WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.840 Real life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim 2 00:00:05.840 --> 00:00:10.840 truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. Listen, with all due respect to 3 00:00:10.840 --> 00:00:16.440 the Red Cross or to whoever United Way, all that stuff, hey, bring all the help 4 00:00:16.440 --> 00:00:22.360 you can, but only you have the gospel. Only you have the cross, only you have the 5 00:00:22.360 --> 00:00:26.880 empty tomb. It's only you that can say, here is nourishment for your body and 6 00:00:26.880 --> 00:00:30.560 here's nourishment for your soul. 7 00:00:32.040 --> 00:00:38.400 You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com slash podcast. 8 00:00:38.400 --> 00:00:43.760 Today, if this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled 9 00:00:43.760 --> 00:00:48.640 life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us, 10 00:00:48.640 --> 00:00:54.240 that's like saying amen or yes, then that rating will encourage others to listen. 11 00:00:54.800 --> 00:00:59.680 Now, open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs. 12 00:01:00.720 --> 00:01:06.160 Pulse us to them. I beseech you. I urge you. I am begging you. The believers in Rome, 13 00:01:06.160 --> 00:01:11.000 therefore brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies and living 14 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:17.440 sacrifice wholly acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be 15 00:01:17.440 --> 00:01:23.360 conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may 16 00:01:23.360 --> 00:01:30.160 prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. And all of God's people said, 17 00:01:30.720 --> 00:01:36.960 amen. Number one, jot it down if you would. It is this. Last week, we saw that if we have one 18 00:01:36.960 --> 00:01:42.080 life to live for now as a believer. And I remember I stressed for now, we have one life to live. 19 00:01:42.080 --> 00:01:49.280 Remember, I use that acronym from our youth, Yolo. You only live once. 20 00:01:49.280 --> 00:01:53.920 False doctrine. Remember, I told you that's from Satan. We do not only live once. There is 21 00:01:53.920 --> 00:01:59.440 an eternity. When you die, you don't listen. Your body dies. He said, I don't believe in God. Your 22 00:01:59.440 --> 00:02:05.280 body is still going to die. Here's the shucker rule for you is that when you die as a nonbeliever, 23 00:02:05.280 --> 00:02:11.040 your body dies, but you are still very much alive. You just don't, you just won't like the destination. 24 00:02:12.960 --> 00:02:19.120 Everybody lives forever. The Bible says there's either an eternal hell or there's an eternal heaven. 25 00:02:19.120 --> 00:02:23.520 And the choice is yours and God bought the ticket on the cross. And he rose again from the dead 26 00:02:23.520 --> 00:02:30.160 to empower that purchase price. And God extends the invitation. Choose me and live. Reject me and 27 00:02:30.160 --> 00:02:38.880 die. The choice is yours. We claim to be a culture. We love choices. We might even say in some way 28 00:02:38.880 --> 00:02:44.320 we're pro-choice. Listen, when I say pro-choice, we need to think of abortion. But let me put it 29 00:02:44.320 --> 00:02:52.080 to you this way. God's pro-choice, pro-choice this way. God wants you to use your will in your 30 00:02:52.080 --> 00:03:00.800 mind and decide from your own self who you worship. Joshua said, choose today whom you'll serve. 31 00:03:02.080 --> 00:03:08.800 The choice is we make church matters in a very important way. I want to give you this quote. I 32 00:03:08.800 --> 00:03:16.160 forgot who it's from, but it's great. Right relationships mean right living. You ponder that for a 33 00:03:16.160 --> 00:03:27.360 moment. Right relationships mean equate to produce right living. Many times in our lives we can say, 34 00:03:27.360 --> 00:03:32.160 boy, I wish I wouldn't have hung out with them because look where I'm at now. Or I'm sure glad I 35 00:03:32.160 --> 00:03:37.360 bumped into this group of people because everything's turned since for the good. Are