I Solemnly Swear | Jack Hibbs Sermon

I Solemnly Swear | Jack Hibbs Sermon

I Solemnly Swear | Jack Hibbs Sermon
What church let’s stand if you would and look to the screens as we read this together, small portion of scripture.
That’s okay. We have a little bit of a time together tonight before communion.
And this is a great setup for the following weeks in Hebrews chapter six, Hebrews chapter 61 of the most controversial chapters in the New Testament, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Um I’ll read verse one.
If you read verse two, I’ll read verse three and that will be enough for tonight.
Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ.
Let us go on to perfection, not blame again, the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God Verse three.
And this, we will do if God permits father again, bless, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
You may be seated. So now we come to this portion of scripture where the author, which I personally, it’s irrelevant, but I personally believe it’s Paul.
I think there’s a reason why he left his name off of the epistle.
It’s directly focused on the, listen, watch me on the Jewish Hebrew believer in Jesus as Messiah, who have now come to this point of their walk where there’s a need for this epistle to be written.
Thus, the epistle to the Hebrews, These are hebrews Jews who are worshiping Jesus as messiah.
But some and listen, just like any generation of believers for the last 2000 years, some began to waver.
We learned last week that some became what dull of hearing.
And so the warning is written in this chapter that we need to press on.
Don’t give up, don’t slow down.

In fact, the title of the Messages, I solemnly swear, what is it that we would solemnly swear if we were in court, we would put our hand on the Bible, I think, do they still do that?
And we would say, I solemnly swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
So help me God. And now you’re under oath and that carries with it a great weight.
If you believe it or not, it’s irrelevant. God’s real.
You put your hand on the Bible and God takes seriously every word that comes out of our mouth.
And when those Hebrews back then said, I believe that Jesus is the messiah.
What happened over time is that they began to waver, they began to gravitate toward back religious practices.
Now, listen, people do that today.
There’s the temptation in people’s lives and some people came into that where they might come out of profound, uh what’s the word liturgical practices where it’s, it’s, there’s a regiment to their religion.
Are you with me? That they do certain things in the morning a certain way and they pray certain prayers and they celebrate or they practice certain things at certain times and it’s somewhat robotic.
But for them, they find comfort in the routine and they even prefer their prayers to be written out or have somebody write their prayers out in advance.
It’s, it’s the practice of it and the danger of that is you can lose the personality between you and God.
Uh, the intimacy when things get routine.
Um Listen, one of the things about love, uh, actual love, love that is, um, can I put it like this?
Love that concerns you. So, what do you mean by that?
That, um, you’re a husband and a wife and you’re, you’re married and you’re in love and how do you know some people will be married and they’ll say, I don’t know if we’re still in love with each other.
Well, why do you even think that? Why do you say that? Well, because they don’t get goose bumps anymore?
That’s not love. Love is not measured regarding goose bumps.
Well, when he used to look at me, I got this tingle That’s called infatuation and it ended somewhere between 18 to 22 months after you guys met, the emotions began to settle down.
You can’t live in a constant state of that kind of existence.
Listen, some of you may be thinking, what are you? Crazy, Jack. That’s what love. No, no, no.
Listen, if that’s what you think love is, then you don’t know. Love.
Love is after all the feelings have settled in, think about it, things have become comfortable.
That’s not a bad thing. It’s how you manage it.
And your relationship with one another needs to be managed and it needs to be administered to and taken care of and nurtured.

And over the years, your relationship of love goes through what I will just call a sanctified or divine evolution.
It’s not about the giggles and it’s not about the tickle.
It’s all about appreciating that person that you have decided to love.
It’s a decision you make and listen, it’s that kind of commitment that keeps the marriage together.
A lot of young people today are not aware of this. They think it’s, it’s all about the feeling.
And so they wind up going from one person, then they get bored and they go to another person and there’s this big rush and a big high and then the emotions wear down after 18-22 months.
And then they trade that person in for somebody else and they’re constantly trying to ride the wave thinking that love is up here.
When in reality, that is all the infatuation and newness of it.
When love is an actual decision, I decide I choose to love you.
That’s why in a wedding service we would have in the ceremony that I would ask the wife and husband to be.
Do you choose today to forsake all others and make your pledge to this person all the days of your life?
