Radio Broadcast Wednesday 07/03/2024

Classic Christianity – Book of Hebrews P127 (07-03-24)

Read The Word of God Yourself to Make Sure What is Being Taught is Truth

~ Don’t believe what any man says, no matter who he is. For deception runs rampant in the church today, and most have no clue about how the lies of Satan get passed on down through the teaching of man, without ever checking out to see if things are true or not of what man is saying. Don’t assume that anyone has all the details of Truth worked out either. And don’t assume that someone you respect, cannot be deceived themselves in a key area of the word of God. The Holy Spirit will teach you the Truth of everything, and context is always important to consider.

When listening to someone teach out of the word of God, it is wise to read different translations of the word of God to see if things are so or not. And we have all the translations available to us, at our fingertips online, and we can even look at the Greek and Hebrew and verify the meaning of words on everything. God gave us his word, but to understand the meaning of it requires trusting in the Holy Spirit to teach you everything.

A wise leader points a person to Jesus and points them to trusting in His Holy Spirit to teach truth. I remember Bob saying many times, “Don’t trust me for what I say, I could be wrong. Go to the word of God yourself to verify everything.” That is good advice today. And don’t forget, even Bob George had things wrong, and he changed his mind (repented) on key aspects of the word of God once the Holy Spirit had showed the truth to him. Then he exercised faith (properly responding to Truth) and told the people (us) where he was wrong and then started teaching Truth. Yet there are still places where people are wrong in their understanding of Scripture, and if he were with us today, Bob would once again repeat what he said, “Don’t trust me. Check things out for yourself in the word of God.” And hence, we are at this point where we ought to “Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever… Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they watch over your souls as those who must give an account. To this end, allow them to lead with joy and not with grief, for that would be of no advantage to you.” What did Bob George say to do? Check out the word of God for yourself, verify if things are so. Context always matters, leaders within the church, and we are not jumping around to other leaders outside the church here either, for only the ones in the church are the leaders that watch over your souls. Details matter in everything. Pay attention to the details. And if the words you are reading here right now cause you to take pause, then the Holy Spirit will show you the Truth too. Trust only in God, not Man for all Truth. Lean not on your own understanding of anything today, for all wisdom comes from God. “Now if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask from God, the One giving generously to all and not finding fault, and it will be given to him.” James 1:5

~ Continue in brotherly love. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those in prison as if you were bound with them, and those who are mistreated as if you were suffering with them.

Marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, for God has said:

“Never will I leave you,

never will I forsake you.”

So we say with confidence:

“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.

What can man do to me?”

Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace and not by foods of no value to those devoted to them. We have an altar from which those who serve at the tabernacle have no right to eat.

Although the high priest brings the blood of animals into the Holy Place as a sacrifice for sin, the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate, to sanctify the people by His own blood. Therefore let us go to Him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace He bore. For here we do not have a permanent city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that confess His name. And do not neglect to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they watch over your souls as those who must give an account. To this end, allow them to lead with joy and not with grief, for that would be of no advantage to you.

Pray for us; we are convinced that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way. And I especially urge you to pray that I may be restored to you soon.

Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with every good thing to do His will. And may He accomplish in us what is pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

I urge you, brothers, to bear with my word of exhortation, for I have only written to you briefly.

Be aware that our brother Timothy has been released. If he arrives soon, I will come with him to see you.

Greet all your leaders and all the saints.

Those from Italy send you greetings.

Grace be with all of you.^{Hebrews 13:1-25}

Pray to God:

“Lord Jesus, teach me the truth of the world today and give me the wisdom to know the truth and identify the lies of the devil. Thank you God.”

