This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.

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 read the Bible. continue on the air. You can reach us toll free at 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made through the Bible-lined website at calvaryoftampa.org. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, and that today’s message will be a blessing to you and your family.

The salvation that we have as the Bible calls it, so great salvation is not over just because you trusted Christ as your Savior. The Lord saves us from the penalty of sin, which is death and hell. So you have been saved from that. The Holy Spirit indwells us in order to save us from the power of sin in our life. And that goes on all the days of your physical life upon this earth. And then the Lord says that He wants to save us and will save us someday from the very presence of sin.

So we know that we’re saved, saved, saved. You’ve heard that song, save, save, saved. So I’m saved from the penalty, saved from its power and be saved someday from the very presence. But if we neglect why we live in this world, If we neglect this so great salvation, God says that He’s going to reward us and the rewards are not always something good. Did you know that you can do bad things and receive a reward and you can do good things and receive a reward?

In other words, you’re going to receive the just recompense of your deeds. So God rewards evil people and God rewards good people. So you’re going to get rewarded one way or the other. But he makes a statement here in verse 1 of Hebrews chapter 2, therefore we, we refers to those who have trusted Christ as their Savior. These scriptures are not talking to lost people. This is to those who know the Lord. This is talking to you and talking to me.

Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, less at any time we should let them slip. There are things that you have been taught that you ought not to let slip away out of your mind. The Bible says in chapter 3, and we won’t take the time to look at it, but it talks about those who depart from the faith because of their unbelief. You know Christ is Savior, but you can get to where you do not believe the things that God says about Him and about your responsibility to Him.

thinking that it’s a serious thing, that our Christian life isn’t a serious deal. My Christianity is serious to me. My going to church, that’s serious to me. My Bible study is a serious thing to me. My prayer and my giving and everything that I do, my whole Christian life is a serious thing to me. It’s not a game to me. It is a serious thing. It ought to be to every Christian. He makes the statement in verse to for if, if the word spoken by angels was steadfast.

In other words, when God gave his word to Moses on Mount Sinai and God meant what he said and God said he would bless Israel if they were obedient and he would chase them if they were disobedient. God meant exactly what he said and they received the just recompense of the reward. In other words, they got their do whether it was in the land and being totally blessed or out of the land being totally what God kept his word.

And if God will keep his word according to the law, what do you think he’s going to do about these other things that he says? So the book of Hebrews is written not to the lost people. The book of Hebrews is written to believers who are stumbling all over themselves, to believers who are disbelieving the things about their Christian life. They’re not walking as the ought to. So the title of the sermon this morning is in your notes there.

How shall we escape the chastening rod of God? How can you escape it? You cannot escape. So this is written to the believers and not to the lost. But look what he says again in verse to. 3 7 8 8 8 9 9 9 8 9 9 9 9 9 8 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 8 He says, and every transgression, that means under the law, when they transgress the law, he says, and disobedience received a just recompense of reward.

In other words, they got their just due. They received their just desserts. They received what the Bible calls, you reap what you sow. You reap what you sow. And how shall we escape is not to the lost man’s talking to the believers. How is the Christians going to escape the chastening hand of God? Now by the time you get to Hebrews chapter 12 that talks about the chastening, the chastening of God’s people, there’s a lot of scriptures in between these scriptures between chapter 2 and chapter 12, 10 chapters in there.

And they have all kinds of things that it talks about the Christian and what he’s to do and not to do. Look what he says there in chapter 4 and verse 12. Because he’s talking to the Christians, for the word of God is quick, that means it’s a lie. The word of God is a quick and a powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. Pearson even to the divided in a sunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and the moral.

That’s your body. So of the body, the soul, and the spirit, and is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. Does the Word of God know your motive? The intents of your heart, yes it does. And God can reveal all these things to us. That helps us to see, why do I do what I do? What is my real motivation? And God says that nothing is hid to his eyes. See there in verse 13? Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

In other words, your whole life has to do with God. And everything is open to the eyes, his eyes. In other words, before God, you are stripped totally naked in front of God. God sees and God knows everything inside and out, body, soul, and spirit. Because as time goes on How are we going to escape when we stand before God and God says why didn’t you do what I told you to do? As the years roll by we want to do less and less instead of more and more He says for the time you ought to be teachers, but you’re not able to teach because you don’t know the word Why don’t you know the word because you wouldn’t study it?

He says you become dull of hearing you don’t want to hear because you don’t want to do You see when you want to do things for God You don’t mind listening to the word of God some people they don’t care what the Bible teaches they’re gonna live their Christian life The way they want to live it’s my life. Get off my back. Leave me alone God pity those kind of Christians Because they’re not going to be used. You’re gonna be put up on a shelf.

