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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 1-800-576-8 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 1-800-576-8 3-7-7-1.

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. The book of Genesis, the book of Genesis. And what I want to discuss with you is found there in chapter 12. Abraham, the Bible says, was a friend of God. When it comes to salvation, there’s scripture that says that a man is justified by faith, justified by faith.

And he says, what hath Abraham our Father as pertaining to the faith hath found? Well Abraham knew that a man could not be saved by works, that a man is saved by grace. Abraham lived approximately 430 years before the law was ever given to Moses on Mount Sinai. So because of that, a man could not be saved by the law because they never had the law. And even when the law was given for fifteen hundred years, no one ever kept the law.

So the law was never given to save a man. It was given to show that a man cannot by his works save himself so that a man would be saved by grace. here in the book of Genesis in chapter 12, the Bible says in verse 1, Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee, and I will make of thee a great nation.

Now get the various things in the next couple statements about the word bless. He says, I will bless thee. There’s several statements down here called the Abrahamic Covenant where God says, I will, I will, I will, I will, I will. These are things that God has determined that He is going to do. It was an Abraham that went looking for God and calling for God. It was God who went looking for Abraham, just like it was the Lord that went looking for Adam and he says, where art thou?

The other night I had a very interesting thing happen because I do believe in divine appointments. I believe in the providential hand of God. I believe that God created the heavens and the earth, created you and I and put us here and I believe that God is the great shepherd and He’s always seeking the sheep. So He has moved in strange and mysterious ways in every one of our lives because every person sitting in this room who has trusted Christ’s their Savior was because Swordsman’s appointment that you had had been in a certain place, at a certain time and heard a certain message and God wanted you to be saved.

God’s the one that says, going to all the world and seek the lost. We’re supposed to go for Him. It’s God that took the initiative and God loves us very, very much. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Now, who so ever believe it then Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Because of God’s great love for us, God sent His Son to die on the cross to pay for our sins so we could have eternal life.

The other night I got home from one of the games. I was tired. It was a late game, I think, about 10 o’clock after we finally got through. Anyway, I came home and went to bed and oh man, all beds feel so good. I’m so glad God created beds. I’m so glad He created food. I loved eating and I loved sleeping. Isn’t it a wonderful thing? Those are blessings of God too. And we get to enjoy those every day.

Even breathing. Oh, what a blessing. But I got a phone call that morning. And it was from the Clark County Police Department. And I know I hadn’t done anything lately. So I said, what can I do for you? Well, they want to know if somebody had broken to the church. I said, sometime back, I said, yes, or somebody’s broken into our church. He said, well, we’re out here right now. We’ve got a couple of windows that we’re looking at.

And, um, Was one of them. Can you come come to the church? I’ll be glad to come to the church Anyway, I got under bed and I came over here. It’s about four o’clock on Friday morning, I guess it was and I got here. There were three police cars I hear in the parking lot They said they’ve been having some break-ins and people been stealing stuff and most of sound equipment at all But anyway, we went into the the building came in here Nothing seemed to be disturbed and so they two got in the car and they left and the one young man about 22 years old and I guess he’s the one that saw broke window back there.

And it was just one that we hadn’t replaced yet. Sooenix,initecellent, I said, well, I’m gonna go get myself a cupmalink coffee. He said, I’m gonna give me one, two after a while. so circumyrightedustoms,jpg, to him at all. Four o’clock in the morning, maybe my mind wasn’t too clear, but, but, clear, but, but, clear, but, but, but, clear, but, clear, but, clear, but, clear, but, clearbyterics, He said, I’m so sorry, I let you down on that. So anyway, I’m sitting there drinking my coffee and the door opens up and guess who walks in?

My policeman. He walks up, sets out of the counter, orders him a cup of coffee, orders him some breakfast. And he looked over at me and he… He said, how long have you been past? I said, about 40-something years. He said, how long have you been here? I said, about 14 years. He says, how old are you? I thought, man, he asked a lot of questions. I said, I’m 63. I’m hollered back and forth across the restaurant. Many people in there, I assure you.

I said, why don’t you, instead of hollered and back and forth, why don’t you come over here and sit down at my table? He said, I guess I can’t. He came over and sit down, drank his coffee. They brought him some breakfast. I started talking to him. And I asked him, I said, where are you going to go when you die? He didn’t know. And I explained to him how he could have eternal life by simply trusting Christ’s Savior.

And when I got through and I said, look, I said, God knew where I was. I was at home in bed sleeping is where I was. I said, God knows where you are. And I said, I believe that God can make our paths cross. I don’t believe that breaking in had anything to do with the issue. It’s all because God wanted us together. And I said, God loves you and God wants you to have eternal life. And I want you to trust the Lord.

