Real Life Radio

Jack Hibbs: Jesus Christ uses suffering to bring people to him. All of us know someone who's suffering right now. Don't despise that suffering as much as it hurts. Oftentimes I have found in my life and in your life that suffering softens the heart towards the truth. I think suffering is one of God's greatest evangelists.

David J: This is Real Life. Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I'm David J, thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God's Word, the Bible.

Jack Hibbs: Three years ago, the Real Life Network launched with a clear purpose: to bring truth to people wherever they are. Since then, we've seen God do so much through this growing platform. Viewers around the world are watching news, sermons, interviews, documentaries, conferences, cartoons, and other biblical worldview programming designed to help believers fast-forward their faith.

And RLN continues to grow. With the addition of our new articles page, viewers can now find timely, biblically-grounded insight on today's most important issues. There is so much to thank God for, but we believe there is still much more ahead. He's used us in amazing ways. He's used you in amazing ways. I believe that the Lord is continuing to open doors and we're going to continue to move forward.

So my prayer is that RLN will keep reaching more people with truth and equipping them as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and pointing them to this generation for his glory.

David J: On today's edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack continues in his series called The Life and Times of Jesus Christ in a message titled Christ and His Earthly Work. 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 his earthly work before the cross and before the resurrection. Jesus walked among ordinary people, making a difference everywhere he went and to everyone he met. Now, you see, when someone asks us why Jesus came, the answer is found right here in his everyday work.

He went about teaching the truth, proclaiming the good news, and healing the broken. And Christ is still doing that very same work today. So today, Pastor Jack teaches us that Jesus came to heal with authority over suffering and even over death itself. It's why understanding his purpose can reshape the way we see God, his offer of healing, and his desire to save us. Now, in a message called Christ and His Earthly Work, here's pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs.

Jack Hibbs: All of us enjoy being served, and don't tell me you don't. We do. Jesus says, "Listen, the example is this to those who follow me: serve one another." And he taught us that if we didn't do this, that there's consequences. And there are obviously consequences to many things, things that we neglect to do and things that we shouldn't be doing.

And Jesus teaches not by slamming down the cosmic flyswatter out of heaven and splatting you. He teaches by picking you up. Remember I've told you before how God spanks? I think it's a wonderful way how he spanks. When he spanks us who believe, his children—he'll never spank somebody who's not his child, by the way—but when he spanks us, he comes down and scoops up, catches us right in the rear end there, and with his spank, we're uplifted. Only God can spank like that.

If you don't discipline a child with love that way, you know what you're going to do? You're going to raise up a child that is filled with guilt, because that infraction will load up on their conscience over and over on top of the next, on top of the next. It must be cleared. And you owe that to your child to love them that way. Let their heart be freed because the judgment has come. God does that with us. He corrects us, but it always builds us up. Always builds us up.

So the next thing that we see this morning in Christ and his earthly work is this: and that is his teaching brought about assurance. When Jesus spoke, he brought about assurance to our hearts. Assurance. And he does it today. The Bible tells us in John chapter 10, verse 27, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them. They follow me, and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish."

I love when God talks like that. "They will never perish, neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand." If I count the hands that are involved, there's the hand of Jesus and there's the hand of the Father. And the Bible says in John chapter 10, you're right in the middle. You are right in the middle of the hands of God, and you're safe.

When Jesus taught, he brought assurance to the soul, to the heart of everyone who heard him. Jesus says in Matthew chapter 18, beginning at verse 12, he says, "What man is there among you that has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray? Does he not leave the 99 and go after that one sheep that is astray? And once he's brought him or caught him, he brings him back and rejoices."

That's how God loves you. Are you sinning? I know we sin. We sin in our thoughts or we sin in our imaginations. We may even sin in actions. But are you backslidden right now? Are you backslidden as a Christian? Are you looking back at a time when you were more right on with God? If you can, you're backslidden. And God would say to you right now, "I've left the hundred and I've come," or "I've left the 99 and I've come after the one." That's you.

