Radio Broadcast Wednesday 11/08/2023

Classic Christianity – Book of Hebrews P32 (11-08-23)

For to me, to Live is Christ, and to Die is Gain

~ Our very life is in Jesus, for those that have the Holy Spirit living in them. The flesh counts for nothing. When we are in Christ Jesus, and He is in us, we make ourselves available to him to be used by him, for his perfect will. That is our perfect worship to God. Don’t let anyone deceive you into thinking that you have to go to a building to worship him. God does not live in a building, he lives in the child of God. It you are in Christ, He is in you, and recognize that you are the temple of God. So, the life that I live, is Christ, and to die is gain. Because I will be absent from this body and present with the Lord. Fact for everyone in Christ Jesus.

So while down here, allow Christ to live His life in and through you. Focus on Him and the truth that he wants you to share today. For he shall give you an abundance of truth, just pay attention to the details. For the details are extremely important in everything today.

—

~ We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. ^{2 Corinthians 5:8}

~ For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. ^{Philippians 1:21}

~ Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. ^{1 Corinthians 6:19-20}

—–

~ Well let’s pray together. Father, there’s not a person sitting in this room that one of these days their bodies are gonna be in a grave or in ashes in a container, whatever. We were all born to die physically. We live here on this earth for a very short, brief period of time. In light of eternity, just a speck. We get all in love with a world that is temporary. It’s fading away. One of these days will be gone. And the only thing that’s important is those things that have eternal consequences to the things that are going to last forever. And you and you alone have a solution to that. We can go to a garage to fix our car. But we can only go to you to fix our soul. And so Father, I pray that each and every one of us will put aside these philosophies of the world. Be willing to put aside these worries and frets that plague us, they’re temporary. Things we worry about today, we look back on a year later and say what in the world was I worried about? Trust you with your day to day, moment by moment provision. And I pray Father, that as we do that, that without ever knowing it, or not doing it because of it, that will be passing on to those around us and to our own children, the greatest inheritance that they could ever possess. The inheritance of having friends or parents that knew their God and walked in him. And I pray this for each and every one of his father to see the truth of who we have been made in Christ. A lasting eternal identity that will never end. And to be able to walk in that newness of life that is ours to Christ Jesus. And it’s in his name that we pray. And thank you.” ~ Bob George

Bible Study Booklets

Join Bob George in this chapter by chapter exposition of the book of Hebrews. Available for download the complete series on the Book of Hebrews. The Book of Hebrews is key to understanding the New Covenant.