And they say I do. And, um, the good thing about what we do here in our weddings is that you can’t get married here unless you go through, through a pre marital, uh, training or our class.
Why? Because so many things happen where the feelings, listen, when you’re, when you’re spiking on the feelings, there’s a good chance that you don’t get down to the big questions and the big answers.
Everything is just, oh, you smell so good. He walks a certain way.
You think it’s amazing, she walks a certain way. You think it’s amazing.
She moves her hair and you almost pass out that stuff changes.
It doesn’t mean it’s bad. You start appreciating other things. Look, I’ll make my point.
It’s kind of kind of tough, but here it is, you can move your hair and you can smell fantastic.
But if you’re a rat, You know, if you’re just a creep to be around, that’s all flushed out in 18-22 months because you know what, you may be an incredible, good looking person.
But after a while, you know, you grow on the person and what grows is like a monster on their face.
It’s like, I don’t know if I think you’re so hot anymore. Why?
Because you’re getting another person and you realize where’s all the tingles?
Well, you make a decision right there.
Listen, it’s, it’s the decision you make to love who and how that relationship operates is a Christ centered.
And it’s a beautiful thing. It’s amazing thing.
Yesterday I was talking to a police officer and it was all good. It was good.
And, uh, and he said, um, How long have you been married?
I said, 43 years coming up in a few months and you said, 43 years, have you wait to the same person?
I said, yeah, do I look that old that I, yeah, same person.
And he said, that’s amazing. He said, uh, I’m on my second marriage.
But we’ve reached, I think he said something like 20, years and, and he, he began to tell me about his life and I was honored by the way that he just began to share and what was beautiful about it.
He was this big burly guy and he began to reveal his heart to me.
And I was moved by that, that he felt comfortable enough to do that.
But it was neat because after a few moments, he got down to the issues of life and the relationship.
And so what’s happening in the book of hebrews when we come to Chapter six is that there are those that are now considering the departure from this relationship with Jesus and going back to where they had the predictable relationship of religion.
And so this chapter will be very timely for us because there are those in our world today at a time like this that are considering giving up on Jesus, giving up on faith.
And what that looks like is this, I don’t want to read the Bible anymore.
I want to feel something. I don’t want to wait for Him.
I want to, I want to do my own thing or I want to go back to what is, where I can touch it.
Give me um give me a statue, give me an icon.
Give me some form of something that it doesn’t require this invisible faith to know God.
I want to have some sort of external experience.
I wanna talk to somebody as though I was talking to God. So give me a person.
Are you hearing me people? These are things that people either hang on to or they can revert back to other than a personal intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so we look at this in our time together very, very quickly.
And it’s this Hebrew six, we look at verse one where they’re the scripture says, therefore, meaning based upon all these previous five chapters of what was said.
Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ. Let’s move on. This is a challenge.
He’s saying there’s things that are basic. There’s things that are part of the relationship. Let’s move on now.
Not in a bad way. Not as though I’m tired of it. Let’s move on.
No, as believers that is settled. That’s the foundation. Let’s now move on.
God wants you to move on as a believer to the next level of your development of your growth in Christ.
And I love how the author writes it.
He puts it in the sense that leaving the discussion of look, the elementary principles of Christ.
This is the absolute basics. We’re going to grow up.
Now, I made a comment last week, something about and people liked it and people hated it.
And that was this, that a lot of people in times of trouble found out because they never never went on beyond the elements, the basic elements of Christ that some people discovered that they had in fact been in a church that was really more of a dairy.
Remember I said that rather than a church, they were raised on milk and they never went beyond the milk.
They never got into the meat of the word.
This is what he’s saying now that’s why the word there in your Bible is therefore in light of what I he said in chapter five.
Therefore, let’s leave those things and press on.
It’s not that those things are to be forsaken, know there to be built upon And that’s very critical.
So what he says there in verse one. Let us go on to perfection.
You ought to circle the word perfection because the word perfection means completion or maturity. It doesn’t mean sinless nous.
You’re gonna be happy to write that down. It doesn’t mean sinless nous.
It doesn’t mean that you’re gonna be sinless in this life. Let us go on to completion.
Hey, we started building a house, so to speak. Right. Laid the foundation framed it.
Uh got, got some of the door jams, the headers in things like that.
Let’s put a roof on it and then you stop. No, you finish it. And that’s what he’s saying.