~ “In this world, it says we’re going to have tribulation, but he said, Fear not have overcome the world. And in our experience, last week, I thank him for allowing those things to happen, because it helped to draw me back once again, to the reality that it is all him and none of us. We can say it and believe it, but through those experiences is where we know we really believe it, and that’s exciting to us, so I wanted to share that a little bit with you today to let you know that we’re all in the process of learning. We never get there. We’re just in the process and. I am so grateful today to be not only in Christ, but to realize that that unless the Lord decides something else, in some other way, that Amy and I are going to be able to spend a few more years together. And that is good news to me. So I thank the staff. I think so many of them that were out there that were deeply concerned about this, and their love and their the outpouring of their love, to me was and to Amy was a great encouragement to us. We have the greatest group of people in the world to work with, and I thank God for that.” ~ Bob George

Bible Study Booklets

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.

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
What it says in the scripture for me to live is Christ for me to die is gain. That’s verbiage, until you’re met with it and you realize, you know, that’s true. That’s not just theology, that’s reality. And so as I said, we, we, we had that, that period of time and grief, and I saw the heart of the staff reach out, and all of us together in in the remorse in our hearts that something could be wrong there, but yet, with faith in God that he’s bigger than all of it. And so as we got back yesterday, why, as as some of you are know, or maybe you don’t know, but my daughter’s husband is a radiologist, so that made it convenient. And so. We got back Friday night, and we weren’t going to go out there until after today, but my daughter said, Get out here. So we drove out yesterday, and John took a look at the x rays and took some additional ones, and found out that it was not a dangerous situation at all, that it was a deposit that had been there, probably from the early days when Amy was going through the hungry years and that type of thing in Russia and Germany, and had the tuberculosis that she had had as a little kid, and those were scar tissues and this type of thing. And so we got a phenomenal report that she is okay. And that is good news.

She is okay all along. We didn’t know it. Now you look at those type of things and say, Well, why do we go through those and what are? What is the meaning of those guys? It brings you back to reality. It really brings you back to reality that the fact that when the Bible says that the only thing that matters is faith, expressing itself through love, that is absolutely all that matters. And when it says to keep on loving each other, it doesn’t say, Keep on loving each other. When each other does what you want them to do, you notice that. It doesn’t say, I love you if you perform the way I want you to perform. It doesn’t say I love you. If you do what I want you to do, that I love you if you act the way I want you to act. It just says, Keep on loving each other. How come? Well, because your brother’s in Christ and in the final analysis, all this nitpicking that we do with each other. In the final analysis, if you were getting ready to go meet the Lord, that kind of stuff would get diminished in a hurry. And we spend so much time in life dealing and worrying over minutiae instead of the truth of reality, that it’s almost sickening how sick we can be, isn’t it? And in the final analysis, when we’re looking at this life that we have, all we have, and when, when they came to Christ and said, Lord, what is the work of the ministry? And he said, Believe on me. That’s it. That is the work of the ministry. That’s that’s the work of the ministry to learn how to trust the Lord Jesus Christ in all things, to learn how to trust him. Because the tendency of man is to say, well, I want to get involved in this. And one of the problems that we have, it’s like the Bible says, A man who judges a matter without hearing a matter is a fool. And we have to understand, there’s a lot of us who are fools, who judge things without hearing things. It’s like meeting a situation and hearing only one side of a story and not going to hear the other side of the story, and therefore judging the story on the one side, you’re a fool, and we’re fools when we do this type of thing. And all it does, it enables us to get nitpicking with each other instead of loving each other.

