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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.

your Bible and turn there to the book of Romans in chapter 5. Romans and chapter 5. Now look there in verse 8. He said, but God sent in His or committed His love toward us into why we were yet sinners. Christ died for us. Much more than being now justified, we’re justified by His blood. We shall be saved from wrath through Him. In verse 10, if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son.

Art, look up here. When we were enemies of God, Christ became the mediator for man, for God, and took our sins so that you and I could come together with God. And that’s all because of what Christ did for us. And whenever you accepted Christ as your Savior, you have been declared righteous, not in yourself, not because you earned it, not because of what you do or don’t do, has nothing to do with it. I am just as justified and I am just as reconciled if I never darken the doors of a church.

Never give a dime. Never live for God one Iota because these are positional truths that happen to us that when you trust a Christ is your Savior this is what happened to you. This is what God did for us and so we have been reconciled. Now take your Bible and look there in 2nd Corinthians 2nd Corinthians in chapter 5 and you’ll notice there in verse 18 And once you trust Christ as Savior, it’s a new birth. All things are new.

Concerning the new birth. So he said, all things are of God who had had past tense, reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ. You see, it was Jesus Christ, our go between, our mediator, in order to bring us to God. That’s mentioned better in the book of 1 Peter in chapter 3, verse 18 and 19 and so forth. But look what he says here, to wit that, excuse me, verse 18, and hath given, that’s past tense, to us, believers, the ministry of reconciliation.

So this is a ministry that God has given to you and to me. Every one of us who hath been reconciled to God because of the death of his son, that God says, I’m given to you this ministry of reconciliation. What? Our look up here. There’s the lost man. Here we are, and there’s God. God said, I want you to go tell that man what I did for him so that he can be reconciled to God. That is the purpose of our life.

That’s why the radio ministry, that’s why ranch, That’s why Sunday school, that’s why a one, that’s why reformers your nanomot, that’s why church, that’s why that’s the purpose of life, the Christian life. God has given to every one of his children the ministry of reconciliation. In other words, to reconcile this lost man back to God. So you have to tell him what Christ did. He’s the focus of everything that we do. It’s because of Him and because you present Christ to a lost man, he’s supposed to understand that because of what Christ did, I can go to the Father.

I can be born into a spam and I can have eternal life and I can go to heaven whenever I die, all because of Christ. You don’t get honor, credit, and glory. The Bible makes his statement. He says, one plants, one waters, God gives a fee increase. That means that some may plant and not reap. And some may reap and not plant. And so it’s God that saves the soul. But our responsibility is to bring the message to the lost man so that he can be reconciled back to God.

And so God has given to us the ministry. So you can’t say, well, God never gave me a ministry. It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to be a pastor. You don’t have to be an elder. You don’t have to be a deacon. You don’t have to be a Sunday school teacher. You can just be on every job, though, but you have a ministry of reconciliation. Now, the more you discipline your life and the godlier you live, the more people are going to believe what you have to say.

And when you really care about that lost man hearing the message so that he can respond, then you don’t want to say or do anything that would cause him not to trust the Lord, not to believe. So that’s why you, the love of souls and this whole ministry and understanding is what causes you to discipline yourself. Otherwise there’s nothing that makes you do it. Why? Because I don’t have to. I don’t have to clean up my life and I don’t have to go to church.

Well then why do I do it? Because the ministry of reconciliation that God gave to me. You see, let me finish this out a lot because it’s so important. I want you to see that. In verse 19, to admit that God, get that God was in Christ, reconciling the world onto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. Well, wait a minute, you mean you can do something and then you don’t have to give a count of it? That doesn’t sound right.

You don’t get it. And most people never get this. But he says, not imputing their trespasses unto them, and hath, past tense, committed unto us believers, the word of reconciliation. You see, it’s the words that we use that they need to hear so that they can believe the message. And then he says, now then we are ambassadors for Christ. As though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ, dead be reconciled to God. get verse 21, for he hath made him.

Jesus Christ, who no no sin to be sinned for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. That is the purpose of reconciliation. Now, if you’ll notice in chapter 6 and verse 1, it follows right after that last verse in 2nd Corinthians 5 21. But in this verse it says, we then as, and you ought to underline this, workers together with Him. Be seated you also that you received not the grace of God in vain.