The work that God has begun in you. He’s gonna finish that. I love that.
Philippians 16, you might want to write it down. It won’t be on the screen.
Um Philippians 16 tells us that once God has begun a good work in you, he will complete it.
So right now for all of us, we need to stop on this so to speak construction site and ask ourselves as God started to work in me.
Can you say at some point in your life, God started to work in your life.
Now, somebody might say, well, God did a work in my life a long time ago, but I straight away then come back.
Somebody might say today God started to work a few weeks ago or a few months ago, but it’s not going so well.
Hang on Well, I, I don’t, I don’t see much progress, stay at it.
You know, Peter put it this way when he was challenged.
When the disciples heard that Jesus said, by the way, it was code word when Jesus said, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you, you’ll have no part of me.
Now, Christianity is not some sort of freakish cult, cannibalistic religion.
In fact, later on, he said the words that I spoke their spirit and their truth.
And the Bible says, some of the disciples who heard that turned and walked away from Christ and never walked with him again.
And then Jesus turned to Peter and said, are you gonna go away also?
And Peter said, Lord, to whom shall we go? Where do we go?
You alone here it is he qualified it. You alone have the words of eternal life. That’s awesome.
What a beautiful thing. So you hang in there and know this, that he’s hanging on to you.
I believe that God’s got a grip on the true believers life that he will not let go.
And I stress true believer. We’re gonna have a lot of fun in this chapter and I’m gonna get a lot of mail.
I did this many years ago. I did this chapter, a study on this chapter many, many years ago.
And I got so much mail from pastors uh telling me how wrong I was to encourage the people that they could be so secure in their relationship because if they’re, if they believe that their, that secure in that relationship, they’ll abuse it.
You know what I’m saying? That’s pretty scary.
If somebody in that level of authority as a pastor says, you can’t let the people know that because if they know that God’s got them in his hand and they’re safe in Christ, they might abuse that.
What kind of a weird thought is that?
No, you’re gonna find out that there is the reality that you can be flirting with religion for years, if not decades, this is why trials are so important.
And then finally something flushes it out.
You can be a pastor, you can be a priest, you can be an evangelist.
You can be the most respected Christian businessman in town, but something happens where your foundation is shaken because what we’re looking at in verse one was not laid well and an engineer designed time has come where the testing takes place, the fire comes and our faith is refined.
This is not God trying to knock us off the perche so to speak.
This is the reality that comes up against faith and every single one of us as believers will be tested in some area of our faith.
Is it true? Is it real?
Listen, friends as painful as trials are just know this trials are sent to us by God himself engineered and will not go beyond what is necessary.
Listen, temptation, that’s a whole different story. Satan hits us with temptation. God doesn’t tempt us.
Trials are to refine our faith and there’s nothing worse than failing a trial.
You wanna know why? Because God loves you and God’s got a hold on you.
If you fail in the fiery trial, he’ll let you go to recovery and you’ll get better and then you’ll go through it again and he’ll take you through it again until you pass.
Sometimes his messages hang on like a think of a fiery torch just blowing you, you know, all over you and your hair is on fire and your scorched and when it’s over, you’re, and the smoke is coming off of you and, and the Lord announces you made it and uh congratulations and you now move to the next level of spiritual maturity because you’ve endured this fiery trial.
And so that’s going on to completion where we learn how in maturity because we’ve gone beyond the basic foundations that Christ Jesus has for us.
And we realize, wow, you can hang on to those promises. They’re real. They come to pass.
God is gonna keep his word and we’re living in a time like that right now.
It’s way harder. Listen.
In fact, I have to, I’m gonna take this pole in here right now. I bumped into somebody today.
They came by the church today for, for some reason, I don’t even know why they were here.
But I had an opportunity to bump into them.
And, um, our, our relationship within Calvary Chapel at Costa Mesa goes back 40 years, 40 years.
How many Christians do you know that you, that you knew 40 years ago that are still walking with Jesus today?
This is a sobering thought all of a sudden.
Maybe you’ve been a Christian 20 years and you had friends who were Christians 20 years ago.
Where are they now? It’s a very interesting question because as time goes on, it almost seems as though as time goes on, there’s less of those who we once knew.
There’s always the family of God around you.
And I love that by the way, some of them have come from other places.
I mean, it this way they come from other experiences, other places and they’re, they’re like my age, Okay.
