ANNOUNCER: The following program is sponsored
by generous friends and partners of Real Life.
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Real Life with Jack Hibbs.
JACK: What the world offers is all
glitter. And when you bite into it, there's
nothing substantial there. You might wake up quickly
to that or you might take an entire lifetime to wake up to
that. It doesn't matter when you wake up
to it as long as you wake up to it.
ANNOUNCER: As Christians, each of
us should continually draw closer to the Lord.
In order to do this, we need to live a lifestyle of
holiness for Christ. This is not an act of religion but of
a life surrendered. Stay tuned for Jack
Hibbs message, We Are On Our Way.
ANNOUNCER: One of the greatest gifts
God has given us is a gift that we can give
to others. But giving this gift is harder than it
sounds. It's the gift of forgiveness. In a world filled
with hurt and resentment, choosing forgiveness isn't easy.
The weight of past grievances and the lure of bitterness weigh
us down and keep us from moving toward reconciliation. In "The
Gift of Forgiveness," Dr. Charles Stanley shows us how to
extend forgiveness when grudges run deep and restoration seems
out of reach. Life is filled with personal conflicts and
confrontations. Will you choose to forgive? "The Gift of
Forgiveness" will equip you to break free from the chains of
bitterness. Don't miss your chance to experience the
liberating power of forgiveness with this life transforming
book. Receive a copy when you make a gift of any size to the
ministry of real life at JackHibbs.com
or by calling 877-777-2346. Order now.
(Music)
JACK: Well friends, listen, according to
the Bible, we are on our way. And that's
the title of our message today, We Are On Our
Way. You know, no matter who I'm speaking to right now, the fact
is that you are on your way somewhere, aren't you? You might
say, well, I don't believe in God. Well, you're still on your
way somewhere, friend. For those of you who do trust God... And
there's a big difference, to believe in God and to trust God,
is the fact that when we trust Him, we're not leaving our
brains, so to speak, out at the door and coming into a church
service because we're Christians and we can't think. I would
argue with you the exact opposites true. In fact, I love
this quote by Os Guinness, the deep logic of God's truth can be
expressed both in stories and in arguments by questions as well
as statements through reason and the imagination, through the
four gospels as well as the book of Romans. And that's well said.
Here's the reason why. No other book of the Bible, 66 books of
the Bible, there's no other book of the Bible like the book of
Romans for this reason. The book of Romans encapsulates the
entire doctrine of God regarding salvation, redemption, and
eternal life. There are two testaments, the Old Testament
and the New Testament. We all know that. But listen, the
summation of the Old Testament is all wrapped up in the
promises and then the answer from old to new. What the old
records, the new reports on being fulfilled. Listen, grab
your Bibles and let's get into this study titled We Are On Our
Way, because the truth of the matter is, my friend, you and I
literally are on our way, every single one of us. And here's the
tough part. Here's the truth. Your atheism, if you don't
believe in God, doesn't keep you away from the truth of God. You
are on your way somewhere. I just hope you're on your way
with us to God's eternal home called heaven.
JACK: It's remarkable to realize that Paul,
the Apostle is speaking. I love this. Listen,
Paul, one of the most zealous and powerful
witnesses of the Jewish religion, Judaism, in the first
century who was a combatant to Christianity, it's
well-documented both in the Bible and in extra biblical
writings, is that he was very zealous for his nation and for
his brethren and for the law and for the regulations. And Paul,
or Saul of Tarsus was this very zealous man who was out, with
letters of authority from Jerusalem and the council, to
hunt down Christians and destroy them. Some of them were held
captive, some of them were arrested, some of them were
tried in courts, some of them were killed on the spot. It's
legendary. It's historic. And Saul of Tarsus was the chief,
and yet God had a plan and interrupted his antics and his
persecution, as he was heading up north to the Damascus region
on the King's highway. That is right between Jordan and Syria
today, and Israel today, the king's highway. It's in a
valley, it's there, it's still there today. And he was on his
way to Damascus to hunt down Christians there. And the Bible
tells us in the book of Acts that Jesus Christ interrupted
his plans and visited his life. And you can read about his life
in the Book of Acts, but he was absolutely transformed. And when
he understood, listen, when he understood the Old Testament
scriptures to say that they were teaching about the Messiah, well
that's obvious, but that the Messiah had come. That's not so
obvious. So when he studied the Old Testament scriptures, he
came to the conclusion that Jesus, we say Yeshua, Joshua, we
would say that name as well, that the Messiah has come
according to the prophets. And for that, the very team he was
on turned around and tried to kill him and so to speak. Now
Paul, with his change of name, change of life, change of
worldview complete, can I put it this way? Radicalized for God in
the right way, became a lover of men's souls, and he's been the
greatest convert to Christianity. Historians say
this, he's the greatest convert to Christianity of the world has
ever seen. I want to believe that I've been the greatest
convert to Christianity the worlds ever seen, because I'm
the one that I'm concerned about regarding going to heaven. Does
that make sense? I know what they mean. They mean his
