Radio Broadcast Wednesday 11/02/2022

Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at Law & Grace P21 (11-02-22)

Faith in Jesus is Resting in Him & His Finished Work ~ You Are Complete in Him

~ “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1

~ Faith says Thank You to God!

~ “Now, completeness is you’ve already received everything you’re going to get from God, you’re not going to get any more forgiven. You’re not going to get any more reconciliation. You’re not going to get any more righteous than what I made you. You’re not going to be any holier than what I made you. You’re not going to be have any more eternal life. You can’t get more eternal life. That’s, that’s kind of a contradiction, isn’t it? You can’t get more of that you can’t get more of God than what you have in Christ Jesus, so don’t seek anything else. Holy Spirit did not come to bring glory to the Holy Spirit. He came to bring it to Jesus the Father came to tell us about Jesus Jesus told about himself and the Holy Spirit is telling us about Jesus. Now the whole concentration of Scripture is around the person of Jesus Christ. So you can’t get any more of God than when you have Christ. So they’re in a sense seeking more you’ve already got all you’re gonna get, just learn to receive what you have. That’s what walking by faith is.”

~ When you are in Christ, and Christ is in you, you already have everything from God. Rest in that. Faith says thank you to God and recognizing everything you already have in Christ.

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

Jesus asked how does God love and accept us? And how does he expect us to live the Christian life? To answer those questions, this insightful study explores a vital issue at the heart of the Christian experience, the biblical relationship between law and grace, understanding their role in our relationship to God will bring joy, freedom and spontaneity to your Christian life. Now, let’s take A Closer Look at Law & Grace.

Bob George 0:39
As we conclude chapter five, which we were in last week, it’s on the chapter of Christ fulfilled the law. This is a very important understanding for us to get a hold of Bob that the law has been fulfilled. The law was there, the law was given to us by God. It says, although it was weak and useless, it was given to us by God. And what made it weak and useless was us. When the law flowed through us. It made the law weak and useless, because it could not accomplish for us, four major things and we talked about that in in prior lessons. First of all, the law could never make us complete the form of regulation, the law, it says was set aside, because it was weak and useless for the law made nothing perfect, nothing complete, and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God. So the law could never make you complete. In other words, you could never get to a point where God’s work with you was finished. It was over, nothing left for him to accomplish, except now just maturing you in his new life, enabling you to draw nearer to the heart of God. And the nearer that we draw to God, the more we know about God, and the more we become like his thought. And so that is the whole goal. It was the goal of God from the beginning. And that was to enable man who was born into this world, dead in Adam, to first of all become alive in Christ, and in that resurrected life, to be complete in all things and a walk now by faith in that completeness.

You see, we almost have spiritual dyslexia, we come to a point where everything is reversed. We think if I go out and love others, then God will love us. The very opposite is that you can’t give what you don’t have. It’s not that we love God, but he loved us first. So until we are literally basking in the love of God, we have nothing to give to anyone else. Under the law, if we forgive others, God will forgive us. That was true under the law, under the grace of God, it is forgive one another as Christ Jesus forgave you. In other words, our action is a byproduct of his action. I have been totally reconciled to God, therefore it says, go be reconciled to all men. It’s not gonna be reconciled so that God will reconcile you, because then we’ve got him responding to us, instead of us responding to him. He’s saying, No, when you understand your reconciliation in Christ, then go be reconciled to one another, because who are you to judge someone else’s servant. So I could go on and on with that line of thought, but this spiritual dyslexia that we have is, we have everything reversed instead of being receivers and therefore givers, we think if we go out and give, we will therefore receive. So you’re never perfect in that because you’ve never given enough, you’ve never done enough, you never been reconciled enough, you haven’t forgiven enough, you haven’t tithed enough, all of those type of things are always there, if they’re if I’m not complete, in other words, I’ve always got something to do in order to bring about something from God. Now, completeness is you’ve already received everything you’re going to get from God, you’re not going to get any more forgiven. You’re not going to get any more reconciliation. You’re not going to get any more righteous than what I made you. You’re not going to be any holier than what I made you. You’re not going to be have any more eternal life. You can’t get more eternal life. That’s, that’s kind of a contradiction, isn’t it? You can’t get more of that you can’t get more of God than what you have in Christ Jesus, so don’t seek anything else. Holy Spirit did not come to bring glory to the Holy Spirit. He came to bring it to Jesus the Father came to tell us about Jesus Jesus told about himself and the Holy Spirit is telling us about Jesus. Now the whole concentration of Scripture is around the person of Jesus Christ. So you can’t get any more of God than when you have Christ. So they’re in a sense seeking more you’ve already got all you’re gonna get, just learn to receive what you have That’s what walking by faith is. And Bob, so much of the Christian world is what walking by faith is I got faith in this and how get it from God see, if I got enough faith, I’ll just get it from God. So where’s the emphasis was on the size of your faith, which Jesus said was somewhat smaller than that of a mustard seed. So it really shouldn’t be a whole bunch of brag about my my mustard seeds bigger than your mustard seed.

