Radio Broadcast Tuesday 08/29/2023

 

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.

 

Purchase Online at Shop.BobGeorge.net

 

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
We’re going to be teaching out of the book of Hebrews. The book of Hebrews is about a 13 chapter book shouldn’t take us over the next five or six years to get through it, I don’t think but we’ll see if we can shorten that a little bit. Let me give you a little background about the book of Hebrews before we get into it. In the first century church, they suffered and underwent a terrific amount of persecution, as you probably already know. And this letter then was written in that particular setting. That persecution had not yet resulted in martyrdom in any great extent. But it was still a great deal of persecution, both physical and as well as psychological. It was severe. And the readers, the intended readers of this book, would have been to people who were out of Hebrew heritage background by birth, who had come to Christ. In other words, Christians, born again Christians who came, who were Hebrews. We’ve talked about so many times that as far as God is concerned, man has messed this thing up. But as far as God is concerned, you’ve got three kinds of people here on this earth, that He categorizes us, you have the Hebrew, and then you have the Gentile. And then you have what is called the church or the ecclesia, or born again, Christians, that is made up of people, both from Gentile background and from Hebrew background. So I only have three categories of people.

The Hebrew person, that’s their bloodline, they were born of their mother and fathers, their grandfathers, their great grandfather’s were born, they were out of the Hebrew background, those people were and in those days it was difficult to separate from their religion, it would be very much to a degree, we see a lot of that in the Muslims over there today, where you see these people are Arabs, but they are Muslims, and what binds them together is in their religion. And the Hebrew is somewhat in the same way that you could not separate a person from Hebrew birth from the practice of Hebrewism. Now, that is not necessarily true today.

Now in this particular time, then this book was written somewhere before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. The author of this book many times, people thought was the apostle Paul, of many times because of just the very logic of the writing of this book. But as we get into it, you’ll see some statements that the author made that would prohibit this from being the apostle Paul, as the author of the book of Hebrews. Some people thought it might be Apollos that Paul certainly mentioned, or it may have been Barnabas, but the author is unknown. It was certainly known in those days, it just was not recorded, nor was it carried down through church history. But Paul was considered the author before the Reformation after the Reformation, again, in more detailed study of the Word of God. And I’ll point that out to you. And we get to that point where I don’t think it could have been the Apostle Paul. But it was written, as I said, sometime before 70 ad before the destruction of Jerusalem. It also is considered because some of the verbiage in this book that it was written after Paul’s death, because it talks about Timothy being imprisoned. And there’s no place in Paul’s writings where he ever states that Timothy was imprisoned. So the assumption is that in between the time of Paul’s death, and the writing of this book was the imprisonment of Timothy, and that, therefore another reason why people do not say that this book was written by the Apostle Paul, but you’re talking to basically pointed to Hebrew Christians, Hebrews who have come out of a, the whole gamut of Hebrew tradition, who have now received, or at least are in the process of receiving Christ Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. Now there again, back then, like today, you get people, you will have people in all stages of this growth process. We’ve talked about so many times that you can have an enlightened soul, but an unregenerate spirit. And you will see some of that kind being addressed in this book of Hebrews. You can have people who are followers of Christ, in other words, and they’re pro professors of Christ, but they are not possessors of Christ. Most of the time, in your own life, and I know in mine, and you will hear people on the radio say, I’ve been a Christian all my life. Have you ever heard that been a Christian all my life, but that’s impossible. Now you can be a follower of Christianity all of your life, or you could be exposed to Christianity all your life, but it’s impossible to have been born again all of your life. Jesus, and God does not have any grandchildren, just children. I never had that privilege of grandchildren, he just has children, you’re just born again. And you become a child of God, never a grandchild. And so you have to understand that you can be a follower of the Christian religion, and not be regenerated. Y’all understand that. So in my particular case, and probably like yours, I certainly was never a Buddhist or a Hindu was never a Jew, follow Judaism. I grew up in a church in a family that went to church, they went to a Christian church. So to me, I was a follower of the Christian religion. You will also see a distinction of people where you’ll have people who say, I follow the Lord. Well, you follow the Lord in the gospels, but you follow him to where he was going. And where Christ was going, while he was alive was to the cross. And so now once you have come to understand, he went to the cross, and there he died for the forgiveness of man’s sins, he was then buried, raised from the dead. And you and I then go from the cross to the empty tomb. There are many people have come to the cross, but have never gone through the cross to the empty tomb there to find Jesus is not there. He’s alive, and to come to the living Christ, not the Christ hanging on the cross, as good as that was, but that only is what cleared the deck for the divine action that was to occur through his resurrection, where his life Christ alive, raised from the dead could come and raise you and me from the dead. And that’s how we are born again. We’re not born again by His death for us, you’re born again because of His life in us. And that’s why the book of Romans says that while we were yet enemies that’s lost, lost as you can get. We were reconciled to God through the death of his Son. What is reconciliation? That’s the balancing of books.

