Radio Broadcast Tuesday 10/17/2023

 

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.

 

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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
All of us are a part of that. So he says you are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it of what? The Body of Christ. Not a part of the Baptist denomination or not a part of the Presbyterians. That’s manmade stuff. It’s a part of the body, we gather here together on Sunday, as the body of Christ coming together, to learn together and to learn to love each other, it isn’t joining something, it’s not a membership. It’s a mutual identity with your God. Now it says in this church or in this ecclesia, this gathering of people God has pointed first of all apostles, some prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, those having the gift of healings, those being able to help others those with gifts of administration, those were speaking in different kinds of tongues. Now, listen to this. You’re talking about all All of these gifts listed. And remember back in Hebrews, it said those were things God gave to the church as he apportioned. He’s the one who determined that one day. So I can’t sit around and teach you how to be an apostle. And I can’t sit around teach you how to be a worker of miracles, and I can’t sit around teach you how to do all those things. It is given to you by God for the benefit of the assembly. So he states that are all apostles? What’s the answer to that? No. Are all prophets? What’s the answer that? No. Are all, all of those don’t see where am I? Apostles? Some prophets. Are all teachers? No, not all teachers do all work miracles? No. Do you all have the gift of healing? No. Do you all speak in tongues? Yes. Do they? No. Do all interpret? No. But eagerly desire the greater gifts, the greater ones.

Now turn back over to Romans 12 with me for a moment. You’re going to see in a book of Romans that was written a number of years after first Corinthians that the same apostle, the apostle Paul is writing again about these things. And in chapter 12, of the book of Romans, he starts off there, I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy now to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, this is your spiritual act of worship. You want to know what your spiritual act of worship is? Offering your bodies as a living sacrifice. It’s already been made holy and acceptable in the sight of God. In other words, recognizing who you are in Christ, what he has done for you in Christ, you’ve already been made holy, you’ve already been made acceptable. You’ve already been made perfect in his sight. He’s done everything for you that he’s gonna do. There isn’t anything else you’re gonna get. You’ve got everything you’re gonna get now he says, Present your bodies to him and let him live his life to you. That’s, that’s an essence. What’s going on. Do you understand you can’t but I can? Yes, Lord, I do. Then let me do it. Do you understand that I am committed to complete the work that I began in you, Bob? Yes, I did, then get out of the way. And let me do it. Do you understand that you’re a branch and I’m the vine and you cannot produce fruit? Yes, I do. Lord, then let me produce it through you. You’ll bear it but only I can produce it. Do you understand that? Yes, I do. Look, then let me do it. In other words, get up in the morning and quit trying to do what you cannot do and get out of the way so that I can do what I can do. And that’s live my life. You cannot live the Christian life you’ve tried. you’ve struggled, you’ve made a mess out of it. Let me do it. Present your bodies. Here I am, Lord, send me. Do whatever you want to with me. I’m available to that’s all that’s holy and pleasing. And this and this alone is your spiritual act of worship my friends. Worship is not sitting around with your hands up or your hands down. That is idiotic. What if you didn’t have hands so it doesn’t make any difference to God, whether you have arms, whether you don’t have arms, whether up whether down or sideways or in your ear. It absolutely has no bearing at all on God. It does have a bearing on your understanding of God. Where did say Christ lives? Where is he living? In you. You see my friends if Satan can get you right up here believing God. Now granted, God is in heaven, but he came to live where? In you. If he can get you believe in God’s out there someplace? He’s gotcha he’s Gotcha. Because now how far out there is he, and what do I have to do to reach him?

We sing songs As the deer pants after the water that’s how I pant after you well, I’m sorry if you’re still panting after him because you haven’t found him. You see, that was marvelous for the Psalm was to sing that song because he never did know his Lord. He knew about him but he didn’t know him. He hadn’t come yet. As on the other side of the cross. They were worshipping a god that was going to be revealed. We worship one who’s already been revealed. When you seek in your find, if you’re still seeking is because we haven’t found Christ Jesus lives in your heart. He’s your best friend. He walks with you. He talks with you. He lives his life in and through you, and that’s why you and I can walk and talk with him all day long. It isn’t something that you have to wait to get in a group to do. That’s why Paul said I can pray without ceasing all day long. No position be would be a little hard do when you’re driving your car, if you’re closing your eyes in that position, we better not. But all day long, I’m talking to the Christ who lives in me, to my God who lives inside of me. It’s my best friend. Although up there, that’s not where he is, in your, in my experience he has come to live in you.

