Radio Broadcast Tuesday 07/02/2024

Classic Christianity – Book of Hebrews P126 (07-02-24)

Having The Proper Therefores is Faith Responding Properly to TRUTH

~ Faith is so misunderstood today, that people don’t even have a clue what the word means. Faith is responding properly to Truth, and is also responding properly to the lies of Satan and the world in which we live in. Faith is a very practical word. Most people think faith is only dealing with salvation, or those things that pertain to salvation. However, faith is much much more than that. Faith is a therefore word.

There are pastors that will preach a powerful message of Truth, and then in the end negate all of it by applying the wrong therefores to everything they said to begin with. It’s easy to see the lies of the Satan, once you know the Truth of the word of God. However, most people lean on their own understanding of Truth, and never study the word of God for themselves. They listen to the preaching of men, rather than exercising their mind to test things out to see if they are so, or not so. We read in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, the people in those examples, exercised faith with proper therefores down through the ages with God. If God teaches you TRUTH today, and you do nothing with Truth, or you misconstrue Truth, twisting the clear meaning, and/or applying Man’s meaning to it, you have not exercised faith in the Truth of the word of God. You are not being taught by the Holy Spirit, but are believing in the lies of Satan, that now has you twisted in the meaning of things, having fallen for his subtle lies, “Did God really say…? Surely God doesn’t mean that? Surely God didn’t create the world in 6 days and rest on the 7th day. Surely God didn’t create them male and female. Surely God didn’t take away the sins of the whole world.” And on and on the lies go. And it gets even worse than those obvious examples. For we could dive into more examples, and many of you are not ready to receive those yet. For the details do matter in everything and we were all brainwashed by Satan’s lies. Likewise, we are all learning, being trained by God, disciplining us as we go. However, if a person is not willing to start with the proper foundation, Jesus, God in the flesh, having taken away the sins of the world, then everything will be off course from there no matter what. And the majority of pastors and teachers these days are NOT saved, because by their fruits it’s easy to identify them. And by the way, that is another therefore in the word of God. For we are told that very fact. [Matthew 7:15-20] How do you respond to knowing the Truth of the word of God? Do you discount it, or do you draw the proper conclusions? Faith is responding properly to TRUTH, and not just for salvation.

~ Therefore, since we know what it means to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men. What we are is clear to God, and I hope it is clear to your conscience as well. We are not commending ourselves to you again. Instead, we are giving you an occasion to be proud of us, so that you can answer those who take pride in appearances rather than in the heart.

If we are out of our mind, it is for God; if we are of sound mind, it is for you. For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that One died for all, therefore all died. And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them and was raised again.

So from now on we regard no one according to the flesh. Although we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!

All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s trespasses against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ: Be reconciled to God. God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. ^{2 Corinthians 5:11-21}

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.”

~ “As we pick up in the 13th chapter of the book of Hebrews, I couldn’t help from thinking how timely It is at this particular point to to see how the 13th chapter opens up of keep on loving each other as brothers. I was listening to a message this morning of one of our local churches, as I sometimes do, and I couldn’t help from thinking as I was listening to a proclamation from a great orator in Christendom, as he was proclaiming the truth about redemption, about the finality of the cross, it was phenomenal, a phenomenal presentation of of what Jesus has done for us. And you could sit there, and I could remember the years that I sat there listening to that and the same message by the same person, and then you got to the therefores. And when you got to the therefores, the whole message crumbled, because it was, it is never a therefore to walk in love and appreciation for this God that has done this for you. It’s therefore, let’s go Sick ’em for Jesus. Therefore let’s become better Baptists. Therefore let’s do this, or let’s do that, or whatever it might be, and the whole essence of the gospel is negated. It’s in the therefores of life that takes what we know out of the realm of theology down to the realm of reality, and until the therefores are properly applied, all we know is theology, but we do not know reality.” ~ Bob George

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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 0:28
As we pick up in the 13th chapter of the book of Hebrews, I couldn’t help from thinking how timely It is at this particular point to to see how the 13th chapter opens up of keep on loving each other as brothers. I was listening to a message this morning of one of our local churches, as I sometimes do, and I couldn’t help from thinking as I was listening to a proclamation from a great orator in Christendom, as he was proclaiming the truth about redemption, about the finality of the cross, it was phenomenal, a phenomenal presentation of of what Jesus has done for us. And you could sit there, and I could remember the years that I sat there listening to that and the same message by the same person, and then you got to the therefores. And when you got to the therefores, the whole message crumbled, because it was, it is never a therefore to walk in love and appreciation for this God that has done this for you. It’s therefore, let’s go Sick ’em for Jesus. Therefore let’s become better Baptists. Therefore let’s do this, or let’s do that, or whatever it might be, and the whole essence of the gospel is negated. It’s in the therefores of life that takes what we know out of the realm of theology down to the realm of reality, and until the therefores are properly applied, all we know is theology, but we do not know reality.