And I explained it to him. And I said, will you right now, will you trust Christ as your Savior? He says, yes, I will. That makes more sense to me than anything I’ve ever heard in my life. He said, I’ve never heard it that simple before. I’ve never heard it that clear. And so I thank the Lord, gave my heaven trying, finally got his trying. But do you believe in divine appointment that God has a special thing for you?

That you’re living by the grace of God in this world? And it’s not just a game, it’s just not haphazard. There’s things going on. And the belief that God is using, be a blessing. But look what he says here. I will bless thee, make thy name great, thou shalt be a blessing.” Now get the two things. God says, I’m going to bless you and thou shalt be a blessing. I’m going to bless you and you’re going to be a blessing.

We often call that make me a channel of blessing. Let God use me that I might be a blessing to others. Now I know there’s a few people that probably consider I’m a curse in this world. But I really want to be a blessing to people. I want the lost people in the world to hear the gospel, how they can have eternal life. And I want God to use me and my voice to reach people. I want people to be in heaven because they heard the gospel from my lips.

But I want every child of God to think that way, to feel that way. You should want to be a blessing. Now the blessing that I want you to see is this. In the last part of verse 3, he says, and in thee, and all thy shall all families of the earth be blessed. All families of the earth be blessed. That statement though we may not see it on the surface. In the book of Genesis, excuse me, in the book of Galatians in chapter 3.

It says that Abraham was justified by faith and that God preached before the gospel under Abraham saying, in these shall all families of the earth be blessed. But what he’s talking about and the blessing that he’s talking about is salvation. It’s salvation. And that’s the context in the book of Galatians. so that through Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and on down the line, a seed would come. And that child that would be born was the Son of God. And Jesus Christ is the seed from which the Bible says, if that seed it die, it will bring forth more fruit.

It’s the kernel of corn that dies and brings forth more. And there’s multitude of people all over the world that now have been blessed because of the seed of Abraham, of the human race, God sent his son into the world to be born so that you and I could be blessed. I am a very blessed man. You don’t look at a person’s life in a sense of this little thing that went wrong and that little bad thing that he did and this little bad thing that it did.

No, there’s a lot more to life. In other words, consolidate your life as though God will look at it. And when you read the book of Hebrews, you’ll find out in chapter 11 that when God talks about the heroes of faith, the whole of faith chapter, there’s none of their failures that’s recorded only that Abraham believed and Sarah believed and Joseph believed and Moses believed and by faith they did these things but it doesn’t record any of the failures of their life not even against David or against Samson because see in heaven God’s gonna reward us for the things that we’ve done our sins is not an issue anymore because they were paid for by Christ when he out on the cross.

And they’ll never be brought up again. They’re removed as far as the east is from the west, cast into the depths of the sea. In other words, they’ll never be thrown up at you again because they’ve been paid for and been forgiven. But when you get to heaven, God wants to reward you for what you’ve done for Him, why you hear. God wants to bless us in our life. And if there’s anything that a child of God should want is, I want God to bless me.

The children that were born in the beginning of the Old Testament, you’ll find them whenever the dad is about to die. He brings the family in and the kids and he puts a blessing upon them and that God would honor the blessing of the Father upon the child. one day a man named Jacob deceived his father and you had Jacob and he saw and he saw became very bitter and wanted to kill his brother and then when you read in the book of Hebrews the Bible makes the statement when he would have inherited the blessing he had forfeited it because he sold his birthright it was the right by being first born to inherit those blessings and he forfeited all of those blessings that he could have had because of a week time in his life.

Now I want you to understand that even though God had promised such great wonderful things for Abraham, Abraham God says is going to be blessed and I’ll bless them that bless you, I’ll curse them, that curse you.” Abraham knew that. And God said, I’m going to give you some land and I’m going to make you the father of a great nation. At that time he was about 75 years old, his wife was old, and they didn’t have any children.

So this is going to be a miraculous thing done by God. This was his plan. There’s a lot of things God has planned that he just didn’t tell us about. When God got together with the father of the the Holy Spirit in their little council room of heaven. He didn’t call us in there and ask for our approval. All we can do is accept what God’s done. But I want you to understand this. Even though God had made such wonderful promises to Abraham that I’m going to bless you, Abraham did not always do that which would bring blessings.

You see, even though God is promised, I’m going to bless. There’s things that God has determined, pre-determined and counseled. But there’s some things that depend upon our obedience to the Lord. Because God cannot bless disobedience. And sometimes we don’t always do that which will bring blessings but chastening. And I try to get people to understand that once you’ve trusted Christ as your Savior, yes, your God’s child. You’re His child forever. God will never cast you out in evolution. But there’s choices that you make in life.

