The End Of Us

Real life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints, and impact our culture. Are you a Christ follower? Before you say yes, Jesus says you've got to deny yourself. You cannot deny yourself unless you understand yourself and I'm not talking about psychology. All you need to know is this, I'm not good for me and you're not good for you. We in and of ourselves, without Jesus, we're not good for one another. But with Christ, everything changes. Can you say amen to that? He changes everything. 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. I'm reminded by the way the 18th century evangelist, the great George Whitfield, who preached the gospel here in the colonies, was probably outside of the Bible. George Whitfield was reaching people in the 1760s, 1765, 1775. Whitfield was preaching in the U.S. colonies having come from England and no microphone, no speakers, no platforms. He did carry with him, by the way, an actual portable pulpit made out of wood. And he did that, by the way, because the churches in England would not let him preach. They forbade him to preach because he preached a simple gospel, very simple. And if you read his writings, it's a simple gospel. And if you've ever attended in his day the Billy Graham Crusades, you're wondering, how can anybody get saved with that message? It's so simple. But there's power in the simplicity of the gospel. When Whitfield would preach, tens of thousands would gather together. In fact, when he was preaching at the Boston Commons, it's a grassy area that's still there today. A guy that was in the crowd was so blown away by what was going on that he could hear the gospel so clearly that he went way to the back and he could hear Whitfield preaching. And looked around and he saw tens of thousands of people. And so what that man did was right in the middle of the sermon, I don't know if he was paying attention to or not, but he walked right through the crowd, went to the front of the podium, turned around and paced it back off and then did the math and figured out that there were 30,000 people listening to George Whitfield preach the gospel. And that man that did that concluded it had to be done by supernatural means. And that man was a guy by the name of Ben Franklin, who from that time forward under the missionary works of George Whitfield. He preached Christ and people were transformed and churches that were dying were renewed and people who were wayward came back home and people who heard the gospel for the first time were converted. And it's simply this that Jesus Christ died on the cross for all of mankind, Jesus died on the cross for all. But to those who believe in him, qualified, but to those who believe in him, trusting him, he would grant the eternal life, resurrected life, the power of God's spirit upon your life. And there's listen, there's a there's a relationship in all of this. There's God the father, God the son, God the Holy Spirit. And the Bible teaches us clearly, Jesus said it, that when he goes away, the spirit of God will come and he will instruct you and he will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. But Jesus says the Holy Spirit will become your teacher. Listen, and he said that he would use the word of God. The Holy Spirit uses the word of God in your life. People will often say, I don't think God speaking to me or I don't understand the Bible. Are you reading the Bible? Are you reading it because the Holy Spirit has been commissioned by Jesus Christ himself to use the word of God into people's lives. So there are those, you and I know, then they criticize the Bible all the time, but they have never stopped to read it because if they read it, the spirit of God's going to speak to them. And they're going to be brought to the place of decision. Yes, for Jesus or no for Jesus. And of course the book of Romans is all about those who said yes to Jesus. Paul is writing to the believers in the epicenter of Rome and those that emanated out from that location. But it's that gathering together. It's important. I'll give you an illustration as to how important you understand this about the Bible, about the Holy Spirit and about who Jesus Christ is. So at least and I do not do much fast food dining. At our age we're trying to protect ourselves, but push comes to shove. We had to do that this week and I we walked into a particular place and I said, well I want this and she said, well excuse me, do you want a combo? And I said, no, I don't, I don't want a combo. I want this and I want that. And she said, are you sure you don't want a combo? I said, I know what I'm doing here. I don't, I don't want a combo. And I'll tell you what, I'll take I'll take that. And she goes, that's a combo. And I had no idea that was a combo. There are Christians today that have no idea that there has to be a combo for you to grow in life. And that combo is a constant feeding upon the Bible. Now the Holy Spirit's got something to use in your life to do what, to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ and how you live. And that's what this closing argument is all about. As we've been looking at this study, busted or broken, that's for you to decide how you're going to go on that. But we've learned these two things previous to what we're going to learn today. We started in verse 14 and we learned that we need to come to the end of ourselves. We need to come to the end of ourselves. It's not about us. It's about him. And listen, and