One of the things that I have noticed in my own life, and we discussed it just a little bit earlier with one of the guys here, is that we have such an unbelievable tendency, do we not of taking for granted the things that we have. We take for granted our health until we lose it. We take for granted our wives and our husbands. We take for granted our children. We take for granted the freedom that we have in our country. We take for granted the fact that we have been made children of the living God. We take for granted our Christ, and we for sure take for granted our assembly. That’s a tendency in the heart of a human being, is to take for granted things that are precious to you in order to get your eyes on things that have no meaning to them at all, and to get off of base. And folks, the one of the main reasons that we get off base is because we’ve never applied properly, the therefores of the gospel. And I’m talking to people who know the Lord and who know the gospel. But it’s in these therefores that either this book becomes a piece of theology which many have made it into, or it becomes the source of reality, because, in effect, as Jesus said, Unless this book leads you to him, and not just to know that there’s a Jesus like you know there’s an Abe Lincoln or George Washington, but to know that there is a Christ who is alive, who is living in you, and the reality of him is as real as the nose on our face. And to be able to know the love of God, and as it says in Ephesians, just not to know it, but a love that passes all understanding, to be able to know the height and depth and breadth and width of the love of God that surpasses knowledge. Until that becomes a reality, we can’t put the therefores to life in it at all.

As we gathered together in in California this last week, wonderful people from around the country came to be with us, and we were prepared for that. I learned a phenomenal lesson last week in a way that I would not have learned any other way except through life’s experience. As we were, as we were there, Amy was not feeling extremely well as we got there, having some difficulties in her chest area. And so we finally, after a couple of days, why, she decided maybe because something was bothering, we’d just go down to a chiropractor or something and maybe get a massage in there, whatever the thing might be. And it turned out that as we went to the chiropractor and we had talked about it beforehand, she said he’s probably going to want to take an x ray. I said, Hey, tell him we don’t need any x ray. Just need to get a little adjustment in there. And next thing I knew, why she was in there getting an x ray, and which was, okay, no big deal until the X ray came out and and as he came out, he said, I think you need to get to a radiologist, because as they looked at the radio or the X ray, there were two big dots the lumps in there. And as as you stand there looking at an x ray of your wife with what appears to be lumps in your lungs. It is not a delightful sight. We had a we had to make decisions on that, and your first responses, goes all over the place, and you see how your mind begins to just go nuts on you, and you immediately go to the future, and you automatically begin thinking the worst, don’t you? And so we thought the worst, but in the thinking of the of the worst, and as I had to get up and give lectures after that, and, and, but it was like God was saying, Bob, these lectures are not for them out there, these are for you. I had trouble even looking at Amy without crying with the thought of losing her, and I didn’t realize how deep that was until you think about losing somebody, because we had a tendency take each other for granted. And so in all these things, we had to get back and Amy upset. And certainly we were upset. And it was one of those things where we, we really didn’t want to get out and share that and ruin people’s conference. But the thing of it is, is, is we, I had to, we had to deal with things. And some of the things, I think we cannot deal with imagination because we do not know, because we don’t know for sure what that means. It may mean nothing. It may be something, and it may mean nothing, but all we have is right now today, and we can’t allow ourselves to speculate as to what that is going to be, because we don’t know. And you can’t call on the grace of God for imagination, only for reality. And so they’re in any way to call upon the grace of God for help over speculation, we don’t know. Now, you got some evidence in front of you, but you don’t know what that means. You see, I knew what the X Ray said. There is a lump there, but I don’t know what it means. And I thought to myself, that’s the way it is in Scripture, we know what something says, but we don’t yet know what it means. And until we know what it means, you’re not going to be able to experience any reality, just speculation. And so we lived for a couple of days out there in California with speculation, but you find out some things. You find out that what you’re teaching and have been teaching to others is real, because the absolute truth of that was as real as rain, that you got to live on this earth one day at a time, just like the song says, one day at a time, Sweet Jesus. That’s all I’m asking from you.