So there but that’s where the emphasis is when we do not understand our completeness. There’s the whole issue, folks, you do not understand you have been made perfect in the sight of God, you’ve been made complete. And that’s what all of this teaching is about to teach you you’ve been made complete so that you can walk truly walk by faith. The other stuff isn’t walking by faith that’s walking in hocus pocus. And isn’t faith. It’s faith that I can think something and God and bring it about from God. That’s a spiritual vending machine. It’s talking about No, you’ve already gotten everything you’re gonna get from God now walk by faith in that that’s what faith is, it’s walking by faith in what you already have. Not that, I have such big faith and I can get what I don’t have. That means God didn’t complete His work. But the fact that I have faith in what I do have now that’s what brings joy to your heart is recognizing what we do have, and then walking by faith in it.

So the law was powerless to make you perfect. The law was powerless to make you righteous, you don’t set aside the grace of God, if righteousness could be gained through the law, then Christ died for nothing. The law was absolutely powerless to justify you, and Galatians 2:16 know that no man is justified by observing the law. And the law cannot give life. And again, if a law had been added that can impart life Galatians 3:21, than righteousness would have certainly come from the law. So now in chapter five, last week, we studied about the fact that Christ fulfilled the law. And Jesus said in recorded in the Gospel of Luke 24, when he said, This is what I told you, when I was still with you, everything must be fulfilled, that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, and the prophets and the Psalms. So what is he saying? Everything that was written about Me must be fulfilled, everything written in the law must be fulfilled. So, and in Matthew five, it said, don’t think I’ve come to abolish the law or the prophets, I didn’t come to just discount them, I came to fulfill, I came to fulfill them. In other words, I am the fulfillment of everything that they wrote, In the Old Testament and the fulfillment of that. We’re told that Jesus on the road to Emmaus, what did he do? he took them from the beginning from Genesis to Malikai. And explain to them, where he fit into the entire Old Testament, He fulfilled the law. Now, we are told that not only did he fulfill the law, but how did he fulfill the law is by walking by perfect love. And he demonstrated that love to us. And while we were yet sinners, he died for us and no love, have any man that he lays down his life for his sheep. So the ultimate expression of God’s love for us, which incidentally, his physical life fulfilled the law, his death of held upheld the law. But the ultimate was in regard to the forgiveness of our sins. He forgave all of our sins, it says at Colossians 2:13, and 14. And when he did that, he cancelled the written code with its regulation that was against us, instead of oposed to us. He took it away, nailing it to the cross. Not only did Christ die for all men’s sins, but He nailed the law to the cross. So that raised from the dead, we could now live in a newness of life, no longer under the law that kills, which is called living according to the flesh. But under the grace of God that gives life which is called according to the Spirit.

