Radio Broadcast Wednesday 03/16/2022

Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at Your Identity in Christ P03 (03-16-22)

The World’s Sin is Unbelief in Jesus

And so, from God’s vantage point, that’s where He cleansed all men, took away their sins, of the world. But you see my friends, we are still left with that sin of unbelief. All people are born into this world in unbelief. And so there’s only one sin, not to be forgiven, sins have already been forgiven, unbelief doesn’t need forgiving, it needs repented of. It needs changed. It would do you no good for God to say, hey unbeliever, I forgive you as an unbeliever. Because what are you? A forgiven unbeliever.

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

This is an exciting study, a set of practical books in our entire series, in our Classic Christianity study series is the fact on our identity. So the subject of identity, once we understand who Christ is, and then we understand who we are, then we can get a glimpse as to who we are in relation to who Christ is. And if Christ as it says, is our life, why then if I’m going to get to know me, whom am I going to need to get to know? And that’s Him [Jesus]. And when we come to know Him, and if He is my life, all of a sudden, I come to know me. Now that is totally contrary, is it not to what the world teaches? Because the world is teaching all of us to get to know ourselves by self analyzation, going back and trying to discover the child within. Maybe if we hug a teddy bear, we’d get to know ourselves a little bit better. We spend thousands, upon thousands, upon thousands of dollars in this country going to psychiatrists in order to try to figure ourselves out. When Paul says, I don’t understand myself. It didn’t bother him, said I don’t need to, Christ is my life. And yet we as Christians have bought into this humanistic thinking and are spending all of her time trying to discover ourselves. And that’s a trap of the world because when I am preoccupied with me and who I am, and what I am doing, how can I be preoccupied with him and who he is and what he is doing? You can’t serve two masters. You’re going to have to decide, which one you’re going to serve one or the other.

And so my friends, we need to come to grips with these types of things in regards to being a Christian. Now, if you’re a non-Christian, why you may as well go ahead and try to understand yourself by analyzing yourself, because that’s all you have is yourself. But if you’re a Christian, you’re not by yourself; in fact, you’ve been made into a new self, if any man is in Christ, now he is a new creation. So something new has happened to you. You may be born again, and something new has happened to you, and you don’t have a clue that something new has happened to you, because no one’s ever told you that before. But my friends, nevertheless, that is true. If you are truly born again of the Spirit of God, and what I’m saying is that, and I’m not talking about some religious jargon, I’m talking about the fact, where you came to a point in your life, where you truly came to the end of yourself. Come to the end of yourself, not trying to boost yourself. Not trying to make yourself into something that you’re not. But saying I am not what I want to be and folks that’s what true salvation is.

I don’t believe that you are truly saved by merely saying, I’ve sinned and I need forgiveness. And the reason I say that is God already had a system in effect for that called atonement, whereby, you went to the day of atonement if you were an Israelite living in Israel, at that particular point in history and you certainly had sinned. As we all have, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. You would have gone to that day of atonement by yourself, transferred in a spiritual way. Transferred, your sins upon an innocent animal, his blood shed on your behalf, and you would have walked away from that experience, forgiven for that from that point back, but when you walked away, you walked away still alone. You went to the altar by yourself and you came home by yourself. Nothing had changed internally. Only the external part of you, the human part of you had been forgiven and cleansed by God, that was His system to do so until the real thing came along, who was Jesus Christ, who did not do it like atonement, cover your sins for a future, He took them away. And when He did, so He did so for all of those sins from Adam on, that had been covered, uncovered them and took them away, and for all sins from our vantage point in the future, that would ever be committed. God is not limited by time and space. So when He looks at us, He sees the whole picture. We are limited by time and space. That’s why you have light years and thousand light years away. And I sit here and say nice verbiage, I don’t have a clue what that means outside of the fact that we live in a different realm. We live in time and space, and eternity does not.

So He said, unbeliever, you’re an unbeliever, but I’m gonna forgive all your sins. Now, that’s what He did at the cross, but you’re still an unbeliever. And that’s why Jesus said that the world’s sin, singular, not plural, is unbelief in Me. So, if the world’s sin, singular, not plural, is unbelief, then what’s the only solution to unbelief? Becoming a believer. A believer in who, yourself? No, in Jesus. The One who, 2000 years ago, took away your sins at the cross, didn’t ask anybody if He could do so, did not do so because you asked Him. He did so because of love. His love for you, not your response, His love for you. He didn’t ask anybody, didn’t consult with anybody, didn’t ask him if it would be okay. He just died for the forgiveness of your sins.