They’re my age and we’ve got similar timeframe stories accepted Christ in, in my late teens when I was 19, this person might say, Oh, I was 21 and we’ve got similar timelines.
But then there are those who we can look back and say they gave up, they quit, they went away, the Bible tells us and first John or second John, John says that these are they who were with us but They were really not of us.
They were there, they were hanging out with us but they were not of us.
They went back into the world. It’s amazing.
To me that when Paul comes to second Timothy and the Chapter four, that’s the closing writing of the Apostle Paul, he’s nearing the end of his life.
He’s now been given the sentence of death. He is going to be beheaded in Rome.
He’s in the Mammary teen prison and he goes down a list.
And by the way, he says, after uh this guy has gone to uh to Salonika and this one has gone to this location.
And the other, he makes a comment about a man who a decade or two earlier.
He says, Dimas is with me. Then he says that Dimas uh was ministering.
And then the last time Paul mentions Demas, he says, Demas has abandoned me having loved this present world.
He’s gone back into it. Can you imagine traveling and ministering with the Apostle poll?
Don’t you think you kinda like automatically are going to be going to heaven just by virtue of the fact that you’ve been so convinced by what you’ve seen and heard?
No, it’s not true. But then pulses. Only Luke is with me.
Wow. Listen, there’s a lot of friends and there’s a lot of foes in our Christian experience.
Things change. Some people, they get the feeling’s evaporating and so they think, well, I’ll just go back to some new rush.
So then you’re gonna ask the natural question in this chapter. Do they lose their salvation?
Pastor Jack? No, they didn’t. They never had it. But they sang with us.
Yes, they did, didn’t they? And they had a better voice than you didn’t matter, did it?
Oh, but they, I saw them lead people to Christ.
Now what you saw was them restating the word of God which has power and people responding to the word of God, not them.
Listen. Matthew chapter seven tells us that in the day of judgment, there will be those who have preached the gospel cast out demons and did many wonderful works.
And Jesus will say to them, I never knew you depart from me.
You workers of iniquity, they did miracles. What about?
Listen, there have been people who have been healed by colts who used the name of Jesus and pray in Jesus name and they’re healed by who the cult or Christ having mercy on that person and healing them.
It’s wild. It’s amazing. God uses and responds to his word.
And if you want to get deeper into that, look at the bizarre ministry of Belem in the Old Testament.
What a weirdo. The guy, the guy was a prophet of God, but we’re not sure tonight if the guy wound up in hell or not.
Isn’t that weird? So your relationship is all important to say the least.
Let us go on to completion. Watch this. Not laying again the foundation of market down.
Number one, repentance from dead works. Listen, church, he’s announcing to us repentance from dead works. Should be a given.
That’s passe we’ve done that. We move on now. We came to Christ.
You understand that he died on the cross for your sins.
This, this challenge right here is meaning this get up now and move forward because all that stuff that you were concerned about at the earlier moments of your salvation has been taken care of in Christ.
Press on. Let’s go. Wow. I mentioned Paul earlier but wouldn’t have been awesome.
Well, I say it would have been awesome. Hopefully we could keep up with them.
But the apostle Paul, remember John Mark couldn’t keep up with Paul.
That was quite a rift and you can read about that in the Book of Acts.
But it wouldn’t have been great though too. Have Paul?
Look at you one morning, imagine getting you wake up and you’re just not feeling right and Paul might say what’s wrong with you.
I just don’t feel right, but who cares how you feel?
Um I don’t feel so hot myself but you know what today is, the day that the Lord has made?
Isn’t that what the Bible says? We’re going to rejoice and be glad in it.
So get happy and get happy.
Now, we’ve got a lot of ministry to do and I don’t want you dragging your mug around because if you drag your mug around, then I’m gonna feel like dragging my mug around and we’re not gonna get anything done for the kingdom.
So listen, by the looks of the sundial on my wrist. We’re running out of time. Let’s go.
And I love that. I love that challenge. So we’ve dealt with repentance. Yes.
Repentance is the beginning of the gospel.
Look at the next thing he says, and of faith toward God, this is a given.
This has been tested. The author of the book is saying You’ve got faith in God.
Yes, I do. Right on. Let’s go. Let’s move on. Now. Let’s build upon that. Let’s do.
