Real Life Radio

Guest (Male): Today, on Real Life Radio.

Jack Hibbs: Aren’t you glad that you're on his side? A lot of people say, “Well, I’m glad God’s on my side.” God ain’t on your side. You’re on his side. There’s a big difference. We have come to believe in him, but you’ve got to come first.

Guest (Male): This is Real Life. Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs.

David J: I'm David J, thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God's Word, the Bible.

Guest (Male): Hey everybody, we're very excited about this special offer. It's called Bold Stand. It's a back-to-school faith guide for your young one. It's going to help them take a stand for Christ even in the public school culture. It's very, very well done. It's a pamphlet. They can put it in their backpack or put it within the pages of any book. It's very colorful. It's in cartoon style, and I think your kids are going to love it. So please get a copy for yourself. Bold Stand, Back to School Faith Guide. Get this and more at jackhibbs.com.

David J: On today's edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack continues his series called The Life and Times of Jesus Christ, and his message titled Christ, the Son of God. Now, this is a series about who Jesus really is, not the Jesus of popular opinion, but the Jesus of the Bible, God Himself, who stepped into our world.

And here we'll discover what it truly means to come to him. You see, a lot of us think that we know who Jesus is, but if someone were to ask us about him, would we really know what to say? You see, many of us are not aware that Jesus really isn't less than God. He is fully God, sent down to this earth in human skin to make a way for a relationship with him.

So today, Pastor Jack reminds us that coming to Christ is far deeper than a moment or a decision. It's realizing he is the one worthy of our trust. Real faith isn't just believing in him, it's surrendering every part of our lives to him, no matter where he leads. Now with his message called Christ, the Son of God, here's Pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs.

Jack Hibbs: Father, we come before you, and Lord, we ask in your holy and righteous and awesome name, Lord, that you would now continue to inhabit the praises of your people. Lord, as we worship you in the Word.

Father, we bring the pen of the ready writer as Solomon speaks of, and we stand, Lord, ready. And we pray, Father, that as your Word goes out, it would transform our lives. Lord, and if that not be the case, it is not because that your Word lacks power. It is not because, Lord, that you are not enthroned, but it is because we're not listening.

So, Father, I pray that you would anoint us in these last days to be careful and diligent hearers of the Word, that we might be doers of it. And Father, we pray that you'd bless this time as we look to Christ Jesus, the Son of God. So, Father, we invite you now to take absolute control in Jesus' name. Amen.

Matthew chapter 3, beginning at verse 13, it says there, "Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. And John tried to prevent him, saying, 'I have need to be baptized by you, and you are coming to me?'"

"But Jesus answered and said to him, 'Permit it to be so for now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.' Then he allowed him. Then Jesus, when he had been baptized, came up immediately up out of the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon him, and suddenly a voice came from heaven saying, 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.'"

This morning we're going to be looking at Jesus Christ in the context, as we go through our theme in series, on Christ, the Son of God. And of course, we've been using Colossians chapter 2 verse 9 as our, really, hallmark or touchstone of the whole series. And that is, "For in Christ, all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form."

So, I'm going to ask you, of course, I always ask you, it's almost like a little routine of mine, I guess, that you take notes this morning, because we're going to hit on some things that are extremely important. Who is Jesus Christ, the Son of God? Can you answer that question?

When we get together, I was speaking to a woman last night who reminded me how important it is that I describe to you by way of an introduction just exactly what we're doing. Normally at Calvary Chapel, you know that we go verse by verse, book by book, chapter by chapter, through the Bible, exegetical teaching, through the Bible.

And we have broken off from that for a moment to go through this 16-week series, and we are in part 10 today. But what we are doing is not so much a topical series but a doctrinal series. And this doctrinal series is that of Christ.

And the reason why this was born here at this fellowship is because quite a while back someone came up to me and said, "You know, in a message you mentioned that Jesus is God, and I would like to know where you get that idea." And I was shocked. My first thing, you know, quite honestly, was a little bit of carnality. I thought inside, "What? You go to this church and you don't know such an essential thing of Christianity?"

I was offended. And then I had to step back and think, "Lord, have I neglected you? Lord, have I somehow betrayed you? Have I not made the issue clear that Jesus is God? The Holy Spirit is God, that the Father is God?"

And as I began to pray and pray, I believe the Lord laid on my heart that we should go through this doctrinal teaching of Christ, and we've covered many topics. This morning, of course, being number 10: Jesus Christ, the Son of God. What does it mean?

