ANNOUNCER: The following program is sponsored by generous friends
and partners of Real Life.
Welcome to Real Life with Jack Hibbs
JACK: And some of you have religion and you're so tired.
You've been pushing your religion and you just, you don't
feel... you don't feel loved, you don't feel defended, you
don't feel accepted because it's all on you, not being a believer
in Christ, it's not. He's done it all and He gives the Holy
Spirit to get you and I through this world and this wonderful
thing of sanctification where we are living life, bumps and all,
pains and all. We have a purpose.
ANNOUNCER: In today's message, The Host of Heaven, understand
what it means to move from salvation to sanctification as
you let Christ move in your life. Welcome to Real Life
with Jack Hibbs.
ANNOUNCER: Have you ever wondered what it would be like
to travel the world and swim with wild dolphins along the
coast of Ireland or walk the war torn beaches of Normandy where
so many lost their lives fighting for freedom or sailed
the ancient prophecy filled seas of Israel in Egypt? In "Now I
Sea," Jenny L. Cote takes you on an ocean voyage around the world
to discover life lessons that point to God's goodness and
grace, from smooth sailing to turbulent tides. Her spiritual
insights will have you thinking about the sea in new and
inspiring ways. Learn to approach faith from a new
perspective and apply Jenny's biblical teachings to your life
when you order "Now I Sea." Jack Hibbs loves this book and
recommends you get a copy as well. One will be sent to you
with our thanks when you make a gift of any amount to Real Life.
Visit JackHibbs.com or call 877-777-2346 to claim your
copy. Order now.
JACK: Romans 8:28, no doubt, is one of the most famous verses in
all of the Bible. I mean you might even see it on a Hallmark
card, it's so famous. I've often, as you have, have often
heard it misquoted. You know, all things work together for
good. Well, sort of. There's a qualifier to that. People kind
of use it like a blanket verse. A blanket verse, that's my term,
blanket verse like, just throw John 3:16 on something, "For God
so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son," right?
"That whosoever believes in Him would not perish but have
everlasting life," and then bam, all things work together for
good, Romans 8:28. It's not that simple. Now hear me out. The
Word of God is simple, but we rush through things. The Bible
tells us very, very clearly in Romans 8:28 that there are two
qualifiers that we're going to get into in study in this
message and that is this, "...And we know that all things
work together for good to those who love God and to those who
are called according to His purpose." To activate that, you
number one, begin with Jesus Christ being your Lord and
savior. Number two, it means that you now embark upon a walk
with God and the realm of sanctification. That is, God
works with you working all things for your good, because
you love God and that means you're a child of God, and He's
doing it, that you might become more like Jesus. And how does
that happen? Through all of these difficult things, we hang
on to Romans 8:28 because in whatever you're going through in
life right now, God is making you more like Jesus through that
rough stuff. Friends, listen, it's the rough stuff of life
that makes things difficult and it causes us to turn to God.
Some of you will turn to a bottle or turn to the Savior. I
recommend the savior. Let's grab the Bible that you have, pen,
notepad. Let's dive in right now.
JACK: The word here in Romans 8:28 is the Greek word eido, and
it means this, and listen, as we read this, it's not future, it's
already, it's already happened. It's now for us in the past
tense. It means now we have seen. Have you? Now we have
perceived. You need to ask yourself that. Are you really a
believer? Now we have experienced or now we have the
knowledge of. Do you know what it is? Can you define to
somebody what it is to be a Christian, to be a witness to?
Can you bear testimony of the fact to be able to testify like
you are in court for example, of having come to know something?
Of course, this something is someone. Having come to the
discovery. And you circle the word discovery. That is very
important because we launched from the word discovery, because
the word discovery in Hebrew is the Hebrew word yada, Y-A-D-A in
your notes, and is found in Psalm 46:10, "Be still and
Yada." Discover that in the circumstances of your life as a
believer, wherever you're at as a believer, no matter what's
going on as a believer, God says, "be still and know,
discover that I'm right there in the midst of everything taking
place." You say, "pastor, that cannot be true." My friends, I'm
telling you, thank God it is true. He is a God that is with
us at all times, the worst of times that we could be having.
