherman. I’m never hungry, I don’t need to be hungry. I can go get food anytime I want it. But you’re the only one that ever gave me spiritual food. You’re the only one that ever fed me spiritually. Where am I gonna go, Lord, to find spiritual truth? Where am I going to go to find the message of God? Unless I go to the one who came from God as you claim? Where am I going to go? You have the words of eternal life. And we believe, and not only believe but no, and folks, there’s something different. We come down and say, I believe in Jesus. Yeah, I know you do. But do you know him? I believe in Abraham Lincoln. But do you know him? You know me. But there’s other people that you know about that you don’t know, don’t you? And he’s saying you have the words of eternal life. And we believe not only do we believe that you’re the one with a words of eternal life. But we know something, we know that the reason you have the words is that you are the Holy One of God. You are who you claim to be the Holy One of God. And we know that to be true. And that’s why we believe what you’re saying. And if we don’t know who Jesus is, why would we be forced to believe what He says? But if Christ Jesus claims himself to be God, then guess what? He’s God. And if he as God claimed something to be true, it is true. And therefore, we can believe it. And to know that’s true, because He is God.

How do I know that Jonah was in a big fish? We call it a whale. That’s okay. But in a big fish. How do we know that to be true? Were we there? Have you ever seen anyone swallowed by a big fish or a whale? Heard about it, but have you ever seen one? I have never seen one. But how do I know that is true? Because Jesus said it was. And if Jesus said that Jonah is in a whale, Jonah was in a whale, if he’s God, if Jesus isn’t God, who cares where it was? But if Jesus is God, and Jesus would have said that Jonah swallowed the whale, I’d have been forced to believe it. I’m glad he didn’t say that. That would have been a big one. Do you get what I’m getting at? He says, You believe. I believe and know. The reason I believe is because I know something. And that is that you are God. And if you’re God, then I believe what you say.

And all these smoke screens get thrown up in our educational system when we teach evolution. I don’t even talk about evolution. You know why? Because Jesus said that man was created. And he wasn’t created a frog that turned into a man. He created in the image of God. He wasn’t a something of a caveman before he was born and created. And you got to in our school system, the pictures of these apes crawling around pretty soon he stand up, they said, that’s where we came from. Nonsense. That’s out of the mind of a lost person. Nonsense. God didn’t create an ape and turn him into a man. We came from an ape, how come they’re still apes? Evolution. Evolution goes out the window. If you know somebody, Jesus, I know that Jesus is God. And therefore I believe God, when He says, You and I were created. It didn’t say that we had all of these things that we study in our schools. We study all these, say, the dinosaurs. And have you ever seen a dinosaur, find a bunch of dog bones and build a dinosaur out of it. How do we know? We stand up like we know these things? We don’t know anything? Except what’s written in the Scripture. And if they were there, and was such a big deal, why wouldn’t it be written in the Scripture? Seems to me anything that big would have been recorded, doesn’t that to you. I mean, if you had something that big walking around spewing fire out of his mouth, would you think it’d be recorded in Scripture? Maybe God, missed one. Maybe they’re in a different part of the world than Jesus was maybe he missed that. But folks, we are so anxious to believe anything that a man tells us, especially if they put scientists behind their name. Do you know, friends that the definition of science alone is to observe observable data, it is not to deal in on origins. There is nothing scientific about dealing in an origin, you can’t deal in an origin. You got to deal in observable data. And when you’re dealing to where did the observable data come from, there’s a step of faith where your scientists are a Christian, where you have to say, must be God or something. Grandkids talking about today about coming out of the ground. So who made the ground who made the earth came from a molecule who made the molecule. But we get into a situation folks, where we begin to believe anything that we hear, and if you’re read it, brother, that’s it. People sit around, read the Davinci Code, like it’s Bible. It’s a novel, no truth to it at all, just a novel. And people read it, like God said it.