God left us here and to be left here given the opportunity to serve the Lord and tell people about them That was grace because we didn’t earn that right. This is a privilege. This is an opportunity of a lifetime. It’s the greatest thing to ever come down the pike. There’s nothing greater than the ministry of reconciliation. And you’d be surprised how many people never take advantage of this great ministry, of what God can do with an individual because it’s the word of reconciliation, the word that we teach and that we preach, and it is so very, very important.

Anyway, if you look at letter E to remove the problem between two parties at disagreement with each other. You ever have two people who have a disagreement? Well, they need to be reconciled. And sometimes in this life with people, it may never happen. And even if you give the gospel to a person, they may not believe it. James was talking to somebody today and he came and says, preacher, I talked to this guy. He heard the radio broadcast and he says, I kept asking him, do you understand?

He said, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. Do you understand what I’m saying? I don’t No. Well, you trust Christ’s Savior, I don’t know. Just as I know, I said, I got about 10 minutes before I had to leave for the Bible study downtown. I said, bring him in. He came in, and I was under the gun, so I gave him 10 minutes. And, Betty, I can say a lot of things in 10 minutes. And so, when I finally got through, I said, did it make sense to you?

He says, I don’t know. I hate to ask the men to trust Christ’s Savior when He doesn’t understand it. I don’t know. I don’t know. I said, James, he’s all yours. Yeah, we told him, I said, don’t you die in the meantime. I said, are you going to die? He said, I don’t know. I don’t know. So some people just don’t, they don’t know. And you can’t make a person see, you can’t make them understand, you can’t make it.

It has to be something that God turned on the little light where they can see it. And you can’t make a person trust the Lord. I’ve never yet saved a soul. God saved him. I’ve never saved him. All I do is just sow the seed. Just sow the seed. Sow the seed. In the book of Ruth, there’s a story where Boaz comes along and he sees Ruth. He tells the servant, he says, now, leave a little extra. In the words, whenever you, kind of, not all the wheat and things down, He just kind of leaves some of it there.

And in the corners of the field, they were supposed to leave it for the poor folks so they could kind of glean some of it, you know. He says, but leave a little extra. And so they left a little extra. And they would drop handfuls on purpose just so that she would get more. And when she got more, and then she had to, of course, beat it and so forth, and then she would bring it home and she would have so much more.

And Ruth, she was just pleasing Naomi. I mean, it was just great, but it was hand-pulled on purpose. As you and I go through life, we’re just reaching into the bag and getting all these verses and scriptures, and we’re sowing seeds on purpose. We’re not doing because, well, I don’t want to do it. We just do it on purpose, not accidentally, and just sow the seed, wherever you can, just sow seeds. Because you never know who’s gonna come along and pick up that seed, that little track, or hear that word on a radio or something like that because you never know.

I see, I may be on the radio, but you know, I wouldn’t be on the radio if the people didn’t put me on the radio. So who gets the credit? We’re laborers together. See that verse one? We then as, and you ought to on the line, those two are workers together, Workers together, we’re doing this because this is what God wants us to do. And if you look there in verse two, for He said, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I suckered thee, he behold, now is the accepted time.

Behold, now is the day of salvation. When should a person trust Christ to save you? Tomorrow! No, today! Because he nobody has a guarantee of tomorrow. You don’t have a guarantee of the next moment. That’s why it’s so important for a person, the child of God, to trust Christ’s Savior and trust Him, trust Him now. Well, what I want you to do is hang onto your notes because we’ll cover the last four or five of them. I will cover those next Wednesday night.

And you will bring those back, won’t you? You will bring them, you’ll put them in your Bible and you’ll come back because we didn’t finish. But I know that you wanna hear the last part. And you just by cause you look at a word, you say, well, I know what that means. You don’t know how I’m going to explain it. So therefore I expect you to come and listen and learn. And a little bit of truth here and a little bit there.

They all add up. All right, you’ll notice that we’ve already covered a few of these words, adoption, faith, glorification, justification, and reconciliation. We did that last Wednesday night. So tonight we’re gonna look at the remaining words here. And we may finish them and we may not. But the first word here is on redemption. And of course you know that means to buy or to purchase. So that’d be letter G in your notes there. So redemption is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Because this is where God tells us some things that you and I need to keep in mind, need to remember. But redemption, take your Bible and turn there to the book of Romans. Chapter 3 Romans and Chapter 3 Because sometimes they look like big word, but redemption just simply means to redeem, to purchase, to buy. People use it in relationship to the slave market where somebody’s up for sale and somebody buys him from the slave market of sin, which is a good illustration.