when it's about him, it's about others around us. It's called church. Secondly, in verses 17 to 18, we saw that we need to come to the end of me or the end of you, of course, the end of me, where it's not about us. It's about him and it is about others. And now we come to the closing argument and it's coming to the end of us collectively as a people. And that emanates out like the believers in Rome throughout the entire empire. So it begins in my life. It affects my home, my neighborhood, the church, and beyond. And that is us in all of this today. By wave introduction, Matthew chapter 16, the Bible says in verse 24, then Jesus said to his disciples, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. And you got to stop and ask yourself, are you a Christ follower? Before you say yes, Jesus says you've got to deny yourself. You cannot deny yourself unless you understand yourself. And I'm not talking about psychology. All you need to know is this, I'm not good for me. And you're not good for you. We in and of ourselves, without Jesus, we're not good for one another. But with Christ, everything changes. Can you say amen to that? He changes everything. And so as we continue on with this, when he says that if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, secondly, take up his cross and thirdly follow me. This is the path. This is the course of a disciple. For whoever desires to save his life, in other words, live for you. Live for yourself. We all live for us. What we're going to lose it. But whoever loses his life, that means willingly, give it up. Give it into his care. Give it into his control. Give it into his power. Coming to him and saying, Jesus, you've given me life and I'm given my life back to you. My goodness, listen, you may be a believer in here today and saying to yourself, I'm going to do that again today. I'm just, in fact, right now, I'm just dedicated myself to God. That's a good thing. You should do that every day. But maybe you're not a Christ follower and you're saying, wow, that's serious. Yes, it is serious. But you also know it's true. These are the words in the instructions of Jesus himself. And so he says, for whoever desires to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life from my sake will find it. Jesus, the epicenter, give up your life, watch, give up your life and let him live his life through you. That is called Christianity. We don't see much of an example of Christianity in the world that we live in today. I don't care if you see it in print. I don't care if you see it plastered on the building. It means nothing. It is an observable fact that you can watch and see to determine that is the nature of Christ, okay? It's very important. Now look at this verse 26. By the way, when I read verse 26, we don't have to think about ourselves, although we should, you might be thinking, oh, if I was, if I just had Bill Gates' money or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, if I just had their money, really? Listen to what Jesus said. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? He can't. I love this. You've heard me say this before, the currency of this world, no matter what currency you hold in your wallet or in your bank, does not exchange over into the currency of heaven. Your money, my money, whatever you have, if it's a nickel, does not transfer into the kingdom of heaven. It doesn't work that way. God operates off an incredible and different economy and that economy is based on blood. His blood, not yours. Oh, just tell me what to do, Pastor. Just give me marching orders and I'll better myself. Give me 10 steps to improve myself. Not going to get it. Can't give it because you cannot improve upon the blood of Jesus. And that's what he has done for you and has done for me. And so we look at the first thing here. It's in verse 19. Coming to the end of us means this. We need to face up with anger. We who are angry. You may say, I'm not angry. I'm talking about an anger that you and I have living within us native to the human. You say, well, I'm a Christian. You still deal with anger. Let me explain how this works. It says in verse 19, beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath. For it is written vengeance is mine. I will repay says the Lord. So the first thing that we need to write down, and I know you're not going to want to do this because you don't want to admit that there's anger. Well, I'm going to say it for all of us. There's anger with us. Well, there's something that happens and it will make us angry. We may not even show it. But there'll be anger on the inside. Now watch this. The Bible here is telling us Paul is speaking to the believers and he's being tender because he's saying, first of all, beloved brothers and sisters, he is saying, do not avenge yourselves. Do not go on a campaign to write what is being done against you. Do not pick up arms as it were and go to war because of what people are saying. We're tempted. I was tempted this week. What is today? Sunday, so Friday. So Friday, the cybersecurity group said, hey, we're working on this. And what is this? I have this link. I look at this link and it's my Facebook page and I thought it was me. You couldn't tell the difference. And then you start looking at it and there's 60, 60,000 followers who I have been asking money from you and you've been mailing the other me money. This guy's a scammer. He's an imposter. Are you hearing me? Listen, those kinds of antics, though as horrible