Instead of you getting blessings that you could have had, you got chastened. But that’s your choice. Now here I want you to see that when God had brought him into this land of Canaan, the Bible says here in verse 10. I want you to see this. Well just first of all look there in verse 8. And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethum and pitched his tent, having Beth along the west, and He built an altar unto the Lord, and He called upon the name of the Lord, so evidently Abraham worshiped God.

Now this is, I believe, the criteria. We should always worship the Lord. We should have a place we call an altar, a place where you get along between you and the Lord and you talk to God. But just because he worshiped God and he believed all of this, didn’t mean that Abraham made all the right decisions in life. Didn’t mean from there on out, he never did anything else wrong. Oh, yeah, he did. Now, remember whenever you really want to worship God, God is going to allow things to happen in your life to see whether or not, do you really love him?

Do you really want to walk by faith? Are you really his friend? Do you really want to please God? Well, then God sometimes began turning off lights. He wants you to trust Him more than anything else in the world. So look what He says in verse 10, and there was a famine in the land. Well, couldn’t God have stopped that? Yes, God could have stopped the famine. Isn’t God in charge of the weather? Yes, God’s in charge of the weather.

Couldn’t He have let it right? Yeah, He could have. But He let there be a famine. I mean upon Abraham? Yeah, even upon Abraham. You mean everything didn’t go right? No, not everything always goes right to those who loved the Lord and worshiped God. but you still want God’s blessings. See, there’s a lot of forms of blessings in life. Sometimes your hardships, your sorrows that bring all these things to your trials and tribulations, those are blessings of God because they can drive you closer to the Lord.

Did you know that we blessed with money might drive you further from the Lord and the money not a blessing? It’s a curse. You see, more people, many times, yield themselves to God in hard time, more though in good times. But he makes this statement here in verse 10, and there was a famine in the land and Abram went down into Egypt to sow gerunderem. For the famine and you ought to underline this word in your Bible, it was grievous.

It means that Abraham had hard times, but wasn’t God going to bless him? Yes, God was blessing him. See God knows what he’s doing. God has a plan. God has a purpose. And his doesn’t always run parallel hours. Sometimes it’s totally contradictory of what we want to do. And this is what sometimes makes us question God because we can’t sometimes at the moment see the wisdom of God because if God really loves me, and God really going to bless me, well, why is He taking so long?

Well, why don’t He hurry up and do something? You see, God is not really that big of a hurry. Somebody asked God, says, God, how long is eternity to you? He says like a minute. He says, what’s a million dollars like to you? He says, penny. Uh, Lord, can I have a penny? Lord, can I have a penny? Lord, can I have a penny? Lord, it’s just in a minute. God’s not in a hurry. God is a patient God.

As you read the scriptures, you’ll find that over and over again. It says, wait upon the Lord, be patient. You see, one of the things that we can’t stand is when we want something, we want it now. I wanted to store with the kids something. Each other I could have at for you in about three days. I said, if I wanted in three days, I’d order it three days from now. I want it now. I’m a man of patience.

Most of us, we can’t handle stress, pressure. And generally it’s because, see, we take upon ourselves more than what God ever intended for us to. We weigh ourselves down. And we burden ourselves. God will give you the grace that you need to bear what He placed upon you. But sometime we place more upon us than what God did. He says in the book of Deuteronomy, He says, unless you serve me with gladness or joyfulness of heart, I will place a yoke of iron upon your neck until it destroys you.

And yet Christ says, take my yoke upon you and learn of me for my yoke is in. easy and my burden is light. Servant the Lord is so hard. Then it’s not the Lord you’re serving. Servant the Lord is not hard. His burden is not heavy. It’s light. Because you see, he says, learn of me. The reason God places things upon us so that we’ll learn. Because God doesn’t just open up your head on the top and pour all this wisdom into it and then cap it again.

It’s going bright now. It don’t work that way. It’s through the living of life, the daily things, all of your multitude of decisions. The way you learn how to make good decisions is make bad decisions and learn from them. You get wiser. Or you can even learn from somebody else or you can read the Bible and put God’s Word into practice and you’d be surprised how many pitfalls and snares that you can save yourself How many scars you can keep off yourself if you’ll just put the Lord first.

But what I want you to see here, it makes a statement down here in verse 12, therefore it shall come to pass because he’s talking about his wife. We’re going down into Egypt. And he says, honey, he says, you know, you’re a very good looking woman. Now she’s in her 60s, but she’s a good looking woman. And he says, now when we get down there, you just tell him you’re my sister. Because if they think, you might want, they’ll kill me and take you.

