Hey, this is Jim Graham from the Masculine Journey Podcast, where we explore a relationship instead of religion every week. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. Welcome to If Not For God, stories of hopelessness that turn to hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick.
If Not For God with Mike Zwick, do we have a show for you today? We've got brother Jeff Hoover, man. Jeff Hoover was a missionary.
He did mission work over in Israel, Palestine, preached to the Palestinians, was over in Europe. He saw some great miracles over there, and now he's actually the high school soccer coach over at, what's the name of the school? Piedmont Classical.
Piedmont Classical. We've got Stu Epperson, the owner of the Truth Network, and Stu Epperson has his own show. What's the name of your show, Stu?
Truth Talk, and I featured the testimony, the story of Michael Zwick on that show nationwide recently, and it's a great story. We've got 1 Corinthians 1, and I'm going to start in verse 18 right here. It says, For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe?
Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified.
To the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Whenever I think of this verse, one of the things that I think of is, how many times over the years have we heard different things about eggs? Eggs are really good for you. No, eggs are really bad for you. Well, actually, egg whites are good for you.
Then a few years later, no, actually, you're supposed to eat the whole egg. And these are the wisest of our age. These are the people who know it all, and then a few years later, then they come up with something else. Stu, Jesus, he's wiser than us. He's wiser, and this passage is brilliant, because you have the word fool or foolish over 20 times in chapters one and two of 1 Corinthians.
And you have this whole theme of God's wisdom versus worldly wisdom in verses one through three. I mean, look at just something very light that's not controversial at all, COVID. Look at how many brilliant experts have come out on the vaccination, the anti-vaccination.
The guy goes and gets his vaccination, walks out, and looks at the Israeli study saying, you're this much more times likely, or this and that. And of course, I'm not pushing any viewpoint there. But it's interesting to see all the experts that have come out, and the experts that are suddenly opining in how it changes. It changes going back from eggs to COVID to, how about this, how about the existence of man? How did we get here? How about the origins of man of creation?
And even the word creation really gets people mad at the intellectual level, because they're like, no, this is all just one big whammo, big bang that we're here by. How about, where did genders come from? How about, what is my purpose now that I'm here?
Why do we exist? There's nihilistic views. There's more views that are, in Corinth you have the Stoics, you have the Epicureans, you have over 50 philosophical schools there, and that's just scratching the surface.
Probably more than that. But you have the great Socrates in Plato and Aristotle, these great thinkers. So Paul comes into Corinth, preaches the gospel, people get saved. He leaves. He stays there longer, by the way, than anywhere else except for Ephesus, where he stayed for three years. He stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, 18 months. He leaves a church that is growing and vibrant and gifted, and that had come to Christ personally pastored by the Apostle Paul.
Kind of cool to have him as your founding pastor and him hanging around that long, nearly two years. Then he gets this letter from Chloe's household, chapter 1 verse 11, chapter 7 verse 1, that there's some stuff going on that's really not good, like that the church is worse than the world in terms of how they're compromising. There's all kinds of bad stuff going on, like moral compromise, a guy shacking up with his stepmom. You've got a guy, you've got all kinds of things, like a guy, people getting drunk at the Lord's Supper, you got all this infighting, people saying, I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, people, you know, picking factions, picking their different denominations, as it were, like, hey, you know, I'm with this guy, I'm with this guy, I'm of Cephas, I'm of Jesus. So there's this pride, this infighting, there's abusing the gifts, like tongues and all these things.
There's a whole litany of problems. So Paul basically, the whole book of 1 Corinthians is addressing the problems that Paul hears about. And right out of the gate, he establishes the most important axiom of, where does true wisdom and knowledge come from?
Epistemology is a kind of a heavy word for those out there, including me, a basketball player, I don't use many words like that because I spend a lot more time in the gym than in the classroom, but epistemology, the origin of knowledge. Where do we get this knowledge? Where do we get this wisdom? And he starts right out of the gate saying, look, there is a foolishness. The whole thing, this whole cross idea of God becoming a man, coming to us, and God dying on a cross, this to the world is absolutely ludicrous foolishness. A Greek word for there is moronis, which is where we get our word moron. Paul is not only a moron, this stuff that you guys are feeding us is a bunch of moron stuff.
It's crazy, it's nuts, it's cuckoo. And Paul establishes in these key verses that the message of the cross, the gospel, the death, the burial, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, which he really drills down on in chapter 15, because there are people attacking the resurrection in this church. He says the foundation of who Jesus is, why he came, what he did, is to the world it's foolishness. To those who are perishing, it's folly, it's dumb, it's nonsense.
But to those who are being saved, it's the power of God. And so he has this whole diatribe on how God's wisdom, and God's wisdom he puts to shame the wisdom of the world. What they're saying, what is the wisdom of the world by, is a great question. Hath not God said, you will not surely die? That's the wisdom of the world.
