Radio Broadcast Tuesday 07/05/2022

Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at Your Identity in Christ P50 (07-05-22)

If You Are in Christ, Offer Your Body as a Living Sacrifice

We need to be often reminded, that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. If a person is in Christ Jesus, and Christ is in you, we are told that we are the temple of God. As such, we are to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, that is holy and acceptable to God not based on what we do or what we don’t do, but because God has made us that way. He has made our bodies holy and blameless in His sight.

Romans 12:1
¹ Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.

Listen in to today’s lesson, from the Bible study booklet, A Closer Look at Your Identity in Christ, available for purchase from our online Bob George Ministries ecommerce store.

Just as a person’s physical growth is based on proper diet and exercise, so is the Christians’s spiritual growth dependent on regular feeding upon the word of God and application of its principles. With more false teaching, shifting opinions and general confusion in the world than ever before, Christians need a solid foundation upon which to base their beliefs and build their lives. The word of God declares that Jesus Christ is that foundation of truth. With that in mind, let’s now take A Closer Look at Your Identity in Christ.

Now, it says in Galatians 4, when the time had fully come, God sent His son, born of a woman born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so what? That we might receive full rights as sons. So we have been named a son of God. And as a son, we have full rights as a son, the same way that the prodigal son, when he walked away, never ceased being a son, he was behaving like a pig, but he was a son behaving like a pig and that’s why he didn’t stay in the pigpen. The reason the son came home was because, he was a son, the reason the pig stayed in the pigsties was because he’s a pig. And so we have to understand that, our identity is what determines where we’ll be living. Now, if I am a child of the Living God, then my home it says, is in heaven. In other words, my citizenship is in heaven. I see the world now is what the world is. First of all, it’s an enemy of God’s kids. It is a temporary existence. It’s going to go someday. It is not our home. We’re called ambassadors here in a foreign land and that’s why it says if you’re in love with the world, the love of the father is not in you. Folks. That’s a by-product. If you’re going to be in love with the world there’s a byproduct of that, the love of the Father isn’t going to be in you. Now when the love of the Father is in you, you’re not going to be in love with the world, why? Because you’re no longer preoccupied with a world that is decaying your preoccupied with God who came to give you life and an inheritance, that is so much more glorious than any inheritance that you could get down here that it isn’t even worth thinking about, it isn’t even worth the comparison. But when you’re in love of the world and unfortunately Bob we have brought these things of the world into the Christian Life, as if they’re acceptable. They’re just wonderful. We become in love with the world. We’re much more interested in getting a political candidate nominated and elected than we are getting people to the Lord Jesus Christ.

We had a political figure who came into Dallas last night and raised four million dollars in one night. We can’t raise that in 20 years it seems like, you know, that’s what I’m getting at. Why? Well, because people are more interested in politics than they are in salvation. That’s the reason more and love of the world and I want to guarantee you a slug of those people were people who name the name of Christ that if you ask them for a dime to help save people. They don’t have it, but they’ll give all kinds of money to get America saved. Why? Because we’re more interested in America than we are in salvation. We’re more interested in getting America cleaned up, then we are in getting lives changed. Our focus has gotten totally off in the Christian world. For the lost world to be involved in those things, man, I don’t blame them. If I did not have Christ, and I would certainly have to be involved in those, you have to do something, but when you are totally preoccupied with with all of these issues, how to world are you going to be preoccupied with the main issue and that is, are you in Christ and darkness, lost dead, or have you come to understand His life living in you? And that’s why it says if you love the wiew, you love the world. There’s a byproduct. The love of the Father is not in you. We don’t see that, we don’t, we ignore those things, but that is a truth. You can’t serve two masters.

What if we got America cleaned up overnight folks? In fact, if you want to get rid of and live in a place where you don’t have any pornography, probably don’t have any R-rated movies. Where you absolutely probably don’t have any bars as far as I know. I’m not sure about that one. Just go live with Hussein, because it was Arab Nations they don’t have any of that stuff, If any of it. Do you want to live there? So you can get all of these things cleaned up. I want to tell you back, when I was a boy, we didn’t have any of those things. If you ever wanted to go out and find a dirty picture someplace, you had to look for a long time to have found something like that, because it wasn’t there, it was hard to get a hold of. Somebody wanted to do that in movies. You never saw sexual scenes in movies. Never, they faded away with a kiss. That was it. Not like today that that was what it was back then. We’re people still lost? It’s that group of people that were there, then, who produce kids, who are producing what we’ve got today.

