Having A False Sense Of Grace

[Music] Real life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. I don't need Satan to ruin my life and I don't need the government to ruin my life or anything else. I'm quite able to ruin my own life. Listen, I don't want to win any more prayer battles with God. I don't want my will done. I've learned, listen, I've been a Christian for a long time, and the worst thing I could ever happen is for God to just be quiet and let me do what I want to do. That's the worst day. You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibs.com/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 going to be talking about the awareness of God's grace in your life. Not to overlook the sins of your life. A lot of people live in a false sense of grace. Oh, I'm a Christian. I can do this. You know, from time to time, I can do this. Don't worry, God's grace will take care of it. I just put in a modern day language what Paul is speaking to the Romans 2,000 years ago. Beware of any religion that says, "I can send Monday and get it forgiven on Wednesday." That is anti-nomenism. It's condemned by God and it's a manifestation of the proof that the Holy Spirit is not present in someone's life. The Holy Spirit will never say to you, "Go sin tomorrow and I'll forgive you Thursday." That's not a true believer's life. You say, "Jack, you kind of sound legalistic." No, I'm not at all because you know what? I'm heading in the direction of absolute liberty and freedom. The challenges will you recognize it when you say it. God's grace is not to overlook our sins when we sin them, when we commit them, as though they're nothing. God's grace is given to us whereby we get controlled and dominance over those sins. It doesn't mean we become sinless, but I like to put it this way. It happens that as we walk with God, we become one who sins less, But you'll never be sinless, not until you drop dead. And then the reason why you're sinless at that point is because you've been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, right? Amen. The cross of Christ. And the only thing that's messing with us right now is our bodies. Think about that. I mean, every Christian that's in the house, you desire to live a life that fully pleases God. The problem is this carcass gets in the way, right? And first Chronicles chapter four verse nine, First Chronicles 4.9, the Bible says there was a man named J. Bez, I love this guy, who was more honorable than any of his brothers. And his mother named him J. Bez because his birth had been so painful. He was the son who prayed to the God of Israel, and this is his prayer. And I'm going to encourage all of you to pray this prayer. I pray this prayer. "Oh, that you would bless me and expand my territory. The word territory in Hebrew means coastline area, presence, influence. There's a lot of words today about, "Are you an influencer? Do you want to be an influencer? Take or influence your scores." You want to be an influencer? Follow God with all your heart. Jabas found that out 3,000 years ago. "Hey, you know what, God? Here's the deal. My name means pain." My mom named me "painer." someone who causes pain but all that you would bless me and expand my territory, please be with me in all that I do and keep, here it is, keep me from all trouble and pain. That's a prayer in the Bible and the Bible says, "God granted him his request." Now listen, there's going to be troubles in life. This is not a prayer like quick, quick, pull the JPS prayer so we don't have to go through anything. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about going through the troubles of life and God's favor being upon you that you go through them and you're a great witness for the kingdom of God. The things that God has presided over in your life, God can turn around and use. This morning I was asked on a live news program TV out of New York on Newsmax. They asked me, "Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do bad things happen at all?" gave them the gospel answer. Jesus said, "I've come to give you an abundant life that you might live and that you might enjoy life, but the enemy has come to rob you, kill you and destroy you." So we need to put blame where blame is due and that's on Satan. God wants you to be one who experiences this blessing, but we live in a fallen world. So then the midst of all trouble, we can look to God. I'm so happy that this earth is not our heaven, this earth is not our home. We're going home someday, but this is not it. How the lia for that? But as we look at this, Mark it down if you would, church, it's so important is that his grace enslaves us to his freedom. I wrote that right. That's exactly what I want to say. His grace enslaves us to his freedom. Right now you are enslaved. Every single one of us are enslaved right now to something or someone. You know, people will say, "Oh, you Christians, you know, You got your little Bible, and you know Jesus, your crutch. I'm insulting people say that, because that's is a terrible thing to call Jesus, is a crutch. Jesus is a wheelchair, he is an ER, he is the hospital, he's the rehab center, Jesus is everything, he's no crutch. Listen, Jim Beam or Snorting Coke might be a crutch. Jesus is no crutch, are you kidding? No, throw your life upon him, get into the hospital of God and watch what he does. He doesn't just heal people up, he absolutely transforms them. It's incredible. And so what I'm talking about is you and I being slaved to his freedom, to be bound to him. Look at verse 15, it says, "What then shall we sin because we are