Classic Christianity – Book of John Part 23 (05-21-19)
Bob George continues teaching from John 5. He shares again about the Holy Spirit, how this person of the Trinity is our guide and counselor. God sent Jesus to explain how to live in total dependence on the Holy Spirit. Jesus emptied himself of his divine attributes, lived as a man like us, except without sin and lived in total dependence of His Father. So we, who are born again, should let the Spirit of God, living in us, guide us into all truth and counsel us. The Holy Spirit instructs us, showing us the error in our thinking, in order to replace error in our minds with truth. So let us walk in the Spirit and see this fruit be produced in us and through us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.
Bob George also shared the process that takes place in the mind of an unbeliever for him to come to Christ. The law at work, with the drawing of the Holy Spirit, reveals to him his condition of spiritual death. He looks at the law that says do not commit adultery or do not steal or do not covet or love your neighbor or do good to others, but then realizes that there is something wrong with him. Not only does he do what he hates to do but he also fails to do what he wants to do. He finds he is empty inside and realizes he is in need of new life. That emptiness is because he does not have the Holy Spirit living in him. At that moment, he hears a message of new life in Christ Jesus, and he believes the message and receives new life, the very Holy Spirit to live in him, and becomes born again.
Bob then continues sharing what caused this death, beginning with Adam and Eve, the necessity of a penalty of death for sin, God’s righteous judgment, the authority he received from God the Father, and how without a renewing of the mind, to first believe the message of good news of new life in Christ Jesus, man remains dead, without life and without hope in this world. Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.” Then Bob shares how, by knowing God, by the Spirit living in you, who raised you from death to life, you can let the Holy Spirit produce this love in you and through you. You cannot do this in the energy of the flesh.
Sin demanded death. Let us look back at Adam and Eve, the first human beings created by God in the garden of Eden. Can you imagine Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, alive soulish, alive bodily and alive spiritually? They had never seen death. When God said the day you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall die. They never saw or understood death. Then he did what the Lord told them what they must not do. All of a sudden, because you sinned, and God said that sin must have a penalty. Then all of a sudden they were clothing themselves with fig leaves, and God said “that will not work”. Sin demands a sacrifice so God killed a animal. Imagine you can freely go to any animal without fear of harm. You have animals as your pets, a lamb even as your favorite pet. Imagine you had never seen death and God had to kill your favorite pet in order to clothe you, and what it would do to your heart. Can you imagine that you would sit back and say, “not a big deal”. Or, would you say, “What in the world did I do that would be responsible for this animal to be killed? What did I do to cause that?” Then 2000 years later, the Lamb of God came to this earth. The Lamb of God became your sin offering and they killed the Lamb of God so you and I can cross over from death to life. A sacrifice had to be made according to the law.
There are animal lovers out there saying God it is cruel to kill animals yet God had to allow killing of animals as a temporary covering for sin until he came to finish all sacrifice. You cannot separate sacrifice from the law. They go together. We do not understand that.
John 5:24-25
24 “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.
25 Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.
Matthew 27:45-47
45 Now from the sixth hour[noon] there was darkness over all the land[earth] until the ninth hour.[3:00 p.m.] 46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 47 And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.”
Jesus was quoting prophesy from Psalms 22 as he hung on that cross. In Psalms 22, thousands of years before Jesus was crucified it was written that he would be crucified, even before crucifixion was in existence.
Psalms 22:1-2
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?
2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.
Matthew 27:47-54
47 When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He’s calling Elijah.”
48 Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink.
49 The rest said, “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him.”
50 And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.
51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split
52 and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.
53 They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
54 When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!”
John 5:25
25 Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.
That prophecy was fulfilled in Matthew’s passage.
John 5:26-27
26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.
27 And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.
The source of our spiritual life is in Christ Jesus. The Father has given him authority to judge.
John 5:28-29
28 “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice 29 and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned. 30 By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.