And for us, you know, look, life is life and then it gets tough,
sometimes bumpy, okay, fine, uh-oh, no, really difficult, and
then at some way, shape or form, either if we get raptured, then
awesome, if not, it's going to get very painful. And guess
what? Our God shows up in the pain. It's the God of the Bible
who has told us in advance that when everything is coming to
what you think is an absolute end, that's when all things come
together and work for good to those who love God, to those who
are called according to His purposes. God's got a plan and
you're going to see that plan today, but you've got to apply
it to your own life. Heaven is working for us. We're not alone.
God's doing something. The great scholar, the great pastor of
Westminster Chapel in London, England, in 1929, Dr. Martyn
Lloyd-Jones, if you can buy any book by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones,
buy it. He's wonderful. Plus he's dead so he can't change his
mind. I love that. He never went woke, so you're safe in reading
him because he can't go woke, he's already dead. So this is
good news. We're safe here. Look what he says about this. He
said, "It is to be noted that our text begins with a
conjunction. This means that the truth of this section is linked
with what has already been set forth. As we have seen, the Holy
Spirit dwells within the believer and makes intercession
prayers for him according to the will of God. Thus God's holy
Spirit is directing each believer..." Say amen to that. I
mean, come on. That is great news. "...According to a
predetermined and definite defined plan," Lloyd Jones says.
He's right. God's got the blueprint for your life. God
knows what's next. God knows exactly in this fallen world,
even though it's fallen, God knows exactly what needs to
happen in your life next. Somebody might say, "I'm having
a moment." Well, from this moment on, when you're having a
moment, you need to stop as a believer and understand, wait a
minute, if I'm having a moment right now, that means God knows
about it. Y'all hear me? I don't know why I said "y'all," I
haven't been to Texas in a couple months. But did you all
hear me say that God knows about it in advance. He knows. Things
are not falling apart, they're falling together. "But they
don't feel like it." He never asked us what we felt like. "I
don't understand it." You're not supposed to. It's called faith.
God says, "I know what I'm doing." He says, "follow me."
"Yeah, but it hurts." Yeah, let's go. Eventually it's not
going to hurt. We're going somewhere. Listen, you have a
choice today to stay where you're at hurting or to pick up
your hurt and follow Him. I highly recommend you pick up
your hurt and follow Him. None of us need to spend time telling
you how valuable and how powerful He is with what He does
with our hurt. All I can tell you, and I'm telling you now
before God, angels, you and this Bible, looking back now, after
60, almost 66 years of my life, I would not change one thing in
my life now that has been placed in the hands of God. None of
this stuff, none of the things that I came to learn about my
life, what I could not be, what I was, what this- how come I
can't? Why this? How come you don't? And all the things that
only I know and God knows. And then that day when God says, "I
know," there's a moment in your life where you... you are either
going to go run and hide with Adam or you're going to say,
Lord, I surrender. Don't run anymore from the one that loves
you the most. His Bible is communicating to you His great
love for you. Dr. Grey Barnhouse, the great theologian,
he too is safely read as he is dead as well. He's in heaven
rejoicing with Lloyd-Jones. "All things work together for the
good...," Listen to this, "...even the fall of Lucifer in
eternity past." Stop right there for a second. Have you ever had
someone tell you, "oh, what about your God of love? If your
God is a God of love, then how come He invented the devil?" He
never invented the devil. "I thought your God invented
everything." Nope. There's some stuff on us and there's some
stuff on the devil. Watch this. It's brilliant actually. I wish
I would've thought about it, but he thought about it. "Even the
fall of Lucifer in eternity past was for the greater purposes of
God to establish good." That's a deep sentence. A great question
does arise here. Did God create Lucifer or did God create Satan?