Go ahead and eat that thing. You'll become like God. What's the wisdom of the world? God helps those who helps themselves. Do nice things for people, and you'll get to heaven. What's the wisdom of the world? All these, you think about all these little cliches that we throw out. So many people listening even right now that think, well hey, I go to a church, I've been going there forever, I'm philanthropic, I give back.
When they pass the plate around, I put something in there, and when I see someone homeless, I give them a bottle of water and give them some money. I'm going to go to heaven. I've not killed anyone.
I've been faithful to the same woman for 50 years. That, my friend, does not get you to heaven. The world's wisdom says, yes, do good, get to heaven. You're born good. The wisdom of God says that no one's good.
No, not one. Romans chapter three. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all of our righteousness is as filthy rags.
We're going to work ourselves right into hell. The world's wisdom says do and don't to get to heaven. God's wisdom says done.
John 1930. Jesus Christ said those three powerful words. One word in the Greek, to tell us die.
Three words in English, it is finished. And that is the message of the cross, and that's where Paul starts in this beautiful book in 1 Corinthians. The older and older I get, the more and more that I see the world.
As a matter of fact, I'm going to look at something right here. We got Matthew chapter five, verse 38. It says, you have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I tell you not to resist an evil person, but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also.
And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him too. Give to him who asks you and from him who wants to borrow from you, do not turn away. You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say unto you, love your enemies. Bless those who curse you and do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your father in heaven. And he makes his son rise on the evil, on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? And do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others?
Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore, you shall be perfect just as your father in heaven is imperfect. And that's good.
That's a good word. But you got to realize that was contrary to everything that was going on at that time, even everything that was going on today. But it's funny because I looked at something in the Mayo Clinic and the Mayo Clinic came out with something and it says, forgiveness, letting go of grudges and bitterness. When someone you care about hurts you, you can hold on to anger, resentment, and thoughts of revenge or embrace forgiveness and move forward.
And this is what they say about it. What are the benefits of forgiving someone? Letting go of grudges and bitterness can make way for improved health and peace of mind.
Wow. Forgiveness can lead to healthier relationships, improved mental health, less anxiety, stress, and hostility, lower blood pressure, fewer symptoms of depression, a stronger immune system, improved heart health, and an improved self-esteem. When Jesus was saying this stuff, this is not what people wanted to do in the natural. But it's funny that the word of God, when we follow what he says, not only does it help us supernaturally, we're doing what God told us to do and we're obedient to him and we feel better.
And when we get to heaven, I believe, we'll receive a reward as well in the natural so many times as well that we're blessed because we follow the laws and the rules of God. As a matter of fact, when I'm talking about this, Jeff, Jeff Hoover over here, one of the things that I was thinking about is you were doing a mission trip one time, Jeff, and you said somebody punched you in the face. When I was in Bethlehem and I was driving one time, a guy pulled out in front of me and we hit just a little fender bender kind of thing. I started to get out of the car. It was hot, so I had my window down and he jumped out of his car and ran and punched me in the face. Then some other people from the stores around came out and settled things down, stuff like this and all. He's probably glad you didn't get out of the car because this guy's like six-eight, 280 pounds of muscle, a gentle giant.
But that's pretty tough. He kept coming right at you. Here you are trying to share the good news of Christ and a guy sucker punches you. The guy's pulled us apart and stuff like this and told me that he was a doctor and everything.
He had a lot of influence in the society and things like this and all. We wanted to try to get together and we just forgave him and we ended up shaking hands and stuff like this and all. The thing is that God allows us to be able to do that. It's not us. If it was me, I would have wanted, like Stu said, that I'm not that small. The thing is that I would want to hit back. But it's God who gets hold of your spirit and lets you know.
Even some of the neighbors told me he's not like that. I know that the tension because of the situation going on there, curfews back and forth and other things like this and stuff and armies coming in and closures and things like this. Because of all these things going on, there's a lot of pressure on these people. That doesn't give them an excuse, but what it does is when we forgive, then they see that we are different. That God has really done something in our hearts and it doesn't matter if they're from Christian background or from Muslim background. We can be a real witness for the Lord at that particular time. They see a difference and so that's what we want to show. Great testimony.
That's awesome. When I think about this, it's like not only in the natural, it sounds like you wanted to punch him back because he got you and you wanted to get it, but at the end of the day when it was all said and done, you ended up shaking hands. I don't know if this guy was a Christian or not, was he? Christian background, I don't know. He was a Christian background. He may not have been loaded, but when he saw you not hit him back and when he saw you love him in a way that was abnormal, because most people would have been furious, then I'm sure that he saw the Christ in you. Have you ever had an experience like that, Stu?