you hearing me? 36 00:03:37.360 --> 00:03:43.920 It matters. Your mom told us don't hang out with bad people. Why? Because you become like those 37 00:03:43.920 --> 00:03:49.520 you hang out with and Paul the Apostle is saying to the church and to the believers at Rome. Here's 38 00:03:49.520 --> 00:03:54.640 what I want you to do. I want you to worship God by presenting your bodies as living sacrifices to 39 00:03:54.640 --> 00:03:59.280 God. God doesn't want you dead. He wants you alive because he can't do anything through a dead 40 00:03:59.280 --> 00:04:05.760 person. He needs your body. He wants to use your body. And so the first thing we saw last time 41 00:04:05.760 --> 00:04:13.600 is this that we are recalled by God to give him our attention. And secondly now we look at this 42 00:04:13.600 --> 00:04:20.560 and it is in fact our bodies. Point number two. One life to live means this. Give God your body. 43 00:04:22.240 --> 00:04:29.920 Your body. So what a minute, Pastor Jack? Look at my body body. Your body body. Like what parts 44 00:04:29.920 --> 00:04:38.400 of my body? All the body. Like the private parts? Those are his. I thought those were like mine. 45 00:04:38.400 --> 00:04:49.040 Nope. Unloan from God. What you do with them reflects upon God in the end. He's your creator. 46 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:56.240 He made you the way that you and I are in his image. We know what's right. We know what's wrong. 47 00:04:56.240 --> 00:05:02.960 We know what's good. We know what's bad. We got that from God. And now that you know the word of 48 00:05:02.960 --> 00:05:08.000 God, God says now that you know me, I want you to walk with me and oh by the way, I walk in a way. 49 00:05:08.000 --> 00:05:13.520 Listen everybody. I walk in a way of sacrifice. We touched on this last week a little bit. 50 00:05:14.160 --> 00:05:20.240 It is the God of the Bible who was the first one to offer up a sacrifice. Not man. 51 00:05:20.240 --> 00:05:26.080 You say, are you sure about that? Yeah, let me put it to you this way. You remember Adam and Eve's 52 00:05:26.080 --> 00:05:33.760 sin. So what did God do? God responded by taking an innocent animal and offering that animal up and 53 00:05:34.320 --> 00:05:41.840 clearly God skinned it because it said that he placed the skin of the animal to cover Adam and 54 00:05:41.840 --> 00:05:50.560 Eve's nakedness. The very first one to produce a sacrifice was God. We therefore as children of God 55 00:05:50.560 --> 00:05:57.520 in his family, we're invited now by God to offer up sacrifice. That sacrifice is not you 56 00:05:57.520 --> 00:06:03.760 dedicating your wife to the ministry. Did you hear? I didn't say your life. I said your wife. 57 00:06:03.760 --> 00:06:14.240 Pastor Jack, we're all in. I am dedicating my husband. That's cute but that's not how it works. 58 00:06:14.240 --> 00:06:19.120 You got to dedicate yourself. Nobody can do it for you and you cannot do it for somebody else. 59 00:06:21.920 --> 00:06:27.840 Paul is speaking strong words and he says right here regarding our bodies. Look at it with me. He 60 00:06:28.240 --> 00:06:33.920 says, present yourself as living sacrifices. Watch. He says that you present your bodies 61 00:06:34.560 --> 00:06:41.440 a living sacrifice. Holy, acceptable to God which is your reasonable service. So the first thing is 62 00:06:41.440 --> 00:06:46.080 this. If you jot it down is faith. How do I do this? You do it by faith, church. 63 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:52.160 Faith. Listen, this is going to be so I can't see faith. I can't feel faith. I don't know if I 64 00:06:52.160 --> 00:06:59.360 believe that. You will in a moment. Watch this. Faith does not exist in a vacuum. Faith explodes. 