Back To Basics

Real life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. Hey listen, a lot of people talking about current events and what's going on in the world Bible prophecy this and that. What should we be talking about? We should start with first things first. Stay tuned, you'll see what I'm talking about. You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.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 Hibbs. Hey everybody, current events. It's a big deal right now. Obviously, supposed to be with all that's going on in the world right now, current events are absolutely off the charts and everybody's curious and interested in current events. In fact, if you want to get a bunch of views and if you want to get a bunch of attention, do a statement on Bible prophecy or you know, breaking Ezekiel, maybe whatever. How about this? The epitome in my opinion of breaking news. Are you ready for it? I don't think so. It's this. In the beginning, God created. That's it. What's the breaking news in the beginning? God created. Why do I bring it to you this way? Because listen, if that statements true, then everything about the rest of this book is absolutely a green light. If I can get past those few words in the beginning, God created. The word in the beginning is in the beginning of physics as we know it in this world. It's not in the beginning God created himself. When the beginning happened, God was not only there, he was the creator of it, which means he's outside of creation. So how about this? Imagine with me for a moment, you have the the unique opportunity. I say unique. I mean, I've never had this opportunity. I'd love to someday, but to be standing in front of some dirt, land, an acre of land. And you look at it and you see how the sun rises and how the sun sets and you want to build a house. Where's the house? It's in your head. It's in your head until you commit it to paper. Now it's a concept design. Can you live in it? No. Does it exist? Yes, in the mind of the creator. How do I know? It's written down in the beginning God, written down. Is that enough evidence for me as a human to believe it? No. But am I willing to entertain someone who's bigger than me, greater than me, stronger than me? Am I willing to entertain the idea of God? Well, let's just be bold and brave and let's venture into this water for just a second. And I confess, I'm a pastor, teacher of the Bible. I'm not an apologist. I'm not a genius like my friend Frank Turek or some others. But I'll do the best I can on this. If I can have an idea in my head, where did that come from? How is that possible? At what point did the evolutionary process say that that's a good thing for me to have? I just entertain that. You should do the same thing. Or does not my very existence and how you and I function that I see a house on an acre of land in my mind that I'm going to commit to paper, that I'm going to take. In fact, we can do it right now. This is kind of fun, you know, if you think about it. This is for real. This is real time. I want to talk about current events. This is happening right now. Okay. This is a horrible drawing of a quick house. This was in my mind. Here's the entryway. Here's the roof. I just put it on paper. I'm not asking you to evaluate my artistic skills. I don't have any. But that came out of my head. In the beginning, God created him. If you can say, you know what? Maybe you're right now. Maybe you're in Fifth Avenue, New York City, and you happen to be taking a break right now and you're watching this and you're a designer. Or maybe you're up in San Francisco and you're at Levi Company and you're designing the latest look for the Levi clothing line and you see this in your head and you do the coloring and you do all that stuff. I want to ask you this question and you don't believe in God. How in the world is that possible? You're using all of God's tools. Because the Bible says you were created in his image, you're even using tools that God reserves for himself. We have no evidence, by the way, that angels can create anything. But humans can. Where does it start? We preempt our creation of a house. But it starts with the image in the mind, in the beginning, God created, it starts in the mind, in the mind of God, in your mind, then you commit it to paper and then I hand it to a contractor and he builds what was in my mind. I look at it, finished. I get the permit. I move into it. Who's house is this? It's my house. Well, it's finished. True, it's physically finished, but it was finished a long time ago up here. It was finished before it was ever physically started in the beginning. God created. Are you willing to entertain the fact or how about this? For me, it's a fact. For you, maybe it's a philosophy. I don't care. The idea that if you exist right now and you can create something and I ask you, can you commit that to paper and you draw it out and you have somebody build it? Can you entertain the reality, the fact, the possibility that God is a grand dynamic of what you are in little? Of course, sin has ravaged us, but he is without sin, but we have been created in his image. The word is his moral likeness, meaning that we can dream, we can think, we can write a song, we can love, we can create, we can choose. In the beginning, God created. If you can get past those few words, then the rest of God's promises, the rest of God's word, the rest of your life takes a radical dynamic shift right now. So listen, it's not some quirky, weird thing to believe in God. In fact, I'm not kidding when I tell you. I think a person who does not believe in God, I don't think you can trust them. I mean it. So how can you say that? My grandmother, she's wonderful, she doesn't believe in God. I don't care who it is. You know why I can't trust them because they're not being honest with themselves. If they're not going to be honest with themselves, how do I know if they're going to be honest with me? Because if you are trying to live your life thinking, it's all an accident, I believe in evolution, it's all things an accident. This very moment, I'm not even sure if it's happening or not, is this real? You get all ethereal or what's the word esoteric? You get very hyper about your very moment. You want to hear some breaking news? This is the breaking news. In the beginning, God created it means he stepped into a world that he designed. He was in his mind, he created it. By the way, Colossians chapter one tells us he did that through Jesus. Hebrews chapter one says he did it through Jesus. Jesus was the contractor. Not a big stretch. Jesus is a carpenter. Fantastic. Everything he made was first in his mind. So we'd look around this world. You see, Jack, that's crazy. Really? Is it crazy? Don't you think? Listen, the greatest minds in the world right now, they're still scratching their head, trying to figure out what is physics? What is marine biology and it's full, full revelation? What is astrophysics in its full revelation? We are learning stuff every day about who and what we are and