In this episode of Classic Christianity Radio, Bob George delves into the transformative journey of Apostle Paul, a man once zealous for the Jewish law, who became a pivotal figure in spreading the message of Christ to the Gentiles. Through a powerful recount of scripture, listeners are reminded of the incredible shifts that occur when a person becomes attuned to the divine call, contrasting human capability with divine purpose and availability.
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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Paul said, I’m a Jew born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. And under Gamaliel, I was thoroughly trained in the law of our fathers and was just as zealous for God as any of you are today. I persecuted the followers of the way to their death. That was the name of Christians back in those days was the way they were the people of the way. Jesus said, I am what? The way and the truth and the life. And I persecuted them. I was followers to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison. So also, as also the high priest and all of the council can testify. And I even obtained letters from them to their brothers in Damascus and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished. He was a zealot and he was after anyone who named the name of Christ in order to bring them for punishment, which ultimately would mean death. About noon, I came near Damascus. Suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me and I fell to the ground and I heard a voice say to me, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Who are you, Lord? I ask. I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting. He replied, My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me. What shall I do, Lord? I ask. Get up, the Lord said, and go to Damascus. And there you will be told all that you have been assigned to do. My companions led me by the hand into Damascus because the brilliant of the light had blinded me. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. And now what are you waiting for? Get up and be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name. When I returned to Jerusalem, I was praying at the temple and I fell into a trance and saw the Lord speaking. Quick, he said to me, leave Jerusalem immediately because they will not accept your testimony about me. Lord, I replied, these men know that I went from one synagogue to another to imprison and to another to imprison and beat those who believe in you. He went out to beat them. He went out to torture them, punish them. And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, and that is the turning point in Paul’s life, as he was holding the coat of the ones who were stoning to death, Stephen, and saw Stephen raise his face to heaven, saying the same thing that the Lord cried out from the cross, Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing. Something happened to him. He said, I was… And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him. And then the Lord said to me, Go, I will send you far away to the Gentiles. The most unlikely person in the world to go to the Gentiles was the Apostle Paul, who was an authority of Jewish law, called a Pharisee of the Pharisees, trained by the greatest teachers in all of Israel. You would have thought he would have been the one to go to the Jew. And Peter would have been the one to go to the Gentiles. So what did God do? Took Paul, who had no credentials at all to go to a Gentile. He had been raised in Jewish culture and sent him to the Gentile and took old Peter, who didn’t do anything except kept fish, and sent him back to the educated Jew. What is the purpose of that? What do you see in that? That God doesn’t need your talent anymore. He just needs your availability. And we keep thinking, don’t we hear all the time, ooh, if this politician could come to Jesus. I’ve said to people before, if you were drowning, what would you rather have? A lost lifeguard who knew how to swim or a saved one who didn’t. So the issue that we’re dealing here is the fact that God doesn’t need your ability, just your availability. Any old bush will do. as long as God’s in it. And we keep thinking that we need to be educated and we need to be this and we need to have position and we need to have influence and all of those things are a detriment. Because God doesn’t need those things. All he needs is available people. If he needed those kind of things, he would have had all kings and political leaders. But what did he have? A bunch of tax collectors that people hated. A bunch of fishermen from Galilee. Just people who loved God. And that’s all he needs in you. It’s just a heart that loves God. He doesn’t need your education. Doesn’t need your degrees. Just a person who loves God. And he’ll use us. So he said, I’m going to send you to the Gentiles. Now the crowd listened to Paul until he said this, that I’m going to send you to the Gentiles. And when they heard that, they raised their voices and shouted, rid the earth of him. He’s not fit to live. Why wasn’t he fit to live? Because he was going to the Gentiles. Now, do you see, guys, do you see how much hatred there was on the part of the Jew to the Gentile? And how much hatred there was on the part of the Gentile to the Jew? Do you see that? It’s all the way through the scriptures. He’s not fit to live away with him. Why? He’s going to the Gentiles. Now, that’s how bad it was. Now that’s the height of prejudice, isn’t it? And so here are these two groups of people that hate each other. That God says, I got a mystery. What’s that? I’m going to bring you together as one. Going to create unity between you as one. And you say, you have got to be kidding. No, I’m not kidding. I’m going to make you a new creation where you’re no longer going to be a Jew or Gentile. You’re going to be a child of God. And I’m going to renew your mind so that all these prejudices will go by the wayside and you will see your Jewish brethren, your Gentile brothers to who they are, children of the living God. Now, that is a miracle that if that is ever seen by the lost world, they have to look on it and say there is no explanation for that apart from Christ. Now, are those prejudices still in existence today? You better believe it. And we talk about Germany and we talk about Hitler and how he persecuted the Jews. And