Radio Broadcast Tuesday 06/18/2024

Classic Christianity – Book of Hebrews P120 (06-18-24)

Natural Man Cannot Understand Spiritual Things

~ If you tell a person spiritual Truths today, they will look at you as someone who is crazy or out of their mind. And even if you quote scripture verses to them, in context, directly out of the word of God, they will look at you and say to you, that verse can’t mean that, because after all, I know what I know, and don’t confuse me with Truth. And only those that have the mind of Christ living in them, can a person hope to understand all things going on today. And you will not get Truth taught in a religious church setting, nor in a world setting, nor going to a Bible school that teaches you what the word of God says, but will teach you the lies of Satan as to what the Word of God means. And the more a person depends on Man to teach them the false meaning of things, the more a person will be steered away from TRUTH. Don’t fall for it. Nothing is as it seems today. Everything has been inverted and we have all been taught the lies of Satan and we have passed them on to others too. And if you have been depending on the teaching of Man up to this point in time, it is time to start listening to the Holy Spirit, the teacher of ALL TRUTH. All of those other things (religious teaching, world teaching, news and history teaching, placing faith in Man rather than God) will pollute your mind to TRUTH. Trust in no one (not even yourself and your own understanding of anything today), but only in God are we to place all our trust. God is teaching us this Truth today, to be fully dependent on HIM for ALL TRUTH. Time to wise up, with Wisdom from God. Only dependence on the Holy Spirit will do, if He does live in you (for not everyone has the Holy Spirit living in them), and only trusting in Him to teach you the meaning of All things is key today. Most children of God have not been taught by the Holy Spirit either. They are still trusting in their own flesh, and their own understanding of everything to make sense of the world in which we live. They will sit in front of a Tell-a-Vision to be programmed by Satan and the world. And many of those people that think they have the Holy Spirit living in them, don’t have a clue about anything today. And if spiritual things seem foolish to you, maybe you don’t have the Holy Spirit living in you either. That’s easy to remedy though. Simply place faith in Jesus, God in the flesh, and He will begin the work of renewing your mind with TRUTH, ALL TRUTH. The question is, do you want to know TRUTH?

~ 1 Corinthians 2:14-16
The natural man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is not subject to anyone’s judgment. “For who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.^{1 Corinthians 2:14-16}~ Psalms 118:8
"It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man." ^{Psalms 118:8}

Pray to God:

“Lord Jesus, teach me the truth of the world today and give me the wisdom to know the truth and identify the lies of the devil. Thank you God.”

~ “Now, the same is true today, and we have people who try to understand the Word through intellectualism. Now, there is nothing wrong with having a brain. Thank God for them, and it’s unfortunate we don’t use ours more than we do. But that brain is not where you’re going to learn what the Bible means. It is what’s going to help you to take in the information, to know what it says. But the Bible says that no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, nor mind has conceived of those things that God has prepared for those who love him, but it must be revealed by the Spirit. And the reason for that is because natural man that’s lost, a man without the Spirit, cannot understand the things of the Spirit because they are foolishness to him, because spiritual things have to be discerned spiritually. You cannot discern a spiritual truth naturally. Spiritual truths have to be discerned spiritually. Natural truths are discerned naturally. You can discern natural truths naturally. You don’t need the Spirit of God living in you to discern natural truths, but you do need the Spirit of God living in you to discern spiritual truths. And so spiritual truths only being able to be discerned spiritually means very simply that unless the Spirit of God lives in you, and not only lives in you, but you’re realizing he lives in you, and therefore having the brains to depend upon that Spirit to reveal to you what this means. You still aren’t going to know what it means without the dependency upon the Spirit to reveal it to you, because there are 1000s of people who are born again of the Spirit of God who have the Spirit of God active, living in them, but absolutely keep it dormant because of their own intellectual pride that says, I do not need the Spirit of God to reveal truth to me. I will study and have the truth revealed to me, or I will learn languages and have the truth revealed to me, or I will get into higher Biblical education and have the truth revealed to me, which is absolutely the very opposite of what God ever had in mind. That’s why he picked a bunch of fishermen who went on the day of Pentecost proclaimed the gospel in the many languages that were represented there, the response of the people hearing that proclamation said, Aren’t these people from Galilee? Man? It’s like saying, aren’t these guys Aggies? I mean, I mean, where’d these guys come from? These are Hill people. Why do they say that? Say they’re not educated. They’re fishermen. Galilee is a farm community, fish community, where in the world did they learn all those languages? So God didn’t pick the intellectual he picked the foolish things of the world, he said, to confound the wise, that’s why most of us will have a great ministry with intellectuals.” ~ Bob George

Bible Study Booklets

Join Bob George in this chapter by chapter exposition of the book of Hebrews. Available for download the complete series on the Book of Hebrews. The Book of Hebrews is key to understanding the New Covenant.