And he says, "I want to pick you up and put you over my shoulders again and bring you back home." I want to encourage you, friend: listen to him. Listen to him because the faithful shepherd, if a sheep continues to wander away, a faithful shepherd will break the leg of that lamb to keep him from wandering off. He loves you. He loves me.

Jesus's teaching brought about assurance. It's awesome to realize that when Christ taught, the scriptures say, yes, that the common people heard him gladly. But it says that gathered to him were all the tax collectors, or the IRS agents today, the prostitutes, the muggers, the bums, the thieves, the outcasts. Now, that's teaching. That is an awesome thing. Jesus did this very teaching.

The next thing that we see this morning, the second point to our study, is this: Christ came to earth to preach. Here's the difference: the teaching is instructive, preaching is evangelistic. There's the teaching that goes to the body, that goes to you. Those who are already saved, those who already know Christ, he teaches. Preaching is evangelism. The word preaching means to herald forth the news, or the evangel, good news, God news.

So Jesus came to earth to preach. We saw this in Matthew chapter 4, verse 23. He went all about preaching the kingdom of God. Luke chapter 20, verse 1 says, "Now it happened on one of those days as he taught the people in the temple and preached the gospel." That is a wonderful thing. That meant that Jesus was teaching to the believers who probably brought some unbelievers. Do you see this? In teaching, he recognized that they were unbelievers in the group and so he preached. Isn't that great? I love that.

To proclaim, to preach is to proclaim. The word in Greek means to make broadly announced the news or to spread the news widely. And you know the word gospel. The word gospel does mean good news, but it's actually in its more correct form, it is God-news. God-news or God's news, the gospel. Jesus called us to preach. He preached himself.

Evangelism is not always done with words, though, by the way. It's done more importantly and sometimes more powerfully by the lifestyle you live. We can talk to people all day long. I've noticed with my children, and you've noticed with yours, that it doesn't matter what I say to them, they remember what I do. And yet some people will say, "Don't do as I do, do as I say." That's impossible. People will do as is done.

But we see this in our study, that Jesus came to earth to preach. And the first thing that we see is that Jesus preached to the heart of man. He preached to the heart of man. When Jesus preached, he cut right straight through the crowd and got into every heart of those who were listening. When Jesus preached, he was relevant and he was current.

People could associate and relate to him when Jesus preached. And that's how you became a Christian. When someone under the power of the Holy Spirit preached the gospel to you, Jesus became relevant. How did that happen? It's miraculous. I mean, look at you in here. If you're a Christian, then it's a miraculous event that brought you to this place.

The Holy Spirit took the words of some person, which were not his words, but under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Bible came out. The Holy Spirit found your seat where you were and said, or announced to you, "This is truth and you need to respond." When Jesus preached, decisions were made. Interesting: Billy Graham has said this. He said, "I know that if I am faithful to preach the gospel in every outreach, decisions will be made."

He says if he preaches the gospel, decisions will be made. And this is what he said, the next line: "Some decisions may be yes, and some decisions may be no." That is all that preaching is to accomplish. You've been witnessing to your friends. The whole act of your witnessing to your friends—I know this sounds brutal, but we are not the ones that cause the growth, we are not the ones that cause salvation to happen. Did you know that?

We are simple messengers. And the decision they make is upon their own head. We have been called to preach the truth. Do you have a friend that you have never told the gospel to? You've never preached to them the gospel? Then, my friend, if a house was burning and your friend was in that house asleep, would you go in to get them? Or would you stand outside saying, "Oh my goodness, his house is burning"? You'll go in to get them out.

To preach to your friend is to run into his house that's on fire spiritually and to get him out. To say, "Listen, your house is on fire, you need to get out." Jesus preached with relevancy and a current heart on the position of man wherever they might be. In Luke chapter 4, verse 43 and 44, Jesus says, "I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also because for this purpose have I been sent." And he was preaching in the synagogues of Galilee. He went all over preaching.

David J: 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 Hibbs.

Jack Hibbs: The next thing that we see this morning, he preached to the heart of men. He also preached to the minds of men. You can preach to the mind and simply affect the mind. You can preach to the heart and get an emotional response. But when Jesus preached, he preached to the heart and to the mind of all those who heard.

