Radio Broadcast Wednesday 08/10/2022

Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at Your Identity in Christ P66 (08-10-22)

Jesus Has Prepared a New Everlasting Body for Us When We Die

~ While we are down here on earth, scripture says we will face tribulation. We can see lots of tribulation going on today. Should we think this is unusual today? No. But we have something sure of to look forward to, a new body He has prepared for us that is incorruptible. And we also have a New Heaven and a New Earth to look forward to also. Follow along as Bob shares teaching from the word of God.

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

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.

Bob George 0:43
Now I say all of that, folks, for the purpose of us analyzing what it means that I am a citizen of heaven. What it means that you and I are children of the living God, we have been reconciled to God. And therefore it says, as ministers of reconciliation, that we should be involved in letting people know something, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not counting sins against them, that when God told His disciples, He said, to go out into the world, and proclaim the gospel, we are told, in essence that we are in the military, and it says that military should not be involved in civilian affairs. In other words, guys, a military man can’t get involved in all these civilian affairs. Now, again, anything wrong with somebody’s civilian affairs? No, nothing wrong with it. It’s just that what we’ve been called to the military is is more important than know civilian affairs. And when we get involved in civilian affairs, what it’s going to do is watered down what we’re supposed to be involved in. And that is the military and before long our minds are warring against ourselves. So we, as children of God have to understand that if I am a citizen of heaven, then I am not a citizen here on this earth. As a matter of fact, does not God say that we are ambassadors, that we are Christ’s ambassadors here on this earth? Well, now let’s think for a moment, what is the job of an ambassador? Well, if if I was named by the President, United States to go over to France, and to be an ambassador in France. What would be my job over there as an ambassador? In France? Well, first of all, you couldn’t be an ambassador in France, if you had a French citizenship, you’re an ambassador, because I have an American citizenship. And I’m living over in France representing the United States of America, in France. Now, as an ambassador, is it my job to pick up Moulin Rouge? Is it my job to tell everybody how they ought to live their life there in France? Is it my job to sit around and pick up the bars and tell people how evil it is to drink wine? Is it my job to tell them that I really do not like the form of government that you have over here in France? It doesn’t seem to be like mine?

Is that my job as an ambassador? Well, folks, the answer is very obvious to that you’d get kicked out of your job if you tried to do that, why? It’s not any of your business. It’s not your job. Your being involved in French affairs, instead of representing the United States of America, in the midst of French affairs. And so if my mindset all of a sudden, I got over and said, Boy, these people are, they’re just going to hell in a handbasket. And so I’m going to have to shape them up in a hurry, and I and boy, I’ll tell you people how to do your deal. And I’m going to form parades and, and picket lines and everything else in order to get you shaped up. You’re not performing as an ambassador, you’re performing as someone who is a citizen of France, because that’s their business, not yours. And you’re also performing as someone, incidentally, who is terrifically in love with the world, or else, you wouldn’t be expecting the world to be behaving so that you might have a nicer place to live. And God also has something to say about that, folks, he says that if you’re in love of the world, the love of the Father is not in you. And my friends, I began to wonder some time if many Christians are a lot more interested in saving America than they are saving souls. And we’ve heard that so many times, we have to get America back to God. And what does that mean? What do you mean, get America back to God? What are you talking about? Well, the way it used to be, well, if it was such a big deal, the way it used to be, how come it’s in a mess it is today, and I could remember and I was a brand new Christian 20 Some years ago, that the big cry and I went along with that, because we’re gonna go change the world, we’re going to change America, we’ve changed it alright, it’s about 10 times worse than it was back in those days. It’s been a huge change. downward spiral. Is that unusual not isn’t unusual, folks. That’s the way this world is calling. It tells us that in prophecy, that’s the way it’s going. Now a person sit back and say, Oh, Bob, we’ve got this responsibility out here. My foot my friends, the only responsibility that God tells us in that Bible is to be responsible to go out and proclaim Christ Jesus, because when until a man’s heart has been changed, you haven’t changed anything. And you can get the laws change today and they’re going to be back messed up tomorrow. The Democratic Congress had laws all in line, and hereby rejoice and praise God, we got all these laws just the way they want them. And now the Republicans are in changing every one of them. And two to four years later, somebody else will be in changing them back again. There is nothing permanent about anything down here. And yet we spend millions millions of dollars supporting a candidate that’s going to do it my way. Gonna do it my way. And that’s why we support millions of Christian dollars that could be given to organizations to proclaim the Lord are spent trying to get a politician elected. What kind of a politician? Well, one that you don’t even know number one who’s gonna get elected or not. And number two, if he did, he might be as big a jerk as when he’s in there now. And yet, it doesn’t make any difference. We just every four years, every two years, we get involved in the same mess as Christians trying to get America changed. Folks, what about souls? Where did it say to go into the world and change your country? It doesn’t Well, you can’t change a country. Christ can’t change a country. He came to change people. He can’t give a United States a new birth, or Canada new birth or France, a new birth, only people, only people are born again. Now, folks, is there anything wrong with having good political system? No, that’s okay. It’s good. It’s just not the best. It’s not the best. And the danger of this is the same danger you’ve got with sports, anything wrong with it? No. But when they start taking over for education, you better do something. And that’s the position of the Christian today, our citizenship is in heaven, anything wrong with all of this political stuff? No, nothing wrong with it. It’s just not the best. And you’re never going to cure anything by understanding it, or changing it. Because it’ll be right back to its same old deal tomorrow.