So was the world saved? See that the issue is, it wasn’t the issue as to whether there was bad movies there weren’t and to believe me, I’m not advocating bad movies. I believe all of this stuff is absolutely a contributing factor to the degradation, the increased segregation is taking place today, they contribute to that increased degradation, but the fact of the matter is, if you got rid of all of that, you still have a bunch of lost people. Just looking at a nice movie, Lost people not looking at pornography. Nice, lost people not doing this. Nice lost people not going to the bars. So what, you are still lost. And so as long as our focus in the Christian community is on, trying to get the symptoms cured, instead of going to the cause, why that’s what the Bible says that when we who are called by God, the salt of the earth, have lost our saltiness, what will happen to the world? We see what’s happening to the world. It’s lost its saltiness because we’ve lost our saltiness and the result of Is what we see going on in the world today. And so when our focus gets off our goal, gets off our purpose, that’s a better word, our purpose, our purpose, as a child of God is to walk in the newness of Life, under the control of the Holy Spirit of God. And it says, when we don’t do that, the byproduct of that product is that we’re going to be walking controlled by our flesh. And the results of that is what we see going on in the world today. So I guess what I’m saying, through all of this, is the fact that we have to see the importance of things like redemption and I have been transferred into a new kingdom and that is not the kingdom of England. It’s not the kingdom of the United States. It’s called the Kingdom of God. And we are representatives, in an alien land, the Kingdom of God that we are a part of, if indeed we are born again.

I’m picking up on page 49. This, the question that always takes place now, when uou are being taught and what the leaglist will always come at you with is a now, what are you talking about If you have all of these things of yours, you’ve been redeemed, you’ve already been forgiven all these things. Why what’s going to keep you from going on sinning? And so the question that is asked in Romans 6: 15 to 18 is, what then shall we sin, and other words continue on in sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? Well, folks, the first thing that we have to realize is what sin is from God’s vantage point. And what God said sin was with that, which is not of faith, he defined it that, which is not of faith is sin. Jesus said that the world’s sin is unbelief in Me. Now, sins are produced as a result of the sin of unbelief. So are you going to continue on in unbelief because you’re not under the law, but under grace? It says by no means. Now if I am going to exercise faith as an example, in Christ, what am I doing? I’m offering myself to Him for His control in my life. We are to be controlled. We are set apart by the Holy Spirit of God, which means to be controlled by God and His love for you. So, I’m offering myself to be controlled by the one who made me, which was paramount to true humanity, because God in the man indispensable to the humanity of them and means that when God created man, He created him in such a way to be under the volitional control of the God, who lives in him. God in the man is indispensable to his humanity. Take God out of the man, and you got a light bulb without electricity, a car without gasoline, and a pen without ink. You’re not functioning, you’re there, but you don’t function. So sin of not walking by faith, that is what the normal life is, that is what is normal for someone who is a Christian, who is someone who has been restored to true humanity from God’s vantage point. That’s what a Christian is who’s been restored to the true humanity, transferred from darkness to light, redeemed. That’s what we’re talking about. So when I offer myself to someone to obey him, it says to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one you obey whether you’re a slave to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness.

So when I give myself to God, remember when it talks about in Romans, I beseech you, therefore, brother to present your bodies, a Living Sacrifice. So I’m presenting myself to the God who owns me to the God who bought me, the God who loves me, to the God who redeemed me, to the God who forgave me, to the God who has given me eternal life. That’s real tough to yield to someone like that [sarcasm]. Imagine that when I offer my/ourselves to Him now, become a slave to the one, that offer myself to. Now we always think a slave is something bad but that’s volutional slave. In other words, it’s saying Lord, I am here for you to use me for the divine purpose that you have in mind. We think of slavery, of course, obviously, as we perverted the word as the slavery that was man-to-man slave to another man. Well you don’t, I don’t want to be a slave to another man. I want to present myself as a volitional available person to God to do in and through me what he wants to do. Is there anything wrong with that? In other words, yielding yourself to the God of this universe, to live His life in and through you to become a volitional slave to a living God by, why that’s normal Christian living. But on the other hand, I can present my body over here as a slave to my flesh to unrighteousness. And I become a slave to whoever I present myself to. What does that mean folks? That means this, and it gets right back to realistic thinking that God created man to be controlled by something. Did man, when he stood not at, when he stood at the tree of the garden, in the Garden of Eden to the tree of knowledge of good and evil say, That I don’t need you God to determine right from wrong? In other words, I want to be independent. God did not create man to be independent. God created man to be dependent, because a created being left on his own is nothing. So God created a created being to be led, instructed, taught, loved by something outside of himself. See we don’t mind being loved by God. I just don’t want him to tell me what to do. You see? Now in other words, I can’t create God’s love in myself. I can’t sit down there and make up my own God love in and of myself. That has to come outside of me. So right there alone, that lets me know that something outside of me is there to do something inside of me. And so God created us that way.