Now, you’re going to notice something. When Paul lists the spiritual gifts. In Romans 12, he alleviates the sign gifts. And in First Corinthians that was written earlier, well, he includes them, but he eliminates them in 12 just to each one. And he said, as Grace has given to me I say to each of every one of you don’t think more highly of yourself than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with a measure of faith God has given you just as each and every one of us has one body with many members. And these members do not all have the same function. So in Christ, we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We understand that. If you’re in Christ, he’s the head, we’re the members of the body, my hand belongs to this body, and it’s there to serve the rest of the body. I pick the hand up and brush my teeth in the morning and wash myself. We care for our body, don’t we? We’re all part of the same body. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him do it in proportion to his faith. If it’s serving, let him serve. If it’s teaching, let him teach. If it’s encouraging, let him encourage. If it’s contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously. If it’s leadership, let him govern diligently. If it’s showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully. So the gifts that he’s mentioned, here are gifts that have to do with the edification of the body. Your sign gifts, as Paul is going to explain later on, we’re for evangelistic purposes, but in the body. It’s the serving gifts. That’s where we concentrate on.

Now, let’s go to first let’s go back now to First Corinthians 13. Do we kind of see how that falls together? So let’s see if we can pull it together? Do we all have the same gifts? No, who distributes them? God according to what? His purpose. So everyone doesn’t have the same ones? Can you learn your gifts? Or are they just revealed to you as God gives them to you? There are you know, there’s things going all over the place we sit down to study so you didn’t find out your spiritual gifts through study. And everybody’s sitting around trying to study what their gifts are. And that doesn’t work. You want to know what your gift aren’t. Get up, let God use you. Use your body as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable in the sight of God, which is your reasonable service, and let him reveal it to you. And other people will know before you do. So don’t sit around trying to figure that one out. Just let it be revealed. You’ll find yourself doing what your gift is. You can see that at a breakfast table with a kid spilled his milk. You will find out what gifts are. You really will give to help will be down there scrubbing that up. Fixing that all up. gift and mercy will be saying to the kid Don’t worry back and having a body. Gifted admonishment will say no, if you could put that milk over here on your right side, instead of your left side, you wouldn’t be doing that again. And and all of these things are going to be manifested just by knocking over a little milk and you’ll see how you respond. Now let’s go down to verse eight in chapter 13, and let’s pick up there with this study on spiritual gifts. Folks, there is no problem to me with people we are we can be taught many, many things. The problem comes in the teaching. And many of us have been taught truth that does not set you free. And there is terrific error in teaching in regard to spiritual gifts. And it puts people in bondage. And folks, if you’ve been under that I’m all I’m asking you is to look at the word of God. I don’t care what your experience is. Look at the word of God. And let the word of God speak to you because it later on says you still want to hang on to what air is it says, you just let you go and let you hang on to it. So I want you to believe what you believe not because of what a man has taught you, or even because of some experience because Satan can duplicate experiences. Satan can teach, does a great job of and you say he’s got the gift of teaching. And that’s probably true. It didn’t come from God. But there is a gift of teaching. There are many persuasive people today with gifts of teaching, using that gift to pervert and to destroy. Is that true or not? You can have a gift of giving, you can have a gift of giving and be giving it to something that is not supporting grace, it’s supporting legalism, you’re using a gift that God gave you to pervert it to support something God never wanted supported. So you can pervert every spiritual gift on the face of the earth that God gave us can be perverted. So we want to take a look out of the Word of God open up our hearts and to see what it has to say. So in verse eight, chapter 13, after he talks about love, and we’ll kind of cap this study off with that, because that’s the essence of what he says to do. He says, Love never fails. Where there are prophecies, they will cease. So you’re going to see one thing prophecies are going to cease. Where there are tongues, they will be stilled. In other words, they’ll just die away fade away. Where there is knowledge, it too will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfection comes or when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. Now the answer that comes down is what is this perfection that you’re talking about? Because Christ has already come? So what is the perfection that is talked about? Well, perfection could be when perfect love comes all of that imperfect disappears, perfect love when you and I learned and are indwelt by the love of God. Or it could mean that when the Word of God itself has been completed, then the imperfect disappears because now the total revelation of God comes.

