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Bibleline Bibleline, here God’s word on Bibleline, here God’s truth on Bibleline. Welcome to Bibleline with Dr. Ralph Yankee Arnold, pastor of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida. Clearly declaring the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the radio and the internet. Your regular prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the air. You can reach us toll free at 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made by clicking on the donations link on the BibleLineMinistries.org homepage. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s concluding message of this teaching will be a blessing to you and your family.

So number three, the individual matters. No one makes you yield and nobody makes you sin. We often blame people. We’re in the blaming game and it started a long time ago as you know. But sometimes we don’t take responsibility for our own actions for what we say and what we do. When I get to heaven and God wants to reward me, and I just know He does, hell, He’s already told me all about what He wants to do. He wants to reward all of us and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own.

And Lord, I was going to do that. But that Bob Brooks, he stopped me. He wouldn’t let me do that. I was going to love you and I was going to give a thousand dollars in church. Bob says, I wouldn’t do that. Bob, you stay out of this. But sometimes we want to blame something. If you want to do right, you say, well, yeah, but if I’d have done what they said, dude, But it killed me. It’s still a choice.

God talks about being faithful even unto death. Ooh. It sounds so final. But now understand this. There is a sequence of consequences and a sequence in temptations. It doesn’t just happen like that. You don’t just, all of a sudden, I just fell in the sand. Ah, just fell in the sand. No, you didn’t. more than you just fell in love. We’re just ready to fell in love. Generally, there’s a time where you get to look at each other and think about each other, talk to each other, and love grows.

They say love is blind. Well, marriage is an eye-opener. But notice, in Romans chapter 13, I want you to hold your place here, but look in Romans in chapter 13 real quick. Romans 13, it tells us, yes, that all the law is fulfilled in one word, which is love, and that we should love. And how that a love works no ill. See there in verse 10, love works no ill to his neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

If you love, you don’t have to worry about the law. Because if I love, see, I don’t have to worry about committing adultery to somebody because I love. And if I love, then I don’t have to do anything. it’s going to hurt somebody. I’m not going to steal from them. I don’t want what they have. I don’t have to covet because I love the Lord and not better than anything else I could ever have. Love solves a lot of problems.

But when love waxes cold, sin abounds. And the further you get away from the Lord, the more sin is going to be in your life. Now look what he says. And he says this in verse 11, talking to those who know the Lord, that knowing the time that it is now high time to awake out of sleep, for now is our salvation near than when we believed. Now the salvation, this deliverance that we’re going to have is closer. Do you realize that I am 54 and a half years closer to the rapture than I was when I got saved?

It can happen at any time. But he says this in verse 12, the night is far spent, the day is at hand. let us, believers, therefore cast off the works of darkness, let us put on the armor of light. So there’s a thing that God wants to take off in our life and this is why you use the word of God, the sharp two-edged sword, to cut out things out of your life that doesn’t need to be there. And to put into your life the things that God wants.

Now when you read the book of Cossians in chapter 3 it’ll add to this. Also the book of Ephesians will add to this about the walk with the Lord and about the flesh, put it on the new man that was created in righteousness. These are things that God wants us to do. Now look in verse 13, let us walk. Honestly, as in the day, not rioting, drunkenness, nor clamoring and wantonness, not in strife and Indian, all these are things that leads to temptation draws you away when your own lust of the flesh lures you.

We desire something. So within us is something that the devil can lure us with. So he knows that he can lure us with certain things because something already on the inside of us desires it. Every man desires praise, honor, and glory. We already want that. Every man does. Now you have to decide from whom do I want it? Do I want it from man here, or can I be patient and get it from God there? that the trial of your patient, been much more precious than gold and silver, though it would be tried with fire, may be found in the praise, honor, and glory at the appearance of Jesus Christ.

See God says, I’ll give you all the praise and all the honor and all the glory for fighting all of these battles. So if you understand that, then you’ll realize that all of the problems of life are just simply an opportunity to do something wonderful and great for the Lord. That gives you an opportunity to prove how much you love the Lord, and to be steadfast, and that you want His will for you more than anything else in the world, and because of your maturity, you can be patient, and you don’t fly off the hand, or you don’t have to fall apart, because something goes wrong in your life.

