Join us in this enlightening episode of Classic Christianity Radio as Bob George delves deep into the understanding of spiritual baptism. Discover the profound message behind being baptized into one body by one Spirit, transcending cultural and social divisions, and uniting as believers. Through a thoughtful examination of scripture, learn how each member of Christ’s body carries unique but equally vital roles, bridging voluntary divisions to fulfill a greater divine purpose.
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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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 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? Hmm? 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. 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, white girl tongues, speaking 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 are of spatial, their 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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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 has anyone been sick in this group and had the recipient of somebody in a body bringing them something
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We have. You have. Different people. The rest of you haven’t been sick or else nobody’s been nice to you. But the issue is that’s what we should be thinking. We should be thinking about how do you serve this body of ours. Why? Because everything in this body is there to serve this body. It’s there to serve it. When my mind says to scratch when you itch, it’s to serve the body. Well, it itches, so I want to scratch it. And he says that’s the way we should be as this body or any body of Christ. We should be thinking about reaching out whenever the occasion is there to help people wherever we can and to hurt with them. You know, many times, guys, in our ministry to people, we think that we have to say something where sometimes all a person is looking for is just somebody to be there and maybe just cry with them. Many times we think that the only way I’m going to minister to someone is talking. Or sometimes it’s just the silence and the compassion that comes out of that silence is what a person is looking for. But it says to be there, to try and to be there and to allow the God who lives in you to lead you to do what he wants you to do with that individual, the body of Christ. So it talks about the fact that God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it. So there’ll be no division in the body. But that its part should have equal concern for one another. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. If one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. When a part of the body gets honored, we rejoice with that. Thank God for it. Now, it says you are the body of Christ and each of you is a part of it. And in the church. Now, folks, that again in the church is not talking about a building. This building is paid for. But more important is our salvation is paid for and was paid for long before this thing was paid for. But this is not the church. This is a building. This is a building that if we weren’t here, somebody could come and buy it and make a warehouse out of it. Couldn’t they? It’s not a church. It’s a building. So get our minds off of this idea that the church is that building down on the corner of walk and don’t walk. That’s a building. Probably an expensive one. That has been built many times to just house a bunch of lost people. But it’s a building. And so what he’s talking about here is not a building. He’s talking about the church of God. And the church of God is people who are born again. We have in most of our assemblies where the way of salvation is not taught, and I want to say hammered, where there’s no doubt to the congregation as to how to be saved. It’s well known. It’s well preached. It’s well presented. But in the average assembly, you have a huge percentage of people that do not loathe the Lord from an apple tree. In the assemblies that I was in prior to coming to Christ, I never knew a born-again Christian, including the pastor. Never knew one. It was a building that had been raised money for and built to house dead people to come on Sunday morning and receive a dead message. Good fellowship, had some good friends, but no input. Never heard the word salvation. Never heard that I was lost. Never heard that I could be saved. Never heard why somebody needed to be saved. Never heard one of those things in 36 years of sitting in church. Never heard one time. The only time that I can remember hearing a gospel message was at a Billy Graham crusade in California, in Los Angeles. And I went to that Billy Graham crusade with Amy. And my mom and dad were visiting from Indiana at that time. And we went together. Now, what did I hear that day? Now, I’m not saying what Billy Graham said. I’m saying what I heard. What I heard at the end of that message was, repent of your sins and come forward and get Jesus. My heart said, repent of my sins. I’ve been trying to do that for 37 years. And what you’re saying to me is I’m going to repent of all my sins and go forward like a hypocrite and then go back to my seat and continue in my sins the way I’ve been doing. That’s what I heard. Repent of your sins. And I wasn’t going to be a hypocrite. And the only reason that I did not go forward that day was because of that. Repent of my sins. I’ve tried. I can’t do it. But you see, the message of the gospel isn’t to repent of your sins