Well, we'll touch on some things this morning, and as we do, you need to be very careful that you do not think of Jesus, listen, the Son of God, as being someone less than the Father or less than the Son. Don't you dare look at Jesus in our Western culture of viewing. It's wrong. That is, we, in our Western culture, view sonship wrong or in a wrong manner.

In America, in Canada, in the West, we have a very low view of sonship. When I say sonship, I mean the relation between the son and the Father. We perceive that the son is something much more less than the Father. And we've mentioned this in our earlier studies, but we need to repeat it because we learn by that, that Jesus Christ, being the Son of God, the Bible makes clear, is that as he has come in his humanity, he is both God and man at the same time.

It's a miracle. It's exclusively possessed by Jesus alone. Not by anyone, and not by any one of us who are Christians. You might say, "Well, Jack, doesn't my Bible say that we are all sons of God now?" Yes, but in a totally different way.

Jesus is the Son of God, and we're going to see exactly what that means, but the concept to us, as father-son relationship, is very different. We need to be very careful. And so we often are ripped off by the culture that you and I live in because we have this void between the Father and Son in way of authority or relationship.

Hebrews chapter 1, verse 1 through 3 tells us, "God who at various times and in various ways spoke in times past by the fathers, or to the fathers, by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds."

"Who being in the brightness of his glory," that is, Jesus being in the brightness of the glory of God, and the power, "when he had by himself," that is, without any external assistance whatsoever, "purged our sins and sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high." This is exclusively the performance of the Son of God. Christ, the Son of God.

So, the first thing that we come to this morning in our note taking is the very, very powerful declaration. We'll look at four of them today, and that is we must come to the Son of God. You might say, "Well, for crying out loud, I already know that." We must come to the Son of God. Let me explain a little bit about what this should mean to us.

When we come to the Son of God, it's going to demand of us several things. Now, I believe that we are living in the last days. I believe that the gospel is being watered down like never before worldwide. We must come to the Son of God. It doesn't mean that we somehow get him as being a Democrat. Oh, we certainly know that can't happen, as a Democrat.

Oh, I find that, I find that highly offensive. Are you a Republican? I'm a monarchist. Don't you dare label me as a Republican or a Democrat or an independent. I got in a lot of trouble like you did, being an independent, haven't we? Get that? Independent from God? It's okay. It's early for service.

No, I'm a monarchist, like most of you are here this morning. I believe in a ruling, reigning king, and I'm waiting for him to come back any moment to take possession of his rightly purchased property. That is, yours truly.

We must come to God. But how do we do this? And what are the important things that we need to consider about that? What does it mean to come to God? This is probably a question that we need to ask for the friends and family members that we witness to. They don't know to ask that question. Did you know that? Very rarely someone will say, "What does it mean to come to God? What do I need to do?"

I am so happy. I am so happy. Anything can happen today. I don't care. Because I am so happy, because last week in third service, my heart's joy was fulfilled. I was preaching with you together, regarding the necessity of the cross and coming to the cross, as we went through that particular topic in our series.

And in one of the services, I don't remember which, I had mentioned that it would be awesome for once to preach a message that would cause someone, as it was in the early chapters of Acts, for someone to just come running and desperate conviction of the Spirit of God, knowing that they're hell-bound, for them to come and say, "What must I do to be saved?"

"I got the message. What do I do? I don't want to live another moment outside of Jesus." Man, third service last week, a young man, 28 years of age, came, in fact, I stepped right off the podium. He made a bee-line from the back, met me right in the middle while you are all singing, and he says, "I've got to talk to you."

And he looked totally normal. He was of normal mind. He wasn't nuts. He wasn't emotional. He was, he was urgent though. And we went right into the prayer room, and went in there and sat down. I said, "What is it?" And I was feeling rather spunky after last week's message.

And he says, "I don't know what to do." I said, "About what?" He said, "About my, my sin." I said, "Well, what do you want to do about it?" "I don't know." And I sat there, and I didn't give him anything. I sat there and I listened to him. "Well, what's your problem?" "I'm a sinner." "How do you know that?"

And I was really sarcastic with him, but with love. No, no, I do mean that. You can only do that in God, you know. I didn't want, you know, remember we talked about the rich young ruler. So here's this young guy. I didn't know if he had any money. I didn't know if he had any authority. But he was young. And so I was really laying it or not laying it on him.

And at the end I told him, I said, "You know, well, this is what you got to do. Boom, boom, boom, you know." And, um, I said, "You know, the Bible says that today is the day. Now is the time. But if you want to go think about it, that's your business."

