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Bibleline Bibleline, here God’s Word on Bibleline, everywhere, every time. Here God’s truth on Bibleline. This is Dr. Ralph Arnold, pastor of Calvary Community Church. We will be continuing our tradition of a candlelight service again this year on New Year’s Eve. You are warmly invited to come and worship with us this New Year’s Eve at 7 p.m. Please join us at 4811 George Road here in Tampa. This will be a special time to reflect upon the blessings of God in your life from 2010.

A message from the Word of God for the New Year. Music from the Firehouse 5 and in with a candlelight dedication. Refreshments will be served afterwards in the Fellowship Hall. So make plans now to join us this Friday for our candlelight service at 7 p.m. turning your Bible to the book of Psalms, the book of Psalms. I was trying to figure out what kind of a title to have on today’s sermon. I thought about the oak tree and the pine.

God, that would make a good sermon. And so then I thought about the fern and the bamboo. Then I thought about the biggest mistake God ever made. Then I thought, well God can’t make a mistake. But if God could make a mistake, what would be the biggest mistake God ever made? I believe that it would be that God gave to man a free will. Do you realize the damage that has come to the world because man was given the ability to choose the right of choice to make up his own mind, to say no, and look at the damage over the years because man made the wrong choice.

Did God make a mistake and given you and I a voice, a choice to choose right or wrong, good or bad? And look what’s happened to everything. And there they were in the Garden of Eden and nothing was going everything was perfect. Everything was just right. And then God told them one thing not to do gave him a choice. Told him it would be consequences. Boy Peter just never gave us a free will. We would have such a wonderful life.

We’d all been down on this world. We’d have been perfect. There had been no sin, no problems. And you know what? God made a mistake. No God didn’t make a mistake. God knew what man was going to do before he did it. So I guess we’re back here to the book of Psalms chapter one trying to decide what is the title of today’s message. But notice there in the book of Psalms in chapter one. The first Psalm, verse one says, Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly nor standeth in the way of sinners nor siteth in the seat of the scorned form.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law that he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bring forth his fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth, shall prosper. The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff, which the wind driveeth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment or sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

For the Lord kneweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.” You see in verse 1, One, it talks a little bit about the separation, things that makes us different. You and I, when we trusted Christ as our Savior, we were separated from the unbelievers because you’re now the leaver. You became a child of God, so you’ve been separated from just being a child of the flesh. So there is a separation, there’s a difference.

You’re not the same as you used to be. God doesn’t see you the same way. You’re different now. And yet at the same time in our Christian life, God says, I don’t want you to do some of the things that others do. I don’t want you to walk in the counsel of the ungodly. So I don’t want you to listen to them. I don’t want you to walk the way others walk. And then He says, and not to stand in the way of the sinners.

I don’t want you to do that because it has to deal with what we do. One is what we hear and then the other hears, nor said it in the seat of the scornful. This is what we say. So there’s three things here that gives us some things that says God said, blessed is the man that walk is not, doesn’t act like the world, doesn’t think like the world, doesn’t talk like the world. Because in God’s I say, you’re not of the world.

You were, but you’re no longer. You’re in the world, but God doesn’t want us to be like the world. And then he makes a statement there in verse one talking about our separation. So we’re separated. And then in verse two, but his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law that he meditate day and night. Now if the man does this, doesn’t do the other, but he does this, then the man is to be saturated.

So we’re separated, but then we’re saturated. We’re saturated with what the word of God says. It permeates our mind so that we want to do what God says to do. We want to walk the way. He says to walk, and we want to sit in the counsel of the Godly and not the walk in the way of the ungodly. It’s causing you to have a separation because the Word of God saturates you. And because of that, he says, you meditate upon the Word of God.

It just says in the book of Joshua in chapter 1, it says that we may have success all the days of our life. Now, not success in the eyes of the world, but success in the eyes of God, what God considers it to be. And then we’re situated in a certain spot. See, there’s a lot of places that we choose to put our home, where we choose to live. Look, there’s 50 states in the United States. We can choose to live so many places.

But the thing that you and I should understand that there’s a better place to be situated. And that’s to be situated by the river of life. You see, there’s a place that you can be that will sustain you all the days of your life, all the days of my life. there’s a place that we could be. And whenever it doesn’t seem like things are flourishing, like you’d like to say to them, but you yourself as an individual are supposed to be like a tree planted by the rivers of water.

Look there in verse three. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bring it forth his fruit in his season, his leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he do it shall prosper. That is a good verse. And this is talking about the God’s child that is saturated with the word of God. And he does the thing that God says to do. And therefore he is situated in the right spot for the blessings of God.