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Bob George 14:27
Where am I going to go to find the answers to life? Where am I going to go? And he says, Who where can I go, Lord, to whom can I go? Not where but to whom can I go? You alone have the words of eternal life. You alone are the only one capable of telling me what happened eternally. You alone are the only one that knows what happened in the past. Where am I gonna go to find eternal life? Why does He know that? Because he knows he’s the Holy One of God. And folks, we can turn to anything we want to turn. And we can say we believe anything we want to believe. But the issue is where do you get your information? Where do you get the information? Where did you find out all this stuff that you’re so anxious to communicate to other people? Where did you get it? Did Jesus give it to us? Or did we get it from man? If you’re going to study about the makeup of man this control center up here called our brain, where are we gonna go to learn about that? The fraud, Freud, excuse me. Or are you gonna go to Jesus who made us? Which one do you suppose is more truthful? Segment fraud, or Jesus? Jesus said, I know man. And I do not need the testimony of man concerning man, I don’t need anybody telling me about man I made man. If you want to find out about yourself, go to the manufacturer. You don’t go to one who has been manufactured. But you go to the manufacturer, I know God.

And so we have this tendency to grab a hold and to believe all of these things that are told to us in the world. And Peter here is saying something so profound, folks, where am I going to go for spiritual truth? Where am I gonna go to find that? You’re the only one that has the answer. And, Lord, I believe this. Because I know something. I know who you are. And if you’re who you are, then I know you’re telling me truth. And I can rely on it and count on it. I don’t care what some teacher says. I don’t care what some scientist says. I don’t care what some theory says. I know how man got on this earth. He was created by the hand of God. And we know that. Jesus replied to them. Have I not chosen you the 12 yet one of you as a devil. He meant Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, who through one of the 12 was later to betray him. He said, I know you, I know who you are.

Now we pick up in chapter seven. And we’re going to pick up at a time of the year at called the Feast of Tabernacles. And the Feast of Tabernacles, appeared in the month of September and October. It’s about this time of the year in Israel. For the for this Feast of Tabernacles. The Feast of Tabernacles was a celebration where people lived, went out and lived in shelters that were made of the leaves, the branches, the olive leaves, and the palm leaves and that type of thing made of branches in celebration, and remembrance of the 40 years that they lived in the desert. And that’s what was called the Feast of Tabernacles. You went out lived in this tabernacle for seven days. It was the autumn festival. It came at the end of the fruit harvest. And at the end of the harvest, we celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles. So with that in mind, let’s pick up in chapter seven. Because of this, Jesus went around in Galilee, purposely staying away from Judea, because the Judeans were there waiting to take his life. Jesus knew that the leadership of the Judeans, and again, when you hear this word, the Judeans, you’re not talking about the common people. You’re talking about the leadership, you’re talking about the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the people who make up the leadership in Israel. The Judeans were waiting for him to show up at the feast in order to take his life to kill him. Of course, in the name of God. Isn’t amazing how blind we are to our own sins, folks? Have you ever noticed how alive you are to other people’s sins and how blind we are to our own? That’s a true thing. You see these people who are Pharisees would think nothing about killing somebody who disagreed with him but don’t spit on the ground on the Sabbath, that’s sin. Or don’t work on the Sabbath that’s sin. Now if you happen to have to kill somebody, that’s okay, but don’t work. And thought that was perfectly okay. And you’re thinking that’s how we can rationalize isn’t not our own sinful thoughts and behavior. And so it says that when the Israel Feast of Tabernacles was near, Jesus’ brothers said to him, now catch this guys.

You know, I’ve said before, how would you like to have had Jesus as your brother? When you sit there like, Oh, that’d be nice. Oh, really, always doing what’s right. Never saying a bad word to the other brothers. Always obedient to the parents. I mean, guys, I’m gonna tell you something Jesus brothers, we’re not fond of him. Now, that’s not amazing. That’s kind of hard to understand. These are my brothers. Now, some of you are sitting out there who are brothers. So listen to this. They didn’t like their older brother. They didn’t like Jesus. Now, some people come in and say, Oh, brothers, that just means Israel brothers. No, it doesn’t. It means brothers. And I’ll show that to you in a moment.