Romans 10, 17 faith comes by hearing, hearing the word of God and you just move on.
Let’s keep going. And you look at verse two introduces us to the third challenge.
I don’t know if you’ve got those first two challenges. Number one, repentance from dead works.
Number two is faith toward God.
And in verse two is the third challenge and the baptism move on from the baptism or the doctrine of baptisms.
Notice in your Bible, it’s, it’s an s plural baptisms, interesting challenge, right? Think of it, baptisms.
What water, water is. Identification of our life in Christ baptisms.
This leads to the Holy Spirit coming into you as a believer. Listen, it’s not complicated.
Watch my hands because I lack the ability to say it.
So you have to let my hands do the talking the moment you come to repentance, the Holy Spirit according to First Corinthians, 12 baptizes you into the body of Christ that is a singular event one time.
Never needing to happen again. The Holy Spirit does the baptizing into the body of Christ read first Corinthians 12.
Later that your homework. When you got saved, when you repented of your sins and trusted Christ, the Holy Spirit, when he came into your life, listen, simultaneously things happen.
Watch. Are you guys with me?
The moment he moved in at your moment of faith, he came in to seal you.
Seal S E A L, seal you with his presence or the word is stamp, he stamped you think of that.
And by the way that stamping of the Holy Spirit is a down payment.
It is a reservation made upon you until the day of redemption. Ephesians chapter one and 2 tells us this.
He stamps you uh and holds you in reserve until the day of redemption.
The day of redemption is when you and I either get raptured or resurrected. Check that out.
It’s the totality of the body, soul and spirit.
So remember some of us long enough, do they even do this anymore layaway? Does anybody do it?
Is it even a thing anymore?
Somebody say some of you are saying yes and some of you are saying no.
Do you remember a place called K Mart?
Ors Odis White front man?
Listen to some of us. We’re gonna start talking about Geritol in the moment used to be able.
It’s amazing. I think it’s fantastic.
It’s certainly biblical is that you could, you could go into those stores, you could pick something off the shelf or try it on and it fits, but you can’t afford it.
So, what you do is you put it on layaway and you make sort of a down payment of some sorts in some places.
It’s just, you can, you believe in America.
There was once a time when you wrote your name on a piece of paper and you tore this thing and they put it on the item and they gave you a number and that was enough.
That was enough and they held it for you until you had enough money to come and receive the purchased possession.
It was, it’s amazing. It was considered purchase when you put your name on it, that’s the word seal.
The Holy Spirit sealed you into the day of redemption.
The Holy Spirit put you on layaway until Christ picked you up.
And that’s true for every believer.
That’s true for any one of us who trust Christ.
And so in that moment, first Corinthians 12, the Spirit of God baptizes you into the body of Christ, the church.
But then listen, Jesus, after the day of Pentecost, Jesus baptizes the believer with the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Listen, it’s the baptism of the Holy Spirit that means Jesus. Does it? Are you following me?
The Holy Spirit? Put you in the church, the body of Christ and from that moment on it’s Christ who baptizes you with the power of the Holy Spirit.
It’s not that you get saved again, you’re saved. The spirit of God comes upon you.
If you want to look at this more detail, read Ephesians chapter five and look up the word in the Greek epi E P I, the spirit of God came among the believers.
Do you remember this on the day of Pentecost?
They were already saved, but the spirit of God came upon them.
And the Bible tells us trying to explain it to us like like tongues of fire, something was going on.
We don’t know what it was but it appeared over their head and it was a manifestation of the first event ever, but not the only obviously of the spirit of God coming upon the believers for power.
You want to ask the Lord to baptize you with the power, use whatever term you want.
By the way, some of look, this is uh this, this church is full of people from every denomination of Christianity.
Some people use the word baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Some people use the word filling of the Holy Spirit or the endowment or the endowment of power or whatever.
There’s a lot of terms and people get all tripped up in the different terms.
All I know is this the moment I trusted Christ, the Holy Spirit moved inside of my life and sealed me until the day of redemption.
That’s why the Bible says, God will never leave you or forsake you. How does that happen?
The Holy Spirit stays and then once that happens, when you make yourself available for service.
So that’s why a lot of listen, I’m gonna tell you something right now.
A lot of Christians, it’s not a secret.
I just feel like I feel like if I say it this way, everyone’s gonna lean in to listen.
