Radio Broadcast Wednesday 08/28/2024

Classic Christianity – Book of Galatians P15 (08-28-24)

Jesus Set us Free! Let Freedom Reign in Your Life Today!

~ When a person comes to saving Faith in Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes to live in that person, setting them free from the death penalty. They become alive in Christ Jesus, and the Holy Spirit now lives them for All time. Nothing can ever take away the Life of God in them. And yet there are many that allow themselves to be put back under the bondage of slavery, too dumb to realize that they are Free in Christ Jesus. And yet the book of Galatians is crystal clear on this, yet people discount the word of God, and still act like they are under some sort of law today. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1 They bring back over that which was taken away at the cross. They count the cross as having no value at all. They listen to Satan’s liars, that teach people that you still need to do this and do that, and if you don’t do this or that, you will lose your salvation. These people that teach that have no clue what salvation is. And it doesn’t matter what it is, for even a speck of leaven spoils the whole batch of dough. Don’t tolerate anyone teaching that you have to obey a little bit of the law. It’s a lie from Satan. Stop listening to them. Stop promoting them. Stop supporting them. And it doesn’t matter how long you may have been a part of a “church” because once you come to the knowledge of TRUTH, you are a part of the TRUE church of God, not the building on the corner of walk and don’t walk. The Holy Spirit is your guide, NOT what a man says, no matter who that man is. Stand firm in the Faith. Be bold for Truth. Tell it like it is. For it is for Freedom that Jesus has set you FREE. Be FREE!

“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever rejects the Son will not see life. Instead, the wrath of God remains on him.” John 3:36

“For Christ is the end of the law, to bring righteousness to everyone who believes.” Romans 10:4

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not be encumbered once more by a yoke of slavery.

Take notice: I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I testify to every man who gets himself circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by the law have been severed from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.

But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. All that matters is faith, expressed through love.

You were running so well. Who has obstructed you from obeying the truth? Such persuasion does not come from the One who calls you. A little leaven works through the whole batch of dough. I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is troubling you will bear the judgment, whoever he may be.

Now, brothers, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. As for those who are agitating you, I wish they would proceed to emasculate themselves!

For you, brothers, were called to freedom; but do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. Rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is fulfilled in a single decree: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you keep on biting and devouring one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another. Galatians 5:1-15

Pray to God:

Do you really want to know the WHOLE Truth of what is going on today?

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7

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.”

~ “And so he says to us, now that faith has come, now that you have put your faith, not in religion, but in Jesus, the person of Christ, Jesus, you are no longer under the supervision of the law. The law has done its work. The law is a mirror. The law has showed you that your face is dirty. The law has showed you you can’t do it. And if you still think you can, you’re deceived, and the Bible says you’re under a curse. You cannot do it. If you think you’re a law abider, try the first one on for size. Love your God with all your heart, mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself. Try that one on for size, see how you doing. You can’t love God until you understand he loves you. That’s why there’s no such thing as a legalist that loves God. That’s verbage that is nonsensical, because a legalist thinks he’s still trying to earn a legalist is still doing. He doesn’t realize it’s done. And it says that in the Scripture, it’s not that we love God, but that He loved us first. We cannot initiate love to God. We only can respond to the love of God, and it’s not that we loved him, but that He loved us first. And we understand that love for me, and I can respond to His love, but I cannot initiate it. And so when you’re still working at it, you’re not loving God, you’re loving yourself, and we love our pride and how well we’re doing for Jesus. And what we have to do is to understand that Paul is writing here to cut through all of this nonsense and to get down to the nitty gritty of life and say it’s all Jesus and it’s none of you. And so faith has come. You’re no longer under the supervision of the law.