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So, if I am a created being that was created by God in such a way that I am to be controlled by God, or to be controlled by something the very moment that I leave the control of God, I’m under the control of something else. There’s no middle ground, in other words. And so, if I refuse to be, to offer myself to God to, to obey him, I’m going to be offering myself over here to Satan to obey him. There’s no neutral ground. That’s like, that’s a hard concept for us, because we keep thinking, no, that’s what I want to do. There is no such thing. I’m either doing what Satan wants me to do, or I’m doing what God wants me to do. There’s no such thing as doing what I want to do, and if I am doing what I want to do, what I want to do is obey Satan. Now we may not realize that, but that’s in essence what it is now. So he’s saying what a dumb question as a child of God, shall I go on in unbelief? In other words, walking out of the instruction of God to do that violationly, because the very moment that I do that, I’m under the construction of Satan. That didn’t make any sense. So it says, thanks be to God, that you used to be slaves to sin. You wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching, in which you are entrusted.. You have been set free from sin, free from that unbelief of what God says and have become slaves to the righteousness of Christ Jesus that lives in you. So, when people are talking about that, when you are in Christ, or when you are born again, and when you teach the grace of God, that all that does is give you a license to sin, that Is a slap in the face to The God, who is alive living in you. In the first place, I do not need a license to sin. I do quite well without one and so I don’t need a license to sin. I am going to be sinning as a by-product because sin is unbelief at the very moment I decide not to believe God, I’ve decided to obey Satan. That’s just all there is to it. You’re either walking, believing in God or I’m believing Satan. One of the two. Now, Satan works on the desires in our flesh and those desires are pretty real. And so he creates all these desires, fans all these things after a while, we think, hey that’s what truth is. And then we act on those lies thinking their truth and then we all automatically find out hey, that was was a lie. Now, that’s what enables us to get back where we belong and that is into a trust relationship with the living Christ.

Now that’s what redemption is all about. So Christ redeemed us, he set us free from the law for the law of sin and death. Why would it make sense to go back to what we were once slaves to? In other words, if we’ve been set free from sin and death, why would you want to go back to the lifestyle that made you so miserable that you turn to Christ to begin with? Now, let me give you an illustration of that. This is an illustration that I have given before. To some of you, it will not be a new illustration but I cannot think of a better one to explain what we’ve been talking about here. Let’s suppose for a moment that there is this fella that has been out eating out of a dumpster for most of his life. He’s homeless, he lives a life that is certainly subpar to what you would think of as a normal life. And again, his restaurant is a dumpster, and you come along to him or someone comes along to him, who has a very, very wonderful kind and wealthy man who owns a whole series of cafeterias, not only in this town, but literally, in every major city in the United States. And so he’s a very wealthy person with a beautiful cafeteria restaurant. And so, he pulls this man out of the dumpster and says, sir, it breaks my heart to see you in the condition that you’re in. And I want to take you into my restaurant with me and get you a good meal. So he puts him into the restaurant. Takes him in and puts him through the line. Eats the most unbelievable scrumptious food that you’ve ever had in your life and at the end of the line reaches down, and pays the bill. And so the man enjoys his meal thinking that was very nice to have a free meal. I don’t know what I’m going to eat this evening, of course, back in the dumpster, but at least I got a free meal. And then the man sits there and says sir, he said I’ve got good news for you and he hands him a little card that says, this card, enables you to eat at this cafeteria or any cafeteria that I own any place in the United States to eat there free of charge at any time at any place, and you hand that to this, man, he says, you’ve got to be kidding me said, no, sir, I’m not kidding you at all. You have a free ticket to eat at this cafeteria anytime that you want to free of charge. And the man says sir. Thank you. And then he looks at him kind of longingly and says, is it okay if I also go and eat out of the dumpster? Well, you would look at that man as if he had just lost his mind, which in other words, if you have a free ticket to the cafeteria, why would you want to supplement that in the dumpster? Why would you want to return to the dumpster when you’ve got a free ticket at any time at any place to eat in a cafeteria with the most scrumptious food available to you?

