Somebody Loves You

Raul Ries: So when Jesus comes now to the end of this chapter, he wants to make sure that we understand that the church today in the 21st century is a church that is ignorant. Ignorant to the things of God and to the truths of God's word. Why? Because people don't study God's word.

Guest (Male): I am falling. I am falling in love. I am falling in love. I am falling in love with you.

Welcome to Somebody Loves You Radio, the Bible teaching ministry of Raul Ries in Diamond Bar, California. Thanks for joining us for a new series establishing the reality of absolute truth.

Society says that we decide for ourselves what is true, but today, Raul will show us that the Bible is our sole source of certainty. Its principles aren't determined by the fluid feelings and ideas of people but rather by a perfect and unchanging God. Here is Raul Ries in Matthew chapter 13 with the lesson "Understanding Truth."

Raul Ries: There are too many people today that do not really have the understanding of God's word. When you go back and you study history, you begin to see that as he's going to be speaking to the scribes here, and the scribes were the ones that were writing the scriptures.

They're the ones that put them down in the papyrus paper, and they wrote them down and gave them to us so that we can read the word of God. Now, there are a lot of people that do not understand, that they say that the Bible is not literally the word of God.

But hear what Jesus does, as he says that anybody that is a pastor, teacher, evangelist, and even those that are sitting in the congregation learning and listening to the word of God are responsible to understand what is being said.

I was talking to some young people yesterday that are going to be missionaries. They're going to Africa. They were in India, and now they're going to Africa. Young kids, 18, 19 years old, up to 24 years of age, leaving everything, going to the mission field.

In our conversation, they were asking me why is it that today in America you can't find churches that really teach the Bible. The reason I shared with them is that one of the things that is happening is the church is turning to entertainment again.

People really don't want to hear the truth about God. This is why Jesus seven times says in the book of Revelation to seven churches, "He who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the church." If you're going to be part of the church, then you need to have a listening ear.

Jesus in Matthew 13 has been speaking to us on the parable of the sower, the parable of the tares, the parable of the mustard seed, the parable of leaven, the parable of the hidden treasure, the parable of the great pearl and price, and then the last one was the great parable of the dragnet.

In each one of these parables, he's given to us illustrations of truth, that is the scriptures, the word of God. In the first parable that he gave to us, the parable of the sower and the seed, it's a parable of the four types of hearers that you find in any congregation that teaches the Bible.

The first kind of a person is the person that comes, hears, but never really participates, never really is affected by the Bible. He just comes as a visitor and then departs the same person when he came in. He leaves the same person when he departs from the church, which means he's a person with no faith in God.

The second person is the one that comes, attends, listens, and then becomes a little bit of a partaker, a participant. All of a sudden, he gets touched emotionally and responds to what is being taught for a little while, and then eventually within time, he literally falls away, and there's nothing to sustain him.

The third type are those that come in, they want to hear, they want to listen, and they don't really want to be attentive because they're concerned with themselves, they're concerned with their riches, and they're concerned with the world. So, they totally never get the word of God.

But the fourth type are those that come and they're hungry, and they want to listen, and they want to learn, and they want to grow, and they want to expand their borders, and they want to be used by God. They really truly want eternal life.

Their hope and their scope of the future is eternity. The Bible says that those kind of people are the ones that attend good churches, that will not only become involved in pastor teaching, they'll become involved in evangelism, they'll become active in their Sunday school and whatever they're doing in the church.

They're the ones that go out and they tell others about Jesus Christ and they bring forth 30, 60, and 100 fold in fruit. They're not fruitless people; they're very fruitful people. The others have no fruit at all.

So I think it's really kind of neat the way Jesus sets up the 13th chapter of Matthew with the seven parables to show us that there is a literal heaven and there's a literal hell. There are going to be people that are going to stand in the last day judgment before God.

They will stand there and they'll be separated as goats from the sheep. Then the books are going to be opened at the white throne judgment, and whoever's name is not found written in the Book of Life will be cast into the lake of fire.