65 00:07:00.160 --> 00:07:07.760 You can't contain faith. Do you guys remember maybe you don't or maybe it was a SoCal thing growing 66 00:07:07.760 --> 00:07:12.720 up but somebody had, there was this thing. It was kind of like silly putty but it was like really 67 00:07:12.720 --> 00:07:19.920 gooey. It was like wet slime. You do remember you bunch of oldies. Do you remember when you had 68 00:07:19.920 --> 00:07:24.720 slime? You would buy slime. See people would pay money for this. You would pay money for it. You 69 00:07:24.720 --> 00:07:29.920 would open it up and it was horrible after a moment. It's everywhere. You try to squeeze it. What did 70 00:07:29.920 --> 00:07:33.680 it do? Members kind of therapeutic. You'd squeeze it and it would go between your fingers. 71 00:07:34.800 --> 00:07:39.040 But what would happen if you tried to nail it to the wall so to speak? It would just run. 72 00:07:40.480 --> 00:07:47.360 It could not be contained. That is a gross picture of what faith is. You can, listen, try to 73 00:07:47.360 --> 00:07:53.680 hang onto it. It's on the move. You can't pin it down. It goes. It sticks the stuff but then it spreads. 74 00:07:55.600 --> 00:08:00.400 Faith is an active verb and it is native to the Christian life. There is no such thing as 75 00:08:00.960 --> 00:08:08.640 spectator Christianity. It doesn't exist. It's a lie. To be a spectator in a Christian, it's impossible. 76 00:08:09.520 --> 00:08:16.480 Everywhere you found Jesus, what was he doing? He was loving on people. What a wild way. Also he loved 77 00:08:17.440 --> 00:08:23.120 a woman who was caught in the act of adultery. She was busted. They wanted to kill the woman 78 00:08:24.320 --> 00:08:29.280 and Jesus sees her repentant heart and he forgives her and sends her on away with a new life. 79 00:08:30.240 --> 00:08:35.840 Jesus comes across a little 12-year-old girl who's dead. He raises her from the dead. 80 00:08:36.640 --> 00:08:42.240 Jesus sees all of the followers that are listening to his messages and the day is now late and he 81 00:08:42.240 --> 00:08:52.800 feeds them with food, bread and fish miraculously. The ministry of Jesus, it's the same ministry that he 82 00:08:52.800 --> 00:08:59.360 conducts today in your life if you're willing. The number one thing regarding this text here is that 83 00:08:59.360 --> 00:09:05.600 you present your body to God. Now don't think of any excuses like, well my body is little or my 84 00:09:05.600 --> 00:09:11.520 body is big or my body is thin or my body is fat or my body is ill or my body what. If he doesn't 85 00:09:11.520 --> 00:09:19.040 matter to him don't you know he and your body belongs to him. Look in your health he wants to use 86 00:09:19.040 --> 00:09:27.280 your body. In your sickness he wants to use your body. If your body belongs to him and the Bible says 87 00:09:27.280 --> 00:09:34.960 it does, what if you are sick? Does he not know? He may not cause the sickness because we live in a 88 00:09:34.960 --> 00:09:41.680 fallen world but he'll use it. Are you not a follower of Jesus? Yes. Then listen you're not 89 00:09:41.680 --> 00:09:48.160 somehow set aside because of some ailment that has come to your life. God is setting you up for a 90 00:09:48.160 --> 00:09:56.240 ministry. I'm not going to give you details. I would never give you details on this. I went to 91 00:09:56.800 --> 00:10:03.680 my doctor that I have to see every six months. I went to my doctor and this last time on Monday 92 00:10:04.640 --> 00:10:09.920 he walks in the room and I've been I've been sharing with him for a long time but he walks in the 93 00:10:09.920 --> 00:10:18.480 room. What doctor does this? He walks in the room and he goes come here and he scoops me up and 94 00:10:18.480 --> 00:10:29.280 holds me and I'm thinking you know man this is so Jesus-like. Jesus is the doctor he wants to hold 95 00:10:30.240 --> 00:10:41.920 you. But your body we're to present it to God. The word present means to to have it come forth. The 96 00:10:41.920 --> 00:10:49.280 word present as you can imagine it means to bring it forth bring it out and to lay it down or to 97 00:10:49.280 --> 00:10:55.200 make it available. God is saying to you and I today I want to have your body be available to what 98 00:10:55.200 --> 00:11:00.320 I want to do. And this is very timely. God's timing is awesome. So with all that's going on in 99 00:11:00.320 --> 00:11:05.440 Southern California right now, right? Some of the biggest churches in the world are at least in 100 00:11:05.440 --> 00:11:13.360 America or in Southern California. So listen I would predict that the biggest magnitude of 101 00:11:13.360 --> 00:11:17.360 love response would be coming from the churches of Southern California. That's what I'm expect 102 00:11:17.360 --> 00:11:23.440 to happen. This is our golden moments. So I'm hoping to see, right? Don't you? All of these 103 00:11:23.440 --> 00:11:31.440 Christians bumping elbows together, knocking each other down to help. Love does that. Why? Because 104 00:11:31.440 --> 00:11:37.200 how do we do it? We do with our bodies. See we've kind of written off our bodies. Well I'm going 105 00:11:37.200 --> 00:11:42.320 to heaven. Hallelujah. And we think about heaven and that's great. But listen you don't sit around and 106 00:11:42.320 --> 00:11:48.240 just dream about your retirement all day long while all the work is being passed by. Now you've 107 00:11:48.240 --> 00:11:56.880 got to do your work. Same thing about the believer in heaven. Heaven is that's there. We're going to 108 00:11:56.880 --> 00:12:02.400 it at the right time in the meantime. We are to present our bodies as living sacrifices to God 109 00:12:02.400 --> 00:12:08.880 and holy meaning this usable. I loved Pastor Chuck Smith would always say this. Always to the 110 00:12:08.880 --> 00:12:17.840 pastor's conferences. Chuck would say, make sure men you keep yourselves usable. What a great 111 00:12:17.840 --> 00:12:26.400 word because we could become so quickly disqualified from ministry. Keep yourself usable. Present yourself 112 00:12:26.400 --> 00:12:34.080 to God. So we would say, Lord, here I am, use me. And I think God is saying that to every Christian 113 00:12:34.160 --> 00:12:39.440 today, that takes faith because here's what's fun about faith. You thought it was invisible. You 114 00:12:39.440 --> 00:12:44.480 thought wrong because faith is so active. God will get a hold of you in those hands that you held 115 00:12:44.480 --> 00:12:50.560 up a moment ago. That's exactly how Jesus is going to be touching people with your hands. It's 116 00:12:50.560 --> 00:12:55.520 your feet that are going to be taking Jesus to people who would otherwise never cross the threshold 117 00:12:55.520 --> 00:13:03.920 of a church. That is awesome. This horrible crisis in our Southland is an open door of ministry. 118 00:13:04.960 --> 00:13:10.400 And listen, with all due respect to the red cross or to whoever united way, all that stuff, 119 00:13:10.400 --> 00:13:17.760 hey, bring all the help you can. But only you have the gospel. Only you have the cross. Only you 120 00:13:17.760 --> 00:13:23.200 have the empty tomb. It's only you that can say, here is nourishment for your body and here's 121 00:13:23.200 --> 00:13:29.840 nourishment for your soul. We will do. We will go and we will be in the name of Jesus. 122 00:13:30.800 --> 00:13:38.640 How do we do that with our bodies? But we move in that arena by faith. We've got to say, 123 00:13:38.640 --> 00:13:43.680 I'm going. I'm going to do. I'm going to contribute. I'm going to speak up. I'm going to whatever. 124 00:13:45.200 --> 00:13:52.720 We do that with our bodies. The Bible tells us in 1 John 5 verse 4, for everyone born of God 125 00:13:52.720 --> 00:14:00.240 overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. I love it. 126 00:14:01.040 --> 00:14:07.360 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the son of God, 127 00:14:07.360 --> 00:14:12.800 says the Bible. Do you believe that Jesus is the son of God? Then listen, if that's true, 128 00:14:12.800 --> 00:14:19.760 there would be a natural incumbent faith active in our lives. I know this is a strong message, 129 00:14:19.760 --> 00:14:28.480 but let's be honest. Can you not sense the late hour of our time? I do not want to have a church 130 00:14:28.480 --> 00:14:36.400 packed with spectators. You want to do that? Go to the circus. God wants people who are saying, 131 00:14:36.400 --> 00:14:53.360 I want to see this book live in my life. I want to see the words on these pages 132 00:14:56.000 --> 00:15:02.720 live through our mouth and our skin. I don't want some theoretical Christianity, 133 00:15:02.800 --> 00:15:08.800 the world has seen enough of that trash. We need to love and we need to get out there 134 00:15:09.840 --> 00:15:12.400 and it begins with loving each other. Faith. 