Jesus brothers said to him catch the heart of this. Jesus, you ought to leave here and go to Judea. Now he just got through saying that he didn’t go because people are waiting to kill him. Now do you suppose the brothers knew that? Well, of course they did. But they’re saying, hey, going into the city, so that your disciples may see the miracles that you’re doing Jesus? No one who wants to become a public figure. In other words, no one like you who wants to be known publicly acts in secret. Can you hear the sarcasm that’s here, guys? He’s saying that anyone who wants to be a public figure, no one acts in secret. And since you’re doing these things, and so if you keep on insisting on turning water into wine, and all this walking on water, and all this stuff, since you want to be this public figure, going into the city, no one who wants to be a public figure acts in secret, you do it out in public. Can you hear the sarcasm, guys, of Jesus own brothers. And since you’re doing these things, Go show yourself to the world. You want to be a big dog, Go show yourself to the world, go out there and let yourself be known. What’s it say? For even his own brothers did not believe in Him.

Now let’s turn to Matthew 13:55. And folks, this ties in what we’re going to discuss a little bit today. It ties in once again to what we were talking about earlier. Do we base our belief system upon the teaching of the Word of God? Or do you base your belief system based upon what I teach you about the word of God? Or what the Catholics teach you about the word of God or the Presbyterians or the Methodists or the Baptists, or the Seventh Day Adventists? Or whoever it might be? Do we sit and determine what the Word of God is true or not based upon what the scripture say? Or is it based upon what someone else is telling you? And again, which is it? Now again, if you do not ever read this scripture, you don’t know what it says. I can remember I never had the Bible open guys until I was saved at 36. When I was saved and open the Bible, it cracked. Because it had never been opened. So anything that I believed now, did I have an intellectual belief that Jesus was the Son of God? Yeah, yeah. Son of God. I didn’t get along. What did that mean? I don’t have a clue. Maybe God had a baby. I don’t know. Did I believe that Jesus died on a cross? I did believed it. Did I believe that Jesus was raised from the dead? Absolutely sang about it every Easter? Did I believe those things? I did. Why? I don’t know. Somebody said it. I heard it in church someplace. Thank God, or I heard it through singing of a song I caught the drift. But did I ever know that Bible studying the Word of God? No, never studied the Word of God. So I didn’t know that. I just knew what somebody had told me and I believe that I remember going to a pastor one time say hey, what are we Presbyterians believe? He didn’t know either. So I walked out there still not knowing but something about that everything will work out in the end. Okay, that’s, that’s good enough for me. Everything will work out in the end. So guys, we’ve got a choice as to whether we’re going to believe something based on the Word of God or believe in what the church has told me. Don’t we? Because the church might be telling you something contrary to what the Word of God says. Now, when it deals with this thing called Jesus, and it deals with this thing called his mother, Mary, and his father, Joseph, and whether or not Mary remained a virgin for all of her life, which is taught in a huge denomination across the world. You better take a look to see is that true? Or is that a lie? And I’m not gonna go to the Pope for the question to answer that question. I’m gonna go to the Word of God to answer that question. Am I not? If I’m smart. Now, if I want to walk around in a blind belief, because that’s what you have. Well, why do you believe that? Well, because the Catholics told me why do you believe this? Well, because the Baptist told me what do you because Presbyterian told me. Man, we’re out of it. You don’t know anything except what someone’s told you. And so you must go to the Word of God to find the answers on these things. And so here’s the answer.

In Matthew 13:55, isn’t he Jesus, a carpenter’s son? And we know marry his mother and his brothers. And not only does it say that he had brothers, they name them and sisters. Who were his brothers? James, Joseph, Simon, Judas, and all of his sisters, so he had more than one. His sisters live right here among us. What makes him so great? And they were deeply offended, and refused to believe in Him.

Thank you so much for tuning in to Classic Christianity, with Bob George. We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s program. We truly hope that today’s message has inspired you to walk a life of faith in the Lord, find more information online at shop.BobGeorge.net. There you’ll also find available CDs, DVDs, and bible studies available for purchase. It’s through your help that we are able to spread the good word of Jesus Christ. Until next time, walk in faith, be good to one another and praise the Lord. Amen.