When you think about judgment can you think about court trials? Sometimes when we have court trials, justice has been done and at other times it is obvious justice has not even been close to being done. On earth we have sinful men judging sinful men. Yet when God judges, it is not going to be a sinful God judging sinful men. It is going to be a righteous judge judging sinful man and his judgments will be absolutely correct. That is why people say, “Oh well, what about a baby that never gets the opportunity to hear? What about the man in a land far away that never gets an opportunity to hear? What about them?” People throw those smokescreens up there. The answer is that all I know is that the decision will be in the hands of a perfectly loving God and a God which is perfectly just. If I have a man who is perfectly loving and perfectly just, I do not have to worry about that decision. Where a man goes is God’s business and not yours and mine. Right now I am telling you how you can be saved and you will have no excuse. So instead of worrying about those who have not heard, let us worry about you who have not heard and let us talk about bringing you to a point of decision.
I think of Larry King, the guy with suspenders, a Jewish man. For those in today’s younger generation, he had his own television show called the “Larry King Live” show that ran from 1985 to 2010. He married a Mormon, Shawn Southwick in 1997, his 7th wife, in a hospital room, three days before having open heart surgery. In an interview, the subject discussed was this, “What are you fearing the most? Death?” He said his wife knows where she is going. Bob said to himself, “Oh really, I did not think you would get there unless your husband called you out of the grave.” In the Mormon religion, there is this erroneous thinking that claims a man can call a woman to salvation out of the grave through some priestly authority. Bob told a story about a woman who was Mormon who left the Mormon church and her husband, and got involved in ministry and came to know who she is in Christ. One day her husband found her and called her and said, “If you do not come back to me, I will not call you out of the grave”. She replied, “if you were calling me out of the grave, I would not come anyway.”
Larry King’s thing is “I do not know”. Larry King is not an atheist, but an agnostic. That is the honest thing to say. There aren’t any atheists. Atheists would say there is no God unless you possess total knowledge. You could not make that statement anyway. To claim to be an atheist is committing suicide. You certainly do not possess all knowledge. So unless you have total knowledge, how can you say that there is no God. So saying you are an agnostic is okay. It is being honest.
I wonder why somebody never asked him, “Larry King, that is an honest answer. You said you do not know there is a God. No one knew for sure there is a God until you got to know him. So if you could know, would you be interested in knowing him?” I think he would say “yeah”. What would he have to lose?
If Jesus is not alive and you are praying, saying “God, I do not know whether this is true or not, but you are telling me I am dead, and that may be true, and you are saying that you are the only source of life, and I do not know if that is true, but I want to know. If that is true, then I would want you to come into my heart and give me life.” Is that a prayer of faith? Yes. And if Jesus is not alive then I am just praying to the air. That’s all, just praying to air. But if Jesus is alive then you will be born again. So what is the risk? There is not any. For the person to continually say, “I do not know if there is a God, and I do not care if there is one, they are gone”. But to the person who said “I do not know if there is a God but if I could know, and I want to know”, then there is a way to get that truth to him with no risk. So either pray to the air or pray to the living God who says “you are dead and I have come to give you life”, and you see what will happen.
John 5:30
30 By myself I can do nothing;
If Jesus said he cannot do anything by himself, how much can we do?
Apart from him we can do nothing.
John 15:5
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
Philippians 4:13
I can do all this through him who gives me strength.
Is that true or not? Can you love someone just by saying, “love him”? No, you cannot get your flesh to love someone you do not want to love.
What is the spiritual side? Does Jesus love him? Did Jesus die for him? Yes, he loved him quite a bit. Perfectly, n fact, and demonstrated his love by dying on a cross for him, and for all of us. Did he love you? Did he forgive you? He forgave all your sins. Indeed, he forgave the sins of the entire world!
So a person says, “I just cannot forgive.” Bob would respond, “Neither can I but Jesus did.”
Can you forgive him in the energy of the flesh? No. You have to come to the point that someone offended you so much you cannot forgive and quit fighting it because you are trying in the energy of the flesh.
So you have to say this, “Lord, I am in you and you are in me, so the Christ that lives in me has already forgiven that person, and if I am in you, they are forgiven. So let’s move on.”