as they are, actually speak to the fact that there's an original. If you have a hundred dollar bill in your wallet, a Benjamin Franklin, that is the most most. What's the word? Counterfeited currency, I'm told, in the world, why do they make knock off hundred dollar bills because there's a real hundred dollar bill? Why does somebody attack you or attack me or whatever it might be or Jesus and make up cults and try to redefine who he is? Why? Because there is an actual original. That's why there's all the other falsehoods. They're trying to cheat and they're trying to get something out of you. And I've told you guys for years, I will never ask you for money. Ever. I will never ask you to meet me somewhere. Never. But there are those who are doing this. And the fact of the matter is that when I saw that, I got angry. Nobody could tell, but I got angry on the inside. And I wanted to ask the cyber guy, can you drop a cyber bomb on that guy? Can you blow up his computer from here? That's how I felt like. Are you hearing me right now? When somebody wronged you and you get angry, notice it's explosive. It may not even be explosive. I'm not talking about you going, hey, no, you can look completely normal. And on the inside, you're screaming. You're angry. And you want to do something about it because you've been wronged. And God says, I'll take care of it. I want to encourage you let God take care of your problems. He knows how to do it. But he's telling us, listen, don't avenge yourselves. And that word avenge, let's take a look at that. Don't do this to yourself. Do not take the matters into your own hands. Don't seek to vindicate, to make a plan, to punish or to take revenge upon someone, an act of premeditation by organizing ill or to manipulate vengeance against another individual. This is where, hey, you hurt me. I'm going to hurt you back. And you do that in anger. Now, I want to be clearer. Church, you do know that there's an anger that God sanctions. Did you know that, right? There's an anger that God even encourages you to operate under. The anger of holiness, the anger of righteousness, when you see something wrong, and you say this is unjust, this is unfair, these people are being hurt or whatever it might be, and you stand up, and you can stand up because you're standing on the truth. It's not emotion. In fact, are you listening? You may not even want to get involved, but you have to get involved because the Spirit of God is leading you to stand for righteousness and you're compelled, but you're confident because you're standing upon his truth. And it's a fight, if I can put it this way, it's a fight that you didn't pick. God says to you, though, I want you to stand up for this issue or stand up for that person or stand up against this other thing. Are you hurting me? It's very important, and we must know the difference, but we can be angry if we are seeking to extract our own wrath or judgment out of it. The Bible says in Hebrews chapter 10, now you'll find this in various places of Scripture. Obviously, it's right here in Romans 1219, but in Hebrews chapter 10 verse 30, it says, for we know him who said, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord, and again, the Lord will judge his people. Now, all of this comes from the foundation verse, and that is Deuteronomy 32 verse 35. The Bible says, I will take revenge. This is God speaking. I will pay them back. In due time, their feet will slip. Their day of disaster will arrive, and their destiny will overtake them. That is a strong verse. People listen up. God is saying, and in this case, he's saying to the nation of Israel and to the wicked, he's saying, I'll take care of it. In due time, their feet will slip. That's a tremendous statement, because you know what it implies. It implies that people that are doing evil and doing wrong think it's never going to catch up to them. And God is waiting. He's patient, and he says to us, in due time, their feet will slip. And what comes to your mind when you slip, they're going to fall, what comes to my mind? Have you ever seen the Grand Canyon? I mean, I've never done this because I'm just, the Bible says, do not tempt the Lord thy God, but there's people who get on those little donkeys, those little burrows, and they go down the wall of the Grand Canyon, nearly 5,000 feet down to the Colorado River. And that donkey, if that donkey had a heart attack, dropped dead, or saw rattlesnake, you're going to go flying without wings or a pair of shoots. And all you're going to have a, hey, no, no, it's a donkey. That's terrifying. This is thinking about that picture. The wicked, their feet are going to slip in due time. So you got, I hope this is not you, but you might be here today saying, I've never gotten caught. I've never gotten busted. I highly recommend today, you look down deep inside and listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying to you today. And God might be saying, I want you to take the fact that I know nobody in this room knows, but I know and I want you to come to the place of brokenness. And to be broken is to say, God, you caught me. And I'm busted. But instead of doubling down on it, God, I'm forsaking it. I want to be saved. I want to live. I want to have forgiveness. I want to live life. I want to go to heaven. God, that's what I want to do. And that would be broken. That would be brokenness. And that's what you want to experience. 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