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 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.

This is called the overview that’s overlooked. In other words, an overview is stepping back and looking at the total picture, trying to see it all. If you get too close to something, you can see one thing, but you can’t see how it relates to everything else because you’re too close. Step back and look at your life that you’ve already lived and see what God’s done for you and you’ll be amazed. Every book in the Bible has a main theme.

There is a purpose of that book. Different people who study the Bible, they may be impressed with this. theme and somebody else, well I think it’s this and something else this. But the theme of the whole Bible is Christ and the theme of every book was going to be Christ or something that deals with Jesus Christ and every book in the Old Testament, New Testament always comes back to that. But this book, the book of Romans I believe is a picture of a duplicating machine.

I’ll show you what I mean by that in just a moment. First of all, look there in Philippians in chapter 2 and look in verse 13. Once you have trusted Christ as your Savior, understand that God not only indwells in you, but He is to work in you to perform, to perform something. For it is God which works in you. All the problems and heartaches and and the trials and tribulations, all that is God’s way of working in me.

And sometimes to work in you, he has to work on you. And he uses those things to get you where he wants you to be and to get you to search, because if you really want God’s will, that’s what makes you struggle, but it makes you stronger in the process. And it’s the struggling that strengthens you. It’s the conflict. It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. In other words, God has a purpose.

It’s for his pleasure. You are here to please God. So he’s going to work on you in a way that pleases him, not you, not me. Do all things without murmuring and what? Dispute and arguing. Don’t always murmur and always argue about everything. God says, don’t do that because you’re supposed to believe that God is working in you and he He uses people’s opposition to you. Look at Elsek in verse 15, that ye may be blameless and harmless the sons of God without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world.

Every problem that people have is your opportunity to shine. People’s problems is to get them to the Lord. So therefore, don’t mind it when people have problems and come to you with problems. problem solver, always try to help people get to the Lord. That’s what it’s all about. So the Lord tells us that we’re here and He wants us as a coffee machine to reproduce others just like us. Now take your Bible and turn to the book of Romans, the book of Romans and chapter one.

It’s that God desires to create a righteous man to produce righteous deeds in a wicked, crooked, and perverse world. So God wants to create a machine. Now I don’t want to use this as a machine like you’re just a machine mechanical, no you’re a person. But like as a machine, it’s only an example please understand that. Create a machine that can produce righteous deeds. God created a man and a woman but the man and the woman got marred. So those were the original people that God had to work with.

So all the copies that came from them because they were marred, all the copies were marred also. In other words, have you ever taken a piece of paper and you can put a number on it or an X or anything on it and put it on a copper machine and make copies and it’s going to… Had the same marks just like the original did. And the copy can never improve itself. The copy is only a copy. It’s not the original.

So we had an original in the very beginning. And the copy was marked, and so all the copies, all the people on the earth have all got scars. Sin. We have a sinful nature. Because the original copy, Adam, was bad. So in Romans chapter 5 and verse 12, wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, death by sin, so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned. And then verse 14, nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similatehood of Adam’s transgression, who is a figure of him that was to come.

So there is an original Adam and he sinned for by one man sin entered into the world and therefore all have sinned because of the original. So everybody has sinned. So out of all of these copies, God could not find one that could produce righteousness. They all produced sins. So God worked with all these copies and try to make some of the copies different from the other copies, pull them aside from all the other copies and say, I’m going to make you something special.

But the copies were still just copies. So God gave them the law and did they have an advantage? Yes, they did. Look in chapter 3. Chapter 3 verse 1, What advantage then half the Jew. Or what prophet is there of circumcision, much every way, chiefly because that unto them were committed the oracles of God or the Word of God. So when God took these special individuals, these copies and separated them from the other copies and was going to reveal things to them that was not revealed to the other copies, will God work with these copies for 1500 years and the conclusion was at the end of 1500 years all the copies were just as bad as the original and God, God, could not change the copies.

God couldn’t change the copies. God and His Word couldn’t change the copies. The copies were still copies and the copy cannot improve itself and God couldn’t change the copies. When you look in chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, he is laying a foundation to show that everybody in the world is in the same boat and that they have all sinned and nobody could produce the righteousness that God wanted. So once you have got a bad copy, all the copies will be bad.

