Real Life Radio

Guest (Male): Today, on Real Life Radio. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. You can’t stop someone like that. Paul, what are you doing? I’m living life. For what? What’s your purpose? What’s your meaning? What’s your cause? Christ. This is Real Life.

David J: 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.

Guest (Male): Are you watching what’s happening but wondering what it means? Every day brings new headlines but not always real answers. In Happening Now, Pastor Jack Hibbs breaks it all down through the lens of Scripture: clear, direct, grounded in truth.

From global events to cultural shifts, you’ll see what the others miss and why it matters. Watch the latest episode now at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com.

Guest (Male): On today’s edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack continues now in his series called Disciplines of Life and a message titled Disciplines of Detail. Even the smallest of details can matter to God. When we’re faithful in the little things, He’s faithful to trust us with the big things.

Faith builds in us a strong and effective life that God can use. The way we live, our habits, our prayer life, even our attitudes help shape our character. When things get hard or inconvenient, we have a God that is interested in every aspect of our lives.

Today, Pastor Jack teaches us that our God is a God of detail. When we consider creation, even ourselves, life is in the details. When we stop the rushing and the chaos, it’s the details of life that make life worth living. Now with his message called Disciplines of Detail, here is Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs.

Jack Hibbs: Father, we ask you, Lord, that tonight as we look to this topic, this portion of our Disciplines of Life series, Lord, that you would invade right now by the power of your Holy Spirit—the process, the recesses of our mind, the very depths of our soul.

Lord, it is so great to be not only one of your children or all of us tonight your children together in corporate worship, but Lord, it’s so great to have you as a real, true, living God. We don’t have to drum you up. We don’t have to do incantations or shout, jump up and down, and go crazy to try to get ourselves into some lather to maybe sense or feel something.

You are so awesome to have made the gospel as it is, that from Old Testament to New Testament, you said that you would inhabit your people. Father, we just pray right now that you would just be inside of us by the power of your Spirit.

Lord, I just rejoice tonight. I just have an extra appreciation tonight that we’re not Christians this evening because in America or some part of the world where we’ve heard the gospel, it was just the thing to do. We’re not Christians because we’re in a club. We’re not here tonight because there’s nothing else going on in the city.

We’re here, Lord, because we’ve come to worship you because we’ve encountered you. It’s amazing, Father, from all walks of life and various levels of life, we’ve come to gather around the name Jesus, the very one in your Scripture that I love so dearly. Lord, in Proverbs thousands and thousands of years ago, written in the book of Proverbs, you’re asking Israel right then and there, "What is my name and what is the name of my son if you can tell me?" I thank you tonight that we can say it’s Jesus. We praise you for that. Bless our study time, bless our worship, and it’s in your name we pray. Amen.

Church, grab your Bibles tonight and turn, if you would this evening, to Philippians chapter 1 and Matthew 28. Those two locations. Matthew chapter 28, Philippians chapter 1. We’re looking at our titled special series, and the special title tonight is the discipline of detail. What does that mean?

Philippians chapter 1, verse 21, but first, Matthew 28:18. Jesus came to His disciples and spoke to them saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations"—all peoples, the word there is *ethnos*—"all peoples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

And now Philippians chapter 1, verse 21. This is where we’ll spend our time in tonight. Paul said to the church at Philippi, "For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain." One of the most radical statements made by a disciple of Jesus Christ, none other than by the apostle Paul.

A man who knew something about religiosity, he knew something about formality. The man was a Pharisee. He was a Jew. He was a leader in the nation of Israel regarding Judaism. He had achieved the status that today in the world probably nobody can claim.

He gives a litany of his both God-given rights, his birthrights, and his achievements. Paul says that he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, that he was circumcised on the eighth day, and of the tribe of Benjamin, mind you. Concerning righteousness and the law, he was blameless before men. Nobody could accuse Paul of any wrongdoing. Can you imagine?

By the way, that’s the way you and I are supposed to live. Let me explain that for a second. I love what my pastor, Chuck Smith, says. He said, "Listen, you stand up and you take a stand, and you’re going to be accused. Just make sure there’s no bite to the accusation." That’s cool stuff.

