Nowhere To Hide

00:00 - Host (Host) 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 (Interviewer) God's word's true, I don't believe it. That's on you. God's provided everything. It's okay. If you're skeptical, that's fine, but just don't stay there. Dig in, find out.  00:23 - Host (Host) 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.  00:52 - Jack Hibbs (Interviewer) When eyes can hear us and there's nowhere to hide. This is the good news. Our pride is laid low before God. That is distributed to us, or I should say displayed before us, in verse two, when it says that Abraham had no boasting. He had no rights, he had no standing regarding merit. It says there, but not before God. If Abraham could boast in any way, shape or form, it could only be before mankind, but not before God. Look at the latter end of verse two.  01:24 This is very important For the believer. We are to be stripped of our pride. When I mean pride, I mean this. I don't mean grateful that you are excellent at what you do and you're a tremendous athlete in this area, or you are a great piano player. I'm not talking about those things that God has blessed you with and you're delighted. I'm talking about the pride by which you and I approach God, thinking that if God has us, it's a sweet deal for heaven. My look, god, you've got me and your family. Aren't you lucky? No, the Bible knows nothing of this.  02:02 Our pride is laid low before God, and that's a great thing. Abraham had no place to boast before God. God's the one that initiated it. That's the one that called him out of this pagan land of the Chaldeans. It was God who spoke to him, and it reminds me of just a grandeur of who our God is. I personally believe that it's a very, very backslidden Christian. Look, we're all prone to this, so we have to keep an eye on one another. We're very prone as humans, in our flesh, to have some form of level of pride active at any given time. He said not me, pastor. I am so humble, pastor, you have no idea. That's really proud. We all have to deal with it. It's like the cancer of our soul, pride. But I tell you, listen, we're to keep it under control and God's Word gives us that power to do that. But this is how, in my opinion. This is my opinion, this is how the Word of God does it in my life.  03:09 I'll give you an example Revelation, chapter one, verses 17 and 18. Now you're going to forgive me in advance, right? If I get excited about this passage, it's because it means so much to me in my life. Read it often. I delight in this. Why? Because it makes me feel really small. I get real tiny when I read this.  03:29 Here we go, john said, and when I saw him, christ, I fell at his feet as dead, but he laid his right hand upon me, saying to me do not be afraid, I am the first and the last. That's right there, verse 17. Revelation 117. The first time you'd be introduced to, the first and the last, is in the book of Isaiah. The God of Abraham, isaac and Jacob is revealing himself through the prophet Isaiah, and he's announcing. He said, isaiah, you tell Israel, I am the first and the last, I am Almighty God. There is no God formed before me, nor shall there be any God after me. I am God. I am the first and the last. No one takes this title to himself. Well, jesus just did, verse 18,. I am he who lives and was dead. And Behold, I'm alive forevermore, amen. And I have the keys of hell and death. Somebody listen, somebody get excited about that. That's incredible. This is Jesus Christ, the God of the Bible, who saves your soul.  04:35 Why should my pride be laid low? Because the one I worship is the eternal God, the first, the, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega, the one who was, who is, who is to come, the Almighty. All of those are Old Testament references to the very person of Christ and Whoever he is. He lived, he died and he lives again. That's it right there. No wonder why John fell down on his face.  05:08 My pride, your pride, goes out the window when we realize that, regarding this God of ours, that there's nowhere to hide from his grandeur and from his glory. And why would you? When you look at who he is in the Bible I'm not talking about following people Did we not learn yet again? Did you see the news this week? Listen, people, what do you guys spend so much time in the Bible? That Bible study was an hour long.  05:37 Let me tell you what happens when you don't spend time going through the Bible on a regular basis. You wind up Taking the name of Jesus and destroying it publicly all around the world. You drag his, his beloved church, through the mud and wind up destroying tens of thousands of people. When you can't keep your pants on doing drugs with a prostitute in a hotel and being so stoned that you wind up posting what you're doing. And that's exactly what happened in one of the world's biggest Christian leaders this week. Have I not been telling you to keep your eyes on Jesus, but listen? To do that, you must go through the Bible. And when you do not go through the Bible and teach Sermonettes for Christianettes, you wind up having no power.  