I'm going to pause for effect. Because this is pretty
cataclysmic if you have the wrong answer. The Bible says
Jesus Christ Himself created all angels. Did you know that? The
creator of Lucifer was Jesus Christ Himself, says the Bible.
"Well, that means Jesus made a bad angel." No, He didn't.
Angels can worship God. That means they have free moral
agency just like you and I do. Now, we're not angels. Right now
we are subversion of what we will be in eternity. Right now,
angels are greater than us, but the Bible tells us that when you
and I enter heaven, we will be greater than the angels. Wow. So
did God create Lucifer or did God create Satan? The answer is,
according to Dr. Barnhouse, and I agree with him, God created
Lucifer. It was Lucifer who chose to become Satan by the
choice he made. Is that not what Isaiah tells us? That it was
Lucifer who said, I want to be like God. I want to be
worshiped. I want all the attention. I want everything to
be about me. And the Bible tells us in Ezekiel chapter 28,
that evil, sin was found in his heart, and in that day he fell
from heaven. Remarkable. According to Psalm 1:39, listen
to this. I want all of you to just really enjoy this. Let this
wash over you. This is the Psalmist writing. Lord, you
have searched me and known me. Number one, as a believer, I'm
refreshed by this. If you're not a believer that makes you
nervous, God knows what you did last night. Now what you do with
what you did last night is between you and God. Are you
hearing me? God searches me and He knows me. Verse two, "you
know my sitting down, you know my rising up; you understand my
thought of far off. You comprehend my path and my lying
down and are acquainted with all my ways for there is not a word
on my tongue, but behold, oh Lord, you know it all together."
Verse five, I love this one. This is the God squeeze. "You
have hedged me behind and before..." Just- I love it.
"...And laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful
for me; it is high, I cannot attain to it. Where can I go
from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I
send them to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in hell,
behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning and
dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand
shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me." Listen to
this. Anybody fighting depression in life, listen to
this. "If I say...," that's us, if you say, "if I say, 'surely
the darkness shall fall on me.'" Have you ever been depressed? It
feels like darkness is choking you. You can hardly catch your
breath. It's like somebody has punched you right in the middle
of the gut and you've lost all your air. Have you ever had the
wind knocked out of you, people? You know, there's brothers and
sisters in Christ and there's people of the world
predominantly, maybe most of them that feel like the wind has
gotten knocked out of their lungs. And when you get the
wind knocked out of your lungs, you feel like you're dying,
I guess. Because when it happens, you can't fill your
lungs up and you just-
Got to wait. You think you're dying, but you're not. Well
emotionally you think you're dying, but God is saying you're
not. So if you say to yourself, "Surely the darkness shall fall
on me," listen to what God says about that. "Even the night
shall be light about me. Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from
you, but the night shines as the day; the darkness and the light
are both alike to you." No wonder why you want to hang out
with God. With all that's being thrown at you in the world, get
close to God, draw closer to Him. There's no excuse. We all
need to make our way closer to Him. "Yeah, but you don't know,
pastor." I don't want to know. I can't do a thing about it.
Besides, you don't know, I don't know. But we know Him. Press
into God and He'll never let you down. Heaven is working church
for us and God is bringing all things together for us. We
remember this regarding Jesus' promise. We must never forget
this. The Bible says in John 14, verse 16, "And I will pray the
Father..." So it's not only the Holy Spirit that prays for us.
