Let's Go Do Some "God" Stuff

Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs Podcast, with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints, and impact our culture. In Old English, because of the original Greek language of the New Testament, the word good or goodness, you never spoke about it as being related to a human. The word good means godlike. When the rich young ruler came to him and said, Good master, what must I do to be saved? Notice what Jesus said to him. Why do you call me good? There's only one good, and that's God. God. It means to be God-like in action and word. It means to do good. Listen, can I put it to you this way and a clumsy way? It means to do God. Do God stuff. What are you going to do today? Let's go do some God stuff. 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. On the day of Pentecost, all the believers were meeting together in one place. Guess what? It was an upper room. Normal, nothing, upper room. This is cool. It's like, listen, it's like us all of a sudden ending the service, and we were all handed a little address. We put it in our GPS, and we all go over to a different location. Maybe it's down the street or it's down at Amazon. Let's say it's Amazon's warehouse or Walmart's warehouse over by the airport. And we just, we don't know, it just has an address. And we show up and we all start streaming in. Okay? Okay. They gather together in a nondescript common room. They're seeking God, they're waiting upon the Lord and the Holy Spirit shows up on the day of Pentecost and tongues of fire, as it were, appear over their heads and they began to proclaim the truths of God in languages they did not even know and people hearing those languages said, what's going on? We hear the wonderful works of God, church family. In this world that you and I live in, people need to hear from us the wonderful works of God. We need to let people know it. But listen, there's an assumption that God is doing a wonderful work in your life. Now, here's the thing. Some of you, that's not happening. And I wonder where you are in the family of God. Are you even in the family of God? Some of you are in the family of God, but you don't recognize, you don't see God at work. And I just want you to think about that because he's working in and through you. You just don't see it. You need to pull back, catch your breath, open your eyes and see, oh my goodness, I have so much to tell people about what God is doing. Listen, big church, big problems, big church, big blessings. So this just a few days ago, one of our very own... I mean, you know this family. You see them. They're everywhere. They're everywhere on campus. In every ministry, they're amazing. And young. And suddenly the husband and the father of these young children died. Suddenly. And you can just pull back and say, well, you know, that happens. Yes, it does happen. But isn't it also true that you're not aware of every person who dies, are you? I'm not. But when you become aware of someone who dies and a family's left behind, if you are aware, we're a family. We should be asking the question, what do we do? How do I help? How can I get involved? How can I get involved? Because the day will come when you need our love and the person next to you, their love. Because we're a family. And on the day of Pentecost, the church was born and it was made alive. Write this down if you would. It's what a real family is like. Verse 14 tells us, now I myself am confident concerning you, my brethren. What a dear term. The word my brethren, this is the great apostle telling them in a modern day vernacular, in a modern day tongue that I would say to you, it would be something like, bro, dude, yo, I've got confidence in you. Can you imagine? He's endearing himself to them. He's telling them, you're my brothers. Now, the word, women, don't get upset. The word brethren means all the believers. Mr. and Mrs. Brethren. Okay? You're my brothers, you're my sisters. He would be saying to them, if Paul was standing right here, and we asked him, when you address them as my brethren, did you mean as like one in the family? And you know what he would say? We have no doubt. He would say, absolutely, each of them one and all. That's who we are. And that is who we are. The church, to be or not to be, is one family, one and all. And the real family is like what we're seeing here. He says, I'm confident. The word confident, I want you to look at the meaning of this word. It means to persuade fully, to have trust in, to know that which is certain. I like that. Don't you want certainty in your life? To be won over by the evidence of one's faith. In other words, it implies, I have watched you. You've watched me. Church family, listen, because what I'm about to say is an actual reality that is actually in play right now, if you believe it or not, if you recognize it or not. You're watching my life. I watch your life. We watch one another's lives. And when I say watch, look, it's not like this. It's not like this. It's not with like a magnifying glass. Oh, I see a freckle there. You're imperfect. No, listen, if anything, we turn that thing around. We're all imperfect. But there's one whom we love who is perfect. And he's called us into his family. And so all of us misfits have come together. And I mean that with the most affection. Can