Classic Christianity – Book of John Part 61 (08-20-19)
Synopsis
Bob continues to share from John 12. Jesus identifies Himself as the Light of the world. We live in a world full of darkness. The real darkness is that there are souls that do not have the Spirit of God living in them. The Light of the world is not living in them and they are wandering in darkness. They are blind to the truth and cannot understand truth when they hear it. Those who are humble of heart listen to truth and let that truth sink in. If my heart is dead, then I want to know how to get my heart alive. One day the truth comes alive in them. They believe the truth and are saved. Who can explain this?
Just putting your faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, and just putting your faith in that, something changes. One day you were going in one direction and the next, you are going in a completely different direction. Can you come up with an explanation for that? Were you hyped? Was it because of the brilliant presentation that somebody gave? A person once asked Bob, “I would like to share but I cannot share as good as you do”. Bob replies, “Good. That is good because you do not want the credit to go to you.”. Bob testifies that Bill Bright, the president of Campus Crusade for Christ, gave the most boring presentation he has ever heard. At that time he handed out the “Four Spiritual Laws” booklet. He simply told Bob to read it. He said, “read this”. Bob replied, “Me read it”. Bill said, “No, you read it” and handed me the booklet to read. There was no presentation. It was God. How do you explain that?
Something caused you to believe the truth. Bill Bright asked Bob, “Do you know that Jesus died for you?” Bob believed Jesus died on the cross but never personalized that. He asked another question. “Did you believe Jesus was raised from the dead?” Bob replied, “Sure I do”. Bill then asked, “Do you believe he was raised from the dead so you could be raised from the dead? That is just not believing in a historical event that took place. Did you know he did it for you?” Bob replies, “No, I did not know that”. “Do you believe it?” “Yes, I do”.
There are people who know the truth but because of the fear of man, they are silenced in sharing the truth of Christ. They would rather have the praise of men rather than the praise of God. This could happen to any one of us who is a believer. How can that happen? Is it possible for a Christian to fear man more than the praise of God? Yes. What happened to us? We slipped back and started back into the thinking of the darkness.
Bob said he was on earth to do what God had asked him to do and that is to proclaim Jesus to people. In so doing, people have asked, “Who are you to be doing that? You are not perfect”. Bob replies, “You are right.” People say, “You are not better than I am”. Bob replies, “You are right. I am not better, but I am better off”. People can say, “You are a hypocrite”. Bob replies, “Possibly so, but I am a saved hypocrite.”
Allow God to give you the boldness to share and not be fearful of man or the response of man. Let us not fear the responses of man. Many times the responses of man is what enables the man to see where he is. Bob says he has met people who get angry at what he has shared. He recalls man coming out of his chair at him, nose to nose, in anger about what he was sharing about Jesus. Sometimes when they did that Bob’s response was not what it should be, but at other times it got their attention.
People fail to consider that the praise of men is only temporal or how fickle that praise can be. You can be praised one day and then the same person can turn on you the next day. Let us work for the praise of God that will remain forever. What better words to hear than the words from Jesus on the day you see him face to face: “Well done good and faithful servant”.
God has commissioned all believers to share the truth of Christ. How can men be spared an eternity separated from God? How much did God love you? Does He not also love them? If truth was so important to God that men be saved, and demonstrated his love when he died to take away your sins, and indeed the sins of the entire world, and then was buried and raised to give you life and offer life to all men, then is there any love in your heart to share truth with men? Allow God to display His love in you and through you.
Our fears can also be unfounded. When a person responds in anger when hearing truth, that could very well be the response that helps him to recognize the reality of his nature. If he is sensitive to that, that he responded in anger and should not have, he might just turn to Christ and be saved. Circumstances do not cause your nature. They reveal your nature. Your wife cannot put mad in you. She can just draw mad out of you. If you did not have mad in you, they she could not get mad out of you. Have you ever discovered how hard it is to stir up beans in a pot when there are no beans in the pot?