In other words, this—and we'll move on: it is that when Jesus Christ taught and preached the gospel message, it made sense and it was logical and reasonable. It was verifiable. When Jesus said something, it was factual. You would listen and say, "My goodness, that's true what he just said." When Jesus Christ preached, he preached to the mind of man.

He didn't divorce the intellect of man. In fact, the Bible makes it clear that God has created us as intellects. We think, we reason. In fact, the Bible says in Genesis that he has created us in his own image. That word means moral likeness. It doesn't mean that God is six feet tall and weighs 250. Moral likeness: "Let us make man in our image." Our moral likeness.

We have the ability to choose, to reason, to argue, to love, to think, to create. No other created being on earth has that capacity. God has given that to us. Why? We are the only ones created in his image. That is so important because he's also given us an intellect. Again, our society has so fallen—the world has so fallen in the last hundred years where the greatest minds, the greatest thinkers up until the last hundred years, have been Christians or Jews or Judeo-Christian believers.

Somehow because of the Scopes trial and the twenties and this ridiculous claim of evolution, which has absolutely fallen apart, that God's not real. God doesn't exist. And yet every human being on the inside knows that there's an eternal witness regarding his intellect: God's out there. And people don't want to believe in God because it's a moral issue.

It's not an intellectual issue. Don't let anybody ever say to you, "Well, I can't become a Christian because I'm an educated man." Well, you've been educated beyond your intelligence then. You think you're so smart? I'd like you to talk to Sir Isaac Newton about that. Go tell Newton he didn't know what he was talking about. Or some of the other greats, Kepler, the great astronomer, the father of astronomy, loved the Lord.

Amazing. Exciting. Also, he not only preached to the heart, he preached to the mind, he preached to the whole of man. When Jesus Christ preached, the very whole of the person was touched, that there was this concept in their minds generated that life is temporal and that there's an eternal life and that there's a sense of urgency, that I need to make a decision for Jesus Christ. He preached to the whole of man.

Thirdly, and we'll end with this, Jesus came to earth to heal. Yes, to heal. He has authority over traditions. I want to simply say this regarding healing in traditions. In that culture, there were those both of the Jewish world and in the non-Jewish world that had their traditions. Example, and you know this. In Mark's gospel, chapter 7, Jesus is in an area of the Decapolis, the region of ten cities.

And a man came to him, or men came to him dragging their friend, because obviously his friend didn't want to come. They had to bring him by force. And Jesus sees these men and Jesus takes this man—Mark chapter 7 around verse 35-ish—Jesus takes this man off away from the multitude. And it says in the scripture that the man had an impediment in his speech and he couldn't hear.

And the word in the Greek is so graphic: it means that the man once was able to hear and once was able to speak. And it implies in his infancy or in his young age, he had lost that. Maybe from a fever, we don't know. But Jesus pulls him off to the side from the multitude. And you know people who once were able to hear and able to speak, the noises that they can make, kind of embarrassing sounds, inarticulate sounds.

Jesus pulls him off away from the multitude. I love that. Maybe to spare embarrassment, because maybe the man just sounded so terribly. And it says there in Mark chapter 7 that Jesus looked at him. It says that Jesus grabbed his tongue. Not his own tongue, Jesus grabbed the other man's tongue. He spit on his fingers, touched his tongue.

Then it says that he put his fingers in the man's ears. What is he doing? Fingers in the ears and grabbing the tongue? And then it says that Jesus is looking up into heaven, sighed, and that word in the Greek is to snort like a horse. Very exaggerated movements Jesus made. Why? Well, he was conveying to the man that couldn't hear or speak regarding the culture where that man lived.

He broke the traditions, and the traditions were this: if a physician came to you in your culture where he lives, if he grabbed your tongue, you would be made whole. If you gave, did, thus, the other, it would be fine. Jesus met the man where he's at. Even in his traditions, Jesus had authority. And he grabs his tongue, he puts his fingers in his ears, he looks up, he sighs and all this.