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Bob George 14:01
I tend to believe that’s what he’s talking about. You see, it’s what we’ve discussed so many times you want wisdom, the book of James says it says Ask God and I’ll give it to you. And Christ says I am your wisdom. But it says if you’re going to ask for wisdom, don’t be asking and not believing. In other words, don’t be a double minded man that’s unstable in all ways. Now that isn’t said, Well, I’m gonna get my faith on that. It’s a conviction that if Christ Jesus is alone your wisdom, then when you ask for that don’t be going to something else. In other words, if Christ is total wisdom that I don’t need Jesus plus anything, do I? And of Christ is total wisdom that I don’t need to depend upon him plus psychology or whatever else comes down the pike, nor do I need him plus man’s interpretation of something. Nor do I need Christ plus something else. It’s Christ alone that I need. So if I want wisdom, there’s one place to go. And that’s God. But it’s talking about the fact, do you truly believe that? Or are you being conned into believing, no, there’s something else? It’s like Christ says, You are complete and me and I say, Yes, I’m complete. But I need another experience. But I need another step of grace. But I need all of this. If you’re in Christ, you’re complete in Him. And if you’re complete in something, then you’re not going to get a completer. And therefore rest in your completeness. You can’t get more complete, you can’t get less complete, he’s made you complete, rest in it, walk in it by faith, because it’s true. And so it said, if you’re going to ask for wisdom, don’t ask for wisdom, believing that Christ is partial wisdom. My friends, do you realize that if Jesus was 99.9%, God, he would cease to be God. You can’t be 99.9% God, you’re either 100% God, or you’re not God. You can’t be 99.9% truth. He’s either total truth or he isn’t truth. And if this book is in total truth, pitch it out and do the best you can. Because it isn’t worth trying to determine what’s right and what’s wrong. Who in a world has the brains inherited to go through the Bible and say, Well, this is truth, but that isn’t for this over here isn’t, but that is? It’s either totally true, or pitch the whole thing out. And that’s what he’s saying, if you’re going to come to Me come to me with a confidence that I am God, I am who I say I am. I testified concerning this word that it is absolute truth. He said, My Word is truth. And therefore you can rely on it as truth. And if I have that, then I don’t need to think where else can I go to get a little information. And that’s what he’s talking about in regard to this wisdom.

So to me, I believe that when a word of God was fulfilled, and when the Word of God was given to us in its fullness, and I’m just saying, this is personally what I believe someone else might have another interpretation. If they do, you could be right. But to me, I believe that when perfection comes, in other words, the perfect word of God has been made totally manifest, then all imperfect disappears. In other words, I’m not looking anymore. I’m not looking anymore with confusion, I know where to go. And if God lives in me, he’ll interpret what it means.

Now, he said about this whole issue of spiritual gifts and the abuse of them and the overemphasis on them. And especially, and I don’t know why this is true, but he spends a great deal of time in this gift of languages or tongues. And it seems to me that it is in that gift for some reason, that pride sets in easier, confusion sets in easier, I don’t know why that is such a hang up. But for some reason it is and was and therefore Paul has to address it in a special way. And in addressing that, which he did before, he said, let me show you a better way. Don’t go around telling people that you’re more spiritual if you exercise this gift than someone else. Don’t go around telling people you’re not saved if you don’t have a gift of a certain kind. There are people today that teach you don’t speak in tongues, you’re not saved. That’s ludicrous, besides being heretical. And then there are people will say well, you’re not filled, that you’re not spirit filled unless you speak in tongues. All just equally as heretical, as ludicrous. I remember seeing a television program one time by a man who’s on television and still on television who fall flat fell flat on his face. And someone asked him one time about Billy Graham said he didn’t. Well, he’s been used mightly of God. But I want to tell you, he would have been used more mightly had he spoken in tongues. I don’t think he says that anymore. You know, I think God sort of loved him enough to buckle the knees out from under him to get rid of that kind of dumb thing. To think that there’s some kind of a gift from God that makes you more spiritual when the Bible so clearly says is everyone have the same one? No. Is everyone filled with emphasis, does that have anything to do with being filled with spirit? No, not a thing in a world, not a thing in the world. There is no exercising of a gift that has anything to do with being filled with control by the Spirit of God, to be controlled. The Spirit of God means to be controlled with the love of God. That’s why Paul tanks in, let me show you a better way. Let me show you a better way. You could speak in the tongues of men and angels, if there was such a thing, and that’s a hyperbole. That’s an exaggeration of a fact in order to prove a point. So there isn’t angel language. I guess people think you’ve got to justify something someplace down the line. I really I’m confused on why people do what they do on these type of things because it’s divisive, but we do that and most of it is just because of teaching. But if I spoke in tongues of men and angels but I don’t have love I’m a rezone I’m a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. Well and if someone says speaking in tongues as an example is evidence of being filled with a spirit How could you call someone a spirit filled gong, noisy one to begin with? You know what he said you can speak in tongues he says. But if you don’t have love, you’re a noisy gong and a resounding and and a clanging cymbal. So how could it have anything to do with being spirit filled? Being controlled by love. He’s saying to you, you can exercise gifts and not be controlled by love. And if it is, it’s nothing. You can teach sermons and not have any love and it doesn’t mean a thing. You can have the gift of prophecy, you can fathom all mysteries. Can you imagine if you really had the ability to do that with your own television? You’d really be able to say I know there’s someone out there. You could have faith that could move mountains. Well, how’d you like see that on TV? Go out and say move mountain want to move. Boy that would raise some money.