If Christians got off there southern region and decided to step out and serve God’s people, watch what happens.
Are you, are you terrified? Yep. You feel helpless? Uh huh. Are you trembling? Certainly.
That’s when he shows up.
When you say, I don’t think I can do this, God and he goes guess what? You can’t.
That’s why I need you to ask me for my power.
Jesus said, if you ask for the Holy Spirit, will your father give you a scorpion?
How much more will your father give you the spirit if you ask?
And so you ask him and so many Christians have never experienced the power of God because they’ve never put themselves in the place of needing power.
Why would God give you some experience of power when you plan on doing nothing with it?
It’s like God give me a chainsaw and uh you wake up in the morning, there’s a brand new chainsaw sitting out there in your backyard and you just go my, that’s a beautiful chainsaw.
Isn’t it glorious? You call your friends, come and look at my chainsaw and you never started.
You never use it.
Oh God, give me the, I want to know more about you.
God, I wanna be, I wanna see your power. God.
And God is saying, well, why don’t you get up and make yourself available?
You know, think about it.
Moses is at the, at the red Sea and he gets right to the water.
The Bible says, And he stops and there’s roughly, we estimate 2-2 and a half million people behind him.
Israel and Moses goes up and he turns to the people and says, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.
It’s an epic moment and God says, Moses, why are you doing this?
Put your foot in the water and go quick? The Egyptians are coming. Isn’t that great? It’s so practical.
Moses doesn’t know what to do.
There’s water, the enemy’s coming stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.
And God says, stop talking and run, isn’t it great?
And as soon as Moses got into the water, it parts Joshua crossing over into Israel from Jordan to the promised land.
The whole prescriptions given this is how it’s gonna happen.
This is the way it’s gonna go.
But the priest, as soon as the priest put their foot in the water, then it dried up.
Well, I’m not gonna do anything until God shows me then guess what?
You’re not gonna do anything you want his power? Sure. Do.
I wanna see some action. Then you gotta show up, make yourself available faith toward God doctrine of baptisms, spirit of God coming upon you.
And by the way, that is according to Ephesians five, that is an ongoing prayer request that God will answer, be filled with the Holy Spirit.
But in the Greek is, it, is the president’s the continuance.
It’s be being filled with the Holy Spirit and just to settle down some of your nerves, somebody might say, and you know it and you, you know what the manifestation of that reality is, don’t you?
It’s speaking in tongues. No, it’s not. It doesn’t say that it happened before that way.
But an equal manner reported in the Bible is the Holy Spirit came upon them and they spoke the word of God with boldness, boldness, courage Is one of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit.
And of course, always the fruit of the Holy Spirit when he has the control On your life.
And then he says, in verse two, the laying on of hands, this is beautiful.
The laying on of hands.
What does that mean that the more ministry in small group settings is most often where it’s applied.
The laying on of hands simply means this, it’s the recognition that I see something in your life or you see someone, you see something in someone’s life and you, you know what the gifts of the Holy Spirit are.
For example, you know that this particular person has, has the remarkable ability you see it happening, they don’t even realize it, but they have an amazing, amazing gift of mercy.
It’s not human. It’s, it’s beyond very merciful.
And the Bible says that mercy is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
One of the gifts that God gives to the church and you see that and you can, you can lay hands physically, lay hands on someone and pray for them.
You can see that somebody might be called to the ministry and the elders are called or the church is called to lay hands on them and pray.
We’re told in the Bible to lay hands and pray for the sick.
You know what you think about it. Christianity is a very touchy religion, very touchy faith.
I’ve heard that before though also about this church, people will say I’ll invite people, you should come visit, you should come visit, they come and visit.
I see them later at Home Depot or whatever. Did you come?
Yeah, I came, I had a lot of hugging going on there.
The people would say that it’s very, people were just like what people hug.
Have you noticed that here drives people nuts. That’s the only thing I’ve ever known.
I got saved at every Costa mesa.
I got hugged and then I started hugging you and then you started hugging others and it’s just a biblical hug fest thing.
Hey, look, it beats, it beats what they do in the Middle East.
They kiss each other, they’re kissing the cheek and kiss on the cheek.
It’s like, no, that’s okay. It’s kind of funny.
And then, you know, you offend them and it’s, it’s just, that’s the way they communicate, care and all, but it’s just amazing laying on of hands.
