Memorial Day is not only a time to honor those who have fought for our freedom, but also a reminder of the spiritual battles we endure. Bob George offers a poignant reflection on how human desires and ambitions lead to conflicts, not just on a global scale but also in personal relationships. He draws lessons from history, the Bible, and current events to challenge us to examine our motives and realign ourselves with God’s wisdom and grace.
00:00:04 Introduction to Classic Christianity Radio
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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And so he says that these are people that come and have come, scoffers, who will follow their own natural instincts and do not have the Spirit of God living in them. But you, dear friends, build yourself up in your most holy faith, pray in the Holy Spirit, keep yourself in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life, to finalize the eternal life that you have. When will that take place? On the day that you’re absent from the body and present with the Lord, seeing Him as He is and becoming like Him, your eternal life has now been in essence realized in its fullness when we are out of this body and present with the Lord. In the meantime, do we have eternal life now? Yes. He who has the Son has what? And he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. So eternal life begins the very moment that you accept Christ Jesus into your heart as your Lord and Savior. Keep yourself in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. Be merciful to those who doubt. Do we run into people who doubt? No. Sure. What’s he say that our attitude should be to them? To be merciful. In other words, there was a time when I didn’t understand either. And to be merciful to those people. Don’t tell them you’re going to hell. Snatch others from the fire. It tells us where the destination of those that haven’t been snatched from the fire are going and what it’s going to be like. Save them. In other words, he’s saying to be merciful to those who doubt, but reach out to them with the good news of the gospel. Don’t be afraid to share the good news of Christ Jesus with people. Be merciful in their doubting, but be bold in your proclamation. Save them. To others show mercy mixed with fear. That means… When you’re talking about the fear of God, you’re talking about the awe of God. You see, folks, Jesus has come to extend us mercy, has he not? But the other side of that is the wrath of God to those who do not receive mercy. And what is the wrath of God to those who do not receive mercy? It’s called hell. And it seems like it’s a pretty warm place to be. And I think that what we have to understand is we’re presenting to the world a wonderful message that God was in Christ, reconciling you unto himself, not counting your sins against you. And that God loves you. And that God came to save you. And that God is for you. And if God’s for you, who can be against you? Those are all wonderful truths. But also connected with that truth is to those who do not accept that. To those who have gone their own way, acknowledging not him, but their own way, that there is a place called hell that is the final destiny for those who refuse to accept the mercy and the goodness and the love of God. That’s putting the balance in the message. You’re telling of the good news and you’re also explaining the bad news. And God never sends a person to hell. We send ourselves to hell by refusing the life that is offered to us in Christ Jesus. We choose, while we are here, where we want to live in eternity. That’s our choice. I want to live separated from God in a place hotter than Phoenix. That’s where I want to live. Well, you’re going to get your opportunity. That’s the deal. That opportunity is available. And that’s where people are going to go who refuse life. And as we’ve said before, you get people that are all hung up on the do’s and don’ts. And again, God expects us as a child of God and gives us what we need to live a life that is commensurate with who we are, to live a godly life. But the issue is you’re saved or lost. That’s the issue. Are you saved or lost? And the only sin attributable to man is that sin of the rejection of the Son of God. The rejection of the mercy of God and the kindness of God and the goodness of God that has been given to us in His fullness in Christ Jesus. The only sin, the only unpardonable sin is the rejection of Christ Jesus. You’re not going to go to hell ever because of your sins. Only the sin of the rejection of the Son of God. That ought to be good news to people. Now, so it says, Be merciful to those who doubt. Snatch others from the fire and save them. And to others show mercy mixed with fear, hating even the clothing stained by corrupt flesh. Now to him who is able to keep you from falling… and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power, and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord before all ages now and forevermore. Amen. I told you I was going to finish this. Man of his word. Now, let’s go back to not only the condition of the world, but to go back to a subject that’s very pertinent to this Memorial Day celebration. You have people in this world who say, I hate war. Well, I say to them, who doesn’t? Why do you think that is so unusual to think that you hate war? We all hate war. We all hate war, do we not? So a person saying, I hate war, I’m against the war, it’s like saying, who isn’t? Who in their right mind says, hey, I’m going to go have some fun today. Let’s go have a war. Hey, I’m going to really have a good time today. Let me get in a fight with my wife. That makes me just feel good. I’m going to have a fight with my husband. What do you think we are, idiots? See, everybody hates war. That’s not the issue. The issue is, why do we have it? I’ll tell you why we have it. Turn to James. Gospel or Book of James. Let’s begin in chapter 3. beginning in verse 13. Y’all got it? James 3, verse 13. Who is the wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. So humility, a humble spirit, comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, don’t boast about it or deny the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from heaven, but