One Life To Live - For Now

00:00 - Speaker 1 Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs Podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. 00:09 - Speaker 2 As a believer. I want to put it to you this way I only regret that I have one day to live my life for the Kingdom of God, Because my goal and your goal is to live the rest of your days until the finish line, to live for the Kingdom of God every day, on a grand scale however God calls you, 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. 00:48 - Speaker 1 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. 01:01 - Speaker 2 Talking about one life to live for now. There was a young man by the name of Nathan Hale, and I love this guy. Some of you might remember him, but he was not only a patriot, but he was also an officer. Yes, and he was a spy for General George Washington and he was caught spying by the British Washington and he was caught spying by the British and so he was taken before British ruler there in the East Coast during the colonial war which was just breaking out. By the way, this took place in late summer of 1776. My goodness, we had just declared our independence on July 4th and then just in the late summers August, september-ish he gets captured. 01:46 And I want to put this quote up by him. Listen to what he said. He said to the commander and we know this because British history wrote this down. That's how we know it. He said, before the rope went around his neck and he died he said it is the duty of every good officer to obey any orders given to him by his commander in chief. 02:08 I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country. And then to the gallow he went. And what a great statement that is. I love that, as a believer, I want to put it to you this way. I only regret that I have one day to live my life for the kingdom of God, because my goal and your goal is to live the rest of your days until the finish line, to live for the kingdom of God every day, on a grand scale, however God calls you. So number one is this church. Write it down, it's our only point, and then we'll back it up One life to live for now. We read this that it says I beseech you. Therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, we'll stop with verse one and we'll look at this and, by the way, mark it down. We're looking at it this way One life to live for now. So give God your attention. Can you write that down? Please? Do I have your attention? Can you write down this? So give God your attention. 03:12 We have a hard time with the word attention, apparently. I know I do. I was constantly in trouble at school for looking out the window. It wasn't my fault. I had the boringest teachers in the world. They're horrible. Whatever was going on outside was way more exciting than what was happening on the inside. I learned more looking out the window. And then look, I grew up in an age which I wish our young people could grow up again. When we went on trips, we looked out the window of the car and we recognized things, we saw things, we learned things and we recognize things, we saw things, we learned things. 03:48 But attention is something that we've lost as a discipline in our world today and we need to regain it. We've got to capture the disciplines of paying attention, and it's something. Listen, in a crowd this large, and it's easy for me to lose your attention. It's easy for you to give up your attention to something, and we need to work on that. But how many of you are married? By the way? You're married. Raise your hands, okay, there's no use talking to you. How many of you are single, which poses the possible opportunity of being married someday. Listen, this is free. 04:24 One of the hardest things in marriage is for men to pay attention. We're just wired different. To pay attention is a sacrifice and to prove it for all of us, our nature as humans. When it comes to anything else, we can pay attention to it, but when it comes to God's stuff, we wander and we need to discipline ourselves. Number one in this life that you and I are living for now. We're going to have to fight the battle to pay attention. We have got to pay attention and we've got to ask God, lord, help me to pay attention to your word, to what you're saying to me. Look, I'm going to upset people. It's just too bad. Watch this. Let's be honest Right now. 05:08 There are tens of thousands of people that are streaming this message right now all around the world. We know this because we have stuff that monitors all that stuff. But if you're on any one of those social sites I'm here right now how are you doing? Wherever you're at, and there's a bunch of people making comments over here and they're saying things like Omaha's in the house and it's cold in Iowa is in the house and it's cold in Iowa, and what color is your car? And they're all talking to each other. You're not paying attention. They're not even listening to me. Now, look, if I had it my way, I'd remove that feature from YouTube or Facebook. Because, listen, how can you listen to a sermon and you're typing all this stuff and you're looking up the temperature and the weather and looking up the cake and all this kind of stuff. We don't pay attention. And if we paid attention, a lot of great things would happen like this we learn from verse one, we would remember and we would revel in the fact of what we've been taught In Romans 12, one. 06:12 It says I beseech you, therefore, brethren and this is a tremendous truth, and watch, I'm going to change it up on you intentionally. I'm not going to give you the definition yet to the word beseech. I'm going to give you the definition first to the word