And Jesus says finally, "Ephphatha," which in Aramaic says, "Be opened, be loosed, be healed." And Jesus healed him. A woman came with an issue of blood and she said to herself, "If I just touch the hem of his garment, I'll be made whole." That is not biblical. Did Jesus say, "Excuse me, but don't you dare think that just by touching the hem of my garment you'll be made whole"?

No. He says, "Who touched me?" The crowd was pushing him. He said, "No, no, no, virtue's gone out of me. I felt power leave me." Can you imagine? Jesus turns around and says, "Who touched me?" And the woman being afraid confessed up, and Jesus says, "Your faith made you whole. Go, you're healed." That was not a biblical approach to him, but he has power over tradition.

My mom's life, all her life, my mom bowed to statues in prayer. Condemned by the scriptures. She bowed to saints and to icons and statues in prayer. Four weeks before her death, she bows her knee to Jesus. In fact, she says that day, "I've been praying, why isn't—why aren't these saints helping me?" And I said, "They can't help you. They can't. I've been telling you this for years. They can't help you."

"Well, then how can I find help?" "Mom, on your knees and talk to God direct." She accepts Jesus Christ. Four weeks later she enters eternity into the kingdom of God. He's authoritative even over tradition. Amen? Quickly, he has authority over suffering. Simply this: Jesus Christ uses suffering to bring people to him. All of us know someone who's suffering right now.

Don't despise that suffering as much as it hurts. Oftentimes I have found in my life and in your life that suffering softens the heart towards the truth. I think suffering is one of God's greatest evangelists. Number three here on the third point: Jesus Christ came to heal, he has authority over death. This is what we are so excited about, of course, is that Jesus Christ has completely robbed death of its sting and of its pain.

The Bible says—you can close your Bible and rest if you want. We're done. The Bible says to be absent from this body is what? Is to be present with the Lord. "Well, Jack, what's going to happen to me when I die?" Well, first of all, are you a Christian? Yes. The moment you blink here, you blink there. Wow.

"Well, the Bible says that those who sleep in Jesus," speaking only of the appearance of the physical body, not your soul, not your spirit. To be absent from the body, says the scriptures, to be present with the Lord. Jesus came teaching, preaching, and healing. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, he does it still today.

Father, we thank you for your word and we ask even now at this hour, Lord, that you would continue to touch us through the teaching of your word as we look and consider the earthly work of Jesus, that he came to teach, he came to preach the everlasting gospel, and he came to heal. Father, we thank you that you are in business today to do the same until the culmination of the ages. We praise you for this.

While heads are bowed and eyes are closed this morning, maybe this morning you would like to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. That the truth of him dying on the cross for you has rung true. And maybe this morning you want to make a decision for Christ. I'm going to ask you wherever you're at this morning, if you can confess that you're a sinner, that is, you're not perfect, you have sinned, and you want to go to heaven, then you admit now that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, for the Bible says no man can come to the Father but through him.

If that's your heart's desire this morning, I'm going to ask you to just simply raise your hand this morning and I'm going to pray for you. Wherever you're at this morning, you might say yes to Jesus. I want him as the Lord and Savior of my life. If that's your heart's desire this morning, there'll be men up here, prayer elders with you, immediately after service as well in the back, to pray with you if you'd like to give your heart to Jesus Christ this morning.

Father, touch this church, touch our hearts. And Father, anyone who may not know you, who may be on the outside, Father, let them know that decisions they have made today, even now, has either been a yes or a no. But until you come again, until they breathe their last, the decision can be changed. Father, we pray for the touch of your spirit. In Jesus's name and all God's people said, amen.

David J: Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs, here on Real Life Radio, and his message called Christ and His Earthly Work. Thanks 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 changes everything. And we'll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.

Jack Hibbs: So as you heard from our broadcast, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And if you'd like to know what a commitment to Christ can mean in your life personally, we would love to help you out with that. Go to jackhibbs.com/knowgod. That's K-N-O-W-God. And there you'll be guided through what a commitment to Christ can mean in your life and the freedom that you'll find in knowing God. Don't miss out. That's the Know God tab at jackhibbs.com.

David J: 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.