So you could do all that stuff that’s bigger than anything I’ve seen. You say if you don’t have love, you’re nothing. Absolutely nothing. Folks, nothing’s a big word. It means nothing. In Greek it means nothing. In Hebrew it means nothing. If I gave all I possess to the poor in other words, if I had a spiritual gift of giving and man I exercise that thing and gave it all away. If I surrendered my body to the flames and became a martyr like Joan of Arc, but I don’t have love I don’t gain anything. I don’t have anything. Then he goes ahead and explains what love is. And then Verse eight says Love never fails. Where there prophecies they’ll cease where there’s tongues there’ll be still where there’s knowledge they’ll pass away. We know in part and we prophesy in part but when protection comes the imperfect disappears. Now look at this guy’s you know, a Paul was saying here, grow up and quit thinking like a kid. Baby stuff. Babies get infatuated with noise. And they get infatuated with baby things. Not the deep things of God. Shallow babies. When I was a child, I talked like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put away childish ways behind me. I took those kiddie things and put them away. I took my hobby horses, and my dolls, and I put them away. Because I’m not a kid anymore. I’m a grown up man. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror. Then we’re going to see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully even as I am fully known. And now these three things remain faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love. That’s what he is talking about growing up. Grow up and see that the greatest is faith, hope and love and the greatest of that is love. Faith, Hope and Love and the greatest of that is love. Not gifts. Grow up and see that the greatest is faith, hope and love and the greatest of that is love. It’s not gifts, not miracles. It’s love. Love is the fulfillment of the law. So it’s not what you’re not doing that’s what you are doing. Love is everything. If you’re not loving, don’t allow the love of God to flow in and through us, nothing. Well, how can I be a loving person when I’m sitting here thinking I’m better than you are because I gotta get it you don’t have? You tell me how you can live with that attitude. You tell me how you can love with that attitude that I’m spirit filled but you’re not because of the way I know I am was because I speak in tongues and you don’t or because of some other things. You tell me how you can remain in a loving attitude. You can tell me how you can remain impartial and in a loving attitude. When someone has told you that you have a language I can community Get with God that someone else doesn’t have. So in other words, you got kind of a pipeline to God and other people don’t. You tell me how you can remain in a loving attitude. You tell me how pride cannot help from creeping in with that kind of an attitude. If you can explain how you can do that, I guess I’ll probably look at the word of God differently. But I don’t know how you can do it, I couldn’t do it. I’ll guarantee you.

And so we’re into a situation where we are building and trying to, instead of seeing one another as what God says, I am the head, not you, you’re a part of this body. And there are some parts of the body that are very unsightly that you’d better not try to do without. There’s other parts of the body that are more visible. There’s other parts of the body that have different uses, but I’m gonna tell you something, if all of them aren’t functioning then you’re in trouble. And they’re in any one part any more than the other, if God made you a finger that he made to make you a finger and he says, wiggle, do what it’s supposed to do not be sitting there saying, Well, yeah, I’m doing that. But I’m not going up a storm like that nose up there. If I want to make a nose, he said, I made your nose, made your finger, wiggle. I made your nose sniff, and quit looking at what you are in comparison to what someone else is. Because all it’ll do is puff you up with a bunch of spiritual pride. To thinking that I’ve got something that someone else doesn’t have. You’ll never love that way.

Announcer
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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