A Moment Of Silence Please

Real life presents the Jack Kibs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. But because you don't look at it, you think this book is here to beat you up. But it's not to beat you up, it's to bring it to the understanding that the law of God is holy and you're not. And what you need to do is that you need to run to Jesus. That's what you need to do. You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackkibs.com slash podcast. Today, if this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us, that's like saying amen or yes, then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now, open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Kibs Christian, I'm going to be talking about today a discipline and something that God is calling us to and then God will ultimately require of us and that is to get alone to be still and to listen to what God is saying and to be alone is a very terrifying thing. When there's no noise, it forces us to listen to our thoughts. It forces us to think about what's on the inside. Where have we been spending our thought affections? Where have we been investing our thought energy? But do we ever pause and you know that throughout the book of Psalms? Over and over again, the Psalms, each Psalm almost, each Psalm will end with those Hebrew words, S-E-L-A-H-S-E-L-A, which means pause here, pause, don't move, just pause. To have the word of God sink in, but we've been conditioned to have all of this noise around us. We're constantly bombarded. We have devices now that constantly keep us in tune with the world. We know things now worldwide within moments, as notifications light up. But as we get into our study today, I'm going to put up a cute little graphic that I want you to remember because it's going to be some hard going here in a moment. Now I have to be honest with you, I sent that graphic to the graphics team and I had them drop in John 3-16, everything else is original. The original graphics said free shipping, and then in the middle it said free shipping, and of course at the bottom it says free shipping. But why am I showing you this? Because at the top of your note taking page, you need to mark this down. Everything that you and I hear now from this moment on, you need to remember John 3-16. As we go through this study today, you're going to want to be reminded that God says, I have loved you so much that I sent my son to earth that if you would believe in him, trust him, you would not perish eternally, that is you would not see hell, but you would enjoy everlasting life if you would just believe in him. And I want you to remember that, that is the gospel. If you forget everything else, don't forget this, that God says, I love you, and I want you with me in heaven, but there's a way by which that happens. And so we need to be listened to what he's saying. We need to be silent so we can receive. In Psalm 46, verse 10, the Bible says, be still and know that I am God. You guys know that this is one of my favorite verses because it has that Hebrew word in there, Yadda, that word no, be still and no, Yadda. Y-A-D-A, it means watch this, listen, look at the screen, be still and discover in whatever situation you're in, I am God. That's such a great passage of Scripture, such a great verse to keep in mind. So church, we look at it right now, a moment of silence for all those who we see are lost in the noise of a misguided faith, misguided faith. Every single individual that you'll meet in life has faith. You need to probe them about what their faith is, but apart from Christ, your faith is misguided. You can have all the faith in the world, but if your faith is based upon something that is not Jesus Christ Himself, then you have wishful thinking. We live in a world today that will say, just have faith, there's songs about it, there's books about it, there's books about the power of faith, just have faith. And when you avoid the object of who you should have faith in, you wind up defaulting in having faith in faith, which is a disaster, or faith in something other than what God will expect. And the truth is, tradition is the number one killer in this area. Will you write that down, please, misguided faith is often something that clings to tradition. You may say you have a lot of faith, or that you have faith in God, but the traditions that you follow are the things that define you, rather than knowing Christ personally. And so I would ask you today, or anybody would ask you, regarding your faith and what it's based on, oh, all of my family and for generations, we've had these traditions of faith. Where's Jesus Christ? Who is Jesus Christ? What has he has done for you? What do these traditions achieve? Now look, I'm not knocking traditions for, you know, if they're beautiful and it's fine and it's nice and it's cute and we have this tradition. But when you take tradition and translate it over to be in a vehicle for your forgiveness and salvation, then something is very wrong according to the Bible. And so when he says, now we know that whatever the law says, which is a tremendous statement, that word says is a present tense. The law is same. Here the scripture is saying that the law of God is speaking, always speaking, but that word no means that we know intuitively. So you may or may not be a believer right now, or you may be a believer or not tuning in right now. According to the Bible, the Bible says, you