Just one scripture before we get into chapter six. In Romans eight, three and four, it says For what the law was powerless to do. Now we just talked about in the earlier teachings, that the law it says the former regulation was set aside because it was weak. It was useless, and now we’re told it was powerless. Is the law good? Paul said in Romans seven. Absolutely. There’s nothing wrong the law is good and holy, but when it flows through us, is that it kills us so because of us, the law becomes powerless, and it becomes weak, and it becomes useless. Now what the law was powerless to do, in that it was weakened by the flesh, in other words, weakened by our own sinful humanity. God did the law couldn’t. So God did something, he sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful man, to be a sin offering. So all of the elements of the flesh, all of the religious things that are contrary to the fulfillment of the law in Christ Jesus, all of those things that became weak and useless, he set those aside and sent his Son to do what the blood of bulls and goats could never do. Take away sin. Sent his Son to do what no law could ever do, impute righteousness, sent his Son to do what no law could ever do. And that is to give life to the dead, came to this world and sent his Son to do what no law could ever do. And that was declare a person wholly unacceptable in the sight of God. Sent His Son to do with the law and its sacrifices could never do. And that’s make God’s work complete in us in our lives. And so what, what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by our own flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man, to be a sin offering, no longer a blood offering of a blood of a bull and a goat, but a sin offering from the blood of God Himself. And so He condemned sin, sinful man, The wages of sin is death. So he condemned men in that way, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us. The righteous requirements of the law is that the wages of sin is death, we were met in that we literally died in all ways with Christ. When Christ died, we all died, the law was fulfilled, it was there, it convicted, it condemned, and we all became dead, including Jesus who knew no sin. Now, and it says, Therefore, that this righteous requirements of the law has now been met. To those of us who do not live according to the flesh, and that’s dead. But according to the Spirit, which is life, the law speaks to the flesh, and condemns the flesh to death. Thus, Grace of God speaks to her spirit, and raises us from the dead.

Now, with that, let’s go over to chapter six. Now, in our books dealing with Christ redeemed us from the law, he not only freed us from the law, he not only fulfilled the law, but he redeemed us from the law. In other words, he bought us out of that relationship with the law. Redeem is a word that most of us are somewhat familiar with. We’ve talked about before, it’s if you remember, back in the days, we used to have green stamps, why we we saved those old green stamps and we turn them in for a toaster. Those stamps were worthless, couldn’t mail like mail a letter with them, couldn’t do anything with them, they were only had value at the redemption center. That’s the only place that had a value to them. You turn them in and you got a toaster. Now most of us know that we’ve been redeemed by Christ. We can sing about that redeemed, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. And we look at at redemption in light of our green stamp illustration. But biblically, what does it mean for us to be redeemed? Well, the full meaning of redemption is to buy back and to set free. We take a closer look at redemption, we’re going to learn that’s exactly what Christ has done for you and me through the death on his cross. He not only bought us and bought us out of our relationship with the law, but he called us in to a relationship with the Holy Spirit of God living in as Christ himself living in us our hope of glory.

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Bob George 14:09
So it isn’t just a case of being bought out of something. It’s the case of being bought out of something so that you could become joined to another. Now in Galatians 3:13 and 14, it says that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. Now again, what is the curse of the law? Well, it’s death, isn’t it? The wages of sin is death. That’s a curse. That’s why it says that anyone who’s under the law is under a curse. So Christ became death for us. For it is written cursed is everyone who hung on a tree. Now he redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham and that was that the just shall live by faith, and that salvation comes by faith that That promise might come to the Gentiles as well as to the Hebrews through Christ Jesus, so by faith that we to in essence, might receive the promise of the Spirit. So, all men, even though the Gentiles, were never given the law, the Hebrews were given the law that was given to the Israelites in the desert, as they had been redeemed, bought back in essence, transferred, saved from the bondage of Egypt, opened up the Red Sea, all of the Israelites who were slaves in Egypt, walked through that sea, God closed the sea up behind them, and in so doing drown all Pharaoh’s army. So there was no going back, there was no going back to Egypt, he had to have to open up that sea again. So it was the case of redeeming them out of bondage into the desert. Now that was the Israelites. And in that desert is where the Israelites asked for the law. And God gave it to them. Had the Israelites done what God told them to do, and that was to go into the Promised Land, which represents living by grace, resting in total provision, they wouldn’t have had the law, they wouldn’t have needed it. And God wouldn’t have had to give it to them. But because of their stubbornness and refusal, and fear of going into the land that God had prepared for them called a what today in today’s terms, we call it the Sabbath rest. We choose to live under the law.

