Radio Broadcast Monday 04/14/2025

Classic Christianity – The Mystery of God Part 1 (04-14-25)

Bob George Presents: The Mystery of God Week Two Part 1

~ Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Ephasians 1:1,2

Paul was writing to the SAINTS in Ephesus, and he wanted them to know something. He wanted them to know that in Christ Jesus they were set apart. They were made HOLY in the sight of God. He called the SAINTS. Saints are NOT something the Catholic church says are saints. Those are nothing but lies by the Catholic church by the way. A person is a Saint when the Holy Spirit indwells them. God makes a person a saint, NOT man, and certainly not demonically controlled religion centers.

A person is not a saint based on what they do or don’t do. A person is a Saint because of who they place Faith in. And only those who place Faith in the True Jesus are saved. A person that has the Holy Spirit living in them, will be having their mind renewed. They will be changing their mind about the things of the world. For the Holy Spirit ALWAYS disciplines those he loves. And if you are not sensing the Spirit of God disciplining you, then you might want to check to see if you are in Christ Jesus yourself. Because we are told, that the Lord’s discipline does NOT feel comfortable at the time. Why? Because in our flesh, we don’t like hearing that we were wrong. Or that we believed and taught wrong things. Or we put entities on our idol pedestal that we had no clue about.

And today, we are being shown Truth all around us. Those with eyes to see can begin to see the Truth of what is going on today. And if a person is still into politics, and in love with their movie stars, or get bent out of shape when someone talks badly about one of our favorite characters on the world stage, they will lash out in anger to the messenger. That’s how you know someone does indeed have an idol. And folks, we all had idols, and many still do, and have not repented of their idols. Most are no different than the TRUE Hebrews in the desert, where they created idols to Baal.

—

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the One having blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world for us to be holy and blameless before Him, in love having predestined us for divine adoption as sons to Himself through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He has freely given us in the Beloved One, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished upon us in all wisdom and understanding, having made known to us the mystery of His will according to His pleasure, which He purposed in Him for the administration of the fullness of the times, to bring together all things in Christ—the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth— in Him, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of the One working all things according to the counsel of His will for us, the ones having first trusted in Christ, to be to the praise of His glory, in whom you also, having heard the word of truth, the gospel your of salvation, in whom also having believed you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance to the redemption of the acquired possession, to the praise of His glory. Ephesians 1:3-14

…..

And a certain ruler asked Him, saying, “Good Teacher, having done what, will I inherit eternal life?”
And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good, except God alone.

~ “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” 1 John 5:12

~ Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; the one believing in Me, even if he should die, he will live. And everyone living and believing in Me shall never die, to the age. Do you believe this?” John 11:25,26
—

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.”

“~ Now he addresses his letter, then to the saints of Ephesus, the faithful in Christ. Jesus, grace and peace. Be to you from God, our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. You remember we’ve talked about that. How many times had Paul always talked about grace and peace, which is a very unlikely salutation, because the normal salutation of the HEBREW to one another was Shalom peace. But Paul always said grace and peace, grace and peace, be unto you. And the reason for that is Paul had come to understand. Something that there is no peace apart from grace. And so all of his salutations were grace and peace be unto you, not just peace, grace and peace to you from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms. With every spiritual blessing in Christ, how Blessed are we?” ~ Bob George