not under law?" This is a beautiful sarcasm of the Apostle. So what? Because we're not under the law, just syn it up? Are we to be those practicing this anti-nomenism and action? He says, certainly not. The word means perish the thought, strike it from your mind. That's a horrible thing to be saying. So he goes after the one who's being an opponent to the grace of God. He would be saying absolutely positively no way. He's saying to the Christian, how can you possibly think like that? If you guys listen, if the Holy Spirit is in you, you can't think like that. So you remember this Christian thing, it's pretty cool. You're like, you become a Christian and then you send up a storm and ask God to forgive me. The Holy Spirit would never let you think that way. You know what I love about what we're talking about? This shatters the habitual practice of religious activity. And God just makes the deep dive right into your soul and says, "Here's what we're going to do." We're not going to do anything right now with the externals because I'm the God of eternal life. I'm diving deep into your soul and you're not going to fix yourself from the outside in. You're not going to go to a course for this. There's no apt for that. I'm moving inside of you. The Holy Spirit at the moment of you believing in what the Son of God did at the cross. And I'm going to transform you by my power from the inside out. That's why Christians can't get figured out by people. They don't understand it. They just see a life being transformed. And listen, the great thing is it's not so much overnight. I mean, there's some stuff that God, you remember when we accepted the Lord, there's some stuff that had to stop that night. (congregation laughing) Right? And he stopped them. And then there's other things throughout your life that he's been working on. That's what he does. But I'm talking about him, transforming us. Transformation. Transformation, in my opinion, is the missing link today and so-called Christianity that we see. We see some sort of a weak powerless Christian experience, a weak powerless Christianity. I grew up under a pastor who was just so rock solid, pastor Chuck Smith, he would say, "I don't care how much, how high you can jump in the air and shout as a Christian, I care about how straight you walk after you land." - God bless you. - And that's called holiness by the way. Young people today, listen, holiness. I was so blessed yesterday, I got stopped in a mall by two teenagers. I mean, I'm absolutely old enough to be their grandpa. And I really felt good about myself after that. I'm not, I feel good about the Lord using a ding dong like me. These two kids came after me and they just said, "We listen to your podcast all the time." And I'm thinking, "Am I me?" Really? Well then the Lord tapped me on the shoulder and said, "It's not you, Nuckaulhead, it's my word. Let's keep things in perspective, Jack." Okay, this is Jack. This is God. But how does an old man touch young people to walk with God, the Holy Spirit? And he does it on the inside outwardly, not outwardly on the inside. And we become enslaved to his freedom. He sets us free. Verse 16 says, "Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves, speaking of your body, slaves to obey, you are that one's slave whom you obey?" Watch this, number one. Whether of sin leading to death can have we're all honest. We know that sin leads to death. First of all, general sin. This world is sold under sin by rebellion. when a little baby is suffering, that little baby committed no sins. Why is the baby suffering? Because Adam and Eve sent. Right? That is in our spiritual DNA and it's tragic. But I might add to you, it's only for a season. I know it hurts bad. I know it hurts terrible when you kiss your daughter or son in that hospital room not knowing if they'll be alive tomorrow morning or as you sit there in the night. I remember our daughter at eight months, they told us she's got less than a 50% chance to live and they quarantined her at St. Jude's for eight days and we just sat there, we took shifts and there come some point in some moment where you go from please God please God please God you know I'm talking about to where you where I think God accomplishes what he wants to accomplish and that is Lord wait a minute you You made her, you gave her to us. She's yours. And the moment when that happens, there is an enslavement to his freedom that is beyond human words and description. I can't write a book about it, I can't preach about it, it's got to be experienced. And I believe that every true child of God will go through that crisis moment of faith where you release God's God from here. This is the first thing. The second thing is there are obedience leads to righteousness. We get all scared about the word righteousness. It's unfortunate. We need it the most. People, none of us want to be labeled self-righteous, so we so push away from the word righteous and we make it so fantastic that we won't even study it. The word righteous or righteousness means that we live in act like Jesus. It simply means to do the right thing. Do you not know what the right thing is to do? Think about it. Right now there's huge talk and battling taking place over, is it right or wrong to terminate a pregnancy? Now you might say, "Well, I believe it's a woman's right to choose." I don't think that's the question. That question lends itself under the parameters of timing. Now, seeing how I've been put in Instagram, time out in prison, so a muscle just go for the whole risk of the thing. If you were not a believer in God