In today’s engaging discussion, Pastor Jack Hibbs challenges us to reflect on our personal journey with God beyond mere textual understanding. By delving deep into Jesus’ parables, we uncover the dangers of focusing solely on religious duties without cultivating an intimate relationship with Christ. This episode invites us to evaluate our spiritual dryness and reassures us that persistence in faith will lead us to live out the teachings of the Bible, infusing our lives with divine resilience and clarity.
You can say, I’ve read that verse so many times, but have you ever walked its streets? Oh, Jesus, Jesus, and now I’m talking about Jesus again. It’s always Jesus. And there goes the songs. They’re singing this, but have you ever sung the songs? Have you ever read that book of the Bible? Do you even know the Jesus I’m talking about?
SPEAKER 01 :
This is Real Life. Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I’m David Jay, thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God’s Word, the Bible. Are you looking for some solid biblical teaching that speaks to the world today? At jackhibbs.com, you have access to Pastor Jack’s entire library of sermons on demand, anytime, anywhere. Whether you’re commuting, you’re at the gym, or you need a moment of encouragement, you can dive right into some powerful verse-by-verse teachings that make God’s Word really come alive. From deep dives into scripture to practical messages on everyday issues, Pastor Jack’s teachings help you understand the Bible in a way that’s clear, it’s relevant, and it’s easy to apply. You’re going to find sermons that address today’s toughest questions with biblical insight and hope in the midst of life’s challenges. Now, whether you’re new to the faith or you’ve been around for a long time, these messages are designed to meet you right where you’re at and inspire you to grow deeper in your walk with God. So don’t miss out. Visit jackhibbs.com. Why don’t you start exploring the sermon library today? You’re going to like it. That’s jackhibbs.com, where powerful teaching is always just a click away. on today’s edition of Real Life Radio. Pastor Jack continues his series now called The Parables of Jesus with a message titled Parable of the Householder and His Heir Part Three. Whenever Jesus spoke to the crowds, he often spoke about relatable stories using common everyday themes that the Bible calls parables. But in this parable, Jesus goes even further, exposing the dangerous ministry of the so-called professional religious leaders of Israel. You see, these scribes and Pharisees have hidden the word of God from the people of God. Instead of bringing them into a deeper relationship with God, they deceived their hearts and minds in the name of religion. So today, Pastor Jack teaches that God is persistent and patient towards us, but there will be a time when He will no longer extend His mercy, and we need to stay as close to Him as we possibly can. Now, with his message called, Parable of the Householder and His Heir, Part 3, here’s pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs.
SPEAKER 02 :
John 1, beginning at verse 1, follow me through on this. In the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God and all things were made through him and without him nothing was made that was made. Verse 10 of John chapter one, Jesus was in the world and the world was made through him and the world did not know him. Verse 11, he came to his own, that’s these guys, and his own did not receive him. Incredible. Hebrews one. Look at Hebrews one. In the New Living Translation, it says, long ago, God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. But now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his son. God promised everything to the son as an inheritance. And through the son, he created the universe. The son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God. And he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. Amen. wow, that’s my Jesus. Who are you going to call upon when you’re sick or when you’re hurting or when life is dealing you a rough set of cards? Who are you going to cry out to? Oh, man. God is patient. Before we move on, I want to ask myself and us these two questions. Are you, am I as close and as personal with the Lord as as is possible within my power, within your power. Can you just stop and think about that for a second? Are you, am I, as close and as personal to Jesus Christ at this time as is possible within my own power? In other words, am I seeking God as I ought to be seeking God? Don’t jump up and just think about that for a moment. So why are you asking this question? Because it’s a probing question. And you and I can fool each other. We can all say, yep. But then God knows on the inside exactly what the truth is about this. And I’m not saying this to make you and I sick to our stomachs right now. I’m saying this because it’s a good moment for us to stop and think, have I ever been closer to God than I am right now? Yeah, I remember when I was 13 or whatever your answer is. If you and I can say, I remember when, that’s not good at all. Now watch this. It’s wrong for you and I to say, well, I used to be closer, but the reason why I’m not is because, there’s no because. For each and every one of us, I’m only speaking to the believer, for each and every one of us right now, you and I should be striving to be as close and as personal with Jesus as ever. Tomorrow should be our closest day with God ever. And then the day after that should be even closer still. Yeah, but aren’t there dry periods? Oh yeah, there are dry periods. Listen, I’ve gone through dry years. I’m not joking. And what do you do? You know what you do. You do what Peter did. When Jesus said, are you guys gonna leave me too? And Peter said, where else are we gonna go? You alone have the words of eternal life. Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever felt like that for years? I remember going through a spell for years where the heavens were like brass and it was like dust. It was like licking a rock. You ever get any nourishment out of licking a rock? It’s like, oh man. Well, God, I don’t know where else to go, but hang on to you. And I’m glad now. I wasn’t glad during the time, but I’m glad that that time came through and I look back and it’s like, awesome, God. God’s existence and promises is not predicated upon my feelings, right? Isn’t that a great thing? So listen, don’t answer. Do you want to be closer to God? Yes. Then get closer to him. He wants you close to him. He’s like this. Yes, yes, come on, come on, come on, come on. Yesterday afternoon, evening, we took our granddaughter to see Monsters, Inc. or Monsters University, right? The new one? And she’s three years old. So we go there and she’s sitting there and you know, they have like 35 minutes of previews. It’s brutal. So she’s got her popcorn, she’s got her water, she’s sitting there. And she’s going, she goes, we’re gonna see Monsters. Yeah, Monsters is great. She goes, I like Mike. Yeah, I like Mike too. Mike Woskowski, you gotta see him anyway. The preview comes on for some other cartoon. Is it coming on yet? Not yet, honey. It’s coming soon. And then there’s another one. Is this it? It’s not it. It’s coming soon. Come on, I missed her. Turn the thing on, you know. Is that it? It’s not yet. It’s coming. And then she’s going, is it it yet? Is it it? Right? She wanted it. And then as soon as she recognized something, she recognized it before Lisa and I did. There was something on there. She went, as soon as she recognized the cartoon started, she goes, yes! Think about that. Jesus tonight is saying, you want to get closer to me? Yes. The only reason why you and I are not closer to Jesus is because you and I, quite frankly, we haven’t wanted him enough. We’re going to heaven. He might even be using us. He wants to use you more. He wants you to know him more. He wants you to draw nearer. And that is a very, very good thing. Number four, verses 39 to 40, is the lordship of God. Now remember, this is our third installment, our final message, so now we’re at number four. The lordship of God is indivisible. Cannot be parsed up. Verses 39 to 40. So they took him and cast him out of the vineyard and killed him. Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will they do to those vine dressers? Basically, Jesus is saying this. I have just made an utterance to you guys of prophetic truth, of prophetic significance. Jesus tells them what’s inside their heart and what their actions are going to soon be, and that is, we are gonna kill you. We’re gonna come after you. Thinking, listen, End of problem. Do you understand that what their plot was, God who’s infinite, knows all things, anticipated all that, and he’s got an answer to their evil plot. Is anybody plotting against you? God knows the answer to the plot. Be very, very careful, church, listen. Stand for righteousness in your situation, but be very careful and prayerful not to defend yourself. I know that goes against the grain of how you and I were raised. If you proceed prayerlessly, without confidence in the word, and you defend yourself, you know what God does? God lets you defend yourself. It’s never a good thing. Let God defend you. He does a much better job. Did y’all hear that? You need to take a deep breath and let that get into you because here’s the deal. God can do a much better job defending you and the beautiful thing about it is you’re gonna learn so much out of it as God defends you. Granted, he’s gonna work some patience into us when he does it. Because you and I, we want a settlement now. We want to pull out a sword and get some action going. Listen, God will defend you, protect you. He’ll bring you through his way. And in his time, what does that mean? His time, one day is as 1,000 years with God. 1,000 years is as one day with God. Well, which one is it? His time, right? When we get impatient, we jump ahead and we think we can help God out. Okay, God, you take care of that part of the universe and I’ll take care of mine. You can’t divide him up. He’s your Lord. And he will not be relegated or delegated into some little pigeonhole somewhere. He’s your Lord. And number five, we’ll end with this. The fifth and final thing, verses 41 to 46. The Lordship of God is obvious. It’s obvious. It’s obvious in the parable. It’s incredible. It’s awesome. I would have loved to have been there to see this. They said to him, well, you know, he will destroy those wicked men miserably. Notice what they’re saying. They didn’t catch on. They’re talking about themselves. And lease his vineyard to other vinedressers who will render to him the fruits in their season. And Jesus said to them, have you never read? And he quotes the scripture. He quotes the passage from the Old Testament again. The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. That’s an awesome story in and of itself that we don’t have time to get into. Just simply this. When they were building the temple that Jesus was standing at, they had in fact lost the cornerstone and it’s part of Israel’s history. And they found it later. It had been cast off and rolled down a ditch thinking it was a mistaken stone. And Jesus quotes that to them and they’re like, This is no obscure little funny statement here. This was the Lord’s doing and it was marvelous in our eyes. God was in that is what Jesus is saying. Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it. He’s talking about the nation that he’s talking about are all those who come. to God by faith, which is the only way you can come to God is by faith. He’s not talking about Canada or Peru. He’s talking about the household of faith. And whoever falls on the stone will be broken. Will you underline that, please? You want to do this. Not only do you want to do this, you want to do this every day. Fall on this stone. Cast yourself upon Jesus, and he’ll take care of you. Imagine if he was a big stone, you’d just throw yourself right on him. What you don’t want to have happen is what he says next. If you don’t, that stone will someday grind you to powder. He’s talking about the day of judgment.
