Christ And His Mission - B

Jack Hibbs: Paul goes on later to say, "Wait a minute, God didn't pick us because we were more noble than any other nation. He picked us because we were a bunch of losers." God says this in the book of Isaiah and in Jeremiah in the Old Testament, that He says, "Don't think that I've picked you because you're some spectacular thing. I've picked you because you need help."
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. This Independence Day season, don't just celebrate America's 250th birthday, stand for what it was built upon: faith, freedom, truth. These are the values that shaped this nation from its very first days, and our Faith and Freedom collection was designed to help you carry them boldly wherever you go. This collection is more than patriotic apparel. It's a reminder of the convictions worth passing on. In a culture that's working overtime to silence those convictions, a simple shirt can start a powerful conversation. And right now, when you order from the Faith and Freedom collection, we'll also send you a free copy of the Happy Birthday America kids guide, a faith-centered resource that puts America's founding story in the hands of the next generation. Order soon and be ready to celebrate America's 250th birthday with conviction. Shop today at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com or call 877-777-2346. On today's edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack continues now in his series called "The Life and Times of Jesus Christ" and a message titled "Christ and His Mission." 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 that Jesus came into the world with a mission that's still on target, still on schedule, and right on time. You see, every one of us has a mission in this life. That's true. But Jesus came with the greatest mission of all: to seek and to save those who put their trust in Him. And the very brokenness we see in the world around us is proof that His mission still matters. So today, Pastor Jack teaches us that Jesus came to liberate not just one nation, but the whole world, and that includes us. We are the treasure hidden in the field and the pearl of great price that He gave up everything to win. It's an awesome message worth repeating, and we need to share it with all who will listen. Now with his message called "Christ and His Mission," here's pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs.
Jack Hibbs: The Jewish people had that same question. They began to strut around. Paul warned them. Paul was even at one time one strutting, that he was of the tribe of Benjamin, the nation of Israel, and all this stuff. And Paul goes on later to say, "Wait a minute, God didn't pick us because we were more noble than any other nation. He picked us because we were a bunch of losers." God says this in the book of Isaiah and in Jeremiah in the Old Testament, that He says, "Don't think that I've picked you because you're some spectacular thing. I've picked you because you need help." Isn't that funny? You say, "Well, glad He didn't say that about me." Oh, just wait. He said concerning you and I that He chose the foolish things of this world to confound the wise. That's why your boss or your neighbor thinks you're an idiot. "Well, there they go. Look, Harriet, they got their Bibles. There they go. Look at them. Every Sunday." We are goofballs in the eyes of the world. That's okay. This earth's not our home. Aren't you glad? Man, we're not home yet. God always selects the underdog. The scriptures teach us that He came to the nation Israel. The Bible says in Matthew chapter 15, there around verse 22, Jesus is trafficking through the area and a Canaanite—remember the book of Joshua we studied about the Canaanites?—a Canaanite woman cried out to Him and said, "Master, Son of David." What is she using that term for? She has no right to that term. "Son of David, have mercy on me, help me, my daughter's possessed." She's a Canaanite. And the disciples say, "Master, send her away, she's bugging us." Great men of compassion that they were. "Send her away, she's bugging us." Jesus, as she cries out, it says does not answer her a word. And she keeps crying. And He says, and I'll paraphrase, "I've come to bring food to the house of the lost sheep of Israel." And she says, "Yes, Lord, that's great, and I'm not rejecting that truth, obviously. You're Jewish, I'm a Canaanite. But I recognize that You have all the power, and I do believe, though I'm not a Jew, You are the Son of David, that You are the Messiah. Please have mercy on me." And He says, "But woman, it wouldn't be right for me to give the food that's dedicated to the nation to the dogs." Now you and I with that statement might have said, "Well, you can keep your Messiahship," and walk away. Or she said to Him, "Lord, this is true, but even dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table." And Jesus got a huge—it doesn't say this in the Bible, it had to have happened though—Jesus got a huge smile on His face and He said, "Woman, I haven't seen this kind of faith anywhere." And He healed her daughter. What's the point? The Jews