Join Bob George for an enlightening discussion that explores the essence of spiritual rebirth and the simplicity of the gospel as it was intended. By addressing the contrasting teachings across various denominations, Bob emphasizes the importance of personal revelation through the Holy Spirit, guiding believers toward a unified understanding of truth. From a historical perspective of the apostles to the contemporary challenges of faith, Bob illustrates the journey to embracing an uncomplicated, Christ-centric life.
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 :
In both of those places where you’re meeting with new people, you realize how many times we take for granted what we have. And I understand that to a degree. But that’s why it is always encouraging to me to get into other areas and to hear the same response that comes out of people that we hear from our own group, where people will testify to the fact that their lives have been changed through this message of totality of God’s grace. And it does the same thing all over. It doesn’t make any difference whether you’re talking to people in Chicago or whether you’re talking to people in Cairo. The same response is there, how the human heart evidently was made by God to respond to love. when we finally get a hold of the totality of love, where we realize that nothing can separate us from the love of God. That’s the ultimate of this teaching. That’s the ultimate of the teaching of Christ, is to get people to see that nothing can separate you from the love of God. Amy and I were having some breakfast this morning, and there’s a young man that came up to us and He’s been around a long time, kind of in and out. I don’t know, but from his looks, probably on back and forth on alcohol or drugs, I don’t know. But he looks like it. They might be judging that. But the issue is that he came up and he always has a smile on his face and came up and, hey, I’m dating a girl who says she’s a born-again Christian. Do you have any advice? And I felt like telling, yeah, tell her to go get lost. But the whole issue I said to him, I said, you know, unequally yoked is never going to work. You’re never going to have a relationship when you’re unequally yoked. What do you have in common with each other? But I said, Jeff, let me ask you a question. What are you rebelling against? In other words, why are you saying that she’s born again, but I’m not? What are you rebelling against? Love? Here you’ve got a God who loves you perfectly. You have a God who has taken away your sins from the eyes of God never to see them again. A God who is offering you life, a life that you do not have, that will be a life that is so different and so wonderful that you’ll wonder what you were running from. What are you rebelling against? And, of course, he had to go back to work. And guys, that is the question. What in the world is the world rebelling against? Love. Here’s somebody who said, I love you perfectly. I demonstrated my love towards you in that while you were a sinner, I died for you. I didn’t wait for you to clean yourself up. You can’t. I had to do it for you. You were lost. You were dead in your sins, in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, and I came and offered you life. What in the world are we rebelling against? When you stop to think about it, and yet you have a world in total rebellion. Satan is very clever. He has all kinds of things out there to deceive people. This guy asked me a question, what do you think of Christian science? I feel like saying, well, first of all, it isn’t Christian. It’s not Christian. It’s a cult. But I thought to myself, you’ve got Christian science. You’ve got Mormonism. You’ve got denominations. All teach something different. Like I say, the Baptists teach one thing. Presbyterians teach another. Methodists teach another. Church of Christ teaches another. Episcopal teaches another. Catholics teach another. And all of them can’t be right because they all disagree with each other. And I thought to myself, no wonder the world is as confused as we are because we have become double minded. How can you sit, guys, and listen? And I know some of you do. So maybe you can answer that for me. But sit and listen to Christian radio or even worse, watch Christian television. That’s almost a misnomer. But watch television where there’s Christian stuff. I’ll leave it there. And not be totally confused. If you’re taking in what’s being taught, how could you sit and listen to that and not be totally confused and become double-minded? Because one person says one thing, say, yeah, yeah, yeah. Another says another, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that sounds good and that doesn’t sound too bad. And we’re sitting around with this information coming in from another source and we’re dissecting some of it and wondering why we’re as confused as we are. Guys, there’s only one source of truth available to us, and that’s the Bible. Now, I realize in some of the things that we were talking about that the Bible is very seldom used. It’s just the opinions of man that is used. But in some places, the Bible is used and quoted. But in my opinion, most of the time, out of context. And so how in the world are we going to know What we know, what we know. You’ve got a book. It’s called the Bible. And that has to start there. That’s our source book. But then I’ve got a book that’s called the Bible. And it’s got words in it that say something. But then you’ve got to know what it means. Because just because I know what it says doesn’t mean that I know what it means, does it? Because if I know what