SPEAKER 01 :
You’re listening to Real Life with Pastor Jack Hibbs. You know, to hear more episodes and maybe catch up in the series, just go to jackhibbs.com. That’s jackhibbs.com. And for now, let’s get back to our teaching. Once again, here’s Pastor Jack.
SPEAKER 02 :
In Matthew 12, 35, the Bible tells us, a good man, Jesus said, out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things. A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things. And an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. Well, what’s he talking about? Watch. But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give an account of it in the day of judgment. Remember what these guys had said. Verse 37. For by your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned. Wow, by your words. By your words you will be justified. What’s the word? What’s the password? Exactly. That’s the password. What separates those that are going from heaven, going to heaven, or those going to hell? What separates them? Jesus. That’s it. That’s it. That’s it. By your words, you will be justified. What’s the word? Jesus! Right? Jesus, be my strength. Walk on the wire, Jesus, Lord, you’re my defense. Right? Calm that wind, Jesus. Or by your words, you will be condemned. It still could be the name Jesus. Like, we will not have, I will not have this Jesus to rule over my life. Last final few verses, and we’ll end here. Matthew 7, 20. I mentioned this a couple weeks ago. Therefore, Jesus said, by their fruits you will know them. What comes out of their life? Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me, in that day… Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? Cast out demons in your name? Done many wonders in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. Notice, all the works that they did, even religious works, because they didn’t know who he was, their works stunk in the sight of God. Stunk. Yikes. How many demons have you cast out lately? Have you raised anybody from the dead? Just because people can do stuff doesn’t mean clearly from the lips of Jesus himself. It doesn’t matter to him. Notice the structure of this. Jesus, you gotta let me in. I preached around the world in your name. The only problem is Jesus didn’t know you. Listen, we’ll end with this. You can close your Bible. Just tune in for a second as we close. This morning and yesterday, The pastors, we all get together and just go through stuff. Most of the time it’s doctrinal stuff. Sometimes it’s stuff on how to handle things, how to deal with things. And we had a conversation going and then we had to end it. And so this morning I wrote my closing statement to our time together. And I basically said to the guys, hey, check this out. We need to be very careful. Listen, everybody, don’t get this wrong because I’m letting you in on a private conversation that had a context to it. But you and I, Hold up your Bible. And if you have it on your iPad or your phone, go ahead and hold it up. We’ll forgive you tonight. Hold up your Bible. That’s an awesome view, by the way. Oh my goodness. Wow. Okay, so watch this. You can put it down. We can study verse by verse, word by word, we could study this Bible from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. Thousands and thousands of verses. It could take us a lifetime, okay? And you could be schooled and trained in missionary pioneering, evangelism, preaching, pastoring, administration. You can become a church worker. You could become the most famous Christian in the world. You could become the greatest Bible teacher the world has ever known. Why? Because you’ve been trained and taught and told rightly that the word of God is above all things. Absolutely it is. The sufficiency of the Bible is 100% for life. And you can become such a master at teaching this with perfect textualism. perfect illustrations, perfect humor, perfect syntax, perfect homiletics, perfect hermeneutics, perfect sermon. I mean, a seminary professor would jaw would drop. It was perfect. But without experiencing the text in life, you will only be extremely perfect. proficient at giving information, which is good, but you can’t, nothing of that will last. There’s great preachers who’ve never been to the destinations that they’re preaching on. Are you with me? As Christians, we can read the Bible and we can stand for truth. I go to a Bible teaching church, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book. But are we any closer in personal relationship