You know, it seems like all of the things that you sometimes we criticize each other, or we’ve got little things that maybe we don’t like about each other. It’s amazing how all that stuff fades away when you think someone’s going to die, how rapidly you forget about all of those kind of things. So when the when the Bible is saying to us to keep on loving each other, it that’s a therefore. That’s one of that’s a therefore of this life we’ve gone through the book of Hebrews talking about the Lord Jesus, Christ and all of his fullness. You talk about the Lord being greater than Moses, the Lord being greater than Joshua, greater than Abraham, greater than angels, greater than the Levitical priesthood, ushering in a new covenant, greater than the old. And we can leave that there in this realm of theology, or we realize, no, there’s a reason for saying that. There’s a therefore to that. And the therefore is it that Christ is greater than all, and if Christ is greater than all, then can we, or can we not trust one another and trust people in the hands of God? The God that we say, that we that we trust. In other words, can I trust God in your life to do what he wants to do to you and with you, or do I have to get involved helping you out a little bit? You see, man has that tendency, don’t we, to say, God needs my help someplace down the line. I mean, he can’t do it, so I’ve got to get involved in it. It was like when Amy and I were sitting in that situation and not knowing what to do, I had to say to her, one thing, honey, that is your body and it’s your life. Because Amy’s one of those that says, brother, if they’re, if they’re even thinking, if this thing’s real, and they’re even give a thought of going in and cutting on me, it’s all over. We’re now, I’m not doing it. I’m riding this one out. That’s the way she believes. And I said, if that’s the way you believe, that’s where it’s going to be. That is your body, that is your life. It is your God, and God is as real to you as he is to me, and I will not interfere with whatever decision you’re going to make in regard to you and your body that’s hers. But you see, the tendency that we have is to say she needs a little help. She’s going to need a little help while it goes live. And the fact of the matter is is, no, we don’t need a little help. We’ve got a lot of help in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is alive, living in us, who is truly our hope of glory. And so as we as we come to the to the Word of God, and we see the reality of him, we’ve got to apply a proper therefore to that. And if Jesus is who he says he is, and if he is the love, the Mercy, the grace that indeed we know he is, then therefore, trust him. Trust Him. He is trustworthy, and therefore trust him.

I think, I couldn’t help but think one of the guys that was there, he is a pastor from California. He said, Dear brother, and he had been, he had been for years, an evangelist with the Walter Martin organization. Had been with them dealing with cults and everything else, and he stood up and shared at the end of the conference, and he said, God sent Jesus into the world not to condemn the world. That’s why he sent me. That’s why I didn’t send Jesus condemned the world. He sent me to do that. And and, you know, I thought to myself, we get that attitude after a while. I think so many times we get so very critical. And, man, there’s a lot out there that’s, that’s, that’s horrible, but you’re never going to correct that by attacking the wrong of it, the only correction you’re ever going to do is through the presentation of the truth of something else, and it’s only Christ that’s going to shove out the error. You can’t jerk it away from people. It’s only the Word of God that can push it out, but you can’t jerk it out. And and to realize so again, that’s where it continually is talking about in the Scripture, that it is the love of God that is what teaches you and me to say no to unrighteousness. It’s also the love of God that’s going to teach someone else to say no to unrighteous. Not not the criticism of evil, but the love of God that pushes it out. And in the final analysis, our mindset has to continually get back to Jesus and His truth and the realization of that truth in our own lives, and let that be the controlling factor in our life, in our lives. And that’s why it says to be controlled by the Spirit is to be controlled by the love of God.

In this world, it says we’re going to have tribulation, but he said, Fear not have overcome the world. And in our experience, last week, I thank him for allowing those things to happen, because it helped to draw me back once again, to the reality that it is all him and none of us. We can say it and believe it, but through those experiences is where we know we really believe it, and that’s exciting to us, so I wanted to share that a little bit with you today to let you know that we’re all in the process of learning. We never get there. We’re just in the process and. I am so grateful today to be not only in Christ, but to realize that that unless the Lord decides something else, in some other way, that Amy and I are going to be able to spend a few more years together. And that is good news to me. So I thank the staff. I think so many of them that were out there that were deeply concerned about this, and their love and their the outpouring of their love, to me was and to Amy was a great encouragement to us. We have the greatest group of people in the world to work with, and I thank God for that.