There is a majority of people that Jesus is talking about that do not literally believe in a literal hell. Did you know that Jesus in all four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—spoke more about hell than he spoke about heaven?

It's interesting. More about hell than he did about heaven. This is why Jesus, as he's coming in this chapter now, concluding the chapter after he speaks on the last and the seventh parable, says, "Have you understood all these things? Do you really truly understand what I'm telling you?" And what they said? They said, "Yes we do, Lord," but they didn't.

Think how many of us, including myself, studying God's word and there's a lot of things I don't understand yet. The Bible is so broad. Yet God has given us his word for us to learn.

So when Jesus comes now to the end of this chapter, he wants to make sure that we understand that the church today in the 21st century is a church that is ignorant. Ignorant to the things of God and to the truths of God's word. Why? Because people don't study God's word.

Think about what you do every single morning when you get up. You can't give five minutes to the word of God. In the times of Spurgeon and Chambers and all these great men of God that used to get up at four o'clock in the morning and pray until seven o'clock in the morning.

They would spend another three, four hours and then throughout the days preparing their lessons, eight to 15, 20 hours for one lesson. Without computers, they would write them down by hand. Then they would get up and they would preach for one whole hour to hear the word of God.

That's what we call expository preaching. At the same time, learning from Genesis to Revelation, which a lot of churches don't teach like that. What you do is you have 39 Old Testament books in the Old Testament, 27 in the New.

There are churches that only teach the New Testament and they never touch the Old Testament because they say the Old Testament is very hard to understand. Yet here in these last words of Jesus, he says that a true teacher of the word of God, which were the scribes, takes from the old and brings it into the new.

The Old Testament is all the things and prophecies that were written by the prophets about Jesus Christ coming, the first and the second coming of Christ. If you come to the New Testament only and only study the New Testament, you will never truly understand what God was saying and preparing the way for the Messiah to come into the New Testament.

Like the book of Isaiah chapter 53, a whole chapter on Jesus Christ. Even the Jews today, when you talk to them and you take them to the book of Isaiah 53, you ask them, "What is that talking about?" and they'll say, "That's talking about the nation of Israel," that is the nation, not the people of God.

No. If you read it, you don't have to be Jewish. If you read it in its context, he's not talking about a nation or a country; he's talking about a person that is coming: Jesus in the Old Testament. Yet they're blinded, they can't see it until that blindness is taken away from them, the Bible says.

There are people in the church just like the Jews that never really, really are attentive to the word of God. Even though you may come here on Sunday morning and Wednesday nights or any other night, if you're not really paying attention and you're not spending your time at home in the mornings, in the evenings reading and studying and meditating on what God's word says, then you're never really going to hear from God.

You don't know him personally. It's really important to know the word of God and the way God speaks. Yet when you look at people today and you ask them, "Well, what does Habakkuk say to you?" they'll say, "Who? Habakkuk?"

Or Malachi, or Jonah, or Job, or one of the Psalms, or going back to Leviticus, or Exodus, or Numbers, or Deuteronomy, or Nahum, see, or Zechariah. These are names in the Old Testament of writers that have given us quality books, historical, to teach us.

Guest (Male): This is Somebody Loves You Radio with Raul Ries. For resources to strengthen and deepen your understanding of God's perfect word, visit us anytime at somebodylovesyou.com.

Raul is also happy to respond to any questions you might have about the Bible. You can email him at pastorraul@somebodylovesyou.com. Now, back to "Understanding Truth" with Raul Ries.

Raul Ries: So here when Jesus is closing the parables, he had those scribes and Pharisees that were before him. Now what would happen and what's happening to the church today: the scribes were so dedicated to the writing of the scriptures that in the Old Testament when they were writing the book of Genesis, the scribes would have a bottle of ink and a pen.

They would take down the papyrus paper, for example, if I'm writing the book of Genesis chapter one: "In the beginning God, Elohim," I would stop in the word God. Take my pen, go over to the drain, wash my pen in water, clean it, and then go behind and then take a shower or bath and change my clothes, come back again and start writing "In the beginning with God," pick it up from there, "created the heavens and the earth."