Bible Study Booklets

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 0:30
Let’s all turn to the book of Ephesians. As we had discussed last week, the city of Ephesus was to Turkey, what Athens would have been to Greece. And there in Greece, you have the Parthenon, which was the temple that was basically dedicated to the goddess Athena. And then right across the sea, why there you have turkey, and there you have the city of Ephesus. And there was built the largest temple. They said it was six times that of what was built in Greece. And there you had the Temple of Artemis, or to the goddess Diana. And like I said last week, she was a goddess of futility, but actually it was fertility, but I meant to be a joke, and some of you caught that. In those kind of climates, what you really see was the mindset of the Gentile world. We need to realize that when it comes to Gentiles today, that Gentiles are thought of in most parts of the world as if, in America, nice church going Gentiles in comparison to J@@s, it would be synagogue going. But back in those days, a Gentile was a total heathen, if you’ll remember, in the gospels, it talks about giving some of the crumbs to the dogs, and so they were considered totally godless people, totally people who were worshipers of idols, morality was not even in their vocabulary. We have to understand that of how destitute the Gentile world was at that particular time of history, the only voice that was in the world during those days, in regard to the true God, was the voice that came from the HEBREWS. And that’s why, when God set apart the HEBREWS from the Egyptian heathen Gentile world as well as the entirety of the Gentile world, he set them apart to be a representative of the Triune God here on this earth. Now, they did not know the Triune God or the details of the Triune God. To them, it was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was the God that in the beginning, Elohim, that was the Hebrew name for God. That’s a plural. I am is a plural. And so you scratch your head and wonder, where did that plural come from? Because God is one, and yet, Elohim is a plural ending of a word. In the beginning it says, or we will go down and confuse their language. Who is the we? Let us make man in our image? Who’s the US, who’s the our when there’s only one God? And so to those old rabbis scratching their head, wondering about all of these things, no one knew the true answer to that, but they did know there was a plurality in the Godhead, but did not have a clue how that worked itself out in human experience. So it was only until Jesus Christ came that we knew what that plurality was all about. That God is made up of three persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And yet there is one God, and that’s what we call today the Trinity. The word trinity is not used in the Scripture, but yet the Triune God is proclaimed in the Scripture. In one part of the Scripture, Jesus said, I will raise myself from the dead. Another part of the scripture says God raised Him from the dead. Another part said the Father raised Him from the dead. Another verse said that the Holy Spirit raised Him from the dead. Well, surely we don’t believe he was raised four times. And so the issue is that when you’re talking about one, you’re talking about all God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, representing the true God on the. Earth. And so Israel was the only voice to proclaim that.

I think that one of the most amazing things to me when Amy and I visited Corinth, and right outside of where the Bema Seat is there in Corinth is now been excavated a J@@ish star of David, and that was supposedly the place where the J@@ish Temple was in that total heathenistic Gentile city. And so we have to realize and to and to get our minds focused on the fact when don’t think of Gentiles as what we see today in the Gentile world, it is nothing like it was back in those days. And so you’re talking about total idol worship, heathenistic practice, Temple prostitution, everything under the sun was taking place in the Gentile world back in those days. Now it was to that kind of a city. Ephesus was a city with a population of 250,000 people. Back in those days, that was a huge metropolis. It was the largest city in the Asian in all of Asia. And so we have to realize this was a metropolitan city. It was a port city where people came in from, with their boats and their trades from all over the world, in the known world in those days and so again, a very decadent place. Now you can imagine Paul going into a setting like that. He seemed to have a propensity for that, to go into places like Ephesus and into Corinth, and places where it was just totally hedonistic practices, and there to present the gospel of Christ, Jesus.

Now we’re going to see therefore, as he wrote to the church of Ephesus on one of his visits, obviously away from Ephesus. He was there about three years. And so he starts off his gospel. Is Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ. Now what I want us to see as we go through here is we’re going to see the term by the will of God. You’re going to see chosen, you’re going to see adopted, you’re going to see the pleasure of God. You’re going to see in accordance with the riches of God’s will. And I want us to when we do that, if you mark your Bibles, mark some of these things so that your Bible isn’t was never meant to be this nice, clear page that you go to and sacredly look at and worship. It’s a study book, and your Bible ought to look like somebody’s been beaten it up in a very short period of time, if you’re working your Bible. So he says, Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. So Paul did not name himself an apostle. The apostles did not elect him as an apostle. He was named an apostle by the will of God. Now this is a very strange character to be called an apostle. He’s the one who was persecuting the church, if you remember, and prior to his conversion on the road to Damascus, he was hated by the Christian community. He was, he was absolutely an advocate of destruction of this Christian sect that was teaching something totally contrary to the teaching of the HEBREWS. He was teaching this thing called grace. He was teaching that this man named Jesus was higher than the angels, that this man named Jesus was greater than Moses, whom they in essence, worshiped. They wouldn’t have said that, but in essence, they did. And therefore they said, we will believe what Moses says, but don’t let God talk to us. Jesus said, On another occasion, you say that you believe in Moses, but he said, No, you don’t, because if you believed in Moses, you would believe in me because Moses wrote about me. So here is this apostle and coming in and talking about this Jesus into a surrounding that no one was very anxious to hear that message in those days. So he was named by the will of God. God called him to be an apostle.

Now he addresses his letter, then to the saints of Ephesus, the faithful in Christ. Jesus, grace and peace. Be to you from God, our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. You remember we’ve talked about that. How many times had Paul always talked about grace and peace, which is a very unlikely salutation, because the normal salutation of the HEBREW to one another was Shalom peace. But Paul always said grace and peace, grace and peace, be unto you. And the reason for that is Paul had come to understand. Something that there is no peace apart from grace. And so all of his salutations were grace and peace be unto you, not just peace, grace and peace to you from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms. With every spiritual blessing in Christ, how Blessed are we?