you imagine? Train 295, leaving for Misfit Island, rail one. All aboard. Let's get on. If it's taken us to Jesus, let's get on. He speaks of them, brethren, and he says, I'm confident in you. I have known about you. You see, Jack, you said earlier that he'd never been there, that he was writing to them with hopes of going to see them. That's true. That is true. So then what's going on here? How can he say this? You'll see in a moment. In the meantime, there's a healthy expectation that's much needed in our lives today. We need a healthy expectation. We need this confidence. And I wrote myself a note, and it's why is it that among so many believers there's confidence lacking? What's wrong with us? We should be the most, you know what I mean by confidence. I don't mean arrogance. There's a big difference. Confidence in Christ and his word and what the Bible says God will do. We should be the most confident people on the planet. Young people, you should be the most confident people on the planet if you know Jesus. I tell you what, what a great warfare that is to be confident in Jesus and at the age of 16 be able to say to the world that is alluring your children away, I don't need that. Get away from me. In the name of Jesus Christ, my life belongs to him. Stay back in Christ's name. Amen. Can you imagine when somebody calls or when somebody connects or somebody... Somehow in social media reaches out with nefarious plans and your young person in your life can say, get out of here or start witnessing. We used to have a friend, Lisa and I did, way back in the 70s and the 80s. And she said when she got, she was a single woman, loved the Lord, she would get nasty, I don't know what they were called back in the, you know, nasty phone calls. Yeah, but it was illicit. Like, you know, somebody would call. And you know what she would do? She would start sharing the gospel as this person's breathing out their whatevers. And she just starts giving the gospel. Listen, God's my witness. Watch this. I'm telling you right now. She's sharing. She's witnessing. She's sharing. She's sharing. She's witnessing. One thing after another. And she read some portion of scripture about the wicked will inherit hell. And then she hung up. She goes back to bed because the phone call came in the middle of the night. Her phone rings. Again. She picks it up. And the man is weeping on the other end. Convicted of his sins and asked her to forgive him of his horrible phone call. And she told him, go to church wherever you are. I didn't want to know where you're at. Just go to church next Sunday. You need Christ. And she gave him the gospel. The spirit of God moved. And this pervert was converted. That's what God does. Confidence like that again. It's the same Bible. In a wicked world. The Bible thrives in a wicked world. 1 Corinthians chapter 12. Am I yelling? Sorry. 1 Corinthians chapter 12. Verse 12. For as the body is one and has many members... Sorry. For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of the one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks or Jews or Gentiles. Isn't that great? Isn't that precious? We're one. When we're hurting, if we're one body, what if your elbow hurts? Think about it. Your elbow hurts. Your hand reaches over to touch your elbow. Then your mind starts thinking, why is that hurting? Think about that. Then you're going like this. And then now you're engaging your brain. I need to remember, did I bump into something? What's going on? And then you realize, whoa, what is that? That skin's red right there where it hurts. And then your brain says, use your other hand and pick up the phone and make an appointment or something. I don't know. Right? And then your feet take you to the appointment. That's like the church. Some of us are hands. Some of us are feet. And when one body is hurting, the other body responds. The rest of the body. It's awesome. And this happens, by the way, all the time. I'm making myself think right now. You guys, if you guys knew... You probably know 25% of what happens regarding this church and its life. On any given week of any given month of any given year. That's a shame. You should know all of it. But if we were to tell you all of it, I don't think you would have any time. Because if we just began posting, oh, this phone call just came in. That guy was going to kill himself. He just put down the gun. He just accepted Christ. This guy called from Chicago. He was going to jump off of a bridge. He thought he'd call us one more time before he went to the bridge. and he gave his heart to Christ. This baby, it was said that this baby was going to be born dead, and the baby's born perfect. This happens all the time. You're not aware of it because I understand that we don't announce it all the time because we can't. We just don't have the time. Maybe that's what heaven's going to be for. Maybe heaven is going to be us giving the report. All of us as a family reporting. Do you know what? This is what a family's like. But we need to do away once and for all with this lack of spiritual confidence. It's a self-inflicted wound in the church, and we need to stop it. We need to have confidence in God, not ourselves, of course. Romans chapter 4, verse 21 tells us this, And being fully convinced. That what he had promised, he was also able to