Explore the profound questions surrounding free will and God’s presence in the world, through historical narratives and theological insights. From the Magi’s journey guided by a heavenly star to Herod’s desperate attempts to maintain power, we see how the narrative of Jesus’ early life reflects broader themes of choice, control, and divine orchestration. Bob George offers a perspective that challenges us to consider our own choices and the cosmic battle between good and evil.
Thank you so much for tuning in to Classic Christianity with Bob George. Through our Classic Christianity radio program and the books, Bible studies, CDs, and DVDs we have available for purchase online at bobgeorge.net, it is our desire and prayer at Bob George Ministries that you continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and forever. Amen. Let’s join Bob now as he gets started with today’s lesson.
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And so we have to understand what he’s dealing with here. And that is that your hearts are going to be revealed. You know, you can go to people and talk about God all day long. But you mention Jesus and you’ve got a division on your hands. Have you ever noticed that? I know how easy it is for people to talk about God or the big boy upstairs or the good Lord. We’ve got all kinds of expressions, but talk about Jesus. Say Jesus and see how easy that is if you don’t know Jesus. And see how accepted that is to people that you’re mentioning Jesus to. So folks, we have to understand that Jesus becomes a divider of mankind, and you cannot compromise that. There is no compromise in the gospel. Jesus is God or He isn’t God. If you don’t think He is, join the rest of the world. But if you believe He’s who He is and that is God and you believe He’s the Savior of the world and you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that He has come to save you, you are by that very nature going to be controversial and you are by that very nature going to be separate from the rest of the world. So he says that this child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be spoken against so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. Guys, what does the thoughts of God do to your and my heart? It reveals what we’re thinking, doesn’t it? Isn’t that fun? But you know, that’s what the Spirit of God living in you is for. He shows us when we got stinking thinking, doesn’t He? He points that out to us. And there’s where the Holy Spirit of God lives. He lives to renew your mind on truth and set you free from the error on truth. The only thing that will separate me from the error of the world that’s constantly bombarding my mind I don’t know about yours, is the truth of the Word of God. Now that gives us a plumb line. And it gives us something that we can gauge whether this is proper thinking or improper thinking, is the Word of God. And you can’t compromise that. So when the word of God is in you and you’ve internalized this word, you have something and someone inside of you that is constantly in the process of renewing my mind, teaching me truth, and setting me free from the error that keeps me in bondage. Now that’s important, isn’t it? And that’s what Jesus said. When I go away, I’m going to send my counselor to you. Well, what’s a counselor? Someone they’re supposed to give advice. Do we need advice? I would think so. We all need advice. And folks, incidentally, that’s what discipline is. Discipline isn’t going out and beating the daylights out of somebody. When it says that we are disciplined by the Lord, everybody shudders. No, discipline’s wonderful. Discipline is discipleship. That’s where the word discipline comes from, discipling someone. So what is this Word of God continually doing to you and me? Discipling us, disciplining our minds by teaching us truth up against what we’re trying to hang on to as truth, which is nothing but error. Do we understand that? It’s not a bad word. Nor is discipline something that comes upon you. Discipline is something that remains upon you. You and I are continually, if the Spirit of God is alive living in us, are under the discipline of the Lord. He doesn’t sleep. He’s always there. And He is always teaching your and my mind truth that is setting us free against the air of that is also bombarding our mind, because I don’t think Satan’s sleeping either. It says there was also a prophetess, Anna, and the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher, and she was very old, and she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was 84. She never left the temple, but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying.” Now coming up to them at that moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption in Jerusalem. Now, guys, let’s go from there over to Matthew, in the second chapter of Matthew, because we have to pick up at that moment Now at this particular juncture, before you go over there, hang on to where we were for a moment in verse 39 of Luke. It said, When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong and was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. Now in these gospels, in the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you’re going to see that only in Matthew and Mark is it now picked up these particular events. Excuse