Radio Broadcast Tuesday 06/25/2024

Classic Christianity – Book of Hebrews P123 (06-25-24)

Quit Making a Mockery of the Cross

~ We live in a world where everything is backwards. Most people think God is a giant vending machine. They place their quarters into it, and put their requests into God for this or that. They even do it thinking they are getting their sins forgiven today. And it doesn’t matter whether a Catholic teaching of the confession booths, or a Protestant teaching of virtual confession booths. Both are calling God a liar. And both are teaching the lies of Satan. Quit listening to them. Quit calling God a liar. Quit making a mockery of the cross. That is the biggest sin imaginable. Most do not understand God’s love for us. Most do not understand God’s completed forgiveness. Most walk around in unbelief. And most listen to the teaching of Man rather than God.

~ 
Bear with one another and forgive any complaint you may have against someone else. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” ^{Colossians 3:13}

~ 
"And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, as also in Christ God forgave you." ^{Ephesians 4:32}

~ 
and then have fallen away—to be restored to repentance, because they themselves are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to open shame.
^{Hebrews 6:6}

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.”

~ “But you see, we look at that, just like in the book of Hebrews, that’s not a primary sin. The biggies are the nasty nine, the Dirty Dozen. He’s saying, yeah, those are sins, all right. But the biggest one is not trusting in Christ making a mockery of the cross of Jesus, Christ trampling underfoot the grace of God that has set you apart. There’s the biggest sin you and I can commit, and it’s being committed every Sunday and every day of the average Christian’s life, and he doesn’t even realize he’s committing sin by refusing to believe that Christ, Jesus has done it all. Now that isn’t theology. That’s truth if you’re going to believe that Christ came to do it all. Now, if he didn’t come to do it all, then what did he leave for you to do? And how would you know how much? And how would you know when you’ve ever done enough? And so this whole book, the whole Bible, is about the grace and the mercy and the completed work of Christ, Jesus, our Lord. And there’s no yes, buts in it. It is just Yes, period. He either did it or he didn’t do it. But let’s not say and come up with this nonsense about the fact we just did part of it. Now the biggest argument that people have with this type of thing is on forgiveness. Forgive one another as Christ, Jesus forgave you. Well, now, if my son went out and did something wrong and then he did he he’d need to come back and apologize to me for me to forgive him. Have you ever heard that one? Well, what are we doing? Well, bringing God down to us. I thought the Bible said for us to elevate up to him. We’re bringing God down to us and saying, if that’s the way I would treat my son, then surely God would never treat me any different than I would. And all of a sudden, you have become the criteria for forgiveness, you have become the criteria for perfection instead of God. So God now has got to imitate me instead of me imitating God.” ~ 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
We are surprisingly enough, kind of winding down on the book of Hebrews. I don’t know how many years we’ve been in it, but it seems like a lot, but it’s interesting that as we do begin to wind down in this book that we see in the 11th chapter, it beginning to pick up with what this life in Christ is all about, faith, hope and love. It’s the very thing that Paul stated in his letter to Corinthians, that as all else is ending and all of life is coming to an end, that there’s three things that are going to remain, and that is faith and hope and love. And the greatest of these is love. And so as we wind down in this book of Hebrews, we see, once again, the author of Hebrews winding down with the emphasis on those three things, faith, hope and love in the 11th chapter, as we wound down in this book about the supremacy of Christ, the supremacy of Christ over all things greater than the angels, greater than Moses, which was a shock to the Hebrew to hear that there was anyone that could be greater than Moses, greater than Joshua, greater even than Abraham. And to that, again, almost an impossibility to comprehend, to the Hebrew of anyone being greater than Abraham. And yet, Christ’s supremacy is far above all of those men, greater than the priesthood, the Levitical priesthood, and therefore, as a priest greater than the Levitical priest, a ushering in a covenant that is greater than the old covenant that had to be administered by the Levitical priesthood. So all through the book of Hebrews is the fact that, yes, this is what you used to believe. This is what you used to adhere to. This was your faith. But there’s something greater here than all of those things. And it’s not a religion, it’s a person. It is Christ, Jesus. And so as we came to the 11th chapter of the book of Hebrews, you talk about faith, and it’s the lineup of faith. It’s the Hall of Fame. God’s Hall of Fame in regard to people who believed God, and therefore it was credited to them as righteousness. And you’ll see that in the 11th chapter, and then in the 12th chapter, when we went through there, you’ll see that it’s talking about hope, 11th chapter, faith. And then in the in the 12th chapter about hope. And you will see hope as an example the power of hope in our lives. First of all, you’ll see as it as it relates to some of the debatable things in life. And there, and it says, We’re surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses. Let’s throw off these things that hinder us. In other words, there are things that we don’t even talk about many times, things we don’t even know, that are hindering us from walking by faith. And it’s saying, let’s throw those things off. So you hear about the power of hope in regard to these debatable things, you’ll also see the power of hope in regard to the disciplines of God and and what it’s saying to us is, when you’re running through the trials and tribulations of life, don’t look at it as if God is punishing you in some way. But it’s, it’s the thing that in life, that that’s just what life’s all about. I couldn’t help from thinking there was a sign down in Miami, Bobby and Kelly that I saw on TV the other night, and it said that they’re something that God didn’t bring on the didn’t bring on the storms. You’re just trying to teach you to swim. Well today say you could have taught me to swim a lot easier than blowing down all those families. And those are idiotic statements that people come up with that that’s what he’s trying to do is teach you to swim. So he’s going to bring about a flood in order to teach you to swim. That’s not the issue. The floods, the storms of life, are going to come. In this world, you’re going to have tribulation. God is not the author of tribulation. He’s not the author of evil and so but in this fallen world, you’re going to have tribulation, but he says, in the midst of that tribulation that God did not bring about, don’t lose hope, because God is going to teach you how to trust him in the midst of that, and that is a continual discipline of God. So discipline isn’t something that comes on you. It isn’t something that well now, because of what you just did, God’s going to get you and he’s going to discipline you. It is the fact that we live in a discipline, because the discipline is the discipline of the mind where we are constantly coming back to truth and letting that truth set us free in the midst of the unbelievable propensity of error that is in the world today, and so there’s hope in the midst of the disciplines of life, the trials and tribulations that you and I run into, that we can realize that God is always there, working on our minds, subtly but succinctly, working on our minds to teach us truth, to change your attitudes about things, because we all get some pretty stinking thinking, don’t we. And it isn’t hard for that that those kind of things to enter in, and before long, it just got you so But God’s always there teaching you truth and teaching you truth. So chapter 12 dealt with the power of hope in regard to the debatable things of life, and then in regard to the disciplines of life. And then it talked about the direction of your life. In verses 12 through 17, you’ll see the directions that he had for your life. And then you’re going to see, as it closed out the chapter, in regard to the drives of your life. In other words, what is to drive us, what is to motivate us, in regard to living this Christian life? And course, what the motivation is is the love of God.