What is the purpose of? Chasing so as you go through here You find out a lot of things that God warns us about and things that we should go on to maturity in chapter six and many of God’s people won’t go on. They never mature. They stay a baby all their life. They never grow up, never can handle spiritual responsibilities, but take your Bible and turn there to the book of Hebrews in chapter 10. But he makes a statement here in verse 34, we know him that hath said, vengeance belong unto me, I will recompense.

That’s the Lord says, I will get even. That’s the Lord says, I will pay you back. In other words, God says, I’m going to judge my people. See in the last part of verse 30. The Lord showed judge who, the lost to his people, his people. You see, you and I cannot live as we please after we’re saved and do whatever we want, think it’s okay. No, we have spiritual responsibilities and we’re to be found faithful to do the things that God says to do.

He says, if you don’t, he says it’s going to cost you. It’s going to cost you. Look what he says in verse 35 of chapter 10. Cast not away therefore your covenant, which hath great recompense of what? Reward. Don’t cast away your confidence. In other words, as a Christian, don’t lose your confidence in God. Don’t lose your hope in the Lord. Don’t lose the purpose for which God left you here. Don’t get so involved in the things of the world that you don’t have time to be faithful to God.

Wouldn’t that be a shame? So I can’t be faithful because I just don’t have time. God can solve that. The purpose of chasing to correct a child, that means a rebuke for the wrong actions. To train a child, repeat the right actions. You see, all chasting isn’t bad. Chasting is also for instruction in righteousness to help us to do the things that we should do. It also is to scourge a child and hopefully trying to learn how to get a balance in this when we raise our own children.

And there’s a lot of things that we as a pastor, and we’re going to be able to do that. And there’s a lot of things that we do that we do that God wants to reward us for. And there’s things that He wants to rebuke us on that He said, I want you to stop that and don’t you do it again. and don’t you do it again. And there’s the other things that you’re doing that may be right in God said, I want you to repeat that over and over and over again.

The other words you hear me always said, just keep doing right. Whatever it is, if it’s right, you keep doing right. Always keep doing right. Always do right. The Holy Spirit will never lead you to do wrong. The Holy Spirit will never lead you to be unkind or unfaithful. Holy Spirit always leads you to be holy, to do right, to trust the Lord. You see, there’s some things that God will do for you and I that He won’t do for the lost man.

You see, God’s not interested in just chasing the lost man for everything. He does it’s wrong and it seems like they can get away with murder. And that’s why even David says that I became envious of the wicked. When I saw the prosperity of the wicked, whenever I did what was right and it seemed like I was chasing all the day long and it seemed like they could do whatever they wanted to do that was wrong and they get away with it.

It’s not fair, God. Just not fair. Well, life isn’t fair. But David says, when I saw the end result, I looked down the road and I saw the end result. He said, when I went into the sanctuary, awesome. But he makes a statement here in verse 6 and 7, who is subject to chastening God’s children. He says, for whom the Lord loveth, he chastened and scurgedeth every son, every Ukrain, whom he received the who does God chasing every son, every child.

And he says,Twitter, If you do not receive chasing, he says, then you are a bastard. You are an illegitimate child. You’re not my child. See, God doesn’t chase everybody, but he does chasing his children. You see, why does God chasing? Because he loves you. Because he loves you. And he chases us for reasons, we’ll discuss in just a moment. But in verse 8, but if you be without chastisReleased, we’re of all or partakers, all are part, all who all believers are partakers.

And verse 9 says, furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us and we gave them reverence. And part of the chasing process is our Father, heavenly Father, is correcting us. Because see, we don’t have the knowledge to do everything right. The Bible says the book of Jeremiah, it is not within man that walk of two direct his steps. So God has to correct us all the time. And sometimes we don’t listen to the Lord and God has ways and means in which he can work and deal in our life.

He gives us that personalized attention. Look at number three, how does chastening prophet obedient Christians? How does chastening profit of an obedient children? DIT Look there in verse 10. He says, for they are, are, are barely for a few days. They chastened us, it was temporarily. Chasing us after their own pleasures. You say, what do you mean pleasure? Most times parents will chasten the kids when they get sick and tired of putting up with you, doing something and they want to kill you.

Instead of being faithfully disciplined you all the time consistently, whether they want to or they don’t, they do it because they do it for your good. And sometimes because you’ve irritated them to the no end or you don’t got on their nerves, then they’re going to come down on you and then that’s their form of correction. You see God, He’s long suffered and He’s patient. But when God has to lower the boom, He will lower the boom. He says, but He does it.

Why? You ought to underline these two words. He does it for our what? Our prophet. Why does God chasing us for our prophet? Why does God correct us for our prophet. Why does God rebuke us for our problem? You’re going to live long enough that you’ll be so glad that God never answered all of your prayers and that God was wise enough to rebuke you, to say no to you, to knowledge you have everything that you want. And this is why you have to be so careful in your Christian life, desiring things that God doesn’t want you to have, falling in love with the things of the world that God says not to do.