Maybe where you did it the wrong way. I'll stay with my brother here, Jeff, who both of us have played basketball overseas and coached. He's coached more than overseas and I played and I did have an experience with a very well-known coach in the States now who was our HUD coach with Athletes in Action. The refs, it was in Greece playing a pro team and I had had a really good game the game before, so they targeted me. First half of the game, they called three fouls on me and it was a close game and I was hitting threes and I was on fire and I was at the other end of the court trailing and the foul was committed on this end of the court 200 feet away by one of my teammates by one of my teammates and they called my number as the foul. My coach went nuts. My assistant coach had to hold him back.
He's over here. Well, three fouls, you're watching that, so I'll go to the bench, fourth quarter. Within like two minutes of the third, fourth quarter, second half, they called another ridiculous foul only because I was at the foul line and on the baseline, our big man fouled their big man, they called it on me. So now I've got four fouls. I think they fouled me out within with only like a few minutes left in the game. The other team, they came back, they won and so literally our coach, he was ready to rip the head off the referee and we were holding him back, but after the game with athletes in action, you're supposed to share the gospel and of course, to his credit, he restrained from doing that, but the Lord put a strong sense on me and I was mad that they had fouled me out and it was really, it was definitely wrong. It was purely dishonest, unethical.
It was evil. What do you expect though, right? This is Greece. This is their hometown team and I love Greece.
Nothing is Greece, but this is hometown team and here the Americans come in and they're wanting to beat us because they're going to be there the rest of their life. We're going to go back to America on our, you know, Pan Am flight and be done and the Lord put in my heart to go share Christ with that ref and I didn't think much of that. In fact, I forgot about it because I share Christ with everybody and I just said, hey, listen to the good news of Christ.
I had a Greek interpreter and we got everyone in a circle and we would share, one guy would share the gospel through an interpreter and the other guy, about a 60 to 90 second testimony, two minutes, and the next guy would share the four laws or, you know, how do you come to know Christ? So we did that and then we prayed with whoever wanted to pray to receive Christ and I remember going after that ref and sharing the good news of Christ with him and the other coach and some of the players and all that. It was a few years after that that my coach, we were reconciled, we were reunited on something and he got to introduce me and he shared about that instance.
I couldn't even remember that, that that had happened. So that instance had an impact on my coach, who's also an intensive, you know, Division One, you know, the thing about the pressure there, think about the forgiveness needed there, but it also, who knows, maybe that other guy got saved and saw, because he knew he had done us all wrong and really threw the game for us, but in that instance, the power of forgiveness, and by the way, it never comes easy and it never, it's never, you know, what does Jesus say in that Matthew 5 passage? If you forgive those who you get along with, if you love those who you you're compatible with, it's easy.
We all have our friend groups, our cliques. How about going and forgiving someone that did you wrong? How about going to, like I talk about my book Last Words of Jesus in chapter one, how about going over to Rwanda, where there's a civil war and they're literally murdering each other's families, and then this awesome ministry went over and they wrote a whole documentary, just Google this, As We Forgive, it's called As We Forgive, and they went over and they got all the churches and all the Christian leaders and they prayed for revival and repentance, they got on their knees, they fasted, they prayed for months, and the Lord started doing a work in these same tribal feuding individuals that were murdering each other, that shed blood. You saw the Rwanda, you look at the footage, just Google it. The same people that were killing each other were now worshipping together and forgiving each other.
They did not have, by the way, they did not have enough room in the jails and the prisons to put all the murderers. It was that bloody a genocide in Rwanda, but when Christ came in and Christians got serious, you have this amazing work of grace, and that's what he's done in our life. Think about it. We were enemies, Paul says in Ephesians 2, Colossians 1, we were enemies of the cross, but Christ, but God rich in mercy by his great love, where he loved us, he poured out his grace on us, we were running away, we were fighting God, we were, you know, we were looking for God as much as a bank robber's looking for a cop, and here Jesus Christ came in all his glory, leaving the wonders of heaven to come in and die so we could be saved. He left the 99 to go after the one, and now he sends us into that same hate-mongering, evil, politically charged, anti-God world to share the wisdom of God with a world that needs Jesus. And that is 100% true, and I believe that when the world sees that everybody else is freaking out and losing their minds, and that when we have a peace about us, people are going to want to look at us and say, what do you have, number one, and number two, I want that. One of the things that I think about, and I'm reminded, I remember Pastor Charles Stanley, he said one time, he says, you know, are things tough for you, or whatever, he says, when was the last time you were crucified?
