Join us as we delve into the teachings of Bob George, exploring how focusing our eyes on Jesus can transform our lives. With insights from the book of Hebrews, this episode emphasizes the importance of shifting away from self-centered thoughts to find faith and maturation in Christ. Bob George shares personal anecdotes that highlight the struggles with self-love and the journey towards humility, encouraging listeners to endure hardships as a form of discipline from God.
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.
SPEAKER 03 :
Let’s turn to the 12th chapter of the book of Hebrews. And it’s good to see all of you on this nice, cool morning here in Dallas. But I hope we’ll warm up a little bit as we go on today. We’ve been talking about Jesus. How unusual. And how in the 12th chapter of the book of Hebrews, in the second verse, it says, let us fix our eyes. on jesus the author and perfecter of our faith and i want us to camp for just a little bit on that verse there about keeping your eyes upon jesus and what it says about him that he is the author in other words he is the one the object of our faith and it says that he is the perfecter of our faith in other words he’s the one that’s going to perfect us in our faith Why do you suppose it says to keep our eyes on Jesus? If we don’t have our eyes on Jesus, who do we have our eyes on normally? Ourselves. You know, I tell people sometimes quit worrying about what people are thinking about you. They’re not. They’re thinking about themselves. And we spend so much time worrying about what others are thinking about us, but even more importantly than that, is preoccupied with ourselves. I can’t tell you, folks, the number of times that I have dealt with people over these years who have a total preoccupation with themselves and their own self-importance. It’s like we grab this attitude that I am the center of the universe and I am central to everything that happens in the universe. That when I was born, people should have treated me this way. And I should never have any trials or tribulation. Or I should never have anyone who ever says anything bad to me. And people should be calling me all the time to talk to me because I’m lonely. And I could go on and on and on and on about people who are totally preoccupied with good old self. Now what is the object of that? The opposite of that. Keep your eyes where? On Jesus. Why is it important to keep your eyes on Jesus? It’s because it keeps it off of you. And folks, I don’t know about you, but when I look into the depths of me, it’s dark in there. And I don’t like what’s in there sometimes in my flesh. Do you? I don’t mean in my flesh, in your flesh. I know you wouldn’t like mine, but I’m talking about you now. We have to understand the truth of that, that we’re not the center of the universe. Jesus is the center of the universe. And there are a lot of times people grow up with that, I call it, a perverted self-love. You know, you’ll hear people say, oh, I hate myself. I’m ugly. I said, no, if you hated yourself, you’d be glad you’re ugly. Isn’t that right? I mean, if I hated myself and I’m ugly, praise God. No, you love yourself. It isn’t a case of hating yourself. You’ve got too much self-love. There’s too much preoccupied with me and my needs. And people aren’t treating me the way that I wanted me to be treated. And we go along with that type of thing. And you’ll find it in Christian circles where people come and join a church so that everybody can pay attention to me. And I think sometimes that is really sick. But it’s true. And you cannot go through life thinking to yourself that the world is all evolved around me. And that I should never have trials or tribulation. Or I should never have bad thoughts. Or other people should never have bad thoughts about me. No. Guys, that’s living in a world of unrealistic expectation, and you’re going to be miserable for all of your life if you continue in that type of thinking. There’s only one way to get off of being absorbed with me, and that’s to get absorbed with him. There’s the object. Keep your eyes on Jesus, the author and what? Perfecter of our faith. Now you say, well, how does God perfect us in our faith? In other words, if you’re getting perfected in our faith, he’s moving towards something, isn’t he? Maturity. Perfected your faith could say maturity. Well, one way that we mature in Christ is through having trials and tribulation. Now, God doesn’t bring upon you and me trials and tribulations so that he can mature us. He doesn’t need to. The world is very anxious to bring those things upon us. It comes upon ourselves. Sometimes we’re the cause of it. Sometimes others are the cause of it. But the fact of the matter is that in this world, what did Jesus say? You’re going to what? Have tribulation. So why should it be a shock to us when we have tribulation? Why