having been in the text or in the context? Textualism is truth simply interpreted. But if it’s never appropriated in living, then we become very theologically sound and perfect and right. to the point where we become dead right. Because we’ve never lived what we’ve talked about. As Christians, this is our desire at this church, that what is taught, we get up and we go live it. And what we live or what we teach, we have lived. Or what we are teaching or what we’ve taught, we’re living it now. Are you with me? It is a dynamic. And you need to stop and ask yourself tonight, Is this true in my life? For you. Do you name the name of Jesus? Do you claim him? Then ask yourself, do I know all the ins and outs of the Bible and can I even preach a tremendous sermon? But I only know Jesus textually. I don’t know him experientially. And I gave the guys this illustration. I said, in closing, what I’m trying to say is this. I can tell you tonight, as I told them this morning, in all honesty, that I have been to Prague, I have been to Cincinnati, I have been to Warsaw, I have been to Vienna, I have been to St. Louis, I’ve been to Frankfurt, right? I’ve been to Milan. I’ve been to Milan a bunch of times. Oh, aren’t you something? Well, just wait. I’m not done talking. I can go down the list. I can tell you I’ve seen those cities from end to end. I’ve seen those cities like many of its citizens haven’t. Coming in to land at that city airport in a 747, I’ve been to that city. I’ve never left the terminal. In getting a connecting flight, I was there maybe five minutes or five hours. But I could tell you I’ve been to Frankfurt. And it’s true. But I can’t, listen, that’s textualism. I’ve been there. We’ve been so far, and we’ve got a long way to go still, but we’ve been to the parables. But I’ve never walked the streets of Frankfurt. I can’t tell you where that cafe is. I don’t know if the schnitzel in Frankfurt is as good as the schnitzel is in Ziegen. I’ve never walked the street. Are you with me? Yeah. I could Google Earth, Frankfurt. I’ve been to Frankfurt probably, honestly, more there than any other city in my lifetime, but I’ve never left the terminal. You can say, I’ve read that verse so many times. Oh, gosh, is he gonna go through that verse again? But have you ever walked its streets? Oh, Jesus, Jesus, and now I’m talking about Jesus again. It’s always Jesus. And there goes the songs. They’re singing this, but have you ever sung the songs? Have you ever read that book of the Bible? Do you even know the Jesus I’m talking about? Well, he’s the son of God, savior, came to earth, died on the cross, rose again from the grave. You can spit out all the textualism perfectly. You’re a theologian. There’s a lot of theologians in hell because they were never born again. They never walked the streets.
SPEAKER 01 :
pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs, here on Real Life Radio with his message called Parable of the Householder and His Heir, Part 3. Thanks for being with us today. We really appreciate you being here. You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack’s series called The Parables of Jesus. It’s a series that highlights the teachings of Jesus while he was here on this earth. And we’ll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio. You ever find yourself longing for a deeper spiritual walk? For many believers, the Holy Spirit is just a mysterious idea we hear about on Sundays but rarely live out on Mondays. What if his presence could transform your daily life, fueling you with hope and power and unstoppable joy? What if his guidance could help you navigate through decisions, strengthen relationships, and bring genuine peace to your soul? This month, Pastor Jack Hibbs is featuring Living Water by Chuck Smith. It’s a down-to-earth look at the Holy Spirit who can revolutionize the way you connect with God. Inside, you’ll uncover practical biblical insights to help you walk and step with the Spirit right where you are. No hype, no cliches, just real answers for everyday challenges.
SPEAKER 02 :
This book changed my life. Authored by my pastor, Chuck Smith, the book Living Water, incredible.
SPEAKER 01 :
Living Water is available for a gift of any amount at jackhibbs.com slash real radio. That’s jackhibbs.com slash real radio. This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That’s jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His Word. We’ll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.