believed and believe today that Gentiles are fodder for hell. Did you know that? They believe that we Gentiles are fuel for the pit, for the flames of hell. That's why they believe—this is not in the Bible, this is in their traditions—that God made Gentiles to stoke the flames of hell. When Jesus says it's not right that I give the food that's intended to be for the house, for the children, to the dogs, every orthodox Jew would have said, "Boy, He sure told her off." Well, the word that He used, and you and I don't get it in the English, go to it in the Greek. He says, "Woman, those cuddly little puppies that hang around the table, they shouldn't get it first. I've come to the nation first." A cuddly, cute little puppy. Everybody loves a cuddly, cute little puppy. Jesus elevates this woman and then not only elevates by statement, but turns and blesses her with a miracle. He's come to the nation Israel first, yes, true. But watch this, consider this: He's also come to liberate the Gentile nations. Hey, look at this. You and I, most of us are Gentiles. Right now, I am 25 percent Irish, 25 percent German, and 50 percent Portuguese. My mother was pure Portuguese. I am definitely a Gentile. I don't have a Jewish bone in my body. But God has saved me. You may not be a Jew, but what has He done with you? He has saved you. Is it biblical? Oh yeah. Isaiah chapter 11, God says, "I will go to a nation, the nation of Gentiles, and they'll seek after me." Do you seek after Christ? His mission is to bring all the world to Himself, even you and I. Isn't that awesome? Isn't it great that God is not exclusionary in His mission? "Only those who have an income of 100,000 and over." Aren't you glad He didn't lay that as a requirement? "All those who live in certain zip codes." Aren't you glad He didn't have that requirement? "All those who will look unto me," He says, "I will in no wise cast out." To liberate the Gentile nations. Peter, God had to just drive this into his head. Peter was in the town of Joppa, remember there, and he was hungry. And it says that he went on top of the roof and he fell asleep. Now that's something. I cannot sleep when I'm hungry. But Peter goes up on the roof and he falls asleep. He's starving. And they're downstairs, they're cooking the meals being done. The fish tacos smell is coming up through the roof. Joppa's right on the beach, it's a great place. Peter's there sleeping. And it says while he's in a trance and he's so hungry, this sheet comes down in his head. He's dreaming, he sees this sheet come down. And he says he looks into the sheet, and all kinds of four-footed beast and unclean things are running around in the sheet. Can you imagine? You look over there and there goes a lobster. And there goes a pig. Peter's going, "Ugh, unclean." And the Lord says, "Peter, get up and kill and eat." Peter says, "No way, Lord," which is an impossible thing to say. "I'm a good Jewish boy. None of this stuff has ever touched my lips." God says, "Peter, stand up and eat. Go after it. Get it." "No, Lord." Three times. Ladies, be encouraged. Three times God had to tell Peter. Three times. It takes a while for us to get it. And Peter later in Acts, in the book of Acts, Peter later goes on to say, "I have concluded from this that God has even provided salvation to the Gentiles." How is that? Because it all started with a bunch of little pigs running around in a sheet. And in a Jewish mind, God wants them too? Yeah. To deliver a Gentile nation—us, all of us. This is wonderful. This is liberating. Jesus, the Bible tells us in a parable, two of them actually, Matthew 13, He says this: that the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. Get it carefully, watch this. A treasure hidden in a field, who when a man comes, buys the whole field so he can extract the treasure. Very simply understood. The field is the world. The man who buys the earth is who? Jesus. What is the treasure in the field? You are. He buys the whole field. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever put your name in there, there you go. Another parable, Matthew 13 again, verse 45, Jesus says, "Again the kingdom of heaven's like this: a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold everything that he had and bought it." Who's the merchant? Jesus. Who's the pearl of great price? You are. He gave up everything on His mission to get you. That ought to clear up your self-esteem problem, don't you think? You are valuable to Him. The second thing we see this morning is this: the scope of Christ's mission, and that is to provide a temporal liberation for mankind. The scope of His mission is this: when we say scope, we're talking about His far-reaching grasp of all that concerns us. In fact, a good verse to put with that is Matthew 9:36, where there it says in the Bible, "And when Jesus saw the multitude, He was moved with compassion for them because they were weary and scattered, and they were like sheep having no shepherd." Are you lonely? Is your life just—are you hurting right now? It's not important I know your problem. I probably can't do anything about it anyway. I can pray for you. But