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Bibleline Bibleline, here God’s Word on Bibleline, everywhere, every time. Here God’s truth on Bibleline. 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. 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 message will be a blessing to you and your family.

So look at the last part of verse 6. So Absalom stole the heart of the men of Israel. So by stealing their heart they became loyal to Him. So now David has to be concerned. Because now Absalom is going to kill his dad. So now David has to leave Jerusalem and run for his life. See that under in verse 12, the last part of it says, and the conspiracy was strong. In verse 13, and there came a messenger to David’s end, the hearts of the men of Israel are after Absalom.

And David said unto all his servants that were with him at Jerusalem, arise, let us flee. But we shall not escape from Absalom. So suddenly, now he has to run for his life. This is King David. Why doesn’t he have the peace and the joy of the Lord? he played the fool and he’s reaping it. And he loved Absalom. And Absalom was a very handsome individual. See there in verse 25, look in verse 25, just to show you can see there.

In verse 25 he said, but in all Israel there was none to be so much praised as Absalom for his beauty. From the soul of his foot, even to the crown of his head, there was no blemish in him. He must have been some good looking hunk, as the women would say. Must have been like Peter over there. He’s just smiling. Ha ha ha. Hey, that’s pretty high over there now. You got to admit that. But you see, all of these things that happened, and it just gets worse and worse and worse.

So look there in chapter 18 and verse 9, chapter 18 and verse 9. Verse 9 says, An Absalom met the servants of David, an Absalom rode upon a mule, and the mule went under a thick bow of a great oak, and his head caught hold of the oak, and he was taken up between the heaven and the earth and the mule that was under him went away. Well, what got caught? His beautiful flowing locks of hair. That’s another reason why not to have long hair.

When you’re trying to get away on a mule and your hair gets stuck in a tree and the mule walks out and he’s hanging there by his little goldy locks in the tree. But it says in verse 10, and a certain man saw it and told Joab and he said, Behold, I saw Absalom hanging in a new tree. Joab said unto the man that told him, and behold thou saws him, why this thou not smite him there to the ground?

I would have given thee 10 shekels of silver and a girdle, and the man said unto Joab, though I should receive a thousand shekels of silver in mine hand, yet would I not put forth my hand against the king’s son? For in our hearing the king charged thee and Ebishai and Atayah, He said, saying, be where that none touch the young man Absalom. Otherwise I should have wrought falsehood against my own life. For there is no matter hid from the king.

And thou, thy self, would have had set thyself against me. Then said, Joab, I may not teary thus with thee. And he took three darts in his hand and thrust him through the heart of Absalom while he was yet alive in the midst of the yoke. So… Number four. Message came back and lo and behold, David is told about Absalom’s death. And he says there in verse 33, and the king was much moved and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept.

You know, after David’s sin, you don’t find much happiness. You don’t find much joy. This is why David wind up having two years later. David had to go to the Lord and he talks about how it is so heavy upon him and how he had to confess things to the Lord and because of the weight owes upon him and look what he says here and As he went does he said oh my son Absalom my son my son Absalom and you’re on the line this part in your Bible would God I had died for thee oh Oh, Absalom, my son, my son.

Number four. You see, he was the one that should have died. True? But God says, you’re not going to die. But you see, all the damage it was done because he was evidently discouraged. He didn’t want to go. He stayed there. He looked. He took something that didn’t belong to him. And every one of the others did exactly the same thing. And look at the damage and the destruction. You see, depression can cost you an awful lot. But depression is a choice that you must understand.

Depression is a choice. It’s because of how you’re thinking. Why do you think the Bible says, be strong and very courageous? It’s talking about having a positive attitude because of your trust in the Lord. When you don’t trust the Lord and have to trust yourself, you have limited power, limited ability. Therefore, you don’t have the peace or the hope or the joy that you have what it takes to get you out of whatever it is. And there’s problems in life.

We all have to go through them. It’s one thing if you will go through them with your confidence and your trust in the Lord, or that you will betray the Lord. And you’re going to have depression build up and you’re going to get so done and so discouraging, you’ll think wrong. And when you think wrong, it will not just be you that’s affected. The Lord tells us in the book of Acts, talking about the third and the fourth generation.

fourth generation. Whatever I do affects my kids. And whatever affects my kids affects their kids. And whatever affects those kids are going to affect the next kid. Up to the third and the fourth generation, you don’t do what you do alone. No man is an island into himself. And this is why this is so very, very important. Guilt is to the soul what pain is to the body. And there are things that we think that are sins of the mind that causes our depression.