Well, let’s, let’s go into the 13th chapter. Do any of you, I guess we stop right here. Do any of you have any questions in regard to what we’ve we’ve just talked about? I feel so inadequate, and I can’t express adequately what’s going on my heart right now. But if there are any questions, I’ll, I’ll answer it In what regard, what we just talked about, if not, well, we’ll just go on. Okay, let’s pick up in the 13th chapter here, keep on loving each other as brothers. This is the therefore of the whole book of Hebrews. Don’t forget to entertain strangers before by doing, some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if yourselves were suffering. It talks about marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, and God will judge the adulterer and the sexually immoral. And there we were talking about the fact of identities of people who are lost engaged in those activities are going to be judged, and if that activity is judged is wrong, then as Christians, we should not be engaged in it.

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Bob George 13:52
Keep your lives free from the love of money. It certainly doesn’t say keep your lives free from money. That would be a little difficulty. Some of us have tried that, but it says to keep our lives free from the love of money that Chuck was talking about, he was an executive with Xerox, and that wasn’t enough, so he decided to grow some marijuana and and all of that type of thing today, a dear brother in Christ, a phenomenal pastor that has come to understand the grace of God, is now struggling with his denomination in regard to the teaching of the fullness of the grace of God. But is in him, understands it, and is moving out with great the boldness of God in the proclamation of this message, but the love of money, it carries you into all kinds of tricks. And you don’t have to be rich to have the love of money. You can be poor and be in love with money. So the love of money means I want to keep what I’ve got and, and I don’t care what I have to do, I’m going to keep everything I can and and it says it’s an entrapment. And guys, when you understand the grace of God, I’ll tell you there are a lot of things in life that are not going to be the same temptations to you and me that we used to experience out there in the world, there’s going to be new ones and more subtle temptations than you’ve had before, and it’s going to be very easy, and it is very easy for us to fall into entrapments of subtleties, not the grossies, but the subtleties of entrapment. And these are attitudes of the heart. That he is saying is the only thing to develop these attitudes that’s going to keep you from falling into the trap of those subtleties. And one of the attitudes is, don’t be in love with money and to be content with what you have, because it’s God who said, I’ll never leave you and I’ll never forsake you. And so we say with confidence, The Lord is my helper. I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? It says, To Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you another attitude, the apostles spoke the word of God to these early Christians, and he’s saying, Remember those leaders. And I think what we have done, in many instances is some people have taken this to try to hammer and put people under some kind of a control in the church, in using passages of Scripture like this to try to make a control mechanism, it isn’t the case of it doesn’t say Allow leaders to control you, but it says, remember them, because there is a pressure when you’re in the position of the proclamation of the Word of God. There’s a pressure there. There is no question about that. There are temptations and pressures there that necessarily are not out in other areas of work or employment, or whatever it might be, people say full time, we’re on full time Christian work. That is true to a degree. But there is when God calls some to be teachers and some to be pastors, evangelists, that type of thing. There is a pressure there. Believe me, I’ve been on both sides of it, that there is a pressure on this side that is not on the other side, and that’s why it’s saying to remember them, they spoke the word of God to you and consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. It doesn’t say imitate their actions, but it says, imitate their faith. And a leader who is in the Word of God, the only example that I want to ever be, and I don’t ever want to think whether am or not, but the only example that is there is, am I a person that’s trust the Lord, or aren’t I? And if I am, that’s a good example to follow.

It says that Jesus is the same yesterday and today and forever. So don’t be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. You suppose there’s any of those out there? It’s good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace. So he said, Grace of God will strengthen your heart. You’re not going to strengthen your heart by ceremonial foods, which are of no value to those who eat them. We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat. If you’re in Christ, you got a different altar. It’s the cross of Calvary. Those who are not at the cross of Calvary. That’s not their altar. They got another one out there someplace. The high priest carries the blood of animals to the most holy place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burnt outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside of the city gate to make the people holy, set apart through his own blood, not the blood of bulls and goats, but through his own blood and let us therefore it says, Go to him outside the camp, not in the temple outside. That’s where he died. He didn’t die inside the Holy of Holies. He died outside, for all people bearing the disgrace that he bore. It’s much more acceptable to had he been able to die in the temple. But he didn’t die in the temple. He didn’t die on the altar where they killed blood, where the blood of bulls and goats were offered. He went outside the camp and died. He died out there and bore the disgrace of it. For here we don’t have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come, which is the Heavenly Jerusalem. Man is still preoccupied with the earthly Jerusalem. And the Bible is telling us there’s a heavenly Jerusalem has come, and that’s where we ought to be preoccupied with.