you say, oh, that was back then. That wasn’t that many years ago, folks. And if another Hitler came on the scene, you could probably have the same thing happen to this very day because of the jealousy and all of the other things that take place between Jew and Gentile. On the other hand, when you have truly come to know Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, what happens to your heart as a Gentile toward the Jewish people? I hope it’s happened to yours. What happens in regard to that? You begin to love the Jew. You love the Jew just like you love the Gentile. You don’t see a difference in them. Like I said, Ed Hecht and I have lived side by side with each other in this ministry for well over 20 years. I don’t look at him as a Jew and he doesn’t look at me as a Gentile. We look at each other as children of God. We were just up in Chicago with a young man at our conference that is very, very, very, very into the ministry. And I don’t look at him as Jewish. He doesn’t look at me as Gentile. We see each other as who we are, children of the living God. But there’s a supernatural love that you have for the Jew. I don’t know what that is. But there’s a supernatural love that you have for the Jew when you truly become born again. You can’t sit around and be prejudiced toward anyone when you’re born again. You can’t sit around, and people have tried to do that, and we saw that in the South of people that were prejudiced toward black people, calling themselves born-again Christians. That’s impossible. You’ve got to get rid of that garbage. There isn’t any prejudice that you have between black or white or purple or green. The fact is, in Christ, we’re brothers and sisters in Christ. We’re new creations. And you don’t look at people the way you used to. And there are many people who have grown up with those type of prejudices. And if you’re a child of God, you need to get rid of them. And prejudice isn’t colorblind. It can go both ways. And we have to understand that it can go both ways. And you’ve got to get rid of that kind of stuff. You can’t be sitting around saying, oh, well, they’re Spanish or they’re black or they’re white or they’re Asian or something. It doesn’t work as a child of God. A child of God sees people as who we are, children of the living God. Or lost people. And if you’re lost, you don’t need to change your color. You need to get saved. And so your whole attitude changes, should change. And if it isn’t, you’re not born again. It’s that simple. You’ve got a hard heart. And there’s a lot of people with hard hearts today calling themselves born-again believers whose hearts are still cold as a brick and they say, you better call yourself something else because there’s no way that you’re a born-again believer and still harbor those kind of things in your heart. And be happy with it. You may have them and say, Lord, this isn’t right. But if you have them and you don’t care, there’s something wrong with your heart. And so we have to get rid of those kind of things. God gets rid of those for us. We don’t get rid of it. He just replaces it with the thing called love, which is what Christ told us to live by. So he says that he’s going to send them to the Gentiles. And they said, get rid of him. He’s not fit to live. And as they were shouting, now listen to anger. You think you’d get mad on the freeway. I haven’t seen any of you do this one yet. As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, the commander ordered Paul to be taken into the barracks and he directed him. Now here’s a guy that has done nothing and done anything except preach the gospel to the Gentiles. So what do they do? Take him in and flog him. and questioned in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this, as they stretched him out to flog him. Paul was something else. I can’t wait to meet him. Paul said to the centurion standing there, Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty? Whoops! Now someone doing that could be put to death. And when the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and reported it. what are you going to do, he asked. This man’s a Roman citizen. The commander went to Paul and said, tell me, are you a Roman citizen? Yes, I am, he answered. Then the commander said, I had to pay a big price for my citizenship. Back then you could buy Roman citizenship. And so the commander said, I had to pay a price for buying. So obviously he wasn’t an actual born citizen. He paid a price for it. Well, Paul said, I was born a citizen. Those who were about to question him withdrew immediately. They wanted no part of him at all. And the commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains. And the next day, since the commander wanted to find out exactly why Paul was being accused by the Jews, he released him and ordered the chief priest and all of the Sanhedrin to assemble. And then he brought Paul and had him stand before them. Now, we’re not going to go through all of these things. Paul went through the Sanhedrin. There was a plot to kill him. He was transferred to Caesarea, tried before Felix, and all of these things, and went up before Festus and King Agrippa. He had a bunch of trials. And in all of these things, he ultimately ended up appealing to Caesar and therefore sailed to Rome. And so going back to these last chapters in the book of Romans, we’re about to wrap this book up. He was writing to them prior to these things happening that I’m going to go to Jerusalem. We’ve just talked about what happened there and then on to Rome. Now he goes ahead to say, I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church in Caesarea, in Centurion. Now, you have a bunch of names here. Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Jesus Christ, they risked their lives for me. Not only I, but the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them. Greet also the church that meets in their house. Where did the church meet in the early days? In a house? You mean they didn’t have any buildings with stained glass? Didn’t have a $90,000 organ? Didn’t have a youth program? Or an executive ministry? What did they do in that house? It says that they met daily for the apostles’ teaching and for fellowship and for prayer. Now, folks, do you see anything else in the Bible where the church was anything except meeting for the apostles’ teaching and for fellowship and prayer.