conversion has literally affected millions and millions,
if not billions of people. My life, maybe your life may not
have that effect, but isn't salvation personal anyway? Is it
personal for you? It should be. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes
3:11, he has made everything beautiful in his time also, he
has put eternity in their hearts. He's speaking about our
hearts. Did you know that your heart, your life, your mind,
your thinking will always go back to the fact that there is
an eternal stamp by God in your making. You can go out and do
all the things in this world and all that this world offers and
we've done it. Some of us have, it's been so long since we've
been a non-Christian, we forget what God's delivered us from. We
need to remember, not dwell on it. You know what I mean? Not go
back and think about it, but remember enough about our
pre-Christ life to remember how lost we were. You know how we
talk up the stuff we did? Oh man, it was an awesome party. It
really wasn't. Oh, we had the best time ever, man. We did
this, we did that. Yeah, we really talk it up. What the
world offers is all glitter and when you bite into it, there's
nothing substantial there. You might wake up quickly to that or
you might take an entire lifetime to wake up to that. It
doesn't matter when you wake up to it, as long as you wake up to
it. That what this world offers has no way of sustaining what
your life needs. Why? Because he's put eternity in our hearts,
every single one of us. And so church, we look at this, we're
on our way. Number one is this way in verse 23, the heartbeat
of heaven, the heartbeat of heaven is in our very making,
the heartbeat of heaven. And you might say, today, I don't
believe in heaven. Well, you not believing in heaven doesn't make
heaven not real. That just means at this moment you're going to
miss out on a very real place. We don't want you to do that.
Just because you don't believe in God doesn't mean he doesn't
exist. That's kind of funny. He actually exists and he's written
us his book and he's stamped within our hearts this constant
nagging question about eternity, about heaven, about judgment,
about life, about death. What's beyond the grave? Job asked that
question. Oldest book in the Bible, the book of Job,Job asked
if a man dies, does he live again? Isn't that great? By the
way, if you read the book of Job, he gets the answer. He
says, I know that I will see God in my flesh. What a response by
Job. As Christians, we believe in resurrection. Maybe you're
Jewish today, Muslims believe in resurrection. Much of the world
believes in reincarnation. Listen, the Bible's very, very
clear that resurrection is a biblical doctrine. And when Job
said that, you got to remember there was no Bible in Job's day.
God spoke to him and he said, I'll see God in my flesh. What a
statement. Every one of us who are trusting Christ, we will see
God in our flesh. Now, thank God in heaven our flesh, this flesh
is going to be reconstituted. We believe in resurrection. That
means if listen, if I'm laying here dead and the Lord calls us
home in the rapture, my dead body's going to rise off the
ground. It's going to go invisible. Why? God is going to
change the structure of my atomic existence. He's going to
change the collection or the assemblage of my material being,
it's called resurrection. The Bible says the dead in Christ
will rise first and then we who are alive and remain shall be
caught up to meet the Lord in the air. And that's where these
movies come from, and the books come from of a disappearance.
It's true. There's going to be a disappearance. Some will
disappear at his coming, some will be resurrected from the
dead at his coming, but the believer will be united with
Christ in the atmosphere. What an amazing thing. And our hearts
will rejoice because finally, if you're honest, if you truly know
the Lord Jesus Christ, your heart beats with a hunger for
heaven right now. He says in verse 23, Romans chapter eight.
Not only that building off of the previous verses, but we
listen, we also, who, have the first fruits of the Spirit. Even
we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for
the redemption or the adoption I should say, the redemption of
our body. Very powerful portion of scripture. Number one, church
jot this down. The heartbeat of heaven is this, within us,
heaven's throne within us is God's proof. It's the proof of
God in ownership of who you are, of who I am. According to the
scriptures, God dwells in heaven and we know this. But according
to the scriptures, what is known as the omnipresence of God, the
omnipresence of God is that by His Holy Spirit, God dwells
everywhere. I mean, it gets kind of deep, but think about it. God
is here now, for the believer God resides within us He says,
but he's also seated upon his throne in heaven. That's beyond
my comprehension, but this I know that my heart inside being
a follower of Christ, he touched my life with what is called
salvation, and I didn't feel anything the day I accepted
Christ. Some people feel things. That's great. I didn't, I didn't
get goosebumps. I didn't get emotional. I was actually,
everybody around me was crying and I thought something was
wrong. What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? I remember
saying that, what's wrong with me? And somebody had to tell me,
it's not by feelings, it's by faith. But this I knew, from the
moment I accepted Christ, my mind began to think differently
and my desires began to struggle with my previous desires. I grew
up wanting these things and then Christ invaded my life and
caused me to not have a struggle with those things because now I
wanted the things of God. In fact, over time, and this is
true, many of you can say amen, that the more that the Bible
gets inside of you, the more of your desires become his desires.