me, in the book of Matthew are these next events picked up. and that is what took place in between the time that Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the law, Jesus had been born, went back to Nazareth. We know, and we’ll cover this in a moment, we know that there is now a two-year period that we’re going to deal with here, approximately a two-year period. It was customary for the Jews to return back to Jerusalem on a yearly basis. And I’m assuming, this is an assumption, that this would have been about a year later when Joseph and Mary would have gone back to Jerusalem and probably stayed in Bethlehem which is just outside of Jerusalem. Bethlehem and Jerusalem are just neighbors. And so this is a possibility that this was a year later. But whenever it was, it was at a later period after the birth of Christ. And so let’s pick up in chapter 2 in Matthew. After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him. So they were inquiring of people in regard to where is this one who has been born king of the Jews? Now, guys, another thing that we have to see is there’s no place in the Scripture talking about there being three wise men. Now, we sing, we three kings of Orient are, but that’s tradition because there’s nothing in the Scripture talking about how many magi were there. It could have been three. It could have been 13. We have not a clue how many were there. We’ve just kind of made it up. But the fact is, we don’t know how many were there. But we do know that the wise men or the magi were there. How many? We don’t know. Really not very important. And I want to talk, guys, they call him Herod the Great. He was the most vicious man, probably one of them, that has ever lived. If you ever wanted to try to pick an antichrist, this would have been the one. He was a horrible, mean, detestable, vicious human being. And so he heard this and he was disturbed. He was also a maniac. And all of Jerusalem with him. Now when he had called together all of the people’s chief priests, so he said, I’m going to get together these Jews and find out about this thing. So he pulled together their chief priests and their teachers of the law. And he asked them where the Christ was to be born. Well, their answer was in Bethlehem in Judea, they replied, for this is what the prophet has written. Now there again, guys, do you think the people who lived in Israel at that time were familiar with the Scriptures? They knew what it said, didn’t they? And did they believe the Scriptures were reliable? Absolutely. They quoted. They said, where is this Messiah going to be? They didn’t go to the Reader’s Digest to find that out or Life Magazine articles. they went to where it told where the Messiah was going to be. And that was in the Old Testament. And so they quoted to Herod out of the Scriptures, But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd over my people Israel. Now was that good news to Herod? This egomaniac sitting there saying, some kind of a king’s going to come and replace me. Guys, do you remember when we talked about what is it to kill Jesus? Job security. Job security. They said, if we allow this man to continue, before long, everyone’s going to follow him and we are going to lose our place and our position. So in other words, if this man Jesus, if we let him go on, we’re going to lose our position. Number one, their position was teachers of the law. He’s teaching grace. If he’s teaching grace, who needs a law teacher? So if we let this grace teaching go on, we’re going to lose our jobs because I’m not going to teach grace and don’t know anything about it. Besides that, in order to enter into grace, you’ve got to humble yourself. You’ve got to be willing to put aside your education. And as Paul said, to consider all things dung in comparison to that of knowing Christ. And I’m not about to do that. I got my Ph.D. from Jerusalem U. And I know the Scriptures. And I’m going to act on those. Don’t tell me that’s dung. I’m proud of those degrees. Now what you’re dealing with there is the fact that job security is much stronger than what you and I think. And in these particular cases, these were religious rulers that were saying, if we allow Jesus to continue, we’re going to lose our place. And now Herod is saying, if there’s supposed to be a king and it’s prophesied in the scripture, then that means I’m not going to be king. And if anyone thinks they’re going to take their kingship away from me, even God. And that’s in essence what he’s saying. If this God of these Jews think that that God is going to remove me from office, he’s got another thing coming. And so he developed a plan. And here was his plan. He said, Herod called the Magi secretly. That’s the way people like that always deal, secretly. and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem. He said, Go and make a careful search for this child, and as soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him. What a hypocrite. Go find him so I too can worship him. You just see him saying that.
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Be sure to go to BobGeorge.net to find our in-depth and practical Bible study guides. Each Bible study will teach you more about Jesus and will help strengthen your relationship with God. Now back to our Classic Christianity radio program.
