Join us on Classic Christianity Radio with Bob George as we dive into the richness of the Gospels, exploring the depth of early manuscripts and their implications on our understanding of Jesus’ ministry. This inspiring episode unravels the significance of the Great Commission and the importance of spreading God’s love in a world desperate for hope. With timeless teachings and biblical insights, Bob George reveals how to truly experience the Holy Spirit and the joy of making disciples.
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.
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As we study through the scriptures, guys, you might want to just turn to the very back chapters of Matthew and Mark and Luke and John. And what you’re going to see as you turn to the last chapter of Matthew is that there is really no recollection there or no recording of the appearances of Christ Jesus in except to the people immediately following his resurrection. But there is the Great Commission, which we will read at the end of this lesson today. Now, I used to think that the Great Commission was 15% on top of retail. But then I became a Christian and realized that’s not what it meant. But the Great Commission is something we need to grab a hold of and hope that it’ll get into our hearts today. Go back to Mark. you’re going to see an interesting thing about the gospel of mark is once again we do not see the appearances recorded here except immediately following his resurrection and then if you’ll see down in verse nine down to the end of the chapter and hopefully in your Bibles, it makes this notation that most reliable and early manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16, 9 through 20 in them. Now, what is it saying here? It’s saying that in the earlier manuscripts that this was not there. It was therefore added in later manuscripts, and therefore it depending on whether you believe that the earlier is better or the more is better. And I’ll get into that just a moment. The earlier being better means that the earlier that a book was written closest to the event of it should be more accurate than something that is written later, especially if it’s added. even though on those manuscripts, because of the paper that it was written on, there were multitudes of those manuscripts where the earlier ones, there weren’t as many, but they were earlier. And in my opinion, I don’t think there’s any question about it, that they should be the most reliable are the earlier of the manuscripts. Now, when you get into some of these things, we’re talking about people in Matthew there picking up snakes with their hands and drinking deadly poison. I don’t think you have to be a rocket scientist to figure out. I don’t think that’s for us. I’ll guarantee you picking up snakes is not for me. I would rather go set myself aflame than even come in contact with a snake. So when you see passages like that, you realize that someplace down the line, some of the early church fathers or whoever would have added to this gospel, and therefore it’s in the later manuscripts but not the earlier manuscripts. Are we all together on that? You know that what a manuscript is, is the original writing of the Scripture that was then copied numerous times in absolute accuracy, copied, and that’s why we have the copies of our manuscripts today. Then you come back to the Gospel of Luke, and at the end of Luke, the last chapters on all of these tells us what Jesus was doing was on the road to Emmaus. And after the resurrection, there were many people who saw him immediately following his resurrection. But then on the road to Emmaus was the beating of those men and the teaching, marvelous teaching, about the fact that he had fulfilled the law in all things. And now let’s go back to John. It’s only in John and in Luke, that actually you have a recording of some of the appearances apart from immediately following the resurrection. We’re going to come down to chapter 21. Jesus had made different appearances to his people after his death, burial, and resurrection, proving himself to be God. And in many instances, having to prove to somebody who said, I won’t believe that he is God, I don’t believe he has come back from the dead, such as Doubting Thomas, where he said, come and put your fingers into my hands and my feet and believe. We have to realize that even though these men had been with Jesus for some three years or three and a half years, had seen his miracles that he did, had heard his message that he gave, had been loved by probably the most loving human being that ever walked on the face of the earth, a person who knew truth and communicated truth to people in a loving way, And yet they didn’t get it. They did not have the power to go forth and to do what Jesus had said is to make disciples. The same is true today. You have Christians or people who claim to be Christians, some of whom have never had a born-again experience. They call themselves a Christian because they go to a Christian church rather than a Buddhist church or a Muslim church. And so we call ourselves Christians. Or you have people who possibly have come to Christ, but have never been taught the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Have never been taught what Jesus said to go and to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit to come and live in you. So they’ve never had an experience with the Holy Spirit of God. So it’s like I’ve said before, I was a very self-sufficient lost person and I became a self-sufficient saved person. In other words, I am now saved, but I’m going to go out and live this Christian life in the energy of my flesh. And I’m going to go out and do good things for Jesus. Sincere is a heart attack, but sincerely wrong. Because we’re out trying to accomplish for God what only He can accomplish in and through us. And so there’s no power. You can have activity, but there’s no power to it at all. And many, many people live their entire Christian life in that fashion, whereby I never experience the love and the joy and the peace and the patience and kindness and goodness that comes from being indwelt by the Spirit of God living in us. And we never experience the thrill of leading another person into a saving knowledge of Christ Jesus. That is a thrill that you’ll never forget. And we never have ever experienced that because we’ve never had the guts, so to speak, or the power to go talk to somebody. It takes the power of God living in us that he says, you don’t need to worry about what you say. If you’ll trust me, I’ll give you the words to say. And so you don’t have to be like Moses saying, hey, I can’t talk. He said, I’ll give you the words to say if you’ll just trust me. But I do want you