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, the 13th chapter of the book of Hebrews. We’re coming to the end of this book. Some of you thought it would be the end of your life before you got to the end of the book. But fortunately, we’re putting it in a reverse order. Guys, we’ve been talking about an unbelievable book of the Bible. Pointed, of course, as we’ve said, to the Hebrew, who was steeped in religion and steeped in an understanding of the Old Testament, I say an understanding, an understanding of what it said, a memorization of what it said, as a matter of Fact, to the Orthodox, people who had memorized great portions of the Old Testament. The problem of it is that it’s the same thing as today. You can have intellectual scholars, and you can have seminaries all over the country, and you can have people who spend a great number of hours in study of original languages in order to try to understand what the Bible means. And the Bible says, I’m sorry, but that ain’t going to help you. You can understand and study Greek, thinking it’s going to teach you what the Bible means, until you stop thinking, or start thinking, if that taught you what it meant, how come the Greeks didn’t understand what it meant? They didn’t even have to go to school to learn Greek. For sure, they didn’t have to go to seminary to learn Greek. They were Greeks, and they already knew Greek, and they didn’t have a clue what it meant. They knew what it said, but they didn’t know what it meant. The same thing would be true in the Old Testament, written in Hebrew. The Hebrews knew Hebrew. They did not have to go to college to learn Hebrew. They already knew Hebrew. When it says in the Bible of calling God the Father, Abba, Father, you didn’t you don’t have to do what we do today, and say that means, daddy, they knew what it meant. You go over to Israel today and you hear little kids over there saying, abba, abba, abba, abba. And they’re calling out for their daddy. You don’t need to say now, what does that mean in the Hebrew they already know. And even though they knew Hebrew that the book of the Bible was written in they didn’t know what it meant. They knew what it said, but they did not know what it meant. And my friends, it is no different today than it was back then. You can study languages until your eyeballs fall out on the table, but if you do not have the Spirit of God living in you, and not only that, depend upon the Spirit of God to teach you what you are reading means, you do not know what it means. You know what it says, but you don’t know what it means. And that is exactly and precisely what Jesus said to the Pharisees, you search the Scriptures. Did they search the Scriptures? Oh brother, where they had quiet times and knocked your eyes out? Oh yeah, they searched the scriptures. Were they diligently involved in fellowshipping together? You better believe it daily. Did they pray? Oh, man, did they pray. Did they understand what the scripture meant? Not a clue, not a clue. And Jesus told them that he said, You search the Scriptures in hopes of finding eternal life, and those scriptures all point to me, and you refuse to come to me for life. You know what they say, but you don’t know what they mean.

Now, the same is true today, and we have people who try to understand the Word through intellectualism. Now, there is nothing wrong with having a brain. Thank God for them, and it’s unfortunate we don’t use ours more than we do. But that brain is not where you’re going to learn what the Bible means. It is what’s going to help you to take in the information, to know what it says. But the Bible says that no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, nor mind has conceived of those things that God has prepared for those who love him, but it must be revealed by the Spirit. And the reason for that is because natural man that’s lost, a man without the Spirit, cannot understand the things of the Spirit because they are foolishness to him, because spiritual things have to be discerned spiritually. You cannot discern a spiritual truth naturally. Spiritual truths have to be discerned spiritually. Natural truths are discerned naturally. You can discern natural truths naturally. You don’t need the Spirit of God living in you to discern natural truths, but you do need the Spirit of God living in you to discern spiritual truths. And so spiritual truths only being able to be discerned spiritually means very simply that unless the Spirit of God lives in you, and not only lives in you, but you’re realizing he lives in you, and therefore having the brains to depend upon that Spirit to reveal to you what this means. You still aren’t going to know what it means without the dependency upon the Spirit to reveal it to you, because there are 1000s of people who are born again of the Spirit of God who have the Spirit of God active, living in them, but absolutely keep it dormant because of their own intellectual pride that says, I do not need the Spirit of God to reveal truth to me. I will study and have the truth revealed to me, or I will learn languages and have the truth revealed to me, or I will get into higher Biblical education and have the truth revealed to me, which is absolutely the very opposite of what God ever had in mind. That’s why he picked a bunch of fishermen who went on the day of Pentecost proclaimed the gospel in the many languages that were represented there, the response of the people hearing that proclamation said, Aren’t these people from Galilee? Man? It’s like saying, aren’t these guys Aggies? I mean, I mean, where’d these guys come from? These are Hill people. Why do they say that? Say they’re not educated. They’re fishermen. Galilee is a farm community, fish community, where in the world did they learn all those languages? So God didn’t pick the intellectual he picked the foolish things of the world, he said, to confound the wise, that’s why most of us will have a great ministry with intellectuals.