Now chapter five, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Now, what have you been set free from? The bondage of the law. The bondage of the law. What was the bondage of the law? The wages of sin is what? Death. That’s a bondage, isn’t it? Kind of a bondage? You have been set free from the bondage of the law by the Lord Jesus Christ. So he says it is for freedom. So. You could be free that I set you free, I set you free so that you could be free. Now, isn’t that hard?” ~ Bob George

Bible Study Booklets

Join Bob George in this chapter by chapter exposition of the letter to the Galatians. Available for download the complete series on the Book of Galatians. The Letter to the Galatians is key to understanding Law and Grace, the new covenant, and being one in Christ Jesus.

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 0:27
Well, let’s turn to Galatians five, as Paul is now coming to the conclusion of this marvelous book of Galatians. And this book is something that when you read, I do not know how people who are in ministry, who have supposedly studied scripture in seminary, could ever read this book and go back and teach the law. I do not know. I cannot comprehend that it is a marvelous treatise that Paul gave to us in regard to the difference between the law and grace. If you remember back in in verse 23 of chapter three, you don’t have to turn now, I’ll read it. It’s talking about the fact that before faith came, and that is before Jesus came, historically and before Jesus came reality and a reality in your life. So before Christ, Jesus became a reality in your life. It says that you were locked up until faith should be revealed. You and I are locked up under the law. We are born into this world under the law, and we’re born into this world under the consequence of the law. And the consequence of the law is that the wages of sin is what? Death. It is, not out of fellowship, as is taught all over the place, in and out of fellowship. No place in the scripture where you’re in and out of fellowship, that’s all man made teaching, where every time you sin, you’re out of fellowship. There, it’s not in the Scripture. You’re in in fellowship. You’re either in the fellowship saved, or you’re out of the fellowship, lost. And fellowship is what takes place when you come into fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ. And so there isn’t any of that other stuff out there, except in man made teaching. And we have to understand that.

And so when we have come into this relationship with Christ Jesus, we then are freed from the consequence of the law. And we are freed from the law. Because you cannot separate the law from the punishment under the law. The law is meaningless unless there’s punishment for violation, and so God at the Cross nailed the law. It says to the cross why the law was paid for. The law was fulfilled through the life of Christ. It was upheld by the death of Christ, and that’s what enabled him to usher in a new covenant in which we stand today, and that is the covenant of grace.

Someone recently heard was, what is the law? The law is do. What is grace? Done. There’s your difference under the law do, under grace, done, finished, over, complete. Now learn to walk in it. And so it says that you were locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ so that we might be justified by faith. You can’t be justified by faith under the law. The only way that man could be justified was through grace, because no man will ever be declared righteous in the sight of God through obedience to the law, and this is what he’s trying to get across. You people who want to be under the law, you’re a goner. He says, You are under a curse. You’re under the curse of the law. You’re under the death penalty. You’ve got yourself on death row by your own choosing. The doors are unlocked. The bars are unlocked. Walk out of there, and that’s what he’s saying to us. You’re in that thing by your own choosing. You were born under the law, and I’ve opened the gates, and you can walk out any time that you want to into a newness of life. And so he’s saying to us, the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ so that we could be justified by faith. And now that faith has come. And if you’re sitting in this room today who have exercised faith, not planned religion, there’s a lot of people plan religion, and I’ve seen them, and I’ve sat in assemblies with looking every Sunday morning at hundreds of young people with their rosy cheeks and their youth, sitting there singing their hearts out and go to school and died of AIDS. I could name them on both hands, not a reality, just a name.

And there are many people who go to schools and they sit there in those schools, some of them religious schools, and study the Bible academically, just like you’re studying the history book, and never come to know the author, never meet the author, because we’re acquainted with books. To study the books without ever an intent of knowing the author, whether the author has a brain in their head or not, whether they don’t know what they’re talking about or not. We don’t know. You just study the book, don’t you? And you just take what’s in the book, and you get it in a blue book. And you do that enough times, you’re going to get a degree. That’s how hard it is to get a degree. You don’t know whether the author has a brain in his head. You don’t know whether he knows anything. You don’t know whether what he’s talking about is true. All you’re doing is internalizing what he says and put it in a book and get a grade. And we worship an education. Isn’t that strange? It’s especially strange when you think in 1941 the three most educated countries in the world were Japan, Germany and the United States of America, and what were they doing? Blowing the daylights out of each other. And so if anybody thinks that intelligence has anything to do with morality, they’d better start thinking again.