"But I got a second service, or I got a service to prepare for tonight, and I got to get moving." And he says, "I want to accept Jesus now!" And it was like, "Hooking on the Marlin!" I mean, it was like, "Yes!" And I began to reel him in. It was incredible.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Real Life with Pastor Jack Hibbs. To learn more about this ministry or to catch up on some previous episodes, go to jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. And now, let's get back to today's message. Once again, here's Pastor Jack.

Jack Hibbs: We must come to the Son of God. But how do we come? What must I do to come? By the way, this very, very concept, put your little yarmulkes on, get real Jewish with me for a moment. Kick off your shoes and put on some sandals. It was very confusing and difficult regarding the religious person of Jesus' day to grasp this concept of coming to the Son of God.

In fact, even today, honestly, look in your Bible. Somehow we think, and I'm not against them, that's how I came to Christ, but we think that somehow people get saved by getting up and coming forward at an altar call. That's not, I repeat, not how people get saved. If that's how people get saved, then why did Jesus go to a cross? If that's how people get saved, then why don't you all just come forward?

You see, we begin to put trust in the movement and the activity. "Well, I went forward." That is not coming to Christ. As much as I love it, that's not it. Coming to Christ is to realize a few things, and in the ancient world, when Jesus walked the earth, the whole concept was radical. To come to Christ? What does that mean?

And you'll never exactly find a verse in the Bible that would match our modern-day actions of altar call or whatever, or I often hear, say, "Raise your hand." We can find scriptures that would substantiate possibly backing that request up, but you're not going to find a verse, "Come forward and receive Jesus Christ." It's accepting him. We'll talk about that in a moment.

What does it mean to come to him? In Jesus's time, that was a weird concept. If you're Jewish, you're kind of born into the deal. If you're Gentile, it's believed that you're not in the deal. Then Christ comes along, which carries the prophetic fulfillment of Judaism.

And the fulfillment of Judaism is called, very few people in the world know this, are you ready to write it down? You'll be the smartest people in the world with this one. You ready? You get it for free. The fulfillment of Judaism, when Messiah comes, and he came, and he's coming again, is called Messiah-anity, or we call it in our Greek tongue, our world Western tongue, Christianity.

The fulfillment of Judaism is coming to Messiah. To come to Messiah is to become a Christian. What does it mean? Well, to do that, it's the touchstone of worship, for one thing. Not the physical temple that was in Jerusalem. That was a thing that the Jew believed in. "We go to the temple to worship." Do you know anybody today that would say, "I can't pray unless I go to the church." "I can't worship unless I go into the sanctuary." That's wrong.

It's wrong now. Because we can do that anywhere. But during the time of Christ, when Christ came, what did it mean to say, "You must accept Christ"? Well, to that concept, to that mindset back then, everything that was religious and of God was connected to the temple, in Jerusalem. And yet Jesus came, really, frankly, to fulfill and then take down the material.

The way into the temple was via a priest back then, a priest who would represent you in your case to God with a sacrifice, and never without a sacrifice. There had to be a sacrifice. It was a very liturgical protocol and exact. The things that you did had to be exact. There was a very strict and stringent protocol laid out by Moses, how someone came into the temple.

Very, very important. When John the Baptist came on the scene, who remember John the Baptist was the last of the Old Testament prophets. He was the last of the Old Testament prophets. John the Baptist appears on the scene and introduces into the minds of the people a whole new way of thinking, a radical way of thinking.

And John argued this. He says, "Jesus is the Lamb of God." I want you to mark that in your mind. Jesus is the Lamb of God. If you're Jewish right now, and you're all Jewish, remember, the first church was predominantly Jewish. Very few Gentiles in the first church. They even met in synagogues.

When John the Baptist, who everyone honored, when he said, "Jesus is the Lamb of God." What in the world did he mean by that? That's a bizarre concept. Listen, it's radical regarding that announcement. What we say concerning this is extremely important. We must come to the Son of God, because he is the only Son announced.

God sent John the Baptist to announce Jesus Christ. Matthew 3:13. We just got done reading it. Jesus comes on the scene, and Jesus says to John, paraphrasing this, "Suffered to be so, to baptize me that all righteousness might be fulfilled." The sonship is such an important thing. And it was at that moment that God opened up the heavens, and he came down by voice and said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

But we need to understand something. He is the only announced Messiah. It's not Buddha. It's not Muhammad. It's not Joseph Smith. It's not Sai Baba. It's not Sun Myung Moon. It's not Rajneesh. It's not Shreez Bambi. It's not, and on and on you go. The Scriptures announced Christ in his coming.

But to come to Christ is to first of all, realize something. Before you make that decision, you must realize he's the only Son announced. And he still is the only Son announced at this hour. And I got good news for you. As we read in Hebrews chapter 1 a moment ago, he's the only one that's ever going to be announced.

