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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. Your regular prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the air. You can reach us toll free at 1-800-800-800-800. 776-3771. One-line donations may be made through the Bible-lined 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. Take your Bible and turn with me to the book of Hebrews, the book of Hebrews. And I want And I want us to look at several difficult passages in the book of Hebrews. As you read the Scriptures, you’re going to come across several Scriptures that does present a problem that might be hard to explain to someone.

And I want to be able to cover some of them and at the same time teach you some things that are in its context that are very, very helpful. So here in Hebrews in chapter 3, we have a lot of people who take verses that seems to say something and you build doctrine off of them. It doesn’t say that if it seems to say something. Remember the key to understanding the Scriptures is the gospel. The light of the gospel is the key to unlock the Scriptures.

So one, when we understand that salvation is truly a gift of God and that it is by grace and not by man’s works, by anything that he does, that’s one of the biggest keys to understanding much of the Scriptures. So for example, look there in the book of Hebrews in chapter 3, and I want you to notice there’s a word called if, if, if. He says here in verse 6, but Christ as a son over his own house, whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm until the end.

So a person reads that verse and says, see there, you’ve got to live right firm until the end, my friend in order to get in. Now it seems that you could take that verse and make it say that, or look down here in another verse that I want you to see in verse 14, for we are made partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast until the end. So you notice that it He keeps talking about until the end.

So it’s natural to assume time at the end of your life. Well, maybe it means that, maybe it doesn’t. And maybe it’s talking about how to get to heaven and maybe it’s not. Now we know that the Bible cannot contradict itself. It can’t say for by grace are you saved in one place and then say you’re saved by your works in another place and both be referring to salvation. We know that one has to be referring to salvation and something has to be referring to something else.

So whenever we find this word if in here, we know that we cannot be talking about how to be saved. It has to be talking about how we live. But now what I want you to see there in chapter 3, he goes back and talks about Yes, Christ, but also about Moses and how hateful they were. You see what he says here in verse 2, who was faithful. Talk about it, Christ. Who was faithful to him that appointed him as also Moses was faithful in all of his health.

So you’re talking about a Christian being faithful. So we’re not talking about how to be saved. We’re talking about how a Christian is supposed to live. So we talk about how a person is to live when you trusted Christ as your Savior. See, you were placed on the foundation which is Christ. Christ is the rock. That’s the foundation. Then no other foundation that can be laid is that Jesus Christ. And on this foundation, we’re to be built. We are placed upon this foundation and so God wants to build us.

But you’ll notice what he said. In verse 4, for every house is built by Son man, but he that built all things as God. And Moses, barely or truthfully, was faithful in all his house as a servant for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after him. But Christ as a son over his own house, whose house are we? So we’re talking about God is going to build a house. A house is where you and I live.

That’s what we usually consider a house to be, for a purpose of it. So God wants to take you as a child of God that’s on the foundation and build you strong. Now it says in the 20th verse of the book of Jude, building up yourselves in your most holy faith, building yourself strong. So as we read the book of Hebrews, we’re talking about how God wants to take a believer and make them strong and build them into a strong house.

Now in this house is where I’m going to live. Now I could relate to this and approximately 50 years of my life. We’ve been building on this house. God’s been building me. But after a while you get to where you can live in this house. And it provides for you with shelter and with light, with comfort, with food. It’s a spiritual home where you live. Now, see, I have a physical body and I have a place that I live in and I have a bed that I sleep in and we have food that I eat, but I’m talking about a spiritual house.

So God says, I can build you if you will submit yourself to him, he can build you strong in the Lord. Now, there’s a lot of God’s children that will not allow the Lord to build them. They trust Christ as their Savior and they never dedicate themselves to the Lord. So they never get strong in the Lord. And so they don’t have this house, a protection, a place where they can live. And it takes care of you all the days of your life.

So I’m glad that years ago, I learned enough scriptures to allow the Lord to help build me stronger in the Lord so that I can enjoy a good walk, a good spiritual life. Now in the book of Ephesians, it talks about how that we’re built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets and how that the building, fitly framed together, builds into a spiritual habitation of God, which God lives in. So he says, my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, but it’s more than just the body that God wants.

God wants your soul and your spirit, and He wants to build you strong into a house. And this foundation is His word. You see, when He makes the statement in the book of Matthew in chapter seven, He says, “‘Ye are to build yourself upon His sayings.'” He says, “‘If a man will obey my sayings, he shall be like a wise man that builds his house upon thee.'” rock. Now some Christians see are building their house upon the sand, but the Lord wants to build a house for you to live in, a spiritual home.

That’s why He wants you to learn the Word of God and the Word of God and the truth. It says about in the book of Galatians in chapter two when He talks about some of Peter and James and them, He says, they were like pillars in the church. You and I need to have some pillars. You know, some things that we believe in and that nothing can move us or shake us. Now, the world can fall apart and you can have health problems, you can have finance problems, social problems, but spiritually you can be a solid rock that doesn’t have to move and shake to all the problems of life.