That’s what it means in the Scripture, what to be filled with the Spirit. And again, we’ve taken those kind of terms and make them mystical, instead of what they are, which is practical. And in the book of Ephesians, where it says, Do not be drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit, that means to be continually being controlled by the Spirit. To be filled means to be controlled by and so the verse is to be continually being controlled by the Spirit of God. Well, again, if you don’t read that in context, then what does it mean to be continually being controlled by the Spirit of God? Well, it means anything you want it to mean, if you don’t study it in context. And therefore you have to go back to the third chapter where it explains what it means to be controlled or filled with the Spirit. And that’s where, in that passage of Scripture, Paul’s prayer was that I pray that out of his continual love for you, that by the power of the Spirit living in your inner being, that Christ will be at home in your heart, and that I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, will have the power, together with all the saints, to grasp in your minds the height and depth and breadth and width of the love of God, and to know this love that surpasses all knowledge. So that result you may be filled to the measure with the fullness of God. Well, how could you be filled to the measure with the fullness of God and not be filled with the Spirit? And the answer to that is you can’t. So what does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? It means to be filled to the measure with the to the measure with the fullness of God. What does that mean? It just told you to be filled with the controlled by the height and depth and breadth and width of the love of God. So what does it mean to be controlled by the Spirit? It means to be controlled by the love of God. Paul said it was the love of God that what? Constrained him controlled him, what controlled Jesus. The love of God. What is to control you and me? The love of God, it is the only motivation for life is the love of God. Why should I love you? Because God loved me. Why should I forgive you? Because God has forgiven me. That’s why it says, as Christ, Jesus forgave you, forgive one another. If we don’t understand Christ’s unconditional love and forgiveness for me, I will not pass it on to you. I’ll be vindictive, I will be bitter, I’ll be all of those things. Why? Because I don’t understand God’s love for me, and therefore I’ll pass it on to others. The greatest argument that you hear in regard to the finality of the Cross, which is an amazing thing to me when I realize and you can drive into any city in the United States, and there you see on every street corner, practically a building with a cross on it that says, This is a Christian church, and inside of that building with the cross on top, where people say, Jesus died for your sins, but we don’t have a clue what it means, because when it explained what it means that Christ died for your sins, and that meant all of them, why there’s all kinds of argumentation takes place, and people don’t understand it at all. They say, Christ died for your sins, past, present and future. Beat their Bible right down through the top of the pulpit and turn right around the next verse and say, If you confess, He’ll forgive you. That’s double talk that is not biblical at all. As to a Christian, that is double talk, that is a double minded man that is going to be unstable in all ways, in all of his relationship with Christ. You can’t have a yes, but when it comes to Christ, he’s not a billy goat. When he said it’s finished, he meant it’s finished. When he ushered in a new covenant, that meant he ushered in a new covenant, and under the new covenant that we’ve been studying in this whole book of Hebrews is the new covenant where Jesus said their sins and their lawless acts I will remember how long? No more period. Now to walk in unbelief in that is to walk in unbelief in that. And people never consider that to be sin. So if you want to be confessing your sin, you ought to be confessing the sin that you don’t believe Jesus had died for you. That’s the sin you ought to be confessing. Because I want to tell you something, there’s no sin to me anymore that is more disgusting than not believing Christ when he said it’s finished.