The Bible says Jesus is praying for us and He says, "...I will
give you another helper...," that is the Holy Spirit,
"...that He may abide with you forever, even the spirit of
truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees
Him nor knows Him, but you know Him for He dwells with you and
will be in you." Listen to what Jesus said. "I will not leave
you orphans. I will come to you." The way that Christ comes
to you is by the person of the Holy Spirit. During worship this
morning you were singing praises to God, and what was happening
is if you meant it, the Holy Spirit was ministering through
you to the very son of God and to the Father himself, and you
are caught in between. That's the best place to be, caught in
between of the intercourse of God. He's the savior of your
soul and He loves you, but He requires that you come, that you
run out of the burning home, the burning house, and you run to
Him. Salvation is waiting as it were at the curb, but you got to
go to Him. He will not make you. He will not force you. John 16,
verse 12 tells us, and still Jesus says, "I have many things
to say to you." Imagine talking to Jesus personally and He says
that to you. "I have a lot of things that I need to say to
you." Don't you think you would say to him, "okay, tell me all
of it? Tell me what you want to say?" He knows how frail we are.
He says, "...but you cannot bear them now." You can't handle it.
Verse 13, however, when He- Can you circle the word He in your
Bible? This is not "may the force be with you, Luke." This
is not an it. Our Jehovah witness friends that say the
spirit is an it, it's not a person, there is no trinity.
Well, the Bible says there is a trinity and the Bible says the
Holy Spirit is a person. Jesus calls Him a He. When He, the
spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all truth
for He will not speak on his own authority, but whatever He
hears, He will speak and He will tell you things to come. You
want to know what's up next? You don't need to read the paper.
Talk to God. Ask the spirit of God, what do I need to know next
for my family? What do I need to know next about my home or about
the world or about my state or about my kids, about my husband
or my wife? What do I need to know, God? He will tell you
things to come. What do I need to know about the future? What's
going on with the world in the Middle East right now? How is
this going to play out? Now, God's not going to answer you
like, you know, some ticker tape things, spitting out the
information that way. He's going to give you discernment to
unpack the times, and you won't be caught off guard. You won't
get sucked up in the lunacy of the world. Let Him speak to you.
Jesus went on to say that, verse 14, "He will glorify me for He
will take what is mind and declare it to you." Notice,
we've got several persons involved here. We've got Jesus
speaking, that's God the Son. We've got the Holy Spirit who's
being promised to be the minister to us. And then we're
talking about here in a moment, the Father. He will glorify me
for He will take of what is mine and declare to you. Verse 15,
"All things that the Father has are mine. Therefore, I said that
the Holy Spirit will take of mine and declare it to you." God
the Father, God the Son, and one person is the Holy Trinity of
God. Ephesians chapter 4, verse 30 says, "and do not grieve the
Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of
redemption." There's a lot there in that verse. Number one again,
my friends, the spirit of God is not an it. How do you upset an
it? Can you upset an it? May the force be with you? No, no, no.
Maybe you, not me. I don't want the force. I want God the Holy
Spirit in my life. Think about that for a moment. The power.
"May the power be wi-" What is this power? You know what? If
you sit right here and you move in this direction and you put
this crystal in your navel... don't laugh. You'll offend
somebody who's watching from Sedona, Arizona or Laguna Beach.
Oh, is that too close? Sorry. But, you know, wait, face in
this direction, put your hands up, put the little receiver
oracle and your navel and then start to chant and you'll get
the power. Really? Really? No, listen. To grieve the Holy
Spirit is to upset, hurt the Holy Spirit. You can't hurt an
it. You can go yell at the fire hydrant outside all you want,
you're not going to hurt its feelings. It doesn't have any
feelings. I saw a guy, this is a true story, last night he was
pushing his Tesla, and the battery was so low, there was
not even emergency blinkers on. It was just gone, and the poor
guy's pushing it. And I thought for a moment, wow, this is a
great picture. But I was driving and I didn't want to endanger
anybody, but I just thought about, there's a vehicle that is
very fast when it has the power, but when there is no power, you
got to push it. And some of you have religion and you're so
tired. You've been pushing your religion and you just, you don't
feel loved, you don't feel defended, you don't feel
accepted because it's all on you. Not being a believer in
Christ, it's not. He's done it all. And He gives the Holy
Spirit to get you and I through this world and this wonderful
thing of sanctification where we are living life, bumps and all,
pains and all. We have a purpose. We know what's coming,
and we don't have to worry about how this ends. We know how it
ends. We read the back of the book. It's awesome.