Bob recalls a story where he was invited to share the truth of how to be saved to a group of Catholics in a home. He shared with a man who was angry at him for the teaching Bob shared about being born again was contrary to all that he had been taught by men. It is so natural for man to defend what they believe from what they have been taught yet not test if what man has taught them is true. Bob told him he ought to be happy and grateful to hear the truth instead of being angry. Although Bob admits he should have left off the second thing he said, but nevertheless, the man went home and thought about how wrong he was to respond in anger. He had a sensitive conscience and realized that his response revealed his nature to him that needed saving. Two weeks later he accepted Christ.
Circumstances just reveal your nature. A guy named George on his board of director’s, who was in his 80’s, said, “God gave me the absolute perfect wife.” Bob said, “That is nice George. Why do you say that?” He replied, “Everything that God wants me to know about myself, she reveals”. Circumstances do not cause your nature. They reveal it. When we understand the truth of that, then we realize that whatever we say to somebody and that whatever comes out of a person is going to show them who they are, and if they are sensitive to that, it could be the very thing that leads them to Christ.
Other people’s hearts are so hard to truth. That is why through the prophesy of Isaiah, men will hear truth but not turn and let God heal them. Bob recalls listening to the Larry King Live show, where numerous pastors and preachers were invited on the show. They would speak with Larry King, but Larry could not understand the truth that was told to him. Here is a man so hard that even though he heard truth, he could not understand it.
They can neither see with their eyes nor turn. If they would turn, God would heal them in a minute. But they will not do it. We have to realize that some people’s hearts have been so hardened, that when they hear truth they will not respond to it. That is a sad situation, but it true. Let us not have such a hard heart that crowds out the truth that can save your soul.
Transcript
When you and I are indwelt by Christ Jesus, and we truly are if we are born again, then we have received the light of the world. But there is darkness out there. Walk in this light unless you get overtaken. What does that tell us? You can get so involved in the world that nothing spiritual comes through. We are spiritual people. We are in Christ Jesus. We are in the Light. Our destiny is secure as to where we will be when we are absent from the body. We will forever be present with the Lord, and will soon see him face to face, and remain with Him forever.
Yet, we wander back into darkness. I wonder sometimes, not to be overly critical, but what are people are thinking in this so-called church life, that we call Christianity? When we go out into the world and ask the manager of Walmart, “What did you do to get business? What did you do to get people attracted to your store” So church leaders think, “Let us use the same principles and apply them to the church”. So we have all these church mailers and advertising, and if you do these things your church will grow. But what is really being grown, a church where people grow in the knowledge of Jesus, or a business, where the lost is catered to so as to increase the numbers of people coming?
What many church leaders today are catering to is that if you do these things your numbers will grow. But what about the maturity of the people who are here? Yet people ask, “What kind of music do the children like?” The leadership thinks, “So let us develop music so the children will like it?” What I liked as a child I would not be proud of. The role of a parent is not to reduce down to the level of a child but to elevate the child to the level of an adult. So many are compromising to be politically correct or socially acceptable instead of helping people to understand good things or even truth.
I appreciate my daughter for she teaches music to her children. Josh Groban was a singer that she liked. And as good as those songs are, they do not come close with truth in the old hymns. Those old hymns, you will never beat them, just as you will never outdo Michelangelo, the sculpture. The work produced by Michelangelo will probably never be duplicated again. We need to think about those things that are good and holy. We had the light in the person of Christ Jesus but now we have the light of the person of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.