But you see, we look at that, just like in the book of Hebrews, that’s not a primary sin. The biggies are the nasty nine, the Dirty Dozen. He’s saying, yeah, those are sins, all right. But the biggest one is not trusting in Christ making a mockery of the cross of Jesus, Christ trampling underfoot the grace of God that has set you apart. There’s the biggest sin you and I can commit, and it’s being committed every Sunday and every day of the average Christian’s life, and he doesn’t even realize he’s committing sin by refusing to believe that Christ, Jesus has done it all. Now that isn’t theology. That’s truth if you’re going to believe that Christ came to do it all. Now, if he didn’t come to do it all, then what did he leave for you to do? And how would you know how much? And how would you know when you’ve ever done enough? And so this whole book, the whole Bible, is about the grace and the mercy and the completed work of Christ, Jesus, our Lord. And there’s no yes, buts in it. It is just Yes, period. He either did it or he didn’t do it. But let’s not say and come up with this nonsense about the fact we just did part of it. Now the biggest argument that people have with this type of thing is on forgiveness. Forgive one another as Christ, Jesus forgave you. Well, now, if my son went out and did something wrong and then he did he he’d need to come back and apologize to me for me to forgive him. Have you ever heard that one? Well, what are we doing? Well, bringing God down to us. I thought the Bible said for us to elevate up to him. We’re bringing God down to us and saying, if that’s the way I would treat my son, then surely God would never treat me any different than I would. And all of a sudden, you have become the criteria for forgiveness, you have become the criteria for perfection instead of God. So God now has got to imitate me instead of me imitating God.

Click to Donate to Bob George Ministries

If you’re enjoying the Book of Hebrews, check out our website, Shop.BobGeorge.net. There, you’ll find a whole collection of messages from the book of Hebrews, as well as other DVDs, CDs and Bible studies available for purchase. That’s Shop.BobGeorge.net. Let’s join Bob. Now as he continues the radio program.