Now it says, Through Jesus, Therefore let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that confess his name and don’t forget to do good and to share with others. For with such sacrifices, God is pleased. Now it talks about obey your leaders. Now that is not talking about church leaders. That’s talking about the government, obey your leaders and submit to their authority. Now, doesn’t that sound funny as a Christian, but you see, as a born again Christian, I have no qualms at all about obeying my leaders, unless my leaders told me to do something and tried to force me to do something that was contrary to the Word of God. But we have to understand something about authority, that we live in a world and man is sinful, and if you didn’t have laws to control and curtail the sin nature of man, this place would be in utter chaos, would it not? And so God initiated government. Whether we like it or not is not the issue. The issue is it doesn’t matter whether I like it or not, because I’m in the world, but I’m not of it, and so it’s not difficult to obey it, because I’m not hung up on it anyway. And so it is saying to us, to obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you. Now I realize that that’s like the police force. It’s like the army. It’s like everything else. They keep watch over they’re the thing that enables some sort of sanity to come in a world that would be totally insane without those rules and regulations that the world has to live under. So they look out after you as men who must give an account, so obey them, so that their work will be a joy and not a burden. For that would be no advantage to you. There would be no advantage to me, as a Christian, to make the work of the police force a burden or the work of the government a burden. In fact, by trying to do so, I’d have to be a spend more time trying to fight the government than I would share the Lord.

Now, let’s turn back over to First Peter. First Peter two, beginning at verse 13. Submit yourself, for the Lord’s sake, to every authority instituted among men, whether to a king or to a supreme authority, or to governors who are sent by him by God to punish those or by them, to punish those do wrong and to commend those who do right, for it is God’s will that by doing good, you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men. There were Christians back in those days who said, I am under God. I don’t have to listen to anything. I don’t have to listen civil authority. I’m not under their authority. I can do, anything I want to do. In other words, we as Christians are above the law. There are Christians today who are creeping into that, we’re above the law. And it’s saying, Don’t do that. It’s God’s will that by doing good, you silence the ignorant talk of foolish men. I’m in the world. I’m going to obey the government, but I’m not of it. Live as free men, but don’t use your freedom to cover up for evil. There are people who can do evil against the very government that we live in and cover that up as being godly. So don’t use your freedom to cover up your evil, your love of money. Live as servants of God. Show proper respect to everyone. Love the brotherhood of believers, Fear God and honor the king. He’s talking about civil obedience.

Turn back to Romans, if you will. Chapter 13 in the book of Romans, Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authority of government over man was established by God. We’re very privileged to live in a country where we can elect officials, and then we get all preoccupied with that and think that somebody is going to come and really do something. I haven’t seen much done in my years, but maybe someone will. That’s not the solution to the world. Is politics. It’s the Lord. But we still get off and again, that’s one of those things where we start thinking that maybe man can do something. And quite frankly, we can think that, but I’m just glad elections only come every four years, so we can only get hung up, you know, every four years on that stuff. But the fact of the matter is that man is not going to correct anything, only God’s going to change things. But he established authority for to keep rule and to keep from chaos from going rampant. So there is no authority on this earth, no government on this earth, that has not been established by God. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Now, I don’t know how much clear you need it than that, do you? They’ve been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority of the government is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves, not from God, but from the government.

Announcer 27:11
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