Because you already know all things work together for good to those who love the Lord, to those who are called according to it, you already know that. And you don’t think it’s strange concerning all these fiery things that happens to you. You don’t automatically think, well, I thought I was doing right, I thought I was serving the Lord and then all these bad things happened to me. I guess I must be out of the will of God. Just because bad things happen to you when you’re serving God and doing the best you know how, don’t think, well, it must be, I must be out of the will of God.

It doesn’t mean that you might be out of the will of God. Do you think that Paul could have been in the will of God and people stoned him, begin the will of God and people wanted to kill him and cut him with the clatter nine tails about four or five times and left in the deep and all the things that happened to him, all the beings that he went through, well he must have been out of the will of God.

No, he wasn’t out of the will of God. And sometimes this is how Satan defeats us because he said, well see if you weren’t serving God this wouldn’t happen to you. I know lost people and they have problems too. I’m just glad, I got the Lord to help me walk through all of my problems. And this is why I preached a sermon years ago on the man that walked with God. Because you go back to the Old Testament, it talks about Noah and Noah walk with God and Moses walk with God.

And different people, they walk with God, they walk with God. Well, if I’m walking with God, sometimes walking with God, God will walk me right into the middle of a problem. Moses was leading the children of Israel out in lo and behold. He let him right into a dead end. In your walk with God, sometimes God will lead you into a dead end. And sometimes on a detour, and it’s not always the shortest route, He did not take him the shortest way.

And sometimes a dry hole, there’s no water. And you’ll think, well, God must have let me the wrong way. If you walk with God, I always keep telling people, I don’t care what happens to you, just keep walking with God. God will walk you through this. God will walk you through this. All you have to do is walk with God. Trust Him. He’s our God, see Him. But you have the word of God. He says He’ll never leave you and never forsake you.

Oh, okay. But isn’t it better if we could see Him? Well, then you wouldn’t be rewarded because see God’s gonna reward you with walking by faith, not by sight. The other’s easier, but then there would be no test. God could not tell Job why He did what He did, or it would have eliminated the purpose of casting Him. But was Joe in air? No, Joe, God just had to show Joe how far he had to go. It’s not how far he’d went.

It’s how far he needed to go yet. See, God not do with us. And sometimes he wants to show us, hey, I’m not through yet with you. I got a lot more lessons I want you to learn. I want you to go even further. And in order for your faith to grow, he has to send you bigger problems. They don’t get easier. They don’t get smaller. but your faith is to get stronger. So you can get over this and over this and over this because the stronger you get, the bigger the testings have to be.

And that’s why there’s some testing that we have not yet faced in our life. When Dr. Hudson developed cancer, he came to our church in M. Betty’s song, the song that we sung was New Grace. Grace, I’ve never had to have before because God has given me grace to face this and this and this and this. But there’s coming a time when we’re going to face some things we’ve never faced before. new grace in time of need. Go to the throne of grace that you may get the help that you need at that moment.

And I don’t believe God’s late. I believe He’s on time. It’s just that He doesn’t work according to our timetable. When you said in Psalm, sometimes you’ll see there’s portions of scripture that says, Lord, help thou mean speedily. I like that word. That means right away. I need it now. So sometimes, yes, God will do that. So here in James, temptation has a sequence. Look there in James chapter 1 and verse 14. There is a sequence to this madness, but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his, And here’s a word you ought to underline it.

Own lust. And the devil may be, no, no, no, the devil did not make you do it. He can lure, he can tempt, but he can’t make you fall. Resist the devil and he will, what? Play from you. You can win. You don’t have to give in to the devil. And I would venture to say that most of us in this room are not probably a big enough caliber to merit the head man himself. He has enough little minions that take care of us.