06:35 And this is a tragic time for the church. As long as we had the right lighting, as long as we had the right Superstar singing, as long as we had the right feel, as long as we made the church so much like the world that the world wouldn't know that when they came to church that we were anything different in the world. And then they would come because we're just like the world. And that's what they did. The church doesn't need to become like the world. Listen, guess what church? The world is much smarter. Then the church believes the world is sick of sin. Many people are sick to death of sin in the world and they're looking for hope, they're looking for the answers, they're looking for Jesus and they don't know how to look for him. But they stumbled into a church. It's just like the world. God has offered us change in a whole new life, in a whole new kingdom, and it's a whole new beginning. It's not something that has a tax exemption. That's just like the world. It's a horrible thing, it's a tragic thing. God's word levels us in our pride. We should all be laying down on our face with John and saying wow, he's the alpha and the omega, he's the first and the last, he's the one, it's Jesus and he's alive forevermore. He's my God, he's my savior.  07:59 Isaiah, chapter six, tells us verse one. Isaiah gives us the Old Testament version of this. In the year that King Uzziah died, isaiah said I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled or the glory robe, both the same filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphim angelic creature. Strange thing, each one had six wings. With two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet and with two, so he had three sets of wings. With two he flew, and one cried to the other saying holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory, and the posts of the door and John is seeing heaven, the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. So I said this is John, this is Isaiah speaking.  08:55 Woe is me. The word woe is condemned, undone, condemned I'm. I have no hope, I'm done, I'm undone. I got nothing here. Woe is me, for I am undone because I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes here's the reason, for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts.  09:21 This is the God of the Bible. This is the God that is to be governing our lives as believers. It's not for us that people should see us living and being and speaking and acting different. It's for his name, it's for his glory that we live. Well, listen, we are supposed to be followers of Jesus, not some snobby, legalistic, right, unapproachable, religious. And Isaiah was laid low at the scene of his God.  10:02 Daniel put it this way In verse 20, daniel said I. Daniel fainted and was sick for many days after when he saw heaven. Daniel got sick. Wow, can you imagine? I just want to see heaven, I want to see a vision. Are you sure? It's probably safer to read your Bible and go with that?  10:26 In Philippians, chapter 2, verse 10, philippians 2.10 says and we read it last week, but it bears repeating that at the name of Jesus. Listen, this is going to happen someday. By the way, as I read this, I had to recommend you do it now instead of later. If you do it now, it's going to go well with you later. If you do it later and not now, it's not going to go well for you. At the name of Jesus, every knee should bow of those in heaven, those on earth and those under the earth, the underworld spirit realm, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Why? Why? Because Jesus Christ is Lord, he's Lord, he's the one. I mean, there's nowhere to go with that. See, it comes down to this choice Do I believe this or not? And then number two this is our second point in our study, when I can hear us is that there's no way to lose. These are again all positives. Paul is not beating up the church in Rome. He's giving them incredible encouraging statements that there's no way to lose church. That's what we see in verse three. Number one is this in verse three is that salvation is founded upon the scriptures, the scriptures I'm so grateful for this the scriptures, the Bible.  11:46 For those of you who don't know, did you or have you ever considered why or how has the Bible endured thousands and thousands of years? It's kind of a fun question. We're in the 21st century. Isn't this thing old? That's a hard question. I guess it's old, but it's for now and it's eternal, so it's ageless. This book's timeless.  12:13 This is the book that wrote down the future in advance on the pages. It's called Prophecy. This is the book that says, regarding the Hittites, that they live in a certain region. And then everybody says that's ridiculous. There's never been anything found that ever substantiates the Hittite kingdom. And then people start digging around in the dirt and then they find out Hittite artifacts. Then they say there was not even a King David. There's no evidence we can't even find if there was a King David. And then they start digging around and they find artifacts displaying David from the house of Jesse. Well, you know what the Bible says? That this guy, corinius, was the governor of Syria at the time of Christ. And we can't find any evidence about that until some archaeologists start digging in the dirt and find out that there was a governor in Syria by the name of Corinius.  