because there’s only one sin attributable to mankind as far as the Lord Jesus is concerned. That’s the sin of rejection of the work of Christ Jesus, of him and his work. I didn’t hear repent of your sin of unbelief. I didn’t hear that. I would have responded to that. I heard sins. And I was wise enough to know I cannot repent of my sins. I can try. But I’ve seen too many people try and fail. So I’m not going to go down and go through the motions. I went home. We drove home. I was mad. I was mad. That’s a problem with my family is we’re so darn, they are so darn prideful. They are so prideful. We wouldn’t even go forward. But the seed was sown. Now, whether, again, whether that was said or not, I do not know. And I’m not saying it was. I’m saying that’s what I heard. But, guys, the whole issue here is this, that you’re born again, and you know that better than I. You’re born again of a spiritual birth when there comes a time in your life when you are sick of you. No one comes to Jesus, I just love me. Okay, Jesus, come into my heart because you’ll be so glad to get me. I always remember W.A. Criswell saying to me one time, Bob, the time that you’re going to find yourself the closest to Jesus is when you’re flat on your face with no place to look except upward. And I believe that’s true. You come to a point in your life where you recognize, whether you’re a little kid or not, that whatever requirements seem to be placed on me, I can’t pull it off. I can’t do it. He says, now you’re ready for salvation. When you come to understand that you can’t is when you’re going to be looking for the one who can. It’s not a church experience, guys. It’s a real experience. It’s not a religion. It’s a relationship. It’s a person who’s come to the end of their own self-sufficiency and the end of their own self-righteousness. and being able to say, I don’t have any righteousness. That’s what God says about you. There is no righteousness in us. No man will ever be declared righteous in the sight of God through obedience to the law. So you’re not going to get it. You’re not going to get there through self-effort. And you come to the end of yourself and you turn to this wonderful Jesus. Like people call me sometimes, say, Bob, I’m almost to the end of my rope. I say, grease that sucker. Because when you, at the end of your rope is where you’re going to find the outstretched arms of Jesus Christ saying, come unto me. All ye who labor and are heavy laden. And I will give you rest for your soul. Come unto me. That’s when you fall into the arms of Jesus is when you’ve come to the end of your rope. Is where you’re going to find him. And those are born again people. Born again, now indwelt eternally by the Spirit of God and placed in this body called the Ekklesia, the body of Christ. Made up of all kinds of parts and gifts, and we’ll study a little bit more about that next week. Different gifts given to this body to be exercised in the body for the building of the body. There is no gift that is given to edify yourself. An apple tree doesn’t turn around and eat its own apples. A cow doesn’t drink her own milk. Gifts are given for the benefit of the body, not self-edification. So if you got a gift that’s self-edifying, forget it because that isn’t what it’s given for. I don’t sit around with the gift of teaching in a room by myself and teach myself. if I didn’t use the gift that God gave me to edify you, I wouldn’t be using my gift. And the same thing is true with yours. Everybody says, well, I don’t know what my gift is. Well, God will show you if you’re curious. He’ll show you. Someone once described the way you kind of discover your gift is kind of like the family sitting at the breakfast table and one of the kids spills the milk. the person with the gift of teaching says, now, son, let me show you what you did there. And he’s going to kind of teach him how to hold his glass a little bit different so he won’t knock it over. Once the gift of helps is going to say, get down and start cleaning it up. Not even ask to just want to clean it up. They got a gift of helps. The admonisher is going to tell them why they did that dumb thing. It’s going to be there in there. Now, here’s the reason you did it. Number one, you’re a little bit stupid, but that’s all right. God loves you anyway. There’s going to be a little. But at any rate, your gifts can be explained a little bit by just that one illustration. But you do have a gift, and God wants you to exercise it in the body. He doesn’t want you to get all hung up on it and get all prideful over it. He just wants you to use it. But we’ll be studying about that next week. Well, let’s close for this time and hope this has been beneficial to you. Father, we want to thank you for your goodness to us. And the fact that you want to use us, that’s why you gave us these gifts, is you want to use us. You’ve allowed us to become a part of your work on this earth. You’re the initiator of all things. but you use our bodies and our minds to carry it out. And we thank you for that. Keep us humble, Lord Jesus. Keep us close to your feet. Keep our face to the ground, where there’s only one place to look, and that’s upwards. Allow us to see that we’re here for a reason and a purpose. And as far as you’re concerned, there aren’t any losers. We’re people. Blessed of God. And God wants to use you. We thank you for all these things in his wonderful and matchless name.
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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.
