In Christ Alone

Real life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. God does things in life, my dear friends, that causes faith to take action. You can't talk about faith without living it. That's where Christianity goes from theory to reality. 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. 17 times in the Old Testament, the Bible says it is written. 17 times. Do you have any times that appears in the New Testament? 63 times. And I love that. Why? The Old Testament's 17 times it is written. You say, Jack, that doesn't make any sense because the number should be the same. No, no, no. Because the Bible, it is written. 17 times Old Testament, 63 times new, is the New Testament winds up quoting all 17 of it is written. And listen, listen, are you listening? All of the other statements or quotations that are necessary for us in our salvation. It's brilliant. You'll see this so in a moment. How do I equate this? 17 and 63? Jesus soon, you'll see. Jesus said that he came and taught or he came to fulfill Moses and the prophets. So when you read the New Testament's account of what the Old Testament declared, you come to this conclusion that the New Testament was as though a bunch of reporters were watching the unfolding and the fulfillment of God's prophesied word. And what happened was God prophesied his word time and time again. Why? Because God's word is true, not like the news broadcast or the video of some guy trying to keep his body bag on. I don't know nothing anymore unless it's in the Bible. I don't believe anybody in the more unless it's in the Bible. That's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. Quite remarkable. So watch this. Come in right along like this. Listen up carefully and then we're going to plug this together. It's kind of blow you out. Genesis 17. For as for me, God is speaking. Behold, my covenant is with you. That is Abraham. And you shall be a father of many. What's the word? Nations. The Hebrew word is Goy. No longer shall your name be called Abraham, but your name shall be called Abraham. For I have made you a father of many. Goy. Nations plural. Look at that verse. You should mark verse five. That's you and me. I will make you exceedingly fruitful and I will make nations. Goy of you and kings shall come from you. I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you in their generations. Now watch what happens here. For an everlasting covenant to be God to you and your descendants after you, I'm tracking everything right now with my Jewish brothers and sisters. Are you with me? Because I know something here. Did you catch it? He's the God of the nations. But he has picked a special nation to be his witness. That nation is called Israel. Abraham is the father of Israel, but when you read Genesis, Abraham is the father of all who believe, including the Goy. The nations. I get excited about this. Listen, us Gentiles. We're not orphaned. We're not on the outside. We've been grafted into the very family of God by the blood of Christ. Jesus has made us one with the father and we, as the Scripture says, have been brought into the commonwealth of Israel. All of the promises that have been given to Israel belong to us. Now, the book of Colossian says, how beautiful is that? And remember, the first century church only had the Old Testament and it was enough. The New Testament was given to announce to the world that the Old Testament was true all along. But I'm still reading. Where did I leave off? Verse 8. God says, look, listen to him. He said, I made. I will make. I will make. I will establish. Look at verse 8. I give to you and your descendants after the land in which you are a stranger. All the land of Canaan, which was renamed by God, Israel, as an everlasting position, and I will be their God. What an awesome statement that is. So the beautiful thing about all of this is remembering the fact that there's no act. You know this. There is no physical act that can make you right with God. Abraham was a Gentile called out of a pagan world by God's own voice and God declared him righteous. You got that everybody? Fundamental basic, right? We need to repeat that over and over again. 400 years before Moses was born and then and the 10 commandments was given, Abraham was already declared righteous. God declared him righteous before the practice of circumcision. God declared him righteous. Why, based on what? Abraham believed God's word. In fact, listen, what FF Bruce, professor FF Bruce put it this way, it's perfect. Abraham simply took God at his word and acted accordingly. That's a bomb drop, right? That's a mic drop. A bomb drop. I'm watching too much news. That's a mic drop right there. That sums it all up. It's perfect. What's the big deal with Abraham? That's the big deal. He simply took God at his word. Man, do you know how healthy you and I would be in life if we just took God at his word? He took God at his word and he acted, conducted himself. You know the word, we don't use this word anymore. It's an old English word. Deportment. Deportment. Abraham heard God and then conducted himself in his deportment accordingly. What does that mean? He went from being a pagan worshiping, bowing down to idle guy, Gentile, to a believer confident in the promises of the God who got to hold of his life, who no doubt I would say, and I'm just assuming here that somehow in some way, shape or form, Abraham found his heart being strangely warmed. You need to ask yourself, it's God causing you right now and even in this message to start realizing, you know what I think, I think I can maybe believe this, that the God of heaven would do this for me. That would be love. That's right. Pretty sure I can't save myself. You're right. My flesh usually gets me in trouble. True again. So I think I'm going to come running to the foot of the cross. Amen. That happens as God awakens you. So watch, this is fun. James chapter 2 verse 20. Some of you have been writing me and saying, what about this? All right, so what about this? Let's remember something. Theologians in here, all of your theologians by the way, do you know that? It means you study the words of God. So watch, the book of Romans summed up is the believer's position in Christ in heaven. In other words, from God's vantage point, he looks at the, he looks at your name. Let's see. Okay, there's Mike, Mike, righteous. Mike believed in my son on April 9th, 1941 or 2010 and declared righteous. Isn't that cool? That's the book of Romans from God's perspective. The book of James, same truth from man's perspective. If I say I believe in God, guess who knows that immediately? God does. You don't. Do you? Let's be honest. If I were to ask all of you, do