Aren't you glad that you're on his side? A lot of people say, "Well, I'm glad God's on my side." God ain't on your side. You're on his side. There's a big difference. We have come to believe in him, but you've got to come first. The sonship. He's the only one announced. You know, as I mentioned earlier, that culture's very, very passionate about that.

And you might meet someone, maybe you have a precious Jewish friend, and they're so into that precious culture of theirs about the son. By the way, if you are a lawyer this morning, an attorney at, say, family law, or if you're an estate attorney, you, chances are, you will never move your practice to Israel or where there's a strong Jewish presence.

Because they don't believe in that garbage. What? When the son reaches the age of 30 in the house, all that the father has is transferred to the son, even though the father's the patriarch. The son runs it all. There's no, there's no dealing in court about estate inheritance. Oh, no.

That would put a lot of people out of business, you know, in America. No, the father says, "Now, that you're 30," by the way, they, they consider that youth. Amen, huh? Hallelujah. If that's true, then I'm just a little, you know, no, I'm kidding. The father would say, "Now all that I have is transferred to you." The father had governorship over it all.

Remember the old man whose son had gone wayward with his inheritance? That young man, we know in that prodigal son proverb, in that prodigal son scenario, every Jew would have realized that that boy who took off with his inheritance was about 30 years of age. You see how stupid that boy was?

30 years of age. "Yeah, give me my inheritance, Dad." And he hands it to him, and he goes out and squanders it. Sonship. But you would hear a Jewish woman, I heard, and maybe you have too, in just things and traveling or whatever, "Oh, this is my son, the lawyer."

"Or this is my son, the doctor." They're very proud to announce to you what their son does. It's important to them. God says, "This is my son." It's the Son of God. Jesus Christ was announced by God. Note that. "Well, how do you know that Jesus is the Son of God?" God said so. Matthew chapter 3. God said so.

"This is my beloved Son." We're going to look at a few things, and I'm going to give you this verse. If you're paying attention, this is about the third time I've given this verse in four weeks. I'm hot on this verse. I love this one. Proverbs 30 verse 4. You probably have it memorized by now.

Proverbs 30 verse 4 says, "Who has ascended into heaven or descended? And who has gathered the winds in his fist? And who has bound up the waters in his garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth?" Gee, who do you think he's talking about? Amen. He says, "What is his name? And what is his son's name if you know?" And in the Hebrew, the word title son is capitalized, speaking of deity.

That's a great verse. Jesus the Son of God. I'm going to run through some verses real quick. If I'm going too fast, get the tape or rewind something, I don't know. The Son of God. Psalm chapter 2 verse 7. Powerful message. Psalm 2 verse 7. And we declare and decree, "The Lord, he has sent me. You are my Son. Today I've I have begotten or glorified you or established you in the minds of men as my only one."

You know, there's going to be people who knock on your door that represent a cult who say, "Oh, this word begotten means he's lesser than God." Not true. Don't be duped by that. Acts chapter 13 verse 33. God has fulfilled this for us his children, and that he has raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, "You are my Son. Today I have begotten you."

You see the uniqueness? You can take that word begotten and and even put it as unique. Unique. Because again, there are people knocking on your doors who will absolutely attack you on this word begotten. They'll tell you it means that Jesus is lesser than, and they're going to pull some verses out of context and deceive you. You're going to call the church and you're going to be all upset because now you have a bunch of doubts in your mind, and you're confused. Know your Bible. He's the only one announced.

David J: Pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs, here on Real Life Radio. And his message called Christ, the Son of God. Thanks so much for being with us today. You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack's series called The Life and Times of Jesus Christ. It's a series about the real Jesus of the Bible, God in the flesh, and why knowing him more deeply really changes everything. And we'll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.

Guest (Male): America's founding wasn't just political, it was biblical. In The American Story, The Beginnings, Tim and David Barton uncover the scripture-anchored principles that shaped this nation from day one. It's the history they don't teach anymore, and the history every American needs. Give a gift to real life and receive the book, plus a free kids' guide for America's 250th birthday, and check out our Faith and Freedom collection, bold apparel to wear in celebration of America. Visit jackhibbs.com or call 877-777-2346.

Guest (Male): Hey, thank you again so much for listening. And if you'd like to hear or see more of what we do here, you can always go to jackhibbs.com for all the latest on what's going on with this ministry. And please, if you're ever in the Southern California area, come see us at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills. We'd love to see you there in person. It has been so good to be with you today, and I pray you find yourself in the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. See you on the next episode. This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in his Word. We'll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.