Radio Broadcast Wednesday 01/25/2023

Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at Law & Grace P47 (01-25-23)

Quit Asking for What Jesus HAS Already Done ~ God FORGAVE You at the Cross!

~ They can’t be brought back to repentance, because they never repented to begin with! They are crucifying Jesus over and over again, Catholics and Protestants alike.

~ “And who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.” ^{Hebrews 6:6}

~ “But you see where we are absolutely petrified of freedom, what freedom means to us, and unfortunately, too many Christians, evangelical Christians, what freedom means is that you’re free to go out there and live like the devil.

Listen in to today’s lesson with more in-depth teaching, from the Bible study booklet, A Closer Look at Law & Grace, available for purchase from our online Bob George Ministries ecommerce store.

Jesus asked how does God love and accept us? And how does he expect us to live the Christian life? To answer those questions, this insightful study explores a vital issue at the heart of the Christian experience, the biblical relationship between law and grace, understanding their role in our relationship to God will bring joy, freedom and spontaneity to your Christian life. Now, let’s take A Closer Look at Law & Grace.

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Bob George 0:40
It’s amazing to me how rapidly time goes by. And we have been a number of weeks in this study of law and grace, which is a fascinating study. And quite frankly, I believe, Bob that until people really do get a handle on the contrast between long grace that they’ll never fully understand what it is to walk in this newness of life that has been given to us in Christ Jesus. Life itself is full of contrast, isn’t it? You have light and darkness, you have death, you have light, life, rather, you have law, you have grace, you have good you have bad. It’s life is full of contrasts. And quite frankly, if I didn’t know what darkness was, how would I ever appreciate if I was in light? If I didn’t know what evil was? How would I appreciate good and vice versa? If I didn’t know what good was, how would I ever identify bad? So all of these contrasts are in our existence today, prior to the fall of man, did Adam and Eve have a clue as to what death was? Well, of course not. They’ve never seen it. But once death entered into the world, the contrast was there. And therefore, a deeper understanding of what they had life and now a new understanding of what they possessed. And that was spiritual death. In other words, Bob, the contrast is there. We have that tendency, instead of living in light and darkness to live in the dawn, or in the twilight of the day. And even though dawn is there, and the Twilight is there, it those things are not talked about. In contrast, those are a blend of the two. And that’s where we like to live in our Christian life is we like to live in the twilight zone of our Christian experience, or in the dawn of our Christian experience. And we do not see that there have been extreme contrasts that have been given to us. In the Scripture, when you see the light and darkness, it is always lost and saved. We’ve talked about this before how we have that tendency to, to watered down our words, instead of a man being lost and saved. We say they’re unsaved, they’re not really lost, they’re not really saved. They’re just kind of unsaved, kind of an uncola type of person. And that’s where we like to live. We like to live in this neutral zone. But from God’s standpoint, he lives in opposites. He lives in contrast, you’re either lost or you’re saved. There’s nothing in between, you’re in darkness, or you’re in light, and there is nothing in between. You’re either spiritually dead, or you’re spiritually alive, there is nothing in between. You’re either under the law, or you’re under grace. There’s nothing in between. Now, you see Galatians was a book that Paul tried to clarify that when he was saying to the Galatians, you are foolish and idiotic. In essence, he was saying to them, did you start were you save by obedience to the law? Or were you saved by believing what you heard? Well, the obvious answer to that is believing what you heard. And then he goes on to say, then if you began by faith, why are you now trying to perfect yourself by human effort? In other words, under the law. So you saying there’s a contrast there, you can’t blend Law and Grace together, you have to leave grace, you have to leave the law behind in order to ever fully appreciate the fullness of the grace of God that we live in today.

And so as, as we begin our final chapter, we’re going to see the contrast of what it is to live under the law, which absolutely forces you to be self absorbed. Absolutely self absorbed. And contrast between that and living now under the grace of God that enables us to be Christ absorbed. Under the law, there is no option except to constantly be looking at me and what I’m doing. under grace, you have the option of looking at him and what he is doing in the midst of whatever I’m doing. The law condemns. It says You’re under a curse. Why would you as a Christian, want to remain under a curse? When you’ve been freed from that curse? Why would you want to continue? Someone comes down and closes down the jail opens up the cell said all of you have been, received a pardon. And then go out and go to a furniture store and buy a little bed and move it back into yourself and say, I’m going to sleep in here. It just doesn’t make any sense. You’ve been freed from that environment go out now into the free world. But you see where we are absolutely petrified of freedom, what freedom means to us, and unfortunately, too many Christians, evangelical Christians, what freedom means is that you’re free to go out there and live like the devil.