And in our sense, it’s that we were lost and there’s a price to pay. And so he paid the price for us to be set free. And so Jesus Christ, of course, went to the cross, died, and paid for our sin so that we could be free. And the Bible says in the book of Psalms, let the redeemed of the Lord say so. those that are redeemed should say, I have been redeemed. That’s a good song by the way.

But here in the book of Romans in chapter three, look there in verse 21, verse 21. But now the righteousness of God without the law is revealed or manifested. And the righteousness he’s talking about is a person, it’s Christ. Christ has been manifest. Christ has come into the world. the Old Testament saints and prophets told about it. But it says here, been witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all them that believe.

So we’ve explained this before that salvation is unto all, but it’s only upon those that believe. So the righteousness of God is something that is imputed to a person’s account, as an accounting procedure. and a general ledger of putting like assets and liabilities, expenses, and income, and so forth. And so here he’s talking about a payment that Jesus Christ has made. And you’ll notice when he makes the statement there in verse 24, being justified freely. And the reason I think that is so important because he just said if there in verse 20 that you could not be justified by your works.

And here you’re justified freely. So if you can’t be justified by your works, it would have to be free. And of course, that is what the scripture teaches. So being justified declared righteous, just as if I’d never sin freely, that means without charge, get it by his grace. In other words, you did not deserve this, but because of God’s love, this is what He did. And He says through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. So Jesus Christ made a payment for the purpose of redeeming us.

He didn’t just die for himself or just to die, He died for a reason. He was born for a purpose and He died to accomplish that purpose. And that was to make the payment necessary for you and I to be set free. So when we accept the payment Christ made for us, we are redeemed. We have accepted the payment. And in verse 25 it says, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation. That means that this payment that was made, it revealed the wrath of God upon sin, but it also revealed the love and the mercy, the compassion of God for the person and that Christ and God the Father was satisfied with the payment that was made.

You see, Christ could have died on the cross and paid for sin and God the Father not be satisfied. But He had made a promise to Abraham saying that in Abraham the seed, He would justify the world by faith, the heathen through faith. So He made a promise So the son had to come, the son had to die in order for God to keep his word. Because there was no other way for God to keep his word if the son didn’t do what he did.

So the son came and made the payment. God the Father was satisfied and it says here to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God. I believe that’s a reference to the Old Testament, to the law and so forth in the Prophet. And then he says there in verse 26 to declare say at this time on this side of the cross his righteousness. So they had to declare his righteousness before the cross after the cross.

They look forward to his coming and we look back to his coming because he made the statement right there in verse 21 that now the righteousness of God without the law is manifest been witnessed by the law and the prophets. So the law and the property they told about this righteousness that was to come. So then the conclusion of the whole matter was in verse 28. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law and the reason is because we have been redeemed.

Now if I have already been redeemed, then I am not seeking to be redeemed. You see, if you are saved, then you should not be seeking to be saved. If any man is still seeking to be saved, what he’s saying is, I am not yet saved. You understand what I’m saying? If you’re still trying to get to heaven because you don’t know if you’re going to make it or not because of something, then that means you don’t know it now.

You can’t be saved without being saved from something. Save from what? Save from hell. Christ cannot be my Savior if He has not saved me. So I accepted the payment He made. It’s done deal. I am saved, safe and secure. It’s done deal. So the Bible is clear on this, and there’s no reason for anybody to be mixed up on it. But what I tell you, they are so many people do not get the simplicity that’s in these scriptures.

So we have been redeemed. Look there in chapter five. Chapter five, it kind of gives us this idea about us being redeemed. When he makes the statement there in verse nine, much more than being now justified by his blood. By his blood is the payment that was made because the life of the flesh is in the blood. So I have been justified by his blood, that payment that was made. That’s what the law required, a death payment. So he was able to do this for us and we have been reconciled to him.