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And so going back to these last chapters in the book of Romans, we’re about to wrap this book up. The most unlikely person in the world to go to the Gentiles was the Apostle Paul, who was an authority of Jewish law, called a Pharisee of the Pharisees, trained by the greatest teachers in all of Israel. You would have thought he would have been the one to go to the Jew. And Peter would have been the one to go to the Gentile. So what did God do? He took Paul, who had no credentials at all to go to a Gentile. He had been raised in Jewish culture. and sent him to the Gentile and took old Peter, who didn’t do anything except kept fish, and sent him back to the educated Jew. What is the purpose of that? What do you see in that? That God doesn’t need your talent. He just needs your availability. And we keep thinking, don’t we hear all the time, ooh, if this politician could come to Jesus. I’ve said to people before, if you were drowning, what would you rather have? a lost lifeguard who knew how to swim or a saved one who didn’t. So the issue that we’re dealing here is the fact that God doesn’t need your ability, just your availability. And we keep thinking that we need to be educated and we need to be this and we need to have position and we need to have influence and all of those things are a detriment. Because God doesn’t need those things. All he needs is available people. If he needed those kind of things, he would have had all kings and political leaders. But what did he have? A bunch of tax collectors that people hated. A bunch of fishermen from Galilee. Just people who loved God. And that’s all he needs in you. It’s just a heart that loves God. He doesn’t need your education. Doesn’t need your degrees. Just a person who loves God. And he’ll use us. Paul was something else. I can’t wait to meet him. Now, we’re not going to go through all of these things. Paul went through the Sanhedrin. There was a plot to kill him. He was transferred to Caesarea, tried before Felix, and all of these things, and went up before Festus and King Agrippa. He had a bunch of trials. And in all of these things, he ultimately ended up appealing to Caesar and therefore sailed to Rome. Going back to these last chapters in the book of Romans, he was writing to them prior to these things happening that I’m going to go to Jerusalem. We’ve just talked about what happened there and then on to Rome. Now he goes ahead to say, I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church in Caesarea, in Centurion. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints and to give her help that she may need from you for she’s been a great help to many people including me now you have a bunch of names here Priscilla and Aquila my fellow workers in Jesus Christ they risk their lives for me not only I but the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them greet also the church that meets in their house where did the church meet in the early days In a house? You mean it didn’t have any buildings of stained glass? Didn’t have a $90,000 organ? Didn’t have a youth program? Or an executive ministry? What did they do in that house? It says that they met daily for the apostles’ teaching and for fellowship and for prayer. Now, folks, do you see anything else in the Bible where the church was anything except meeting for the apostles’ teaching and for fellowship and prayer? You see anything in the Bible where it was anything different than that? Anytime. Starting off in what you and I would call home Bible studies. Now, home Bible studies are something that’s kind of gone by the wayside. Because when Christianity… by the emperor Constantine was named a religion that you had to belong to. And it was named a state religion that you had to belong to. And if you didn’t, you could undergo persecution. Well, you had to have a place to house all these people because they used to meet in homes. Now you need a building. And so that’s where the big buildings started coming up and assemblies. filled full of people that didn’t know the Lord from a lamppost. All few would, the remnant that were forced to go, the ones that used to meet in the homes for fellowship and prayer, they were born again, but they were thrown in with a whole group of people that just had to be there because if they didn’t, they got persecuted by the Romans. And that was the beginning of the end of the church as God designed the church to be. There’s no place in the world that you will gain any more and grow any more in your knowledge of Christ than in small settings where you can study the Word of God together and you can ask questions and you can be taught and pray together and fellowship together in the Lord. Today, what has the church become? An entertainment center. It’s become a place where you sit and you say, we got these buildings, what are we going to do with them? Can’t afford to put up a $9 million or $12 million or $24 million. That’s a small building anymore just to meet once a week. So we got to keep it filled up. So let’s have activities. And so it becomes an activity center. And you’ve got the groups now. In the early church, they didn’t have singles meeting