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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 over to the church and be seated. free at 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made through the Bibleline website at calvaryoftampa.org. We pray that you’ll enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s concluding message of this teaching will be a blessing to you and your family.

All of life down here is getting ready to face God. So God says that why you’re here, yeah, you need this 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, 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 and Leon.

Man, I forgot my wallet. Have you ever know people who like that? I forgot my wallet. 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 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 appear for a little time and then vanishes the way. For that you ought to say, if the Lord will, we shall live and do this or that. But now you can rejoice in your boast in all such rejoicing as evil. Therefore to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not to him it is sin. If you know what priorities are what they should be and you don’t do it, then you’re sending as far as God is concerned.

But what I want you to see in James chapter 4 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? 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’d like to just or 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 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 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 chased it with all your heart. If you live long enough to see that sometimes some people can touch something, it turns the gold and you touch it and it turns the coal. They win, you lose. Man, they’re lucky, but they’re always lucky. I’m never lucky. I am a very lucky individual. Very lucky individual. Most of it bad luck, but lucky.

Sometimes mentally on a play game of golf and his ball is going in mind won’t. He says, just luck. I said, I had luck too, my mind 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. Look in Isaiah 56. Isaiah 56. Over there in the Old Testament, Isaiah 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. 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, you know, was so objective and everything was going to be better and he was just always hopeful and joyful of everything was 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.

Game of pitch for it. And that little boy, 12 years old, in there just a throwing at manure. And the 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. I’ve got 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. They 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 witch’s end. You don’t know that tomorrow the Lord may be going to… 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’s 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 ten-ton load. And 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 here 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 and lot of things go, but 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 my wife, 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 my heart, mind, body, shoulders, and that’s first, that’s 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 5 of James. Go to now ye rich men, weep and howful your misery, 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 and 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’reAnimation 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 say right. Priorities always keep your priorities a priority. And he makes the statement here in verse 2, your riches are corrupted, your garments are maleating. In other words, it doesn’t matter whether you got the riches 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, they were to successful. They didn’t die rich. They most, not even jail, 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 but sand. there’s no value in the sand. I assure you that Godfall 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 3, 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 treasure 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. And if God gives us more than let God give us more, but always keep your priorities right.

You see, my values that I have, it’s not based upon do I have a car, do I have a house, do I have money in the bank, those are not my priorities. My character is a priority. Doing right, it’s not based upon whether somebody else thinks I am or not, it’s my personal vibe between me and what I think I’m worth. It’s me. It’s how I see my personal values. And I believe they ought to be real in every person’s life.

Nobody can make those things wrong. I want these teenagers to have value in their life. They can spend their life on nothing but sand or they can develop some priorities in AUTHORITY in their life and they can’t be bought because they’re not for sale. I’m not going to give up this golf ball right here. That’s a priority of life for some more sand. I don’t want no more sand. And sometimes you have to get things out of your life.

And this is why you studied the Bible to find out maybe there’s things that I’ve got, things that I’m doing that are not wise. It’s not right. And they’re just consuming my life, consuming my time, but I’m getting nothing for it. Learn these things. They’re so important. Other things here I want to share, but we will get to that here at another time. I want you to look in the book of Proverbs 27, Proverbs in chapter 27. Proverbs 27, there are things that happens in our life that are to keep us off balance because life is always fleeting.

The Bible talks about it as a vapor, smoke, that appear for a while they blade of grass that groweth up. It flurs for a while and then it faded away. Life is a very short period of time. You ought to underline verse 1 in verse 1 of chapter 27. Most not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. You ought to underline because it’s a word of wisdom. A word to the wise. You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.

But the Bible says what we should do and should say is if the Lord will, if the Lord will. And I believe that’s one of the most important things. Keep us in mind. Me, without God, I’m nothing. Christ says, without me, you are nothing. God, without me, still God. Me, without God, I’m nothing. God, without me, he’s still God. But without God you’re nothing in so am I. Now with the Lord we can do a lot of things but we we don’t prepare the day.

There’s a verse talking about God has prepared this day. This is the day that the Lord hath made and you don’t know what a day is going to bring forth. We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. It may bring blessings or it may bring drought. It may bring financial rewards and it might bring poverty. It may bring good health and it may bring cancer, bad health. You don’t know what’s going to happen. That’s why you are to prepare every day to be strong in the Lord so that whether with the blessings you don’t get lifted up with pride and turn on God or become so down in the stories that you don’t even want to live.

But if you always keep your priorities right say you always got something to live for. You know you hear people say, I just want to make no live for. Well, you filled your life full of sand. If you had some priorities, you got lots to live for. I’ve got a reason to guard my testimony because I got something to live for. I got priorities in my life. But you take away all those priorities, have nothing to say. You don’t care about your testimony.

You don’t have to be faithful. You don’t worry about anything. You don’t care. And you’re a developer. I don’t care attitude. Ever seen anybody like that? Nothing matters. Don’t care. because they’re focusing only upon sand, upon sand, not priorities. So keep those things in mind. I want you to see this in Psalms 102. Psalms 102. Psalms 102 and look in verse 11. There’s really three verses here I want to read. Because it’s about a person whose soul is so distressed, So afflicted, and they know that God is the one that can remove the affliction, and God may choose not to.