Well, anyway, I got some notes that I gave out to you. I’ve already given you the first messages and I thought, well, I’ve just jot down a couple of little notes that I’ve already done. And then I wrote some of the rest of them. And nothing that I do is that original, I copy, copy, copy. I get ideas from this person, that person. I read a lot. But sometimes I come across someone saying, that’s good, that’s helpful. And some things help me.

Whatever helps me, I pass on. Because I’ll have to be honest with you. There’s a lot of times when I get so discouraged, so depressed. You say, mean, at your age, after 51 years, you still get discouraged? Yeah, what about it? And I don’t like myself when I get like that. I don’t like being down. I don’t like being discouraged. I’m almost like Moses that, Lord, I don’t wanna see how wretched I am. I don’t wanna see how bad I really am.

Lord, don’t let go of me. Lord, I want you to take down the hedges once in a while and you know, you let the old devil get to me a little bit, but not too much. You know, just enough. Just to keep me humble and keep me close to you, but don’t overdo it. I used to scare Betty’s dad to death. He says, I’d tell himself like that. And he says, oh, I can’t believe you pray like that. I said, I just want to learn every lesson that I can learn.

I want to be as wise as I can be. I don’t know how long I’m going to live, but I know that you have to go through things to learn things so you can be profitable to somebody. And I says, I just want to learn this, but just I can’t. So man alive. The lure that time seemed like he had just poured it on thick. And so, anyway, the Lord tells us in His Word, God hath not given us the Spirit of fear, but of love.

Power and a sound mind. Now all these things about depression, just, you know, down in despair, is really just the evidence of an unsound mind. You’re not thinking right. So God’s always trying to get us to think right. And so what reveals whether or not you’re thinking right? Well, the problems of life. the kind of reveals what you’re trusting in for sure. And because we’re so easily deceived. So God allows us to be tested in so many ways to reveal to us that our weaknesses so that we know what we need to work on.

So anyway, look at the first part here. With depression, the alarm clock goes off, and we can’t face life. There’s just some people who don’t want to face life. This is what causes people to commit suicide. Can a Christian commit suicide? Think about it. Well, they still go to heaven. Yeah. See, if it’s a sin, well, Christ paid for it. So all sin has been paid. So does that mean because I say, you’re going to heaven, I’m advocating Christians go commit suicide?

No, I’m not saying that. No, I’m not saying that. I do not advocate people to live in sin just because you’re saved by grace. I believe we should serve the Lord and do right. Not to get to heaven, but because we’re going there. Look at the little box statement here. We can’t sleep or we sleep all the time. You go from one extreme to the other. I can’t sleep or just don’t want to get out of bed, don’t want to do anything.

Or we can’t eat or we eat all the time. You know, depression can cause both ways where you can’t eat and you can’t sleep. And then sleep all the time or just eat all the time. I’m going to, when I get to heaven, I can eat all the time. I do like eating. It is a wonderful invention. The next statement, it’s better to discover what’s wrong before considering the solution. And the reason is because the doctor diagnoses the problem before he prescribes the medicine.

So sometimes you need to study yourself, examine yourself, and see how are you doing spiritually? I believe that the first 10 things that we’ve mentioned, they all deal with sins mostly of the mind. Things that we have to deal with, things that hit us emotionally. Remember, most sins are taken care of in the anger, the bitterness, and all these things simply because we learn how to forgive. But forgiveness deals a lot with the emotional part of it for us.

And then there’s the judicial part of it, where a person is still held responsible for their actions. See, people may wrong you and you can forgive them. But emotionally, you forgive so it eliminates you having hatred or vengeance to get even spirit back to the person. But it doesn’t eliminate the judicial part of the forgiveness because a person still should be held accountable for what they do that’s wrong. For example, a guy rapes a girl, hey, I’m sorry, forgive me.

So if she forgives him, then he don’t have to pay for what he’s done? No, there’s a judicial part of it that he still is responsible for his actions and a price must be paid. The man that killed my son, I can forgive him because I do not want up on my mind the guilt that I harbor, vengeful, hateful, maintenance, you know, toward the individual. So me forgiving him personally relieves me of that emotion that I don’t have to have the guilt of how I feel towards someone because if you hate them, you know it’s wrong and it’s going to take its toll upon you.