Now that in so doing, He cleared the deck for the divine action to take place of salvation. So that, from that point on, there was nothing left for any man and woman, boy and girl on the face of this earth to do, except to receive what He now came to give, and that’s life. Now, He did not remain in the grave when he died. He was buried, proving His death, upholding the law, raised from the dead with the promise that, that life, that raised Me [Jesus] from the dead, I’m going to raise you, and raise you from the dead. So what is salvation? It’s being raised from the dead. It is being transferred from darkness to light. It is being transferred out of the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of the Son that He loves, in whom we have what? Redemption. What else? The forgiveness of sins.

So you see my friends, the issue of identity comes from the fact that I am born into this world called a natural man. You could call me a dead man. And the only solution to a natural man is to become a spiritual man. Just like the only solution to a dead man is to become a living man. But a corpse cannot produce life. And so life is to a corpse if it’s going to be given has to be given from without the dead being, and it has to be given by somebody who is alive and the only one that’s alive is God. And so, the living God gave you and me his life at spiritual birth at the very moment that we turn to him by faith and said, Lord, I believe this. And I understand now, in other words, I’m not listening to man’s opinion of me. I’m listening to Yours. You say I’m dead as a hammer, and I want Your life. And we invite Him to come into our heart, as our Lord and Savior to give us life. And we become a living being called Born Again, a new creation in Christ Jesus. That’s the good news of the Gospel.

We are working out of our Classic Christianity study series called A Closer Look at Your Identity in Christ. And last week, Bob, we kind of set the foundation for that. And today we’re going to be beginning on page 8 as we begin our study in the first chapter of this book. I want to remind our listeners that this is one of larger Bible studies in the United States I think that we’re doing together. It’s a wonderful thing to see the technology that enables this type of thing to occur, whereby we can beam up to a satellite and come right down into your home with a home Bible study. And I think that my early days as a Christian, fact is for many, many years that this was what I did, and what I love doing, probably more than anything else, and that is still true today and that’s teaching in a small group home Bible study. So when we’re together here on radio, why I never envisioned sitting here talking to the thousands of people that I’m talking to, but kind of in my mind, it’s just kind of a home Bible study sitting here and we’re going over the scripture together, discovering the truth of God’s word.

I was thinking this morning Bob, I guess I do some greater thinking when I’m brushing my teeth, but I was thinking this morning, what an unusual thing that this is in our world today. Today especially facing the Christian world, whereby everybody probably, we’re talking as the same book called the Bible. And is it something you stop to think about, what other piece of literature could you think of where you could say, okay guys, you know, get out Gulliver’s Travels or something, we’re going to study it? You’d certainly have some people who would have that, but you may have to go to your attic to get it. But here are people all over the world, some with different translations, but we have the Bible and most people have a radio and if you’ve got a radio and you have a Bible and this program is coming down, we have the privilege of doing a Bible study together. Now, that’s unbelievable. So we don’t take those things for granted, and we absolutely praise God for the opportunity of doing what we’re doing.

So, let’s turn together, if we will, we’re going to start with the beginning key verse, which is Romans 12:3. Now, we’re talking about a believers identity. In other words. Who am I? What am I here for? Where am I going? Well, the Bible speaks to that in Romans 12:3. It says, for by the grace given to me, I say to every one of you. Now again, before we begin here, Paul is saying by the grace given me. What is he saying? He’s saying, I know this is not Paul saying what I’m going to say to you. God’s Grace has shown me something about himself and had shown me something about me. It first of all showed me that in and of myself, I was nothing. But in Him, I am everything. It showed me that in and of myself, I can do nothing. But in Him, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. It shows me by the grace of God that in and of myself, I had no ability. No ability at all in and of myself to produce life.

But, the grace of God showed me that in and of myself, I have no ability at all to produce righteousness. In other words, a right standing before God by anything that I could do, or don’t do. And it also showed me that God gave me His righteousness. I could go on and on for a week on our inheritance in Christ, but that’s what he’s meaning when he said by the grace given to me. In other words, I understand that everything I have is a gift of God. And so as a result, I want to say to each one of you don’t think of yourself more highly than you ought. In other words, don’t think that I have what I have because I’ve earned it, and I’m a child of God and I’m a Christian because I earned it. And so let’s not go around all puffed up and looking down on people who are not children of God, as yet, making fun of them looking at other Christians with this obnoxious attitude, that my sins are not as bad as your sins. To walk around thinking that other people are worse than me. And therefore, let’s discredit them in some way or disgrace them in some way. It’s a hottie thinking of yourself more highly than you ought.

I heard a song this morning and I don’t remember the title exactly, but it was a song about David and it said, the world saw David as a shepherd boy, and God saw him as a king.