You can begin little by little that knowing that vex your righteous soul from day on to day, looking and seeing the things of the world. And you begin to grieve for those things that you want to cleave to the things of the world. The next thing there in that verse to make us more holy because he says for our prophet that we might be partakers of his what? His holiness. God, believe it or not, God wants to be holy.

God doesn’t want you to be unholy. Unholy means not like God. Holy means like God. God wants you to be like Him. I heard a man one day… Ask somebody, how do you know you got this great big old granite and you’re gonna chisel the picture of a horse on it? How do you know how to chisel this horse? He says, I just chip away everything that doesn’t look like a horse. I just chip away everything that doesn’t look like a horse.

And God wants to chip away everything out of our lives. It doesn’t look like him. You think as God says that we’re naked unto him and he can see all that God is wanting to purge out of our life anything that doesn’t look like him and act like him. Think like him. What do you think? What do you think? Do you think God has been working on you lately? Do you think God really cares about you? Yes, he does.

And see, God is more interested in you looking like him and being like him than you have in anything else in this whole world. Everything else in this world ain’t worth a quarter compared to you being like him. That’s what he wants. He says, walk in his image, learning how to be like the Lord. He says, now, now, never is. Now, no chasing for the present seems to be joys. Have you ever enjoyed a weapon? You teenage, you ever enjoy a weapon?

No, I don’t think most of you probably don’t get one. That’s what I ought to do once, and I just have a good old weapon session. And just whoop y’all, because you probably got it coming, you just haven’t got it yet. For their profit, right? For their profit. But notice, he says, nevertheless afterwards, afterwards the chasing, it yielded the peaceable fruit of what? Righteousness. In other words, why does God correct you? Why does God because he wants you to do right?

He wants the fruit of righteousness in your life. Wants you to do right. Does God want you to get mean and bitter ugly and unkind because of whatever he allows to come into your life. No, that’s not what God wants. Look in chapter 11 and verse 26, remember the man named Moses? Well Moses, before he ever left Egypt, before he everutable left Egypt, he wanted to serve God before he spent 40 years on the backside of the desert. He had already made up his mind what he wanted.

It’s just that But they rejected him. So he went on the backside of the desert. 40 years later, God came to him and says, I want you to go on that. I ain’t going back. He said, yeah, you are. No, I’m not going down here. Look what he says. He says in verse 25, Choosing, talking about Moses, Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God. You see, serving God is a choice. He says then to enjoy the pleasures of sin.

in other words, this for a season would have been his lifetime. Would have been his lifetime. He could have enjoyed the pleasures of sin for a whole lifetime. But he says he chose the reproaches of Christ, esteemed them greater riches. So he makes a statement here in verse 26, A steaming the reproach of Christ, greater riches than the treasures in Egypt. for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward. You are to underline that statement. You see, he was looking down the road and past this life because he never enjoyed it during this life.

His 40 years of serving God after he got those children was one of nothing but headache and misery for 40 years. That’s what he put up with. You know the reason he was not even allowed to go into the Promised Land because he lost his cool because he got mad, he got angry. It happened on quite a few occasions, but God still used the man, but the man never got to go into the Promised Land, never got to go in.

It was a Monotny Bowen died there, but he looked beyond this life and beyond what he had to go through in for 40 years that he served God. Not talking about the 40 years on the backside of the desert. Is it going to be worth whatever I go through here or what I’m going to get in eternity? See, this is just the dressing room. This is not really where it’s all happening. We’re going to a place where it’s really going to be real and really going to happen.

And you’ll see why it was so important. So, they manned in upon you at times. And that’s why some of these people went through a lot of things. Why didn’t God prevent all these things that happened to these people? Well, maybe he could have, but he didn’t. But look there in verse 34. This is what some of the people went through in the so-called experience, you know, after they’re saved. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?

What God has done for us and this period of time that God’s given them in the living, what if I neglect to live for God during this period of time? What’s he gonna cost me? So how are you think you’re going to escape the chastening hand of God? You’re not going to escape it. It’s not that God saved you and he’s busy and you’re busy and you just ain’t got time to get together I got it and don’t, no big deal anyway.

You don’t get it. He said, who through faith subdued kingdoms and wrought righteousness obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, valiant and fight and turned and flight the armies of the alien. And look what some of these people went through that didn’t make it. They didn’t make it in this world. Some of the things that happens to them. You say, well, if they really love the Lord, that wouldn’t have happened to them.

Yes, Job still has his three friends and they’ve a lot of years of paths. There’s a lot more of them today. He says here in verse 35, women received their dead raise to life again. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection. Others had trials of schools, mockings and scurging. Yay, more over a bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn a sundae, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskin and goat skin, been destitute, afflicted and tormented.