The little devil’s on the bottom. There’s probably some big guys up there that merit, Paul I know, Jesus I know, but I don’t know who you are. He might not even know you exist. But I would like to know when I get to heaven that I at least gave of a scrap. But you watch being lifted up with pride. Even Michael the Archangel didn’t want to even rebuke the devil because of his power and let God do that because when he talks about the body of Moses and so on, don’t get too big for your britches that can I can handle that devil.

Come on, come on, come on, come on. You want a piece of me devil? You’re dumb. Realize God can allow you to be tempted in order to strip you of your pride. He can allow you to make some dumb stupid idiotic mistakes. Look what he says here in verse 15. And then when lust hath conceived, it bring forth sin. It’s not a sin to be tempted. We all have a sinful nature and we’re going to be tempted. But we don’t have to yield to that temptation.

Now, where’s the saying the Bible, something about you, your members as instruments of righteousness. Look over in the book of Romans in chapter 6, I want you to see this real quick. The yielding is a choice that we make. So look what he says here in verse 11 of chapter 6 of Romans, likewise, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed understand but alive unto God. Verse 12, let not sin or that sinful nature that you have, therefore rain in your mortal body.

You have a mortal body. Mortal means subject to death. You have a body that’s dying. You have a body with a sinful nature. Let not that sinful nature rain in your mortal body that ye should obey it in the lustor of. It has sinful desires. And so he says here, in verse 13, neither you do your members as instruments of unrighteousness, undescend. That means your body, your eyes, your ears, your hands, your feet, your body belongs to the Lord.

He bought in paper, belongs to Him. Don’t let this body be your master. That’s why Paul says in 1 Corinthians in chapter 9, I keep my body under subjection. The body is a good servant, but it’s a poor master. But this body has a sinful nature within it and this sinful nature can become your master and make you subdued and you’ll fulfill the lust of the flesh and you’re not going to like the results. So this yielding business is a choice of ours.

God’s given us the freedom to choose. Count it all joy when you fall in the divers temptation because hey you get a chance to choose. I told one time an illustration about Betty. Wouldn’t it be a shame for a woman to have a million dollars to spend and no stores? There’s no stores. I give her a million dollars honey you can have, spend any way you want. But then there’s no stores. What gives a million dollars there’s nothing to buy?

It would be the same way for God to give you so much wisdom and no problems to solve. So if God wants to be a man, he’ll be a man. bless you and you pray for wisdom, how do you know if you have attained any? You have to have a multitude of problems so that you can spend some money solving this problem, solving this problem, solving this problem. You see, that’s all we do. Everybody’s got a job is because they are a problem solver.

You’re solving somebody else’s problem. You’re counselor, you’re worth putting in your conditions. You’re solving somebody’s problem. Everybody gets paid because they’re solving somebody else’s problem. And since everybody’s got a problem, everybody got to pay something. Everything costs. But having money and no stores, not good, having wisdom and no problems to solve is the same thing. So if God is going to give you wisdom is because there’s something he wants you to solve. So he teaches you a lot of valuable lessons that you can’t learn just by reading the book.

So anybody can gain knowledge. That’s an accumulation of facts. Wisdom is taking that knowledge in a planet to the issues of life. And you’ll know whether you’re wise or not because it’s based upon God’s wisdom. So that’s why in James chapter three talks about this wisdom coming down from God above. There is a wisdom of the world and there is the wisdom of God. So there is a human perspective in life and there’s a divine perspective in life and you’re and I are supposed to see the world through the eyes of the Lord.

Let me just show you this one down here for looking verse 16 of the same chapter in Romans. No you’re not that the whom you yield yourself servants who obey His servants you are to whom you obey, whether sin and the death of obedience and the righteousness. It’s a choice. Now go back to the book of James. What you do, and some of y’all like to go fishing, is you put bait on a hook. Fish desires to bait. Fish takes the bait.

