Radio Broadcast Wednesday 04/12/2023

Classic Christianity – The Book of John P30 (04-12-23)

Eternal Life is Found in Christ Jesus

~ “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.” ^{1 John 5:11-13}

“But now he’s introducing to us the fact of eternal life in Christ Jesus, that this is the record that God has given us eternal life. And this life is any Son, and who has the Son has life. And who does not have the Son of God does not have life. It’s a cut and dried situation, folks, it’s, it’s not even a religion. It’s an extremely practical thing that God did for us. He says, if you need life, then you’re dead. And until we see our spiritual death, why would we ever come to him for spiritual life? If we’re not hungry, why would we come to Him for bread? If we’re not sinners, why would we come to Him for salvation and forgiveness? And so until we see our need, we’re not ready for Jesus. Whether it be back then or today, until you and I come to grips with the fact that we are dead, spiritually, born, we came into this game of life, dead, we entered into this world dead spiritually. And until we see that spiritual death, and that the only solution to that death is life. Why would we want to come to Christ for His resurrected life?”

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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
Well, let’s turn to John chapter six, Jesus is identified himself as the bread of life. And again, as we discussed last week, you have people who, when presented with a spiritual truth, never get away from the physical aspect of it. This tied in to where he had just fed the 5000. And using just a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish, and had done one of the greatest miracles that he had performed up to that point in the feeding of the 5000. He then went over to the other side of the lake, and people had noticed that Jesus didn’t get in the boat with the disciples to go over there. They did not realize that as the disciples were on their way over to the other side of the lake that a huge storm had developed, it was in the evening. And suddenly they looked up, and Jesus was out walking on water out to them. Another one is phenomenal miracles, they did not know this, the people that came over the next day to meet with Jesus. But when they finally got over there, they asked him that, you know, we saw that the other guys left the boat, how’d you get here? And Jesus answered them, because he knew what was in the heart of people. And he answered them with this statement that the reason that you came following me over here is in essence not in order to receive me or to come to me for what I came to give. But to get fed, you came to me for bread. And they equated that then well, when Moses, he, you know, he had manna, and in the 40 years, we’re out in the desert. And Jesus again answered that kind of bread that Moses gave you, first of all, did not come from Moses, it came from God. But it’s like anything down here, you’re gonna eat it, and then you’re gonna get hungry again. But he said, I have a different kind of food. And yet bread and water are the sustenance of life. But he said, I have something greater than that. And he’s talking about the spiritual aspect of being the very ability, giving us the variability to live spiritually. And he said, I’m the bread of life. And he used that as an illustration that you eat bread to stay alive physically, but I have bread from heaven, that will enable you to have and to enter into eternal life. And so he’s talking about the fact that that physical bread came from God, and I also came from God. And he said, no one has ever seen the Father except the one who is from God, he’s talking about himself, only he has seen the Father. And I tell you the truth that He who believes has everlasting life. I, He says am the bread of life, not the bread of physical life, but the bread of spiritual life. Your fathers ate the man in the desert and they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven. And you’ll notice in these passages in John, he continually repeats that statement, I came down from heaven. Again, showing that Jesus didn’t come from here and go up. He was from heaven, who came down to us. Jesus has always been God. He is God. He’s always been God, he always will be God. But God sent His Son to this earth, born of a virgin, had he been born out of the loins of Adam, he would have been born dead just like you and me spiritually. But he was born of the Holy Spirit of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit of God. And he walked on this earth in perfect love for some 33 years, thus fulfilling the law of God, and thus, being able to die for the sins of us who could not fill the law and ushered in a New Covenant of grace for us. So he’s identifying himself that he is the bread of life. Your forefathers, they ate that manna from God in the desert and yet they died. But here’s the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am that living bread. He’s not talking about a piece of dead bread is I’m a living bread. I’m the living God that came down from heaven and If anyone eats of this bread, in other words, partakes of it. Recognize you can’t live without it. It’s all a part of the thinking here. And anyone who eats this bread will live forever.

But now he’s introducing to us the fact of eternal life in Christ Jesus, that this is the record that God has given us eternal life. And this life is any Son, and who has the Son has life. And who does not have the Son of God does not have life. It’s a cut and dried situation, folks, it’s, it’s not even a religion. It’s an extremely practical thing that God did for us. He says, if you need life, then you’re dead. And until we see our spiritual death, why would we ever come to him for spiritual life? If we’re not hungry, why would we come to Him for bread? If we’re not sinners, why would we come to Him for salvation and forgiveness? And so until we see our need, we’re not ready for Jesus. Whether it be back then or today, until you and I come to grips with the fact that we are dead, spiritually, born, we came into this game of life, dead, we entered into this world dead spiritually. And until we see that spiritual death, and that the only solution to that death is life. Why would we want to come to Christ for His resurrected life?

