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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 Bibleline website at calvaryoftampa.org. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s first part of this two-part message will be a blessing to you and your family.

I want you to look into, look at James chapter four. James chapter four, it’s a very interesting Scripture that I wanted to share with you. Sooner or later everybody needs to learn that everything in life is is not not good. I Think you probably have already come to that conclusion. It’s some things you consider. They’re just plain not good But there are some things as we live life that are inevitable and it’s something that will hold you together if you can come to the right conclusion.

You have to face the inevitable. Some things you can change. Some things you can. And so we do need to learn how to accept reality. And the three things that I wanted to mention to you this morning, one is that material gain cannot bring fulfillment. You should have learned that by now. I also that tomorrow cannot be perfectly forecast, and at three that the Master, the Lord, cannot be forgotten. As you live your life, there are multitudes of decisions that we have to make.

And it’s hard sometimes for people to be able to learn what priorities are. Now I want to show you a simple little stration. And I hope that you will understand it. But what I’m going to do is use a little little stration. I learned this from somebody just recently. Now I want you to notice up here as you look up here. These are golf balls. I rated Leon’s house and stole all of his golf balls. Now what we’re going to do is we’re to fill this jar full of golf balls.

Is it full yet? Thank you. Is it full yet? I don’t want to go over the top. That’s going over the top. So that’s before, right? Okay. Now, would you say that that is full? Of course most people say, well, yeah, because you can’t get another one in there because it won’t close then. But what I want to show you is this. Not only is it not really full, it all depends on what you have in it. So we can put some of these things in here, right?

How many of y’all used to play marbles when you were a kid? Girls? Girls raised her hand? I used to love the play marble. I remember one day, when I was in the second grade, right down here in Good Old Lexington, we would get out there and we couldn’t wait for recess. We’d get out there and we’d have some marbles. And when we had those marbles, we’d always put a choice number and we’d make a big old circle and we’d put those marbles in there and then whoever got knocked going out, then you’d get to shoot again and again and again.

So the key was always to take the other guy’s marbles. And so after a while we said, well, you done lost your marbles. Of course, we’ve meant it something else, too. And they lost their marbles. And I remember I had a big day one day right after recess. My pocket was bulging with marbles. I had a good day. And then when I, uh… That full, that’s full, okay. I walked into the classroom and sat down, but after a while I’d get bored quick.

So when I got bored quick, I slouched down in my chair. When I slouched down in my chair, those marbles, and I was, A, Arnold, always in the front row, close to the teacher. And those marbles came out of my pocket and started running down the aisle. Well, doggy. The teacher confiscated all of my marbles. To call my marbles. That was a bad day in my life. Now, this is pretty much, you know, full. Can’t get much more in there.

But I could put a little bit more in there. I could put some sand in there. And you could put that sand in there. Now, see, it’s full there. Well, you say that’s pretty full, right? It ain’t full yet. See y’all said it was full. And look at that. See it wasn’t full. Look how much more it can go in here. See there? Did that awesome? I’m gonna drink a portion of that in just a minute.

I love coffee. We’re talking about your life. You see, if we had put the sand in first, We couldn’t have got any marbles in it if we’d have filled it full of sand. If we’d have filled it full of sand first, we couldn’t have got the marbles in. But if we’d have filled it full of marbles, we couldn’t have got the golf balls in it because you can’t get those in there after you don’t got it already full. See, when you’re talking about your life, see the golf balls, they represent the priorities of life.

They come first. sure that you get the priorities in your life. You know, something in your life ought to be a priority ought to be the Lord. The studying of God’s Word, that that’d be another Godfall, that’d be a priority. And see your love for your wife and your children, that would be a good priority. And to witness and so forth and live in a righteous life, those are those are priorities. So always get your priorities in your life first.

You see, then you’ve got these marbles. Those are other things. They’re not bad, they’re just some other things that you can put into your life. But at least you got the priorities. And then you put the other things in your life, you know, like maybe going on a trip or a house or a car, your job. But those are not the most important things. The relationship you have between you and the Lord and you and your wife, those are important.

Live in a godly life. Whether you have a job or whether you have a house, whether you have money, that’s not the most important thing. But you see, those are important and they need to be in your life, but you gotta have the priorities first. Now, some people, all their life consists of is nothing but sand. They fill their whole life of nothing but sand. Christ says, if you build your house upon sand and it’s all going to crumble.

You don’t have anything of value. You see what makes you a valuable person, a person of character, is the priorities that you have in your life. See, I know people that have no time, they have no room in their life to go to church, they don’t have time. They don’t have time to study God’s Word, they have no time, they have no room because their life is filled with so many other things that are not important, but they’re filled.