You also find out some things. And Amy found out some things in that experience that, first of all, she found out there wasn’t truly any fear of death, that if that was going to occur, that she was ready to go meet the Lord and and, and I was thinking in that, in that event, then we’re going to have a little Romeo and Juliet, because I’m going with you and, and we found out a lot of those type of things, that when it really hits, it’s no longer just verbiage. It’s a reality that death where’s your sting? We all know, don’t we that that’s going to occur one time or another. And I’ve said many times to this place up here, that look around and look at your mate, because one of these days, you’re probably going to see one of them in a casket, either you your wife or your wife you. And I just never thought that it was going to be that close, or could be that close with this situation, but I did know that that’s a feasibility and a possibility. I also learned during that period of time that when the Bible says that the only thing that counts is faith, expressing itself through love, that’s the only thing that counts.

Few weeks prior to that, we got our house broken into and robbed. Would they take? Trinkets, things that could be replaced. Does that matter? Nah, doesn’t matter. Just things. Got along without them before we had them. We can get along without them now, things and the only thing that matters is faith, expressing itself through love to him and to one another. That’s all that matters. When you get down to the nitty gritty, that’s all that matters. And many times, it takes situations like that to bring us back to that reality. So we had a couple of days of the anxiety of that type of thing, and yet, at the same token, the day after that occurred, I saw my wife in there saying, I got this joy in my heart. I keep singing this song about about the Lord, what was it you were singing today? Oh yeah, his eyes on the sparrow, and it’s on me. I sing because I’m happy. I sing because I’m gay, got a new connotation today, but that’s but used to mean something worthwhile. But at any rate, you you know there was a joy in the heart. There’s a joy in the heart. And you say, Where in the world does that come from? Because it sure didn’t come from the circumstances, but it came from an understanding and a knowledge that Jesus is real.

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Bob George 14:10
What it says in the scripture for me to live is Christ for me to die is gain. That’s verbiage, until you’re met with it and you realize, you know, that’s true. That’s not just theology, that’s reality. And so as I said, we, we, we had that, that period of time and grief, and I saw the heart of the staff reach out, and all of us together in in the remorse in our hearts that something could be wrong there, but yet, with faith in God that he’s bigger than all of it. And so as we got back yesterday, why, as as some of you are know, or maybe you don’t know, but my daughter’s husband is a radiologist, so that made it convenient. And so. We got back Friday night, and we weren’t going to go out there until after today, but my daughter said, Get out here. So we drove out yesterday, and John took a look at the x rays and took some additional ones, and found out that it was not a dangerous situation at all, that it was a deposit that had been there, probably from the early days when Amy was going through the hungry years and that type of thing in Russia and Germany, and had the tuberculosis that she had had as a little kid, and those were scar tissues and this type of thing. And so we got a phenomenal report that she is okay. And that is good news.

She is okay all along. We didn’t know it. Now you look at those type of things and say, Well, why do we go through those and what are? What is the meaning of those guys? It brings you back to reality. It really brings you back to reality that the fact that when the Bible says that the only thing that matters is faith, expressing itself through love, that is absolutely all that matters. And when it says to keep on loving each other, it doesn’t say, Keep on loving each other. When each other does what you want them to do, you notice that. It doesn’t say, I love you if you perform the way I want you to perform. It doesn’t say I love you. If you do what I want you to do, that I love you if you act the way I want you to act. It just says, Keep on loving each other. How come? Well, because your brother’s in Christ and in the final analysis, all this nitpicking that we do with each other. In the final analysis, if you were getting ready to go meet the Lord, that kind of stuff would get diminished in a hurry. And we spend so much time in life dealing and worrying over minutiae instead of the truth of reality, that it’s almost sickening how sick we can be, isn’t it? And in the final analysis, when we’re looking at this life that we have, all we have, and when, when they came to Christ and said, Lord, what is the work of the ministry? And he said, Believe on me. That’s it. That is the work of the ministry. That’s that’s the work of the ministry to learn how to trust the Lord Jesus Christ in all things, to learn how to trust him. Because the tendency of man is to say, well, I want to get involved in this. And one of the problems that we have, it’s like the Bible says, A man who judges a matter without hearing a matter is a fool. And we have to understand, there’s a lot of us who are fools, who judge things without hearing things. It’s like meeting a situation and hearing only one side of a story and not going to hear the other side of the story, and therefore judging the story on the one side, you’re a fool, and we’re fools when we do this type of thing. And all it does, it enables us to get nitpicking with each other instead of loving each other.