You see, why didn’t God stop all that? God didn’t want to stop it. God doesn’t stop all the heartaches in our life. God wants us to go right through the middle of every one of them. Everything that happens. God has not seen fit to deliver us from every eels in this world and every bad man in this world and all the bad decisions of people. No, God says, I want to give you the strength and the grace that you need to face whatever’s coming down the road.

And it says in verse 38, of whom the world was not, look at it, look what it says. In God’s eyes, He says the world was not worthy of such people. In verse 39, these all, these all, these all, having obtained a, what kind of report? Well, slap my mouth, somebody else is keeping the books. Somebody else has got a report card on what people are doing. Do you think that if God had a report on them that He’s got one on you and me?

that he’s watching us, that he knows what we go through, what we face, how we feel, and all the things that happens, I think so. I really do. Look at number four in their notes there. What is chastening to prevent useless hands, crooked paths, stumbling blocks. Look at those up there in verse 12. As the Bible says here, lift up the hands which hang down in the feeble knees. Because you see you get you get weak spiritually and you can’t go.

I’m not talking about physically now. I’m talking about spiritually And he says you’re down you’re so discouraged because You talk he talking about spiritually. You don’t have the strength And he says in verse 13 make straight paths for your feet Less that which is lame be turned out of the way you become a stumbling block to other Christians Somebody’s always watching you and somebody’s following you You’re an example to somebody. I don’t care where you think you are on this little Christian ladder and your maturity, you affect some people’s lives.

People are looking at you and watching you, and they’ll make decisions based upon the decisions that you make. You influence people. And God pity how we influence people when we say, I don’t care how it affects anybody else. It should bother us. So he says here in verse 14, follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord talking about the fellowship that we should have with one another. Looking diligent lest any man fail of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness spring enough trouble you and thereby many become defiled.

In other words, this is what happens to weak Christians. And see, chastening is to prevent us from having all of these things in our life. When we get to it, we don’t care about other people. And God’s, how do you think you’re going to escape the chastening of God when you don’t care about your own personal testimony? You don’t care if you become a stumbling block. You don’t care if you get mad and bitter and you sow discord and you ruin and corrupt people’s lives and cause them to be unfaithful to God.

You don’t care about that. There’s a God in heaven that cares. And there’s a God in heaven that says that’s going to cost you. And you haven’t got to heaven yet, so you haven’t seen what you have lost because of it. The usefulness that you could have had in the lives of so many people. The next one, the selling of the eternal for the temporal. See there in verse 16, like Esau, who sold for one more solid meat, sold his birthright.

In the lower he sold something of great value for something that had no value. You see, whenever you get down spiritually and you’re not right with the Lord, did you know that you’ll give up eternal rewards for something temporal in this life? Eternal weight of reward for something is trash. And verse 17, but we know how that afterwards when he would have inherited the blessing he was rejected, for he found no place or repentance, though he saw it carefully with tears.

And I wrote down the tears of future regrets, the tears of future regrets. Did you know that every Christian is going to have to have that time when you stand and find out what it cost you For all your disobedience Your nonchalant attitude and there gonna be tears of regret I want to how many of those tears when he says in God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes Those aren’t tears from the lost people those are tears from God’s people God may chase in in many different ways with many different believers He will give personalized attention as it’s needed see verse 17 deals with the forfeiting of earthly blessings There’s earthly blessings that sacrifice because of disobedience to God.

1 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 8 says, And every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor. So it’s going to cost you here and it’ll cost you there. 1 Corinthians 11.30 says that your rebellion to God can cause you weakness as a Christian, sickness as a Christian and not only that, death, premature death. Health and wealth, family, finances, all these things can be affected by the attitude you have toward the Lord. You are going to suffer many things in the Christian life, and sometimes it has nothing to do with what you decide.

They’re going to come. And he says, as a man is born and the shots, the sparks fly upward as troubles come to all of us. And everybody’s gonna have their fair share of all kinds of temptations and trials, troubles. And God can use everything to make us better for him. It doesn’t matter what it is. He can draw us closer to him. He can teach us valuable lessons that we will never learn. He had not had done so. Let this hand represent you and me and this wallet represent sin.

And the Bible says that God, he loves us, but he hates our sin. And he says that because we have sin, we are all condemned. And the payment is eternal separation from God and hell. And God says to go to heaven, we have to be perfect as righteous as God. 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.

So Jesus Christ took the sin, paid for it on the cross, and came back from the dead. And God said if we would believe that He did it for us, He would save us, give us eternal life. We’d go to heaven on what He did for us. There’s no tricks of that. No, give me. This is an awesome story. Do you realize that some things happen in life, in the timing, to bring people together so that somebody would talk?

We have the greatest message in all over the world. We have something worth living for. Let’s pray a shout. 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 10 30 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 Bible Live. And now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound. We will be changed. 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.