You see, we all get pretty much the same amount of time to live. If we all live this day, 24 hours, everybody got 24 hours, but some people have greater priorities than somebody else. And many people, their life is filled with nothing but the sand or the priorities. So as you go through life, make sure that you have the priorities of life. Seaky first, the kingdom of God and all these other things can be added to you. But you only get to live so long.

You can’t do everything. So what you want to do if you don’t have room or time for the priorities, but then maybe you need to get rid of something. You see, you’re the one that decides what you put in your life. We learned a little illustration from a guy named Lester Rolloff. He started roll up homes down in. Texas. And he was explaining Romans 828 and he says that Romans 828, all things work together for good to those who love the Lord, to those that are called according to his purpose.

But he said not all things in themselves seems to be good. And if he was the bacon cake and you took the various ingredients and you took a mouthful of lard, that doesn’t taste very good. A mouthful of bacon soda doesn’t taste very good. A mouthful of salt. doesn’t taste very good. But the right amount of each ingredient all put together under time, heat, pressure, it can produce a wonderful cake to eat. So since God is the one who is building your life and he knows what you need, he’s going to put different ingredients into your life.

Well some people see there’s no room for God to put anything into your life because you’ve got it filled with sand. Imaterial think things that doesn’t matter, thing of no value. So the reason for studying the Bible is because the Bible talks about cutting off the things of the flesh, mortifying the things of the flesh. In other words, doing away with some of those things that you don’t need. In the book of Hebrews in chapter 12, it talks about us running a race, laying aside that which will hinder you from running the race.

So it’s not that somebody else could sit in judgment on everybody else, it’s just, but what are you doing? What Does your life consist of? What is your value? What is your priorities over the years? Since I trusted Christ my Savior. Going to church every time the doors are open, as much as I possibly can, unless I’m working or sick in the hospital, whatever, I’ve always been in church. That’s a priority. What, I need church. I need it. What God says so.

See, when you start using human logic and reasoning, Well, I’ll go whenever I think I need to. Well, see, then you don’t have your priority straight. Reading the word of God, study in the word of God. If this is truly the word of God, do you believe that it is the will of God for you to spend some time letting God talk to you? That ought to be a what? That ought to be a priority. And if you can live your days and your life without study in the word of God, then evidently you don’t have your priority straight.

Now, you may be doing a lot of things, But if you don’t have time for God to speak to you, then you don’t have your priorities in the right order. If you don’t have time to talk to God, then you don’t have your priorities straight. So that’s why some people need to rearrange their life. They need to get their lives in order. When God’s gonna have one man taken home, God says, get your house in order. In other words, it wasn’t in order.

You’re not prepared to meet God. All of life down here is getting ready to face God. So God says that, why you’re here, yeah, you need this and you need that, you need clothes and you need food and all these things. He says, but seek ye first, the kingdom of God, that’s priorities, seek the right things. You see, you being strong and doing right is more than what you have and what you can accumulate. You may sacrifice some priorities in order to make money that only gets you things that you really didn’t need after all.

So whenever life is all over, all over it, now what? Now what are you going to do? Do you believe that witnessing is a priority or should be a priority? I believe it should be a priority and personally, yet some people that’s not a priority to them. It should be a priority. So you see these golf balls, if you don’t have time for the priorities, that means you’ve got your life filled with other things that you really don’t need.

And If you say, well, what was the coffee for? Well, in spite of everything else that goes on in life, nobody ought to be too busy that you ain’t got time to sit down and have a cup of coffee with a friend. So that’s why you need two cups of coffee to put into your life every day. So there’s two cups of coffee. There’s one for me and one for a friend. So if I ever got with you, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.

That’s all. I started going out with Leon. Leon. Man, I forgot my wallet. Have you ever know people who like that? I forgot my wallet. Where are they? Heh! I tried it with him and he says, I did too. Some things are just not fair. But what I want you to see there in the book of James and chapter four, I’m already convinced that I’m not gonna finish this, this morning. But we’re gonna make a stab at it, but I want you to see there in chapter four, looking verse 13.

In verse 13 says, go to now ye that say, today or tomorrow we will go into such a city and continue their year and buy and sell and get gain. Whereas you know not what shall be on the moral, for what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes the way. For that ye ought to say, if the Lord will, we shall live and do this or that. But now you can rejoice in your boast, and all such rejoicing is evil.

