Radio Broadcast Wednesday 09/04/2024

Classic Christianity – Book of Galatians P18 (09-04-24)

Walk in the Grace of God, In Christ, You Are The Church of God

~ People think words used today are a matter of simply semantics. But words matter, especially in the word of God. If you don’t understand what the actual words used by God means, then you will fall for every deception that Satan throws your way. Details matter in everything. Pay attention to the details. When a born again, child of God, and a true child of God most assuredly has the Holy Spirit in them, they are to be lead by the Spirit of God himself. The Law is not there to lead you around after coming to Christ. It is Not to be used for that. In fact, if a person is using the Law for that, then it is obvious that they do not have the Holy Spirit living in them to begin with, especially if they are pushing it with great vigor, to make sure you are doing this and that, or God is not going to give you your reward when you die. They preach the lies of ongoing forgiveness, or the lie of repent of your sins for forgiveness, or after coming to Christ, now you better follow the Law, otherwise look out, God is going to take you to the woodshed. Who wants to live in that kind of bondage? You who are in Christ, don’t let yourself be placed under the yoke of slavery, not by ANYONE today. Don’t tolerate it. Speak up about it. Point out the lies.

Those that have been listening to the program for some years now, know exactly what we are speaking of. Many have stories they can tell of talking with a pastor or people within the setting of religion, and most will simply discount everything you say to them, or get mad as a stirred up hornets nest. Or for those that are a little more outspoken, they will attempt to put on the muzzle over you so you will not speak out about TRUTH. And they will even try to use the word of God against you. But here is the thing, Christ in you, is greater than he that is in the world. So don’t worry about what you are going to say. Trust in Him to guide you along every step of the way. And be aware that there are many agents of Satan in the world, and they are in local religious assemblies today. They will be subtle in their teaching of Law many times, to simply keep it under the radar. But make no mistake about it, these people are teaching lies, if there is even one ounce of Law in their teaching. For a spec of leaven spoils the whole loaf.

Paul did not tolerate this teaching of lies of mixing even a little bit of Law into the teaching, and neither should we. The apostle Paul asked the question, “Who has bewitched you?” We know who has bewitched us today, and that is Satan and his minions. So it is time to wise up in the Lord Jesus Christ, for ALL Wisdom comes directly from Him and pay attention to the details that the Holy Spirit wants to show us all today. The church is not a building that you go to, it is NOT an institution, it is not a denomination, it is NOT even the actual meeting together of people. The church is you and me who are true children of God. We are the church of God. Be bold as we should when proclaiming TRUTH.

“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.”

~ “As we’re continuing and ending up through the book of Galatians, we’ve come down to the point where, after Paul, in chapter three, chastised the Galatians For the commingling of law and grace. And again, we see this all the way through the Scriptures, that what is being said here is in regard to law and grace, and the fact that you have been freed from the law, and therefore freed from the consequence of the violation of the law, you cannot have a law that has any meaning to it apart from punishment for violation. Are we together on that? Do we see the logic there? What good does it do to have a law unless there’s a punishment for violating it? It has no meaning to it. And so we have been set free from the wages of sin, which is death by the gift of God, which is life in Christ, Jesus, we’ve been set free from that, so that we walk today in a different walk than when you’re under the law, under the law, you’re under the guidance of the law, you’re under the rules of the law. And there’s only one problem with that, and it’s not the law, it’s us, isn’t it? Paul says nothing wrong with the law, but when it flows through me. It kills me. Why? It goes me’s a mess. And so there’s nothing wrong with the law. It’s holy and good. We’re the problem that when the law flows through us and our fallen condition, it kills us, and that’s what it’s saying. It has no benefit to us at all except showing us you’re dead. It can’t give you life. It can’t give you righteousness. It cannot make you holy. It can’t do anything except serve as a mirror to show you your face is dirty, so that what? You’ll turn to Christ for salvation. That’s the purpose of the law. It says, so right in the Scripture. Don’t have to analyze it. Don’t even have to know Greek, just read it. It says, so that’s the purpose of the law.” ~ Bob George