And so he says to us, now that faith has come, now that you have put your faith, not in religion, but in Jesus, the person of Christ, Jesus, you are no longer under the supervision of the law. The law has done its work. The law is a mirror. The law has showed you that your face is dirty. The law has showed you you can’t do it. And if you still think you can, you’re deceived, and the Bible says you’re under a curse. You cannot do it. If you think you’re a law abider, try the first one on for size. Love your God with all your heart, mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself. Try that one on for size, see how you doing. You can’t love God until you understand he loves you. That’s why there’s no such thing as a legalist that loves God. That’s verbage that is nonsensical, because a legalist thinks he’s still trying to earn a legalist is still doing. He doesn’t realize it’s done. And it says that in the Scripture, it’s not that we love God, but that He loved us first. We cannot initiate love to God. We only can respond to the love of God, and it’s not that we loved him, but that He loved us first. And we understand that love for me, and I can respond to His love, but I cannot initiate it. And so when you’re still working at it, you’re not loving God, you’re loving yourself, and we love our pride and how well we’re doing for Jesus. And what we have to do is to understand that Paul is writing here to cut through all of this nonsense and to get down to the nitty gritty of life and say it’s all Jesus and it’s none of you. And so faith has come. You’re no longer under the supervision of the law.

But it is hard because we don’t respond that way. And as I’ve given this illustration before, but well worthy of doing again, you can envision with me, going back to the years of slavery in this country, the worst atrocity that we’ve had in this country, even more so than the World Trade Center of people killing brothers, killing each other, and much of that was over slavery. And so imagine that all of a sudden, you’re at a slave block, and you’re standing there with me watching this, and all of a sudden they bring in this huge, muscular black man, and you stand him at the at the slave block, and the bidding starts going up for him, and it goes up, and it goes up and it up, and one guy bids, and the another guy tops, and it just goes, skyrockets, and all of a sudden a man comes in and triples what the highest bid was. And the auctioneer says, going, going, gone. And he sells that slave. The man comes over and pays this exsorbent amount of money for this slave, more than had ever been purchased for a man ever before. And he goes over and asks the man who did the sale for the keys to the locks. The man hands him the keys. He goes over to the black gentleman. He says, Sir, stick out your hands, and he sticks out his hands, and he unlocks the bars, and they fall to the ground. He then kneels before him and unlocks the leg chains, and they fall to the ground. And he stands up and says, Sir, now go free. And a black man looks at him and said, Do what? He says, go free. I bought you. It is for freedom that I’m sending you free. They said, Sir, you just paid the biggest price that anyone’s ever paid for a man. He said, I know I bought you to set you free. And the man looks at him and he says, Sir, where do you live? Oh, he says, I live down the road. Could I go home with you? You can go home with me as my son, but not as my slave. You can go home with me as my friend, but not as my slave. Why do you want to go home with me? Said, Sir, any man that loved me enough to pay that kind of a price to set me free, I want to spend the rest of my life getting to know you and serving you voluntarily. That’s what freedom is. The perfect example of it as to what freedom is.

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Bob George 13:33
Now Christ came to free us from the demands of the law so that we could walk freely, being guided now by who? The Holy Spirit of God, who is alive, indwelling you. And if he isn’t indwelling you, you don’t have anything to be led by but the law. And that’s why people hang on to the law, is they have no awareness at all of the Holy Spirit of God, either have him and are too dumb to realize it, or they don’t have him. You either have a life that you don’t live or you don’t have a life that you try to live, one of the two. And so he says, if you’re now in Christ, it is for freedom that I have set you free. The Law killed you the demands of the law drove you to the grave. Paul said, under the law, the things I want to do, I don’t do, and the things I don’t want to do, I do them anyway. Wretched man that I am who will free me from this bondage of what? Sin and death under the law. And his answer to that was, thanks be to God. Through Jesus Christ, my Lord, He has set me free. So he says, Stand firm. Stand firm. Don’t be a Mealy mouth. Stand firm. Don’t be vacillating back and forth under the law, under grace. Don’t try to be politically correct. Don’t try to make brownie points with your professors. Stand firm in the grace of God, and do not let yourself be burdened again by the yoke of slavery. I freed you, do not go back and be a slave. You’ve been freed. You’re now free.