So he’s just him and you’re messing. Now, is it right to lie? Well, it’s not. He said, well, it’s maybe, because she could have been his half sister. And men believe that that was the case. So it was just a little white lie. He says, this is his one. And they will kill me, but they will save the life. Say I pray thee, thou art my sister, that it may be well with me, for thy sake and my soul shall live because of thee, you’ll save my life.”

Yay! I’m not sure Abraham did everything kosher, but instead of bringing a blessing, because he said, I will bless you and you’ll be a blessing to others. Was he a blessing to Pharaoh because of this? Look what it says down in verse seven. and the Lord plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarah Abram’s wife. We didn’t God had already just promised him, but I’m going to bless you. And I’m going to bless others through you and thou shalt be a blessing.

Well he wasn’t being a blessing right now. Does that annul God’s promise? That doesn’t annul God’s promise. You see Abraham still has to do what’s right to get many of the blessings. You see, God wants to bless you and I. Our going to heaven is free. That’s a gift of God. That’s because of what He did for us. That shows how much God loves us. And once you trust Him as your Savior, you have eternal life and He’ll never cast you out and never lose you.

You can never go to hell once you trust the Lord. You have eternal life. He’ll never take it away from you. But that doesn’t mean you can live like you please and get away with Him. Now you can live like you please, but you can’t get away with it because God, your heavenly Father, is going to beat the Torah out of you. maybe take you home before your time. And so instead of getting blessings, you get just the opposite.

So he says, the Lord put a plague upon Pharaoh. Not a blessing because Abraham didn’t do right. You see, this didn’t have to be this way, but because of choices that he made. In verse 19, Pharaoh said to him, he says, why sayest thou she’s my sister? So I might have taken her to be my wife. Now therefore, behold thy wife taker and go thy way. In other words, I don’t want to be around you. Get out of our country.

Boy, so much for blessings there, isn’t it? But as you go through and you study the Bible, you’ll find out that all the stories, whether Abraham, it’s Abraham and God. The story I’ve told you before about Joseph, it’s the story of Joseph and God. The story of Daniel is a story of Daniel and God. We often say Daniel and the lion is dead. Yeah. The three Hebrew children in the fire. It’s a story about those three Hebrew children and God.

All life is a story about you and God. When all this life is over with, it’s going to be what did God, God mean to you? What did Jesus Christ do for you. What did you do with Christ? And our lives that we live. It should behoove every individual that one thing that you want, more than anything else in the world, is that you want God to bless you so that you can be a blessing. And sometimes we go through life and we cause nothing but heartache and misery to other individuals instead of just the opposite, the blessings of God.

Now what I want you to do there, look there in verse 2 again of chapter 12. And verse 2 says, I will bless thee, make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing. Now I want you to take and hold your place here, but look at Numbers in chapter 6. Numbers in chapter 6. This is a good portion of scripture, because this was something that God told Moses to teach to the fathers concerning their children because we should want this.

Teaching children that what you want more than anything else in the world is the blessings of God upon my life. I try to tell the teenagers though they even want to play ball. It doesn’t matter what the activity is. Character over talent. Character over talent. in Numbers in chapter 6, notice what it says. In verse 23, speak under Aaron and unto his son, saian, on this wise you shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them. This is what you’re to say.

The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace. Isn’t that a wonderful portion of Scripture? This is what every father should want for his children and we should want for every family. When we pray God bless our church, will God bless our church when God can bless the family and God can bless the family when God can bless the individuals in the family.

There’s a story in the Bible that I think you may have heard of it called Jonah and the whale but it’s really a story of Jonah and God and God had something he wanted Jonah to do but Jonah didn’t want to do it so he ran from God and when he ran from God he got himself into trouble. And when he got into trouble, after he got on this boat, the man on the boat says, look, we got to get rid of our troubles.

Getting rid of their troubles was getting rid of Jonah. So what did they do to Jonah? Got rid of him. And that’s how they solved their problem. Now listen, in a church, in a country, we always have some Jonas. You have people that are rebellious to God. They’re rebellious to God. You may know Christ as your Savior, but if you’re not serving God with all your heart, you’re rebellious. Serve the Lord and do right. Do good. 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. Our 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, calvaryoftampa.org. Thanks for joining us on Bibleline, and now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friends, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound. We will be changed. Caught up to meet the Lord in the air.

So live today and every day, believing that the Lord is coming soon. Just keep looking up.