But you still judicially want them to realize there is a responsibility that has to be taken care of and that it has to be dealt with according to the law. Look at the first statement, guilt is solved by forgiveness. Materialism, solved by contentment. If you was content with what you have, then you don’t have to be so materialistic minded. See, some people think that the more they buy, the more happier they’ll be. And that’s why, you know, they just buy, buy, buy, buy, buy.

And they think it’ll make them happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy. Well, it doesn’t because they got to go out to the next week and buy some more and some more and they’re never satisfied. It’s never enough. And so if you can learn to be content, then you can be satisfied. And you don’t have to worry about the guilt of materialism because you can become so depressed. You see, people have to find a way to relieve themselves of the guilt or the depression trying to figure out a way to get rid of it, how to make me feel happy because of something else that’s happening.

going on. So they try to cover the real problem and they’re just trying to soothe over. And you know, you may have a root problem over here, but it surfaces over here. And there’s a lot of people that give you the impression, this is what’s wrong with me. And really, it’s not what’s wrong with them. There’s a root problem way down deep. And sometimes you have to try to find out what it is is causing the problem. Look at number three, anger is solved by entrusting yourself to the Lord.

Because if you can trust the Lord with whatever it is, it’s supposed to make anger and you can commit that thing to the Lord. It can really relieve the depression, you know, the discouragement because it can build up into anger and so forth. And these are things that destroy the Christian. These are the sins of the mind that the man who loses control is going to have to suffer with depression. It means you’re going to be so discouraged that you’ll think, quit, stop.

Stop doing what I’m doing. Did you realize if you studied the life of the Apostle Paul and what he went through, I couldn’t think of another man who could be so discouraged more than Paul. And And yet he said it was nigh unto death. I mean, he was really taken down. And he was really hurt and forsaken. And he says, all have forsaken me, except just a couple of people. So what he really went through and the hardships. And yet he just kept on going, but he never quit.

He says, because of the ministry, because it was so worth whatever he had to go through and he hung in. Number four, hatred is solved by forgiveness and love. If you can learn how to love, you don’t have to worry about the hate. Because love, the Bible talks about perfect love casts us out fear. And fear actually is a result of hating because you’re afraid of what’s going to take place and you hate when somebody steals something from you or says something about you and you can hate another person because they’re like robbing you of something that you’re supposed to get like maybe from other people, a little praise and honor and glory.

And so it causes all kind of jealousy and stuff. Number five, perfectionism is solved by acceptance of human limitation. You and I know we would like everything to be perfect. Wouldn’t you like your wife to be perfect for a change? We’d just like her to be perfect. Well, wouldn’t she like for the husband to be perfect for a change? Well, what if he was just right once in a while? And wouldn’t you like your kids to do right? But we can also easy focus upon the error, the human limitation.

Because if you know and you recognize and you can accept the fact that people are human and to air is human and everybody has limitations, they don’t know it all. They can’t do it all. So don’t expect it all. It will help you not to be so down and discouraged because of the way people are, because people can be so, so deflating at times, just because they don’t pay you the tension that you think you deserve or the compliment you think you deserve or whatever it might be.

And you can be so discouraged and so depressed so quickly, so easy. Look at number six, worry is saw by faith in the promises of God. that’s why you study the promises of God, so that you know what God says, so that you don’t have to worry. Most of our worrying is because it’s based upon our own performance of what I can do. Or can’t do. And so my life is totally dependent upon my ability. And when you can’t see how you’re going to do it, you worry.

When you can’t see financially how you are going to get yourself out of this, or you’re going to try to solve this medical problem or this, whatever it might be. Well then all those worries come back because you forget the promises of God. God didn’t promise that we’re going to live here forever. He did not promise us that we’re going to have all of us. the money we want. See, you might just live until you die, and you can die at any time in any ways.

So you don’t worry. Number seven, jealousy is saw by esteeming others better than yourselves. You know, if you read the book of Colossians in chapter 2, it talks about esteeming others better than yourself, seeing them that way so that you’re not jealous because they are lifted up and they’re doing things and God’s using people. Because you know that if you humble yourself to the Lord, God will honor you. God will bless you. God will use you. So you see, it’s a personal thing between you and God, and all these things reveal where you are spiritually.