Get hooked. You get to fish. Satan has to get you, but he has to bait you. So remember when you go fishing, you’re trying to outsmart the fish, aren’t you? So you’re trying to pull the fish, and some fish are pretty smart, but hit fish takes that bait, and next thing you know, you pull that thing and set that hook and you start pulling it into the boat. That’s what the devil is after you for. And he lures you, and he gets you away from the things of God.

in Matthew chapter 4, when the devil came to tempt Jesus Christ, he offered him praise, honor, and glory. The same thing that he does to us, 1 John chapter 2, same thing. And so he gives you debate and some people are going to bite, but remember this, he offered Jesus the kingdoms of the world and Jesus said no. Most of us, he offers us little trinkets, little silver glittering things, things that don’t amount to a hillabanes. And it can lure us away from the stability of the Word of God.

Oh Lord, I love you, I love you, I love you. And Satan can lure you with a little fame, a little promise of this, and a little money, and this, the other. There you go. And you fell apart. You gave it all away. Remember these four little things I’ll give them to you kind of quick. Kind of a temptation by yoden to God, like he says in Romans. Use the right resistance. What’s the right resistance? Resist the devil and he will flee.

Remember the illustration in the Old Testament about a man named name of Joseph, Potiphar’s house. And he was accused. This woman wanted him to do a no-no. So what did he do? He ran. Got out of there. Did he do the right thing? Yes, he did. Did he go to prison? Yes, he did. He went to prison. But he was still did right and suffered for it. You can do right and still suffer for it. But did God know what was going on?

And the Bible says in all of these things and God was with him and God was with him. God was with him. God says in the hundred and fifth Psalm, God says, I sent a man down into Egypt. God said, I sent him, and he was put in irons. He was hurt. He had been rejected. Look at all the things that happened to him, but God had a plan. God had to get the man in the right place, and then before it was all over with, the man went from the pit to the prison to the palace.

And here’s Jesus. He went from the very same thing. He was sold by his own people. And one day he’d be highly exalted and given a name which is above every name that is the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue shall confess. But see that’s after the cross. Now in this life you and I we’re bearing our cross. We are suffering every day just by the fact that we’re here and not there. But he says the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed.

remind yourself of consequences. It will scare you out of its temporary pleasure. Anything that tempts you, look down the road and try to reason you. Is this going to be worth it? This is going to steal from me. This is going to rob from me. This is going to cost me something greatly. Is it going to be worth it? Think about the sequence and the luring isn’t what the sin is, is taking the bait, getting hooked. Think, well, I can just take it and then I’ll get free and you can’t get free.

It traps. It does a lot of damage. An answered temptation by the Word of God. If sinners entice thee, consent thou not. Howl of all shall a young man cleanse his way by taking heed according to thy word. My Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path, the Word of God. So it’s the will of God to know the Word of God in order to know the will of God. That’s why you read, that’s why you study, so that you can know what God wants you to do.

But we should be so thankful that God has given to us on this side of the grave, opportunities to prove we love Him. This is the only chance we have, this life. Take advantage of it. all the wisdom you can, wisdom from God is money to spend. And some people are bankrupt. They have no faith at all. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Christ said, when He come back, will He find faith? Is there people who really believe what God’s Word says and can walk by faith believing that what God says, it is true.

It will be worth at all. It will be worth it all. We’re to believe that. Look up here. I was talking to a guy on the ship. He was a Muslim and he came up to my table and he cleaned off some stuff and I says, can I ask you a question? I said, yeah. I said, do you know where you’re going to go? And he says, he says, is that a Bible? Yeah. I says, do you believe the Bible?

Nope. I says, your mother’s a marching. He let them give me a little smile. I said, yeah. I said, you read the Koran, right? Yep. I says, even if you read the Koran instead of the Koran, believe the Koran, you still don’t know if you’re going to go to heaven, do you? Then I smiled at him. He says, no. I says, you may even be a good Muslim. You still don’t know if you’re going to go to heaven, do you?

No. I said, did you know in the Koran, It doesn’t talk about Allah loving you Allah forgiving you Allah making a payment for your sins It always talks about home merciful all how merciful all I says where’s it show his merciful? He has no mercy I Says let me just mention this to you. I said, did you know in the Quran it talks about Jesus in In the Koran it talks about the people of the book. I says that book he’s referring to is this book right here.