Purchase Online at Shop.BobGeorge.net

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

Now if Christ is God, then He is the WAY and the TRUTH and the LIFE and no one comes to the Father except through him if he’s God. If he isn’t God, who cares what he said? Would it make any difference? He’d just be a philosopher on the par with any other religionist. Buddha certainly never claimed to be God, Mohammed would have laughed himself to death if anyone said he was God. No religious founder claimed himself to be God. Christ said, I’m God. The prophecies testified to the fact that He was God. The whole Old Testament is a prophecy to the fact that he has God. Over 300 of those prophecies fulfilled in Christ alone, almost a mathematical improbability. And yet Christ claimed to be that. Now he said, I am the WAY and the TRUTH and the life. Now what we’ve done is this, we’ve latched on what I call the bookends. We’ll latch on to the fact that I am the way and the life. And you say Do you believe to the any evangelical Christian you want to talk to you. Do you believe Christ the only way to God? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely no other way to God except through Christ. He’s the WAY and the TRUTH in life. He is the way there’s no other way. Billy Graham said it, That settles it. Sure. Here’s a guy the other night that said was schooled in theology, the Battle Hymn the Republic. Yeah. And so I don’t know where he is. But he’s using Battle Hymn of the Republic for his theology. But at any rate, he is the way no other way. Well, you mean you can’t get there? No, no other way. Now you see, religion will come along and say no, he’s not The way there’s many ways. In other words, there’s many ways to God and you can get there through religion you can get there through being good. You can get there through Buddha, you can get there through Muhammad, you get through all kinds of ways. You get to get there through Joseph Smith idea of who Jesus was, and all kinds of things. And you’ll say, No, that is not true. Christ, the Christ that you and I give our hearts to is the Christ of the Bible, that Christ that was born of a virgin, that Jesus is the one who saves, that Jesus that was prophesied in the Old Testament, as the coming Messiah, that Jesus is the one who saves you that Jesus who was nailed on a cross of Calvary, and who died and was buried, and on the third day raised from the dead, that Jesus is the one who saved you’re the one who is sitting at the right hand of God today, interceding on our behalf, that Jesus is the one who saves you, not one you’ve made up through your own imagination, to believe on the way and then you get over there the life do you believe that he is the life? Oh, yes, absolutely. Is the only life available to us. He is eternal life. And if you didn’t have him, how could you have eternal life? After all, all evangelicals know that he you as the Son has life, and he does not have a Son of God does not have life. And these things I’ve written unto You who believe in the name of the Son of God, know that you may what? Know that you have what? Eternal life. Whose life is that? Christ, so he is the life. Well come on there. It’s kind of dogmatic. There’s a lot of life there. There ought to be a lot of ways to God and there ought to be a lot of different lifes. No, there ought to be a lot of ways of getting life. No, that’s it. That’s it. And that right? Now, if you if you as an evangelical said, there’s other ways to God, what would you be called? A heretic. What have you said, there’s other life. There’s other ways of, of obtaining eternal life except through Jesus, what would you say, ah, heretic is could be, but what do you do when you get into truth, when he also identified himself as I am the truth? You see, it’s the book ends. We latch on to the way in the life, but the truth is up for grabs. And we think nothing of saying and then we’ll come out and say, well, all truths, God, truth. All ways are God’s ways. Then the way to God through Buddha, that’s all ways God’s ways. All kind of life, or you can get there by going out there and howling at the moon, get involved in little, little New Age stuff. That’s, that’s a way to life. Heretic, heretic heretic. But when you come into truth, and we want to add to the truth of Christ Jesus, and we want to bring in philosophy and psychology and everything else. Everybody sits there and says, Oh, well, all truth is God’s truth.

Jesus came down and said, I am the truth. Of Christ said, I am the truth. That means something, folks, we got to bring it down to where we live, that means there isn’t a truth beyond that, he is the truth. There isn’t any other life, there isn’t any other way to God, and there isn’t any other truth that will set you free. So if you’re talking about truth that will set you free. There isn’t any except through Him.

Now, if that’s true, then, and Christ is truly who he claims to be, and that is God. And if he is God, and He is truth, then we have the privilege of walking in that truth. If he hidden God, why then quite frankly, as I said, we just put him in the list of of anyone else who’s out there. But if he is truth, then we as Christians have the ability to be set apart from the world, again, not by how we dress, or how we look. But in what we believe. Now the thing of it is, is will that belief and does what we believe affect the way we think and the way we act? Well, of course it does. But you see that acting can manifest itself in many, many ways. And that is not what you observe. You see, the only thing that I want to be concerned with with a person is not whether you’ve been able to put what you know into practice yet because sometimes you can’t or you haven’t. But do you know what truth is? You see, I can put up with when you’re talking in our lives, folks, you can win when you have an attitude, Lord Jesus, I know what truth is. And I know this is the way and I know this is a truth and I know this is a lie, but I tell you, I’m having trouble putting this into practice. God has said, That’s okay. I’m not through with you. And you keep it by Writing in my word, and you keep abiding, and may I will keep showing you truth and that truth will keep setting you free. So trust me, I will accomplish that. But if you’re going up with him and said, Lord, you know, this is just, you know, absolutely, this thing is just got a hold of me. And I know that you say in your in your in your word there that just so homosexuality is a sin. But but but I’m really struggling with this. And the reason I’m struggled with it, I think I was born that way. And and I think it’s a disease or I think it’s normal. Did you see where the laws are now passing where that’s now a legitimate minority group. So that’ll ultimately prohibit anyone from ever teaching from the pulpit, that homosexuality is sin. Now, isn’t it strange how we’ve come to that point in our lives where we have wandered so far away from the Word of God, that instead of looking to him for what he says, is truth, we have become smarter than God on our rationalizing every single thing that comes down the pike. And that’s the day and age in which we are living today.