Then in the book of Genesis chapter one, 32 times the name of God is mentioned, which means he took 32 baths in chapter one. The holiness of God. The scribe would do that. Today people just treat the Bible like a piece of paper.

Did you know there are many, many people in the 1500s died by burning because of the scriptures? A lot of blood has been shed for the scriptures. Not to take it lightly. That's what Jesus is teaching. Let's read it in chapter 13, 51 and 52. Look what he says.

"And then Jesus said to them, 'Have you understood all these things that I just told you?' And they said to him, 'Yes, Lord.' Then he said to them, 'Therefore every scribe instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven is like' what? 'Like a householder, a house manager, who brings out of his treasure things that are new and things that are old.'"

Isn't that interesting how Jesus says it? That's the way the Bible speaks to you, from the old into the new, the new to the old. There's always something that you can bring out from the old that becomes new and from the new to the old.

You can go back and forth in the Old and New Testament to really understand what God is saying to the church. I think today in the days that we're living in today, these are very difficult days. Days where people are not bringing their Bibles to church.

In churches they're bringing up the scriptures on the screens. So what happens, people get lazy and say, "Well, why should I bring my Bible when they have it on the screens?" But to me, every single day when I carry my Bible wherever I go, it's a comfort to know that I have a sword. You mess with me and I'll cut you.

It's a weapon. The Bible says that. It's a weapon to defend the faith. When somebody asks you the truth, you can give them the truth. But if you're not a scribe, if you're not really studying God's word and digging into the scriptures, then you have nothing to say to anybody. Nothing to say.

Think of the ignorance in the church of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ today among the congregations of the world. Talking to these young people yesterday, they were telling me about how in some of the churches that they've been attending there's no Bible reading, there's no Bible teaching, but it's all about worship.

All about worship. I love worship. But again, biblically in the Old Testament, who were the ones that were going out to the battle to fight against the enemy? Who was leading the army? It was the musicians. Why? Preparing the way in worship of God before the army would take on their enemies.

That's what we do here. We have worship to prepare your hearts so when the word of God is presented, the word of God will be able to cut through and bring conviction into your hearts. They come out and they prepare for you to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

They don't come out to entertain. They come out here to lead you in worship so you can worship God, preparing your hearts to God so you have an ear to hear. Not coming here with all kinds of situations and problems which many people do have.

But when we come into the house of the Lord, we're coming with all of our problems, all of our situations, all of the things that we're going and facing in our own personal life. What do we do? We bring them to the Lord. So I say, "Lord, I need to hear from you because they're going to take my house tomorrow. Lord, I can't make that next payment. My children got on drugs. What do I do, God?"

Instead of listening to people, you listen to God's word and God speaks to you. Not only when you're here, but when you go home and you get alone in a place in your home where nobody can disturb you without any disturbances and you wait and you meditate upon God's word as you're reading and praying and all of a sudden, the word of God speaks to you and says, "This is what I want you to do."

That's how God speaks. Not in an audible voice. I'd probably die; I would die. So many times when I talk to people, I say, "Well, have you heard from the Lord?" They go, "Does he speak?" Oh yeah, he speaks. How does he speak? Through his word.

When you sit down, you meditate and you read the word of God in the morning before you go to work, before you go to school. How are you going to get through this dirty world and this world that has so many problems, so chaotic?

How are you going to get through the next 12 hours of your day without spending time with God? How are you going to defend yourself? How are you going to speak out with wisdom and knowledge if you have none from the word of God to make decisions in your business, to make decisions in your home for your children?

You see? We're secular, but we should become spiritual. The way we become spiritual is by humbling ourselves before God and asking God to give us insight in his word as I begin to read from Genesis to Revelation.

Every single morning I read chapters. Don't jump back and forth. Take one book at a time and go through it. As you begin to really discipline your life in reading and thinking and meditating and waiting upon God, all of a sudden you start hearing that small still voice through his word speaking to you.