perform. He was speaking about Abraham. Abraham believed what God said God would do. That's awesome. You know, that's really what's all, that is all what's required of you and I. Did you know that? Is to believe God at his word. But God says, okay, that's it. Remember the old days? Way old days. I'm gonna look over to some old Calvary Costa Mesa folks. Remember this? Remember the times when it was, how did it go? God said it, I believe it. And that settles it. Is that how it went? That was a bumper sticker. Back in the 70s and 80s, there were more bumpers that were born again than people. He goes on in verse 14 and says that you also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge. That's powerful. The word goodness here, it's not going to surprise you, especially in the Old English. The word good, you may or may not be aware of this. In Old English, because of the original Greek language of the New Testament, the word good or goodness, you never spoke about it as being related to a human, a person. Did you know that? When somebody says, oh, this is good. We have diluted the language in our day and age. Good, that's good. That's good. The word good means godlike. How was your dinner? Godlike. See, it's like we dilute the words. Remember, Jesus said it this way. When the rich young ruler came to him and said, Good master, what must I do to be saved? Notice what Jesus said to him. Why do you call me good? There's only one good, and that's God. Remember that? It means to be God-like in action and word. It means to do good. Listen, can I put it to you this way, in a clumsy way? It means to do God. Do God stuff. What are you going to do today? Let's go do some God stuff. Go to Walmart, buy some gifts, wrap them. Go to the hospital. Go to the hospital and say, look, I don't even know what I'm doing here. I don't know anybody in here, but you have to get past the guards and all those people, whatever it is. But I want to give somebody some toys. Here, guard, you can have the toy. Give it to somebody. You know what I'm saying? Just do something. That sounds kind of weird, right? Don't stand around. Just do something. Well, it's not what I'm saying, but I'm saying as a believer, we should be busy about doing good stuff. Why? Because we want to show them Jesus. We want to be about doing good. And Paul says of them, I already know that you're full of goodness. I've heard about you guys in Rome. You guys are all about doing goodness. And you're filled with all knowledge. Goodness and knowledge. Listen to this. Acts chapter 10, verse 38. This is pretty cool, by the way. Watch this. God... When it's normally mentioned in the context like this, this is referring to the Father and the Godhead. So God anointed Jesus, that's God the Son of Nazareth, with the Holy Spirit, God the Spirit. Do you see in the first sentence, there's the Trinity? Anybody see that? And with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. Man, that's needed today. There's a lot of demonic activity going on. And a lot of, by the way, not all, but a lot of the mental illness issues of our culture today is the re-manifestation of demonic activity. The gods of the ancient pagan gods that were driven into their holes because of the light of the gospel as it advanced over the earth. And as the church loses its power by its own choosing, not by God's design, the gods fill the void. They return. And so you're seeing a rise in satanic worship. You're seeing a rise in voodoo. You're seeing a rise in all of these dark arts. There's a revival among evil. Why? Because the church is diminishing in its influence, but not all of us have to diminish. I don't know about you. I hope you're with me. I refuse. I refuse. I would hope that our lives would have to be extinguished for our personal light to go out. But may the memory that we followed Christ still linger in the hearts and minds of people. And that word knowledge, it's that ancient Greek word, gnosis. Some say gnosis, but it's gnosis, the G silent. To know by experience, experiential knowledge. Wow. To affirm that what you know actually works. This is so needed today in our confidence building. To know to be proven knowledge or beneficial knowledge. This is the life of the Christian. That what I believe actually works. When you show up, think about that. You know like when the president shows up, there's the security stuff that comes a week in advance, they do everything, they get it all set up, and then there's all of this stuff, and it's obvious the president is showing up in this city. Can you imagine, or can we relate, that when you and or I show up somewhere, There's an entourage of spiritual forces. There's an entourage of spiritual influence. We see it in the physical realm. How much more is it true in the spiritual realm? If we determine, you know what? I'm going to go into this area. I'm going to go back to my family today and I'm going to be a different man. I'm going to go back home and I'm going to see it now as a spiritual hovel, a spiritual... tomb. But I'm going home after this church service and I'm going to walk in there and I'm bringing life. I'm going to bring love and forgiveness and grace and mercy. I'm going to go about doing good starting in my own home. And I'm going to make a difference. 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.