you guys all believe in Jesus? You know, hands go up. I know something. I know this. I don't know if that's true. You know it's true or not, but I don't know if it's true or not. And let's, we all move into the same house. Imagine if we all went on a huge camping trip for a month. You know, the first day would be wonderful. First night. Wow. Everyone's singing song. Praise the Lord. Look at the sun. The stars are out. And it's all going so well in the third day. Yeah. God is so great. Let's do this. Ninth day. Hey. Excuse me. That's my site. Who's in charge around here? I want to follow the complaint. Aren't we sick of eating this? This has been eating this every day since we got here tired of this. Manna. You know what? Over time, we would find out who's really a believer. Do you know what that's called? The Book of James. What you want in your life, what I want in my life is the Book of James and the Book of Romans to do what we're about to read because it just goes right to our title. Does it not of this very message? So watch this. James says, but do you want to know a foolish man that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? He said, Jack, you just read in Romans. He was justified by faith by belief. That's right. James just said he was justified by works. That's right. That's true. In heaven, God saw his belief, God saw his faith. On earth, Isaac, two witnesses that Abraham took with them saw his works. We'll keep reading. Watch what happens. Do you see verse 22? Do you see, I'm sorry, verse 21, was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see then that faith was working together with his works? Of course. And by works, faith was made perfect or complete. And the scripture was fulfilled which says, here we go. Listen church, everybody. Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. You see the close quote there? And he was called the friend of God. You see then that a man is justified by works and not by faith. What? Say it again. Only. This is epic. Do you remember how I open this message? What we see, right, ought to jive with what we hear from your mouth. This is incredible. And what's awesome about this is God tells Abraham alone by himself. Abraham, he says, yes Lord, he said, I want you to take now your only son. And I want you to take him to a mountain that I will show you. And I want you to offer him there to me as a burn offering. Okay, stop right there. Abraham's mind. Was that God? I recognize voice. But how can this possibly be? Because I'm really old and he said earlier that we would have a son and that from him the promise of the nations would be fulfilled that I would be a father of many nations and that from my life would eventually come the Messiah of the world. How can this be? I'm sure he said not a word to Isaac. This is all going on inside. Can you imagine if you were Abraham and you obey God? This makes no sense. The Bible tells us they went on a three-day journey. I think that's significant. No, I'll read too much into it. But Abraham was ordered to offer up his son on a hill. He walks for three days. Three days. And Abraham's heart in mind, his son is dead for how many days? Three days. He's going with his son and with two servants. Abraham gets to the base of Mount Moriah. Bible says Abraham turned. Listen to this. Abraham turns to the two servants and says, you guys stay here. I and my son will go to that mountain top and we're going to worship the Lord and we will return back to you. Did you hear that everybody? That's faith. God will keep his word. You know, God owns everything, you know. What comes to my mind right now, our daughter was eight months old and we didn't know that inside of her blood was something called Stevens Johnson's syndrome. We didn't know she got sick. So when the kid gets a cold, they get antibiotics, ear infection, pediatrician gives the antibiotic. Next thing we know, she's bleeding from the inside out of her body. Her blood cells begin to lice open throughout begins to swell shut and suffocation takes place. She's rushed to the hospital, Chak's hospital, and this unbelievable process, quarantines, they don't know what's going on whether she's the only one there on that area of the floor. Incredible love and attention and medical treatment. Took him a while to find out what it was that she had because it's not all that common. Lisa and I went downstairs as we were doing, we'd go downstairs in the cafeteria and just try to get something deep and catch up to this. You know the amazing thing is, have you ever had this happen? Eight-month-old baby girl and God says, do you believe she's mine? Do you believe that she's mine? Did I give her to you? Yes, and she's mine. Yes, sir. Yes. Humanly speaking, Lord, can you have your stick around a little bit longer? Second thought, but heaven's awesome. And we get in the way of this. And then, you know, our God is alive, you know, so that's why one year in situations like that, he shows up. It was a Saturday morning, mid-morning, and Lisa and I were in the cafeteria and we saw Chuck Smith walk by. We got up and ran. Pastor Chuck, Pastor Chuck. I don't know if you know, but Ashley's here. Oh, no, I know. I know she's here. I was just up in the room praying with her. Excuse me. He said, yeah, the office told me that Ashley's here at Chuck's and I'm in between weddings. Truly. He did four weddings a day on Saturdays. I'm in between a wedding, so I thought I'd come in and pray for her and he said, she's going to be great. He doesn't say things like that. He didn't say things. He didn't give you false hope. It wasn't even him speaking. I'm sure of it. It was the Lord saying this. Now that you gave her back to me, she's going to be fine. You see, that's exactly what happened with Abraham. Isaac got on the way. God loved Isaac. God loved Abraham. God was going to fulfill his word, but listen, God does things in life, my dear friends. That causes faith to take action. You can't talk about faith without living it. That's where Christianity goes from theory to reality. And we end in verse five. Salvation is a radical transformer, but to him who does not work but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, don't raise your hand, but are you ungodly? God wants to justify you, friend. His faith is accounted for righteousness. Do you believe that you need a savior? Bible says you're ungodly. If you believe that Jesus has done the cross for your sins and rose again from the dead, he'll give you a new life. This Jack Kibs podcast, as well as all the broadcast outreach opportunities, are listener supported. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? Go to jackhibs.com to learn more and stay connected.