where we exist. So the truth is, listen, be intellectually honest. It is insane not to believe in the existence of the supernatural because the evidence is overwhelming that the supernatural preceded the natural. It was the supernatural that brought forth the natural. And if you begin to entertain that, all of a sudden you are going to have to come to the grips of who are you? Who am I? And what are the depths to my existence? What is my purpose? There's no fathoming that to its full extent apart from believing that we are not an accident, but we are in fact living a life that God designed and created even to the point of the fall itself because you and I live in a very terrible world, very violent, very ugly mean. And is it interesting that God himself, the designer said, that's not the world I created. You know how you and I have the tendency to blame God for all the evil in the world? We need to calm down and stop doing that because we're really, really being dumb when we do that. He told us that's not the world I gave you. You are the guys that crashed it. I gave you this and you drove it into the wall, but I've come to redeem it back. That's why the return of Christ is so awesome for the believer. He's going to fix that which we crashed. And on top of the fact that Satan is running around with his goobers demons on this world and this universe, which is really enemy occupied territory, this belongs to God. The Bible tells us that Satan has commandeered it. And so there's rape and there's murder and there's evil. There's prostitution, pornography, drugs, abuse, none of that stuff's from God. So I have to wrap this up. I'll bring it down to this. Be honest. If you right now can say or point out something that is wrong, something that you know in this universe is not right. Listen, when I'm conducting a funeral service, I often, if not always, remind the congregation that all of a sudden you have come to this gathering today and your lives were dramatically interrupted by a phone call or an email. You had to take time off from work. You had to book a flight. You had to get in the car and start driving. You had to buy a suit or a new tie to come to this gathering. Your life was interrupted by something that seems so wrong. It seems so wrong. It's not wrong that your life was interrupted. It's that your life was interrupted by death. And you've come to this service today. And you sense how wrong this is. It's all wrong. This shouldn't be happening. You know that inside. I know that inside. Be intellectually honest with yourself. You know why it's terribly wrong? Because Jesus said, I came to give you life, but Satan has come to rob, to kill and destroy. That's why you feel awed at a funeral or seeing that person mangled in that car wreck on the freeway. And there's a sense of of frailty instantaneously. You sense that all of your foundations and stability are now shaken in an instant of time. Why do you feel that way? Because you have been interrupted by a reality that was never, never supposed to be its death. But the Bible says Jesus Christ came to undo the ramifications of death. That's why Jesus went to the cross. That's why Jesus said, if a person dies believing in me, he shall live forever. Why? Because this physical life is thank God. This physical life is not all there is. But in the beginning, God created. That means in the beginning, if God created, God can redeem. God can repair. God can make new. God could save in the beginning. If God created, then God can bring me back into His presence. I just want you. I wanted to drop this thought bomb on you to be thinking, if you don't believe in God, why? Why do you not believe in God? There's overwhelming scientific evidence. There's indisputable historical existence. What about anthropology and sociology and the existence of man? What about man's quest to try to search to find something out there in our search for intelligence? Is there anyone out there? Did you know that we as Americans spend billions of dollars a year? We have special telescopes that are in various parts of the world. Hawaii, Peru, Europe that are listening. Searching for any intelligent life out there. Can you imagine if God were to say, here I am, I wish He would. Some day He will. It's going to be with a trumpet blast, but my dear friend, I'm going to put this out to you for you to ponder. To not believe in God is to be intellectually dishonest with yourself first. And with all the evidence around you. And those people who are religious, they may be on to something, I don't know, I don't know what their religion is. But for those who have encountered the Creator God, we're not nuts. We've actually come home. We've come back as it were to the one who thought us up in the first place. And you're not some expiring vapor. You have an eternal soul that will live forever. And I pray that you trust in the Lord Jesus Christ exactly as the Bible says. Read John chapter three in a Bible. If you don't own a Bible, just get your device and type in John three, John chapter three of the Bible and read it. Just John chapter three can save your life forever. You want to know why? Because you're not an accident. You were actually designed by God. And you've wandered far from God. It's time for you to come back to him. I'll leave you with this silly analogy. So I have a very perfectly vintage awesome. I have to add, I have a European German import car. Yeah, no, it's not a Porsche. It's not a it's not a 911. It's not nothing like that. It's a 1967 Volkswagen. That's in perfect condition. It's so well preserved that I just can't take it to anybody to work on it or to do anything to it. I don't want anybody just touching it. It's got to be handled by one or two people period because it was designed even though it's a 1967 beetle. It was designed to be handled by people who know it. I don't take my bug to a Ferrari dealer. I don't take my bug to the Ford dealer. It's got to be handled by someone who knows it. And it just so happens to be that the guy who does the service on my little bug is also the same guy who literally took it apart every nut and bolt and laid it out in his barn and refurbished and restored that vehicle from every nut being separated and put back together every piece internally and externally. And he and I have photographs of this. If we can do that with a car, can't God do that with you? He can. He did it with me. So why don't you talk to him about these things and listen for him. He'll talk to you about you and what he wants for you. In Jesus name, amen. So yeah, listen, it's time for us to live out what we believe in. And I hope you believe in the God who says in the beginning, God created because God wants to recreate you right now. If this has been a blessing to you, let people know. We'd love to hear back from you guys. God bless you. This Jack Hibbs podcast as well as all the broadcast outreach opportunities are listener supported. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? Go to jackhibbs.com to learn more and stay connected.