Liberty Or Death

00:00 - Announcer (Announcement) Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. 00:09 - Jack Hibbs (Host) Our fathers gave us this nation and we have failed to keep it. We cannot blame anybody for the condition our nation is in right now but ourselves. We cannot blame anyone. Well, you know, if somebody would get control of the border, listen, stop that. Well, what about spending? It's out of control. What about the national debt? It's on us, god says. I'm looking for one man to intercede on behalf of a nation, and there's more than one of us here today, but it's not over. 00:41 - Announcer (Announcement) You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com 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. 01:10 - Jack Hibbs (Host) You and I have the wealth and the freedom and the liberty to gather together today, safe and free, but we scarcely remember how it came about. Against all odds, the greatest power on earth put us in her sights. And how in the world does General George Washington lose most battles fought and winds up winning the war? But by the hand of God. Jesus Christ gave us liberty by going to the cross and there, thank God, dying once. He rose again from the grave to give us eternal life. And the Bible says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life. He was bought by Jesus. Freedoms in the heart of a human, god placed it there. But in a fallen world, freedom and liberty is on the other side of war, and our founding fathers knew that and our pilgrim fathers knew that. 02:11 But we're talking about memorials today. When I talk about the meaning of a memorial, this is what I mean by that, by noticing and reckoning the importance of what happened in history. Memorial Things have happened in your life. Every single one of us have a memorial. Some of them are dark and gray and dented and broken and strange, looking almost rusted, and we'd rather not go there. Those are memorials that are tombstones to us, and I get that. We all have those. And there's memorials where there's been opportunity in your life and things have happened in your life and God has done something in your life. There's memorials, believe it or not, I would argue with you today. That's happening in your life right now, but you're not recognizing them. That's happened to me many times and it's happening to you and it will happen to you and it will continue to happen in my life. And you might say, well, that's kind of heavy stuff. Well, let me show you how heavy can look. So I wanna show you some photos here. 03:22 So you guys, this is the city's symbol, chino Hills. That is an ancient oak tree. It's considered to be the oldest oak tree throughout Chino Hills and Chino Hills State Park. I can walk to it very briefly from my house. I've taken many men from this church up there. I live in a 1500 square foot house, so it's not big but it's not small. My entire home will fit underneath that house. I mean that tree or that tree house. But listen, let me tell you why. That is a memorial to us and we were blessed because, you know, we were here before it was a city and we didn't petition the city to make it our, our motto or our city emblem. I was just happy to find out that they did. But the fact of the matter is that when Lisa and I moved out here, we had two little kids, rebecca and Ashley. 04:18 And when we moved from Costa Mesa, that was on a Saturday and for the first time we woke up in Chino Hills and I lived just about two miles from here, just as the crow flies straight toward the hills. And when we woke up on that Sunday morning we thought we had woken up in hell. Why? Because I had never in my life I was born in San Diego lived close enough to the ocean in Osea. I had grown accustomed to the smell of salt water. When you leave salt water air and you move out here to the smell of what the dairymen call money, I call it stink. 05:04 We thought that we had fallen off the end of the planet and I gotta tell you, lisa and I, we didn't know what in the world is God doing? We had no vision, we had no manifestation from God. We heard no voice resounding, moved to Chino Hills. Technically, chino Hills didn't even exist yet. This is County land and it had no name. But you know what? Lisa and I picked up our two little girls and walked up this hill and there was no patent drive in those days. We walked up and stood underneath that tree and see how clear it was the day that we took that picture. We stood there and we stretched out our hands. Church family listened. We didn't know what we were doing, we had no intel, we had no secret insights but for whatever reasons, we lifted up our hands. We were holding our daughters, we had them lift up their hands. We didn't know what we were doing and we said something nuts. We said God, if you want to deliver this valley into your hands, lord, here we are, send us. And if you wanna take the word out beyond those mountains, here we are, send us. We didn't even know why we said it. Lisa's here. You can ask her later. So don't believe you, ask her. We didn't know what was going on. We didn't get emotional about it that day, like I am right now, went back to the house and we started to make a home out of it and over some years we were lonely and Looking for Christians in this part of the nation and God took a Bible study of three couples and he just started adding people to it and adding people to it and it started growing and started growing and I had my career at Baxter healthcare and biomedical engineering. 06:56 I was having a great time. By the way, sometimes I still miss that job. I had an awesome job. I was gonna retire from that job and God had another plan, but it didn't come. The answer didn't come so easy. It's painful and as it goes along, the Bible studies grown. 07:17 I told Pastor Chuck Smith. I said you gotta get a pastor. It's out of control. I've got my job. It's taken up too much of the. We've got like five houses now involved on a Sunday morning with various ministries at various homes, and Lisa, our bedroom is a nursery For real. And, chuck, you gotta do something. And Pastor Chuck just stood up and he put his hand on my shoulder and he said Lord bless what's happening in Chino Hills. And he walked out of his office and I sat there waiting and his secretary stuck her head in the door and she said can I help you? And I said I'm just waiting for Chuck to come back and she said he went home and two weeks later I got my ordination certificate from Calvary Chapel Coast to Mesa and I didn't even know what happened. We've never known what we've been doing here. 08:14 God has done it all along the way and the calling, the calling that God gives. The calling that God gives means that he gives the resources and he gives the power and he makes the way. He's the way maker, you know, and in each and every one of our lives God has established you as a believer to be a memorial. I'm not talking about some old crusty stone memorial there are places for those but I'm talking about what Paul spoke to us about, about being living sacrifices to God day in and day out. And listen, god, help us if we lose sight of that vision. We can't lose sight of that. People have tried over the years to try to make this a normal church, try to make this a normal Calvary Chapel, try to make this a normal gathering. I thank God that listen. He has interrupted and he has turned over tables and he continues to do that this day and we're happy about that. 09:24 But my heart goes out to our nation. We're too big to be defeated by any power on earth still to this day. We're flanked by two great protective oceans. We have neighbors to the north and neighbors to the south that we have insured would be there in the time of need. And now I look at our country and my heart breaks because I don't recognize much of my nation that I've learned to study in school, that I grew up in and what I see on the horizon for my kids and my grandkids. 