it says and everybody knows what it means, we’d all be on the same page unless we don’t know what it says. But we know what it says, but we just don’t know what it means. And the issue to that is how are you going to know? How are you going to know that what you believe is true? Because I’ll guarantee you if anyone in this room or in the sound of this voice gets up in front of any group and starts saying what you believe, you’re going to have people say, no, that’s not right. You’re going to have some people as you talk about the subject of tithing and you’re going to have, oh, that’s not right. We’re supposed to be tithing. It’s supposed to be tithing. Well, I thought we were under the law. Well, tithing was under Abraham. Well, so was circumcision. But I don’t hear much preaching going on about that. But again, how are you going to know? How are you going to know that tithing is not in the new covenant? If you do not study this book. Because you’re going to hear from one group. Yes, it is. And you’re supposed to be a tithing. And if you tithe, God’s going to bless you. And if you don’t tithe, God isn’t going to bless you. You’re going to hear that, aren’t you? And how are you going to know whether that’s true or not? You’re going to go out and you’re going to hear that Jesus died for the sins of the world out of one side of your mouth and the other side of the mouth. But, but, but, if you sinned, then you’ve got to ask God to forgive you. That’s double talk to me. But it’s not to the people who teach it. And it wasn’t to me when I taught it. Because I used to teach it. That when you sin, you had to have 1 John 1.9. You had to ask God to forgive you. 1 John 1 doesn’t say that, but you interpret it to say that. But that isn’t what it says, but we’ll go beyond that. But I taught that. It had great illustrations on it. And the people who teach it have good illustrations on it. But it’s not true. What is true is that Jesus took away the sins of the world at the cross 2,000 and some years ago. That’s what truth is. Now, the issue is, how do you know that? How do you know that’s true? Because you’ve got a whole bunch of people, I mean a whole bunch, that say, no, no, no, you’ve got to keep asking for forgiveness. Yes. And you better watch your P’s and Q’s. And if you are saved, if you are saved, if, but if you are and you keep messing up long enough, God’s going to pitch you overboard. You’re going to lose it. Got a whole bunch of people who teach that kind of stuff. How do you know that’s not true? How do you know that’s not true? Then you’ve got people who say, oh, you’ve got to be baptized to be saved. You’ve got to be baptized to be saved. Now, the Bible teaches that this is the gospel that saves, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Doesn’t say anything about baptism. Doesn’t say anything about tongues. Doesn’t say anything about any of this stuff. It just says the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. He provided salvation. But others say, no, no, no. You’ve got to be baptized to be saved. Others, you’ve got to speak in tongues to be saved. That’s the evidence of it. So if you’re not babbling in tongues, boy, you haven’t. Well, maybe I’ll grant you you’re saved, but you haven’t been filled with the Spirit yet. And people believe that. How do you know that’s not true? Because you go to one group, and they’re going to say, this is true, and I’m going to bring some verses out. Maybe we’ll try to prove that. And then you’ve got another group that will say, no, no, no, no, no. How are you going to know, guys? If you don’t know, number one, what this book says, but you haven’t learned to rely on someone except yourself to teach you what it means. Because God did and said, no, I’m the provider of both of these. I’m going to give you the word, but I’m also going to tell you you have no capability of understanding its meaning apart from me who gave you the word. And when you’re born again, I’m going to come and live inside of you. And the Holy Spirit of God is called your teacher. And I’m going to teach you all things. And I’m going to take the things of the Lord Jesus Christ and make them known to you. I’m going to reveal them to you. But you’re not going to figure them out on your own, in your own strength. Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor mind has conceived of those things that God has prepared for those who love him. but it must be revealed by the Spirit. The Spirit gave you the Word, the Spirit indwells you, and the Spirit must reveal the meaning of the Word of God to you. Otherwise, what are you going to have? Denominations. That’s what you got, denominations. What’s the difference in a denomination? That they believe different things. They believe the Bible says different things. Church of Christ says you’ve got to be baptized to be saved. Baptists say, no, you don’t. Which one’s right? Which one’s right? And how are you going to know whether you’re right or not? Unless the Spirit living in you reveals it to you. Well, you say, well, how are you going to get all these people believing the same thing? It’s not my job. It’s not my job. The job of a minister, we’re told, in the body of Christ, is to teach people how to walk by faith in Jesus Christ. So we have to come to understanding, guys, that this is not as, say, uncomplicated as people think it is. We’ve made it so complicated that we can’t get through the complication. But the issue is that really the simplicity of the gospel is that I have done it all and you are not in the equation. That’s the simplicity of the gospel. It’s all Jesus and none of me.