at all, let's just take the Bible off the table, forget about it. Let's just talk about pure biology. You can't ditch that because you're a human right now. Can you hear me? It's because you're a human. Just pure chemistry, pure biology. announces to us that when a male and a female, when this body part explores this body part, biology happens and the living sperm crashes with a living egg and someone's alive. Something like Frankenstein. It's alive! And it is alive, but it's so small. So since when does smallness have anything to do with its value? Look, if you take that kind of approach, Shaquille O'Neill can look at everyone. Of us and say, you know what, you're not valuable to me. You're too little. You're only six feet. You know what I'm saying? God says, "I made you in the womb when nobody could see. I made you. So right now there's a big battle. And here's the deal. Listen, people choose to have sex. They know full well. If I have sex right now, I could get pregnant. That's the choice. The choice was made. I am for choice. Listen, God's pro-choice. He says choose life and live. I'm pro-choice. But listen, there's a ramification and there's parameters. Oh, listen, and some people are not going to like this. There's a parameter based on science that decisions are made. And listen, once you press the button and the rocket goes up, guess what? It's going up. You're going to Mars. Can you imagine being on a moon launch and saying, "You know, I think I want out." They're not going to let you out. The decision has been made. Once the decision's made, what do you want to do? I want to go back on my decision. I don't want to be hindered or encumbered by this problem. And so now I want to kill this child. Listen, that's why God invented adoption. Let the baby live, but don't kill. Thou shalt not murder, says the Bible. He's who, well, as the Bible says, listen, show me in science where science exterminates what it stands for. It doesn't happen. And so when we do the wrong thing, it leads to death. When we do the right thing, it leads to righteousness, simply doing the right thing. And God does that by transforming us. There's a lot of things going on today and I was thinking, so I hope I say this right. Leah Nardo Domenci said, "When can have no smaller or greater mastery than the mastery of oneself?" That's a great statement. It looks awesome on a plaque. But you know, that's impossible. We have no power to control ourselves. That's why there's new years of resolutions. (audience laughing) The Bible says you have to be transformed. But you know what, when you reject a God, when you're a culture that rejects God, you don't say transformed. You say we need to be trans humans, right? This movement that scientists are telling us that we may reach at about 2035, 2040, where we will be trans-humans, where we will be human, but we will have our phones and our, the cloud will be actually implanted in our skin. We will be wired and we will have accelerated thought. So you have stopped and asked the question, why do you want to be trans-human? because we'll have the Internet and our brain in a second. Wow, is that good? Let's say they succeed in that. It's still not going to transfer from your soul. And because people have rejected God and are not enjoying what it is to live for why you were created, people want to be transgendered. And my heart breaks. Because when you study why these people are going through, there's a lot of baggage that leads them to this conclusion. But if you stop and ask them, why are you thinking about this? The strip away all of the smoke screens, the bottom line is, I'm not happy with myself. That's the answer. I want to be somebody else. You want to know why you want to be somebody else? It's because you haven't found the person who you're supposed to be. God made you to be someone. And you've not found him yet. Don't talk to me about religion. I'm not talking to you about religion. Look, my truck is Is idling rough. It needs to go into the shop the computer says on the screen Jack how long are you gonna wait before you take it in? You got to take it in got to take it in And they'll take it in and they're gonna plug it in and listen. I'm not gonna take that to a lawnmower shop Right? You take it to where it came from. Why? Because the Creator of it knows what to do with it. You've been created by God. The Bible says what you claim not to believe in that you were made in the image of God. So I'm just asking you, why don't you take yourself back to your Creator and watch him transform you because the way that you're going about it ain't going to work. You're still going to be hurt inside. You're still gonna have hopelessness. Somebody even get whooose. Because you're gonna think that's gonna change you, but then when you wake up to the realization it didn't change you. Now what are you gonna do? You're gonna do what we're seeing on the news now. I wanna change back. And you keep listening. You need a heart change on the inside. And you might be here today and you're the big man in the corner office, smoking your cigar and counting your money. And you're saying, yeah, you tell it, pastor. Wait a minute, what about you? Have you been transformed? I don't need that. I've got billions. Billions of bricks tied around your feet pulling you down. We need to be transformed. (dramatic music) - This Jack Kibb's podcast, as well as all the broadcast out reach opportunities, are listener supported. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? Go to jackhibs.com to learn more and stay connected. (cheering) [MUSIC]