If you take a stand, you’re going to be attacked. Let them attack, and listen, you don’t need to defend yourself when they attack if you know that those attacks are false. He was an amazing witness for Judaism, and Paul goes on to say, "You know what? When I encountered Jesus Christ, I threw my Judaism out the window."

I don’t mean to say that in a derogatory way. He says it himself, that all of the things that he did to meet the requirements of righteousness, he did all of these things. Imagine religious zealots today. They do all of these things to earn a status or a position with God, and they’re never quite sure if they’re good enough.

That’s how legalism is. You’re never quite sure if you’re going to make it. You’re never quite sure if you’re walking straight enough or whatever. You’re always insecure. Legalistic people who are trying to earn their way into heaven or impress their god or gods by their performance are terribly insecure people.

That’s what legalism does. Paul, though, was not like that in the sense that he said, "Man, I’ve looked at the requirements of the law and I’ve met the requirements." That’s what he believed in his mind and that’s what he did in an outward performance. But what Paul had missed was the spirit of knowing God.

That’s what the New Testament is all about. Don’t think for a moment that the Old Testament and the New Testament are two separate books and they don’t relate to one another. Not at all. They’re exactly a dovetail connection. It’s not some different thing.

The Old Testament declares the holiness of God and the demands that He places upon man if he’s going to try to be perfect to get to heaven. The beautiful thing about the Old Testament is that if you read it carefully—for that matter, just read the Ten Commandments carefully—you’ll come to the conclusion that you can’t be good enough to get to heaven.

That’s what the law is all about. In the book of Galatians, Paul used the word to the church at Galatia that the law is, in the Greek, it’s *paidagogos*. In the English, the closest thing we can use is the word "schoolmaster." We don’t even have schoolmasters anymore.

You know what a schoolmaster is, though? A schoolmaster is that person that’s in class that actually makes you do your homework to the point of death if necessary. They walk around, you know. Really high-end private schools have a schoolmaster. The guy or the gal walks around kind of dressed like Hitler.

If you’re cheating, they’ll whack you or whatever. They’re just... and you say, "Jack, really?" Yeah, that’s what the Bible says regarding the law: that the law was to walk around and look at you and bust you the moment you stepped out of line. The Bible tells us that by the works or keeping of the law, no man shall be justified before God.

Yikes! That’s why when you read in the Bible Abraham’s life, when you read David’s life, these guys had New Testament lives in the Old Testament. God tells Abraham—I love this, this has nothing to do with my notes, I haven’t even started yet. You guys, I love this about Abraham.

Abraham, oh listen, because this generates mail every time I say this, and yet it’s theologically perfectly accurate. Check this out. Abraham—Abram before he was called Abraham—does anybody know where he was from? Ur of the Chaldees.

Abraham came from the region that today would be more Babylonian than our mind of thinking. Well, he’s a Hebrew. Yes, he’s a Hebrew. He’s a descendant from Eber. Eber was a guy. He was of the DNA of Eber, yes. But Abraham, we say is a Hebrew.

But listen, God tells Abraham that he’s justified by faith, right? It’s in the Bible. God declares Abraham righteous. Guess what? How could God declare Abraham righteous when Moses hadn’t even been born yet? There was no law. There were no Ten Commandments when Abraham was walking around.

Moses came later, and God says, "You’re righteous." Why? To rub it into our hearts and heads that you can’t get to heaven by keeping the law. And then God says to Abraham, "You’re my friend, you’re justified. The just shall live by faith." God said that to him before he was ever circumcised.

Abraham was a Gentile before he was a Jew. I’ve said that in Israel and almost got killed. I’m not kidding. It is true. God says, "You’re my friend, you’re righteous. I declare that so because you have faith in me." He was not circumcised, he was not able to keep the law; the law didn’t exist.

Why? Because it is all by faith. Paul comes along and encounters Jesus Christ on that road as he was heading to Damascus, Syria, 2,000 years ago. He encounters Jesus Christ and Paul says, "Everything that I racked up in my religious achievements—all of my degrees, all of my successes, all of my power in being a Pharisee, all of my wealth—evaporated in a second."