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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 0:29
As we’re continuing and ending up through the book of Galatians, we’ve come down to the point where, after Paul, in chapter three, chastised the Galatians For the commingling of law and grace. And again, we see this all the way through the Scriptures, that what is being said here is in regard to law and grace, and the fact that you have been freed from the law, and therefore freed from the consequence of the violation of the law, you cannot have a law that has any meaning to it apart from punishment for violation. Are we together on that? Do we see the logic there? What good does it do to have a law unless there’s a punishment for violating it? It has no meaning to it. And so we have been set free from the wages of sin, which is death by the gift of God, which is life in Christ, Jesus, we’ve been set free from that, so that we walk today in a different walk than when you’re under the law, under the law, you’re under the guidance of the law, you’re under the rules of the law. And there’s only one problem with that, and it’s not the law, it’s us, isn’t it? Paul says nothing wrong with the law, but when it flows through me. It kills me. Why? It goes me’s a mess. And so there’s nothing wrong with the law. It’s holy and good. We’re the problem that when the law flows through us and our fallen condition, it kills us, and that’s what it’s saying. It has no benefit to us at all except showing us you’re dead. It can’t give you life. It can’t give you righteousness. It cannot make you holy. It can’t do anything except serve as a mirror to show you your face is dirty, so that what? You’ll turn to Christ for salvation. That’s the purpose of the law. It says, so right in the Scripture. Don’t have to analyze it. Don’t even have to know Greek, just read it. It says, so that’s the purpose of the law.

Now, when we take the purpose of the law and pervert the purpose, not the law, but the purpose of the law, it’s like taking a hammer instead of using it to build a house. We hit you in the head with it. Nothing wrong with a hammer. It’s whose hands it’s in. We’ve perverted its purpose. Now when we pervert the purpose of the law and try to make the law an instrument of our righteousness, now we have perverted the law and told somebody you need to do something that God says you can’t do. You can’t do. If you, if you kept all of the law and yet violated the least of these my commandments, you violated all of them. So you’re a goner. And yet, we say, keep at it. And so we come up with stuff like, well, maybe God’s grading on the curve. You know, maybe if at the end of my life, if I’ve done more wrong or more right than I have wrong, I’ll be okay. Well, the only problem with that is you live too long, and you find out that ain’t going to work. So there, when you get into this type of thinking, There’s no end to it. You have to keep coming up with one idea on top of another idea in order to justify but there’s no man that will ever be declared righteous in the sight of God through obedience to the law period, the only thing the law does is show you your condition of spiritual death. So that’s all the way through the Scripture.

So as we pick up in verse 11 and again, part of the law. You have the ceremonial law, you have the moral law, you have the law, the dietary laws. All of that is contained in the first five books of Moses called the Pentateuch, and all of it is inclusive, and there’s no place in the scripture where it splits it up that you’ve been freed from the dietary laws, but you’re still under the moral laws. You don’t go to Sinai period. Sinai is a place to show you your death. You go to the empty tomb, and there you find life, and people are still wandering back to Sinai for instruction instead of the empty tomb for life. And so he’s saying to us that if I was still preaching circumcision, because circumcision was under the law, it was the way of identifying a Hebrew male as being Hebrew, in compared to what? The rest of the entire world now today, circumcision is commonplace. Back then, it was not commonplace. So if you really wanted to prove that you were a Hebrew, there was a way to do so if you were a man. And so that was, that was in the books. That was in the book circumcision.

