Getting Real With God And Man

(0:00 - 0:32) Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs Podcast, with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints, and impact our culture. In all of life, right now, you and I need more and more and more of this personal awesome God. We sing worship songs to Him, but we scarcely know Him, let's be honest. We can combine all of our knowledge together, and we stretch the surface maybe. But we love Him. How do we love Him when we've never seen Him? It's hard to explain this, but He has revealed Himself to us personally on the inside. (0:35 - 2:04) 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. I'm a real big fan of Bible prophecy. I think everybody should be. Bible prophecy proves that the Bible is given by God. God tells the future in advance. But one of the great things about God prophesying the future is when He prophesies what is known as the doctrine of soteriology. It is God, the God of the Bible, who prophesied salvation. No man made that up. Nobody concocted that idea. God did. Listen, I'm being sarcastic right now. Why would God give you and I the idea that He wanted you and I to be forgiven and experience salvation? Why would He do that? Yes, because He loves us. That ought to blow your mind. You say, well, I don't know, pastor. Nobody loves me in this world. Maybe that's true. Maybe nobody does love you. Who cares? God does. By the way, let's be honest. (2:04 - 3:04) The people who love us on Monday, they may not love us on Tuesday. Genesis 315, God is speaking. He says, I will put enmity between you, Satan, and the woman, Eve. I'm going to put warfare between Satan and his descendants and Eve and her descendants, between your seed and her seed. Notice the capital S, divinity. Someone's going to come from Eve who will be divine. Whoever he is, we know who he is. He shall bruise. The word bruise, you see the bruise twice. The context demands everything. Let me read it according to context. He shall crush your head. Hey, Satan, you're going to get a head crushing. By the one who's going to come from the woman, Eve, she's going to have one in her line who will be one of divinity. He's going to crush your head. (3:05 - 9:59) Oh, I like that. And you, Satan, shall bruise his heel. Satan will inflict the pain upon Christ. And that is summed up in the fact that Christ goes to the cross and he suffers rejection and he fulfills Isaiah chapter 53 and Psalm 22 of the Old Testament. And he goes to that cross and he bears the atoning weight of God's people. And the Bible tells us that Christ, and it had to be this way. Jesus died at Golgotha. He died in Jerusalem. He died in the nation of Israel and all of that to fulfill the Old Testament prophecies. And I want to stress that in light of today's insanity that's being discussed by, I was going to say what came into my head, but you know, there's a big debate right now. Is Israel really Israel? Are they legitimate as a country? Should we be helping them? And the word in Hebrew is libtard. Libtard. Sorry. I probably need to ask God to forgive me. If you say today that there is no viable existence for the nation of Israel, you are denying the Bible. Jesus not only had to die in Jerusalem, but the Bible tells us that without an Israel and without a Jerusalem, Christ can't return. When Jesus returns to the earth to establish his kingdom, he returns to where? Canada? Santa Monica? He returns. His foot will touch the Mount of Olives, Zechariah tells us. The Bible tells us it's going to split open. Ezekiel tells us that water will explode from the Mount of Olives and it will flow down into the Mediterranean and half of it will flow down into the Dead Sea and Christ will cross the Kidron Valley and he'll go through the Golden or the Eastern Gate. He will establish his rule and reign and Daniel tells us he'll judge all the nations as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. That's at the end of the seven year tribulation period, the great second coming of Christ. And I'm getting so excited about this it has nothing to do in my notes. But I just had to say that there's a lot of people denying, denying the legitimate government of Israel today because they say they're sinners, they don't believe in God, they're immoral. And I hear people saying that and I'm thinking, are you? Are you sinless? And what are you referring to? And they're talking about America has now taken the place. Is America not immoral? Is not America the one that pumps out sin to the world? We are the pornographic cabal of the world. No, it's ridiculous. Israel is Israel in the Bible, Jerusalem is Jerusalem, and the Messiah is the Messiah. And there's no messing around with that. I digress. Genesis through Moses announces that you and I will have a redeemer who will crush Satan's head. And Jesus did that at the cross. And when he rose again from the dead, it's an awesome thing. What would be God's personal and willing display of himself in the act of grace? Number one comes to my mind is Noah. The Bible tells us that Noah found grace in the sight of God, Noah. Then I think about Abraham, Abraham. This is kind of a shocker. He's the same guy. He's the same guy. I'll tell you what I'm going through. Abraham was a Gentile before he became a Jew. He was from Ur of the Chaldees. He was pagan. This is how are you listening? This is how personal your God is. Your God who is God, same God, we're studying that on Wednesday nights. He's the same yesterday, today and forever. He's the same God