And so because we never deal many times with the fact that we’re dead, and all we deal with the fact that we’re sinners, we stop at the cross in our teaching of salvation, instead of going on to the resurrection, which is what saves us. We’re not saved by the death of Christ, you’re saved by the life of Christ. You could not be saved eternally by the life of Christ apart from the eternal value of the cross. So you cannot mistake one for the other. And but you have to understand there’s two things here. But you can’t have one without the other. But there are two separate things. And we stop at the cross and miss the life issue. And therefore we just walk around as forgiven sinners. And that’s how many Christians see themselves as just an old forgiven sinner saved by grace, instead of seeing that you’ve been raised from the dead, and you’re a new creature in Christ, called a saint that has been saved by the grace of God, saved by the resurrection of Christ Jesus, which is the only solution to spiritual death is life. And the only life available to us is the life of Christ Jesus. And so he’s trying to get this across to us. That If anyone eats of this bread, in other words, partakes of me, Jesus, you will live forever. Now, this is quite a contrast to the Judahites, or to us today who think that I’m going to be saved because I’m a Catholic, or because I’m a Baptist, or because I’m a Presbyterian or a Methodist, or a Jew. And that’s what they were thinking, we’re God’s chosen people were saved regardless of what we do. And he say, No, that’s not true. You’re that’s not true. Well, we believe in Moses. And he said earlier, no, you don’t. If you believed in Moses, you would believe in me because Moses wrote about me. He said, You search the Scriptures, in hopes that by them, you will receive eternal life. But he said, all of these scriptures point to me, and yet you refuse to come to me for what? For life. You come to me for forgiveness, you come to me to get fed, but you don’t come to me realizing that you need life, spiritual life, you already got physical life, it’s obvious you need spiritual life, if you’re going to live spiritually, eternally. So he said, This bread is my flesh, which I give for the life of the world. Well, then the Judahites began to argue among themselves, and he said, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? And Jesus said to them, I tell you the truth and let you unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks, my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up. And remember what it says I will raise him up at the last day. He did not say our raise him up in the last days. He said, I will raise him up at the last day.

When do we get raised up? There’s only two ways that we’re going to get raised up either at death where we’re absent from the body and present with the Lord, or at the rapture of the saints, only two ways. And in this particular case, he’s saying, I give you eternal life. Now, if you have eternal life, how are you going to spend 2000 to 3000 years in the grave before you get alive? He said, If you have the Son, you have life. You don’t have it, lose it and get it later. You got it and you got it forever. And so the life that Christ came to give us is a life is that I am alive spiritually, and this spiritual life that lives in me will never die. So when he’s saying it’ll never die, I’ll just go to sleep and Jesus and wake up into his arms. For me to die is to be separated from this body and immediately presence into the presence of Christ Jesus, where I will live eternally with Christ Jesus.

And so he says, My flesh is the real food, you got manna up, but this flesh is the real food. And my blood is the real drink. Now life is in the blood, you remember the passage of scripture that life is in the blood. So when he’s talking about the blood, you’re talking about his life, my life is the real food, this body of mine is real food, and my blood, or my life is the real drink the two things we need to live, Whoever eats my flesh and drinks, my blood remains in me and I in him. Now, folks, I’m gonna stop here for just a moment. Again, Jesus is talking about a spiritual truth. When you and I come to Christ, we come to Him one way and one way only. And that’s by faith, we have no other way to come to him, except we hear truth. Our heart responds to that truth. We hear that Jesus is alive, I don’t see him, I do not hear His voice. I cannot touch him. But I know he’s alive. And I’m told in the Scripture, that he’s standing at the door of my heart knocking. And if I will hear His voice and open the door, he will come into me. Now that’s either truth or it isn’t truth. And as I’ve said to people before, that when you hear something like this, you’re either going to have to accept it or reject it. You see if Jesus isn’t alive, if this is all, just a fairy tale, how do you account for the testimony of the apostles? Who all of them lost their lives in a martyrs way over claiming that they had had an encounter with a resurrected Christ? How do you account for that? I mean, if you were kind of deceived, you can be deceived up till the time that somebody says, I’m gonna hang you upside down. And then you get rid of your deception in a hurry. How do you account for 2000 years of the testimony of people for 2000 years, testifying to the fact and on a specific day I was born again of the Spirit my life changed. How do you account for your own testimony? How do you account for my testimony? Am I a liar? Or Am I insane? Because you would either be one of the two claiming that you had an encounter with the resurrected Christ. If indeed you didn’t have an encounter with the resurrected Christ, you would either be an imposter, just as much of imposter as Jesus would have been claiming himself to be God if he isn’t, or you would be insane. A nutcase claiming yourself to be God, when indeed you’re not. Well, the same is true of you. The same is true of me. I’m either a nutcase, when somebody could say would know, we have too much problem, or an imposter or I’ve had an encounter with God. Now I’m not talking about I’ve seen God with my eyes. But I was born again back in 1969. going in one direction, as fast as I could, and coming to Christ, and the next day going the other direction as fast as I could. There is no account for that. There’s no explanation for that, except you’re born again.