And every person that I know of that knows the Lord loves the Lord, wants the blessings of God upon their life. And I want that and I’m sure that you do too. But he says in verse 4, the ungodly are not like this. The ungodly doesn’t love the word of God. They’re not situated by the river of life talking about the Word of God itself They don’t plant themselves into the Word of God so that their roots go deep.

I mentioned to you about the oak tree and Everybody knows that an oak tree goes grows real slow And they say well, there’s two ways to get to the top of a note tree One you can climb it Two you can sit on an acorn But an acorn tree will take a little bit longer to grow because it’s got deeper roots, it’s a stronger tree, and it produces hard wood that burns good. Now pine tree is not exactly like that.

And a pine tree, while it grows faster, and roots is not as deep, when there’s a storm they blow over quite easily. And they can be a danger. It’s just that there’s a difference in the root system. one person, he was very sick and tired of life. He didn’t like his job, didn’t like his wife, didn’t like his health, he didn’t like people, he didn’t like the world, he didn’t like God. And matter of fact, he just hated everything and hated himself.

So he just one day just told the boss, he says, I quit my job, told his wife I’m quitting, don’t want to be married anymore. He says, and I’m just going to quit my spirituality altogether. I don’t want church no more. I just quit everything. And I’m going to go out into the woods and I’m just going to end my life. I quit. You ever think like that? Just I’ve had enough. I don’t want to go no more. Stop this world Lord and let me off.

Well, he thought I’m going to have one last talk with God. So he’s got out there in the woods and he says, dear Lord, before I end it all, you have anything final you like to say to me. I mean, can you talk me out of this? Can you give me one good reason why I should not just end it all right now? Give me a good reason. And the Lord says, have you ever seen the fern and the bamboo?

He said, well, yes. He said, well, you see this beautiful force that that I have. He said, you know that I plant the fern and I plant the seed for the bamboo. Even if I plant them both at the same time and I can give them water. And I give him sunlight. He said, you know that that fern will just grow up immediately, beautiful green, and it’s great, beautiful. He says, but that bamboo seed didn’t grow at all. He said, but I didn’t give up on that bamboo.

He says, after the first year, the ferns came out more abundantly and covered the floor of the forest. and it was beautiful greenery, look great. He said, but that bamboo still didn’t grow. The seed didn’t grow at all. He said, and I watered them. He said, and I gave it sunlight. But the bamboo seed didn’t grow. The third year, still the same story, Then you grow. The fourth year, then you grow. He said, but in the fifth year, there’s a little sproun.

He says, in comparison to the ferns, he says it was small and insignificant. He says, but you realize in six months that bamboo can be a hundred feet tall. He says, those five years that nothing happened. He says there was nothing wrong. He says I created them. He said but that bamboo was building its root system so that when it started to grow it could grow as tall as it goes. He says I didn’t give up on that bamboo.

He said, just because it didn’t grow, he said, I don’t give up on you. I don’t give up on people. He says, my word doesn’t go and not come back. It accomplishes what I sent it forth to do. He says, when it comes to anything that I’ve made, he says, I’m the creator. He says, and it will accomplish that which I intended. So whenever you and I understand that our good days, all we talk about how blessed we are of God.

But those bad days are the days that God is spending time causing us to deepen our roots into the Word of God. So it’s not wasted time. So every one of us may flower at times, but he says, there’s other time He says, I’ve got your root system going deep. And I want you to hang on to what the Word of God says. And so your faith grips this rock and your faith grips this rock. And this one goes down 20 feet and grips a whole of this verse.

And this one gets a whole of this verse so that whenever you really start to grow, he says in the wind start coming, he says the root system is what sustains you. And just like that bamboo, it might seem like a year ago by two years, three years, times of law, nothing exciting, but it’s not lost time. It’s because God is spending time giving you experiences. So the good things, oh, we love the blessings of God, but the bad days are not really bad days, but we look at them as bad days.

Those bad days is where we’re gaining experience that will deepen our relationship with the Lord and cause us to be a stronger Christian and then whenever your roots go deep you can grow and be higher. And the man says, Lord, how high can I rise? He said, well, how high can the bamboo tree rise? He says, as high as it can. He says, and that’s what I want for you. I don’t quit on you. I want you to rise and give me glory as high as you can.

Just be faithful and God will bless and I believe that the Lord will remember this because we often think about the bad days and it’s amazing that many times on our calendar we can’t remember certain days unless something happened on that day. Here’s the Lord he gave you and made the right of choice. Did God make a mistake when he gave you the right to choose. He saved you, gave you eternal life, and then set you free to live.