the very situation that you find yourself in right now, Christ knows about it. And He is saying this to you this morning: I see you, weary, scattered, like a little lamb that has no shepherd. Maybe you're even a Christian and you wandered away from His wonderful pastoral care, which means shepherding care. The fact of the matter is He has provided temporal liberation. When I say temporal, I mean on this earth now. Maybe you're sitting here as a non-Christian, you're saying, "Why should I come to Christ?" Well, the first thing is because He offers to you temporal liberation. That means right now He can give you the peace of God and peace with God. All your life you've been kicking against God, knowingly or unknowingly. And Jesus immediately offers temporal liberation. Peace now in the midst of a storm. He provides that. The scope of His mission is certainly to help us now. I love when people give their hearts to Jesus Christ. It's spectacular to watch. We'll pray together and they'll pray, "Lord, come into my life." And we pray and they come to the conclusion of their prayer, and you can almost put a stopwatch to it. They'll say, "In Jesus' name, amen." And I'll say, "Welcome to the family. It's great to have you in the house." And you'll see them go, "Whew. Just peace. Just peace." Quite a long time ago, there was a man that used to always sit back in that area right there against that wall over there. And he wasn't a Christian. And his wife would drag him here, drag him here. Not—she didn't drug him to get him here, but he was dragged. And finally, he gave his heart to Christ. It was a very exciting day. It was actually a Sunday after a third service. And after third sermon, I ran home and I was mowing my lawn, or getting ready to mow my lawn. And so this guy pulls up to beat me up. I didn't know that. I thought he had a mission all of his own and it was to beat me up. He was fed up with the messages and "Why should I come to Christ?" and all this stuff. And so by the time he got to me, God had just kind of touched him a little bit. And God began to do one thing and the other. And the make a long story short, right on the front lawn underneath the trees there in my house, he accepts the Lord. And the first thing, we get them praying in Jesus' name, amen. You know what he said first thing? Talk about peace. This may seem funny to you, but he went, "Oh man, great. Now I can go to the church picnic." I said, "What?" He'd been fighting the church picnic. "Oh no, I gotta go. My wife's gonna drug me or drag me to get there. All these Christians, I can't stand them." Freedom. Jesus would have said, "Truly salvation has come to this man's home today. He gets to go to the picnic." Liberation, freedom. God does that. Jesus also provided physical relief. He went around healing all those who were sick, all those who were in pain. He offers that help now. He comforts your life. He will either do it miraculously or He'll do it what I like to just say naturally-supernaturally. Sometimes Jesus heals. We reported some tremendous news last Wednesday night, didn't we, about God's wonderful, incredible works this week? But sometimes God chooses natural means, supernaturally. Maybe the storm that you're in stays with you, but there's a peace. And haven't you had this happen in your life? There's a peace that comes into your life and you almost feel guilty that you have so much peace in the midst of this problem. It's the strangest thing. "Why aren't you worrying?" "I don't know." It's the Lord. "Don't you realize what's going to happen?" "Yes." "Panic with us. Make us feel better." "I just don't know. I think God's going to do something." I'm getting this right now. I'm preaching to myself right now on this. "We've got to break ground on the property. We've got to get going. It's going to take years to build this building and we're going to be out of a building." "Our lease expires and the city won't renew our lease and we're going to be on the street. We're going to be homeless. Do you realize that? I say homeless in two years. There'll be 3,000 of us begging on the streets. I'm supposed to start signing papers and I'm supposed to say dump it here and dig it there." And I feel terrible. God, what am I doing? Am I steering these people toward homelessness? I don't know. I just know that God knows what He's doing and He's bigger than me. Hallelujah. I don't know if that turns you on, but it sure turns me on. I just lay down and go to sleep while everyone else, all of you are worrying when we're going to put a shovel. He brings physical relief. He works in our lives now. He's so faithful to do that. He's so good. And also to provide eternal freedom, obviously. Don't you feel absolutely sometimes like you're in some little super-covert, top-secret club? That when you look at the news and look around the world and talk to your friends at work and share with people, that you know something they don't and it's an inside thing? Don't you feel like that? You know what, I sometimes I feel terrible about having that privilege. When somebody says, "Well, I think of this and I think of that and I think of the