Now the world says the very opposite, and the world concentrates and elevates things that it can understand because they’re natural things, and natural things can only be understood naturally, and that’s why we camp on the things that we can see instead of the things that we can’t see. And that’s why the Scripture tells us that anyone who comes to God must believe that he is and he’s a rewarder of those things that that we, that we diligently, that when we do diligently, depend upon him, he’s a rewarder of that we can’t see, those. That faith is the substance of things hoped for but not seen, and the things that you see are going to disappear. The things you can’t see are going to remain forever. Now you tell some natural man to figure that one out, go up and tell him, the things you can see, they’re going to all be gone. The things you can’t see are going to go on forever. Say, where’d that planet that guy come from? So the book of Hebrews is is the whole book is trying to get people to see that because you see religion, religion deals in the things that you can see, and religion camps on things that you can see. It doesn’t camp on the invisible it doesn’t camp on the miraculous things that God is doing inside of your and my heart, it only deals with things that you can see. That’s why, in many churches, you’ll see advertised every Sunday up there last week’s attendance and this week’s attendance and last week’s offering and this week’s offer, because that’s what you can see. That’s just as good as it gets. You know, man just doesn’t get any better. That’s why man camps on what I’m doing for God instead of what God is doing in and through me. Because you can’t see what God is doing in and through me. And so the book of Hebrews is talking about all these exterior things. They were talking about angels said Jesus is greater than that. They say, Oh, we’re followers of Moses. And he said, Well, you can see what Moses did, but there’s someone greater than that. Well, you know, but how you going to get a better than Joshua? I mean, he led us now, there’s someone greater than Joshua. Well, what about Abraham? How are you going to get a better than Abraham? I mean, after all, we’re followers of Abraham. No, said, No, there’s someone greater than Abraham. Oh, don’t give me that stuff. No. He said, Well, I’ll just prove it to you. He said, When Abraham went out and and they won in battle, and he gave his spoils, 10% of his spoils, to somebody, didn’t he? Yeah, well, who was that? Well, so some priest called Melchizedek. Well, if a priest called Melchizedek wasn’t greater than Abraham, why would Abraham have been given part of his spoils to him? And someone asked to scratch his head and said, Well, maybe there was someone greater than Abraham. And of course, what we’ve done is turn around and teach tithing off of that, which is about as idiotic as you can get. But because the whole purpose of this, from start to finish, was showing there’s something better. Now, under the Old Covenant, there was also an Old Covenant, and and it’s talking about that too. And under the old covenant, God said, here’s some laws again, that you can see. You can see that they’re written on stone, and I command you to obey those. That’s a part of the Old Covenant was you are have to obey these commands. But see, I can see that, and I can see when I’m doing pretty good, and I can also see when I’m falling flat on my face. So in as much as I want to keep looking good in the eyes of people that you can see and being appraised by things that you can see, why, then when I do good, I’ll certainly later by know that, and when I don’t do quite so well, I’ll hide that and therefore become a hypocrite, acting like I am something that I’m not. And God comes along and says, there’s a better covenant than that. There’s a better one than that. And that’s this new covenant that God brought into effect. Now, under the Old Covenant, if you wanted to get forgiveness, which certainly if you’re going to be under the law, then there has to be a system for forgiveness, or else everyone’s condemned.