should that be a shock to us when everything doesn’t just go perfectly for little old me? After all, I’m wonderful. And bad things shouldn’t happen to me. Well, they happen to others. Why shouldn’t they happen to you? And so we get this idea that I don’t deserve. I don’t deserve these bad things that are happening. Folks, I want to tell you something. If you got what you deserve from God, you’d go to hell. And so would I not join you there? We’d have a party together there. Right or wrong. So get rid of this idea that I deserve that everything should be going my way. Because we don’t deserve anything. And you’re never going to get this concept of getting your eyes on Jesus if I’m still thinking about what I deserve and what I ought to get out of life. Life isn’t fair, is it? You look at life and you see people who go out and live all kinds of terrible lifestyles and are dishonest and everything else. Multi-multi-millionaires. Say, what happened to them? Who cares? What do I care if Donald Trump is a billionaire? What does that make any difference to me? Do I sit there and say it should have happened to me? Why? Why? Why would you think it should happen to you? And so, guys, we have got to learn to get our eyes off of ourselves and to get our focus upon the one who is the author and the perfecter of our faith. Now, we talked about the fact of not making light of the discipline of the Lord because the Lord disciplines those that he loves, just like a father disciplines a child. And so it says in verse 7, “…endure hardship as discipline, for God is treating you as sons, for what son is not disciplined by his father?” And if you’re not disciplined and everyone undergoes discipline, so there’s another one. How many people does the Bible say are going to undergo discipline from the Lord? Kind of me, it says everyone, doesn’t it? I think that would include all of us, wouldn’t it? And again, it says if your father is not disciplining you, that you’re illegitimate children and not true sons. It said, Moreover, we all had human fathers who disciplined us, and we respected them for it. How much should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live? Our fathers disciplined us for a little while, as they thought best, but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in His holiness. Do you want to share in the holiness of God? If you do, don’t make light of His discipline. Now, this Bible is a Bible of discipline. And guys, remember that discipline is preparation for the game ahead, whereby punishment is a retaliation for an act done. Now, God is no longer punishing you. Are we together on that? There is no condemnation awaiting you who belong to Christ Jesus. There is no punishment for your sins, right? God is not going to punish you for your sins. I don’t care what you’re doing. He’s not going to punish you. Why is he not going to punish you? Because he has already punished who? Him. Now why he says keep your eyes on him. He punished Jesus for my sins. And he’s not punishing me. Now if that doesn’t do something to your heart… Because you’re recognizing that in the midst of our stubbornness and our rebellion, that the punishment for my sins have gone to him, not me. I sit back and say, I wish you’d just punish me. I don’t want to get punished a lot, but just a little bit so I can feel at least justified. He said, no, all of the punishment and the wrath of God is For your and my sins went upon my son, period. And now there’s no condemnation awaiting you who belongs to Christ Jesus. So there is no punishment. No man is going to be punished for his sins. Only the sin, remember, of what? The rejection of the one who came to do that for us. rejecting the fact that Jesus said, I will come and take upon myself the sins of the whole world and I will become sin for them so that they have the ability to become the righteousness of God in me. And man standing back and saying, who needs it? I’ll either work for my own. I just don’t believe in this righteousness stuff. I just don’t believe it. I believe that God probably grades on the curve. And if I can do at least 51 percent, I’ll get there. And you’ve got every idea under the sun, don’t you, out there as to how you get to heaven. And all of it is based, most of it is based just upon humanistic thinking because very little of it that you will hear out in the marketplace is based upon what the scripture says, that the only way that you and I will ever have a life called eternal life is when we plug into the eternal one, the author and perfecter of our faith. Are we together? So this discipline that we’re talking about is how God works on us. And he works on us in various and sundry ways. The Word of God is a book of discipline. It’s called discipleship. That’s where the word discipline comes from. Discipleship, discipline, training in righteousness.