It’s like a guy that lives in the apartment and his landlord lives next to him, and he’s mean as a hen, an old, that’s an old, mean hen, mean, that’s right, just mean. And every month, here he comes knocking on the door. Where’s the rent? Of course, it’s 10 days before it’s due, but I want it now, and you’re making too much noise, and I don’t like the way you keep your house, and I don’t like, I mean, just griping all the time at him, and this guy sits there living in that house, and he’s miserable, but he can’t move someplace else. But he hates this guy. And one day, one of his buddies comes up, knocks on the door, and he lets him in. He said, Man, did you hear the good news? Said, no. What is it? The building’s been sold, really? Yeah, the old guy next door sold the building to a new group of landlords. No kidding. What are they like? Oh, phenomenal. A bunch of Christian people. They’re loving we’ve talked to some people over there that where they own other buildings. And you know, if you’re a little late on your rent, that kind of stuff, they just work with you. Just marvelous, loving people. They say, Oh, fantastic, fantastic. Incidentally, where’s the old goat going to move? The old, old owner? Oh, he’s going to stay here. He’s going to rent from them. Next month comes along banging on the door. Here’s the old landlord banging on the door, saying, where’s your rent? You make too much noise. And you know what we do? We just pull up our little chair and sit there and listen to Him and live under the frightening demands of somebody doesn’t even have anything to do with you anymore. Now, what do you do with a guy like that? You tell him to get lost. You tell him, Sir, I am under new ownership. You don’t own this place anymore. You live here just like I do. Get lost. I don’t want to listen to you anymore and slam the door in his face and enjoy where you live. You’re under new ownership.

Now that is exactly what he’s talking about here. Don’t let yourself be burdened again by the yoke of slavery. Don’t get back under the old landlord’s commands when he’s not the landlord anymore, he is not your master, and that’s what he’s trying to get about. You’re going to be mastered by one of two people, Satan or God, and don’t get back under the yoke of slavery to be mastered by the law, because it says in the scripture that the power of sin is in the law. So you keep yourself under the power of sin and walk in this defeated lifestyle, because you don’t slam the door on your old landlord and say, I’m under new ownership. So Mark my words. Paul says, I tell you that if you let yourself be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Now, why is he saying this? Well, once again, every place, Paul went into the Gentile world and told people about their freedom in Christ, the Judaizers came right in behind them and began to try to put them under Hebrew law, stating that Christianity is an extension of Hebrewism, and you cannot be a true Christian until you become a true Hebrew. And one of the signs of being a Hebrew is to be circumcised, and so you have to go through the rite of circumcision in order to become a true Hebrew, and therefore a true Christian, putting them back under the Hebrew law again. Did the Gentiles ever have the law of circumcision? Never that was all Hebrew. And so he says, if you let yourself be circumcised, circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. In other words, you’re back under the legal system. You’ve just put yourself back under the old owner, and are going to be right back in bondage again, again. I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised, He is obligated to obey what? The whole law do. So if you allow, if you get back under one law, you’re obligated to obey. How many of them? All of them. Guys, according to God, not according to religion, but according to God. You don’t cherry pick the law. You don’t take the ones you like and bring them over and leave the others behind.