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Well, after they had heard the king, they went on their way. And then the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. Now, folks, we could sit here all day long and talk about that being just a normal star in the sky, and you’ve got people that talk about the planets were all lined up, and that’s what happened, and you’ve got all kinds of studies on that type of thing. I don’t care how you line up the stars. A star doesn’t lead you to a place. And so this star that we’re talking about was something spatial that God put there. It wasn’t something that could be explained by the study of stars. It was a unique thing in the sky. And that star, the only thing you could call it was a star, but it was something up there of a light that led them to the place of Christ Jesus. And then stopped. Stars don’t start and stop. Have you noticed that? So it stopped over the place where the child was. Now when they saw the star, they were overjoyed. And coming to the house, saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him. Now that’s why I say, folks, Jesus was not born in a house. He was born in a manger, wasn’t he? And then it said that Joseph and Mary returned back to Nazareth after they had completed all the purification things. So now, for some reason, and the Scripture doesn’t tell why they’re back in Bethlehem, we don’t know. It could be that they moved back there after being in Nazareth. They moved back because being close to the temple, recognizing the fact that their son was someone somewhat special, and recognizing that Jerusalem is the holy city, it could have very well been to say, we need to go live there close to Jerusalem and educate this boy in Jerusalem. We don’t know those things, and we don’t need to know them. What we do know is they were back in Bethlehem for some reason or another, living in a house. This is after the birth. This was within a two-year period. And so we don’t know when within that two-year period, but as we read on as to what Herod did, I would assume it was closer to the one or two-year period. period that we’re going to talk about in a moment. Now, they saw the child and they bowed down and worshipped him. And then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, incense, and myrrh. Maybe that’s why they get the three wise men. One wise man had gold, another had incense, and another had myrrh. I’d just like us to come up with that. But at any rate, they all had those things and they laid them at the feet of Christ. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route. So what you assume took place there is they were in Bethlehem and instead of going back from Bethlehem through Jerusalem, they took an alternate route and escaped Jerusalem for fear of their lives. Now when they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. Now here’s another dream. And he said, get up and take this child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search the child to kill him. So he got up and took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet Hosea, Out of Egypt I called my son. When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious. And he gave orders to kill Herod. all the boys in Bethlehem and in its vicinity, who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. So here was Herod, and he had learned the time from the Magi as to the approximate time of the birth of the Messiah, the time then that they had seen this star leading them to the Messiah, And he knew that if he set a rule to kill every boy under two years of age, he’d be sure to get this one. And so in an attempt to kill one child, he ended up killing every boy under two years of age. How many of you have a child under two? How would you like to take that little baby and have someone rip her out of your arms and go cut their heads off? Can you imagine the lament and the heartache of mothers and fathers seeing their children dragged from their homes and killed for no reason? Just killed. Why? Because of this madman that was so egocentric that he said, no one’s going to be king with me. And so he goes out and kills every one of the boys. Every one of you and I who have had boys, children, can imagine taking a one-year-old, almost a two-year-old, and having them snatched out of your home to be murdered by a maniac. That’s what took place. Now, folks, you ask yourself the question sometimes, where was God in all this? Where was God when John the Baptist was beheaded? Where was Jesus as his relative? And we ask ourselves that question sometimes. Where was God in all this? Folks, the answer to that is God was exactly where he’s always been, on his throne. When God created man, He created man with a free will, did He not? He could have created us as a robot, and we would just be little robots running around down here. If you were a robot, could you love God by free will? No. And if God was going to create a creation in whom He could love and interact, then He had to create a creation in such a way who could respond to that love and interact with that love. And in order to do that, in the foreknowledge of God and His creative work, He created man with a will. He also created the angelic beings with a will. And some