"I’ve counted all things loss that I may gain Christ." Do you know that in your life? Have you encountered God personally to where you know you’re His? And if, listen, if you know what it’s like to love and to care and to concern and to show emotion, you being one created in the image of God, how much more does God show those things toward you and wants that relationship with you?

It is awesome. And so when Paul meets up with this God of the Bible, he says, "You know what? For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." You can’t stop someone like that. Paul, what are you doing? I’m living life. For what? What’s your purpose? What’s your meaning? What’s your cause? Christ.

Well, what are you going to do when you’re dead? What are you going to do when you die? What are you going to do if I kill you right now, Paul? To gain. I’m just going to gain. You want to help me out? Send me to the gain. You want to put me into retirement? Retire me. Isn’t that amazing? You can’t stop somebody like that.

He’s got a purpose, he’s got a reason. That’s the great thing about detail tonight, the discipline of detail. It is this: our God is a God of detail. In the Bible, you find that out clearly. Consider His creation. Our God is a God of detail. Consider yourself being a created being.

You are an amazingly detailed human being. Your blood cells, your very DNA—genius, brilliant, unbelievably amazing. When you’re conceived in your mother’s womb and all of the science that’s going on, there’s an explosion of information when sperm and egg come together that is unparalleled in the universe.

There’s more data taking place at conception than Mars and Jupiter and all the stuff and their astronomical angles and speeds and gravities. It’s amazing. God is a God of detail. It’s the details of life that make life worth living. Think about that.

We’re a people that have a tendency to skim over the details. The more, listen, the more you and I are in a rush, the more danger it is for you and I. Always in a hurry, always in a hurry. This is a danger of our culture. It may be incurable unless God, you know, knocks us out and we have to lay down for a while.

Constantly going, constantly moving. And you know what? We can miss the details. Life is lived in the details. You guys, I think you know this, I’ve said this before. I love graveyards. I love old graveyards. I love taking black and white photos of an old graveyard that’s just awesome.

It’s amazing because you’ve got all of these names and stuff, and you’ve got this guy born in 1796 and he died in 1834. What’s between the two years? Those? What’s between those dates is a dash. Who cares? Who cares when he was born? Do you think anybody really cared, walked around life saying, "When were you born?"

Nobody walks around saying, "Hey, when were you born? Oh, look, he died, that’s the year he died." We look at a tombstone and we go, "That guy lived, he was born then and he died then." If you’ve ever—does this sound morbid? You ought to try it sometime.

Go to a really cool old graveyard and look and think for a moment. You wonder, how was the dash part? How did the dash part work out? Who is this guy? It’s the dash that you live your life. It’s in the details that you’re living your life. This is an amazing thing because you and I can be in such a great hurry all the time that we’ve lost the art or discipline of detail.

God is in the details. You know, it sounds corny, but you know, slow down and smell the roses or whatever. People will say that. Hey, listen, there’s a lot of truth to that. Slow down. In spiritual matters, we need to slow down. It’s a dangerous time.

We are a fifteen-second media soundbite generation, and I’m afraid church is like that. I’ve noticed some Christian programming on radio now. They’ll teach for ten minutes and then they have to have a commercial in between the twenty-minute program. And you find out, you call them, "Hey, why do you guys do that?"

Well, because people don’t have attention spans. So what do we do? We feed that. Next, it’s going to be every five minutes you have to have a commercial. What’s the matter with us? Jesus said in John 10:10, "I have come that you may have life, and that you may have it more abundantly."

And we rarely take notice of that. The details is where we encounter God. The Bible says in Psalm 139, verse 1, "O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and You know my rising up; You understand my thought from afar." This is how awesome He is. "You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways."

That’s the God of the Bible. That’s detail. Now listen, everybody. If God’s acquainted with all of your ways, that should dictate how you and I live our lives. He knows what you’re going to do tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon, and three weeks from now on a Wednesday morning. He knows.

If He knows that and we meditate on that, it should affect our lives. We should slow down and wait a minute. What happened to us today? What’s going on in our lives? God knew. "Oh my goodness, I can’t believe it!" Calm down. Slow down. He is acquainted with all of your ways.