A person came to talk to Bob about a story she read in Classic Christianity that really touched her heart. Bob retells what happened. A lady called concerning her husband Sid, who had gotten drunk again. So Bob thought to himself, “There must be something wrong with Sid. A number of weeks prior to that, and both of them were alcoholics since the time of college, they both walked an aisle in Whitaker, CA after hearing a message of truth. She was set free from alcohol. But her husband Sid was not. They heard the same truth about Jesus. One is set free and one is not.”. After talking a while with Sid about his drinking again and similar talk, Bob finally asked Sid a question. Bob asked him, “When you walked the aisle, did you receive Jesus the God or Jesus the man?” (From reading Classic Christianity, you may recall that the Lord had revealed to Bob that he should ask Sid such a question.) Sid replied, “What do you mean?” Bob asked, “Did you accept the fact that there was a man named Jesus walking on the face of this earth who did many wonderful deeds. He healed the blind, made the deaf hear, and raised the dead. Is that the man you received or did you realize that that man who did those things was raised from the dead as God, and today is seated at the right hand of God, interceding on your behalf? Which did you receive, Jesus the man or Jesus the God?” Sid said, through blurry eyes, “I received Jesus the man.” “Did you realize, Sid, that this Jesus, who is the man, is also God? Do you realize that this was the one who was raised from the dead, after entering into your death with you, in order to give life to you? Did you understand that?” “No”, he said, “I did not understand that.” “Are you ready today to accept the living Christ, not just the one who walked on this earth and died on a cross, but the one who was raised from the dead, and today is ready to raise you from the dead?”
Bob finishes retelling what happened. I saw that man fall on to his knees and accept the living Christ into his life. That was years ago, never to touch another drink, and that started into a newness of life. Why? He was new in life. He accepted not just what Jesus did on this earth, but what He did in His resurrected life. He came to the fullness in Jesus Christ. God restored the years the locusts ate away all through his life, that at the time looked like it was totally destroyed because of his choices in life. But that was not the case, as he became a new creation in Christ.
So there is darkness out there. We have that tendency to walk back into darkness and engage in the deeds of darkness. God is saying to us, “The Light is in you so walk in the Light so darkness does not overtake you.” Did you know that you, as a believer, that you can get back into darkness and be overtaken. How does he, or Satan, do that? He does that by changing our attitudes. He does that by getting your mind off of truth and getting it onto a lie. He also convinces you about how much fun it used to be back then before you knew Jesus. So Satan is continually bombarding our minds with thoughts that are not the thoughts of God.
2 Corinthians 10:1-6
1 By the humility and gentleness of Christ, I appeal to you – I, Paul, who am “timid” when face to face with you, but “bold” toward you when away! 2 I beg you that when I come I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be toward some people who think that we live by the standards of this world. 3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 6 And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.
How do you know when you are being led by the Spirit? If you are in Christ Jesus, you are being led by the Spirit. If you are not in Christ Jesus, then you do not have a choice of who you are being led by. You are being led by Satan. He can lead you on good things too. He does not care where you are led as long as your eyes are off Jesus. If you are in Christ Jesus, you are being led by the Spirit.
Romans 8:14
14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.
2 Corinthians 2:14
14 But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere
Then what keeps a person, you or me, from being led by the Spirit? Getting back into the world. Getting back under the law. Getting back where sin is. The only thing that can cause the Spirit not to lead you is your refusal to not be led. If you know the truth, walk in it. For when you are in the dark, you do not know where you are going.
John 1:12
12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God
John 12:36
36 “Believe in the light while you have the light, so that you may become children of light.” When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them.
The children of the light of the children of God.
John 12:37-38
37 Even after Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him. 38 This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet:“Lord, who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” [Isaiah 53:1];
Even after Jesus did all these miraculous things, they still would not believe. This was to fulfill the word of the prophet Isaiah. Who believed our message?
John 12:37-38
39 For this reason they could not believe, because, as Isaiah says elsewhere:40
“He has blinded their eyes
and hardened their hearts,
so they can neither see with their eyes,
nor understand with their hearts,
nor turn – and I would heal them.”
People are so often involved in signs and wonders today. What would Jesus say to those of the “signs and wonders” crowd today? “I will show you a sign. Tear down this temple and I will raise it up in three days.” He was talking about his own body.