What’s it say? How blessed? With every spiritual blessing in Christ, every blessing that has been given to Christ has been given to who? To you. Is that mind boggling? For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world. Now, what were we chosen to be? To be holy and blameless in whose sight? In his sight, are you homely and homely? Are you homely in your own sight? Yes. Are you holy and blameless in your own sight to each other? I mean, do you look at each other and say, oh, there’s a holy, blameless person. Do we do that? No, well, what’s what’s more important, this thing going on and off? What is more important? What you think about you, or what God thinks about you? I mean, is that true or not? You see, what we think about each other can go up and down like a Yo yo, can’t it. But what God thinks about us, how consistent is that? I mean, does God say, well, you’re holy and blameless today, but tomorrow we’ll wait and see? No because he made us holy and blameless in his sight, through our identity with the holy and blameless one. Jesus Christ is called the blameless one. He is called the Holy One. And through our identification with him, he made us holy and blameless in his sight. Now blameless means that there’s nothing left that he can blame you for. Now do we do things that are blameable? But he does not blame us for that, and folks, that’s what mercy and grace is all about. You see, when you’re talking about mercy, extending mercy to someone, you are saying, I’m going to withhold what is due to you. As an example, if you were driving along, which some of us have done, and I can remember at times of and so can you I imagine that you might have been going a little faster than what the speed limit was, and then you see those colorful lights, and you realize it’s not Christmas, and the police officer said, Come on, sit back in the car. And got out his little book and was going to write out a ticket. And you said to him, Sir, could you extend mercy to me? And the policeman says, Yes, I will, yes, I will get back in your car and watch your speed. What did he extend to you? Mercy. In other words, you had punishment coming to you, but it was withheld, wasn’t it? That’s mercy, but that’s not grace. Grace would be as you were getting out the car, say, incidentally, here’s $100 bill. Enjoy yourself when you get to your destination. That’s grace.

Click to Donate to Bob George Ministries

If you’re enjoying the Book of Galatians, check out our website, Shop.BobGeorge.net. There, you’ll find a whole collection of messages from the book of Galatians, 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 14:58
You see grace is giving you something that you don’t deserve mercy is withholding something that you do deserve. Do you understand the two on that? So you see, when you’re dealing with mercy, you’re saying yes, you’re guilty and yes you deserve punishment, but I’m going to withhold that. I’m not going to exercise that. And Grace says, Not only that, I’m going to give you my life. Now is that something? So he says, in regard to the sin issue, I’m not going to punish you and the grace issue, besides that, I’m going to come live in you. I’m going to give you something that you didn’t deserve, and I’m going to withhold something that you did. And that’s mercy and grace working hand in glove with each other in regard to this thing called salvation.

And so when God went to the cross, and there it says, He who knew no sin became sin for you and me. He took upon himself the punishment that I deserved. Why? So that in him we could become the righteousness of God. So what’d he do? Give me something that I did not deserve, but he did that only after he withheld something that I did deserve, punishment. And so by that one offering Hebrews, 10:14, we have been made forever, perfect, complete in the sight of God, all of you whom he has made what? Holy. Could you make yourself holy? No no. Many try. And there’s many people in the Christian world today trying to improve upon what Jesus said, or don’t have a clue that he ever made you holy. So they’re really trying to make themselves holy through what they’re doing. But you see, none of us could ever be found acceptable in the sight of God through our own works, or through obedience to the law or through our good deeds, because he said that all of our good deeds are as filthy rags in comparison to what Jesus accomplished for you.

And so we have to realize that if we’re going to walk by faith, folks, we our faith is not in what you and I are doing. I do not have faith in the fact that if I do something, God will do something. I would hate to have that kind of faith, and yet that is what most people call faith today. If I tithe, God will bless. If I am good, God will do something good for me. And if you’re obedient, God will really bless you. How many times have we heard this? And folks, it’s the very opposite. God has already blessed you. We just got through told you’re blessed in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing. So how in the world are you going to get away with this? If you do this, God will bless you when it says you’ve already been blessed? Faith is not if I do something, God will do something that’s ridiculousness. Faith is God has done something, and I’m going to walk by faith in that. Now, when we don’t understand that, folks, the attention of Christianity is always on what we are doing and what we are not doing, rather than on what he has done, and what he has accomplished, and what he has accomplished was in the mind and the plan of God, before the foundation of the earth put into existence at the time, in his timing, when Jesus came to this earth, in order to save both The HEBREW and the Gentile and make one man out of the two. And so there is no such thing. If you do this, God will bless you. Because again, how would you know that, folks? And you know how most people think along that? When they get a raise, or when all of a sudden you start making money, you’ll hear that, oh, God’s blessing me, not necessarily. It could be Satan cursing you. So don’t ever think because you’re making money, that God’s blessing you. Because who’s blessing you are your clients or the people you’re selling your merchandise to, and unless you’ve got some kind of a weird business, you had to do something to get that back. That’s not blessing. Blessing is when you don’t do something and get something you see.