therefore, and I'll tell you why in a moment. Therefore, the word therefore is actually referring to the 11 previous chapters of this entire book. Paul is basically saying okay, now that we got to chapter 11, and that's behind us, in light of everything I just told you, guys from chapter 1, here's the punchline and it's chapter 12. That's how important this is. The word therefore means this, and you might want to either write this down or take a shot of this, but the therefore here means that what has been said and what is being said is intentional, the requirement needed for moving forward. The therefore means before we can, so to speak, lift this 747 up off the ground. This is what you must remember. Everything about those 11 chapters are needed for this very purpose and Paul now gets right back into, after those three chapters of Israel 9, 10, and 11, he gets back to the discipleship of the believer. 07:40 And I don't know if you know it or not. Some of you might be visiting here for the first time. You don't know, or you stumbled in here. This is a discipling church. This is a church different than many other kinds of churches. Why, if you've noticed of churches, why, if you've noticed or you will notice, it's more, it resembles more of a worshipful college course than anything else? Because this is our time as a church, that we study to know how we ought to live. It's for us to become or to stay relevant in this world concerning the things of God. Are you paying attention? Do you have that? We have come here today to refuel, to go back out, to do the work of God. This is not an entertainment service, this is not a play service, this is not theater. This is boot camp before we go and we're deployed into the world. Okay, that's very important. 08:30 Now, this word, therefore, the Greek, is a very interesting word, very short word, very big meaning. It actually means the then, the then or the wherefore. It means here is the reason or the point. All of this is speaking of a practical faith in action. That's why, true, listen, true Christianity is very active and very lived out. Why? Because we have to do that? No, because the Spirit of God takes control of this. Listen, by virtue of how much the Word of God is in us. If you have a lot of Bible in you, you're going to be controlled by God, so to speak. The Holy Spirit's got a lot more to work with as you ingest the Bible. Does that make sense? 09:15 Very, very necessary to know that Paul is basically saying, in the word beseech, which is that word that precedes, but he says this way he says I beseech you, therefore, brethren. So he's speaking to the believers. And that word beseech is this, and you might recognize it, it's a very, very common and popular word in biblical studies. It is the Greek word parakletos or parakleto and para. We know what para means Parachute, paraglider. Para means alongside. In Greek, the word kaleo means comforter, one who comes alongside you, para to comfort you. This is beautiful. Paul says I beseech you, therefore, brethren, I, paul, am coming alongside you, I'm putting my arm around you and I'm whispering in your ear. I'm telling you things, I'm speaking to you. I am tutoring you. I am what would we say today? 10:20 You know, you see people walking around with their Bose headphones or Beats or the ear pod things. You know all these things that give us brain cancer, those things. And sometimes you see people walking around Lisa just made this comment the other day she goes, look at that guy. She goes, that guy looks like he's nuts until you see that he's got some wire coming out of his ear. Because he's like what? And there's nobody near him. He's like oh, my goodness, I thought the guy was like freaking out on something. No, he's having a conversation with somebody. 10:51 Imagine God putting his earpiece excuse me, his earpiece in your ear and he's speaking to you every day along the way. This is how you live your life Turn left, turn right, do this, say this. That's what he wants to do, and Paul is living it out this way. He's saying I'm gonna come alongside you and he uses the exact same word that defines the Holy Spirit, the parakaleo, the one who's going to come alongside you and come for you. That's one of the jobs of the Holy Spirit. I love that he's announcing to us. Basically, paul is saying attention, please. I have a very important announcement to make, and he gives us the word. So mark this down, if you would, everybody. What kind of things do we need to remember? What kind of things was he announcing to us? 11:41 Well, there's the issue of condemnation. I'll give you four of them that we've come to thus far. The issue of condemnation the Bible tells us in Romans 3.20, listen, therefore, by the deeds of the law that is your morality, you trying to be good enough to please God no flesh will be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. Condemnation resides upon all those who do not know Jesus. It is vitally important you hear and give attention to what I'm about to say. It's not this is not me. I'm just repeating what is biblical truth. 12:20 A believer who knows the Lord, jesus Christ, may not feel forgiven. In fact, I'm going to put it to you this way what does feeling forgiven feel like? It's not a feeling. Some of you love the Lord and you're right with God, but you don't feel like it, and one of those reasons might be because you're listening to voices inside your head, and most of those voices are your own and you are quite the judge of you. You beat yourself up and then the pendulum swings to the other side, where that's not the case, and we can always justify ourselves in whatever we do. That's not of God, but for him to be announcing to us that the work of the Spirit comes alongside you and comforts you. The important thing is to understand this that, as believers, it's not based upon your feeling or your assessment of how your day is going. 