When Eyes Can Hear Us

Real life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. This is kind of romantic, so hang on. I think when you and I are alone with God, and then we go out into the world and live our day, I think our face blows, see what do you mean? There's something happening, there's just something, I don't see it, I don't feel it. But God, the Holy Spirit, is still excited about our moment together this morning. And it shows, it spiritually shows. 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. As I get into this today, I want to say this that, and I'm just calling this a disclaimer, I wrote this note to myself, disclaimer, and I said this basically to make sure I tell all of you, with all due respect, for those of you who are here today and you've never experienced salvation, listen, that you've never experienced salvation, the reality of it. Maybe you've ignored him, maybe you've not allowed him to work in your life, I don't know, maybe you're religious, but you have no relationship, you need to know something. You need to know that we know what you know, we know where you're at. We've been where you are now regarding experiencing salvation. You can talk about it until you're almost a Christian. You can go to church all your life. But if you have not encountered the God that Abraham encountered or the God that David encountered, the God that those who follow Jesus have encountered, this is a very, very serious thing. We who have, we know where you're at, but you do not know where we're at. We can both criticize where we're at and where you're at, because we've lived on both sides of the fence. You've only lived on one side of the fence, so you go, I don't know to believe that, what about this and what about the other, listen, we tolerate you. We lovingly tolerate you because we look at you with some sympathy, because we remember what it's like to be where you're at. You talk about the things of God, but there's been no explosion in your life. Nothing's changed. You go in and out of church and nothing's ever happened. There's no event where you can say God moved in my life. Listen, what if I were to say today, and by the way, this is why fellowship is so important and more now than ever before, that somebody in your group of friends should be able to say to you, what's God doing in your life? You need these kinds of experiences you pass, that freaks me out. All the more, you need these kinds of friends. Come on, listen, listen, listen, let's not go to the doctor and get a band-aid put on cancer. Time is running out. You sense it in the world around us. Things are going goofy crazy. According to the Bible, everything's falling right into place. Christ is coming back. This world, this world is unlike any other time in human history, and all these things are in alignment. I would just say to you right now, make sure that you have encountered the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I know some of you are going to write me and you say, Pastor, I'll have you know that I have a PhD from Fuller, a PhD from Westmont, or I've got a doctorate from Biola. You shouldn't mention the word experience because it causes people to lean upon experiential Christianity. Listen, you can pontificate that all you want. The truth of the matter is, when Abraham met God, it freaked him out and transformed his life. When Saul of Tarsus encountered God on the road to Damascus, it freaked him out. He met God. Today, we have settled for something that the first century church and the Old Testament prophets wouldn't even recognize. They would expect to see lives on fire for God, burning for God. I don't know what would happen if David or if Paul showed up today and say, and we'd say, but you want to come to our church and say, and Paul showed up and he's, what is, this is not church, you would say, what is going on here? It's like, this kind of reminds me of the Roman morgue. We sing, we sing with half a voice, we clap with a half a hand, and we sometimes read our Pibles. Paul would say, it's our life. I was blind, I was, his presence blew me away. Listen, you see, Jack, you're getting out of hand. Tell that to Martin Luther, the great Catholic reformer. His life was radically changed. Man, if you ever get a chance, I forget the name of the city. It's in Germany, the town, but it's there. It's a museum piece. You go into the room. You talk about not only him encountering God, but Luther is translating the scriptures for the people to read because the Catholic church didn't want the people to read the Bible. Luther said, nope, they got to read it. They got to read it. Luther says Satan appears to him in his room and there's the wall that's still there. He picked up his ink well full of ink and he threw it at the devil and that ink is still on the wall to this day. You say, man, that's wild, that's crazy. Listen, our experience as Christians should be absolutely radical. In fact, I got to tell you right now. I got to tell you right now. If us in this church, in my life, if we are not hovering near and around radical based on experience, I feel like something's wrong. I mean, I'm dead serious. If we're not advancing forward, something's wrong. If we're not getting attacked and threatened by people who hate God, something's wrong. Right now. Did I have too much coffee this morning? Am I telling you something? We need to experience God. We don't trust our experience. We trust Him who gives us the experience. You get alone with Him. He actually, it's hard to do, but you get alone with Him and you actually say, Lord, speak to me. Just speak to me, God. That doesn't work. Go climb a tree. That doesn't work. Take a walk. If that doesn't work, I don't know what you're thinking, go ride your bike, take a hike. What is it for you that clears the webs? He'll speak. I am not going to worship a God who doesn't speak. What is that? That's crazy. He's speaking. He speaks. And we know this, verse six, knowing that it's like what it's like to be with Him. Look at verse six, just as David, can you mark that? Your life is to be able, my life is to be able to be described just as David. You know it's available to us. Right now we choose that. What did David do? He prayed. He talked with God. He walked with God. He's saying songs. Come on, read the book of Psalms. Most of those are his, Psalms are like songs or poems. Read those things. Women love David. They read the Psalms and they go, oh, be still in my heart. But all the guys like David, because David said, I got to come on, come on, guys, we're going to find some giants. I mean, I'm in the mood to take out a giant. Let's go, guys, you know, he was just the best guy all around, you know, representing us in life, worship God, sing God a praise, go out, slay, listen, slay, as it were, the demonic evil forces of this world by our obedience to Christ, we