Now, do we ever do that in Christianity? Like, what? What’s one you can think of? Tithing. Tithing. We like that one. We can raise money easier. Does tithing belong in your freedom? That’s a do not a done. Why do we teach it? Why do we pull Malachi over into the New Covenant? Now to me, I have difficulty believing that people don’t know that they’re deceiving people. I have trouble with that because I don’t know how you can read this and come up with any other conclusion, but that’s just one thing we drag over. What’s another thing under the law we drag over? How did you get forgiven under the Old Covenant? Day of Atonement, that was law. How do you get forgiven today? Well, let’s see. There’s no more Day of Atonement. So let’s first John one nine and go to our confession booths, and let’s do all those things. Is it a do or a done? Is your forgiveness a do or is it a done? It’s done. Who did it. Christ? How much of it? All of it. What’s left for you? None. So why are we still going to God to get forgiveness? When he said, forgiveness is done, what are you doing? Burdening yourself again with the yoke of slavery and hoping that your memory does not diminish as you get older. Because what happened if you forgot one? That’s what happens.

So what is he saying to us? Christ will be of no value to you at all. I declare that every man who lets himself be circumcised that he’s obligated to obey the whole law. If you want to obey the law of tithing. You’ve got to obey all of them. No man will ever be declared righteous in the sight of God through obedience to the law. James says the same things, if you violate just the least of these my commandments you violated. How many of them? All of them. What kind of shape does that leave us in, folks? I mean, that’s pretty bad shape. I violated every law there is but Lord, you take me into heaven with you. Those of you who are trying to be justified by the law, are there people who are trying to be justified by the law? What are you doing when you’re talking about that I worship on Saturday, and that’s the Sabbath, and you worship on Sunday, and you’re going to hell. You and then we get little liberal and say, Well, maybe not hell, but you gotta get close to it. Now I want to ask you a question, folks, what is the Sabbath? Is that the law? Is that a part of the law?

Turn back with me to Colossians a minute. Colossians two and again, we’re just going to briefly go over this again, verse 16. Therefore, don’t let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink or with regard to a religious festival, a new moon celebration, a Sabbath day, or the way you dance. That wasn’t in there, yes, all right. Now he’s named about four or five things there, but let’s just take them one at a time, a Sabbath day. Did was there a Sabbath? And is there a Sabbath day? And what’s it talk about in the Scripture about the Sabbath, set it apart and make it holy. How many laws did the Hebrews have around the Sabbath alone? 600 and some laws around the Sabbath alone. And we’ve laughingly talked about some of those laws that what you can and cannot do on Shabbat, on the Sabbath, if you live in Israel today, you’re going to have to take an elev Shabbat elevator up to up to your room. You can’t push a button that would be considered as work. You can’t spit on the ground on the Sabbath, spit on a rock, but not the ground. Spit on the ground that makes mud. That’s called work. That’s why Jesus spit on the ground, made mud, put it on the guy’s eyes and told him to go wash in the pool that was on the Sabbath. Why did he do that? Because he needed to, don’t to drive him crazy, to show them their hypocrisy, that all you’re worried about is Sabbath, but you don’t care. Give a flip about a guy who was blind and now he can see he showed them their hearts.

Now it says, What is a Sabbath day? These or it the Sabbath day is a shadow of the things that are to come. The reality, however, is found in Christ. It’s a shadow. What’s the law? It’s a shadow. What’s the reality? Jesus. So people bring the Sabbath over from the law the shadow, and worship at the foot of the shadow. Now what is our Sabbath today? I mean, how many days are we supposed to be resting in Jesus? Every moment of the day, not one day a week. Every day he is called the Lord of the Sabbath. What does that mean? He is our Sabbath. Christ is your Sabbath, not a day of the week, every day of the week. And so again, we drag the old the old covenant, the Old Testament, law, over into Christian living, and getting arguments over what day you ought to go to church. It wouldn’t matter whether you were here on Sunday or Wednesday or Tuesday or Thursday or Friday or Saturday. This is not the Sabbath. You are the Sabbath. If you’re resting in Christ, you’re just coming here to learn, not to rest. You should be resting before you get here. And so we understand the difference? Do we understand the difference between the law and grace? And that’s what he’s trying to get to us.

Announcer 27:11
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