Christ alone is the truth. He has made us brothers, set us apart in this world that is full of humanistic philosophy. And said, stand up against it. Be in it, don’t try to escape from it, be in it. But don’t be of it. And folks, the warning to be in the world but not of the world is a warning from God because it’s very easy for the world and it’s philosophies that grab a hold of us. And that’s why we have to be strong in the faith. And that’s why we have to know what the word of God is. And that’s what it says, Let your roots grow deeply into the Word of God so that you won’t be tossed to and fro by every wave of doctrine, everything that’s coming down the pike, that someone has to offer for a solution to something except our relationship with the one who is the solution. And that’s Christ Jesus.

Now folks, you and I have been set apart for that purpose. He says, again, I’ll declare your name to my brothers. In the presence of the congregation, I’ll sing your praises. And again, I’ll put my trust in Him. And again, he says, Here I am, am I the children that God has given me. Now since children have flesh and blood, since we are in our humanity, he to shared in their humanity, so that by his death, he might destroy him, who holds the power of death, that is the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery, by their fear of death. Folks, you know, people will come down and say, Well, I don’t fear death. Is that true? No, that’s true as a Christian. But is it true, if you didn’t know the Lord? If you you can sit there and say, Oh, I don’t have fear, go over there. And go over there and get in the ward and let them win shoot at you and see what happens. See how fearful you are, we will hang on to life for dear life. Won’t we? And I believe that what the Bible very clearly teaches until a man is prepared to die. He’s really not prepared to live. If I don’t know where I’m going, when I die, how in the world do I know how I’m going when I’m alive? And Christ freed us from that. That’s another thing where that sets us apart from the world. And because the world doesn’t understand that type of peace, in the midst of death. You and I will never understand that kind of peace when we are facing death. If we do not understand the fullness of the gospel. There isn’t any way until we understand under the New Covenant, how our sins were taken away, not covered in atonement, taken away from the sight of God, so that you and I with Paul not because of what we’ve done or haven’t done are able to say absent from the body present with the Lord. For me to live Christ for me to die that’s gain.

I wanted to read with you an article I read Tuesday. That was in that was in one of the magazines. Certainly not a Christian magazine. People magazine. This is unusual article to be published in People Magazine, but it was published and it talks about a pair of says a pairs inspiring Final Hours, quote so beautiful. Cannoneda Jean Cheney of California couple had been trapped for 19 days inside their snow covered 1984 Ford Thunderbird. Kids, Jean Cheney wrote that day. I can’t find the dome light writing by glove compartment like dad went to the Lord at 7:30 This evening, March 18. It was so peaceful. I didn’t even know he left. The last thing I heard him say was, thank the Lord. The Cheney’s bodies and a diary were found in their car stuck in 10 feet of snow. May one two months after they’d taken a wrong turn in the Sahara, Nevada, while returning to their Palmdale home from Fresno. Now excerpts from the diary published in this week’s People Magazine reveal a couple calm in the face of death. Jean was 68 Ken was 75. She wrote the diary on envelopes and paper scraps. The third day she wrote, When I feel hysteria rising up in me, I just start praising him and talking to him. And the serenity comes. What a loving and kind Savior we have. Your dad and I are having such a good time in the Lord. They used the blanket and the car heater for five minutes every two hours. The car ran out of gas on the seventh day. Snow provided water. They had two packets of jelly, gum tick tacks and Rolaids. Quite a feast. She quipped. The couple expressed joy, not self pity. We sing, we laugh, we pray, and our love for Him and for one another swells until I can hardly contain it.