is earthly. That comes from the earth, unspiritual and of the devil. So whenever we harbor bitter envy toward one another, selfish ambition in our hearts… And we all know what selfish ambition is. It’s get ahead at any cost. Do unto others before they do unto you. Selfish ambition, he says, does not come from God. It comes from the earth. It’s of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition… There you will find disorder and every evil practice. Every evil practice and disorder comes from envy and selfish ambition. Well, what causes fights and quarrels among you? What causes war among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something, but you don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. And when you ask, you do not receive because you ask with the wrong motives that you might spend what you get on your own pleasures. You adulterous people. Calls us adulterous. In other words, we’re married to God, but we’re having an affair with the world. Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? And anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God? Think about that. You choose to be a friend of the world, you become an enemy of God automatically. Why? Because the world and God aren’t in harmony with one another. Do you think that the scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? That the spirit of God is the cause of your envy and strife and selfish ambition? He said, no. But he gives us more than grace. And that’s why the scripture says that God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. Now again, where does humility come from? We just talked about it comes from wisdom. Submit yourself then to God. Resist the devil and he’ll flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord. and he will lift you up. And brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. And when you judge the law, you’re not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There’s only one lawgiver and judge. It’s the one who is able to save and destroy. But you, who are you to judge your brother? So we’re talking about, in our own lives… Do we have the capability of getting along every day of our lives with other people? Do we do that? I mean, is there anyone here that says, I’ve never had a disagreement with anybody? Well, then you don’t have an opinion on anything. If you’ve never had a disagreement, you obviously don’t have an opinion. Never had a disagreement with anybody? I just love everybody? I’ve never been in a fight or a quarrel with anybody? I’ve had people, and maybe they’re right, I’ve had people who have said, we’ve been married for 50 years, never had a fight. Do you believe that? One of you is unnecessary.
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Well, what causes fights and quarrels among us? They come from the desires that battle within us. Any of us ever had any ungodly desires? Yeah, we’ve had them. You want something, but you don’t get it. So you kill and covet because you cannot have what you want. You quarrel, you fight. Now, guys, if we’re capable of doing that with one another, especially in marriage, where prior to the marriage you were just ushy-gushing all over each other and just couldn’t stand the thought of being away from one another for just five minutes… And then after a while, you’re trying to figure out ways to get away from each other. Why? Because you have fights and quarrels. Why? Because you want something, and you don’t get it. I want Amy to meet my needs, and she isn’t meeting them, so I’m going to quarrel and fight with her. And she’s looking, I want him to meet my needs, and I don’t meet them, so she’s going to feud and fight and fuss. Now, if that can happen with two people that literally have experienced the most intimate relationship that you can have, which is marriage, you can’t get any more intimate than that. Then how do you think countries are going to get along? Think about it. Is it a mystery that countries are in war? Is that a mystery? Not a mystery at all. Anymore than it’s a mystery that you and your wife are at war sometimes, or you and your husband. Because we want things. And we don’t want God’s will. We want what I want, and I want it now. Am I right or wrong, guys? And I’m not speaking from a political standpoint, but I had to think to myself when, you know, you’ve got people politically that think, oh, all you have to do is just negotiate with people. Don’t go to war. That’s stupid. But just negotiate with your enemy. Have you ever tried to negotiate with your enemy? You ought to watch Judge Judy sometime. And just see how well two people that can’t stand each other negotiate with each other. You can’t negotiate with your enemy. Your enemy hates you, and you hate them. But you’ve got people who think, oh, just negotiate, just negotiate. I know during a campaign, Kerry was saying, oh, just negotiate. I thought, if you’re such a good negotiator, how come you got divorced from your wife? You should have negotiated with her. It’s not negotiating with a whole bunch of people. That’s just with your wife and her with you if you’re such good negotiators. Guys, you know what they call that? They call it hypocrisy. And I don’t care whether it’s one side or another. I’m not talking Democratic or Republican. I’m just talking about hypocrisy. a thinking that you can negotiate with an enemy. I’ve lived long enough that I’ve lived back in the days of World War II. Some people say, have come up to me and asked, you know, were you in the war? I said, well, yeah, I was alive during the war. They said, World War I or the Civil? But… We had a person back in the late 30s by the name of Adolf Hitler. And in other parts of the world, we had Mussolini in Italy. You had other leaders and dictators, but Hitler was a maniac. Our country back at that time was what you would call isolationist. Don’t go to war. Just sit back and negotiate. Or stick your head in a hole and pretend that England didn’t get the daylights bombed out of them and all these countries are getting taken over. Just stick your head in a hole and pretend that’s not the case. But we had people on both sides of the ocean, Japan on the Pacific and Germany on the Atlantic. And it was a time when