I’m going to go back into Philippians 3 and pick up before verse 20, where we just pulled out the single verse of our citizenship is in heaven. But if you’d like to turn, turn back with me to I’m going to start in verse 7 of chapter 3, where Paul’s talking about I have no confidence in the flesh. He said, whatever it was to my profit I now consider loss. Folks, Paul was a Pharisee, he was the call the teacher of the teacher, a leader among the leaders, young man growing rapidly in position in that establishment, the Israelites under Roman domain, were given the right to rule themselves. And so politically, they were very active politically, and being sure that Rome was treating them properly. Although Rome didn’t have to treat them properly, they just found out it was easier to do so than to have to deal with them all the time. So they’re interested in all of those things. And so Paul knew all of those things. But he said, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I’ve lost all things, he said, I consider them rubbish or dung, that I might gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law. But that which is through faith in Jesus Christ, the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings. In other words, I’m not out there trying to get Rome shaped up, I’ll just go ahead and and I’m going to share any sufferings, becoming like him and his death. And so somehow to attain the resurrection of the dead, not that I’ve already attained this obviously hadn’t been raised, or have already been made perfect, except in the eyes of God, of course. But I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me, brothers, he said that I don’t consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do, do, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal, to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward, in Christ Jesus, the prize, I press on to it, one of these days hearing the word, well done, good and faithful servant. I’ve been at Paul’s, I said, I’ve been focused, I haven’t gotten off of my focus, I haven’t lost my calling. I’m not here to change the political system of this nation. I’m here to proclaim Christ Jesus to the lost, and Christ Jesus to the saved, to allow people to see that salvation was more than just getting out of hell into heaven, but enabling God to get out of heaven back into you. And to be an instrument through which Christ Jesus can go into the world with His love and compassion. Get rid of that critical, rebellious political spirit, and to go out and to love people. And folks, you can’t love people when I’m of this group and your event group, I’m sorry, you just can’t do that. If you’re a Republican, how am I gonna love a Democrat? And if I’m a Democrat, how am I gonna love Republicans? It doesn’t matter. This is what I am. Well, we look like it. But if you’re a child of God, you can’t be looking at people as whether they’re Democrats or Republicans. They’re lost or they’re saved. And if they’re saved, you’re one in Christ. Those other identities don’t mean a flip in heaven. And quite frankly, don’t even mean much down here anymore. And yet, that’s where we focus our attention and our time, and our money and our energy to do what? Try to get somebody elected. Try to get laws change that will benefit me. Try to get America cleaned up.

Folks, I get back to this and please understand what I’m saying. I lived in America at a time when it was cleaned up. I lived in America where you couldn’t have seen a dirty movie if you wanted to. There were no porno shops when I grew up, there were no porno tapes when I grew up on television. Man you couldn’t in early days of television, one guy had to stick a handkerchief down into the front of her dress because it was about an inch under Adam’s apple. It that’s just the way it was. You didn’t have the filthy stuff that you see today on television and sex right in front of you. You the language that is used in films today. You don’t have any of that back in those days. So you say Clean Up America I grew up in America was clean. It was the prime of of this country right after the war, people were excited. GIs were getting educated, the highest grade averages ever attained and universities were contained in those years after World War Two guys were older, mature, and they went to school to study they got good grades. We had prayer in schools, we had Bible teaching in schools. But folks, I don’t know about you, but I grew up lost as a goose. And I didn’t come to Christ until the years that quite frankly, were the most difficult and damaging years probably in the history of our nation. That was the 60s when the hippie generation came in and free sex came in and opened drug usage, and nudity and everything else. That’s when I came to Christ. When I looked at the world and said This world is bad as I am. So folks, we live in an idealistic mindset. This world is not going to get shaped up any more than your body is going to get younger. Your body is getting older. Decay is setting in not a reversal. There is no such thing as as this idiocy of the theory of evolution. Nothing evolves upwards, only downward.