So we have been redeemed. Now look at the next word. The next word is regeneration. Regeneration. If you take off the word re, it’s just generation. And it comes from the word genesis or you have beginning. And so if you go all the way back to beginning when everything began, and when you trust Christ as your Savior, it is a new beginning. It is the new birth. So, the regeneration, if you want to mark it down there, would be in letter H.

This word speaks of the new birth. Take your Bible and look there in Titus in chapter 3. The book of Titus and chapter 3. But Titus in chapter 3. But why are you right here in chapter 3, just so that you see this other verse that I want you to see in chapter 2 in verse 14? You’ll notice where it says in verse 14, Christ, who gave Himself for us. That’s why I often refer you to Him. He says, Christ was the payment.

He gave Himself. The price was Him. And so He says, who gave Himself for us, for us. for us, that substitution. Get this, that he might redeem us. So he had to give the payment that was required. So he died to redeem us. And not only does he want to just save us from hell, but in our Christian life, he wants to redeem us also from those things that keeps us from serving the Lord. So I can’t say I am being redeemed, but I am to be walking in the Lord and he wants to have each one of us to be zealous, zealous of good works.

I can say just about from the time I trust that Christ is my Savior just maybe a couple of years in there I kind of floundered trying to figure out what’s going on and I wasn’t always clear, but I’ve had a burning zeal to want to serve the Lord. I’ve been zealous of good works. I desired to do whatever it takes to please the Lord and whatever he wanted me to do Wherever we want to go it was no God never had to argue if he never had to fight with me I Was searching he had trouble directing me Because I didn’t know which way to go and so not all things to do But I was desirous of doing what he’s talking about here.

He wanted for himself people That were as he says here a peculiar people people that are different from the world. Now I guess I’m about as different as they come, but different. Zealous of good works. And then he says down here in verse 5 of chapter 3, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit. So every one of us, Once you trust Christ as your Savior, it is a new generation, a new beginning of life.

That’s why God wants us to be a tree of life. It says in the book of Proverbs, a tree, a tree that is wise, when it’s so, has a tree of life. In other words, when you trust that Christ as your Savior, has there been any fruit from your tree, another generation, another generation? Because see that’s what God wants from every one of us now Somebody had asked me this question just today at the Tampa Bible’s day, and so look there at this verse in the book of Matthew 24.

Matthew chapter 24 and verse 32 about the type of the fig tree. Now learning parable of the fig tree. When his branch is yet tender and put it forthleads, you know that summer is nigh. Well, to me, the point of the parable is that when a fig tree puts forth the tender leaves, you know that summer is nice. That’s the point. Is you know something is near because of something else? Now, he says, when you see these things come to pass, then you’ll know that crisis soon to appear because that’s in the content.

Now, it does not say here that this is definitely the fig tree is when Israel became a nation. We often refer to that. I do too. I believe that Israel is a type of fig tree that began to blossom back in 1948. And so people figure, okay, a generation could be 70 years. So a generation of 70 years, okay, from several years from that period of time and then take off the seven-year tribulation when he comes back to the year.

So you’ve got seven years. That close. So there is a possible, that’s why a lot of people are saying something like it because of the generation being 70 years. But it says, when ye shall see in verse 33, all these things know that it is near even at the doors. So it’s a reference to those who see these things that are mentioned in the 24th chapter. And it’s not a reference to the nation of Israel becoming a nation, as it is when you shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel standing in the holy place.

And when does that take place in the tribulation period? So it’s got to be a referring to the people that will be living at that period of time. There’s many people who were live when the nation of Israel came into existence in May the 28th, 1948. But majority of those people that were born then are dead. True? A lot of them are dead. So they never saw it. Which ones get to see it? The ones that lived the longest?

Well, they might. But majority of the people have already died. So that generation, is it those that were born at that time on? gets the 70 years or those who are a man who was already 50 years old. If he was 50 years old in 1948, he’s an old codger now, isn’t he? But he’s dead. So he didn’t make it. So it’s the generation only beginning in 1948 and those who were born at that time forward. Okay, that sounds pretty good.

But, see, you can’t prove it. And that’s the problem. 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. for Calvary Community Church. He’s 4811 George Road Tampa, Florida 33634 Our Sunday morning services begin at 10.30 and at 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. Live broadcasts of our services may be seen by going to our website calvaryuddempo.org Big good today. his man 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.