John 2:18-22
18 The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
20 They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
If the miracle of the resurrection is not enough for you, then what do you think lengthening your legs would mean for you? Or what do you think some other miracle is going to mean, in light of eternity? Or if some healing, that even some doctor can do, what will that mean to you? If I cannot believe in Jesus by the resurrection, then there is not any so called miracle that he will do for me that would cause me to believe in him.
Luke 16:31
30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
There is no greater miracle that God did for you and me than the miracle of making us into a new creation, by means of a new spiritual birth, being raised up in Christ. That is a miracle! For some of you, it is an even greater miracle for you than others, as when you are in a situation where you know nothing and where you do not know how anything works. All you know is that what you are doing is not working. Then someone comes along, a born again believer, and tells you what Jesus has done for you, and you believe the message of the resurrected life of Christ and receive that life and become a new creature in Christ. Bob George is so grateful for Bill Bright sharing such truth to him. Bob believed and accepted the truth and was born again. Bill Bright was a servant whom God used but God caused the growth.
1 Corinthians 3:6-8
6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. 7 So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8 The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor.
Something caused you to believe the truth. Bill Bright asked Bob, “Do you know that Jesus died for you?” Bob believed Jesus died on the cross but never personalized that. He asked another question. “Did you believe Jesus was raised from the dead?” Bob replied, “Sure I do”. Bill then asked, “Do you believe he was raised from the dead so you could be raised from the dead? That is just not believing in a historical event that took place. Did you know he did it for you?” Bob replies, “No, I did not know that”. “Do you believe it?” “Yes, I do”.
1 Corinthians 15:1-4
1 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures
Just putting your faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, and just putting your faith in that, something changes. One day you were going in one direction and the next, you are going in a completely different direction. Can you come up with an explanation for that? Were you hyped? Was it because of the brilliant presentation that somebody gave? A person once asked Bob, “I would like to share but I cannot share as good as you do”. Bob replies, “Good. That is good because you do not want the credit to go to you.”. Bob testifies that Bill Bright, the president of Campus Crusade for Christ, gave the most boring presentation he has ever heard. At that time he handed out the “Four Spiritual Laws” booklet. He simply told Bob to read it. He said, “read this”. Bob replied, “Me read it”. Bill said, “No, you read it” and handed me the booklet to read. There was no presentation. It was God. How do you explain that?
On the other hand, I look at the world and listen to a guy named Larry King. Bob used to listen to a program called Larry King Live. How many times has Larry King heard the gospel on his television program? How many people has he interviewed? I have heard him on with Tim LaHaye, Franklin Graham and other pastors. Yet, his head is still like a brick. It is like talking to a wall. He comes back with all these, what we would call, clever little side issues. Larry, what is wrong with you? You are supposed to be smart. You make a lot of money. You are on television, but you are as dumb as a mule. That is all I can say about it. I am not alone in that because Isaiah said the same thing. Your eyes have been blinded to truth. You cannot see truth. The truth is right there in front of you but you cannot see it. Your heart is dead. How would you like for God to tell you that your heart is dead? I would say, “How do you get it alive?”
John 12:39-40
39 For this reason they could not believe, because, as Isaiah says elsewhere:40
“He has blinded their eyes
and hardened their hearts,
so they can neither see with their eyes,
nor understand with their hearts,
nor turn – and I would heal them.”[Isaiah 6:10]
They can neither see with their eyes nor turn. If they would turn, God would heal them in a minute. But they will not do it. We have to realize that some people’s hearts have been so hardened, that when they hear truth they will not respond to it. That is a sad situation, but it true.
John 12:41-43
41 Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him. 42 Yet at the same time many even among the leaders believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they would not openly acknowledge their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; 43 for they loved human praise more than praise from God.
That is probably one of the biggest things we need to deal with and to allow God to deal with us in our lives. Bob said he concluded a long time ago that he is not running for sheriff. He is not there to win a popularity contest. He is there to do what God has asked him to do and that is to proclaim Jesus to people. In so doing, people have asked, “Who are you to be doing that? You are not perfect”. Bob replies, “You are right.” People say, “You are not better than I am”. Bob replies, “You are right. I am not better, but I am better off”. People can say, “You are a hypocrite”. Bob replies, “Possibly so, but I am a saved hypocrite.”