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Bob George 14:12
Only when the Prince of Peace comes and a new heaven and a new earth emerges that anything’s gonna be changed and you and I can’t bring that about. So folks, he’s he’s saying I’m pressing on to the win the prize for which God has called me heavenward, not earthward heavenward in Christ Jesus. You know what he says, folks? Verse 15, all of us who are mature should take such a view of things. When we don’t take a view of it. What is he saying? It’s in maturity. Now, and if on some point you think differently, that to God will make it clear to you well, he says, I think if we think differently on that why God’s faithful he’ll make it clear. Only let us live up to what we’ve already attained. Join with with others, he said in following my example, brothers and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you, for, as I’ve told you before, and now I say again, even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross. Maybe they don’t mean to, but they’re living as enemies of the cross, their destiny is destruction. Their god is their stomach. And their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things, you get that folks, their mind is on earthly things. Friends, that’s what that’s what the nature that’s what the old nature is all about. That’s what the flesh is all about. Your horizon, has never elevated beyond what you see. Your horizon is limited to earthly things, and not heavenward things. And it says, we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, where our citizenship is in heaven, we await a Savior there, who by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, when he decides to do that, will transform our lowly bodies, so that they will be like, His glorious body. So therefore, my brother’s you whom I love, and long form, my joy and crown. That is how you should stand firm in the Lord. Dear friends, that’s what Ambassador does, you’re going to stand firm, representing your country in a foreign land. We are in this world, but we’re not of the world. And folks, the only reason I say that is to prioritize your life. Do not let the good rob you of the best. Our priority has to continue to be what God’s priority is. And that is to seek and to save that which is lost, and to build the saved into a knowledge of the life of Christ that is available to us. So that as Paul said, we present everyone perfect in Christ, not perfect in our behavior, to understand we’ve been made perfect in the sight of God, through the living Christ.

Now in 1st Peter, one, three and four, it says Praise be to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In His great mercy, He has given us new birth into a living hope, through the resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade, kept were? in heaven for you. Do we have a citizenship in heaven? Yes, we also have an inheritance in heaven. And that’s where it is not down here, in heaven. The inheritance that we have in Heaven will never perish. It’ll never spoil. It’ll never fade. You can have an inheritance here on this earth, but it’ll perish it’ll spoil. And it will fade.

We were talking the other day. And I just, you know, I’m, you know, you hate to mention something, because sounds critical, just factual. How would you like to have been years and years ago, I say years ago, at the very beginning of Harvard University, Harvard University was, was formed as a Christian school, to teach the Bible and to send ministers all over the country, to proclaim the Gospel. And so some big wealthy man comes along and says, Man, I’m gonna dedicate this $20 million building to this school for that purpose. What do you think he’d do today, if he walked back there? He’d roll over in his grave. Because what has happened, what started out as Christian, has ended up as one of the most liberal institutions on the face of the earth. And you see, to the founders, to the people who invested in these buildings who probably put on there and God we trust. You say I wasted my money, I wasted my money.

And folks that is taking place today where we are building edifices to ourselves and think it’s going to last forever, but it doesn’t, the only thing that’s gonna last forever, is Christ Jesus, the inheritance that will never perish, never spoil and never fade, that is kept in heaven. Anything kept down here, is going to fade away. Now in Hebrews 12:22 and 23, it tells us that you and I have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. And you have come to 1000s upon 1000s of angels in joyful assembly to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven, and you have come to God, the Judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men, made perfect. Hebrews 1222 and 23. We just read you’ve come to Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem. Now Mount Zion is used in this passage. to contrast the Old Testament or the Old Covenant and the new Covenant, the Old Covenant was obviously given to Moses at Mount Sinai, and it represents the law. Mount Zion, on the other hand, is representative of the new covenant, and of the heavenly city, city of God, and those who will dwell there with him. So you’re talking about the church of the Firstborn. And remember, we talked about Jesus, it’s called the First Born from among the dead, who are the dead? us, who’s the first born among the dead? Jesus. Again, that’s why his virgin birth is an up for grabs, folks that if Jesus had been born from the loins of Adam, like us, he would have been born dead spiritually. Well, he wasn’t he was born physically, of a virgin, he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, but born of a virgin, he was the firstborn from among the dead. And so today, all of us who are identified are identified with this first born from among the dead, and the one who took that life that he had and laid down for us so that he could be raised from the dead in order to give you and me life. And to all of us who come to that Jesus. It says, Our names are written in heaven. Now, that’s pretty good news as well.