The Bible says delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you
the desires of your heart. That's an awesome verse. But
listen, it's not a trick verse, wait, what was that? If I
delight myself in the Lord, you'll give me the desires of my
heart. Man, that's awesome. That's not what it means. Well,
that's what you said. That's what, you just quoted it. I did,
but that's not what it means. It means that if you delight
yourself in the Lord, that means you fall in love with God. You
care about what God thinks, you care about what God wants. That
what you desire now are the things that God has always had
for you to desire. It's just now you're listening. Now he's
active in your life. How is that true? Because he's enthroned in
your heart. He's enthroned in your life. You see this word
first fruits, again in most Bibles, it's one word. It's a
difficult English word or Greek word for us to put into English.
So you see first fruits, some of your Bibles might have first
fruits divided, but the meaning of this first fruits is this
everybody, talk about throne being on your heart. Look at
this, the beginning of a sacrifice, he says this,
regarding our new life in Jesus that we are to be a kind of
first fruits, the beginning of a sacrifice. First fruits out of
the Old Testament, Leviticus chapter 23 means the first of
what has been received, the first of what has been taken in,
or we would say harvested the best, the most precious of that
which you have gotten in value or of worth, meaning God's given
you this in life and God says, give me the best back. I'm your
God. Keep your heart level. Give me the cream of the crop, so to
speak, okay? God says, we're to be giving him the first of our
increase, whatever that might be. But notice what this does.
It shows us that there's the throne room of God in your life,
that God is in control, and the evidence of the Holy Spirit in
possession of your life is that this throne is set up and God
begins to speak to you and you basically come to this
conclusion. Lord, I see that you want the first of all that's
important to me, but now I see you want everything that is me.
So somebody will say, well, God wants 10%. Somebody might say
God wants 13%. Somebody, did you know that, and I forget his
first name, but you've heard of Proctor and Gamble, the man
Proctor. He said, Lord, he had basically nickels, God, I
dedicate my company to you. I'll give you 90% God of everything I
make, 90. So what he did was he started his company and God had
to bless it so the poor guy could eat, and he lived his days
like that and of course became a iconic global corporation, but
he put God first. That's what he chose to do. But what's amazing
about this is that when you think about it, that God
actually owns everything that you and I have, and he even owns
the air in which you and I are breathing right now. The fact
that you and I know that as believers and that we think
about him being in control of our lives is a glorious thing.
We've learned this in scripture, which I think is amazing. The
Feast of first fruits. People write this down in your notes,
when it says first fruits here in verse 23, first fruits that's
an Old Testament thought. In the seven feasts of Moses recorded
in the scripture. By the way, you may or may not know this,
that in the Old Testament, which listen, every Christian, as I
say, you're probably tired of me saying this, every Christian
should be studying the Old Testament like you studied the
New Testament. You don't separate them. You look at the
old and what it says and what it promises, and then you look to
the new to see when those things were fulfilled, given or
implemented, the Old and New Testament, and when you look at
that, you realize that in God speaking to us, there's a
priority that Christ is to be on the throne of our lives. Why is
that the case, though? Maybe you're here today and you're a
skeptic and that's fine. The feast of first fruits, check
this out, given by God to Moses to pass down to the children of
Israel was a springtime feast, and we know this. On the Hebrew
calendar it is to be celebrated on the 16th of Nisan in the
Hebrew calendar. Their calendar has different names than our
pagan calendar, which places it listen, two days after the feast
of unleavened bread. So you have the feast of first fruits, you
take in the harvest, then you've got two days later, the feast of
unleavened bread, and then on the third day you have the Feast
of Passover. You say, who cares? You and I do. Based on Leviticus
chapter 23, 2000 years ago when Jesus died, listen to this,
Jesus Christ died three days after the first fruits of
offering in Jerusalem, two days after the feast of unleavened
bread. What does that mean? That God who promises the first
fruits, meaning the best given to God first, Christ, according
to the Bible is the first one resurrected from the dead, never
to die again. And because Christ has risen from the dead, you can
know that you have eternal life because what he's done for us,
and it's in direct correlation with God's revealed word through
Moses. That's why over and over again in the Bible, the very one
who occupies the throne room of your heart is the one who said,
I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way, the truth
and the life. I am the bread of life. I am the living water. I
am the light of the world, Jesus said. He made that announcement,
and those are huge announcements to make because he's insinuating
that I am the eternal one who gives you life because my
offering is the bread of life. The word that I give you is the
water of life. Think of it, radical statements, right? You
have to admit, don't let anybody in your life tell you well, you
know I believe in Jesus. He was the great prophet. Really? Oh,
he was one of the enlightened ones. People try to, Jesus is
too big to throw out the window, so they try to redefine him, so
they give you some kind of a bogus excuse or definition of
who Jesus is. Listen, I would argue this, and that's what
J.R.R. Tolkien argued with C.S. Lewis. That's not true. The
things that Jesus said, the things that he said to people,
he said things that are crazy unless he performs these things.
