Beyond

Real life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. God speaks about new. He loves to give new and that is so seen in the birthing of Jesus coming into the world and he comes in just like us. He's got five fingers and five toes on each hand and each foot. He's got the nose, the ears. He's just like you and I. He feels what you and I feel. He experiences the draft, the cold, the heat, everything, pre-planned by the power of God to come into this world and relate to you and I. 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. One of the key verses that you and I always go to a second Corinthians chapter five verse 17 and I love that. It's is therefore if anyone is in Christ, so the baby born in Bethlehem is going to someday and his adult ministry life, he's going to challenge those to believe in him. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. Our God is a God that loves new things. We should never shy away from that. Isaiah chapter 42 verse nine. Behold, the former things have come to pass and new things I declare before they spring forth, I tell you of them. Revelation 21 verse one. Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also, there was no more sea. God created a new existence called eternity. Ezekiel chapter 36 verse 26. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. God speaks about new. He loves to give new and that is so seen in the birthing of Jesus coming into the world and he comes in just like us. He's got five fingers and five toes on each hand and each foot. He's got the nose, the ears. He's just like you and I. He feels what you and I feel. He experiences the draft, the cold, the heat, everything pre-planned by the power of God to come into this world and relate to you and I. There's new hope. There's a new start. There's new life. There's a new world. There's new everything and what's awesome is that for the first time new, if you want to call it, where God allowed himself to come into this world like us. And I appreciate that. He didn't come as an angel. He came to us as a human because only humans are redeemed. Angels are not redeemed. That bums people out. Forget about angels. You don't need to care about angels. The Bible says God made them to minister to us. Did you know that? That's a valuable you are. I want to give this to you in a way of a contradiction. Look at it this way. The old world was cold. It was a cold world. Christ came into the world at just the right time according to the Bible. Israel was occupied by the Roman Empire. Life was difficult to say the least, but he came into a world that was a very cold world. Death, life, life, expectancy, cultures, how people treated one another. You would have thought if you were God sending your son into the world, you would have brought him in at just at the right time of what? The enlightenment or just at the right time of the great economic boom happened in the world. Not God. God sends his son not only into a cold world. He sends him into a very humble, humble setting, a cold world. How do I know if God loves me? Number one, think about this. We celebrate Christmas and he came into a very cold, cold world at a very difficult time. A second thing is this, the old world was a very dark world. My goodness, we've studied history and we have gone through times like what is known as the dark ages. We hear about some of the great wars on the continents of the earth. I don't know if this is true or not, but at the CIA website, it says something to the effect that at any given day, tribal wars, all the way out to national wars are taking place, so tribal. Think about North Africa or think about South America and the Amazon jungle. There's some form of wars taking place every day to the tune of 128 wars happening every day. That seems impossible to us. But the world is like that without God, without hope, without Christ, the world is cold and the world is dark. And everything about Jesus is him coming into this world and he illuminates it. It's awesome. The Bible says in Isaiah 9 verse 1, a prophecy concerning Jesus against over 700 years before Christ was born. By the way of the sea beyond the Jordan in Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death upon them a light has shined. And Isaiah tributes that light shining to the coming of the Messiah. In fact, listen, Luke chapter 4, New Testament, verse 14, then Jesus returned in the power of the Holy Spirit to Galilee and news of him went out through all the surrounding region and he taught in their synagogues being glorified by all. So he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up. And as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. And he was handed this book or the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written. Listen to this, Jesus says, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, quote, in Isaiah, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind and to set at liberty those who are oppressed and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Verse 20, then Jesus closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and he sat down. The eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed upon him. And he, that as Jesus began to say to them today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. What a radical thing. No one has ever done