Click to Donate to Bob George Ministries

If you’re enjoying the Book of Hebrews, check out our website, Shop.BobGeorge.net. There, you’ll find a whole collection of messages from the book of Hebrews, as well as other DVDs, CDs and Bible studies available for purchase. That’s Shop.BobGeorge.net. Let’s join Bob. Now as he continues the radio program.

Bob George 14:35
We both say whatever the outcome, we wouldn’t have missed this experience. We realize not a single soul knows where we are. But God and like I said, Who is better to know. Sons skip told people. We’re fortunate that mom and dad were so sweet. That they gave us something so beautiful. There’s a couple that were freed from the fear of death, through the life of Christ. People who realize that the author of their salvation was made perfect through his own suffering. He tasted death for us, in order to free us from our fear of death. Folks, there is not a greater inheritance that we can pass on to our children, to our loved ones, to the people around us, than an inheritance of a trust in this God, a trust in the Lord Jesus, there’s no greater inheritance, you pass on a lot of dollars, and it’ll probably be fought over. You pass on love, and it will be cherished, the greatest thing that you can pass on to your children are good memories. And of a couple who trusted the Lord. It is, in many instances, the very thing that draws people to him.

Last week, or a couple of weeks ago, I don’t remember when I interviewed on the radio, a guy that would been brought up in Romania, or my How many of you heard the broadcast. But this fellow had been brought up in Romania, under the communist regime. And at age five, went into school and was taught all of his life to be an atheist. That’s what the communists teach. And he said, it’s amazing how they, how they teach that they throw it in everything. Even math classes, they taught how that two plus two equal four, and thank God for that we’ve been freed from this religious or miss religion that would enabled us to discover this. That type of reasoning, even in math, that that’s, you know, that’s how we got our math problems is through getting freed from religion. And so we were brought up that way. He said at age 15, his father died, his dad had been converted as a result of a Bible translation in Romania. And as he said, Romania was the last province of the Roman Empire. That’s where the Romania comes from the word Rome. And so it was an integral part of the Roman Empire. And their language was sprinkled with Latin, not sprinkled flooded with it. So the Romanian language was unique in and of itself, but because of the dominance of the Russian influence in there, like I said, their Bible that they call it a Romanian Bible, literally, it was with their language, but with Russian letters to it, so nobody could read it, nobody could understand it. And so there was a priest back in those days, a priest of the Orthodox Church that decided to translate the Bible into Russian, and got permission from the Queen to do so in fact, moved on the grounds there, and was paid by them to do the translation. In the midst of the translation, got all the way through the Gospels, and got to the book of Romans. And in that translation in the book of Romans saw where you are justified by faith and faith alone, that it is full by grace that we have been saved, and not that of ourselves, it was a gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no man could boast. And stop translating the Bible said, I can’t go any farther. I don’t buy this. All my life, I’ve been working to find acceptance with God. And I’ve been working hard, doing good. And I’m a priest and all of this. And here, this is saying all that’s for naught. It just doesn’t amount to anything. It’s just by the grace of God, period. And so I’m not gonna translate anymore. So he stopped the translation. That went on for about three months. And in three months, while the Lord was already doing His work of his heart. And finally, to the point of this priest coming back and saying, Lord, Jesus, As hard as this is, you are God. If this is what it says, then that’s what it means. And I accept your provision of grace and was converted.