We still do that today. God has called us to a rest and we say no, no, I’d rather live in law. I’d rather live in the desert, eat manna hate it. It’s miserable. But I, I can walk around saying praise God, hallelujah, just raising my hands and just joyful all over the place. But down there, the skin, I’m miserable. Because I’m in a desert, I’m not resting, I’m still trying to get from God. I’m trying to get more faith instead of resting in the faithful one. I’m trying to get more blessings instead of realize you’ve already been blessed out of your socks through Christ Jesus. I’m trying to get more holy when God said up are a made you holy. I’m trying to get more more and more and more. I’m constantly seeking God, I’m constantly just like the Hebrew reaching up to God. Why? Because we don’t know he reached down to us. So if I don’t know he reached down to us, I guess the only thing I have left to do is to try to reach up to him. But it doesn’t make an ounce of sense when you realize that he’s already reached down to you. He’s already here. People are trying to get closer to God say how can you get closer to someone who lives inside of you? But if you don’t know He lives inside of you, and you’re not aware of the power of God that is inside of you. You’re gonna keep seeking power. What do you hear constantly on television, people wanting power, wanting the anointing that thing drives me out of my mind, what’s going on there? What are you talking about the anointing? It talks in the scripture that every person has been anointed by the same Holy Spirit of God, there isn’t a special anointing on someone’s life that everyone has, now that I have God, how can I get something more spatial than Jesus living in me. That people are walking around with some kind of a spatial power that has come upon me. And to that, I say, baloney. It is just a bunch of spiritual gobbly gook that is going on in the Christian world today. And it’s time somebody speaks up and, and exposes this charade that is taking place out there today in the name of Jesus, and then piously sitting back and saying, well, people are criticizing us. But that’s what you always do with God’s people. Well, I’m sorry, that is not true. I’m not criticizing people. I’m criticizing the teachers. Yes, I’m criticizing people who are becoming false prophets and people who are sitting around deceiving human beings, I’m not going to change them, incidentally. But I can warn people not to get into it. I can warn people that there’s deception that is out there. And the only way that you’re ever going to match up with what’s being taught is true, is if you know the Word of God, right. And if you don’t know the word of God, you’re a sitting duck as to what it says whether I’m teaching it or someone else’s teaching it, because I could also be lying out my teeth to you. But the fact of the matter is that you have a plumb line living in you the ability, the Holy Spirit of God gives you, not some kind of a spatial anointing from God. If you’re in Christ, and Christ is in you, you’ve got that anointing. And that gives you the ability to understand the word of God. It’s what he said, No, I see no, in our ears heard, mind is conceived for those things that God has prepared for those who love him. It’s got to be revealed by the Spirit. The Spirit is living in you to reveal the meaning of the word of God. So you don’t have to trust me or Benny Hin or somebody else is to what the Word of God says. Going Do it yourself. Read it. If the Spirit of God lives in you, he’ll reveal to you what it means. Now that’s neat, because therefore I don’t have to have my dependency on somebody else except the Lord Jesus Christ in His Spirit to reveal that to me.

So folks, when we’re talking about these things that Gentiles never did, would never was given the law that was given to the Hebrews. So when a New Covenant, a new agreement between God and man came, that agreement was the blessing of Abraham, of salvation by faith to all who believe in other words that covered all of the world. Abrahamic covenant, the Abrahamic promise was to everyone in the world, the law was to the Hebrew. Now for the Hebrew, when the New Covenant came, the Hebrew had to take off in order to put on and the illustration there is somebody standing there, and all these beat up ragged clothes that have just been beat up something terrible. And God says, I got a new set of clothes for you. Standing beside them is as Gentile, and as naked as can be, he doesn’t have any clothes on. And God says to him, I got a new set of clothes for you. Now in both cases, there’s a new set of clothes being offered to one the Hebrew, what do they have to do to put on the new take off the old? What was a Gentile supposed to do? Just get dressed. And in both cases, it is a New Covenant to both Hebrew and Gentile. The difference was, the Hebrew had to take off to put on and the Gentile only had to put on.