We cannot sit around fearing man or the response of man, not if we are living in a world of darkness, where people do not know the Lord from an apple tree. Who is going to tell them if it were not for people like you and me, born again believers bold enough to tell the truth of Christ? We have to understand that we too could love the praise of men rather than the praise of God. Is it possible for a Christian to fear man more than the praise of God? Yes. What happened to us? We slipped back and started back into the thinking of the darkness.
Allow God to give you the boldness to share and not be fearful of man or the response of man. Let us not fear the responses of man. Many times the responses of man is what enables the man to see where he is. Bob says he has met people who get angry at what he has shared. He recalls man coming out of his chair at him, nose to nose, in anger about what he was sharing about Jesus. Sometimes when they did that Bob’s response was not what it should be, but at other times it got their attention.
In his early days, Bob often led bible studies. Bob recalled the time he led a girl in California, who was studying to be a nun, a sweet parish girl, and her husband to Christ. They had asked Bob if he would consider teaching a study in their house. Bob agreed to do that. When he went over, there were 22 Catholic couples. It did not bother Bob, but it bothered some of them. They were talking about what they were talking about, being born again. They had been taught what they had been taught. The natural inclination of man is, “Tell me what to believe and I will believe that”. It is amazing how we will defend what we have been told to believe from another man. We have never checked it out to see if what that man was teaching is true or not. We just grab a hold of it and believe it.
At the end of one of those studies, this man came over and got in my face. He was mad as a wet hen. Bob remembered saying this to him, and said he should not have done this. Bob said to him, “If there is anybody in this room who ought to be happy and grateful that I am born again, it ought to be you, because if I had not been, I would have taken you outside and cleaned your clock”. That calmed him down a bit. Two weeks later he came to Jesus. You know what happened. His reaction showed something about himself that he did not know; how angry he could be at another person who was doing nothing but telling him how to be saved. So many times we are so concerned about what a person’s first response might be, but we forget that their response might show them who they really are.
Circumstances do not cause your nature. They reveal your nature. Your wife cannot put mad in you. She can just draw mad out of you. If you did not have mad in you, they she could not get mad out of you. Have you ever discovered how hard it is to stir up beans in a pot when there are no beans in the pot?
Circumstances just reveal your nature. A guy named George on his board of director’s, who was in his 80’s, said, “God gave me the absolute perfect wife.” Bob said, “That is nice George. Why do you say that?” He replied, “Everything that God wants me to know about myself, she reveals”. Circumstances do not cause your nature. They reveal it.
When we understand the truth of that, then we realize that whatever we say to somebody and that whatever comes out of a person is going to show them who they are, and if they are sensitive to that, it could be the very thing that leads them to Christ. So do not fear and do not look forward to the praise of men. For what men say to you is temporal. It is not going to last long. But the praise from God will last for eternity. Now concerning rewards, when we leave this earth and enter the presence of God, and He says to you, “Well done good and faithful servant” then that will be the most rewarding words you will ever hear. I have no doubt that Bob has heard those words from Jesus Christ!
Bob closes the study in a prayer of thanks to God. Let these words be the expression of your thanksgiving to God also.
“Thank you for the truth of the word of God. Thank you for the privilege that you have given us to be a part of this body of believers. We thank you that as members of this body, you have given each and every one of us gifts for the purpose of serving the body, of reaching out to one another in love, in the special way that you have given us to reach out. In so doing, we teach others how to exercise those gifts. Father, allow us to be cognizant and to be aware and to be curious as to what kind of a gift you really did give me, a special gift of service to the body of Christ, and show that to me, so that I can be used effectively in this market place of darkness that I live in. Father, we thank you now for what you teach us and we pray that you will embed these things in our hearts. We pray this in Christ’s name and for His sake. Amen.”