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Bob George 13:31
A law without punishment has no meaning. So if you do not have punishment, laws don’t mean anything. So if you want to be under the law, there has to be a punishment for the violation of the law. And with God, the wages of sin is death. And so if there is sin, it has to be punished and someone has to die. Now he put into a system where, instead of you dying, because otherwise, you just alleviate the world. Why then there will be a sacrificial system where an innocent party will die on your behalf, and animals were used. And I was Kevin’s little Jonathan came up to me at the beginning of the service, telling about having this little rabbit. And I said, What are you gonna do with it? And his daddy said, Eat it. And John, kidding, of course. Well, John, no, no, no, no, no. He doesn’t want to eat that little rabbit. That’s his friend. That’s his pet. Well, quite frankly, that was exactly what the sacrificial system is all about, because they required you to bring an animal into your home and make them a little pet, so that you would sacrifice it, so you could see what sin brought into this world, death of who? Somebody, something you loved. There was a picture of who had to die for us, Christ, Jesus, someone whom God, the Father, loved.

So we had an Old Testament, sacrificial system that you could see you. Could go and see an animal die, and you could see that that provided forgiveness, blood was shed, punishment had been paid for, Jesus came along and said, there’s a better covenant than this. There’s something better than that. I know that you can see that, but I got something that you can’t see. You’re just going to have to take it by faith. So again, what does man do? Well, man says, No, I don’t want to function with that, because, you see, once again, that’s a spiritual thing, and I can only be discerned spiritually and natural man can’t understand spiritual things. It’s foolish to him. Neither can a prideful spiritual man understand spiritual things, because he won’t rely on the Spirit to reveal it to him, and therefore he has to come to it only by his own understanding. So man comes along still and says, Well, I don’t like this invisible forgiveness thing over here. I want to keep something visible that I can see, because I can understand that. So we came along with confession, booths, alter calls, short accounts with God, First John one nine quoting, and everything else under the sun, because natural man can understand that. He can understand that. But natural man can’t understand spiritual things, but he understands quite well natural things. And Jesus comes along and says, there’s something better than natural things. That I’m going to die on a cross once and for all, and I’m going to provide forgiveness once and for all, and then you can live by that, by faith, and you have to be able to see that again, because I’m not going to come and die again. And when it says, When the Lord comes back the Second Time, he’s not coming to deal with sin, he’s coming to bring salvation for those who are waiting on him. And the reason he’s not coming to deal with sin is because he’s already dealt with it. But he says to us that if you’re going to walk by faith, and you’re going to have to walk by faith in a spiritual truth, not something that you can see, but something you can’t see, something better than what you can see.

Now, that’s what this whole book of Hebrews has been about. Is guys, there’s something better. There’s something better than just my being happy. There’s something called having joy. There’s something better than everything going my way, and that’s something called letting things go God’s way. There’s something better in life than getting my own way. And Jesus said, Not my will, but yours be done. And that is having things his way. You see, we have such a tendency, don’t we, to to live for our own gratification. We allow bitterness and resentment to creep up in our hearts, and we hold on to it because it’s natural. You see, I can see those things I’m bitter about in my mind. We find out folks that from God’s vantage point, when he said, there’s the planting and the sowing, that’s that is something that is as real as rain, planting and sowing, I plant a thought, and it’s going to reap a consideration of that thought. If I think it, I can consider it, is that true or not? So I plant a thought, and therefore I consider it, then I plant the consideration. And when I plant the consideration, it reaps an action, and then I plant the action, and it reaps in habit. I then plant the habit, and it reaps bondage and slavery. All I have to do to become a slave to something is think it and consider it, that’s all. It’s like in marriage, and that’s what Hebrews is talking about. To be honored, for the marriage bed to be kept pure, for marriage to be something to be honored. You see if, if I allow the thought to come into my mind, man, I’m getting out of this thing, and I can consider it, and then if I plant considering it, I’ll act upon it, and if I act upon it, that’s going to become a habit, and that habit can become slavery. That’s why in marriage, as far as I’m concerned, and God certainly knew, and we certainly know that everybody doesn’t stick together and hasn’t stuck together, but as far as God’s intent, and as far as our intent, because there isn’t anybody that goes to the minister that I know of when he got married with the thought, I sure hope I can get divorced someday. Is that idea that I’m not going to entertain that thought, I’m not even going to let it be a consideration of getting out of this that’s not up for option. And if that is my premise, that it’s not up for option, then I’m not going to consider the thought, because I can sure get the thought, can’t you? I guess you don’t want to say that too.