Now he’s saying Paul is coming along and saying, Hold on a minute. God has created a new man out of the two, out of the circumcised, out of the uncircumcised, out of the Hebrew, out of the Gentile, only two kinds of people in the world, three, actually, but two, we’ll talk about the Hebrew, the Gentile, the circumcised, the uncircumcised. And so he’s saying to us that there’s a new man that has been created, and that’s called You and me, called the church, the ecclesia that is not a building with stained glass, that is not something that you go join. You don’t join the church. You are the church. If you’re born again, you’ve already been joined to the body of Christ. Who is the church. Are we together? So you don’t join a church. Now, people have church membership, and you join the church, but God says you don’t join the church, because my church is not something you join. It’s not a Kiwanis Club. It’s not a rotary club. You’ve been joined to Jesus. He is your head. I have placed you into my body. I’m the head. You’re the body. And though the body has many parts, it forms one body that’s the new man. That’s neither a Hebrew, neither a Gentile, slave or free man or female, it’s born again. Person, what you said a child of God. So you got Hebrew gentile child of God. You got lost Gentiles, you got lost Hebrews. You got saved Gentiles, you got saved Hebrews. But in either case, you’ve been made into a brand new creation. If any man be in Christ, he’s a new creation. God created a new creation called the church, the ecclesia. Now that’s been perverted, because that’s become an assembly of that you join, that’s becoming the building down on the corner of walk and don’t walk, and that’s my church. No, it isn’t your church. It’s his church. You don’t have one. You are the church. If you’re born again. Well, see, I don’t want that BORN AGAIN stuff. I just want to belong to a church. And so we belong to a church, and we get baptized into the church, and that’s why baptism is so prevalent. It’s not to be saved, it’s to join the church to show I have been baptized into the church of Christ. And that obviously is the only church, because it’s called the Church of Christ. Now, if that makes sense to you, I got some ocean property for you in Arizona. You see what I’m getting at You don’t join that. That’s a manmade thing. When you’re born again, the only church that Jesus has are born again people. You might have two or three in an assembly on Sunday morning in some places, if you’re lucky, you might have the whole group that are born again. God knows that. I don’t know it, you don’t know it, only God knows that. And so that’s what the church is. And so he’s saying that if I’m still preaching Hebrew tradition, if I’m still teaching circumcision, then why am I still being persecuted. Who’s he being persecuted by? Who? Is there just three people that know that, the rest of you guys asleep or what’s going on? Who’s he being persecuted by? The Hebrews. The Hebrews. Why? Because he’s teaching you don’t have to be circumcised. You’re a Gentile and you don’t have to be circumcised. Now, what were the Hebrews teaching the Gentiles? You got to be circumcised in order to be a Christian. And so that was a means of identification. In other words, you got to become a Hebrew before you can become a Christian. And the way you become a Hebrew is to get circumcised, at least, that’s what we’re going to say now.

And he said, if I was still preaching that kind of garbage, why am I still being persecuted? In that case, the offense of the cross has been abolished. There’s no offense of the cross. What was the offense of the cross folks? Well. What made the cross offensive to the religious world? Absolutely it got rid of religion said it’s not being a Hebrew, it’s being a child of God. Now to the Hebrew that was offensive. What do you mean that these heathenistic Gentiles are born again, have a relationship with God, our God, the one that gave us the laws that we’ve been diligently obeying them. That was offensive, was it not? Terribly offensive. So he’s saying that in that case, in other words, if I was teaching circumcision, the offense of the cross has been abolished there, and the offense to the cross, you need to become a Hebrew before you can be saved. There’s no offense to that. So he’s saying, as far as those agitators, I wish they’d go the whole way and emasculate themselves. You, my brothers, were called to be free, but don’t use your freedom to indulge the flesh. Now, have you been called to be free? Are there people who are called to be free who will use their freedom to indulge their flesh? Are we together? Is there anyone in here that’s never done that? So is it natural to indulge your flesh and use your freedom to indulge your flesh? Is that natural? That’s the problem. It’s natural, but it isn’t spiritual. So do you have a choice? Do you have a choice in this whole thing? The choice is, I can use my freedom to indulge my flesh. I can use my freedom to serve one another in love. Is that a choice? That’s right? Do we make both of those choices? Yeah, sometimes we make good choices. Sometimes we make what? Bad choices. Now, if that was not true, he wouldn’t say, don’t use your freedom to indulge the flesh rather to serve one another in love. If it was unnatural, he wouldn’t have to say that. The reason that he says that is because the natural thing for you and me, to do in our flesh is to serve our flesh, is it not? And so he’s saying you were called to be free now because people use their freedom to indulge the flesh. Does that negate the fact that you’ve been set free? Does it negate it? Does it diminish it? Does it make it worthless? No, that’s a truth from God. You have been set free. You’ve been called to be free. That doesn’t get diminished, that doesn’t get covered over. That’s a truth from God. Now what do we do with that truth? Serve one another in love or serve our flesh? Who’s involved in that you or God? That’s our response. He initiated the fact I have set you free. What is our response to that? Thank you, Lord, I’m going to serve you in love or thank you Lord, I’m going to go have a ball. I’m going to go indulge my flesh. Is that right or wrong?