Well, I want to see if that’s what Galatians three said. It said you were called brothers. You my brothers were called to be free. Now, if God called us to be free, then why would we as Born Again Christians be fearful of freedom? Why would we be fearful of telling people, you’ve been called to be set free. When God set you free? It’s because we think we know more than what God does. It’s the same type of argument five that we talked about last week of people who absolutely will never come to grips with the finality of the cross, never. And I sometimes wonder if they ever will. And there and so they keep insisting on the fact that we although God has very clearly made it clear that has taken away our sins, forever, forever, insist upon trying to keep themselves forgiven through their confession. And the argument that they give with that type of thing is, well, if I’m a father, and I have a son, and that son does something wrong, he’s out of fellowship with me. And in order to get back and fellowship with me why the son has to come and ask for forgiveness. Well, in the first place, I say that anyone who’s perpetuated that argument hasn’t had a son. Because I quite frankly, remember very seldom that either one of my kids ever come and asked me to forgive them. And yet, I don’t remember ever being out of fellowship with them. As far as their as, as a father is concerned. We should be bigger than that. But people still want to use that as an argument. Well, let’s say okay, I’ll grant you the argument. Why then why are you bringing God’s forgiveness down to my level? In other words, saying, if that’s the way it is with me, it certainly has to be that way with God because Oh, god, me couldn’t be different than God him. You see, God doesn’t want to you to bring him down to our level, he wants to raise us up to his level, he isn’t going to come down into our puny kind of forgiveness, He wants to elevate us into his kind of forgiveness. And man is so egotistical, and so self absorbed that we think that God should come down and act like us, thank God, he doesn’t come down and act like us. Thank God, His forgiveness was not like ours, thank God, that I don’t have to use a manmade illustration, to try to explain and to defend God, that God came down to this earth to say, Bob, I am being raised from the dead, I’m going to be seated at the right hand of my Father, so you can get your head up here instead of down here. And so we come up with all of these puny arguments in order to justify our own little theologies. Instead of saying, What did God do? And if God did something, what should my response be? Faith, the only thing that faith can say, is thank you. I was forgiven totally at that cross. And because of that, I do not get more forgiveness. I just rest in my forgiveness. And that is an verbiage of saying, Thank You, Lord.

As we said, If God called you and me to be free, why should we have to fear freedom. And I went ahead to say that there’s two choices that you and I have as a child of God. And those two choices tie in to the two contrasts that are inside of a human being. If you’re born again, first of all, you have the desires of God living in you. And secondly, you have the desires of your flesh living in you. There is indwelling sin living into our bodies. Now, folks, that is not a nature, our old nature was totally lost, separated from God today, we have a brand new nature, and that new nature is the nature of Christ Jesus, which we have the privilege of participating in that we have the privilege of participating in the divine nature of Christ Jesus that lives in us. Now Christ Jesus has come to indwell you in May to bring life to our spiritual being. But that spiritual being is housed in a body containing indwelling sin, there’s the contrast. And so as much as that is the case, he still called you to be free. But he said, you’ve got a brand new set of desires living in your body. And you now have the ability to choose to either walk in love or to indulge your flesh. Now what he says to that don’t use this freedom that has been given to you to indulge the flesh, you’re free to do that, Bob, if you weren’t free, you’d be under the law. And if you’re under the law, you’re under a curse the wages of sin being death. So he had to free us from that. But so I’m free now to choose, I’m free to choose to listen to either the demands of the flesh that are always demanding something contrary to my best interest, even though it convinces me that it’s to my best interest. And then I’ve got the desires of God living inside of me. So he says, You’re don’t use this freedom that you’ve been given, don’t deny this freedom, because you’re free to choose either one. But don’t use this freedom to indulge that flesh, because it’s not gonna be to your interest. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. Now, when I began to use my freedom to serve, I find out what Jesus said all along. It’s, it’s more blessed to give than to receive, and you find out it’s much more gratifying, in this life of ours to be giving than it is to be receiving. I know that from from, we ought to figure that out from Christmas, I had, what do you get the greatest enjoyment out of giving somebody a present and watching them, your kids just rejoice over what you’ve given them or getting, you know, a pair of socks, or a necktie, and hanging it up there for the next year. So I mean, we ought to be able to figure that out that giving something to somebody and seeing them, happiness produced from them, is the greatest joy you’ll ever experience in your life. Now, you’re never gonna experience that until you learn to serve one another in love. I now have a choice to do that. Now it says the entire law summed up in a single command. And that is to love your neighbor as yourself. Now we can get down and say, Well, okay, love your neighbor as yourself. Define love for me, Lord, what just what does that mean?