What happened to the Gentile world, what happened to the all the world you have the Hebrew that was totally steeped in the laws of God, lived in the desert with those laws for a long period of time, had all of the Hebrew traditions that that tied into all of that. What do you do with that? Think about how difficult that would have been to have come in and said to that group, folks, all of that is a foreshadowing. It’s not a reality. The reality was in this Jesus who came and appeared himself to you came to you came into his own, but his own didn’t receiving but to as many as did receive him, he gave the right to have eternal life. He said, What do you mean to have eternal life? Well, I thought we got eternal life through obey obeying the law, said no, because none of you have ever obeyed it. So how could you get life through the law, if a law had been given that could impart life, well, then certainly salvation would have come to the law, but the law can’t give life or the law could do was impute death. And so to the Hebrew, they had to put that aside, in order to walk down in this newness of life whereby you’re being led internally, by the Spirit of God of the resurrected Christ that died and was raised from the dead, with a promise that that spirit that raised me from the dead, I will send you and raise you from the dead, walk in a newness of life. So you had to let go of what you had in order to grab on to something brand new. Now the message to the Gentile was not letting go of the law, it was letting go of this free spirit that you had where you had no restrictions, no limitations. In other words, this lifestyle of promiscuity, lifestyle, if if it feels good do it, to put that aside in order to be led by another and that’s the risen Christ. So in essence, you were coming out of a total in going into a total hedonistic society of the Gentile world, in comparison to the Hebrews that although there was sin there, certainly that it was somewhat restrained by the requirements of the law.

So what did ultimately the Gentile community do? While we picked up the law that the Hebrews that were supposed to let go of. And although the ones who never came to Christ never did let go of the law, so we bypass those who came to Christ and went back and picked up all of the traditions of the ones who were not saved, still hanging on to their Hebrew laws still hanging on to their Hebrew traditions, and picked up those traditions and drugged them over into what we call Christianity. And so the Hebrews or the Gentiles literally picked up the all of those old raggy clothes that the Hebrews took off in order to put on the new cabinet. And here was a Gentile all dressed up in his new suit and grabbed those old clothes and made a nice vest out of him and put the old baggy clothes over on top of their brand new ones and walking around proud as punch is to have nice they look. And that is exactly what we have done. We have literally negated what Jesus said. And that was the that he came to redeem us from that law and the curse of the law, the problem with the laws of wages soon as death, and all have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory of God, and therefore, all are dead. You’d think you’d want to let go of that. But you see, once again, we say no, God can’t mean what he’s saying the wages and couldn’t be death. And so we come up with this dumb out of fellowship bit, we’re just out of fellowship, we’re gonna words, God just kind of turned his back on us a little bit. He just a little mad at us. And so we’re out of fellowship, folks there isn’t any place in the Bible talking about being in and out of fellowship, The wages of sin is not being in and out of fellowship, The wages of sin is not going to the woodshed. The wages of sin is not getting a paddling. The wages of sin is death. And until you get freed from the wages of sin being death, you’re under a curse under a death penalty. The wages of gravity jumping out of an airplane without a parachute is death. Gravity grabs a hold of you, and you’re gonna die. Now, when you’re under the law of aerodynamics, and flying, and the engines are running, and under that law, why you can escape temporarily that law of gravity. But when those engines go off, that planes under the law of gravity, and the wages of sin is death period. And until you get freed from the wages, the sin being death, by the law of life that has been given to us in Christ Jesus. Why, how in the world you ever going to fly? How are you ever going to have life? And the answer that is you can’t there is no way to do that. And the law, and the gravity cannot make you fly. It can only hold you to the earth, but it cannot enable you to fly. And so we had to be redeemed from something. But when we don’t believe that the wages sin is death, and we make up all kinds of things, and that’s what’s going on today. We all know the wages isn’t death, you’ve been freed from that, but the wages of sin now is out of fellowship. So now what do you have to do what you got to get back in fellowship. Well, how do you do that? Well, I’ll be keeping your sins confessed.

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.