Chapter three through chapter five shows that the copies cannot improve themselves, but the only cure is to replace the marred original with another perfect original, which is Christ. And do what? Make more copies. This is why Christ came into the world. Jesus Christ, He was perfect. And so if He was put onto the coffee machine and you made copies from a perfect original, then we could have some perfect copies. So He gave birth to a person. So every one of us that are born again, born by the Spirit of God, have a perfect birth.

That when you trusted Christ as your Savior and were born into God’s family, you were made a perfect copy. You’re perfect. They don’t believe you are created perfect. As you go through the book, you find out that God is revealed certain things and it’s all by faith. It’s not by your works. So salvation is the gift of God. But now that’s why you need to understand that when you go from chapter three, parts of chapter three, therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.

See the first three chapters to an half chapter, they will show you that a man cannot save himself. That a man is a bad copy and he cannot improve his condition. No man can. So only through Christ is there a perfect cure. It’s kind of like having something that’s all written over and it’s all marred and you didn’t try everything and you can’t get the stain out and yet Christ comes along and says, here’s my blood and you are dipped into his blood and when it comes out it’s perfectly pure and the The only thing left is the image of Christ.

Your second birth, born of God, is the perfect image of the Son of God. You and I, we will reach a certain level in our walk with God, and that new birth is a perfect Son of God. Within you, there is a little child that was born. That’s your second birth. It’s born of God. It’s a perfect copy. And you are going to go through various levels of the Word. and your Christian walk and you maturing in the Lord.

To where one day you ought to be able to take a ministry just like Christ took a ministry. You go through chapter two, you go through chapter three, you go through chapter four and chapter five and about Christ dying, paying for sins, and we can therefore be justified by faith. Chapter five verse one, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. So we have a new machine. This new machine can make new copies. Now everyone that trusts Christ is Savior, you’re like a little individual copy machine, and you can make copies.

That’s why you are supposed to win others to Christ. And so by you winning someone else to Christ, then they become a child of God, created in His image, created in righteousness, just like the original. And so we all are to become copy machines, creating others in His image. When we trust Christ as our Savior, that’s just beginning of the work. The Lord says that when we are saved, it says that He indwells us. So the Bible tells us that He which hath begun a good work in you will accomplish that work.

That’s the job. So the Holy Spirit lives within us. He’s working on us in order to work in us that He might work through us in building us. And it’s the problems of life. It’s all the conflicts that you have that works against you that makes you struggle and fight in order to build your faith strong in the Lord. So don’t despise life, realize the purpose of it. It’s to build us to develop that character, that good qualities that the world needs to see.

Because he says, in a crooked and perverse generation, it means God didn’t straighten up the world and solve all the world’s problems for you and me to live here. He let the world be as bad asmpeg wants to be and puts you right in the in the middle of it. Now I think I would have preferred if he’d have just straightened out everything and I could have just enjoyed it. But that’s not the way God wants to do it.

He wants us to be a light in a dark world. Means the world don’t have the answers. You do. Live like it. Act like it. Think like it. Pray like it. Walk like it. Because you’re different from the world. In other words, don’t you live like a copy from the old machine? Romans 6 shows that the new copies are not to run on the old machine, the old man. Look in chapter 6 and verse 11. Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed on the sin.

That means the old copy machine is broke. You don’t need it and you don’t run on it and you don’t produce those copies no more. In other words, when you had nothing but the old machine, you produce sins all the time. And the Bible says, shall we that know the truth, now live in sin, walk in sin? Shall we continue in sin? Look in chapter six and verse one. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin? That grace may abound.

How shall we then, or dead to sin, live any longer than end? God says, no, because he, consider the old machine is dead. It don’t work no more. So if it’s dead and doesn’t work anymore, You don’t have to produce no more copies from it. You are supposed to live according to the new machine. And now you let Christ duplicate Himself in you. When Christ was here, did Christ have any troubles? Any problems? Just like you and I. And yet He says in all points tempted just like we are.

And yet without sin. Now it would be great if we didn’t have to worry about this old machine and this old nature that we have, but we do and He follows us all the days of our life. But your new birth is totally perfect. It cannot sin. It cannot produce one bad copy. Anything that comes out wrong is coming from the other machine. And you’re the one that cranked it up and you produced it. Don’t blame somebody else for running your old machine.