He said, Okay, well, so you might want to turn with me to First Corinthians 13. We’ve gone over this before, but I think it’s worthy of going over again. And in First Corinthians 13. God describes love before we understand this is how we are to love one another, we have to understand that this is how God loves you. In other words, would God call you to love with a higher standard than he loves you? In other words, did he say to you, Bob, I want you to love like this to old Jim over there, and I don’t love you that way. And I don’t love him that way. But I want you to love him that way. Isn’t that ridiculous? So what God is saying before you can understand first Corinthians 13, as to the kind of love that God will produce in and through you if you let him but you can’t produce it on your own, that you’re going to have to be wallowing. That’s as good a term as I know basking in my love for you. Just like fall in Romans 8:35 was able to say, Who shall separate us from the love of God? Nothing can trouble can’t hardship can’t famine nakedness sword nothing can separate me from the love of God. Paul came to understand something nothing can separating from a love of God.

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Now first Corinthians 13. You want to know how I love you? God is always patient with you. God is always kind to you. God is never easily angered with you. God never keeps records of your wrongs. Now, isn’t that now, I wonder if God never keeps records of the wrongs only if you confess and ask him to forgive you. I wonder if that’s what that means. I don’t quite think so. If that’s the case, and God ignored the kind to me when I asked him and he’d only be patient with me when I asked him and he would only not be angered with me when I asked him and he had not keep records of my wrongs only if I cleared the deck. It seems like don’t you think after a while people want to catch this? Man I tell you so the letters I get back I scratch my head and said will you ever learn the finality of the cross? But that’s another subject. God will delight and he never delights in evil. God always rejoices in truth. God always protects you. God always trusts you. God always hopes the best for you that always perseveres with you. In other words, he’ll hang in there with you forever, and God’s love never fails. Now we are said, What did? What did the Word of God say to us? Well, the entire loss summed up in his single command, and that’s for you to love that way.

So folks, let’s see how we’re doing. John 13, said, A new command I give you Love one another, as I have loved you. We just just got through reading how he loved us, you must love one another. And By this all men will know that you’re my disciples if you love one another. So take a look, folks. And again, I look back at people who are so self absorbed, and are so hung up on the sin issue. Instead of the life issue, I want to present to you and I want to ask you to be honest with yourself, if the only thing that matters and we’re told that all through the scriptures is faith, expressing itself through love. And there are only one command I leave with you to love one another. I want you to go along with me. And I want to ask you how you are doing and how I’m doing. Love. I am always patient with everybody. I am always kind to everybody. I am never easily angered with anybody. I never keep records of anybody’s wrongs. I never delight in evil just makes me sick, if I see anything and even even might even hint of it. I always rejoice and truth. I always protect others. I protect them to my death. I always trust others. I will trust them to my death. I always hope the best in regard to others. I will not be subject to listening to an adverse rumor about somebody I always hope the best. I always persevere with people. I’ll hang in there with them forever. How’d you do folks? Well, I want to tell you, I don’t know who you are possibly in some of you I’m talking to I do know, but I know myself. I would have flunked on the first one. And I have a feeling you did too. You see when we’re looking at this quality of love this definition of love, the only thing God left us with he didn’t left you. He didn’t leave you with church attendance and tithing records. He didn’t leave you with how dedicated you are to your first John one nines are dedicated you are to your confession booths, or how dedicated you were to going back to the days of atonement. He didn’t leave you with that. He said there’s only one thing that is important. And that’s love. And folks who want to tell you something, the way that you think God loves and forgives you is the same way you’re going to pass it on to somebody else. And if you think God’s keeping records of your wrongs until you turn around and ask him to forgive you, that’s how you’re going to treat others. Like I’ve got a right to be angered until somebody comes and begs for forgiveness, folks, that’s judging one another. That isn’t love there anything love connected with that. And the only thing he left us with is love and why do we not see more love in the Christian community because we’ve substituted everything for love. We said, Lord, let’s take this out of the Scripture, this deal. This command you gave me to love one another, which incidentally, is the only command he left us with. And the fact that all men are going to know you’re my disciples, if you love one another. Well, we said, well, I can’t love like that.