So what we have to come to grips with was with all of these things, I am already blessed in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. I want to ask you a question, if you have Christ, Jesus, how much more blessed do you need to be? Just think about that. Well, I got Jesus, but I’d like to get blessed. I got news for you, friend, you just got blessed when you got Christ, Jesus, and you’re not going to get any more blessed, any more than you’ll get any more holy, or you’re going to get any more righteous, or you’ll get any more forgiveness, you’ve got it all. Do we understand that, guys? We’ve got it all in Christ, Jesus. So Paul says that we’ve been blessed in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing.

Now here’s how all this came about. He chose us in him. This is where it all happens in him, before the creation of the world, to do we what? To be holy and blameless in his sight, period. I’m going to provide a way whereby I can look upon you heathens, you people that have no righteousness of your own, who have fallen beyond the depths of imagination. And I’m going to provide a way whereby you can be holy and blameless in His sight. Now, if we don’t recognize we’re a heathen, why that’s not such good news. Look at that and say, cause God, I’d do the same thing as good as you people are. I mean, when someone says, God loves me, I agree. No wonder. I love me too. And if me loved me, I know he loved me. Folks, we have got to see how destitute Man is before we’re going to appreciate how wonderful he is. And guys, if we’ll just use our heads not to be thinking about what I’m doing. Think about what you could think, just your own thinking processes, just what some of you have thought in the last five minutes, possibly. And we realize, apart from Jesus, I can do nothing, I can be nothing, I am nothing. Apart from Him. Why? God made us that way, He made us in such a way whereby God in the man is what makes the man. And when God is not in us, we’re not complete, but when Christ is in us, we are complete. Been given everything we need, for life and for godliness. So he chose us to be holy and blameless in his sight. So you see, now we got this word chose. Now He also predestined us. Now, what was his predestination to be adopted as his sons through Christ, Jesus. Now, let’s stop there. Now, what’s the difference between a natural son and an adopted son? I mean, if you were a natural son, could you be called an adopted son? No, who were the natural sons? The HEBREW who did the gospel go to first, the HEBREW who were given the ordinance of God? The HEBREW. Who were given the laws of God? The HEBREW. Who was given the knowledge of God about the Messiah coming? The HEBREW. Did the Gentile have that information? No, they’re worshiping Diana. They’re over there wallowing in heathenism, worshiping temple prostitutes. So who’s the natural children? The HEBREW, who’s the adopted children? The gentile. Who’s he talking to here? The Gentiles. You’re talking about Ephesus. You’re not talking about Jerusalem. You’re talking about Ephesus, a city full of heathenistic Gentiles. Were there some HEBREWS there too? Sure, they had been there for quite a while with the message of HEBREWISM. And so he’s saying, in God’s sight, in his mind, he also predestined that the Gentile was going to be adopted into the family of God, the same way that the HEBREW was elected into the family of God

Now is that good news? Now, folks, this predestination we’re talking about and choosing has nothing to do with yous and mes. It has to do with the body of HEBREWS and the body of Gentiles. There’s only three categories of people from God’s vantage point on this earth, HEBREW, Gentile and the church called the ecclesia. The Ecclesia made up of born again people, both out of HEBREW and Gentile background. Now a child of God, an ecclesia, a church which is people indwelt by the living Christ. That’s the only three designation of people. There’s no slave, there’s no free, there’s no black, there’s no white, there’s none of that stuff in God’s economy. You’re a Gentile, you’re a HEBREW, or you’re born again, one of the three. Now He predestined that, in other words, is that pretty much the world? God so loved the HEBREW, God so loved the Gentile, that he gave his only begotten son. That’s another way you could put that. The Bible just says, God so loved the world. He not only died for the sins of the HEBREW, but he also died for the sins of the Gentile. The Bible puts it, he not only died for our sins, but the sins of the whole world as well. So what you’re talking about is the entirety of the population of the entire world was predestined by God that through His Son, they would be conformed in the image of His Son. So He predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with and you keep seeing this in accordance with the pleasure and will to the praise of his glory and His glorious grace which He has freely given us in the one that he loves.

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.