that. He's come, listen, to set us free and to give us a hope with a new world. A new world that begins, listen, not with the advent of some new currency, not with the advent of some new politic, the new world that he gives starts first in the human heart. Jesus said, my kingdom begins within you. He told those that were around him. He said, look around, the kingdom has arrived. I'm here. That's how he was able to raise the dead. He exhibited all the powers of the kingdom life so that people would believe in him and follow him. The miracles were done, not to convince people. The miracles were done to tell them the word of God was true. You're not to have faith in miracles. You're to have faith in the miracle giver. And that's him. The Christmas Christ, the salvation Christ, the Christ that delivers us from a cold world, a dark world, and also a hard world, hard. Now throughout our globe, throughout all of human history, there are reasons that have always had it hard just by virtue of this fallen world. It's hard. But listen, live and even here in Southern California or wherever you may be. Maybe you're listening to this message and you're in a region that is very affluent. It can be a very hard life. You can have all the things that promise you meaning and hope and ease and be completely destroyed and broken by the events of life and when it throws its darts at you. They stick nonetheless if they're being stuck in your ribs or stuck in your back in Bel-Air or Bangladesh, it doesn't matter. And Jesus came to deliver us from a hard world. But our God is a God that has given us the hope and the assurance of a brand new world that first starts within us. Let me explain what I mean by a new gift throughout all of Israel's existence. In fact, it doesn't have to be Israel's existence. For human existence is recorded. And this is kind of amazing if you're an anthropologist or a sociologist. Whatever culture you study around the world doesn't matter. It does not matter. Find the continent, study the ancient history of those people and go back as far as you can. And when you do, I'm going to hit to burst your bubble. I'm going to get letters for this, but when you go back, you are not going to bump into a Neanderthal. I'm sorry to tell you, you're not going to bump into all of our previous fathers that came from a monkey's uncle. You're not going to bump into them. Those are fabrications. And I don't mean necessarily intentionally mean fabrications. But when people were trying to describe our coming into existence and they would not consider God, they had to make stuff up. Why am I saying this? Because man has never lived without pursuing some avenue of faith and or religion or both. Did you know that every culture has worship shrines, temples, altars and pillars of sacrifice. Why? Because all the gods that man made up, they all required a sacrifice. You say, well, Jack, the God of the Bible and the Old Testament required a sacrifice. That is true. You got me there. It's true. The real true God required a sacrifice, but even the pagan gods of paganism required required sacrifices. And we were told or commissioned or commanded to bring a gift. And in all the religions of the world, there's only one that says, you know all those gifts I asked you to bring? They were just types. They were they were just symbols. Ashtar wouldn't say that, Molek wouldn't say that. Atlus wouldn't say that. Poseidon wouldn't say that. Diana wouldn't say that. The God of the Bible says, you know that stuff you've been giving me for all these years is real? It's just a picture of the real thing coming. Yeah, what's that? You don't give me the gift. God says, I give you the gift. The new gift is Christ and Christ alone. He's the gift. That's the entire point to this entire celebration. The very fact that God is the gift giver. Listen, tonight and tomorrow you're only going to act like God and give a gift to somebody. It's an expression of love. I get it. That's fine. Just know this. The old gifts had become routine gifts. Routine gifts. Even though they're draped in religion, our God gives us a whole new brand new life and here's the deal. If you get balled up and tied to religion, you can be just like a pagan and go through all of the religious stuff and it's not real. It's routine. Well, I'm here right now pastor because this is our routine. We do this once a year and I'll see you next year. Listen, save your gas. Save your time. God doesn't dwell in routines. That sunrise this morning will never be repeated. There'll be ones like it but like a snowflake, there'll never be another one. And God doesn't want routine. That's the old world. The new world and the new life in Christ, all of it is the opposite of a routine. Now, I know that as people and then we have, it's good for us to have, I call it fences or guardrails. We need that in life. You know, we need, we might say a routine but what I'm talking about is a discipline. We need disciplines because you and I have a tendency to wander off and but listen, even when we say, well, I get up in the morning and I read my Bible and I pray and listen, it sounds like a routine when you say it that way, but I pray that it's not because I pray that you and God are actually making a way together because that's the kind of God He is. He wants it all to be anything but a routine. Here's