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And a marvelous marvelous song as I was listening to it this morning I was thinking what ties right into what we’re going to be teaching on today. The world looked at David as just a little shepherd boy out there with his sheep hot stinkin everything else you can imagine, probably uneducated to them. But God said no, there’s a king. There’s a king and folks, and David became a king, You see, David had to discover as well what God thought of him, because he was fully aware of the fact that the world thought of him to as a shepherd boy. And he thought of himself as a shepherd boy, but God revealed to him that No, David, I’m going to make you a king. Well you see folks, what did David have to do with that? I mean, did God make him a king because he was highly educated, and real smooth and suave, and had been to college, especially a Christian one? And all of those types of things? No, he had nothing to do with that at all. That was a selection of God looking at the heart of a young man who was frail, made mistakes, obviously, as we see in later life and yet, God still looked at him as a man after God’s own heart. And He loved him. He said, I’ve got, you’ve got the qualities that I’m looking for. I’m not looking for arrogance, and conceitedness, and puffed upness, and for a person walking around thinking more highly of himself than he ought. I’m looking for a person who sees that everything he has is a gift of God. I’m looking for people who will understand the grace of God that had to be given to me. I couldn’t earn it. I didn’t deserve it. I’m not a nifty person in and of myself, I had to be made righteous in the sight of God. I’m not righteous in and of myself. It’s a heart attitude of seeing yourself as it says, with sober judgment. Now, you say, well, what’s the opposite of sober judgment? Well, it’s intoxicated judgment. And if you’ll observe people who get intoxicated and some of you don’t have to look at others, you can look at yourself and I certainly remember days of my life when I was intoxicated before knowing the Lord.

Well, what’s your opinion of yourself? Well, it’s sometimes, it’s kind of King Kong, and, and Don Juan all rolled into one. And you just can’t understand how in the world you have been made President of the United States as smart and brilliant as you are. I can sit around thinking of some of the conversations that I probably had in some of the bars with my buddies and I’ll tell you I’d love to have had a recording of those today because I could have sold it for idiocy and we absolutely thought it was the smartest stuff that you could ever imagine. I don’t imagine, Bob you ever experienced anything? So, but in other words, liquor does something to you like that. You really, your inhibitions sometimes will go away which just means that you were all tied up to begin with. When I say I have to have a drink in order to lose my inhibitions, that just shows the bondage that you’re living in, when you’re sober, which is which ought to be a clue to you that there’s something wrong that is not going to be corrected by an hour or two of being drunk. Ugh, but you don’t look at yourself with sober judgment. Your mind has been distorted and you think more highly of yourself than you ought. And there’s many times that’s where bar fights and that type of thing happen. Here this guy weighs about 120 pounds, sopping wet, goes up against a 300-pound guy because all of a sudden he thinks he’s King Kong. And next thing you know, why somebody’s trying to get him out of a doorknob. So there’s all kinds of things like that, that take place under intoxication.

You don’t have to have liquor to be intoxicated and it says that your mind can be deceived and your mind can be deranged. And that is a form of spiritual intoxication, which Satan is involved in. And so, whenever we get these exalted opinions of ourselves, we’re not thinking of ourselves with sober judgment. We’re not looking at ourselves of the total helpless condition that we are in apart from Christ. And if we truly believe that, and agree with that, we tend to be rejoicing in the fact of what I have been made, a king, a child of the King, not because of anything that I have done but because of everything that He has done.

It kind of reminds me of the, this is supposed to be a true story of Michelangelo that somebody went along and here’s this big old ugly chunk of marble that was there. There he was chipping away, and somebody said, Michelangelo, what are you doing? And he said, oh, I’m getting ready to free the beautiful angel that lies inside of this ugly chunk of marble. You see to the outside man it was an old ugly useless chunk of marble. To Michelangelo, there was a beautiful angel in there, that was going to come out. And so again, from the world standpoint, why we could look at ourselves and others as just an old ugly chunk of marble, but from God. God, He saw something beautiful in there. And so, and He’s the one who chipped it away. I had nothing to do with that. He chipped it away. And so it says, rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. And that’s funny. It didn’t say to think of yourself and sober judgment in accordance with the degrees that you have, or to think of yourself and sober judgment in accordance with your bank account, or to think of yourself in sober judgment in accordance with how many people you think, like, you want it running for sheriff. A popularity contest or to think of yourself in sober judgment in accordance with how wonderful you think you are, but it says to think of yourselves, if you’re going to think of yourself, think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance to the measure of faith God has given you.