So we come up with alternatives. A loving person would witness I witnessed, therefore I’m loving. A loving person prays, and I pray, therefore I’m loving. A loving person goes to church, I go to church, therefore, I must be loving. we’ve substituted everything for what God said Love was. When I’m impatient with somebody that’s not love. When I’m not kind to someone that’s not love. When I’m easily angered with someone, I’m not expressing God’s love to them. When I keep records of people’s wrongs, it’s not love. When I delight in evil, that’s not love. When I rejoice when I don’t rejoice in truth in other words, what’s a little white lie gonna hurt? That’s not love. When I don’t protect a person. In other words, I want to expose them. I want to make them look bad so that I look good. It’s not love. I want to trust people. In other words, I’m so anxious to hear any kind of juicy gossip on somebody, that’s not love, when I don’t hope the best for them. In other words, they say, Man, I hope he gets his just dues. That’s not love to say I give up on that person, I don’t ever see him again, that’s not love. They’re in a thing about God in any of those things. And yet are they not qualities that each and every one of us have in our flesh? I have those things in mind. And I’ll guarantee you have them in yours. So folks, we’ve substituted everything for what God said is the true Christian life. And that is to walk in love. Jesus went down there trying to obey the 10 commandments, Jesus Christ walked in love and that love and love was the fulfillment of all the law, not just the law written on stone, but the law of God. That was written on hearts. And so until we come to grips with the fact that here is a standard that I cannot live up to, that’s when God is going to, in essence, wipe his brow and say, you finally got it, I think you might have it, Bob. And now you know why said apart from me, you can do nothing. And he related that to the bearing of fruit, that apart from your abiding in my love for you branch, you will never bear fruit to others. And the best you can do is hang on your brand, some artificial plastic fruit that you better hope no one bites into because if they do, they’re gonna get a mouthful of plastic, something artificial, looks good, from a distance might not be able to tell the difference. You bite into it, and you’re gonna find out. It’s not the real thing.

I have had people, and possibly I’ve done the same thing in my life. I’ve had people who literally cut off friendships with me or with Amy, because of a disagreement over a passage of scripture. And you look back on that and say, well, that’s real love. We can get angry at someone that says something to you and say, I’m never gonna, I’m never gonna talk to them again. You say, Well, that’s real love. And and still walk along thinking I’m doing real good in my in my Christian experience, because I am theologically correct. And, you know, I don’t think God’s gonna ask you when you get to heaven, how theologically correct you were because in essence, it said all of us are looking through a clouded glass. But I think he is going to say, Bob, thanks for letting me love through you on those occasions that you did. And I don’t think we’re going to talk very much about occasions when we didn’t. And when Bob that there’s not a more convicting message than the message of love, because we cannot do it in the energy of our own flesh right.

Now, that’s why Ephesians 5:18 And this is the verse it’s kind of like the first John one nine, and the Lord’s prayer that that’s the only one people ever memorized and don’t memorize the hundreds of other scriptures dealing with the finality of the cross. And then will memorize Be not drunk with wine, which leads to debauchery, but instead be filled with the Spirit. Memorize that out of context don’t have a clue what it means. And therefore it means anything you want it to mean. And one group of people being filled with the Spirit means that you start speaking in a language that you haven’t learned to another group of people might be rolling around on the floor, to be filled with the Spirit. Some people think that you’re filled with the Spirit when you’re up swinging and swaying and bouncing back and forth. Other people might think, no, you’re fill the Spirit when you’re very quiet, or when you’re singing just as I am, or whatever else it might be in all kinds of mindsets, or what does it mean to be filled with the spirit where the fact of the matter is that the passage of scripture that precedes Ephesians five, which is Ephesians three, explains explicitly what it means to be filled with the Spirit.

To be filled means to be controlled by that’s the Greek word meaning to be continually being controlled by something. And so when you’re talking about being filled with the Spirit, it means to be controlled by the Spirit. In other words, to have something that controls your life. Well, the Spirit of God is supposed to control your life to be filled, controlled by the Spirit of God. Now, if you are being controlled by the Spirit of God, then you say, Well, what does that mean? What how would that express itself? Well, it tells us explicitly in Ephesians, 3:16 and 19. And you might want to turn to your Bible and read that with me. It’s a Paul, it’s a prayer of the Apostle Paul’s. I pray that out of his glorious riches, not ours, but his his glorious riches, that he may strengthen you with power. Now, here’s this word power. And Bob, we’re going to look at that and just pause here in this verse for a moment, because, again, words generate visions in your mind, they generate images in your mind. So what do you think of when you think of power? Well, again, in the spiritual realm, some people think, man, I got the power to command this. And man, I got the power, and everything’s always powerful. I’m just, I’m so powerful and hardly stand myself. And we think of power is something strong and big and mighty. And we name our football teams after powerful things. The Chicago Bears, that’s powerful. Detroit Lions, that’s powerful. Dallas Cowboys, well, that’s powerful. The Indians, you know, all of these, you know, we got all these. Of course who in the world would ever name their football team, the Los Angeles lambs, or the Seattle sheep, right? Of course, we do have the Ducks. We need no commenting on that anymore for all of our friends. But again, we named powerful teams after powerful images. So we always think of that. But isn’t it strange that the most powerful man that ever walked on the face of this earth was identified as what the bear of God the Lion of God? no the Lamb of God, that takes away the sins of the world, gentle, loving Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God. So he wants to strengthen us with power not to be the bear. But to be a lamb. To be so powerful that you can walk in humility, and to be so power to have a power living in you that will enable you to walk in something that never fails. Love, that’s pretty powerful. Something never fails. Not bad. That’s pretty powerful.

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.