13:22 What does the Bible say? If you answer what the Bible says regardless of your feelings, that's called faith. What does the Bible say when you say to the lord god, I sinned against you. I shouldn't have had that thought. Please forgive me, watch this, I'm going to exaggerate something here. Please forgive me. I ask you to forgive me in jesus name, amen. And then you walk away and all day long you're depressed why you keep? Oh, it was nine o'clock. I had a horrible 9 am this morning. I had a horrible thought. Well, did you confess it to God and tell him to forgive you, and did you move on? Oh, yeah, yeah, I did. Well, what are you moping for? Oh, I had a horrible thought at 9 o'clock. Yeah, you just told me you took care of that. He says he says if you ask him for forgiveness, he's going to forgive you. What are you doing? No, no, he's forgiving me, but it was horrible Nine o'clock thoughts. 14:30 You know what we would make better Muslims. You know what Muslims do they sin and then they take out. I forget what they call it, but they flog themselves, some of them to the point of blood on the back. I have one of those things in my office, by the way. It's from the Middle East. It's a handle with about 27 razor blades on it, and you go like this and you bleed for forgiveness. Excuse me, there's one who bled for our forgiveness and his name is Jesus Christ, and your blood couldn't forgive anybody anyway. His blood saves. My blood stinks. Think about that for a moment. And, by the way, how insulting is that to God that we could come in and help God out? No, you can't. No, the issue of condemnation is gone in Jesus. 15:27 And then the second thing is justification, the issue of justification. What is this justification To the Christian, the real born again Christian, not the Sunday Christian, the real born-again Christian, not the Sunday Christian, the everyday Christian? They revel in the doctrine of justification. What does that mean? That Christ, that God, the Father, put on Christ Jesus the sins of mankind. Did you know that that's what he was doing at the cross? And when Jesus died for our sins, he paid the debt that you owe to God. But when he rose again from the dead, he rose again from the dead for our justification, meaning. He worked the work on the cross and then he got up out of the grave and applies the work that he did. He is now the one who implements the working actions of his labors. It's called justification, meaning. What Meaning? 16:16 I, you who trust him, we're forgiven of all sins, and not only forgiven of all sins, that's sins past, present and future. That'll keep you up tonight. How does God do that? How could Christ pay for such a great price? Only God could. But justification is this which he not just expunges the record or he somehow says well, you know, we erased it. Oh, no, no, no, listen. 16:40 God's word for justification for every believer is that he removes not only sin, he removes the remembrance of sin. When God looks at his kids, he sees nothing but the blood of Jesus covering you, in other words, the righteousness of Christ. Shed for you, shed for me. What's wrong with you, guys? You should all clap. You should all be clapping Really. Oh, my goodness See, it's crazy for us to look back at 9 o'clock. Oh, I remember 39 years ago. Are you a believer? Do you trust Christ? Yes, I do. Well then, knock it off. Seriously, it's ridiculous. What are you doing? You're just keeping yourself back and Satan's loving it because he can't take your soul, but he'll sterilize you. So you don't tell anybody else, no, you move on with him all the way, justified. 17:34 And then, thirdly, there's the issue of assurance. I didn't read the verse Romans 5.1 for justification. Look at this Romans 5.1. Sorry, let me back up. Look at this verse. Therefore, having been justified, notice best tense by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Kaboom, right, right there, assurance, kaboom, right, right there, assurance. Romans, chapter eight, verse one Assurance. 18:02 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit. Let me make something clear who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit? That's not a qualifier, it is a reality. Let me explain. Don't think for a moment that if you walk according that, you do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit. That qualifies you now to have no condemnation. Did you guys all hear that? Don't mess it up. That would be damaging the scripture, because there's no condemnation upon your life anymore. 18:35 You now walk in the spirit, by the power of God. You don't earn it, you don't achieve it. Because God's done this, you live it right. So watch this. As far as the east is from the west, so far have I removed from you your sins, god says. I have taken your sins and I've cast them into the depths of the sea, and I like what J Vernon McGee says once God puts them in the depths of the sea, he puts up a little buoy and it says no fishing here. So stop going back to 9 am. So stop going back to 37 years ago. Will you? So stop going back to 37 years ago, will you? As a believer, your greatest passion is to live for Christ today. God has given you and I, as far as we know today, right. We can't assume anything. Will we see the sunset? We don't know, but we've got right now and if we're living for the right now, for him, for his glory, oh wow. 19:50 - Speaker 1 It's a great way to live.