They don’t have to be that way. So he’s talking to the children of God about how to grow from childhood to maturity, how to become strong in the Lord. Look there in chapter 5, won’t you see his very quickly. He says in verse 12 in chapter 5, for then for the time you ought to be teachers, you have need that one teach you again, which be the first principles of the oracles of God, and it becomes such as have need of milk, not of strong meat.

In other words, you didn’t grow up. You never became mature in the Lord. You’re a child, a child that never matured, a child that never grew, a child that never learned how to rest in the Lord, never learned how to take God in His Word and trust His promises. To see the light, I guess you could say, in the night. And then He says here in verse 13, for everyone that uses milk is unskilledful in the Word. Of righteousness for he is a what?

A babe. He says in verse 14, but strong meat belong to them that are a full age. So we’re going somewhere. You’re going from a child of God and to be a man of God. And the thing that makes the difference is the word of God. That’s why he says in chapter four, look in chapter four in verse 12. He says, for the word of God is quick and sharper and powerful that any two-edged sword, Pearson even to the divided of sons, and the verse 14, but strong meat belong to them that are a full age.

So we’re going somewhere. You’re going from a child of God and to be a man of God. And the thing that makes the difference is the word of God. That’s why he says in chapter four, look in chapter four and verse 12. He says, for the word of God is quick and sharper and powerful than any two-edged sword, Pearson even to the dividing of Sanders. soul and spirit and of the joint and the moral, the sinner of the thoughts and the intense of the heart.

So the word of God is given to us to take us from something to something. You were lost, you came, and you heard the word, you believed it, you trusted Christ as your Savior. Now you’ve been placed on a foundation. Now God wants to build you strong. And He can build you if you’re whole fast to the truths that are found in the Word of God. Now if you don’t, nobody can make you do it. Nobody can make you.

Nobody can cause you to walk with God and make you do it. It’s a personal thing. Do you want to be a strong Christian or do you want to be a weak Christian? Strong in your faith? Your choice. So now if you’ll notice there in Hebrews in chapter two, so he says in verse six, if we hold fast the confidence, the confidence. I can hold your place right here, but I want you to see this verse over there in the book of Hebrews in chapter 10.

Hebrews in chapter 10. And look there in verse 35. So he’s talking to Christians. And he says this in verse 35, cast not away, therefore you are what? You’re confidence. In other words, don’t let the devil cause you to doubt the word of God or doubt the promises of God, to doubt the will of God. The devil wants to just shake your life up and ruin you and keep you from walking with the Lord, to keep you from being strong in the Lord.”

So he says here in verse 35, “…cast not away therefore your confidence which hath great recompense of salvation or reward. Reward. The rewards is what God gives to you because of your confidence in him.” You see when you have confidence in the Lord, you’ll serve him. And when you serve him, God’s going to reward you for it. So you don’t want to cast your confidence away. You want to hang on to your confidence in what God says. And believe what God says, and you can grow strong in the Lord.

Now look there in chapter three and look down now in verse 11. He says, so I swear in my wrath, as he’s talking about the children of Israel, as they go on through the wilderness, he says, he was taking them from Egypt. They had crossed over and now he wants to take him into the Promised Land. Now the Promised Land is not generally considered to be a type of heaven. It’s a type of the Christian life because you see in the Christian life you’re either wandering in the wilderness or you can go to the Promised Land.

One is for the babe, you’ve got to be taken care of on everything. you can go into the land and there’s battles there and there’s giants there, but that’s what the milk and the honey is. That’s what is the victory for the Christian, to claim that which God has for you. But because of their unbelief, yes many of them crossed over the river, but they didn’t get into the promised land. It was why because of their unbelief. It wasn’t because they couldn’t, it’s that they wouldn’t.

They could have all, in 11 days journey, been there, but because of the hardness of their heart. They never got what God wanted them to have. Now there’s Christians living today. They’ve trusted Christ as their Savior, but most are living in the wilderness. And they’ve never grown up, never matured. Now you can be involved in a church all your life and never mature and never grow up. You can play the game. You can do all kind of things for God, but you never let God do a work in you that makes you spiritually strong and godly.

So he says down here in verse 11, so I swear in my wrath they shall not enter into my rest or into that land. Now there’s a lot more to this, but I ain’t got time for all of that in the spiritual aspects of it. Trump take heed brethren. So we’re talking to brethren, the believers, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. So that means you already know the Lord.

But a Christian can have an evil heart, an evil mind of not believing what God says concerning his life. And you live your life like a lost man. I’ve always looked at it this way. Let a a lust man do what a lust man can do and let me as a child of God do only what a child of God can do. That helped narrow it down by what I wanted to do with my life. That anyway says here, but in verse 13, but exhort one another daily while it is called today.

Lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. Now, if I was to take off my shoes and my socks, say, where’s he going? And there was some gravel out there. When I was a go out there and try to walk on that gravel, I am now a tenderfoot. I would be walking across like it. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, you would too.