You made me sin, and everybody blames everybody else without taking personal responsibility for their own actions. You are responsible. Let not send, therefore, rain in your mortal body. In other words, don’t let this old coffee machine keep producing those old bad copies. Don’t keep producing the same anger, the bitterness, the hatred, all those things that God says, I don’t like those results. So God, in order to build a machine that could produce righteousness, had to start all over again.

Well the total new birth and Now by you trusting Christ as your Savior born of God created in righteousness Now God says I want you to produce others just like you and so that’s why he says so Love kindness and so forth if you sow bitterness you sow anger you whatever you sow you what? you read and so many people are adding to their burdened by becoming, you can be a gossiper. Do you know if you gossip to somebody about somebody, those people that will listen to your gossip will also spread gossip about you because they know that person gossips.

And they’ll tell a lot of people about you, God don’t do it. Keep control. Look what else it says here in verse 13, neither yeo ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness understand. In other words, don’t let this one body that you’ve only got one body. Don’t let this one body that you have be an instrument that produces unrighteousness. Now you have something new. You have another original, a new man. But you’ve only got one body produced righteousness. No, you not.

that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey his servants, he art to whom you obey.” In other words, you’re the one that determines whether or not what kind of copies do you reproduce? What are you producing in your life? Show why the new copies are not to run on the old machine. You say, well why? Because you get a conflict of interest. You’ll get double vision, double image. It won’t be clear. This is the battle of the two, what?

The two natures. Romans chapter seven is the battle of the two natures. It means you cannot try to produce the righteousness on the old machine. In other words, you cannot serve God in the flesh, in your own energy. Have you ever heard about people who get in? I just getting so burned out. Well, it’s because you’re trying to produce righteousness on a bad machine and it won’t work. But if you’ll try to produce the righteousness just by letting the new machine run, it won’t wear you out.

I have never yet, I’ve never come close to burnout. Well, I’m not going to serve the Lord. I’m just tired of serving God. I’m going to quit. And so as you read down through Romans chapter seven, well, look in verse 18, for I know that in me that is in my flesh, developed no good thing. In other words, there’s an old bad coffee machine inside of me that wants to produce some bad copies. And every time I want to make good copies, the old bad machines cranks up and starts producing bad copies.

That’s what he’s talking about. When I want to do that which is good, I want to end up doing that which is wrong. And when I sometime want to do that which is wrong, I find it good as with me. He said, oh, I get so confused in verse 15, for that which I do, I allow not for what I would that do I not, but what I hate that do I. Yet then I do that which I would not, considering to the law that it is good, not that it is no more either do it, but send it to all of me.

old machine inside of me that wants to keep producing bad copies. For I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwellef no good thing, but how to perform that which is good, I find not how do I perform just the good copies. Don’t you struggle in your Christian life trying to produce just good copies? Isn’t the old copies easier to reproduce? And it’s so easy to get mad and angry and bitter and not the trust to be disobedient.

So easy to do that. Well that comes from the old sinful nature. That’s that old machine that lives inside of you. But so how can I perform? In other words, where does the power come to run on? The flesh cannot perform. The flesh is work, but then Christ says, come into me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Then why should it be hard to serve the Lord? Because how to perform has not been found. See, what is this new power? So you don’t even until you get to the eighth chapter, find out what is the new power that this new machine is supposed to run on. It doesn’t run on the flesh. It doesn’t run off that bad machine that you had. God says you consider that one dead. It doesn’t work. All you get is bad copies.

If you live in the flesh and you walk in the flesh, you’re producing bad copies. That doesn’t produce the righteousness of God. That’s not why God left you here. So here in chapter eight of Romans, you’ll notice there in the last part of it after the spirit. And verse one verse two, for the law of the spirit of life in Christ, it hath made me free from the law of sin and death. And then he talks about that in verse 4, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, but not by us, who walked on after the flesh, but after the flesh.

In other words, if you walk after the Spirit, the Spirit that lives within you will give power to produce the righteousness. Now if you don’t allow the Holy Spirit that lives within you to control you, you cannot produce the copies of righteousness that God intended. So therefore you cannot walk in the flesh. It’s the flesh that wears you out that makes you tired and miserable and all those things that just drag you down. It’s not the power of God that does that to you.

The work of the Lord will not kill you. The work of the Lord is not where, what wears you out. It’s when you’re trying to do the work of the Lord in the power of the flesh, it will not work. When you don’t depend upon God and you worry about things and you think it all depends upon your talent and your power, your ability, your intellect, your, your, you, you, then you, you don’t miss the whole picture. It won’t work that way.