Now you got the freedom to choose to serve the Lord or not to serve the Lord. How did you do with your choice? You have a choice to read God’s word or not to read God’s word. What kind of a decision did you make? You have a choice to witness for the Lord or not to the witness, but it gave you choices. Did God make a mistake? Did He trust you too far? Did you let him down? Did you fail?

Did God make a mistake when He left you here, said, taking you home? Whenever you think about the twelve disciples, Christ spent three and a half years at least with His disciples, taught Him, walked with Him, and He spent time with them. And then whenever it was all over with it, the big test came and they all failed. They all fell their final exam because it says in the scriptures that they all forsook him, every one of them did.

But Peter, remember him, God bless Peter. He said, Lord, though everybody forsake you, I won’t. I will never forsake you. The Lord says before the night’s over, you’re going to deny me three times. Nah, not me. I don’t know what everybody else is going to do, but man, I’m rock solid. You know, Peter’s roots were not very deep. didn’t last the night did it didn’t last the night because before the night was over with he’d done messed up and messed up and can you believe that Jesus and and Peter exchanged a glimpse at each other Jesus looked at Peter look at him and Peter saw him after he denied him three times and it came into his mind and he web.

Because he knew what he had promised. And literally he know that within a few hours he was going to let the Lord down so bad. You talking about failure. Did God make a mistake with Peter? Did he make a mistake with him? Look how bad he blew it. And yet God still used Peter on the day of Pentecost. What a great honor to use this man. See, God didn’t use a man because he was perfect. God used a man because he really, I’d have messed up, I accept it, and then make things right with the Lord.

And when Jesus came to him, he says, Peter, they says, do you love me? How many times did he ask Peter, do you love me? Three times. Who knew I did it three times you gonna include how many times did he be nigh him? three times You know one time there was a girl She was blind a girl was blind She hated herself She hated the world She hated everything and everybody hated God Because she was blind She hated everybody and everything except her boyfriend He asked her says will you marry me?

she says if I can see the world if I could just see the world I’d marry you Somebody donated her some eyes The surgery was a success and she could see totally changed her outlook on life. And a boyfriend asked her, says, now that you can see, will you marry me? And she looked at him and she was shocked. She didn’t know he was blind. And she says, there’s too much of the world that I want to see. I don’t want to spend my life tied down to a blind person and he wept walked away.

Several months later after he got over some of his grief he wrote a little letter. He says, take care of yourself and take care of my eyes. Wouldn’t it be something to look one day into the face of Jesus Christ and you realized who has done so much for you and how little we respond in the good way to the Lord. Now notice here in the book of Luke and chapter 22, looking verse 54, then took they him and led him and brought him into the high priest house.

Peter followed a far off. When they had kindle of fire in the midst of the hall and were set down together, Peter set down among them. But a certain maid beheld him as he set by the fire, and earnestly looked upon him and said, This man was also with him. And he denied him, saying, Woman, I know him not. And after a little while another saw him and says, Thou art also of them. And Peter says, man, I am not.

And about the space of one hour after another, confidently affirmed, saying, of a truth, this fellow also was with him, for he is a Galilean. And Peter says, man, I know not what thou sayeth, and immediately, while he yet spake the cockroof. And the Lord, get the Lord turned and looked upon Peter. What that look must have done. Did you know one day we’re going to stand before the Lord and we are going to look into the face, face of Jesus Christ?

I’ve often tried to picture what Christ really looks like, but I just can’t seem to do it. But all I know about the Lord is what the Bible describes about his character. I know what he’s like because the Word of God tells me this is Jesus. He is God. And this is what he’s like, and this is who he loves. And this is what he promised, and all the things that he will do and things he won’t do. And then he makes the statement here in verse 61, and the Lord turned and looked upon Peter and Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, before the cockroach thou shalt deny me thrice, and Peter went out and wet bitterly.

Wet bitterly. When he knew he had blown it, he had failed the Lord. I believe Peter loved the Lord, but I believe he took his eyes off of him. I believe he got scared, but I believe he still loved the Lord. But he didn’t realize how shallow his roots were. See the roots didn’t go very deep because a big test come along and he wasn’t able to stand. But see, God doesn’t just forget about it and let you alone.

I believe there’s some of these teenagers and even adults that you pour a lot in and say I watered and I gave sunshine and I did all these things and in some Christians will just seem to take off and grow and in some of them look like they are never going to grow. And then I say years later, all of a sudden there’s a little sprout. But in all those years, they’re still going through experiences of life and their roots are still going down.