of those, one-third, chose to follow Satan to this earth in rebellion to God right out of heaven. Angels were not propagated. They were created individually by the hand of God. And yet, with a will, chose to turn their back on God. So you and I were created with a will. And I have to say, thank God for that, because if I didn’t have a will, how could I be choosy To love God. How could you make choices? The answer is you couldn’t. You’d be a robot. Just like these little things that you turn the remote control on. Now was there a gamble with that? Is there a gamble in giving man a free will? And what is the gamble? The gamble is that even though we are created by the hand of God, we can choose to rebel against God. Is that right or wrong? We have a will today, don’t we? I can choose to live a life that is commensurate with who I am as a child of God, and I can also choose on occasion to live contrary to that. That’s some of the things James was talking about. How can this be? Out of the same mouth, I can praise God with the same tongue, curse man. And he said, that should not be. That’s true, it should not be. But is it possible? Sure. Why? Because one day I choose to praise God, and another moment I choose to blast you. Is that true or not? And so free will was given to man. God had to do that. Now, if free will is given to man, then can people like Herod choose who needs God? Can a man say, I want to be God? Well, I want to tell you folks, if Lucifer said, I want to be God, for sure we can too. Can we not? And is not the temptation that was given in the Garden of Eden that you can be what? Like God? You can choose. You don’t need God to teach you right from wrong and good from evil. Choose it yourself. You don’t need God for those things. You determine right from wrong and good from evil. You control what’s going on. And I am absolutely convinced that what indwelling sin is, is nothing more or less than that propensity inside of each and every one of us to want to control everything. We want to control, do we not? I want to be in control. After all, if I’m the center of the universe, then I want the universe to flow around me. Isn’t that the way we are? I’m right at the center. I want everyone to please me. I want everyone to do what I want them to do. I want everyone to treat me the way I deserve to be treated, wonderfully. Is that not right or wrong, folks? We are self-centered, egocentric, and we want to control everything. That’s indwelling sin. Now, is that not what God does? Does He not control the universe? We say, I could do it better. I love that song that Tony Bennett did years ago, If I Ruled the World. What a wonderful place it would be if I just ruled the world. And I look at that and say, that’s a good song. Just kind of describes me. But that’s the way we are. And so we have to understand that, folks, that that is a desire that is in your flesh and in my flesh. That is there. And it raises its ugly hand anytime you let it. Anytime we’re not allowing Christ to control our lives, that propensity to want to control is right there. Am I right or wrong, guys? So what you’re dealing here is, are we going to allow Christ to control our lives, or are we going to allow our flesh to control our lives? He gave us a will. Now, if God gave a will, how is He going to stop a Herod from killing those babies? What’s he going to have to do? Take away the will of Herod, for sure, wouldn’t he? Or just blast him? Well, if you start just annihilating everyone who chooses to do something contrary to God, what are you going to have left? Apes, fish, you know, not people. Where do you stop that, you see? Where do you stop it? You say, where was God when Hitler was annihilating the Jews? Same place he’s always been. And he gave Hitler a free will. And Hitler had a choice. All of his life he had a choice. I can walk with God or I can feed my own evil nature. Guess what he chose? To feed his own nature. What’s he do with the result of that? Well, you start out killing one, then you kill two, and after a while, it’s easy. And you kill millions. Where was God? Same place He’s always been. How could He stop that? Kill Hitler. Lord, why can’t you figure that out? Kill Hitler. If He killed Hitler, there’d be another one right behind Him. And you’d end up having to kill all of us. And so what you have to understand, folks, is as long as God chose to give man a will, you’re going to find evil in the world and you’re also going to find righteousness. And all of it’s a choice. And we’re in the driver’s seat, so to speak, in regard to making a choice. Am I going to be controlled by God or am I going to be controlled by Satan? Stop it? How are you going to stop it? If I gave you a will. The only way that you would see total non-will on this earth is if God just jerked the free will away from every man on the earth, every man who was ever born, and make robots out of us. Then you wouldn’t see any evil at all. But as long as we have a free will, you’re going to see good, you’re going to see bad. Is that true in your own family? Well then, if it’s true in your own family, why wouldn’t it be true in the world?
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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.