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Bob George 14:19
Now, that is a spiritual birth, and Jesus told us that there’s two births, you have a physical birth, and you have a spiritual birth. You have physical bread, and you have spiritual bread. Now, today, you have people who instead of taking these passages of Jesus, and seeing them for what they are of teaching a spiritual truth using a physical illustration, why you have people today in the denomination that believe that the way that you have Jesus into your heart is to put a wafer in your mouth. And so you have people that come forward, and the priests puts wafers in your mouth and that wafer is transformed into the body of Jesus. And now Jesus lives in you. If you drink wine, well, then that is transformed into the blood of Jesus and Jesus lives in you. Well, I’ve told people, if that’s true, that isn’t gonna stay there long, and as much as we have a digestive tract. And so we’re how a person or how people can believe this, I do not know. Because I do know what I put in my mouth ain’t gonna stay there. Maybe that’s why you have to keep coming back, to get Jesus over and over again. But there are people who believe that, or people who are taught that until they learn otherwise. That is not the way that you receive Jesus. You receive Jesus, not by taking a wafer or not by drinking something physically, but by understanding the truth that Jesus was raised from the dead, so that that life that raised Him from the dead, can raise you from the dead spiritually. And you enter into that by faith. And when you do, there’s something called being born again. Do I understand that miracle? I don’t understand that miracle at all. I don’t know how God did that. But I know he did it. And how do I know He did it, because I know he did it to me. And you know it because of what he did to you. It’s, it’s a miracle of new birth in Christ Jesus.

Now, he said to us that whenever you participate and enter into that agreement between God and man, by faith, you are born again. And you will live forever. So there’s no temporary life down here at all for us who are in Christ Jesus, when we are absent from the body, we’re eternally present, with the Lord forever. Now, he said, he said, he said these things while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. Now On hearing this, many of His disciples said, this is hard teaching. Well, of course, it’s hard to teach. And he’s talking about bread, and yet he’s talking about spiritual bread. He’s talking about wine, and yet he’s talking about spiritual wine. He’s trying to make an illustration here to us. And whenever we hear a spiritual illustration, for some reason, our minds are always thinking on the physical realm. Because why? That’s where we live, isn’t it? We live on a physical plane, we live on being able to see things and touch things and hear things. But he says, this is different. There’s a spiritual realm to this life that you know nothing of that he said, I’m going to teach you. And so it said, this is a hard teaching who can accept this? If I had a person say, I want to believe this, but there’s something in my head that just doesn’t comprehend it. Now aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, does this teaching in essence offend you? Is this offensive to you? Well, he didn’t give them a chance to answer he probably knew what their answer was, well, I don’t know where it’s offensive we’re not Lord. But it’s hard to comprehend. It’s hard to accept. He says, Well, what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before? Now you just got through saying that he not that I came from heaven, I came down from heaven said what do you what would you think if you saw this man all of a sudden go back to where I came from? Did that happen? With Jesus following his resurrection? Absolutely. And until that happened, I did not believe there was a true belief system. I don’t think there was that gut rendering deal where a person says into the nth of their being, this is absolute truth. When they saw Jesus ascend back to where he came from. He said, The Spirit gives life. I’m talking about a life different than this physical life that you have. The Spirit gives life and then he says, Guys, the flesh counts for nothing.