to go say what I’m telling you to say. I do want you to go make disciples. I want you to be engaged in the activity that perpetuates this message of God’s love and grace to other people. Otherwise, as I said in our prayer, we become a dead sea. and we have the message, and we enjoy it, and boy, I enjoy it, and it’s really good, and I just can’t get enough of the message, but I never pass it on to somebody else. Do you know all it would take for this place to double and triple in size is for every person here to just bring one person, just one person in a year, and have them to stay. That’s all. Just to have one person that you meet and you have enough of a desire to communicate truth to these people and to tell them that there is a place where you can find truth and just bring one in a year. That’s all. And we’d have to put up new seats. But we get complacent, don’t we? and we get complacent many times, and therefore we don’t reach out the way that God wants us to reach out. And so that isn’t something of pointing fingers. We’re all guilty of that, are we not? We kind of forget about it. But guys, this is a hurting world, and I want to tell you something. This world is hurting more right now than I think I’ve ever seen it. And when you have what’s going on today out there, Where the Muslim community… I want to tell you… They’re not complacent. Can you imagine a complacent Muslim? They’re not complacent. They want to take over the world. They want everyone to become Muslim. Even to have to kill you… To get you to become one. The world is in turmoil. The world is seeing things… Wars going on… People killing themselves… People, maniacs going out and killing 30 people in the university. All of this stuff, it’s going around us, isn’t it? And people are in need of the Lord. People need the Lord. You can say, oh, you got this and you got this and you got all these things. You’re paranoid. No, you need the Lord. You need to learn to trust the Lord. The Lord that lives in you. That wants to live his life in and through you. That’s what we need. We need more information. We don’t need more education for goodness sakes. We’re educated far beyond our intelligence. We don’t need more psychology. We don’t need more anything. We just need Jesus. And to trust him. And to live by him. Instead of just using it as something that we go listen to on Sunday. And so the Lord was meeting with his disciples. This is the last meeting that he’s going to have with them before he meets with them and ascends to heaven to be with his father. So it says that afterwards Jesus appeared again to his disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. And folks, do any of you have been to Israel with us? To me, this was probably the most touching of all places because it’s there. It’s right there. And the place where Jesus built the fire and cooked the fish is right there. You’re just sitting there looking at it. And it’s one of the most touching areas, in my opinion, of the entire trip to Israel. But it happened in this way, he said, Simon Peter, Thomas called Didymus, Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. And Peter says, I’m going out to fish. Now, I do not believe that Peter was saying, hey, I’m just a little bored, let’s go fishing. I think what Peter was saying, because it had been some 40 days since he probably had visited with the Lord or in that vicinity, and I think he’s saying, I haven’t heard anything in all this time. I’m going back to my boats. I’m going back to my profession. I’ve been following this man for some three and a half years, and I’m going to go back to my profession, and I’m going to go back to my boats. And the other people who were also in the fishing business said, I’m going with you. And so it says, well, they went out and they got into the boat that that night they caught nothing. Fished all night long and caught nothing. The one or two times that I’ve gone fishing, I’ve done better than that. I caught a boot one time and a big limb another time. At least I caught something. They caught nothing.
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Now early in the morning, so this was almost a daybreak, Jesus stood on the shore and the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus at all. And he called out to them, friends. This is funny to me. Do you have any fish? He knew they hadn’t caught anything. He knew that. He said, have you caught any fish? No, they answered. So he said, throw your net on the right side of the boat and you’ll find some. And when they did, they were unable to haul in the net because of the large number of fish that was in it. Now, had they recognized Jesus when he said to throw the dead over, you could almost hear them, you know, in their minds saying, this guy’s a carpenter. What’s he doing telling us how to fish? I don’t tell him how to build houses. He should be telling me how to fish. But they didn’t say that. Now it said, then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, it’s the Lord. They didn’t recognize this. It’s the Lord. And as soon as Simon Peter heard this, typical to Simon Peter, he wrapped his outer garment around him, for he had taken it off, and jumped into the water. And the other disciples followed Peter in the boat, towing the full net of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards. That’s not a bad little journey either, about a hundred yards from shore. Now when they landed, they saw a fire and the burning coals there with fish on it and some bread. And Jesus said to them, bring some of the fish you just caught. Simon Peter, it says, climbed aboard and dragged the net ashore. So he jumped out of the boat. Now he climbed back aboard in order to help them with that huge catch of fish and dragged that huge catch of fish to the shore. And it says it was full of large fish, not just fish, large fish. But even with so many, the net was not torn. In other words, there comes a point where the nets can’t handle the weight of certain fish. But these, even though they were large fish and numerous number of them, the net still did not break. Now, Jesus said to them, come and have breakfast. None of the disciples had said, it’s strange, isn’t it? None of them asked, who are you? They didn’t ask the question. Now, they had identified him. They said, it’s the Lord over there. But they didn’t say to him, Who are you? In other words, is this for sure? Now, again, guys, think about this. They had seen Jesus, had they not? They had seen him die. They had seen the fact that the tomb was empty. They had seen a couple of appearances where Jesus showed up to them, walked through the wall. That should get your attention. And appeared to them. And now this is later on, a number of days