I love that. The way God does it. That's why for me it's important that as I was reading this conclusion here, that God really spoke to me as a pastor-teacher the importance for me to study, to give the word of God to you and for us to be able to grow and to continue to make the Bible the main thing.

And that we never move away from the teaching of God's word and even at the gig with the kids and Sunday nights. The entertainment's great, everything else, but the teaching of the word of God is the most important thing. Why? Because they're not going to grow through the music.

They're not going to grow through testimony. They're only going to grow through the word of God as the word of God is delivered to them and given to them. Then they can partake of it. As they develop and they grow, then they themselves among the young people, what will they do?

They will go out and multiply 30, 60, and 100 fold, and they will win their peers unto themselves, to the Lord. That's how the church grows. But the church never, ever grows steadily and never, ever is healthy apart from the teaching of the word of God through the Holy Spirit's inspiration, illumination, and revelation of the scriptures.

That's why for me it's really important what Jesus is saying here again. He says you're going to be able to see what? "Jesus said unto them, 'Have you ever understood all these things?' and they said, 'Yes, Lord.' Then he said to them, 'Therefore every scribe instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven'"—what's that? the things about the kingdom of heaven—"'is like' what? 'is like a householder, a house manager.'"

Every one of you husbands are householders. Spiritually, you are greatly responsible for the growth of your family spiritually, as the church is responsible this morning to teach you the word of God so that you can develop and you can grow, and then God can use your life. Otherwise, without the teaching of God's word and without us really waiting upon God and his Holy Spirit, then we can't do nothing. That's why God is so gracious to us.

Guest (Male): The holiday season can stir up a lot of questions about God and faith, and if you're not sure where you stand with the Lord, we hope today's lesson has inspired you to seek answers.

You're listening to Somebody Loves You Radio with Raul Ries. Today's lesson was titled "Understanding Truth." If you'd like to get a complete copy, we'll be happy to send one to you for a donation of five dollars or more. Just call us at 800-634-9165.

Now, we'd also like to offer you a collection of four messages from this series we're currently airing. As you contemplate the reality of absolute truth, you'll see how important it is to ground your life on the Bible's firm foundation.

Then, when you're shaken by trials or confused by the world's shifting values, you can stand unwavering in the principles of God's word. To purchase Raul's four-part truth series, visit somebodylovesyou.com or call 800-634-9165.

We'll send you the CD set for 18 dollars or the USB for nine dollars. That's 800-634-9165. Or you can write to Somebody Loves You Radio, P.O. Box 4440, Diamond Bar, California, 91765.

Somebody Loves You Radio with Raul Ries is fully listener-supported. Thank you for your tax-deductible gifts. Your partnership is a great blessing to us.

And join us next time as we continue this series with the challenge to make studying the Bible a higher priority. False religious ideas abound, but with a strong grasp of the Bible's teachings, you can bypass confusion and deceit and confidently live in God's unchanging truth. Here is Raul with a final word.

Raul Ries: And he continues to speak, he continues to move, and he continues to do whatever he desires to do. Why? Because it's not my church, it's not your church; it's his church. When people say it's my church, I always ask them how much did they pay?

He paid with his own blood for the church of Jesus Christ. It's his church. You are his people. And as long as we continue that mentality biblically to remember that this is not ours, it's his, and that he's in control and he's in command, then we'll do good.

But the day we become possessive, the day we stop teaching God's word, the day we stop praying and really depending on the Holy Spirit, we will become like the rest of the churches all over the country and all over the world.

Instead of being a spiritual people, we will be a carnal people and depend on the acts of the flesh instead of the Holy Spirit. May God help us this morning to continue to look to Jesus as the author and the finisher of our faith, Jesus Christ.

Guest (Male): I am falling. I am falling in love. I am falling in love. I am falling in love with you. This program is sponsored by Somebody Loves You Radio in Diamond Bar, California.