And that love, that’s power, that desire that comes from God, that’s power. It means it gives you that which you need to faithfully keep serving God when it seems like everybody else seems to stop in the quit. You’d be surprised how many of you probably sitting right here, but had it up to here, was serving God and going to church and doing right. You just get tired and worn out. Be to a frazzle. Don’t want to do it no more.

And the flesh is where you are. You have gotten away from the power of the Holy Spirit. and the Bible says in verse 5, look in verse 5, you need to see that. Well, they that are after the flesh, that means that you’re going to run this old machine after the flesh and produce some bad copies, but they that are after the Spirit, are going to have some good copies. And so as you go through life, whenever we get to heaven, God’s the one that separates the bad copies from the good copies.

So when we’re in heaven at the Judson City of Christ, guess which ones are burned up? All the what? All the bad copies. The wood, the hay, the stubble. All that is going to be burned. So if you spend your life producing bad copies, you’re wasting your life. You understand what I’m saying? It’s simply an illustration, but I believe it bears with them. Now chapter 9, chapter 10 and chapter 11 is simply the past, the present, in the future of the nation of Israel.

Shows an example of someone who tried to produce better copies on an old machine. Israel promised that they would, chapter 9, but they failed. Israel showed that they could not, chapter 10, that’s the present and they’ve been set aside. Israel will eventually submit to their new original, which is Christ, the Messiah, when he returns as their only hope, and that’s the future. And the Bible says Israel become the greatest nation on the face of the year. Now look in Romans chapter 12.

Romans 12 to 14 shows the products to be produced for God and for others as a result of chapter 8. In other words, if the Holy Spirit controls your life to produce the works of righteousness in your life, you should be able to expect something from your life. Because it is God that workers in you that is to produce something from you, the righteous knees among whom you shine in this world that is crooked and wicked and perverse. And you’ll shine as the lights.

See in verse 1 of chapter 12, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God which is a reasonable service. conform to this world but be it transformed by the renewing of your mind. And then he goes down here and talks about all the things about service in a verse 6, having then gifts different according to the grace. In other words, if the Holy Spirit lives in you and if you listen to what the Word of God tells you that the Holy Spirit teaches him and as he guides you and directs you, you will find out what God wants you as an individual to do with your life.

And then he talks about all the various gifts. In verse 7, or ministry, or he that exhorted in verse 8, and verse 9, let love be without the simulation or hypocrisy. It talks about in verse 10 being kindly, affection, and want to know those are the outflow that have been produced by this new power that lives within you on this new coffee machine that can be some coffees made that God’s been looking for. But that’s the product. That’s the end result.

This is what God wants to come forth from your life. So when you get a chance, chapter 12, verses 9 through, especially 16, read that and see what God wants to produce from your life. It’ll help you tremendously. Now in chapter 15 and 16, it shows the glory, the patience, the hope, the love, appreciation for what God is doing in bringing forth righteousness from the righteous people. In other words, if I serve God, if I do, God promises these are going to be the things that comes from me, but that might come from me.

But what does it do for me? Well, this is what God says it does for you as an individual. God becomes a God of patience for you and a God of hope for you and a God of love for Look what he says there. This is in chapter 15. Chapter 15, looking verse five. Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be like-minded one toward another according to Christ Jesus. In other words, you become a copy like the original.

And that pleases God. And remember, serving God is for the purpose of pleasing Him. Look what he says there in verse one. We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the week and not to please ourselves. If you’re always the kind that sit back and what can people do for me, you missed it. Because then you want people to please you. Make me happy. Make me happy. No. Do it for others. You reach out. You want to try to win them.

You want them to go to heaven. You want this person to serve God because you want God to bless them. you want all of God’s people that when they get to heaven to be rewarded, wouldn’t that be great? Or do you just want it for yourself but you don’t want nobody else to be happy. You don’t want nobody else to have joy and all those thrills that when they get to heaven they want people to cry. That’s why I try to challenge people to serve the Lord and win people to Christ because when you get to heaven the Bible says the ones you want in the Christ those are going to be your joy in the the Lord.

Paul says, my joy in the Lord are ye at the coming of Christ. I want everybody to have that. I think it will be fantastic. So that means you want others to have what you have and to know what you know. 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 homepage. 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. Friend, 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. Just keep looking up.