Now, folks, that’s the question that is asked there and answered by Paul, you’re a child of God, you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. Why would you ever return to where you came from?

Let’s pickup in question number eight, in our lesson plan, with the verse of scripture 1st Corinthians 6:18 through 20, it says flee sexual immorality and then explains to us that all other sins a man commits are outside his body but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own. You were bought with a price. Now, this ties into redemption. That’s what redemption is all about. You have been bought with a price and therefore honor God with your body. Now, Bob, one of these passages like this, sometimes becomes a little confusing in there when you stop to analyze that all sins that a man commits are outside of his body, except for a sexual sin. And you’re kind of wondering, what are you talking about like that? Because it would appear to me that almost all sins affect our body, both outwardly and inwardly. In other words if you’re a thief and you’re stealing something all the time, it seems to me that inwardly your conscience and you would be fearful of seeing a police car drive up. It seems like it would be all of those types of things that are taking place both outwardly and inwardly. So you have to look at this for a moment and say, I wonder just exactly what is being said here. In other words, what is the meaning of this? And I think what you’re dealing with there is not only on your individual body, but I think that in the Corinthians passage where this is coming from where there was sexual immorality, taking place within the body of Christ, and Paul dealt with that issue. And I believe that not only when you are involved in sexual immorality with people who are in the body of Christ that you’re not only sinning against your own body, but your sinning against your own body, as it relates to your being a part of the body of Christ. In other words, you are dragging another part of your own body into a sin. And that is very damaging to the body.

And so, I believe that there’s a dual situation that he is talking about here, but I’d also believe that there is no sin on earth, that is more compelling. That can get a hold of people anymore, strongly. If I could use that word then, sexual sin, God gave man, sexuality to be exercised within the confines of marriage when it is used as God meant it to be, in the confines of marriage. There is no guilt connected with that at all. It is there to be thoroughly enjoyed and obviously we wouldn’t see the population that you have today. So we don’t have to worry about that. But the issue is that we have taken as all sin, is what God has meant for good and perverted it into evil. Then that’s all evil is a perversion of good. God meant all things for good, man perverts it and it becomes evil. So I don’t think there’s anything that can grip the human being any more than that. I think we’ve seen examples of this in the recent trial that many of us have been preoccupied with watching with the O.J. Simpson trial. And what I’m getting ready to say, what I’m saying, I am not making a declaration as to whether he is guilty or innocent. That’s not my job, that’s going to be the jury’s job. But if indeed, he was involved in this even though there was marriage involved. But then also other type of sexual activities involved that his relationship with his ex-wife and that compelling controlling nature can come from the sexual experience that took place before marriage and was taking place after marriage, and it can become, and it can make a person into a raging maniac.

And you have seen that you’ve seen men who have abused and beaten up their wives because of withholding sex or saying I’m going out and having sex with somebody else, you see those type of things taking place. So, all I’m saying, here is, there’s nothing more compelling. And I believe that’s why there’s such a strong warning in the Bible to stay away from it. Now, in essence, that’s exactly what Paul is saying. There’s only one way to avoid sexual immorality, and it’s flee from it. Stay away from it. If you are tempted as an example for drinking, what would you say to somebody? Stay out of the bars. Don’t have liquor in your home. Stay away from it. Flee from it. If you had a temptation to gamble too much. What would you say to a person? Stay away from the dog track stay away from the horse track. Stay away from Las Vegas, don’t plan a vacation and Las Vegas saying, I’m just going to go see the shows because you’re that isn’t going to happen when you have and you know better than anyone else what your weaknesses are. There’s no one that knows your weakness like you know. You’re a child of God now and you’re knowing your weaknesses more than anyone else. Flee from them if those weaknesses are indeed opposite from what Christ Jesus has for us. And so, because you are now a child of God with a desire in your heart to honor God with your body. And if that temptation for sexual immorality is there, it says, flee from it. In many instances people are involved in sexual activity because they’re looking for love. And my friends, there’s no personal relationship in marriage, out of marriage, it makes no difference, that is going to fill that need for unconditional love and acceptance through another human being but it is absolutely a human impossibility. There is only one place that you’re going to find unconditional love and unconditional acceptance, that is in the arms of the Lord Jesus Christ, who said come unto me and I will give you rest in peace for your soul.

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