Well, what does that talking about in accordance with having big faith and little faith? No, it’s saying how much faith do you have in God in regards to what he says about you. Do I believe when God said that I was dead as a hammer that that was true? I do. Well, then I’m believing truth and accordance with the the measure of faith that he’s given me, I believe that’s true. Do I believe that Christ Jesus came to give me life? I do. Well then I believe that in accordance with the faith that He’s given me. And so when we’re looking at ourselves, it says, am I going to think of myself more highly than I ought not? Not if I got a brain in my head. Not if I understand what God says about me. Now, if you want to get around and believe your own press clippings, I mean walk around and think you’re wonderful because somebody writes a nice article about you, why you’re not thinking in accordance with the faith God is giving you. You’re thinking in accordance with the popularity the crowd is giving you. So folks, what it’s saying is get a life and let’s come to reality and look at ourselves as the one who created you looks at you, and it says that in so doing, you’re going to live a very stable life.

In Romans 12:3, we’ve just discussed. There’s a lot of meat in that little passage of scripture there. What he’s warning us in regards to how we should think about ourselves is don’t think of yourself more highly than you want. You see, folks, we’re living in a day and age where people are saying that we need a better self-image and we need to get a good self-image, and we need to love ourselves. And it’s interesting, isn’t it? That that’s the viewpoint of the secular non-Christian. But how we’ve carried that over into the Christian world and tried to commingle psychology with Christianity. And how in the world would you ever commingle that type of thought with, don’t think of yourself more highly than you ought. It just doesn’t make any sense at all. But, but yet, that’s what the Christian world is doing, is trying to blend and chocolate with milk and come out with pure milk. You can’t do it. You put chocolate milk. You’re going to have chocolate milk. You’re going to distort the purity of the milk and also water down the severity of the chocolate. So you quite frankly, you weaken both of them.

So if you’re going to, if you’re going to be in the psychiatry why I go ahead and stay in there. It’s a worldly philosophy and stay there, but don’t try to bring Christianity into it. It doesn’t have any place there. And if you’re going to teach the truth of the word of God, don’t try to infiltrate into that Freudian thinking and psychological thinking; it doesn’t have any word there, you’re going to be double-minded, that makes you more unstable than you were when you first got into this. A double minded man is unstable in all ways and a double minded man is one who has one foot in the world, thinking the worldly way, and one foot, and God thinking the Godly way. And you become unstable in all ways. And you look and become unstable and you act unstable. Everybody knows you’re unstable. So you’re better off to just be strictly into the world and or strictly into the word of God, but don’t try to commingle those two things.

It’s a sad thing, folks, and I do not know whether these statistics are true or not. But a gentleman was sharing that with me the other day that a huge percentage and the reason I’m not going to give the percentage he used just because it really isn’t verified, but a huge percentage of people who are in mental institutions today claim to be born again, and you would look at that and say, how could that be? Why would that be? When I think the Bible is very clear on why that is because it says a double minded man is unstable in all ways. And that is today referred to as some form of mental illness instability. And what makes you unstable is the fact that you got one foot in the world and one foot in the things of God, and folks, that doesn’t work. You can’t walk down both sides of the street at the same time. Unless you’re a drunk, and you can effectively pretty well do it then. But outside of that, you cannot. You have to get on one side or the other. But once you get on one side or the other, that instability is not anymore. You’re not unstable. If I am lost and I want to be lost, your stable in your lostness and your steadfast. You may have some opinions that are sure are screwy, as far as we’re concerned, but you’re sure stable at them. But when you’re wondering one time, well, I don’t know whether I am, or maybe I am, and maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m saved. Maybe I’m not saved. Maybe I’m a sinner and maybe I’m a new creature. You’re just going to be a mess.

So folks, it’s vitally important for you to understand your identity in Christ and think of yourself with sober judgment. Now, again, what motivated Paul to say that we shouldn’t think of ourselves more highly than we ought? We talk about that. It’s the grace of God. God has already revealed to us by his grace, what we are, who He is, and what and who we have become in Him. And that’s where we stand today at the joy of what He has done for us instead of thinking more highly than we ought of ourselves by thinking we brought these things about.

Now you look what would motivate a person to think of himself more highly than he ought. Well pride. Pride is what caused Satan to be cast from Heaven. If you remember. Pride is what caused Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In other words. If you eat of this, you will be like God, why you’ll know good and evil, you don’t need God to tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. You’ll know yourself and if you can oh boy. This is a point. If you can know, truly know what is right and what is wrong. What is good and what is evil, and you stick by that knowing that you would be God, you know what it’s saying to us, we don’t have a chance of knowing what is good and evil, and right and wrong apart from God. And even when God tells us, what do we do with it? Rationalize it, situational ethics, everything down the pipe comes along, man is incapable on his own of determining, and having the knowledge of good and evil. God was saying the minute you think you can do that, you put yourself in a position of being God. So pride is what motivates us to think of ourselves more highly than we ought. And we have to come to grips with that. Paul tells us that to counteract this attitude of pride, is to realize that we are who we are today, because of what Christ Jesus did for us at the cross, in us at the very moment of his spiritual birth and is continuing to do every day of our lives as He lives inside us.

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.