who calls Abram out of paganism. He called me out of paganism. He said, come. Basically the word is the same. Think about it. Didn't Jesus say to Peter, come, follow me. God said to Abram, come to me, follow me. I'm going to lead you out. Come. And then you know, the Bible tells us Sarah asked him, where are we going? Hebrews chapter 11 verse eight says, Abraham went out following God, not knowing where he was going. Can you imagine? Abram, where are we going? Where are we going? Can you imagine? This is the dread of every, every married man. Honey, where are we going? I don't know. He tells her, I don't know. I'm following his voice. Personal. He's so personal. Yet he's God. He's spirit. And we are just mere mortals, but he loves you and he loves us. A great example of his grace is again, when God spoke to Moses and when Moses said, show me your glory. God says to Moses, humans can't look at me and live just my very presence. That's so personal. He tells Moses, I'd love to show you me, but if you see me, you'll fry. I mean, the physics won't work. You're mere mortal. I'm spirit. And if you were to look at me, you would die, Moses. But he saw the ardor of Moses's heart. And he says, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll do second best. You see this crack in the rock over here. I'm going to stuff you. That's how I see it. I see God says, Moses, go in the crack. And here's God's finger. And he's just pushing Moses into the crack, tucking, tucking. There's an elbow hanging out. We'll push that in. There's a part of Moses's chin sticking out of you to push that in there. All right, Moses, don't move. It's kind of like taking a picture. You ready? Don't move. Smile. That stuff's him in Iraq. And the Bible says that God passed by. And then God removed his hand from covering Moses's body and Moses's face. And the Bible says that the atmosphere was so disturbed by the presence of God passing through that that's where we get the word afterglow. Moses saw the residual effects of God's presence having gone through the atmosphere that was in front of Moses. And so powerful was that that it actually changed the look of Moses's face as he began to take on the glow. That's why he came down Mount Sinai with his face covered that he didn't want the people to see the glory departing from him as it faded. (10:00 - 10:12) Personal God. And then what about the personal God revealed in the man David? He says of David, David is a man after my own heart. You can't get more personal than that, everybody. (10:14 - 12:59) In all of life right now, you and I need more and more and more of this personal awesome God. We sing worship songs to him, but we scarcely know him. Let's be honest. We can combine all of our knowledge together and we scratch the surface, maybe. But we love him. How do we love him when we've never seen him? It's hard to explain this, but he has revealed himself to us personally on the inside, heart to heart. And then what about the man Isaiah and Isaiah chapter six? It's an awesome revelation where Isaiah sees the glory of God. He's allowed to see heaven. And the seraphim before the presence of God, the great angels before him. And when Isaiah sees that, Isaiah understands that when he sees the Lord, he says, I saw the Lord high and lifted up in his glory filled the temple. Isn't that interesting? There's a temple in heaven. And then what about the man Daniel? The personal God met with Daniel. By the way, young people listen up. Daniel was taken as a very young teenager, very young, maybe 13 captive and taken into Babylon. He never saw his home again. He never saw family. He never saw his country. He never saw his home again. And Daniel remained true to God. How do you remain true to God after all of those decades? Because God revealed himself personally to Daniel. And I want to submit you today that the more that you pursue and seek after the Lord, he will reward you with more of his presence in your life. So much so that as you walk with him, that reality takes more hold of your life than anything in this temporal world can ever possess. Remarkable. But Daniel had favor from God. And then finally, with this one, just these are just brief examples. The prophet Malachi in your Old Testament is summed up in this. God tells Malachi, I'm listening. Isn't that a beautiful thing to hear? Don't you want to maybe right now in your life, don't you want to hear God say to you, I am listening to you. I can hear you. In fact, he says in Malachi, I not only can hear you and I'm listening to you. God says, this is awesome. I think it's Malachi 316. I'm not sure. God says, I'm even writing it down in my book of remembrance. Oh, this is the God of the Bible. And he loves you. (12:59 - 15:29) So where are you going with this? I'm trying to build you up, strengthen you up. In Romans chapter one, verses 16 and 17, Paul writes and says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. I hope you're not ashamed of naming the name of Jesus in public. I hope you don't turn red in the face. If anything, we should mention the name Jesus and the world should turn red in their face. By the way, can I get all of you to do this? I shared this with you before, but let's just do this together. If you and I are somewhere and we hear the name of God, we hear God or Jesus Christ said in a not so happy setting, it could be in a movie, could be at a restaurant. Let's, let's agree to do this kind of like slapping that sticker on the back of your car and getting prayed for. Let's all