later, and they are still in somewhat of a state of confusion. It says they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them and did the same with the fish. And this was now the third time that Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead. So we’re told it was three times that he appeared after his resurrection. Now they had their fish dinner together, or breakfast. Had their fish for breakfast. Probably sat there speaking and talking with each other. And after they had finished eating, Jesus said, and he called out Simon Peter because Peter was going to be the one that was ultimately going to take the message to the Gentiles as well as to the Jew. And so when they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you truly love me more than these? Now, guys, in the scripture and in the Greek language in which the scripture was written, There are three words for love. One is eros, which is never used in the New Testament. It was used in a classical Greek, but never in the New Testament. You know what an eros bookstore is. You’ve seen those type of things. That’s the sexual thing. There’s two other words. One is called agape, and the other word is called phileo. You have phileo, which is where you would get your word philanthropic. You would get the word Philadelphia, the city of brotherly what? Love, yeah. So that’s the phileo word. The agape, again, was never used in classical Greek. It was a word that, quite frankly, was only used in religious terms. Because the only kind of love that we experience or we have a point of reference in is what kind? Phileo, friendship love. And so agape is a step way above friendship love. It is not, I love you, Leroy, because, or I love you not only because you did something, but I love you because I just have to. It’s the fact that I love you unconditionally. I don’t love you because of what you do. I don’t love you because of what you say. I just plain love you. God so agape-ed the world. He so loves you that he gave his only begotten son. It is not a love that can be merited. It is not a love that can be earned. It’s a love that we can be the recipient of, but absolutely have nothing to do with it. I love you because I’ve chosen to love you. Agape. Are we together now? Agape. And then you have the word phileo. Now, you do not get the meaning of this passage of Scripture. You do not get that in the English language because we don’t differentiate the word love. But in the Greek language, it really comes out. I wish that when the translators would translate these things, that they would translate it with the explanation. It would be a great help to us. But here’s what it says. Simon, do you truly… agape me in other words jesus saying i agape you i love you unconditionally do you love me unconditionally and peter’s response was yes lord you know that i fillet oh you you know that i’m your friend but jesus you know it’s like i said i didn’t ask you that question he didn’t say that But he could have. I didn’t ask you that question. I asked you, Peter, do you agape love me? Do you love me unconditionally? And your answer to me is, you know that I’m your friend. So he said, then feed my sheep. Now, do you think that who was the sheep that he was talking about? Who’s the sheep? People. People. People. feed my people now do you think he went out and cooked them a fish dinner what does he mean feed my sheep feed them on the word of God the only thing that he’s asking you and me to do feed people on the word of God teach people the meaning of the word of God why Because that truth will do what to people? Set you free. And when the Son has set you free, you shall be free indeed. Do you want people to be free or remain in bondage? Go and feed my sheep. That isn’t just for a select group of full-time ministers. That’s for all of us. We are all ministers of the gospel, are we not? You see, we’ve differentiated the difference between laity and clarity. Nothing in the Bible does. And that’s why the clarity we put on robes and we reverse our collars and we wear dumb-looking hats and we don’t go through all of that kind of stuff in order to set me apart from you so that I can kind of indicate you don’t know anything but I do, so don’t bother to read because they’re not going to do you any good anyway because you’re not going to understand it. You’ve got to come to me to get the answers. That’s laity and deity separated. Not in the Bible. Not in the Bible. This is for all of us, guys. Every one of us have an obligation that if I’m in Christ Jesus, to get to know what he said. I say to people, if you engage to a girl and she was out of town and she wrote you a letter, you wouldn’t poo-poo it. I don’t think you’d also go to say, I wonder what that says in Greek. I think you would just read it and try to read between the lines and try to make her say things that you probably didn’t even say. But you’re going to engross yourself in that letter. You will become a child of God, guys, all of us. We are children of the living God. And God has written a love letter to you and me. And he says, read it and share it with other people. Feed my sheep. If you’re my friend. Feed my sheep, he said. Now, Jesus said, Simon, son of John, he said again, do you truly agape me? See, his first question is, do you agape me? He said, Lord, you know I’m your friend. Now he said, Peter, do you truly agape me? Do you truly love me unconditionally? And again, Peter said, yes, Lord, you know I’m That I’m your friend. You know that I phileo you. Are we together? See what’s going on here? Jesus is saying, do you love me unconditionally? And Peter’s answering, you know I’m your friend. Well, he said, okay, if you’re my friend, do what? Take care of my sheep. Look after them. Make sure that they stick into truth and don’t get off into fairyland. Make sure that… If you’re in any kind of a leadership role, make sure that your doctrine is correct. See, people again say, oh, what’s the matter about this doctrine stuff? Guys, listen. What you believe about God affects every area of your life. Every area of your life. Talk about separation of church and state. Our state looks like it’s been separated from church. Everything that you think and do is predicated on your idea of God. If you don’t believe there is one, you’ll act just exactly like a person who doesn’t believe there is one. And so, once again, Peter says, Lord, you know that I’m your friend. And Jesus said, then feed my sheep. Go out and reach out to others.
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Until next time, walk in faith, be good to one another, and praise the Lord. Amen.
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Put Jesus first in your life and turn your life around.