You and I, if any of you are accountants, any you accountants out there. How many of you are accountants or bookkeepers? Unfortunate. What do you do? What does it mean to reconcile your books? Well, it means to balance them, doesn’t it? If somebody owed a debt that had been on your books, 2,3,4 years, however long and they just couldn’t pay it. What would you do in order to reconcile your books? Well, you would write it off. They owed a debt they couldn’t pay, right? What did you do? You paid their debt that you didn’t owe. That’s reconcile that’s reconciliation. So reconciliation is dealing with the clearing of a debt. So while we were yet enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, when Christ died for our sins, how many of our sins did he die for? All of them. And not only ours, John says, But what the sins of what the entire world so he didn’t die for the saved people sins, He died for all people sins. Now, the problem that you run into is you have a group then that are what’s called hyper Calvinists. And, again, I don’t know how we get hung up on these things. Because here you’ve got Paul, the apostle Paul, that I believe, probably wasn’t too bad of a Christian. And here you got the apostle Paul, that when someone tried to make something out of him, he said, What are you making something out of me for in essence, who’s Paul, who’s Apollo’s? Who’s Peter? All we do I sow some seeds, someone else waters it, but God makes it grow. Why are you making heroes out of us? And here’s the Apostle Paul said, don’t call yourself a Paulenist or Apolloist, or a Calvinist, or a Lutheran, or a Popest or where it came from? And is it what this is all about? Who are we? Just God’s servants. Don’t make a bunch of heroes out of us. A Christian world comes in and TV media just blows that today, you know, we are we’re followers of the biggies on TV, as if that was something to get on TV, anybody have enough money and get on TV, or radio. So that’s not a big thing. Just because you’re on radio or television or have written a book does not make you a big deal, nor does it give you one iota of authority. It just means you’ve had enough money, or conned enough people to give enough money to get on. That’s all. So don’t make big deals out of anything. And so, unfortunately, we identify ourselves as Calvinists are this type of thing, which is ludicrous Calvin to get up and say, What are you doing this for whom the world’s Calvin who’s Luther, who’s any of these, we’re just servants of God. So don’t make big deals out.

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Bob George 13:42
Now, as a result of this type of thing, but you’ve had people that have come down and when it comes to salvation, because we do not understand the verse that I was quoting, while we were yet enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, how much more much more having been reconciled, that that’s been cleared, shall we be saved by His life. Because if people don’t understand that you’re saved by His life, we’re saved from the wages of sin, which is death, and the only solution to death is what? Life, not saved by the death of Christ. You’re saving the life of Christ. Now he could not have been raised from the dead with the newness of life had he not died, and he could not have ushered in the New Covenant had he not died, because a will cannot go into effect until the one who made it died. But his death was so that he could usher in this New Covenant that you and I live in today whereby he said their sins and lawless acts I’ll remember no more. And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any, any sacrifice for sins. And so you see, we’re not saved by the death of Christ. We’re saved for the life of Christ. Well, because we don’t understand that salvation is life, and we think salvation just came through the cross and the cross alone, why people come up and say, oh, when John said that he not only died for our sins, but the sins of the whole world, that could not be true, because that’d be everybody was saved. So we’re gonna do something else with that verse. So he said, he’s just talking about the elect. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life that just for the elect. No, it’s for the world. It’s for the world. The sins the cross was for the world. There is nothing left for a Hitler, or a you, for me to do, except to receive life, to accept that I am dead in my sins, and in the uncircumcision of my sinful nature and turn to him for life. The reason that any man and woman boy and girl on the face of this earth can come to Christ, by faith is because their sins have been totally eradicated at the cross, that issue is done. If it was not done, when you came to Christ, he had have to come and die and bleed again for you to come and shed his blood again for you then say, Okay, now you’re ready. So he died for the sins of the whole world. But that’s not salvation. Now, we have people flooding down aisles to receive salvation, only around forgiveness. And they walk away from that experience, no different than the man who went to the Day of Atonement. And he got his sins forgiven for the last year.