other," and I'm sitting there thinking, "This poor guy doesn't know anything." The Bible says exactly what he needs to know or hear or do or whatever. We continue to the third, and that is the execution of Christ's mission. The execution of Christ's mission. Him doing this, Him being real like that to manifest His execution of it all. Jesus, we are told in Luke chapter 9 verse 51, He's enjoying the wonderful—and many of you have seen it, many more of you Lord willing shall—the wonderful farmlands and regions, very fruitful regions of the northern Galilee, where the Sea of Galilee is at. It's beautiful. Bananas and figs and oranges, papaya and guavas, it's all growing there. Jesus ministered and taught His disciples for three years up there before He headed to the hubbub of Jerusalem. And it says in Luke chapter 9 verse 51, it was at that time when it approached for Him to be taken up into heaven, that He resolutely set His face toward Jerusalem. The word is with absolute determination. Nothing was going to sway Jesus from His executing the plan, the mission that God had given Him, and that was to die for the sins of the world. How did He do this? Well, He did it by a couple ways. Number one, that is that Jesus performed all that was necessary. Hallelujah for this. He did it all. Of course you know that passage Jesus says not one jot or one tittle, one little comma and one little curve of the scribe's pen concerning the writing of the Hebrew language, not one of those little tiny dots will pass away without the word of God being completely fulfilled. He did all that was necessary. In Hebrews chapter 12 verse 2, the Bible says that we ought to look unto Jesus Christ, who is the author and the finisher of our faith. Isn't that great? How many of you are Christians in here this morning? Raise your hand. You're a Christian? You can put your hand down. Don't raise your hand now, the next person, but I said don't raise your hand. That is, how many of you are considering becoming a Christian? Well, God knows about this. And if you are of any other persuasion, God knows that as well. But for those of us who raised our hand, God started a work in us. Did you know that? And He will not stop. Even though you might think He has, He hasn't. He will not stop until He's done. And when He's done—or I guess when He goes "Mwah," or "Finis," or "Voilà," whatever He says, "Voilà"—it's called death. Oh yeah, listen, get over it. Death is a disaster if you don't know Jesus. But if you know Him, it's voilà. It's when we leave this place and Jesus gets to behold the finished work. He has promised that He will complete that work that He has started in your life. He will finish the work. He's done all that is necessary. He will complete it. Jesus directed all that was important. He directed all that was important. In Matthew chapter 28, I'll go quickly, we're out of time, Jesus said this: Matthew chapter 28, this verse, this passage of scripture has had probably the greatest effect upon this church. God has spoken to my heart at more critical moments in Matthew chapter 28 verses 18 to 20 than the other passage. It means so much to me. Jesus directed all that was important. When Jesus said, speaking to them, He said, "All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And behold, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age." Okay, those of you who graduated from logic class, listen. If Christ is going to be with you all the way, all the way to the end, what ought we to be doing? Going into all of the world, proclaiming the gospel and making disciples worldwide, and baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, right? There's a built-in promise. You go, He goes with you. I'm going to say something, if you're visiting here at Calvary, you're privileged today, I guess. I'm going to say something I've never said before in this church, and I don't want to say it again. Jesus says in Matthew chapter 28 verse 19, "Go, go, go, go, go," in the world. Go, get going, go. Those of us who raised our hands a moment ago, were called Christians. We're supposed to go. We're supposed to go. If we can't go, we're supposed to send. If we're not going, then we had better be senders or else we are robbing God.
David J: Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs here on Real Life Radio with his message called "Christ and His Mission." 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 in your life. And we'll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio. Are you searching for answers these days in a world where truth is hard to find? Well, my friend, as you heard in our broadcast, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And if you'd like to learn more about what that means to you personally, just go to our website, jackhibbs.com, and then click on that tab there that's labeled "Know God." And there you'll be guided through what committing to Jesus Christ really means and the freedom that you'll find in knowing God. That's the "Know God" tab at our website, jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. 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.