Wow. You know, I mean, when was the last time you were crucified, and I'm reminded when I feel like maybe I don't want to forgive somebody, I remember that Jesus, he was on the cross, and they were crucifying him, they were killing him for something, he didn't do anything wrong. That's right. And he says, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And some of you say, well, that's Jesus. Well, okay, what about Stephen? Stephen was the first martyr. He was telling the truth, telling everything about Jesus, the Holy Spirit, all this stuff. People didn't want to hear it, and all of a sudden they go out of town and they stone him, and he says, when they heard these things, they were cut to the heart and gnashed at him with their teeth, but he being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God and said, look, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. Then they cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and ran at him with one accord, and they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul, and they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Then he kneeled down and cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not charge them with this sin. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
They had just stoned him. He didn't do anything. He's just a man like us. He was just a man. As a matter of fact, he actually did a job that I think the apostles didn't even want to do. So he wasn't like the best and the brightest, but because he said yes and because when his opportunity came around and he said yes to Jesus and he did what was right, now we all know him as the first martyr.
What do you think, Jeff? I just wanted to, yeah, I mean, all this to me goes back to John chapter 20. And John chapter 20 where verse 23 where it says, whoever sins that you remit or they are remitted or they are forgiven and whoever sins you retain or hold on to, they are retained or held on to.
I was listening to a message one time, a friend of mine who was preaching, and they were telling me that this in the Greek is a a picture of like molasses or something sticky, okay, very sticky, or maybe even like a stick bomb, you know, kind of thing that they throw when it hits somebody's stick, I mean, hits a tank or something and sticks to it. But the thing is that it sticks and it not just sticks to that person because many times we don't want that person to be forgiven, but it also sticks to us and it holds us away from the relationship, the perfect relationship we want with our Father. If that's not enough, that should be enough to be able to forgive people to at least start the process.
You start it by speaking and that you, you may not mean it at that particular time, but you start it there and you keep it going that every time the devil wants to hit you with this, you forgive. And it allows God to work in your heart to help your health, like you said, to help you and your relationship with Him. And then also, maybe you don't want it, but the thing is it also opens that other person, it frees them for God to work in their life, for them to come to come to know the Lord, because that sin is not going to block their eyes anymore. That sin is not going to be held against them anymore.
It's almost like offense and defense. It's like there's a defense of what reason I forgive to protect my soul from bitterness and because I'm commanded to and to keep my relationship with God right, but there's an offense too. The offense is I want to lead them to Christ.
And if I hate them and I'm angry toward them and I swing back and I go after them and I assault them, how am I going to bring them? They are a soul lost, and the only reason they're acting out against us is because they're under the snare of the devil, 2 Timothy chapter 2. They are trapped, and they're not acting on their own. They're acting out of their flesh.
They're acting out of the devil's bondage. And so God has sent us as agents of forgiveness ministers, literally 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verses 17, 18, and 19. He says, after anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation, 517. And he says, and all this is from God who has made you a minister of reconciliation. So every relationship you have where there's a fracture and there's a bitterness and there's an anger, a resentment one way or another, God's put you in that relationship to bring the forgiveness and the grace of Christ. And you know, it doesn't mean you forget. It doesn't mean someone, you know, robbed you.
You don't just leave your door unlocked, whatnot. But you can forgive in terms of saying, God, I don't hold this against them. It doesn't mean they have to receive your forgiveness, right? But you, your part, in as much as it relies on me, Romans 12, be at peace with all men, and you're doing that, you're a blessed peacemaker to bring yourself at peace with them, but to bring them to peace with God. Because they are a soul bound, if they don't know Christ, to hell. You're in their life to demonstrate the forgiveness, but to get them right with God. The reason you have any problems with horizontally with man, the reasons anyone has any problems horizontally, is because they have a vertical problem. Because they're not right with God.
That's the solution to our whole country. If someone gets right with God, it changes everything. It changes how we relate to you.
Because I go to him, he changes me, and then that changes all of my horizontal relationships. So it starts with loving God, knowing God, seeking God, being healed and forgiven by God, and then that flows out to a forgiveness that goes, that channels out to everyone that I come in contact with. And that's why I can't forgive people, because likely I haven't been forgiven yet. I haven't got, I'm, people that are unforgiving, they are, and Jesus even said it, right? He says, you're not forgiving others, you're not forgiven by God. They haven't experienced that peace, that healing, that freedom of forgiveness. So therefore they can't give away, or they can't forgive what they haven't received. And that is the power, and that's why Jesus came.
And that's the call to everyone out there listening. If you've never been forgiven, you're gonna have a doggone hard time forgiving people. You're gonna get over this, and there's gonna be something else. It's gonna be constant strife and strain, and constant problem in your life, until you go to the cross and be forgiven by Christ. And then receive his forgiveness, and then out of that, you will become a perpetual forgiver. And then once you receive that forgiveness for yourself, and once you receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and once you realize how much you've been forgiven of, I believe it makes it a little bit easier for you to forgive yourself. And Jeff Hoover, we're glad to have you. Coach at Piedmont classical men's soccer team, and Stu Epperson, author of First Words of Jesus, and author of Last Words of Jesus. Thank you guys for coming on.
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