over here and marrieds here, and then young marrieds and then old marrieds, and then older marrieds. You just had everybody meeting in the same room, kids, everybody just meeting in the same room, studying the Word of God. So what have we done? Divide up the body. So we put the young marrieds over here, and don’t you associate with those old marrieds? And you put the old marrieds over here. You put the singles here. And don’t you associate with those married people. And you get all of this going on. And then you get the executives. Because they need to be a little bit more than the others. They make more money than the rest of the group. So let’s get all of them together. And it goes on and on and on and on. And I ask you, did Jesus have a high school ministry? Did he have a campus ministry? Did he have a singles ministry? Did he have an old people’s ministry, a young people’s ministry? No. What did he do? He went out and proclaimed himself. What did the apostles do? Went out and lifted up Jesus. And what did he say he would do? Draw him in unto himself. And we’ve perverted this thing unbelievably by dividing up the body of Christ and separating everybody until nobody knows anybody except their own little group. And that’s why, to be real honest with you, that’s why we have not done, during this period of time, have not done a separation. The one we have, I wish, quite frankly, that we didn’t. Because I do not believe it is healthy to separate a bunch of people doing one thing one place and the rest of the people doing another place. And so the early church was home Bible studies. Met in smaller groups. Might have been as big as this one. Could have been. Probably not much bigger if they were than this. But small groups where you can get to know each other. Where you go back and say, did you know anyone? Nobody would know the back of their head. You know what that looks like. I stared at it for an hour. And that’s all we know. And so we have to understand that. that everything has been materialized through the ages. And you look at the ones that really get the oohs and the aahs are the bigger buildings. And the bigger you get, the better. And then you go to the pastor’s conferences, and if you have one of those, then you ask people, what’s the size of your church? Why? Because yours is 20,000. Now, if you only had 20 in it, you wouldn’t ask that question to anybody.
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Right?
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And so it becomes a bragamony. We were visiting in a hospital room the other day and the Sunday school teacher of this gentleman came in and she wasn’t there two minutes until she announced she was a Sunday school teacher and we got 70 on the roll. I felt like saying, how many roll in? Nickels and noses. The church that I used to grow up in, we used to advertise our priorities every Sunday on those little deals that set up right in front. Last week’s attendance this, this week attendance this, last week’s offering this, and this week’s offering. Advertise your priorities. Nickels and noses. That’s all we care about. And folks, that’s unfortunately in many instances what the church of Jesus Christ has been reduced to. And we look at that and say, praise God, just look at all the people there. I say, where? At the Cowboy Games? They’ve outpolled every church I know in town. We have perverted what God told us to do. Study the Word. Know the Word. Internalize the Word. Because you’re born again. And you need the Word. So, he talks about all these people that were his friends. And they met in their houses. Talks about Epinatus, who was the first convert to Christ in province of Asia. Greet Mary, who worked hard for you. Andronicus and Janius, my relatives who have been, I love this, been in prison with me. And they are outstanding among the apostles. And they were in Christ before I was. That meant that Paul had some relatives who were saved before he was. Now, you can imagine how thrilled they were with him. Because if they were saved before he was, they could have been a target for his venom. But I wouldn’t be surprised that they just might have been praying for him. And I think that that is to me quite a statement to say that my relatives were in Christ before I was. Talks about Ampliatus, whom I love in the Lord. Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ and my dear friend. And to greet Apellos, tested and approved in Christ. Greet those who belong to the household of Aristobulus. Herodian, my relative. He had a lot of relatives. And he goes on and on. I mean, I wish their names were Paul and Harry and Anne and Sue. It would be so much easier. So let’s go to verse 17 and skip all of it. He says, I urge you brothers to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching that you have learned. Now folks, when Paul calls this his gospel, and he calls it a gospel of grace, it was not a gospel of commingling law and grace. It was not a gospel that was an extension of Judaism. It was not the teaching of Moses plus Jesus. It was something brand new. Brand new.
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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.