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SPEAKER 03 :
And so we must approach the Word of God with this, that, Lord Jesus, I didn’t write this book. I didn’t have anything to do with this book. you wrote it through your apostles. You wrote it. And what you want me to do is to read it and then depend upon you to reveal what it means. Now, the miraculous thing of that is this, that whether you are here or someone else, if you are born again and you are reading the word of God and you are born again and you’re reading the word of God, and both of you are depending on the Word of God and the Holy Spirit of God who lives in you to reveal what it means, you two are going to interpret Scripture identically. Is that right or wrong? That’s what’s called a unity of spirit. Why is it a unity? Because God individually is revealing the same thing to individual people. And that’s why I can go into Chicago and meet with people who have come to grips with these truths And they’re not Bob George followers. They are people who, as a guy said to me there, you led me into my Bible. You led me into my Bible. And that’s where I came to understand these truths that you’re teaching is out of the Bible. And that is our role. Our role as pastors is to teach people to quit depending on what the pastor is saying and depend upon what the Holy Spirit is saying to you as you yield to him and allow him to do what he came to do. And that is teach you truth and let that truth set you free. So when it comes to the body of Christ, we have been studying that over the last couple of weeks. And in the book of Ephesians, as you know, we have been studying how that the mystery that was held in the heart of God, it’s called a musterion, a mystery that was in God’s mind, in his plan, in his preordained plan for man, and how at a time when he chose to reveal the meaning of this mystery that he did so. He did so to the Apostle Paul, and Paul said to the prophets and the apostles. Now again, why did he say that in the Scripture, that this mystery was revealed to the apostles and the prophets? Well, in the first place, this Bible that we hold in our hands in the New Testament had to be written in the Greek language, Mainly, I believe, because the Greek language was without question the most detailed language that has probably ever been placed on the earth, and probably still so, and the most detailed language that there was on earth. Secondly, that the Bible had to be written by an apostle or an amanuensis of an apostle, the New Testament. Right? To be an apostle, you had to have been with Jesus from his baptism through his death, burial, and resurrection, witnesses to this truth. What I would think is you had to be around him, to be walking with him. That your information as to what Jesus taught was not hearsay. It wasn’t secondhand. that you had heard it out of the mouth of God himself. That was a must if you were going to be even able to write something that went in this book that we call the Bible or the Ecclesia. Those books that we read were all written in the Greek language. People say Koinonia Greek. It was a common language of Greek. the world at that time it was some people referred to as bar language it was just the common common language one highfalutin language but in a strange Jesus was born a highfalutin place either was a and you don’t see a lot of highfalutin things going on in Christianity he took the lowly things in the world to confound the wise And so it was written by people who had heard Jesus himself. And then they wrote it down, and they either wrote it down or they dictated it to an amanuensis, who was a scribe, a secretary, who wrote down what the apostles were teaching. So we do know one thing about this word that we hold in our hands, that it was written originally by Jesus. the people who listened and saw and touched Jesus. Wouldn’t you like to be one of those? When you stop to think about it, can you imagine having the privilege of spending three, three and a half years walking with this man called Jesus of Nazareth, God himself, seeing what you thought of as a human being performing miracles that you had never even thought were humanly possible, raising the dead, walking on water, making the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and walking with him, and talking to him, and being loved by him. It would have been something. But that’s what these men are. So I have great respect for these guys. They were eyewitnesses to