10:06 How did we get here? I honestly lay blame at the foot of the pulpit and in the congregation of churches that failed to speak up. Our fathers gave us this nation and we have failed to keep it. We cannot blame anybody for the condition our nation is in right now, but ourselves. We cannot blame anyone. Well, you know, if somebody would get control of the border listen, stop that. Well, what about spending? It's out of control. What about the national debt that's on us? 10:41 God says I'm looking for one man to intercede on behalf of a nation and there's more than one of us here today. But it's not over. I forget who said it long time ago. I love it. It's not over to the fat angel sings. Isn't that a great song? I love that statement. I ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha ha. Can you imagine getting into heaven and there's a fat angel? And that's the one. There you are, ha ha ha. But the meaning of a memorial prompts us to ask the question what happened here? Why should this ground be dedicated? 11:26 Joshua was getting ready to take on the enemy and on the morning of the battle, early, joshua sees this soldier Listen up, everybody, this is the freak you out. Joshua sees somebody in the distance and it's a soldier and he's alone. And Joshua, general Joshua, commando Israeli, commando Joshua in your Bible says, approaches him. Can you imagine? And says are you for us or for the enemy? And the voice came back out of the darkness and said I am captain of the Lord's hosts. You know what that means, by the way. If you don't know, I am captain of the Lord's armies of heaven and the Bible says that that Joshua took off his sandals and bowed down. The Bible tells us that that manifestation, what is known as the Christophanes, a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ before Bethlehem, led them into battle. 12:29 It doesn't matter how equipped you are, it doesn't matter how smart and pretty you are, it doesn't matter how savvy you are. Is God doing what he's doing in your life. Yes, god has called you to various areas of life. It's the beauty of God, each of us talented and gifted in different areas. God made no mistake in that. A couple of weeks ago there was I mentioned this in passing, but there was a world famous musician that was here seeking God. There was an actress from Hollywood seeking God. 13:09 What's going on? You see, the talents that you have, they don't bring you satisfaction because they were given to you to give glory to God. That's when you rejoice is like. This nation is His, and I know this drives educators crazy. Today Someone's going to tell me haven't you ever heard of a separation of church and state? No, where did you hear it? From CNN? Where did you get that from? It's in the First Amendment. Show me the First Amendment. You think there's something on this planet that's separated from God? I agree with Benjamin Franklin God governs in the affairs of men. God knows. But what happened in this spot? We need to ask that question For us. In one of our memorials it's that oak tree. We believe that God is answering our prayer requests still to this day. Today's a monument of that. But what about you? I know this sounds kind of corny, but not to us. 14:18 My grandkids know about a monument, a memorial. If you go down Pacific Coast Highway south, on PCH, just past Beach Boulevard, you keep going. You're going to go over the Santa Ana River, just past Southbound. Past the Santa Ana River on Highway 101, or Highway 1, you're going to come to Orange Street. It's the first stoplight in Newport Beach. If you hang a right and park your car and you walk out about 300, 500 feet, there is a volleyball net. See, why are you telling us this? Because I'm going to tell you about a memorial. Why is that a memorial? Why do my grandkids know when they drive down Coast Highway? Why do my kids know that's where mom and dad met, right there? I know, as a pastor, I'd love to give you like this great thing about it. 15:08 I was serving food to the starving in Malaysia. Lisa descended down in a parachute carrying Bibles. No, she was a cute blonde, tan and a bikini, a born-again Christian from Anaheim First Baptist Church and a friend of mine that was on my volleyball team playing volleyball. In the middle of the day he said hey, jack, there's a Christian girl right there. Because I was really down on Christian girls. I'd become a Christian. And then I found out I don't think there's any Christian girls. He said there's one, and I didn't let her know by any means that I thought she was cute and all that stuff, but I'll tell you this, you know, I just thought why not just go for it? And when Lisa and I met and conversational, in a matter of minutes, our friends said you know what, come on over to the house tonight and we'll have some friends over. And so Lisa and I reconnected on that same day. 16:12 And why waste time? Right? I just said hey, hey, yeah, good to see you. How many you know? When you get married, how many kids do you want to have? She said, well, first of all, I want to be a stay-at-home mom. And I said I like that. Well, what about? Where would you want to live? And you know, look, we're Californians. You got to live as near to the water as possible. And so I mean, I'm telling you right now again, if you don't believe me, she's sitting here somewhere. She's probably getting elbows by people right now. And we just went through it. We knew everything with it by the time the hour was up. I should have asked her to marry her right then and there. But I waited a couple of months. But that was a memorial. Even the world would have thought the gathering of sand by a volleyball court on Orange Street and Newport would be something that would change the course of history in my life and in my grandkids' lives and in my children's lives, and it's from that meeting that we're friends and we're in the family of God together. 17:23 Memorials don't underestimate them. They're happening every day. Open your eyes to see them. God is good and listen. His Holy Spirit is full of power. This life is hard enough to live, but God sends us His Spirit's power. Don't ever do your faith walk with Jesus. I'm trying to avoid the word Christianity. It's just been so maligned. Don't try to follow Jesus on your own strength. It doesn't work. Let Him take you every single. I don't care how big and brawny you are. We need Jesus to carry us. Flat out, flat out, true.