He says, if a man dies believing in me, he'll live forever. What
kind of a lunatic says that? Unless you can pull that off.
Are you hearing me? That's what C.S. Lewis, C.S. Lewis responded
to Tolkien, I believe Jesus is a good guy. Tolkien says, well,
that's weird because the things that Jesus said, it demands a
response. Everything that he said is so radical that he's
either what C.S. Lewis said, a liar, a lunatic or the Lord.
Think of that, very powerful statements he made.
JACK: Well, the title of our message
is something that I hope settles in, causes
you to meditate on and think about because you and
I, wherever we might live in the world, we get in our car,
airplane, boat, donkey, camel. Doesn't matter where you live in
the world, I've got to go from here to there to do this
business or that, or maybe you're moving. We're going to
move from this location to the next location. Everything about
what you and I do in life is that we are going from A to B,
and then there's going to be a purpose for that. Maybe we are
seeking some sort of a better life. Maybe we're seeking a
better job. Maybe we're actually leaving something behind to go
to something new and an adventure. It doesn't matter.
Every single one of us are on our way, and at the beginning of
the program, I talked to you about the remarkable convert to
Christianity. Paul, or used to be Saul of Tarsus became Paul
the Apostle. Paul, no doubt still to this hour is the
greatest convert the world has ever seen to Christianity.
Brilliant in so many ways and a man deep, deep and steeped in
the things of God. Jesus interrupted his plans on that
road to Damascus. That road by the way, today is occupied with
people on it at this very hour. It's a highway, but listen, Paul
was going somewhere. He was going from A to B. He's going
from Jerusalem to Damascus, and Jesus interrupted his life.
Listen, is Jesus interrupting your life? Are you starting to
think more Jesus thoughts? God has put eternity in our hearts
the Bible says. That means you think about eternity, don't you?
You think about forever. You might say, I don't believe in
God. Listen, you may say that, but you wonder, don't you, if
there's life after death? You know why you do? Because God put
eternity in your heart. So God has put this eternity thought in
us so that you might recognize God's call when he places it
before you. When God says to you, why are you fighting
against me? Why are you kicking against me? What have I done?
God says in the Bible that you would turn away from me. I love
you. I want to give you eternal life. I think you know what
we're talking about. So friend, listen, if you want to know
more, and I hope you do, you can go to JackHibbs.com and you can
also connect with me on Facebook, Instagram, various
social media sites. We would love to stay connected with you,
but until then my friend, stay close to Jesus. Stay with us as
we take a journey through the word of God together.
ANNOUNCER: You are watching Real Life with Jack Hibbs.
ANNOUNCER: One of the greatest gifts
God has given us is a gift that we can give
to others. But giving this gift is harder than it
sounds, it's the gift of forgiveness. In a world filled
with hurt and resentment, choosing forgiveness isn't easy.
The weight of past grievances and the lure of bitterness weigh
us down and keep us from moving toward reconciliation. In "The
Gift of Forgiveness" Dr. Charles Stanley shows us how to extend
forgiveness when grudges run deep and restoration seems out
of reach. Life is filled with personal conflicts and
confrontations. Will you choose to forgive? The gift of
forgiveness will equip you to break free from the chains of
bitterness. Don't miss your chance to experience the
liberating power of forgiveness with this life transforming
book. Receive a copy when you make a gift of any size to the
ministry of Real Life at JackHibbs.com
or by calling 877-777-2346, order now.
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ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Real Life Radio with Jack Hibbs.
JACK: God's Word never will return
void. God's word is spirit, it's power and
it has its effect. God did not give us Bible prophecy
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Jesus said, you are the salt of the earth. How does that happen?
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ANNOUNCER: The preceding program was sponsored
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