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Bob George 13:56
So people will come down and say, you teach this grace. And there’s a name for that, and they put a big, long name on that, and, and, and they say that, why you’re just one of those. And so we become one of those. Why? Well, because you teach grace, and you’re when you teach grace, you’re just telling a person they can go do anything they want to do. How many have heard that one? Is that what grace teaches, no grace teaches, don’t use your freedom to serve the flesh, but to serve one another in love. That’s what grace teaches. But they come on and say, you teach grace, you’re going to be an antinomianist. Isn’t that a good name an antinomianist? I’m so proud of myself I pronounced that. And what an antinomianist is is someone who takes grace to a license. Does that negate grace? Does that mean freedom is bad? No, that didn’t mean any. Those things, it means that your response to freedom is a fleshly response. Now, if you have a person, and this is one of the difficulties you run into in grace teaching is the fact that people look at Grace as an IT or that grace. You hear people that grace. Grace is not an IT. Grace is Jesus. He is full of what? Grace and what? Truth. You cannot separate truth from Jesus. You cannot separate grace from Jesus. If you possess truth, where’s it come from? Jesus. If you, if you possess grace, where’s it come from? Jesus. So it is not a grace message. It’s a Jesus message. That is what Jesus came to do, was to set you and me free. God looked down at us in our fallen condition, in our condition of spiritual death without hope. It says, bound up under the law, under the condemnation of the law, totally bound up with no hope. We just read that. Did we like a couple weeks ago?

That was the condition of man. He looked down, he had pity, he had compassion upon us, and said, I’m going to I’m going to give a solution to that. Now, his solution was to cure the wages or the consequence of sin, which is death, by the gift of God, which is life. And again, he could have given us any kind of life he wanted, no life, temporary life, eternal life. Which did he choose? Eternal. And in order to give you eternal life, he had to deal eternally with the cause of death, and that’s why the cross is an eternal function. It wasn’t something that happened and then keeps happening. It happened once and for all, and therefore the cry out of the Lord, it is what? Finished paid in full that was back to Adam and forward to eternity, the sin issue has been dealt with eternally. Why’d he do that? So that he could give you and me eternal life. If he didn’t do that, the next time I when I got eternal life, the next time I sinned, I would be what? Dead, not out of fellowship, not going to the woodshed, not getting a little paddling, dead. The wages of sin is death, and so in order for me to have eternal life, the cause of death had to be eradicated eternally. That’s the purpose of the cross.

Now he says, now you have been set free. Now I’ve got a choice. First of all, I had a choice to come to Christ. I could have stayed in my lostness, but the power of God working in your life and in mine was so was such that we responded and we said, I do, and I want you Lord, to be my Lord, my Savior, and I want you to come and live in me. I want to get off the throne and quit running my life. I don’t want you to be my savior. Is that not what happened to us? What did we respond to? Love. What we responded to is God so loved you that He gave His only begotten Son. That’s what we responded to. Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so not complicated. That’s what we responded to, and he set us free. Now he’s saying to us, now you got another choice. You can use this freedom that you have and you are free to indulge the flesh, or you can use your freedom to serve one another in love.

Now, let me ask this question, if I choose, which is pretty dumb for all of us, but that’s why he calls us sheep, because we’re all dumb as a sheep. So as dumb as it is, can we choose to indulge the flesh? To indulge it, freedom to indulge it. Okay, now, when we do, what does God do? See, I’ve initiated now, Lord, I’m going to indulge my flesh. Now, how does he respond to me, or does he respond to me? Or has he already initiated to me? So what did he initiate to you? I love you, But Lord, didn’t you see what I just did? No, it’s behind my back. Never see it again. But Lord, I just did it yesterday. I didn’t that’s my that’s behind my back. Never to see it again. Folks, can you get this into your mind? We’ve had a lot of stuff take place over the last week, over suicide, and we had some lady called up and just was irate. Thank God for Steve Simon. He just cuts them off. Anyone who wants to argue with us on the radio is totally out to lunch because they can’t win. We got the control button, so they got to be pretty dumb to try to argue anyway, because they’re not going to get on. Irate, because I told somebody whose relative had committed suicide that if they were Christians, that they were in the presence of God, just irate over that. Well, is that true, or did I tell a lie? I um, and I put the if, if you are truly in Christ, can you, as a born again believer, get in so such despair, such hopelessness, have your mind messed up so much that the only thing you can see that would get you out of this is to get out of here. You see the lost world says, I’d like to commit suicide. The saved world just says, wish the Lord come back. It’s the same thing. We’re ready to get out of here, just different vernacular, yeah, yeah. How many of you have ever said I’d like to get out of here? So in essence, we could come down to the point where pressures of life are such that as disturbing as that decision would be, we can still get to that point, you can get depressed to that point. Unusual for anyone to get depressed? No, it just as you let it go. You can get so depressed that you lose hope, and when you’ve lost hope, you’ve lost it all. So is it possible for a person who is born again to take their own life? Is it possible for someone who’s born again to take your life? So if they can take yours, they can take their own. Now, would that be indulging the flesh or serving one another in love? Well, maybe serving love. I told you I wanted to get out of here, but in essence, whether it’s indulging your flesh in one man, or indulging it in a horrendous manner, it still isn’t the indulging of the flesh, and it is, and it is possible for any of us to do.