know, down deep inside, God has revealed to you, if you believe in God or not, that there's a law at work within you. Think about that. There's a law at work. Some 14 verse 1 says, the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. I love that verse. By the way, it's fantastic. It's so encouraging because when it says the fool has said in his heart, I'm so grateful. The Bible is so accurate. It does not say the fool has said in his mind, there is no God. See, this is an interesting thing. What's in your heart? First went through your mind. It was processed in your head, and then you determine, you picked and choose what you were going to put in your heart, and determine this to be your worldview. What is it that you believe, and why is it that you believe it? Those things are only true, by the way. What you claim to believe can only really be true in your life if you can defend what it is that you believe. I believe in Jesus. That means nothing. What do you mean by that? You see? And so when the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. It's a tremendous statement about the fact that he's intellectually dishonest with himself. The fool is lying to himself. In other words, his mind knows that there's a God, but he doesn't want to be accountable to God for his sinful actions. So what does he do? He fills his life with noise, and that noise is anything other than considering God. And so he convinces his heart, which is the seat of emotions. Doesn't that say a lot? You can always tell in somebody when you're in a debate with somebody, if they start getting all freaked out emotional on you, and they start calling you names because they don't like what you're saying. You know what that means? It means that they have lost their ability to defend their position, and they're losing to you. So what they do is they call your mother a name. They go after you personally. Why? Because they've lost, they don't know what they believe. They've just paraded whatever might be out there. But we need to remember, we ought to pause and be silent before God. And think in Mark's Gospel, chapter 7, the Bible says in verses 5 through 9, then the Pharisees and the scribes asked Jesus, why do your disciples not walk according to the traditions of the elders? But eat bread with unwashed hands. He said to them, verse 6, well, did Isaiah prophesy of you, hypocrites, as it is written? This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And in vain, they worship me, teaching as doctrines, the commandments of what is the church? Men. For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the traditions of men, the washing of pictures in cups and many other such things you do, verse 9. And Jesus said to them, all too well, you reject the commandment of God that you may keep your tradition. Men made things. Wow, we need to be silent. And listen to what God is saying. God's Word is up. I think this is one of the reasons why. And by the way, listen, I'll be honest with you, people don't want to hear about the Word of God. And when we become Christians, we do want to hear about the Word of God. But let's be honest, I'm going to throw all of us under the bus together at the same time believers. We want to hear from the Word of God, we know we should hear from the Word of God, but we are also almost always too open to any distraction that pulls us away from the Word of God. And we have that struggle. That's one of the reasons how we know that we're a believer. I know I should read the Bible, but I can't think of when I changed the oil last in my car. Oh, wait a minute, I don't do that. Jiffy lubed does that. Right? I'm just constantly distracted. So then you got to double down and go to your Bible, pick it up. And if you have ADD like me, you've got to read it in the bathroom or you've got to go stand somewhere in a closet with a light on because I'll be distracted by the slightest things. I've got to fight myself. I'm my biggest problem. I thank God the Bible says that he knows that we are just dust. Isn't that good news? I remind him of that often, by the way. It's in the Bible. It's a good one. But Lord, I am just dust, you know. But one of the reasons why even a believer has this awe in this terror with the Word of God is because in Hebrews chapter 4, verse 12, it says, for the Word of God is living and powerful. This is not a poem. The Bible is alive. I'm not talking about your Bible breathing and seeing the pages and the covers swell. It is spiritually alive. You can quote Amway. You can quote the Quran. You can quote a menu from Memes. It's not going to affect anybody. You quote the Bible and the world stops. Remember back in the ancient days, well, there was a commercial that says when E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen or something like that. I don't know what it was. But it was, we were always talking and then E.F. Hutton says, and we stopped. Have you noticed? You go out to some restaurant or something with your Bible. Maybe you go to breakfast after service to some business that's open with enough courage to be open and employees. And you take your Bible with you to breakfast and you set that Bible down on a table. Watch what happens. Everybody is going to be looking at your table. Why? Because that book is saying, I'm over here. I'm right here and I'm the Bible. I'm alive and you are terrified to find out what's inside. But because you don't look at it, you think this