You know, it seems like all of the things that you sometimes we criticize each other, or we’ve got little things that maybe we don’t like about each other. It’s amazing how all that stuff fades away when you think someone’s going to die, how rapidly you forget about all of those kind of things. So when the when the Bible is saying to us to keep on loving each other, it that’s a therefore. That’s one of that’s a therefore of this life we’ve gone through the book of Hebrews talking about the Lord Jesus, Christ and all of his fullness. You talk about the Lord being greater than Moses, the Lord being greater than Joshua, greater than Abraham, greater than angels, greater than the Levitical priesthood, ushering in a new covenant, greater than the old. And we can leave that there in this realm of theology, or we realize, no, there’s a reason for saying that. There’s a therefore to that. And the therefore is it that Christ is greater than all, and if Christ is greater than all, then can we, or can we not trust one another and trust people in the hands of God? The God that we say, that we that we trust. In other words, can I trust God in your life to do what he wants to do to you and with you, or do I have to get involved helping you out a little bit? You see, man has that tendency, don’t we, to say, God needs my help someplace down the line. I mean, he can’t do it, so I’ve got to get involved in it. It was like when Amy and I were sitting in that situation and not knowing what to do, I had to say to her, one thing, honey, that is your body and it’s your life. Because Amy’s one of those that says, brother, if they’re, if they’re even thinking, if this thing’s real, and they’re even give a thought of going in and cutting on me, it’s all over. We’re now, I’m not doing it. I’m riding this one out. That’s the way she believes. And I said, if that’s the way you believe, that’s where it’s going to be. That is your body, that is your life. It is your God, and God is as real to you as he is to me, and I will not interfere with whatever decision you’re going to make in regard to you and your body that’s hers. But you see, the tendency that we have is to say she needs a little help. She’s going to need a little help while it goes live. And the fact of the matter is is, no, we don’t need a little help. We’ve got a lot of help in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is alive, living in us, who is truly our hope of glory. And so as we as we come to the to the Word of God, and we see the reality of him, we’ve got to apply a proper therefore to that. And if Jesus is who he says he is, and if he is the love, the Mercy, the grace that indeed we know he is, then therefore, trust him. Trust Him. He is trustworthy, and therefore trust him.

I think, I couldn’t help but think one of the guys that was there, he is a pastor from California. He said, Dear brother, and he had been, he had been for years, an evangelist with the Walter Martin organization. Had been with them dealing with cults and everything else, and he stood up and shared at the end of the conference, and he said, God sent Jesus into the world not to condemn the world. That’s why he sent me. That’s why I didn’t send Jesus condemned the world. He sent me to do that. And and, you know, I thought to myself, we get that attitude after a while. I think so many times we get so very critical. And, man, there’s a lot out there that’s, that’s, that’s horrible, but you’re never going to correct that by attacking the wrong of it, the only correction you’re ever going to do is through the presentation of the truth of something else, and it’s only Christ that’s going to shove out the error. You can’t jerk it away from people. It’s only the Word of God that can push it out, but you can’t jerk it out. And and to realize so again, that’s where it continually is talking about in the Scripture, that it is the love of God that is what teaches you and me to say no to unrighteousness. It’s also the love of God that’s going to teach someone else to say no to unrighteous. Not not the criticism of evil, but the love of God that pushes it out. And in the final analysis, our mindset has to continually get back to Jesus and His truth and the realization of that truth in our own lives, and let that be the controlling factor in our life, in our lives. And that’s why it says to be controlled by the Spirit is to be controlled by the love of God.

In this world, it says we’re going to have tribulation, but he said, Fear not have overcome the world. And in our experience, last week, I thank him for allowing those things to happen, because it helped to draw me back once again, to the reality that it is all him and none of us. We can say it and believe it, but through those experiences is where we know we really believe it, and that’s exciting to us, so I wanted to share that a little bit with you today to let you know that we’re all in the process of learning. We never get there. We’re just in the process and. I am so grateful today to be not only in Christ, but to realize that that unless the Lord decides something else, in some other way, that Amy and I are going to be able to spend a few more years together. And that is good news to me. So I thank the staff. I think so many of them that were out there that were deeply concerned about this, and their love and their the outpouring of their love, to me was and to Amy was a great encouragement to us. We have the greatest group of people in the world to work with, and I thank God for that.

Well, let’s, let’s go into the 13th chapter. Do any of you, I guess we stop right here. Do any of you have any questions in regard to what we’ve we’ve just talked about? I feel so inadequate, and I can’t express adequately what’s going on my heart right now. But if there are any questions, I’ll, I’ll answer it In what regard, what we just talked about, if not, well, we’ll just go on. Okay, let’s pick up in the 13th chapter here, keep on loving each other as brothers. This is the therefore of the whole book of Hebrews. Don’t forget to entertain strangers before by doing, some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if yourselves were suffering. It talks about marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, and God will judge the adulterer and the sexually immoral. And there we were talking about the fact of identities of people who are lost engaged in those activities are going to be judged, and if that activity is judged is wrong, then as Christians, we should not be engaged in it.

Announcer 27:11
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