JACK: Well, what an amazing promise, right? I mean, I have
to tell you that there are times when I go and check Romans 8:28
to make sure it's still in the Bible. It's so great, it's so
wonderful. For we know... we know that all things. How many
things? All things work together for good to those who love God,
to those who are called according to His purpose. That
means God's got a plan for your life. And those two
prerequisites, I'm telling you, make sure, number one, is Jesus
Christ your Lord and Savior? Do you believe that you are saved
by you putting your faith in Him and Him alone? No works of
righteousness will He accept in faith in Him alone. But when you
make that decision, then what happens is you love God because
He has forgiven you of so much that you've fallen in love with
the God who saves. So friend, listen. After that, relationship
begins, that relationship grows. It's what we've been talking
about and so all the things that are going on in your life, my
life, because Christ is the one who captivates our love, He's
our affection, He's our purpose, He's preeminent above all things
in our life. Jesus first. Jesus first over everything, over
every one. When that is the order of things, you can take a
deep breath and relax because everything in your life is
working out for your good because you've been called by
God for this purpose. So friends, listen. It's called
sanctification and it's what's happening to you and I if Christ
is the Lord and savior of our lives. Listen, to help you walk
with Jesus more and more and study more and more and get to
know Him more and more, JackHibbs.com is your stop. From
there, you can learn so much more. So much more teachings and
various platforms, by the way: Facebook, Instagram, and other
sites as well. JackHibbs.com. We'll learn together, so let's
move on in our faith with Christ,
ANNOUNCER: You are watching Real Life with Jack Hibbs.
ANNOUNCER: Have you ever wondered what it would be like
to travel the world and swim with wild dolphins along the
coast of Ireland? Or walk the war torn beaches of Normandy
where so many lost their lives fighting for freedom? Or sail
the ancient prophecy filled seas of Israel and Egypt? In, "Now I
Sea," Jenny L. Cote takes you on an ocean voyage around the world
to discover life lessons that point to God's goodness and
grace, from smooth sailing to turbulent tides. Her spiritual
insights will have you thinking about the sea in new and
inspiring ways. Learn to approach faith from a new
perspective and apply Jenny's biblical teachings to your life
when you order "Now I Sea." Jack Hibbs loves this book and
recommends you get a copy as well. One will be sent to you
with our thanks When you make a gift of any amount to Real Life.
Visit JackHibbs.com or call 877-777-2346 to claim your
copy. Order now.
ANNOUNCER: Life is full of fear, doubt and worry. The more you
listen to and see the world today, the easier it is to feel
hopeless and helpless. Amidst the confusion, a voice of hope
has emerged, the Real Life Network, founded by Jack Hibbs,
the Real Life Network is a free digital media platform void of
the noise of secular media that attacked people of faith. Click
on the QR code or sign up for free at RealLifeNetwork.com.
Fast forward your faith.
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 to scare us, but to prepare us. You are the light
of the world, Jesus said. You are the salt of the earth. How
does that happen?
ANNOUNCER: Jack Hibbs truly believes we are living in some
of the most exciting days in history, which brings some great
opportunities to share with the world a powerful no-nonsense
presentation of the gospel to this generation who are
searching for answers and truth. Will you stand with us in
sharing this message in real and practical ways? We ask that you
commit to support Real Life and the teachings of Jack Hibbs with
a gift of your choosing. Simply go to JackHibbs.com, and there
you can simply follow the instructions of how to give a
one-time gift or a recurring gift. If you would prefer to
call, our toll free number is 877-777-2346. Again, that's
877-777-2346. And of course you can write us. Our address
is Real Life with Jack Hibbs Box 1273 Chino Hills, California
91709. Your gift will be faithfully put to work
because it's our desire that through Jesus Christ,
you will know real life.
ANNOUNCER: The preceding program was sponsored by generous
friends and partners of Real Life.