punish disobedience. The scripture says, did you know that? The scripture says, by our obedience, we punish disobedience. Wow. It's incredible. Letting the light shine, knowing what it's like to be with him, capital H, Jesus, just as David also described the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works. That verse, I'm asking everyone who's listening, everyone who's viewing this right now to stop and open up your Bible, especially if you are an Old Testament student, because what Paul is quoting verbatim is an Old Testament doctrine. What faith do you claim today? If you are apart from Christ, you probably claim some form of a works-based relationship to cause you to stand before the Almighty God. A moral code, ethics, these things are not wrong, but when you make them the mode by which you are saved, now they're wrong. Because you're involved in it, ethics is good when the ethics are good because when there's a moral ethic that honors God, that's good. When we do marriage counseling with people, I've mentioned this to you guys before, what's going on? Well, our marriage is folding apart. Why? She's always nagging on me. I don't know what the big deal is. I go to work, I come home, I pay the bills, watch. Next line. I've never cheated on her. Oh, I see. Hang on. Let's give you 100 points for that one. Excuse me. You don't get points for not cheating on her. You're not supposed to cheat on her. Does it make sense? But see, we twist things around in a work related relationship to where we're stacking up things based upon our measurements, God says, no, no, you walk with me and things happen. God said, Moses was talking with God, Moses's faith started glowing. I think that's awesome. In a way, I think spiritually speaking. This is kind of romantic, so hang on. I think when you and I are alone with God and then we go out into the world and live our day, I think our face glows. Amen. See what do you mean? There's something happening. There's just something. I don't see it. I don't feel it. But God, the Holy Spirit, is still excited about our moment together this morning. But it shows. It spiritually shows. And David says the most radical thing, how happy is the man to whom God no longer imputes? No, it's not what he said. How happy is the man who God imputes righteousness? Listen. According to salvation, God no longer imputes judgment or the law. Regarding sanctification and living from the moment on we accept Christ, God takes the positive route. Now he imputes righteousness. You see, what does this impute? Some of your Bibles have different words. It's an old English word, but it's simply, I like the word infusion. It may not be all adequate, but it would be like this. God, when God imputes righteousness, I'm standing near you, I'm representing you. When you come to faith, okay, number one, God stops counting my unrighteousness in that moment. All of my previous unrighteousness is washed away at the cross in a second. Now from this moment forward, church, do I have your attention? From your life now, since salvation, God is imputing or has imputed, given, infused, deposited His righteousness. It's amazing. You not just go from rags to wearing something. You go from rags to riches in the spiritual sense. It's amazing. It's really incredible. Colossians 1 verse 21 says, and you, who were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works? Anybody remember that? I'm going to ask you again. Let's pretend you are honest. Does anyone in the room remember that you once were alienated and enemies in your mind because of wicked works? Every single one of you, all of us were alienated from God because of wicked works. Maybe some of you don't know that. But Colossian says that we were alienated, but he goes on in that verse 21, yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and blameless and above reproach in his sight. Here's the amazing thing. The awesome truth about God's word is this that he takes that which is condemned and he pulls out of the ash heap. For me to experience salvation, I've got to come to the realization of that. I'm fully convinced that the reason why Christianity is so dull in America is because most quote Christians do not appreciate or do not care or think about what they were delivered from. If you have a low view of sin, somebody will say it this way, I can't believe you worship a God that would send people to hell forever. Well number one, he doesn't do that. You do that. We've talked about that. You do that. He doesn't do that. The main thing is this, that this God that we worship, his commitment to us, to impart to us his righteousness is something that is done out of sheer love, infused upon us, and what happens is he delivers us as a people, as a person who's condemned. See, the Bible says we are already condemned. We don't think like that in our Western world. He pulls us from the plane that's going down. He pulls us right out of the plane. See, the world that you and I live in, and so much in Christianity today, or so-called Christianity, it's viewed, or people view, I'm okay, I'm alright, I'm okay. And I'd love and we submit to you that you've probably have not encountered or experienced the living God. Because when you collide with his holiness and his righteousness, there's body parts in metal everywhere, and it's like, oh my gosh, what happened? I collided with the living God, I'm nothing. Well, what's happening? He's reassembling me, he's putting in me a new heart, hip-bone connected to the, you know, he begins to put you back together, and you're different, and I'm pleading with you today. I understand this message may cause you to never want to come back here again, but I have you for right now, for right now, listen, you must be able to take out a pen and write down on a piece of paper, I had some form of dramatic faith crisis with God on such and such, or something year, or whenever I was less and so. If you can't do that, something's wrong, something's wrong, even if you were brought up in the faith, there's a moment where you realize, okay, now I got it, I am now making a decision to follow Christ. He's always been around me, and I've been a Christian, and I love him, but now I'm at this teenage stage, or I'm 19, or I'm 18, whatever that zone is, 13, and I'm now going to choose, it's not my parents' faith anymore, it's going to be my faith now. That's that crisis of faith, every believer in the Bible that we read about had a crisis of faith. And I lovingly challenge you today as your pastor, have you had a crisis of faith? Can you say this is when God got a hold of my heart, He took away the transgressions, He forgave me, He covered my sins and my iniquity is gone. Tonight witness account to yourself, we ought to be able to say, I was there the day I died, and the day I rose again. 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