135 00:15:15.440 --> 00:15:18.320 Say, Jack, I don't know how to do that. None of us know how to do that. 136 00:15:19.840 --> 00:15:23.920 Just sheer act of obedience. There's no doubt about it, but you can't be obedient to God if you don't 137 00:15:24.960 --> 00:15:29.520 exercise your faith, but it's not like I'm asking to jump into a black hole. That's not Christian faith. 138 00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:34.160 Our faith is founded upon fact. Check it out this way. It's quite revealing. I'm going to give you 139 00:15:34.160 --> 00:15:41.200 two passages. They'll dovetail together. Are you guys okay? All right. I wasn't very convincing, 140 00:15:41.200 --> 00:15:47.360 but I'll keep going. Mark chapter 8 verse 35 says, Jesus speaks and He says, 141 00:15:47.360 --> 00:15:53.840 for whoever desires to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake and the 142 00:15:53.840 --> 00:16:01.920 gospels will save it. Wow. I say, wait, what does that say? If I desire to lose my life, 143 00:16:01.920 --> 00:16:05.920 I'm supposed to desire, I'm supposed to desire that? Oh yeah, if you understand what Jesus is 144 00:16:05.920 --> 00:16:11.200 talking about, because listen, He says if you give it up, in fact, look, look at Luke chapter 9 verse 23, 145 00:16:11.200 --> 00:16:20.560 this is epic. Luke 9 23. Then Jesus said to them to all of them, if anyone desires to come after 146 00:16:20.560 --> 00:16:28.480 me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, follow me, for whoever desires to save his 147 00:16:28.480 --> 00:16:34.560 life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. So what does this mean? 148 00:16:36.960 --> 00:16:43.120 Faith and action as a Christian, this means that you take your life, all the things you're 149 00:16:43.120 --> 00:16:50.640 interested in, whatever is you, and you say to Jesus, Jesus, I give it all to you. It's all yours. 150 00:16:52.720 --> 00:16:59.520 I give it. And if there's things in my life that's not acceptable to you, Jesus, slay it. 151 00:17:00.800 --> 00:17:07.520 Take it out. You said, what if you're not willing to have some of these idols removed? Ask them, 152 00:17:07.600 --> 00:17:14.480 Lord, make me willing. God calls me to hate the idols in my life. I don't want anything between 153 00:17:14.480 --> 00:17:22.240 you and I. I want to be used by you, God. And so here's my life. You know, Jesus does. He takes 154 00:17:22.240 --> 00:17:32.720 your life from you, puts it in the shop. He starts stripping it down and polishing and scraping, 155 00:17:32.720 --> 00:17:38.160 then he starts rebuilding. And then he puts on your life, all the things that he intended for you 156 00:17:38.160 --> 00:17:44.560 to have in the first place, that you could never, ever accept, accept because you wouldn't accept 157 00:17:46.080 --> 00:17:53.120 until God got your attention. And then guess what he does? He hands it back to you. You get your life 158 00:17:53.120 --> 00:18:01.440 back. If you give it to him, you give it back. If you hang on to it. Oh, that's pathetic. If you 159 00:18:01.440 --> 00:18:09.440 hang on to it, I was looking for some sort of a prop. So here's my wallet. It's thin because 160 00:18:09.440 --> 00:18:19.920 there's not much in there except plastic. If I say to this, you can't have it. It's mine. 161 00:18:19.920 --> 00:18:32.400 It's my precious. And God over and over again in life gives me opportunity to help somebody with 162 00:18:32.400 --> 00:18:40.400 this. And I say no way. We're tart for this. It's mine. This is the kingdom I've built. 163 00:18:40.400 --> 00:18:52.640 You know you're going to die. The end is death. Some people choose this for some decades. 164 00:18:54.960 --> 00:19:05.120 And they make the choice and lose an eternity. You give Jesus your life. He'll repackage it and 165 00:19:05.120 --> 00:19:14.960 give it back to you. 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