Now, second, Peter 2:12. And 13 says that day will bring about, we’re talking about the end of this world now, folks, it’s going to bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements that will melt in the heat. But in keeping with this promise, we are looking forward to a new heaven, and a new earth, a home of righteousness. Now, what is going to happen someday to the heavens and the earth that we are looking at right now? Well, it says it’s going to be destroyed by fire. Is this something that’s going to affect us as children of God? Well, I don’t think so when that occurs, because I think we’ll be out of here. But I think we’ll be returning for that 1000 year Millennial reign when God is going to restore and give us a new heaven and new earth and a place called a home of righteousness. Isn’t that something, this earth is going to be called a home of righteousness. When Christ Jesus returns, not at the rapture, that’s when we go to meet him. But at His second coming, when he comes to establish His kingdom, here on this earth, bringing back to this earth with him all saints, who have been born again, and will be returning with him to this earth to rule in this home of righteousness. Now, does that give us something to look forward to? Yes. In other words, you can say, is this earth and that we live in ever going to be shaped up? Yes, it will. Is it ever going to be corrected? Yes, it will. Who’s going to do it? The Republicans? No. How about the Democrats? No. What about Ross Perot? No, he ain’t gonna do it either. Who’s going to do it? Jesus is going to do it in his timing, and in his way, and until that time, this earth is on a downward spiral to nothing but destruction.

Now, in Romans 8:18, through 23, Paul says, I consider that our present sufferings. So what he’s saying is, if you’re going to live in this world, you’re going to have suffering, where’s it going to be brought, where’s it coming from? the world. But he said in this world, that I consider our present sufferings not worth complaining with the glory that will be revealed in us someday. In other words, what I’m going through right now is nothing compared to what’s going to be revealed when God creates this new Heaven and His new Earth that we will be involved in. It says the creation waits for this event that waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed, in other words, to come back to this earth, for the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, and hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay, and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in pains of childbirth, right up to the present time. And that’s as true today, folks, as it was 2000 years ago. And not only so but it says, we find ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit, grown inwardly, underneath the skin as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons. the redemption of our bodies, already have a new Spirit. It’s Jesus. My soul, it says it’s being saved says my body will be saved. And so this body of mine is going to fall into a ground. He said, I’m gonna get you a new one. It’s gonna be called a redeemed body. I’m gonna give you a new one someday. In the meantime, if I die, I’m going to be absent from the body immediately present with the Lord, spiritually, and then I’ll wait for that day that I will receive my new body.

Now, folks in this world, we’re going to have presents every sufferings and tribulations. Should we think that’s unusual? No, we should not. Are we going to change it? No, we are not. The only thing that can change things are people. And so if people are the only things can change things, what is the priority of God? People, that’s why he came to save us. And that should be our priority as Christians, folks, our time should go to the reaching out to people, not to vote. Nothing wrong with voting. Anything wrong with it? No nothing wrong with sports. But when it takes on a priority over and above education, or getting people elected to an office takes over the election into Christ Jesus. Something’s wrong with us. And we sit around thinking we’re so holy and so spiritual. And our mind is totally preoccupied with earthly things. And absolutely giving no attention at all, to the spiritual things that God called us to.

2nd Corinthians 5:1 now we know that if this earthly tent we live in is destroyed, that’s your body. We have a building from God and eternal house in heaven, not built with human hands. Isn’t that what Jesus said? Let not your heart be troubled folks. Neither live it, be afraid. In my Father’s house are many mansions if we’re not so I’d have told you so. And I go to prepare a place for you. My friends as a child of God, you have an eternal house in heaven. It’s not built with human hands. It’s made by God. And he’s already got a place for you and for me. I hope it’s on the ocean in the mountains. But it’s a place for us, folks.

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.