Therefore to Him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not to Him it is sin. If you know what priorities are, and what they should be, and you don’t do it, then you’re sinning as far as God is concerned. But what I want you to see in James chapter four when he says, today or tomorrow you should understand that the material possessions of the world do not bring fulfillment. If you live long enough, you’ll know that that will be true.

The accumulation of things of the world does not satisfy for long. You’ve got to go from one thing to the next to the next and you’ll never be totally happy and satisfied. A man has to have a purpose in his life of what he wants to live for that does not change. And that should be the eternal purpose of God. What does God want for you in your life? your life. When it makes a statement today or tomorrow we will go into such a city.

The reason that I wrote down four things and I like to just mention to you, you don’t know if tomorrow will come with you in it. We know that tomorrow will come, but we don’t know if tomorrow will show up with you in it. True? So you don’t know the future and yet you can make plans on what you want and there’s nothing wrong with some of these things it’s just that they left God out. They left God out.

They didn’t have their priorities right. Some people that’s all they live for is to make gain. The other thing is you don’t know you will get to a certain city. Tomorrow will go to a certain city. You don’t know if you’ll be here tomorrow and you don’t know if you’re going to ride at your destination. Have you lived long enough to realize that you’ve had the death of some of your visions, some of your goals, some of your dreams.

Have you married that guy to find out that you had the death of a vision? He was supposed to be that knight in shining armor and you found out he was just a bum on skid row. You married that girl thinking that was the sweetest woman in the whole world and well you don’t want to call her a nag but she He goes to the blacksmith shop to get her shoes and you got troubles. You thought, man, if I get that job, everything will be wonderful.

You got that job and you’ve cursed it ever since. You see, there’s a lot of things that you just don’t understand and neither do I. But we can’t say, Lord, stop the earth. Let me off. I don’t want to ride no more. We’ve got a lot of things to learn. You don’t know if you will continue a year. She says, and we will continue there a year. You don’t know if you’ll continue a day, a week, a month. You really don’t know because there’s too many things that just lies beyond your power to control.

And that’s why material gain cannot bring fulfillment because you may not always get the material gain even if you’ve chased it with all your heart. If you live long enough to see that sometimes some people can touch something and it turns the gold and you touch it and it turns the coal. They win, you lose. Man, they’re lucky. Well, they’re always lucky. I’m never lucky. I am a very lucky individual. Very lucky individual. Most of it bad luck, but lucky.

me and Lee on a play game of golf and his baller going in mind won’t. He says just luck. I said I had luck too. Mine was bad. And I guess if you didn’t have any bad luck, some of y’all wouldn’t have any luck at all. Somebody made that little statement famous. Looking. Isaiah 56. Isaiah 56 over there in the Old Testament Isaiah chapter 56 and look in verse 12 verse 12 in this verse because a presumption upon the future is a foolish assumption.

He says here in verse 12, come ye say they, I will fetch wine and we will fill ourselves with strong drink and tomorrow shall be as this day and much more abundant. Not only is we’re going to have a good day tomorrow, we’re going to have a much more abundant day tomorrow. Did you know that sometimes people we want to be optimistic about tomorrow? Tomorrow is going to be better. Tomorrow is always I’m going to feel better tomorrow. and things are going to work out better tomorrow.

And I remember one time somebody finally got me to, and I saw this movie called Gone with the Wind, and it seemed like the key phrase that woman kept saying is, tomorrow, tomorrow. It all be better tomorrow. I remember her name, but she was, I think that she was the star of the show, but she was always, everything was happening. She was going to get better tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Did you know that many people don’t have an optimistic outlook on tomorrow?

There are some people who have a pessimistic view of tomorrow. And you say, well, what’s the difference? Well, it’s kind of like this little boy was always positive, always positive. He was so, you know, objective and everything was going to be better and he was just always He’s hopeful, and joyful of everything is going to be great. And so his daddy took him out and tried to teach him a little lesson in pessimism. He says, here’s the barn. And I want you to take out all that manure.

I gave him a pitch for it and that little boy, 12 years old, in there just a throwing that manure. Daddy thought he’d come back and check on him and that little boy’s just singing and happy as he can bathe throwing manure everywhere. He says, what are you doing? What are you so happy about? How can you be positive? He says, well, all this manure, there’s got to be a pony around here somewhere. There’ll be a pony somewhere. So some people are very pessimistic about tomorrow and therefore because they’re so pessimistic, they don’t even want to get out of bed.

