We, The Church, Part 2: The Divine Blueprint of Scripture

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Put Jesus first in your life.

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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 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. 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 the world at that time. It was some people referred to as bar language. It was just the common language. Wasn’t a highfalutin language. But isn’t it strange? Jesus wasn’t born in a highfalutin place either, was he? And you don’t see a lot of highfalutin things going on in Christianity. He took the lowly things of 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 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. 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 additions. 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. So 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 spiritually. 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 firstborn from among the dead. Who are the dead? Us. Who was the firstborn 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 of 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. I got fingers. I got a heart. I got kidneys. I 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. Amen. And all of the functions all flow together in a unity of purpose to accomplish life.

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God is ahead. He controls everything. Why did I just touch my face? Because my brain told me to. Why did I scratch? Because… Brain tells me I itch. Why do we go eat? Because your brain tells you you’re hungry or you’re a glutton. Either one. Our head controls every single thing that this body does. Whether we like it or whether we don’t, that’s the way it is. Isn’t it? That’s why it says in the scripture, don’t be conformed to the world, but what? Transformed by what? The renewing of your mind, not your arms or your legs, but your mind. Your mind controls what this body fulfills. And so the body is a unit, and though it’s made up of many parts, and though its parts are many, they form one body. Don’t have two bodies here, only got one. But it’s made up of a lot of parts. And he wants us to see this illustration because he says, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one spirit into one body. Now, guys, you could read that. What could someone think that meant to be baptized? What? Placed in water. Is that what this means? Now, you know, I don’t even know for sure if the Spirit has to reveal that. I think you’ll be able to figure that out by context. But ultimately, the Spirit of God has got to teach you, no, no, this is not what that means. This means a spiritual baptism. We were all baptized by one Spirit, not by one pastor. Right? by one Spirit into the body of Christ. Folks, that is what the Scripture refers to as the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God, in order to be born again, you must be born again of the Spirit of God, right? You’re born again of the Spirit. That means I don’t have the spirit until I’m born of the spirit. So I’m not born with it. It’s something that I have to get from God. And that is a spiritual birth. I have a natural birth that came from mom and dad. And then there is a spiritual birth that God wants to give you. So His Spirit comes and is joined to our human spirit and we’re complete. We’re born again. And that Spirit is sealed, impervious to sin and impervious to the things of the world. It is sealed, my friends. Sealed. Nothing can get into it. Sin can’t get into it. That Spirit that’s in you is sinless. Just like the Spirit that was given to you was sinless. Sealed. Sealed. That’s Christ in you, your hope of glory. Then that spirit that came to indwell you placed you spiritually into the body of Christ. That’s one, Christ in you, you in Christ. And that’s what’s called the baptism of the Holy Spirit. You were baptized by one spirit into one body. Whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all given one spirit to drink. There was no such thing of God placing you into a Jew body and placing the Gentiles into a Gentile body. We separate each other that way, but God didn’t. His church is not divided Jews over here, Gentiles over here. His church are born-again believers who are together. And he teaches you how to live with one another. And not to let the dissensions that are naturally there to take over. One spirit baptizing every person, Jew and Gentile alike, into one new body. And we were all given, not two spirits, but one spirit to drink. In other words, to comfort us. Now the body, we’re told, 1 Corinthians 12… It’s not made up of one part, but many. So if the foot should say, because I’m not a hand, I don’t belong to the body. Now, what’s he saying here? You guys all have different parts. Your fingers do certain things different than your toes. Your toes do something different than your fingers. But they’re all part of this body, are they not? And every one of those parts have a function. And from the head standpoint, they’re all equally important. So you’re not going to sit there and say, well, I’m not the hand, so I don’t belong to the body. It would not, for that reason, cease to be a part of the body. You’re a part of the body, whether you think so or not, if you’re in Christ. And the ears should say, because I’m not an eye, I don’t belong to the body. it would not be for that reason to cease to be a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? In other words, he is saying that God has arranged the parts of this body. God has arranged these parts. God gave you fingers. and fingernails, and toes, and heart. He gave those things to you. When you stop to think of the complexity of the human body, and even the complexity of an eye, a camera in your head, and you say, Big Bang! Say somebody banged you in the head. That’s the big bang. You got banged in the head by somebody. To even begin to even think those things, let alone believe them. That all of this is just by happenstance. But God arranged these parts. He’s the one who gave them to you. And he arranged them just as he wanted them to be. He didn’t want the fingers to be down on your feet. He didn’t want your toes to be up here. He arranged our body precisely the way it needed to be, to function, to serve you. It’s amazing. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it were, there are many parts, but there is only one body. One body. Many parts, one body. Now what he is trying to get across here, guys, is this. That if God has made you a finger, be a happy finger. And quit trying to be a toe. And if God made you an eye, quit trying to be an ear. And quit trying to get all the ears together together and have an ear service. And get all the noses together and blow up a storm. And get all the tongues together and wag. He said, get that mindset out of your head. And that one gift is better than the other. Yeah, yeah, you got those ears on you, but I got eyeballs. Well, who gave you the eyeballs? And why do you think that the eyeball is more important than the ears? Let me take both of them away from you and see how happy you’re going to be, as some people are. You see, guys, all of that is nonsensical thinking that goes on today rampantly in our Christianity today, where you get all the noses together and we’re blowing up a storm together. And the reason we’re together, we’ve got a unity in purpose. What’s your purpose? Blow our nose. What’s your purpose? Waggle tongues. Speak in tongues. What’s your purpose to do this? To do this? Is that how God divided the body? He said, how’s anybody going to see the multiplicity of gifts? If you’re going to get your church and your people gathered together to just speak up a storm. To blow your nose. Just to walk around. You got people doing that? Walking around. Have you seen those? Have you seen those? I may have seen that on TV. Had the unfortunate experience of seeing that one. Around twirling, tambourine. Guy standing there singing the same song, 19,000 verses. Guy walking up and down. Everybody says, praise the Lord. No wonder Jesus called us dumb sheep. So he says that there’s one body. It’s made up of many parts. And what I want you to do is to see the unity of the diversity. What the world is going to see is how this diverse group is unified into one body. And that is the goal that God has for us. Now, we might want to turn to 1 Corinthians 12, and let’s read on from where we left off here. Many parts of one body. Let’s turn to verse 21 in chapter 12. This will not be on the screen, but if you want to look it up, you can. The eye cannot say to the hand, I don’t need you. And the head cannot say to the feet, I don’t need you. On the contrary, these parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. And the parts that we think are less honorable, we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with spatial modesty. He just hits it all, doesn’t he? We’ve got some places that he said parts of our body that are unpresentable. We don’t go around presenting them to the public. But they said they’re treated with a spatial modesty and should be. We have violated that as well, haven’t we? We violated that as well. To the world, they pay no attention to this at all. Modesty is a thing of an antiquated word, to be modest. And we flaunt what is natural and what is man-made, especially the man-mades. We love to flaunt. You think that’s biblical? You think that’s of God? I don’t think so. And so it says that these parts need no spatial treatment. There are other parts that have no spatial treatment, but God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honors to the parts that lacked it so that there should be no division in the body. This is the whole reason behind this, no division, and that its parts should have equal concern for one another. And if one part suffers, every part suffers with it. If one part is honored, every part rejoices in it. Isn’t that kind of amazing, guys? How many of you ever got a little tiny splinter in your finger or someplace? It hurts your whole body, doesn’t it? Or how many of you ever stubbed your toe? You know, now that’s just a tiny little part of your body, but it makes your whole body hurt, doesn’t it? And there’s some places that you get hit that you just wish you didn’t have. So we understand from our body that when one part hurts, everything hurts, and we should be the same way in our spiritual body. That if we see a brother and sister in Christ that’s hurting, that we should hurt with them. We should reach out to them with compassion instead of ho-hum. They’ll get better. Or I like this one better. I’ll pray for you. Well, I need food. Well, I’ll pray for you. man, take some food to them. Take some food to them. If you got somebody that’s sick or been operated on, somebody ought to be there to think that maybe they might be able to use some food.

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Thank you so much for tuning in to Classic Christianity with Bob George. We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s program. We truly hope that today’s message has inspired you to walk a life of faith in the Lord. Find more information online at bobgeorge.net. There you’ll also find available CDs, DVDs and Bible studies available for purchase. It’s through your help that we are able to spread the good word of Jesus Christ. 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