Jesus. And so they wrote these books. They wrote the New Testament books. They wrote it as the Spirit of God revealed to them what he wanted them to write down. And so all of this scripture is God-breathed. It was written down by a man, but it was all inspired as to what to write down by God. That’s why there are no red-letter editions. that the words of jesus are no more different than the words of paul or peter or john or any of the other writers of the new testament they all came from god remember what jesus said i don’t say anything unless the father tells me to say it so the father told him what to say and the father told the apostles what to remember what he said just like he told peter and John, and Paul what to say. And so this Bible is God speaking to you and me. And we have to appreciate that. That’s the miracle of this book. This is God’s love letter to you and me. This isn’t just some man’s brilliant ideas. This is God speaking to us. He speaks to us truth. So we’re told in Colossians… The author of all this, that he is the image of the invisible God, that’s Jesus. He’s the firstborn over all creation. Now guys, again, we know that Jesus was not the firstborn when you’re talking about natural birth. What’s he talking about here? Firstborn over all creation. Remember that Adam was the first man created alive spiritually, created by the hand of God. Are we together? He created Adam and Eve. That was a creation. But it was a creation that fell. And it was a creation that although they were born or created alive bodily, soulishly, and spiritually, that they died. On the day you eat thereof, you will surely die. And death is the absence of life, meaning that the life of God departed from Adam and Eve, leaving them and their human spirit alive to the world, but dead to what vacated them. Who vacated them? God. Dead to God. Jesus was the only man ever born alive spiritually. The only person ever born alive. That’s why his virgin birth is not up for grabs. He was not created by God. He was born of God. And that’s exactly why they say he’s the firstborn over all creation. Now, how do we know that about Adam and Eve? Well, we’re told in Genesis that Adam and Eve, when God formed Adam and Eve, created them. He created them, male and female, and they were created alive spiritually. But it said when Adam and Eve had Seth, Seth was born in the image of Adam. Not in the image of God. Adam and Eve was created in the image of God, but their offspring was born in the image of Adam. Dead. Born dead. Just like their father and mother became. Born dead. So the only man ever born alive spiritually was Christ Jesus. The first born from among the dead. Who are the dead? Us. Who was the first born among us? Jesus. For by him all things were created in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authority. All things were created by him, and all things were created for him. He, Jesus, is before all things, and in him, Jesus, all things hold together. And he, Jesus, is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead.” so that everything he might have supremacy. So we’re told here that he is the head of the body, the church. Now remember what we have studied over these weeks is who is the church. But from God’s economy, he divides mankind into three categories, Jew, Gentile, and the ecclesia, or the church. So you have God, you have Jew, you have Gentile by natural birth, and then you have the spiritual birth of Jew and Gentile down called the church, the ecclesia. So what is the church or the ecclesia? Born again people from God coming out of the Jew and the Gentile forming one new body of people, a new entity. And my friends, that’s a spiritual entity. That’s a spiritual body. We have a physical body. We have a spiritual body. If we’re in Christ Jesus, we belong to the spiritual body of Christ Jesus. And so it tells us that the body is a unit. And though it’s made up of many parts and those parts are many, they form one body. If you are looking at me, you see that I have a head. And that head is what controls everything underneath it. I got arms, got fingers, I got a heart, I got kidneys, got legs, toes. All of these are part of this one body, although this body is made up of numerous parts. Numerous parts. And they all have different functions. And all of the functions all flow together in a unity of purpose to accomplish life.
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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.