And so it says in the scripture that if any of us see someone who is caught in a sin, and that doesn’t mean I caught you. I caught you. It means they’re trapped in a sin. Is a person who is in a continual, ongoing depressed state of mind, trapped in a sin? Sure, they’re trapped in their thinking. It says you who are spiritual, go to them, but go to them very carefully, because you could fall into the same trap. So I’d say, Don’t ever go to minister to a person with the idea I can never do that, because about the time you say that, as I think God says, I’ll just show you what you can do. So you go with a heart of mercy, that’s the heart of God. Is a merciful heart. You go with a heart of love, that’s the heart of God, which is heart of love, and you minister to that person trying to do what? Restore hope to them. Is suicide a good option? No, it’s never God’s best. God didn’t intend man to commit suicide, but he never intended man to sin. He never intended man to get divorced, but when sin entered in the world, all those things took place, and none of them are the unpardonable sin.

And so we have to understand that. We have to we have to have compassion when we’re dealing with people, you can get in the pits to the point you’d like to get out of here. And our role is to help people, to restore them to hope so that you don’t make that decision, because you’re missing God’s best when you do, if you’ll just hang in there, God’s going to show you something greater than your problem, and that’s what our role is. Lot of times, I don’t know about you, and I’m not totally to that age yet, but I’m getting there. But because I can still jump off of a curb, yeah, I can. I’m very proud of that. My body won’t do what my head says it can do. Have you ever found that to be true? And sometimes you know somebody’s name like you know your own and you can’t bring it up. Does that ever happen to you? Have you ever stood in front of the refrigerator and not knowing what you’re there for? Have you ever put your garbage in the refrigerator and dump the good food? I mean, there’s all kinds of things that we do. That are quite strange. And I want to tell you, the older you get, you always blame that on age, but I’ve seen that happen in the 20s, and that gets discouraging. You’re getting older, you can’t do what you used to do. The old head starts telling You’re not worth anything. You know, can’t do anything for anybody anymore. All those kind of things can start entering into the mind, and you can get in the pits, and our role is to help people to get out of those pits by giving them hope. And so what I’m trying to get across here is God has set you free, but with that freedom, you have choices, and you can start putting your mind on all the negative stuff in the world. You can start serving people in love. You can be one who points out every mistake that anyone ever makes. You ever done that? How many of you ever done that? How many have done that? Or you can be one who chooses not to say something, because that’s what love does. You can bring up every mistake someone’s made, or you can not bring it up, which one’s love not bringing it up. So those are choices that we make. Are we going to serve one another? You’re not serving a person in love. We’re bringing up all their mistakes. Are you? You’re not serving someone in love with said, I remember what you did 20 years ago. You’re not serving someone love, telling them what a lousy husband, a lousy wife they’ve been all these years, and I could wish I’d have gotten along without you. Are you? Are you serving someone who loves doing that? No, you’re not. And yet we think we’re spiritual and continually are doing that with each other. And so we keep looking at the filthy five, the nasty nine, but it’s those kind of things that destroy people. They’re destroyers. They discourage you. They’re destroyers.

Announcer 27:11
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 BobGeorge.net. There you will 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.