Look at this, the resurrection of the dead. Do you understand that we are not Buddhist or Hindus?
You know that we are not New agers, we’re not tree huggers or crystal ballers.
We’re Christians. What does that mean? That means that we believe in the resurrection, not reincarnation.
What are you gonna come back as you’re not coming back like the way you think?
Well, man, when that guy comes back, he’s gonna be a carpet. No, he’s not.
It’s not gonna work that way. That’s pagan. Resurrection is a biblical old and New Testament doctrine.
Jews believe in resurrection. Christians believe in resurrection.
And then later on, uh eventually Islam was born through Mohammed, but Mohammed believed in the biblical resurrection.
So Islam Christianity and Judaism are the three faiths that believe in resurrection.
I don’t, I don’t care about the other two. I care about what the Bible says.
And the Bible teaches resurrection. And John chapter five says, resurrection from the dead.
Some to everlasting life, listen and some to everlasting death. He said, what do you mean everlasting death?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You’re alive and you spend eternity dying. That’s called hell. Who wants that?
I don’t want that. You want that. I don’t want that man.
And then finally here at verse the end of verse two and three and of eternal judgment.
So three is the baptisms. Four is laying on of hands.
You look at five is the resurrection of the dead. These are all basics.
Let’s get these things behind us and six is of eternal judgment.
We know that the Bible teaches that God someday will bring justice. There’ll be judgment. He’s holy.
There has to be and verse three just simply states right there.
And this, we will do if God permits.
That’s a beautiful statement we’re gonna end with this and this, we will do if God permits.
Here’s the good news, God, not only permits. He’s saying, let’s go, let’s leave the basics behind.
Let’s grow up, let’s move on. I don’t know about you. I think I do.
I hope I do. But I’m just saying, there’s nothing more thrilling to me and I hope to you.
And that is spiritual growth and spiritual maturity.
It’s absolutely awesome and it’s so sweet because it goes this way when God is maturing us, we become more like Children as we mature.
You said, Jack, that’s a contradiction. Not at all. The kingdom of God.
Jesus made it very clear is like Children in this world that you and I live in.
That is so mean. The most beautiful thing to see in this world still remains is the love and the faith in the actions of a child.
And what do you think, by the way? What do you think?
Right now? They’re very sick, perverted, reprobate, godless, abandon people who are completely devoted to robbing your child of innocence.
We are in the last days that an adult he said just told me this morning, no, this evening that, that there was some officer, I don’t know the story.
So I’ll just, I’ll just keep it as I heard it that an officer investigating what’s going on in our world today.
And I don’t know the terminology, maybe you know what I’m talking about, but they, They posed as 12.5 year old.
They assumed the identity of a make believe 12.5 year old online somehow.
However, this works and went to a, a some school district recommended website for kids and signed up and went in and got in and then received all of this download or information links to all of this, how to uh how to determine your gender.
How do you know you’re a boy or a girl? Are you sure? It was all filled with doubts.
And she told me that and I thought for a moment, Jesus said, when he gets a hold of the person who thought that went up he said it will be better for you in the day of judgment that you’d never been born.
Then when I get a hold of you, the person who says, you know, I think this innocent child just needs to grow up.
The world is a tough place and instead of protecting their innocence, they just need to get on with it.
Jesus says, you just wait till I get a hold of you.
You never offend a child, you never abuse a child.
You never show them pornography or lewdness or the things that are going on.
Even in our own community, there’s some stupid hamburger place in Ontario having these perverted drag queen evenings and having and telling parents to bring your kids, kids get in for free and kids get a free, uh French fries or something and then they have this stuff, the world is shaking, hang onto Jesus.
You’ll never regret it and all this stuff that’s happening where to stand against it were to speak up about it.
The Bible says to expose it.
But at the same time, no, this don’t be moved by it because he told us these days would come to us in the last days.
Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared. Listen, one of the big proofs and maybe I’m nuts.
Probably am actually Charles Spurgeon said those of us who are pastors.
The reason why we’re able to press on is because we’re a little bit touched.
He put it so gently.
But in the context, he said, if we weren’t touched, he met, you know, a little off, he said if we weren’t little off, we would go crazy under the pressure.
So I think of it this way, all of the ugly ugliness and meanness that’s going on out there tells me any day now, Jesus, it’s so obvious any day.