So he says in verse 10, because of thine indignation and thy wrath, for thou have, get this, there’s two things here. Talk about God now. Lift me up and put me down. Did you realize that God can lift you up and put you down? He can exalt you, He can humble you. He can bless you and He can bring all kind of things into your life. God can. Because remember when it comes to that cake, he knows exactly what kind of ingredients to put in because he’s the only one that knows what he’s trying to make out of your life.

So that’s why you always try to look at the things of life through the eyes of God. God wants to use this in my life. wants to use this person in my life, this experience in my life. Individually, they are not good, but you put it together with all the other things that God’s brought into your life. And after a while, you’ll live long enough to look back over your life and say, it’s been a good life. I can see how God has moved here and moved there.

You see, if you put everything in God’s hands, it won’t be long before you’ll see God’s hand in everything. And you can see how God did it. But when I was living that moment, sometimes I was totally terrified. I couldn’t see how God was going to get me out of this jam. I didn’t see a purpose for this or a purpose for that. I didn’t have to. God did. God has one. And He may let me see it someday and may not.

I remember one time I was preaching a funeral and I was explaining some of the things of life that we don’t understand. And I said, it’s kind of like grandma. She’s sitting there doing some embroidering and little granddaughter. She’s sitting there on the floor and she’s looking up at grandma and grandma’s doing some sewing. And she’s looking up and says, grandma, what are you doing? She says, I’m doing embroidering. She says, well, it sure don’t look very nice because she saw the bottom part.

She saw different colors of string and broken pieces of string. She saw no continuity, no pattern. It didn’t look good, looked totally ugly. She says, when I get through, I’ll bring you up here and let you see what I’ve been doing. Okay, that’s her feisture for a while. So after a while, grandma brought her up and set her on any and showed her, and there was a beautiful picture that she had been working. You see, all depends on viewpoint.

There’s a human viewpoint and divine viewpoint. Depends on where you are. So if you’re looking at it from your viewpoint, you don’t see the connection. You don’t see the pattern. You don’t see the beauty. But when you look at things through the eyes of the Lord, you’ll find out God had a purpose. God had a plan. God’s working something. This is beautiful. And you can have a beautiful life. Some of you are going to curse your life. Some of you are going to have a lot of sand.

You’re going to throw your life away because you forget your priorities. I hope that makes some sense to you. Look up here. This is you and me. This is sin. We all have sin upon us. God loves us. He just hates our sin, but He loves us. Keep that in mind. God loves you. It’s the sin that’s the problem. But he says we committed the sin and we have to pay for it, so the wages of sin is death.

So since we’ve all sinned, we all have to die. That means eternal separation from God in a place called Hell. But God loves us, it wants us to go to Heaven. To go to Heaven, we have to be perfect as righteous as God. And none of us are perfect, none of us are righteous. We cannot save ourselves. We need a Savior. So go on to church doing good deeds and things like God says it’s not by your works. this hand represents Jesus Christ.

He’s the Lord, God in the flesh. He was God who came into the world and took upon flesh. He had no sin so he didn’t have to die. But he loves us. He hates our sin because it separates us from we can’t get to God. So what Christ did is he took the sin, not some of it, took all of it. Paid for it on the cross, came back from the dead and God said if we would We would believe he did that for us.

He would save every person that believes it. So one day when I was 18 years old, that for us. So one day when I was 18 years old a man explained this to me and I believe that Jesus Christ did that for me. And God saved me, gave me eternal life. He put this payment to my account and I have a payment for all my sins and I’m going to heaven because of what Jesus Christ did. I didn’t earn it, didn’t work for it.

Now that I got it, I can’t lose it. God says that he so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believe it in him should not perish but have everlasting life we go to heaven what Christ did for us once you trust the Lord you’re his child you’re going to heaven whenever you die now as a child of God living in this world what is your life learn the Bible get your priority straight when you get If it’s your priority straight, then you have time and room for some of the other important things that you can leave out the sand.

Keep the coffee. Let’s pray, shall we? Every headbound, every act closed, no one looking around. If you have never trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, I urge you to do so. Not going to have you forward, not going to embarrass you in any way. But right where you’re sitting, if you’ve never trusted the Lord, would you do it right now? Say something simple like this, Lord, I know I’m a sinner and I believe Christ died, Christ died, paid for my sins, and I’ll trust Him to take me to heaven when I die.

And God said if you’ll believe that and trust Him, depend upon Him, He would give you as a gift eternal life. If you’re making that decision, you’ve never done it before, I’d like to have prayer for you. Would you just slip in it very quickly and put it right back down if you’ve never done it before and say yes, I’ll trust Christ as my Savior this morning and preach I like for you to pray for me. In one of the all before we close.

You that know Christ is your Savior, what is your life? Do you consider yourself having your priority straight? Do you have the main thing, the main thing? The major things is still the major things. You have a lot of sand in your life that you need to get rid of. Things that are not important just filling up your life. Put something better in this place. Our Father, we do thank you so much for all you’ve done for us. We’re thankful that we have your Word, that we have your love, and we have your Son, and we have eternal life.

You’ve been good to us, and we thank you for it. In Christ’s name we pray. 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, calvaryuptampa.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, and we will be changed.

Caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day, believing that the Lord is coming soon, and just keep looking up.