Well, he finished the translation and the translation started getting popular and Romania and the very high priest of the Orthodox Church, called him in to come and preach. And so he went into his church and started preaching salvation by grace. In other words, justification by faith. And this and people stood around for hours asking him questions after the message. Well, this priest had been there for you for years, said, I knew that he saw this response. He said, When I’m preaching everyone’s dead as a hammer, and here, you’re preaching, everyone’s asking questions. So he said, I’ll do that. So he got up the next week. And he preached on the same subject, no response at all. So he called the guy back. He said, I don’t understant this, you preach this message, everybody asked questions, I preach it and no one asked questions. And this young priest said, well sir before you can really pass on something, you have to possess something. Well, that made him mad as a hornet. And back in those days, I mean, there was a pecking order where the high priest, brother, you didn’t question him, you know, he’s God’s anointed, kind of like today, you don’t want to touch the gods anointed. And so here, so here, they were, well, are you telling me you this young whippersnapper, you’re telling me that I don’t know Christ personally, and all this type of thing? Well, you said, Yeah, I guess that’s what I’m saying to you. But you can’t pass on what you don’t know. Well, a few weeks, God got a hold of him and he to received the Lord. And it was through that conversion of that experience through the translation of the Bible that the Bible finally got fully translated and preached. And the guy that I interviewed on the radio that day, his father came to the Lord as a result of the translation of that Bible.

But he said, they lost everything. And he said, All through their time when the Communists took over, they lost everything. He said, You cannot believe the poverty. And I said, Yes, I can, because I’ve heard it from a wife. But the poverty that we lived in, that everyone lost everything, some people, Amy had an uncle who, who took his own life through that period of time, you can’t imagine the unbelievable pressure upon a human being that has worked all of their life, and to be able to have something and then have the government come in and say it’s ours, just take it away from you. And so people respond in all kinds of ways. He said, his dad was like a steady stream. Nothing ever affected him. They take it away. It didn’t belong to us anyway. It just belonged to God, God will provide. And he said, do all of those years of poverty, he saw the hand of God working and saw his dad with a steady faith, not a big highfalutin deal, not in the dumps. He said, Just a steady stream. And so at age 15, after being taught all of this communist doctrine, in school, his dad died. And he said, looking at his dad in the grave, He said, That’s the kind of man I want to be, and gave his heart to Lord Jesus. He said it was one week to discount 15 years of schooling, just a week in the Bible, took care of all those years of communist teaching. What brought that subject up, folks, was as we were talking about the fact and people say, we need to change our school systems. Now that could use some improvement. But I will tell you, folks, what needs to be changed as a family. You can have the rottenst in the school system in the world. But if you’ve got strong families, teaching truth, acting out the truth of God and His Word, you cannot isolate your kids, but you can insulate your kids. And they may be taken in by the philosophies of the world temporarily. But if they can see the reality of Christ Jesus alive, in you, and in me, as people, God will use that, to get them and return them to truth. The greatest inheritance that you and I can ever pass on, is merely passing on the truth of what God’s made us. We’re children of God. We’re called brothers with Christ Jesus. Trust him believe in him, he is the way he’s the truth. He’s the life and walk in it. The greatest inheritance you’ll ever pass on to your kids.

Well let’s pray together. Father, there’s not a person sitting in this room that one of these days their bodies are gonna be in a grave or in ashes in a container, whatever. We were all born to die physically. We live here on this earth for a very short, brief period of time. In light of eternity, just a speck. We get all in love with a world that is temporary. It’s fading away. One of these days will be gone. And the only thing that’s important is those things that have eternal consequences to the things that are going to last forever. And you and you alone have a solution to that. We can go to a garage to fix our car. But we can only go to you to fix our soul. And so Father, I pray that each and every one of us will put aside these philosophies of the world. Be willing to put aside these worries and frets that plague us, they’re temporary. Things we worry about today, we look back on a year later and say what in the world was I worried about? Trust you with your day to day, moment by moment provision. And I pray Father, that as we do that, that without ever knowing it, or not doing it because of it, that will be passing on to those around us and to our own children, the greatest inheritance that they could ever possess. The inheritance of having friends or parents that knew their God and walked in him. And I pray this for each and every one of his father to see the truth of who we have been made in Christ. A lasting eternal identity that will never end. And to be able to walk in that newness of life that is ours to Christ Jesus. And it’s in his name that we pray. And thank you.

Announcer
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’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 in praise the Lord. Amen.