13:12 The Bible says in Psalm oh, I'm going from memory. Watch it Going from memory here. Psalm 45, I think maybe around verse four says that the truth, the earth shall cast out truth. Are you able to draw truth out of the earth man. If I was an archaeologist, I'd have a t-shirt with that on it. You know what's so cool Read your Bible, go get a shovel, get a ticket, fly to the Middle East.  13:44 I think I met somebody before service. They're from Persia. There you go. Did you know Persia's Bible land? People used to say there's been no these empires. And then listen if you don't like what I'm saying and you say that's not true, I'm going to fact check that. Okay, can you note to self? Fact checkers are fake. Turns out that the fact checkers who check the fact checkers are fake. How funny is that? Of course he's going to be honest, so don't listen to anybody, just like the resurrection guy on the tarmac there at the airport. Get in an airplane and fly to London.  14:31 Go to the Museum of History in England and you can spend days going through all of the Babylonian displays or the displays of the Persian Empire and of Cyrus and Daerys and all of these kings and all of these despots that ruled when people used to make fun of the Bible. People used to mock the Bible and then in 1948 or 1949, a shepherd boy is looking for his sheep, is lost, ran into a cave and the kid didn't want to go in the cave. So he said he threw a rock into the cave and he heard glass break. So that kind of freaked him out. So he went in there, found these huge urns, beautiful urns, and wound up telling people about it. Long story short turned out to be the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Bible in those scrolls, in those urns. Open it up. You can go to Jerusalem today, the Museum of the Book. Take a walk. It's all laid out and there's the Scripture, and they'll point out in that museum in Jerusalem that there's no difference from that to the Old King James Bible.  15:40 God preserves his word. God's word's true. Oh, don't believe it. That's on you. God's provided everything. It's okay. If you're skeptical, that's fine, but just don't stay there. Dig in, find out, but know this God is awesome. You can't save yourself. You need to believe in him, just like Abraham did, and God transformed his life. We'll learn about this more in a moment, but it's all founded upon the word of God. So listen, I wrote this note to myself, but look, if I get tormented by these things, I am gonna bring them into a message and share my torment with you and it's this a note to myself, maybe it's to you how responsive am I to following directions Me? So ask yourself the question and when it comes to obeying the command or reading the instructions in a manual, how compliant am I to those directions? And I have to be honest with you, you guys, my first thought was how responsive am I to following directions Me? Listen, totally. I thought totally.  16:53 I grew up in a Marine Corps home. Some of you did four years. I did 19 years in the Marine Corps. I left home at 19. So I was in the Marine Corps for 19 years and I learned how to obey. And I have to tell you something this is a little side note. It does not do their Bible study exactly, but I wound up working for a corporation and I wound up being in a position at a corporation and supervised over people in this global corporation. And you know how I got that job. I should say you know how I kept that job, doing what.  17:39 I was told that there was a time when human resources said listen, you cannot tell people that you didn't go to Stanford or that you didn't go to San Diego State and that you didn't go to Northwestern because you got people working underneath you that graduated from Johns Hopkins and they think you did too, so you cannot say a thing. Did you know it was crazy? Why? Because I grew up learning how to obey. Now I grew up with a whip learning how to obey. When God says obey, you need to know it's not gonna be by whip, it's because he wants your life to be blessed.  18:24 And so when you evaluate yourself that, the second one really got me because I don't read instructions, so I don't obey. After all, we get a tricycle for the grandkids putting that baby together. Look, do I have the? Come on, just like you Do I? Guys, do we have time to read instructions? We gotta go. We got things to do. Then Lisa comes into the garage and says I thought it was a tricycle. What's this? Where's the other wheel? Three try, three try wheel, try sickle what is that? Then I have to read the instructions. It takes me twice as long because I didn't read the instructions. Instructions right here, and you'll just chase yourself in the desert without these instructions. He gives us instructions.  19:23 - Host (Host) 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.