Before we go on, is everyone freezing in here, I see you putting on your coats, very good. We get some heat or something in here. I’m doing okay, because my hands are flapping. But if they weren’t, they’d be falling off. So you, you see, you get the picture that this whole area of salvation then is dealing with the cross, that’s what took away the sins of the world, and then raised from the dead, so that you and I could receive life. Now, as we approach then, you’re going to see there are people there were people back then, just like today, who saw Christ in His fullness as who he was, saw Christ, in His completeness. And then you will find those who were just following Him as Messiah. They recognize this as the Messiah and this Messiah. Yeah, he was crucified, but we understand he’s coming back. And they’re not following Him for personal salvation. They’re still following him for the restoration of Israel. So they’re not coming to him for salvation, they’re coming to him for restoration. There were those back then. And there are those today who are doing the same thing. They are followers of Christ, but not possessors of Christ. And so to the book of Hebrews, it’s going to address all of these issues. As we’ve talked about so many times and as we get into this book is to understand what we’ve said, so many times in regard to the Bible, you will hear time and time again. The theological community or anybody else come up and say this book was written to Christians. John was written to Christians first John was written to Christian, there isn’t any book written to Christians. It was written to a Christian pastor, who was to read that book in a congregation that was made up of lost people and saved people, just like any congregation today with the understanding that if the shoe fits, wear it. And so we get confused in our Biblical understanding by thinking this was written to Christians. No, it was written to the world. So when he’s talking about following Christ, you may be talking about some people who are sitting here right today who are followers but not possessors. People who are following Christ, but are not being led by His internal spirit because they’ve never been born again. It’s a possibility. You see, as a Christian, do you follow Christ? Or are you led by His Spirit? See, I already have followed Christ, I followed him to where he was going, he went to the cross, and I followed him there. And there I saw my sins. And there I saw his forgiveness. I then followed him to the empty tomb, where I found it was empty. And then I followed him to where he said, that same Spirit that raised me from the dead, I’m going to put in you and raise you from the dead. And I realized my deadness and accepted him for my life. So I was born again. And so we’re going to have to understand that that there is a world of difference between an enlightened soul and an unregenerate spirit. And you’re going to see this come out in this book of Hebrews, probably more than any book that I know of in the New Testament. So I think it’s gonna be an exciting time for us. So let’s get started.

You’re going to see the author’s saying in the past, God spoke to our forefathers, through the prophets, at many times, and in various ways. But, here’s the contrast. In these last days, he is spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. Now folks let’s take for just a moment. Again, he was speaking, approximately 1500 2000 years ago. And he said, In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets. And at many times, and in various ways. You’re going to see that this book of Hebrews is constantly dealing with the superiority of Christ, over everything that was held dear into the heart of the Hebrew. It also you’re going to see the superiority of Christ, as superior to everything held in the heart as sacred to the Baptist, or to the Presbyterian, or to the Catholic or to the Episcopal. Because we are plagued with tradition, not only back then among Hebrewism, but today under the banner of Christianity, aren’t we? And we have some people who wear collars, and we have some people to wear suits. And you have some places with stained glass, and organs blasting, and then you’d have people with just Venetian blinds.

And you have all kinds of tradition that we have a tendency to want to worship at the feet of, don’t we? And this book of Hebrews is saying, I’m going to cut the legs out of every bit of that. Because Christ is superior to all of that garbage, human tradition as Paul said, I consider it dung compared to that, of knowing Christ. It is not as a kid, say where it’s at. It’s not where it’s at. And so you’re going to see that all these dearly held traditions, as deep as those are as strong as they are, Paul is saying, you cannot grow in Christ and be holding on to these traditions, you’re going to have to let go and latch on to something else. We have talked about before it to me it is like the trapeze artist. And he swings out about halfway across the net. And there’s another place over there he’s supposed to get to, but that bar swinging out there won’t get him there. There’s another one that swings out from that location. And if he’ll grab a hold of that one, he can get to the other side. And that’s a perfect picture of whatever you and I are holding on to. We want to get over there. We want to get over to the Sabbath rest. We want to get over to that point life where we see it’s all him and none of us. But we grabbed a hold of this bar of tradition and habits and all of these other things that we hold on to and we swing out on our way over to the other side. Man, the other side’s in view and it’s looking good over there. And then we come to the end. And we go right back to where we came from. And so you say, well better try a little harder. It’s the same thing we do, when we do not realize that Christ is put our sins behind his back never to see him again. And when we do not realize that if you are in Christ that He has promised something to you, and that is that he’s going to complete the work that he began in you. And we say, That looks great. It’s over there on that ledge over there. And out, we go headed toward him completing the work that he was going to begin in us and we reached the end. And so we go back and say, I’m going to try harder, kick off a little harder. And so we kick off a little harder. Now, we will again, hit right in the middle and back again. There’s another bar that’s coming up to us. And that’s the one that gets you to the other side. But in order to get to the other side, there has to be a willingness to let go of this one, and grab on to the new one. The problem with that is there is a period of time when you’re hanging in midair. And that is scary. But that’s the only way to do it. You cannot grab on until you let go. And it’s a scary little period of time. But once you let go to that other bar, it takes you over to where you want to go along the promised land. It takes you over to the Sabbath rest. It takes you over to where he wants you to go.

Announcer 27:16
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’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 in praise the Lord. Amen.

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Listen to the Salvation message today!

Stand on the firmness of truth. Don’t keep going back and forth. Thank Him that the forgiveness issue is settled.

Let’s pray together:

• Lord Jesus,
• I thank you for taking away my sins on the cross,
• never ever to see them again.
• Having done that, I now thank you for giving me eternal life,
• through your resurrection.
• I now receive that life.
• And I am going stand in the fact that I am a child of the living God.
• In Jesus Holy name I pray.
• Amen

All believers are now brothers and sisters in Christ.

John 3:3
³ Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

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