Bob George 13:54
And so we come up with all of these different things that people want to come up with bringing God down to our level. And fellas, I want to tell you something. Our love compared to his is pitiful. Our forgiveness compared to his is pitiful. Our life compared to his is pitiful. Don’t ever bring God down to our level. He has called us to elevate up to his level. My forgiveness is not how God forgives. God is saying, Bob, I want you in your refusal many times to forgive and forget, to be elevated to my form of forgiveness. I did it without any qualifications. I forgave you without any standards. I just forgave you, period. I didn’t ask anyone to come to me. No one stood at the cross and said, Oh, Lord, please forgive me. Not one person stood at the cross and said, Father please forgive me. Not a one. And yet he looked down from the cross and said, Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing. Not a person came to him. When the guy brought their friend in, the paralytic that they let down through the ceiling, they brought him down to get him healed. Jesus looked at him and said, Sir, Your sins are forgiven. You can just see a guy said who’s talking about sins I want to get healed. Because God saw a greater need than physical healing. He saw a heart that needed to be changed. That man didn’t say, Oh, God, I’m here. Please forgive me. Not a one ever said, please forgive me. Not a one. Christ forgave he took the initiative. Whenever that is reversed, we become the activator of forgiveness instead of him. And so in every one of these cases, we have turned the tide. We’ve taken the book of Hebrews and the rest of the Bible and reversed it and put the emphasis on me and what I’m doing instead of him and what he’s doing, and in so doing, as the Bible of Hebrews very clearly, spells we are trampling underfoot the grace of God and making a mockery of the cross of Jesus Christ. There is nothing that you and I can do when it comes to forgiveness, except just plain, receive it and live in it. If you are in Christ, in him, you have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Are you in him? Then what do you have? Redemption. What else do you have? The forgiveness of sins. That isn’t something you get. It’s something you have. It is a possession from God. You are a forgiven saint.

Now, what is there hope in that? I mean, can you look forward to Jesus coming back knowing that? I mean, how, how much hope would you have in Jesus coming back with wonderful, clean, enough. Wonder if he forgot anything, you know, what, if I get up there and I forgot to confess one, you know? What Is there any hope in that? Guys here and announce a hope in it, the blessed hope that we have. And people sit around in these prophecy conferences and just praise God that Jesus is coming back. And when that guy wrote that book that he was, you’ve never seen so much fear in your life going all over the place. People fearful that the Lord’s coming back. Why would you be fearful the Lord’s coming back? That ought to be the most, greatest thing in the world to look forward to. Now I want to tell you something. If my going into the presence of God was dependent upon me and what I’m doing, that would be one fearful event, wouldn’t it? So I thank God that when I can know beyond a shadow of a doubt the Lord’s coming back and I’m going to go into His presence, that I’m going to go into His presence clothed in his righteousness, not mine. Thank God for that and that he is not up there to test my memory to see if I forgot any or didn’t forget any. He didn’t forget any. And when he said, it’s finished, that’s exactly what he meant. It’s finished. When he said, all of your sins are behind my back, never to see him again, that’s what he meant, all of them. Now, any response to that that is other than Thank You Lord Jesus is a response that is not based upon biblical teaching. It’s based upon a religious standard that has been set for you and me, but it is not based upon New Covenant Theology.