what we do. God, we do this and then we do that and after that we do this and then I step up and then I move to the right and then I go forward and then you walk away from that and somebody says, what are you just doing? What do you mean? What are you just doing? What? Oh, that? Oh, I was just doing my religious thing. A lot of people today are gravitating towards spirituality because they like the candles. They like the icons. They like the cross or they like the stained glass. I'm not knocking those things, but if that's your routine and approaching God, that's not a good thing. The next thing is this is that the old gifts had become empty gifts. Well, the gift that God gives, listen, can you imagine? The gift that God gives the Son of God and when we say that, he's not less than God, the Son of God is God in skin. That's why he's called the Son of God inside of him. Do up the same lungs and the same heart and the same pancreas and kidneys that you have, but his soul was divine. His spirit was divine and God visited us, anything but routine. Can you say amen to that? You want to, listen, you want exciting, you want to break routine? Start reading in John's gospel. That'll break your routine. And then look, there's nothing more disappointing than for somebody to give you a gift that is meaningless to them. I don't know how to say this. It's impossible. I'm going to get in trouble. I just know it. I can feel it coming. You know how hard it is to buy gifts for some people? Can someone do you agree? It's like, what do you get them? And then you have an idea. This just happened with Lisa and I. We were doing the last minute shopping yesterday. I have an idea and you know I had that idea? She said, well, we should get them. I have an idea. We should get them this. She said, that's what we got them last year. I didn't help her, but I was happy I remembered something that was meaningless. If we would have gotten the same thing, it would have been not only meaningless, it would have been insulting. Meaningless. You want to give a gift that's meaningful to somebody that you love. Here's what's a remarkable thing about this moment in time for you and I. God loves you to the point where God thought this is going to be the ultimate communication of my love to you. It will beam me coming into the world to live my life perfectly because you can't. I'll do it for you. And then when I have accomplished that, once the law has examined me up and down and all around, I will keep the law and fulfill the justice of God and the righteousness of God. And all of you will come into the kingdom of heaven. If you trust what I did for you, you will come in so to speak. Not on my coattails. Oh no, better than that. You will come in. The kingdom of God washed in my blood, covered in my blood. Listen, you get close to Jesus and what he does is he covers you in his atoning blood and God the Father sees the blood of his son Christ as your atonement and God accepts you. No questions asked. This is salvation. This is the meaning of the name Jesus. Christ Jesus coming into the world represents a brand new life for us, for all who will believe in him. Three things and we consider right now together is that the old life had become visionless. What does the Bible say about this? Without vision, my people perish. Listen, without vision, if you're visionless, you can't have life at the same time, really. Listen, the Bible says that a woman who lives for a sinful life, the Bible says she may be living for pleasure and think that she's alive, but she's actually dead. And that's certainly true for men, obviously, us humans. But God wants you and I to live with vision. Well, without vision, you can't see God and God's plan for your life, but I got news for you, believe her. If you're if you're trusting Christ right now, I have good news for you. God's got an absolute vision for your life and you will not stumble around in this world because part of God's new life in you is that God gives you the ability to see. And I'm not talking about seeing like, oh, now I know which way to go, more like a leading. And then secondly, it's this. The old life had become a hopeless life until Christ came. That's why they were longing. That's why the Bible says that they searched the scriptures to find where the Messiah would be. When would he come? None of us appreciate this. None of us. For 2000 years, you and I have lived in a world that has known who the Messiah is. If you believe in Him or not, that's on you. But we all know who He is. In the name of Jesus, He gives you hope. And then finally, we end with this. That is that the old life had become a powerless life. No power. No power. Please listen. Are you religious? I promise you this. You have no power. I'm not talking about how much you can bench for us. I'm talking about the power that counts. And that's the power on the inside of who you are. Do you have a character that is honoring God? That could only come from God's power, not our power. The great power that God gives to the believer is a power that also comes with it to relax. It's not to sweat. Christian should not be sweating out their Christianity. That great power that comes is God living this life out through you. That's why the Bible tells us that we are children of God. 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