And some people are not as strong as they think. And I believe sometimes we don’t want to find out how weak we are. We’re scared. We’re afraid there’s going to be a problem come along that I can’t handle. Well, maybe I can’t, but me and God can. And so whatever it is, you just trust the Lord to walk you through it. Number eight, laziness is solved by meaningful productivity. Now, when we study the book of Ecclesiastes, if you want to see a book that can really can really depress you.

That’s one book that can. All is vanity and vexation of spirit. In other words, what in the world is the purpose of life? Why do I do all this work? Why has all of this got a meaning or whatever? So it’s always looking at life as a man under the sun, as a man living without the knowledge of God. And so there’s not much hope, not much reason for anything. And so we’re just like the beast of the earth we live and we die and that’s all there is to it.

But I do want you to see a couple verses there. Look in the book of Ecclesiastes. The book of Ecclesiastes. In the book of Ecclesiastes and look there in chapter 3. Chapter 3 and look in verse 17. A lot of things he goes down through here and talks about there’s There’s a time for this, then a time for that. Time to be born, time to die. Time to love, time to war. And a time to weep, inverse four, and a time to laugh.

Time to mourn, time to dance. In other words, all this is what goes on in your life. And so he says in verse 11, he hath made everything beautiful in his time. Also he has set the world in their heart or eternity in their heart. So that no man can find out the work that God make it from the beginning to the end. Regardless of how long you and I live, by human wisdom we will never find out or understand God.

So he says down here in verse 13, looking verse 13, and also that every man should eat and drink, enjoy the good of all of his labor. is the gift of God. Did you know that God given to you and I, the ability, not only the ability to work, but the need to work is a gift. Now you talk about being bored in life. God has designed life that if you’re not willing to work, then let you die. So well, I don’t want to die.

Then work. Look, find a way to meet your needs. Till God has designed life and given you a body, gave you a mind, and God says work is a gift from God. Now take your Bible to look there in the book of Genesis, all the way over to the book of Genesis. In Genesis in chapter 2, Genesis chapter 2 and look there in verse 15. Even before Adam and Eve had sinned, he gave them responsibilities in the garden. So he says in verse 15, And the Lord God took the man, put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

He had a job to do. He also was giving a job of naming all the animals and all the plants, giving everything a name. You know, he had to be pretty smart to start off with. And yet they want to tell you that the first man, you know, that came walking out of that cave, you know, and with a big old club and beat the woman over the head and drag her by the head and drag her back in the cave.

And didn’t know how to talk, but just grunt, grunt, grunt, grunt, grunt, grunt. Now the first man God ever made was probably one of the most intelligent men ever made. And so they were very, very smart at the very beginning. Look there in Genesis chapter 3 and verse 17. Chapter 3 and verse 17, you know they had sinned so they had to be placed under a curse. And verse 17, and under Adam he said, Be cause thou hast hearken unto the voice of thy wife, and hath eaten of the tree of which I commanded, they say, and thou shall not eat of it?”

Now keep us in mind, even though he did listen to his wife, God still held the man responsible for his actions. True? He was responsible for what he did. God did not accept his excuse. Well, that woman you made me. I mean, he used that excuse, but God did not accept that excuse. Every one of us as individuals are responsible for the decisions that we made. And so he says, Thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground.

Why did he curse the ground? And you’ll see those next three words for thy sake because man would totally be miserable in life if he didn’t have to work. Being able to work is truly a blessing because God has placed so much upon the idea of work, a man having to work and to provide. And so he says that this is what God wants us to do and this is what he’s done. But a lazy man, a lazy man, God despises a lazy person, people that don’t like to go, don’t like to produce, don’t like to work, Find a work.

Find something to do for the Lord. And try to find out how you can do whatever it is God wants you to do. But God despises slothfulness and laziness. Those are not too honorable traits that go back here to book of Ecclesiastes chapter 3. I want you to see this in verse 17. He says, In verse 17, I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked. For there is a time, therefore every purpose and for every work.

But a man needs a purpose for why he should work. And if a man can find a way to get out of work, most time that will be his purpose in life, trying to find out how to get out of work. It’s better to have a little and work hard and earn the right to rest. 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.

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Best 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, 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.