I says so in the Koran it talks about the book. It talks about the Jews. It talks about Jesus. Well if it talks about those in the Koran why can’t we talk about that? He just stared at me. I said, let me explain something to you. Let me show you what Jesus Christ did on the cross for you. And I looked right in his eyes and I said, did you understand this? You need to understand it. He would rather die than live without you.

He loves you so much. And but it didn’t take but a second. And I saw tears in the corner of his eyes. They’ve never been told somebody loves you so much they would rather die than live without you. I said, he wants you to die. that bad. Let me show you what he did for you.” And it was just a piece of cake. And I got through it. I said, that makes sense. He says, yes, it does. I said, right now, you trust Jesus Christ as your Savior.

He said, yes, I will. He was so excited. I even got one of my gospel-driven members and I wrote in the thing of it and gave it to him. He was so happy, so glad. So do I love Muslims? I hate the religion. I despise the religion. But the people can trust the Lord. And I don’t know where they are. I didn’t care if he was a Muslim or what he was a full-wet, never read anything. I don’t trust the Lord.

This man represents you and me. This wall represents sin. We all have sin on us. Now God says that he loves us. Now he hates what we do, but he loves us. And the Bible says for us to pay for sin is eternal separation from God and heaven. To go to heaven, we have to be perfect as righteous as God and none of us are perfect. None of us are righteous. We’ve all come short of God’s perfection. God says, you cannot save yourself by any amount of works.

This hand represents Jesus Christ. He’s the Lord God in the flesh. Came into the world because He loves us, hates our sin, because our sin separates us from the Lord. So Jesus Christ, God’s Son who had no sin, didn’t have to die. But because of His love, He took our sins, died in our place. Paid for that sin, came back from the dead. And God said, if we would believe that He did it for us, He would give us as a free give everlasting life and we get to go to heaven on what Christ did.

I was telling the people down at the Bible study today. I said when Jesus Christ died and came back from the dead, those scars in his hands and his feet, it’s just like men, Betty, we went to a restaurant and we got some breakfast and we got to receive. We paid for it and they gave us another receive. That receipt means that we paid for our meal. Jesus is my proof of payment and And since He will never die, I have got a living eternal proof of payment for all of my sins.

He is my receipt. As long as He lives, I have a receipt paid in full. That’s good news. Let’s pray, shall we? With every head bound, every eye closed, no one looking around. If you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, I pray that you would. I pray that you would understand that God so loved you so much that He sent His Son to pay for your sins. And if you will believe that He did it for you, He would give you as a free gift of our lasting life.

Would you trust Him? If you’re watching by the internet, right there on the screen, it says, yes, I will trust Christ as my Savior. I pray that you won’t. If you’ve never done it before, do it right now. Let us know. If you’re in the auditorium interview, never trust the Christ as Savior, I pray that you would do that. I’m not going to have you forward, not going to embarrass you, but right where you’re sitting. So yes, that made sense to me.

I want to know that I have eternal life and know that I’m going to heaven when I die. I’m going to preach out life for you to pray for me. Is it anyone at all? Just flipping up very quickly. You know that no Christ is your Savior. You’re going to be tempted. It’s common to all men. But God doesn’t tempt any man. But it’s an individual matter because it comes from within. temptation has a sequence. It leads and baits you, gets you on the hook and burns your life.

You have been listening to another great message from Dr. Arnold and we hope that Bibleline is a blessing to you. In appreciation for your support of this ministry, we’d like to send to you a gift. During this month, for a gift in any amount, we’re going to send the Bible Promise book. It is a book that organizes verses of the Bible by topic. For example, If you wanted to know of verses that address humility, or forgiveness, or obedience, you would simply find that topic in the table of contents, go to the chapter listed, and there you would find the verses that address that topic.

It’s a wonderful study guide and resource for your own devotions, as well as for lesson preparation, and we’ll send it to you for a gift in any amount for this month. Our mailing address is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634, and don’t forget to include your mailing address as well. God bless you and thank you again for supporting Bibleline. Thanks for joining us on Bibleline. If you are in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634.

And now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound and we will be changed. Caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day. believing that the Lord is coming soon, just keep looking up.