SPEAKER 02 :
Classic Christianity Radio thanks you for your support of our online and radio ministry. Make sure to visit bobgeorge.net to order a copy of the Closer Look Bible Study Series. A Closer Look Bible Studies features eight in-depth study guides that detail hundreds of Bible verses to help you deepen your understanding of the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. A Closer Look Bible Study Guides are an excellent tool for both individuals and larger Bible study groups. Please visit bobgeorge.net to order your copy of A Closer Look Bible Studies, as well as many other wonderful books, CDs, and study guides. With your support, we can continue to share the good news of Jesus Christ. Let’s continue now with our Classic Christianity radio program.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s how He disciplines us. He disciplines us in our minds. And every time I pick up this Bible and read what truth is, it’s pushing out what I’ve learned this week of the error of the world or taken in. Isn’t it amazing how quickly we take in the error of the world? But guys, the more that you understand truth, the harder it is for Satan to get error into your mind. And that’s a process. That’s called maturity. What is maturity? Getting to know the meaning of the word of God to the point that it’s more difficult for Satan to get his air into our heads. So this is a book of discipline. And he said, endure it. Don’t take light of it. When God says something, go do it. And we talked about that in our meeting last week. that we hold on Wednesdays, and I gave an illustration that many of you know, but it’s a true illustration as to how God sometimes works with us in strange and sundry ways. After I became a Christian, and prior to coming to the Lord, I worked in a wholesale firm as sales manager of that wholesale firm. It was a very large wholesale firm there in Los Angeles. And I was in the floor covering part of that. They also distributed appliances. They distributed tires. They distributed a lot of different things in that L.A. basin. But my particular role was in the carpeting and the resilient flooring. While I was there, the owner of that was a gentleman by the name of Bernie Suzanne. He was a Jewish man. And he was very, very difficult to get along with. He was a guy that would walk in just with his head down, never speak to anybody, go back to his office. He had his own problems. And very few people liked him. And I thought he was a real idiot. Until I got my own business, I’ve realized how smart he was because there’s a lot of world of difference in being a sales manager only involved in sales and being an owner involved in like profits. See, salesmen, we don’t think about profits. Who cares about profits? That’s just how you keep your business going. I just want sales. And so I didn’t appreciate the fact that he’d sometime curtail my sales activity. We didn’t get along very well, but he kept me because I made money for him. And I stayed there because he paid me money for doing that. And then I had the opportunity of becoming a part owner in my own wholesale distributorship. And so I was president of my own company. Again, distributing carpet and resilient flooring through the L.A. basin. And shortly after getting my own business is where the Lord tugged on my heart because here I had all this potential of obtaining all the goals, financial goals that I wanted to obtain. It was right on the horizon. I could see all of that very, very easily. When you have a business, a wholesale business in a place like L.A. with a huge population, unless you’re a real idiot, you’re going to succeed. And so I certainly saw the success factor there in my life. And so I was president of my own company now, but I was empty, guys, as a pork barrel. I was totally empty inside because I knew something. I knew how to go out and to make money, but I did not know how to be a decent husband and a decent father. I didn’t know how to say no to my buddies who wanted to go to the bars. And it wasn’t that I lived in bars, but when you went, I was there for the evening. There was no visiting the bars. I was there for the night. And so that was a part of the lifestyle. I didn’t know there was a coffee shop in L.A. until I came to Christ. And so all of that, well, that was disturbing to Amy, but it didn’t bother me. I just figured we just got to live with this because I’m not making a living. I don’t know how we can strew sitting in a bar with buddies and making a living, but I guess you do. And so all of those things, and I used to tell her, honey, I’m doing this for you. You know, and I want this big house. And she’d say, I don’t want this big house. It takes too much to clean it. And I’d think, what a dumb thing to say. You know, who cares how much it takes to clean it? Look at how people are going to look at me and say how successful I am. Because that’s why I was doing that. That’s why I wanted those things. It was just plain ego. Wanting the approval of man. And so that was going on. And we came down to a point, as many of you know, where I finally came to Christ. I came to my senses again. And out in San Bernardino, California in 1969, came to know Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. And Amy at the same time solidified her relationship with Christ. We’ve been growing. I had a Bible and I could not get out of it. From the day that I was saved, I was buried in this Bible. I found truth in this Bible that I had never found out in the world. It was so exciting to me to pick up the Scriptures and to read truth. Now, one of the problems with that is that in about, oh, six months, you think you know it all. I couldn’t understand how these people said they didn’t understand all the Scripture because I understood all of