And then one day you’ll be surprised how God was just a blessed person and that person and begins to make wise decision. And then down the road, there could be 10, 15, 20 young guys who become, goes into the ministry that came out of our youth group. But right now you wouldn’t give a quarter for them. But we won’t see things the way God sees things. Think it’s not worth it, it is worth it. Because see, they’re God’s children.

And God can do a better job raising his kids than I can. And God’s word is true. Now take your Bible looking Ephesians in chapter three. the book of Ephesians in chapter 3, verse 13, wherefore I desire that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory. For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man.

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. That ye and your underlinedest phrase being rooted, grounded in love. Now the only way sometimes God can root you and ground you in love is to have a lot of hateful things happen to you. A lot of ugly things, bitter things. Because, see, God’s going to teach you love. It’s not just going to be by showering you with love. It’s going to be because you learn how to love the Lord in a situation that’s bitter.

Because things are not right because people can be ugly. And that’s to bring out the sweetness in you. How is God doing? Did God make a mistake with you? Did God send you some bitterness that you didn’t respond to very well? What have you been facing lately? What do you think God want you to do. How do you think he wants you to be? You see, outwardly sometimes we can fool everybody, but God knows the inside of an individual how they’re thinking.

And you can carry a lot of bitterness and hatred on the inside because you don’t like the circumstances, because God has given us some things that we don’t understand. But the Lord is working on you because he wants you and has made you something special. And he wants you to sink your roots deep and rise as high as you in your honor and glory to the Lord because of what He’s done. But look at that verse one more time in verse 17.

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith that ye being rooted and grounded in love may be able. See the reason for being rooted and grounded in a certain thing is because there’s something God wants you to do. You may be able to comprehend, to understand what all those things, what is the breadth and the length and the depth and the what’s that word height so that it goes deep, that it goes wide. that it goes high because of what God is doing and working in your life.

And that’s why he says all these things on in verse 20. Now unto him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us, there’s power working in your life whether you understand it or not. There’s experiences that you’re going through, not just the good things, Sometimes they so-called bad things because God has a purpose. God is working in our life to develop us into something good. You pitched all the good things that happen to you in your life.

And you say, boy, am I good? God was so good to me. You know, God’s characteristics doesn’t change. When all those so-called bad things happen, God is still just as good. It’s not God changed. God was good, God was bad. No, God is good. And so those bad things that we consider bad, they said we don’t understand and see the fruitfulness of it yet. We don’t see the cause, the purpose of it yet. But like the bamboo, nothing for the first year, the second year, the third year, the fourth year, but the fifth year, a little sprout.

This hand represents you and me and the the wallet represents sin. We all have sin upon us. Now God says that He loves us. God is the love of the world. He hates our sin because you see it separates us from Him. And He says the wages of sin is death and since we committed the sin we have to pay for it. We have to death. And that is eternal separation from God in Hell. But God loves us and wants us to go to heaven.

And to go to heaven we have to be perfect as righteous as God. None of us are perfect, none of us. We’re all sinners. And the Bible says that if we want to go to heaven, we got to get rid of it. On our way is by death. This hand represents Jesus Christ. He’s the Lord God in the flesh. He came into the world because He loves us. He hates our sin because it separates us from Him. Now did God make a mistake and give man a choice?

what you get to choose. Christ took all of our sins, paid for them on the cross, came back from the dead and says, now, if you will believe that I did that for you, if you’ll choose to believe it, I choose to give you as a free gift eternal life. So we choose to accept the payment He made, believe and He did it for us. And He chose to give us as a free gift everlasting life. Our sins are paid and we get to go to heaven on what Christ did for us.

You didn’t earn it, you didn’t for it’s by grace, are you safe to obey that, not of yourself? It is the gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast. God make a mistake. God don’t make mistakes. God is perfect. God is righteous. That’s pretty cool. You’ve been listening to Bibleline, a teaching ministry of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida, with Dr. Ralph Arnold. We pray that you were blessed by today’s message. If you have enjoyed our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, You can reach Bibleline and pledge your support to keep us on the air in your area by dialing toll free 1-800-576-3771.

That’s 1-800-576-3771. If you wish to hear today’s program again or would like to download a free MP3 of today’s or any previous Bibleline program, go to BibleLineMinistries.org and click on the Spinning globe in the upper right corner of our home page. If you’re in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Our Sunday morning services begin at 1030 and at 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. Live broadcast of our services may be seen by going to our church website, calvaryoftampa.org.

Thanks for joining us on Bibleline, and now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friends, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound. 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. And just keep looking up.