this man Hitler had announced… His intentions to take over the world, to become world dominant, and to be an Aryan race. He hated Jews. He hated anybody of color. And he was going to take over the world. Announced, and we say, no, no. You had Stalin, that our president referred to him as good old Joe. Well, good old Joe wanted to take over the country too and the world. And so we’ve had these things, and history will enable you to look back, and if you don’t learn from history, you’re going to become a different history yourself. This man Hitler’s goal was to take over the world, and guys, when I was studying in ROTC in school… The ROTC instructor pointed out that had Hitler not gone into Russia and instead gone into England, he would have taken over the United States. That’s how close we were to being taken over in World War II. We could be speaking German today. And we could be Heil Hitler-ing today. This man was there to do that. Now, when you’re an isolationist country, which we were, then you say that’s their business. That’s their business. We don’t belong over there. That’s an isolationist viewpoint. Let’s negotiate with an enemy, with a madman. And finally, it came down to the point where when the Japanese attacked on December the 7th, 1941, and attacked Pearl Harbor… that the president announced that we were at war with both Japan and with Europe. And we entered into that world that England was already deeply into, getting the daylights bombed out of them, and we entered into that war. And people back then, like they do today, say, oh, I hate war. Well, everybody hates war. The issue is, when you have freedom, Because there are people who want to cause fights and quarrels. Because they want what you have and they can’t get it. And they want to take you over. Freedom has to be fought for. It has to be defended. And that’s the reason that we celebrate today Memorial Day. We’re celebrating men and women today. who for 200 years have sacrificed and given of their lives, if necessary, to defend this country. This country represents freedom. We’re not perfect by any way, shape, or form. Our political system is messed up. Our judicial system is messed up. It’s still the best there is. And with God, hopefully, it’ll get fixed up and corrected in due time. But guys, when you have those kind of men in existence, and you have Hitler-type men in existence, there is no question about it. Had we not entered into the war when we did in 1941, we would not be a country today. We would be taken over by the Nazis. That’s no question about it. Same thing is true with Saddam Hussein. He was a madman. He killed his own people. Did he not? With chemical warfare. He had a goal, just like leaders over there today have a goal. Eradicate Israel off of the face of the earth. And to get rid of Christians. And get rid of America if you can. That’s a stated goal, is it not? You don’t have to wonder what they’re thinking. They’ve told you what they’re thinking. And those are enemies. And those are people who, if you let them go and do not have a deterrent, they will take over your country and you lose your freedom. Very simple. The people say, oh, I hate war. Well, so do I. But I also love freedom. And if freedom always has a cost to it, it’s never free. Freedom is never free. There’s always a price to be paid. And we celebrate today that day when men and women have gone and some gotten their legs blown off and their arms and wounded so that you and I can sit here in a nice air-conditioned room and go out to a nice lunch afterwards and go home to a nice home and pretend that it’s not going on. But it is going on and it’s because of those men. who are willing to give their lives that you and I can sit in freedom today. Is that true or not, is it, brother? You were over there. You testified, one of the first people I’d ever heard, the greatest fighting men, the greatest bunch of soldiers you’d ever seen. Is that fun? No, it’s not fun. But I want to tell you guys, if you turn back to Matthew with me, you’re going to see that none of this, none of this at all, is taking God by surprise. 24th chapter of Matthew. Jesus left the temple, 24th chapter of Matthew, the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him and called his attention to his buildings. Do you see all these things, he asked. Here’s this temple, huge temple. He said, do you see this temple? Jesus said, I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another and everyone will be thrown down. You know what? That was true. Go over to Israel today, you don’t find one stone on top of another. As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, his disciples came to him privately. Tell us, they said, when will this happen and what will be the sign of your coming at the end of the age? And Jesus said, Watch out that no one deceives you, for many will come in my name, claiming I am the Christ, and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. Wars are going to be with us until the end of time. You’re not going to escape it by being anti-war. We’re all anti-war. But it’s going to be with us until the end of time. And our… Our rebellion to it isn’t going to solve it or keep it from happening. It is going to be here until the end of ages. Why? Because we want something and we don’t get it. So we kill and we covet. That’s why. Because of the evil heart of man, we have wars. So he said, see to it no one deceives you. There’ll be wars and rumors of wars. See to it that you’re not alarmed. That’s for us. See, we’re not alarmed by this. Such things must happen, but the end is still not to come. What does he say about wars? It must happen. It must happen. So it doesn’t do us any good to sit around saying I’m against it or I’m for it. It’s just going to happen. Are we together on that, guys? Nation will rise up against nation. Kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. Can you imagine what’s going on over in Indonesia? Just got through with a tsunami and now they had an earthquake that killed what? Almost 4,000 people. That’s more than has been killed over in Iraq. War. War.
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Until next time, walk in faith, be good to one another, and praise the Lord. Amen.