Guys, think about this for a minute. When you get to be older, and all of us are aging. Some of us are just a little bit more ahead than others. But if you tarry, you’re going to be where I am someday. We’re growing older. And I want to tell you something, guys, and any of us sitting in this room who have any age on us at all, know how quickly this life goes by, don’t wait. It’s like this. I’m at the tail end of life. And I look back, and it seems like it’s gone like this, just in a flash. But guys, this life down here that we have in light of eternity is nothing but a split second. But we play such unbelievable importance on it. Look what we do. I mean, these bodies of ours are just unbelievably important. Guys, I don’t care. When you’re 60, and 70, you just ain’t gonna look like a 20 year old. I don’t care how many operations you have, it just isn’t gonna work. You can get the face all stretch, but your arms are bagging. And unless you want to get somebody just zippia from the head, it ain’t gonna work. But we’re so interested in his body and so preoccupied with his body, that you’ve got all kinds of diseases that take place or what people call disease, they got anorexia bulimia, starving yourself to death, so you look good. And I don’t care how long you do that. One of these days, you’re not gonna look good. Maybe look a little better than others, but you’re not gonna be what you were when you’re 20. You don’t see 60 year old bottles in bikinis on television. Thank God. It’s temporary. This life is temporary. We all get a turn to look good. We all get to go through the 20s and stuff and look good, that’s nice but isn’t gonna stay there. If you’re an athlete, you’re not gonna play pro athletes, athletics for all your life. Are you guys? Play for the Cowboys for a while, but after a while the body doesn’t do what it used to be able to do. You think it will until you get hit one day too hard. You say that’s all that’s enough of this. It just doesn’t work. All of this is temporary. That’s why Jesus said the flesh counts for nothing. The Spirit is what counts. We put all of our emphasis is on this flesh that’s gonna die. And no emphasis on the spirit that’s gonna live forever. That’s why it says Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. I’ll add these things to you. But these things I had to you are temporary. Anything we do down here in this flesh is temporary. Our successes are temporary, your failures are temporary. It isn’t gonna last forever. And that’s what he’s saying to us is it’s what it’s what we do spiritually that counts. This is what is going to affect you eternally. What you do down here will only affect you for a few years. Period. And yet, our emphasis is constantly on this life, with no thought at all for what’s going to happen in the afterlife. The words I’ve spoken to you, Jesus said they’re spiritual things. They’re not physical thing. I’m not talking about bread to eat, I’m talking about spiritual food. These words, I’ve spoken to you our spirit and their life, they’re words that will give you eternal life. So that you can die in peace, so to speak, because we’re all gonna die. This isn’t a message of gloom, it’s a message of reality. We’re not gonna live forever. And so he says, If you want to live forever, you’re not going to do so physically. But you can do so spiritually. And these words of mine are life. And yet, there’s some of you who don’t believe. And one of the reasons you don’t believe is we’re thinking too much on this level down here of the flesh, instead of what’s going to happen in the Spirit.

Because they said that Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, this is why I told you that no one can come to Me unless the Father has enabled him. Now guys, again, it is God’s will, that none should perish, and all should come to repentance. Is that true or not? That’s a quote right out of the Scripture. It’s God’s will we know what his will is. That none should perish and all should come to repentance. Are all going to come to repentance? Why? Even though it’s God’s will that you come to repentance. He also gave you a will. It’s God’s will and you have a will. That’s one of the things that makes you human. He gave you a choice. God didn’t make a robot. People say, How does God allow these things to happen? Because he gave man a will. That’s why things happen. Why are these wars taking place because he gave man a will. And a man chooses to go into worship Allah make up his own God instead of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Believe that you’re gonna go to heaven and get your 70 virgins by killing somebody who’s not a believer like you. Instead of believing in Jesus, who came not to give death to people, but to give life to people. And so we realize this truth that not all people, because we have choices are going to come to Him. Now God gives grace to the humble. And he rejects the proud and the reason that people reject this message of salvation through Jesus alone, is because of pride. I don’t want that I there’s many ways to God I want to be liberal, I want to I want to be, I want to, I want to be a broad thinker. I want to I want to just be one of those guys that just believe everything’s okay. It’s like a church marquee. I said, one time come in to our church, you’ll feel comfortable. We don’t believe in anything. I want to be tolerant, tolerant people don’t want to call sin, sin, call it something else. It’s pride. And God will not touch your heart when it’s prideful. So when he’s saying, This is what I will do that no one can come to Me unless the Father has enabled him. How does God enable you to come to you? When you’ve had your heart softened. When you’ve gotten to the end of your self sufficiency, the end of yourself pride, the end of your own righteousness, there’s only two kinds of righteousness, God’s righteousness and self righteousness, and self righteousness is an abomination to God.

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.