So we’re talking about hope in the 12th chapter, and in regard to our lives, the direction of our life, the drives of our life, which is the love of God. And now we come down to the 13th chapter, where we’re talking about the power of love, faith, hope and love. And how do we apply now this love into our lives? So in conclusion, to all of the things that we’ve been learning in this book of Hebrews. It says, Keep on loving each other as brothers and don’t forget. It says to entertain strangers, for By so doing, some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Now that’s kind of a tough passage, because I have not had too many angels that don’t think in my house when you look at that, referring back, it could be either one of two things, either what was talked about in the book of Exodus, when when there was a visitation of what was considered angelic beings, or the word angel is a messenger. Now that’s where we get our word evangelical. In the word Evangelical, evangelical is the word angel, E, V, A, N, G, E, L, evangelical. Evangel, evangelistic Angel. And so an angel was a messenger, a messenger from God. So this could also be referring to that very thing, that many times when you’re entertaining a stranger, you could be entertaining a messenger from God who has something for you. And so it’s talking about practicing hospitality, to be hospitable. Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, as those who are mistreated as you yourself were suffering. In other words, remember people who are in situations that are much less desirable than you, and then you and me. Now this isn’t one of those case do this. Or if you know God’s going to be zapping you. This is the case that because of who you are in Christ, because of this new identity that you and I have in Christ, these are attitudes that God wants to develop in us, an attitude of of reaching out to the unfortunate, reaching out to the people who are incarcerated, who are in jail. Do you realize that more people come to Christ, many times in jail, as a population figure, than about any place that I know of. We had, we had in our ministry. I think I might have mentioned this to you the an absolute first. As far as I’m concerned, there is a prison up in Northern California, Avenel prison. And we went to Avenel prison when we were out there the last time the warden had allowed the chaplain there to bring us in. That prison is made up of wings, and every wing is distinct within its own. One wing could have been a woman’s prison and another wing a prison for murderers and that type of thing, another wing for less offenders. But there are were wings never. Had there been an assembly in that prison where the different wings came together into one place. It was a first and they arranged it for us to come out there. The radio ministry. Radio gets into prisons, isn’t that amazing, and it gets there and people begin hearing the gospel, and lies began getting changed out there. And so when the warden went, when the when the chaplain went to the warden for permission to do this, he was wide open to it because of some of the effects that he had seen in the lives of the prisoners. Well, we went there and proclaimed to them the grace of God, hopefully in its fullness, and we had a marvelous time the chaplain out there, it was of a little different persuasion than us, which is not unusual and and so we were going to bring Jeff Title, who’s a pastor out there that’s very active with us and some of the other people in on a weekly basis to minister to those prisoners. And they were prohibiting us from he was making all kinds of excuses. And there were one excuse after another as to why we couldn’t get into the prisons out there and and finally, this was a first, as far as I know, there was one of those prisoners out there that I’m telling you. He’s one of those guys. You say, Where does he sleep? Anyplace he wants to that guy. I was about that tall, one of the biggest human beings I have ever seen my life. He was a pro football player on I don’t know. He had two super, super bowl rings. I don’t remember who he played for, but he is big enough to be the whole team and and this guy had really caught the message, I’m glad, and well, he staged a sit in a prison sit in to get grace into the prison. Now, can you believe that? And literally staged a prisoner sit in in rebellion to the chaplain who was refusing to let the grace message come into that prison. And the warden called the chaplain in and said, Have you gone out of your mind? These are our model prisoners, and why are you prohibiting the message that has produced these men, the model prisoners that they are. Why are you refusing the message to let them in? And because of that, sit in in order to get the grace message into a prison. Are the prison’s been opened up to our people out there who are going in now on a weekly basis and sharing Christ with the people and that unbelievable a grace sit in. Have you ever heard such a in a prison? Well, that’s part of what he’s talking about here, is to visit prisoners to realize that, yeah, these people have made mistakes, but who hasn’t? And and some of us have made more mistakes than others who hasn’t made mistakes, who couldn’t possibly be in prison had we been caught in something that we’ve done in our lives one way or another? And so it says, Don’t ever look at that. Don’t look down your nose at people like that. Go and share the gospel with them. It talked about, we talked about marriage should be honored all things, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and the sexual immoral. And that’s talking about identities. And it is talking about the fact that adulterer is not a child of God. A fornicator is not a child of God. A homosexual is not a child of God. That does not mean a child of God cannot be engaged in adultery. It doesn’t mean a child of God cannot be engaged in homosexuality. It doesn’t mean a child of God cannot be engaged in fornication, anymore than a child of God could be engaged in lying or anything else. That is a possibility. That can happen. It could happen to anybody. But when you see adulterer, fornicator, homosexual, those are identities, and they are identities of people who that’s their only identity. That’s who they are. They’re an adulterer, they’re a homosexual. That is an identity. Now, if you’re a child of God, then you’re going to have to make up your mind whether you’re a homosexual or whether you’re a child of God, because you can’t be both of those any more than you can be an adulterer and a child of God at the same time, you’re going to make up your mind which one you want to be, as I’ve said, if you want to be if you’re an adulterer, well then go out and enjoy your adultery, because that’s natural what you’re doing. But if you’re a child of God, then that behavior is contrasted to who you are. It is a contrast to your identity. It is not that you can’t do it. It means it doesn’t make any sense for you to do it.

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.