Now, friends, that is why and what God says now that’s all going on under the skin. All of this is going on under the skin. And we sit down and we allow all kinds of things to happen under the skin, don’t we? Consideration, considering bitterness as an example, we get angry at one another and we get bitter toward one another. Why? Well, because things aren’t going my way. And that’s all natural. Things are not going my way. The things I want to do and the things I want to see are not happening. They’re not going my way. So somebody’s keeping it from going my way. And so whoever it is that’s keeping things from going my way is now the enemy, and I’m the victim. And so of course, if things are not going my way, God forbid, and there’s someone out there who are is causing things not to go my way, and they are the enemy and I am the victim. Why then, unless I just want to be Joan of Arc the martyr, then I am going to have to put into motion something to change that person, so that they will change, so that they will do what I want them to do, so I can be happy again. So I set into motion the process of getting involved in trying to change another person. And so my motive for changing you is to make me happy. And so off I go to try to change you in order to do what? Well make me happy, make me pleased, make everything go good for me, after all, I’m center of the universe. And so as the center of the universe, why certainly it should be evolving around me. And so I want to be sure that everyone’s doing exactly and precisely what I want them to do, and again, because they don’t, then I’ve got to set out to try to get them to do that. And now I become not only a manipulator of my own life, but I become a manipulator of someone else’s life. Have you ever tried to get someone else to do what they don’t want to do? It’s not easy, is it? And it takes work. You want to talk about exhaustion that’ll exhaust you. That’s a lot harder than digging ditches. Is desperately trying to get somebody to think a different way, do something different in order to make me happy. That’s work, and it’s exhausting, but we will actively engage in that, because, again, that’s physical, that’s natural. I can understand that naturally. I can understand that how to do that. I want a chess man to move I need to get up there and move it. I can understand that.

But God comes along, my friends, and he saying to you and me, and this is what this whole thing is about, is are you living are you going to live your life on a physical plane, or are you going to live it on a spiritual plane? In other words, if you’re a spiritual being, which, if you’re in Christ, then indeed you are. Then are you going to live on a natural plane, looking at things naturally, this is how you solve things naturally. Or are you going to be able to say, Lord, I can’t even change me, let alone them. And therefore my joy is not dependent upon what they do anyway. My joy is depending upon what you are doing, not what they are doing. And therefore I entrust, commit this situation to you, who alone judges justly and who alone knows what is best for the two of us, not for the one of us, because I’m looking out after me, but what is best for the two of us, or if we have a family, the four of us or the six of us. And so I’m going to trust this to you, instead of my trying to solve it, because every time I try to solve it and make a mess of it, and then to be able to sit back and relax. Because the reason you can relax is because your joy is not predicated upon whether they do something where they don’t. It’s predicated on the fact that I can trust the Lord who said I will complete the work that I began in you as well as them, and I can trust him with that, and therefore put my hands off of it and not be worried about it. Now that is not thinking on a natural plane, folks, because natural thinking does not understand those things. A natural mind does not understand what I just said. Many times. It’s tough for those of us who have spiritual minds to understand that, because we’ve never tried it. We’ve never put it into practice, and we’ve studied this book, like studying a book on how to swim when you don’t have a pool around. And so all you know is the academics of the mechanics as to how to swim, and you’ve never been inside the water, because we’ve never jumped in. We’ve never tried it. It’s what they talked about in Hebrews, that all of these things that we’re talking about were of no avail to the people, because they didn’t combine what they heard with faith. They didn’t put it into practice. They didn’t they didn’t act on it. They say Jesus is the sacrifice, not back there in Jerusalem. And they keep going to Jerusalem. They don’t put into practice. If Jesus is truly God, and Jesus is truly the only sacrifice for sins, I’m going to trust him. That’s it. Period. You going in there to Day of Atonement? No, I’m not gone. How come? Because Jesus is my forgiveness. Christ is my atonement. He’s the one that took away my sins. Not that lamb anymore. I’m acting on it. I’m putting into practice what Jesus said is true.

Announcer 27:11
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 BobGeorge.net. There you will 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.