agree on this. When you hear somebody say in a movie or TV show or on the golf course, Jesus Christ or God, exactly. Just say is Lord. If you're at a theater and you're in, and the thing's going on and notice it's the number one cuss word than any other word. If somebody says Jesus Christ, uh, there in the theater say is Lord and you just ruined the day for everybody. It's beautiful. You know what? They'll go, they'll leave that movie thinking, you know, there was some lunatic. Every time somebody said Jesus Christ in the film, somebody yelled out and said, he's Lord. And you know what's going to happen? Somebody's going to say, well, what's wrong with that? He is the Lord. Think about that. We can't let them get away with that. And we can have some fun doing that. What a witness. Don't be ashamed of the gospel. He says, for it is the power of God into salvation to every believer, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile for in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. And here's the old Testament verse. This is the gospel in the old Testament. The just shall live by faith. Habakkuk chapter two, verse four. Beautiful. So God who is all loving and all caring and kind invites all to come to him by faith. And because the gift of salvation is provided by God, paid for by God, invented by God, he's the redeemer. (15:30 - 16:38) Who are we to boast? Who are we to strut? Our what? Our knowledge, our denominational background. What a joke. Well, I'm a Lutheran. Well, we'll pray for you. Well, I'm a Catholic. I'm a Baptist. I'm a Calvary Chapel person. By the way, do you guys know you're in Calvary Chapel, which forget about the name. This, this is a Bible study, and you'd be shocked to find out who's sitting around you. There are people here from every, every denomination. There are some people here who don't know, even know why they're here. They just thought they should come. There's, there's, listen, there's Jews who come here after Sabbath. They come here to learn, to find out what, what is it we thank. There's even cult members who show up trying to get, after a message, they try to follow you to your car to hand you something. And let us know, by the way, set your alarm off. The car will beep. We'll send, we'll deploy some of our special forces to, to rescue you from false doctrine. (16:39 - 17:16) But wow. So here we go, church. It's this getting real with God and man versus one to three. It's this. It means that we have a grounded faith. Can you write that down? Grounded faith. We've got to make sure that you and I have a grounded faith that can take it, that can take the criticism, that can take the attacks, that can take all of the challenges. Is your faith grounded? And we look at this verse one, wherever there's a grounded faith, there's going to be maturity that produces a practical faith. I love God's definition of faith in the scriptures. (17:17 - 17:37) So here it says, right in verse one, it says, receive one who is weak in the faith, but not to disputes over doubtful things. You say, what in the world does this mean? Well, number one, we've got to unpack the meaning of these words. Look at the Greek word for receive. (17:37 - 18:31) It's very important in chapter 14, verse one. The word receives here means to bring in or to take alongside. Listen, as brothers and sisters in Christ. Now that would be those of us who understand that the old and new Testament speaks about Jesus being the Messiah. Yeshua Hamashiach. We understand that. We understand that he forgives sins, but his requirement is that you must confess your sins, repent of them. In other words, you must agree with God. I have sinned against the almighty God. We've all sinned. The question is, what are you going to do about it? This is critical. Are you going to humble yourself and receive his free gift? Or are you going to pull up your boots and tighten your belt and say, I'm going to believe, but I'm also going to help God out. (18:33 - 19:06) There's a big difference. There's an eternal difference between those two things. Why? Because the just shall live by faith. And so when the Bible tells us to bring in or to take alongside of, to open our arms or to welcome in, to make welcome, accepted. He's saying this to us all right now as believers. Be opening and accepting with arms to bring in alongside of you any weak brother that has a weak faith and make sure that you do that for no other reason, but for love. (19:07 - 19:24) Don't listen, don't bring them in. He says to get into disputes about doubtful things. This is a profound declaration of maturity. A grounded faith is a mature faith. It knows what it believes and it can defend what it believes. I'm going to ask you this. (19:24 - 20:35) Don't answer, don't answer out loud, but by all means, please get this answered. Can you tell anyone who asks you on what basis does God forgive sins? You need to know this. If you don't know the answer to that, how can you believe in it? I believe Jesus is Lord. What does that mean? I believe God is God. What does that mean? You've got to be, this is what's wrong with the church today, at least in the Western world. It says and spouts off all kinds of things and it doesn't know how to back up what they claim to believe. You would never get your job that way. You'd never keep your job that way. A practical faith is a working faith. Jesus Christ came to save us from our sins and to give us that new identity that's in him. 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.