Psalm 139 goes on, verse 16 says, "Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be." God saw you coming together in your mother’s womb.

"How precious to me are Your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of the sand of the sea." That’s what He’s referring to. "When I awake, I am still with You." Every believer knows that sense. Tomorrow morning, when you wake up, you’re going to have the sense that God’s with you.

And His thoughts for you... and listen, I’m telling you this right now. If you’re not paying attention, and if you’re not paying attention to detail, this goes right over your head. It’s like, "Oh yeah, ho-hum, I’ve heard that before." But do you believe it? If you believe it, that His thoughts toward you are more than the sands of the sea, then that’s very encouraging, and your worry scale is going to go down about ninety-nine percent.

Details at first are often overlooked by us in life, and yet God is in those details. So listen, point number one is this tonight: the discipline of details, it’s seeing the Lord in all things. It seems so obvious. You say that’s a ridiculous point, everybody knows that. But we don’t practice this. Seeing the Lord in all things, in everything.

We’re going to define what that means in a moment. Some of you who are in college, you need to hear this because you’re getting hit with this. Number one is this: He’s in the good stuff. The first thing we want to realize is that seeing God in all things is obviously He’s in the good stuff.

He’s in the good that happens in the world. The Bible tells us clearly in our humanity and in our weakness, we want to be people who notice things that are good. When we do good things, don’t you want to be noticed for doing a good thing? You’re going to act all humble tonight and say, "No, I’m..." but it’s human nature to want to be noticed for doing a good thing.

I’m not saying it’s humble, but it’s human nature. But that’s because you want to be appreciated. That’s the human side. God’s in the good stuff, not to be appreciated for the reasons that we seek appreciation, but God is into the good stuff because God is good. He’s good.

And people will say things like this, and we’ll talk about it more in a moment, but God who is good, says the Bible, a person will come back and say, "Well, if God is good, how can there be bad?" I don’t understand that question. Honestly, I don’t understand the question. You can’t have bad without good.

And by the way, if you’ve had a class on logic and debate, "bad" is what once was good that’s gone bad. If a person is a real weirdo—just a real strange weirdo—I’m talking weirdo. I’m talking about a person who’s dangerous to the society. They’ll kidnap somebody and they’ll drive around the country with them and talk to them.

And then what happens? They wind up abusing them and maybe even killing them. Why does that happen? People will say, "How can God—how can your Christian God exist when that happens?" What does that have—I don’t understand your argument. The funny thing is, if I listen to what you’re saying, you’re actually upset with the God that you claim not to believe in for, in your opinion, not doing something about it.

Your very criticism announces that you believe in the God and you think He should do better than what He’s doing. When in reality, the whole Bible has built in the answer to that. A person who is out kidnapping and holding captive somebody and then winds up molesting them or killing them, where does that come from?

It comes from good gone bad. Did you know that? They want to have a sense of relationship with someone. Now you’ve got to admit, it’s sick and wrong and dangerous and godless, but their desire is something that was good and it went bad. Good always has to be in existence before bad. It was very good in the Garden of Eden, and then it went bad. Why? God did the good stuff and man comes along and does the bad stuff. But then somebody will say, "Well then God made a bad man." No, God made a good man who chose to go bad.

Guest (Male): Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs, here on Real Life Radio, and his message called Disciplines of Detail. We’re all glad that you’re here today. You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack’s series called The Disciplines of Life.

It’s a series highlighting the disciplines of the Christ follower and the high cost of sharing our faith with others. We’ll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.

Guest (Female): Have you ever wondered why God doesn’t answer your prayers, or at least sometimes it feels like it? Well, our good friend, Dr. Erwin Lutzer, has written a book, *Why Doesn’t God Answer My Prayers?* This is a practical, amazing book. You’re going to want to get a copy for yourself because it is written by Dr. Lutzer in such a way that only he can. And the topic, "Why doesn’t God answer my prayers?" is something that all of us are asking.

Guest (Male): *Why Doesn’t God Answer My Prayers?* by Dr. Erwin Lutzer is available for a gift of any amount at jackhibbs.com/real-life-radio.

David J: Hey, thanks 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.

Guest (Male): 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.