book is here to beat you up. But it's not to beat you up. It's to bring it to the understanding that the law of God is holy and you're not. And what you need to do is that you need to run to Jesus. That's what you need to do. A moment of silence, we would look also to the fact that a misguided faith elevates morality. Have you noticed that? Misguided faith always exalts morality. Legalism. The old saying back in the wild, wild west of the day was, I don't smoke or chew or go with girls who do. Boy, aren't you something. Right. Because it was a moral call. It was a moral judgment. I've been a member of the first Bapticostal Church for years. My dad was the pastor, my grandfather played in the, sang in the choir. Who cares? Doesn't matter. God's not impressed by that. But we elevate morality. Listen, a misguided faith will elevate human performance. And God's word says there in verse 19. It says to those who are under the law, meaning everyone. There's a bit of reverent apostolic sarcasm with Paul's statement here. I believe Paul is the author of the book of Romans as scripture teaches in correlation to the book of Hebrews, both saying the exact same thing on this, under the law. It means that the law is presiding over us. If you know it or not, it's there. Always there. We learned in Romans chapter 2 verse 1, therefore you are inexcusable. Look at that verse. You are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge for and whatever you judge another, you condemn yourself for you who judge practice the same things. And do you remember what that meant, you guys? That the legalist says you shouldn't do that. And you, according to the Bible, go about doing the same thing or a version of it or according to God because these more concerned about the inside of you, you say to somebody you should never do that, but in your mind you do it all the time. You point out to somebody that they should have never criticized that individual, but inside you're criticizing everybody. And you think you're safe because nobody can hear you. But if you get silent with God, in a moment of silence you'll hear God speak to you. You ought not to be doing that. It's remarkable and powerful. Should we be moral? We should be moral. Should we be good citizens? Of course, but never put the cart before the horse. You're never going to show up and stand before God at your moment of death and say, I was the most moral man in town. I was the best citizen. It's not going to work. It doesn't work. But we are under the law, all of us. For those of us who are believers, we know how this ends and we have a smile on our face. For those of you who are not, there shouldn't be a smile on your face. Because as of this moment, the law is suspended over your head. Imagine Moses with the 10 commandments, three inches from your head. And those 10 commandments weigh a billion pounds. Remarkable, Galatians chapter 4 verse 21 says, tell me, you who desire to be under the law. Do you not hear the law? It would be a bad day if we all read through the Bible and then put it down and got on the freeway or whatever in a minute, two, 10 minutes, half an hour after we read it, we couldn't recite one thing of what we read. We don't want to do that. We want to slow down and let that Bible get into us. We can declare the law. We can read the law. We can state the law. We can study the law theologically. But do you hear what the law says? That's what Paul was saying to the Galatians. Do you hear what it's saying? Those of you who say that you're going to go to heaven on good works and by keeping the law, Paul was saying, are you listening to the law? What does he mean? The law of God never, never, never, never says it will save you. The law of God has no salvation in it by design. God's law was never given to save. Are there guiding principles? Absolutely. Is God true and holy and is it pure? Totally. But the moment God gave the law, he said here now, take an animal and sacrifice its blood in the day that you break my law. Did you guys all hear that? My Jewish friends, did you hear that? The day that God gave the law to Moses is the same day God says now the day that you break the law, here is an animal sacrifice that's required. I need innocent blood to cover your sin. And yet there's people all around the world saying, I can get to heaven by being good enough. No, you cannot. The third thing we see under this is that a misguided faith makes excuses. It says in verse 19 that every mouth might be stopped and all the world might become guilty before God. That's why God gave the law. Churchless enough, again, don't leave the building right now. Usher's locked the doors. God's word says regarding the law, you're guilty. And he doesn't tell you that to beat you up. See, people read the Bible, they read this and they stop and then they run out of the building or they put down the Bible and they say, I don't, why would anybody ever read this book? Keep reading because here's the deal. You got to know why he is the savior, the savior saves people. Why do I need saving? Because you have broken the law. You've broken the Ten Commandments. And it's like a gigantic signpost saying, you need salvation, you need hope. And it's to drive you to Jesus. This Jack Hibbs podcast as well as all the broadcasts out reach opportunities are listening or supporting. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? Go to jackhibbs.com to learn more and stay connected.