it. And then you also have some real humble attitudes like, You know, Billy Graham, you probably ought to start thinking about retiring because I’m on the scene now. And so you had a few of those real humble kind of things. All of that took place. You’re a very self-sufficient, lost person. And like you say, you become the self-sufficient, saved person. Your ego still is there that God has to do what? Discipline you. Discipline you. Why? Because your ego is there. You’ve got this ego that I can do anything. Well, in the world, sometimes you can. You want to be successful, you work hard enough and step. You can be successful. You can drive cars. You can do all kinds of things without Jesus. And so you come to the Lord and that same attitude is there. There again, you still got your eyes on your own self-sufficiency. Well, I came to, I said to the Lord and buried myself in the word of God. Amy thought I had a black leather face for a couple of years because I was constantly in the word of God. Most exciting book in the world. Well, I started saying, and as I was growing in grace and growing in the love of God, I started saying, Lord, what do you want me to do? I’ll do anything that you want me to do. And while I was working for Suzanne, they had a promotion one time in their appliance division where if you bought so many appliances, they gave you this very nice set of pots and pans, Teflon pots and pans. Beautiful set. It was a giveaway item. And one day I was down in the stockroom picking up some samples. And here was this great big old display of all these pots and pans. And I thought to myself, well, these are giveaway items. And I think Bernie would probably like to give them to me. So I took them. I think the word is stole them. Yeah, I think that’s what the word was, stole them. And so I took those pots and pans. well i didn’t think anything of it i mean we took them took it home amy enjoyed them and here i am now i’m a christian and i’m saying to god god what do you want me to do i’ll do anything that you ask me to do and you know what god said go tell bernie about the pots and pans I said, God, is there anything else that you would like for me to do? And I resisted that for six solid months. Now, guys, this was not imagination. This was God hammering me every time I said, Lord, I’ll do anything you want me to do. I’m available to you every single time. Go tell Bernie about the pots and pans. now here was my situation I was now president of my own company having to go back to the president of another company that I used to work for and tell him that I stole pots and pans I would have rather told him I stole a television set or a car or a building then pots and pans And I struggled with that and I struggled with that and I struggled with it. And finally, one day I picked up the telephone and called Bernie and said, Bernie, would you like to go to lunch? He said, yeah, I really would like to. I think basically deep down he liked me and I think basically deep down I liked him too, but we were too egotistical to admit that. But he said, sure, I’ll come over. So he drove over in his big old Cadillac and picked me up at the warehouse and we went out to lunch. And we had probably about a two-hour lunch. And I never realized what a brilliant conversationalist I was because I talked for two solid hours about everything except pots and pans. And all the time I was there with him, it was the same old Lord saying, pots and pans, Bob, pots and pans. And I said, shut up, Lord. And it just got irritating after a while. But it was there. And I’m not kidding you. You know, you can say what you want to. That is just God. He’s saying, I’m going to get you because there’s something I want to teach you. Do you think God was interested in pots and pans? No. What was he interested in? Pride and ego. And I was full of it. So he had a lot of work to do. And so the… So we sat through all through lunch, left, paid the bill, got back in his car, drove me back to my warehouse, sat in the car for a minute talking, opened the door, started to get out. And finally said, I can’t do this. Got back in the car, said, Bernie, I’ll tell you something. I said, since I have left your organization and came over here. I have gotten to know Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. Your Messiah, Jesus Christ, is my Lord and Savior. And he has absolutely changed my life. And I said, for all of these months, I’ve been asking God to tell me what he wanted me to do. And he kept prodding me to come and tell you that while I was working for you, I stole pots and pans from you. You remember that promotion you had? Yeah, I remember. I said, well, I was down in the stockroom one day and decided those would be nice, and I took them. And I want to pay you for them. And Bernie said, fine. Gave me a price. I wrote down a check. But he said, Bernie, there’s nothing, there’s no way in the world That I would ever have even come close to admitting this had it not been for Jesus living in me. And Christ died for my sins and he took away those sins. And I gave him a gospel presentation. And he thanked me for it. And I went back into my office and never thought about pots and pans ever again. now as I said what was God doing with me he’s not interested in pots and pans but he said Bob there’s a character in you that I want to get rid of and I want to get rid of that pride I want to get rid of that idea that you’re too big or you’re too successful to admit to somebody that you took pots and pans I want that out of your character And he kept hammering me until I did what he asked me to do. What is that, guys?
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s discipline, isn’t it? Until next time, walk in faith, be good to one another, and praise the Lord. Amen.