They don’t want that day to come. I just want to get out of life. So you see, you can be wrong because you don’t know what tomorrow may bring. And though you may think that I can’t go another step, I can’t take another thing. I’m at my wits end. You don’t know that tomorrow, the Lord may be gonna open up a tremendous thing for you. Tremendous blessings that you never saw and understood. You couldn’t see it coming. And also that today it can’t get any worse and tomorrow God says, oh boy, it’s gonna get worse.

So you don’t know what the day is gonna bring. So what you do is you stay close to the Lord and keep your priorities straight and depend upon the Lord to give you the grace and the strength that you need, whatever comes tomorrow. But whether it’s good or whether you consider it bad should not affect your attitude about that day. Because the God that prepared that day can also give you all that you need, that’s sufficient for that day.

And that’s why he says, for the day, for the time is sufficient thereof. And many people, instead of living the day that they’ve got with the grace they’ve got, they borrow the problems of the future by worrying about what’s going to happen. And then they bring all the troubles of the past into this one day, and they can’t bear all of that. And so life isn’t worth living. So they’re down, they’re discouraged, they’re depressed all the time. And the reason is because, see, God will give you the grace to bear the burdens of this day.

But when you go back into the past and add onto it, and then reach into the future and worry about it, then see you’ve overloaded yourself and God did not intend for this half-ton pickup to carry a 10-ton load. It’s going to break you down. You can’t handle it. But you need to learn that material gain cannot bring this fulfillment. And as he says, you’re in the last part of that verse 12, and much more abundant. Now look there in James chapter 5, James chapter 5.

There’s nothing wrong in having things in life, nothing wrong and been wealthy as long as priorities are always kept as they should be. You see the main thing is keep the main thing the main thing always major in the major not the minor things. Over my life I’ve had a lot of things come a lot of things go but I’ve I’ve tried to major in the major. I’ve tried to keep priorities straight. That is my love for the Lord is a priority.

My love for my wife is not as priority as the love for the Lord. Though I love my wife, my kids, my grandkids, I love them, but I will not love them right if I don’t love God, right? Loving God is my love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mine, body, soul, and that’s first as priority. And if you keep your priorities right, everything else will work out. You get them out of shape. Nothing will work right.

Look there in chapter five of James. Go to now ye rich men. We’ve been how for your miseries.” Some people say, well, I would like to have some of that misery. I’ve never been rich, so I don’t know how miserable they are. Well, it’s just that there’s times in a person’s life. That whenever the greatest misery of all is if you have made your life a goal of getting the riches and you’re rich in the things of the world, but you did not become rich toward God in no treasure.

your misery not necessarily has to be in this life. If you have trusted Christ as your Savior and you’re standing at the de Jevons of the Christ and you see what God could have done for you or through you in the rewards you could have had real treasure and you reap the treasures down here then you are going to be one miserable individual for a while. I don’t know how long God says he’ll wipe away all tears from their eyes so evidently they’re going to be some tears in heaven.

because of wasted lives. Because you see you had a life full of sand. Something’s just good things but not priorities. You didn’t stay right. Priorities always keep your priorities a priority. And he makes the statement here in verse two, your riches are corrupted, your garments are moth-eaten. In other words it doesn’t matter whether you got the riches or not. You say well that’s a sign of success. not necessarily, not in God’s eyes. The Bible says that I guess the apostle Paul was successful.

All of the disciples were successful. Well if they were successful they didn’t die rich. They even jailed, crucified upside down, chopped off Paul’s head. Isaiah was sawed in half in a tree trunk. So I mean were they successful or not? You see success. You got to find out what does that word mean to you, between you and God, success depends on where you faithful. Faithful to the priorities, not just doing everything that you want to do. Many people’s lives are filled with nothing but sand.

And then they have nothing to say, there’s no value in this sand. I assure you that God Paul costs more than that marble. But I guarantee that marble costs more than that sand. But you see, this costs the most. This is the greater value. And as you live your life, learn the values, the things that God puts upon you. What does God think? That becomes valuable. And get what he says here. In verse three, your goal and silver is conquered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you and shall eat your flesh as it were fired.

You have heap trager together for the last days. In other words, it may not be now, But you’ve have heaped yourself some treasures, but these are treasures that you’re going to lose. It’s nothing wrong in using the things of this world for God’s honor and for God’s glory because we’re gonna leave this world one day. So while we’re here, we should try to accomplish all that we can with what we have. 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. Part two of this teaching will conclude with tomorrow’s broadcast. If you have enjoyed our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, you can reach Bible line 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. broadcast of our services may be seen by going to our church website. Calvary of Tampa dot 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 and just keep looking up.