If you’re used to wearing shoes, and I have been for a while. When I was living in Georgia, way back in the woods, when my daddy was a bootlegger, And it was shoes. The bottom of my feet were like a piece of leather. I could walk and run through a briar patch. Wouldn’t bother me none. Because my feet were tough. I had a thick calisole in my foot. And we moved to Pennsylvania. And I got up there with those sissies.

I could run all over that gravel and stuff like that. wouldn’t phase me when I older, but they couldn’t do it. Now, some Christians have done the same thing spiritually. They are no longer sensitive to things that are wrong. They are calloused. They don’t have any feelings. They’re not spiritually sensitive to the will of God or to the Holy Spirit’s leading for his correction. And see, after a while, see, you get so hardened that you don’t, that’s what he’s talking about.

He says in verse 14, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, it deceives you. It’s not that bad, it’s not that wrong. And you don’t see it the way God sees it. And that’s why he says in verse 14, for we are made part takers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end. Till you get to where God wants to take you. So as you study Hebrews, you find out, where is he wants to take me?

He wants to take me to maturity. Where I can learn how to rest in the Lord. You see, you and I can understand Ephesians 2, 8, 9 and John 3, 16, and you trust Christ as your Savior. You don’t spend the rest of your life trying to save yourself. Why? Because you’re resting in that truth. But many Christians don’t learn how to do the same thing for their life, how to take God at His Word and trust Him. And they never mature.

And they miss out on the joy of the Lord. And they worry about everything. I’d venture to say that majority of what you said in this room, right now, you’re worried about something. You’re worried. You’re scared. in fear. It’s a sign of an undisciplined mind that you can’t put a smile on your face. It says, I don’t know how it’s going to come out. I don’t care how it comes out. I’m trusting God and leaving it in his hands and enjoy your life.

Now take your Bible and turn there to the sixth chapter of the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter six. And you’ll notice here that it says the word if in verse six. If they shall fall away to renew them again into repentance, man alive, hi, I’ve heard this twisted every kind of way you can think of, but I get this. In verse one, he says, therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on. So we’re talking about leaving someplace and going to someplace else.

You’re already a child of God. Now he wants to bring you into maturity and says, Let’s leave the foundation alone. That’s settled. See, once you trusted Christ as your Savior, you can’t get saved again. So I never try to get another person who’s already been saved to get saved again. Because you can’t get saved again unless you can get lost. And that’s impossible. So you try to take a person from where they are and try to give them some truth to help them to grow and to become strong.

And he says, and this we will do. Yeah, God permits. But God doesn’t permit it if you don’t believe His Word. You see, God can’t build a Christian strong in the Lord if you doubt the Word of God. If you can’t believe what God says is true, it’s over. You can’t go nowhere as a Christian. You can’t do something that God wants you to do. You have to believe the Word. If you’re not going to believe what he says, you’re going to have trouble and problems and worries all your life and you’re never going to accomplish what God wanted you to accomplish.

So look what he says, not laying again. In verse 1, not laying again the foundation. Because you see, you don’t have to lay the foundation again. Even if you don’t serve the Lord, you don’t go forth. Why? Because the foundation is Christ and it’s laid and you’re on it. That’s done. And he says, you can’t get lost after you’re saved. He says, that’s what it says. This is what it’s talking about. You see, it’s impossible for a person to get saved and then lose a salvation and then get saved again.

Because the only way that he got saved was because Christ paid for his sins. True? Well, the only way you can get lost is because the sin Christ didn’t pay for. Well, then if he could get lost, well, then he can’t get saved again unless Christ pays for that sin. wasn’t paid for the first time. That’s why it’s impossible for man to get lost and get saved again. So he says, we don’t have to lay that foundation and get what he says of repentance from dead works.

Did you know what repent is talking about in the dead work? A man can’t save himself by his work. Why? Because they come from a dead man. He’s separated from God. So a man’s works can’t save him, so repent means to stop trying to save yourself, change your mind, you can’t save yourself and trust Christ as your Savior. Am I getting my point across? Aren’t good, that’s good enough for me. But repentance from dead works, you can’t save yourself by your works.

So you trust Christ as you save you. You don’t have to lay that again, you don’t have to get saved again, why? Because you can’t get lost. And so he says in verse three, and this what we do. You If God permits, if God permits, why wouldn’t God permit it? If you don’t believe his word, you can’t grow. You can’t produce. It all boys found is as you have received Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk ye in Him. How did you receive Him?

By faith, well, how do you live? By faith, you gotta keep taking the men as word. So you gotta keep learning scripture so that you can believe it, so you know that. Don’t it make sense? When you heard John 3 16 about how to get saved, you believed it. What did he get you? Got your salvation. And when we get to heaven, we’re going to find out what we could have had. And we didn’t get because we didn’t believe him.

What God wanted to do with you, he probably could have used you to shape the world, but you wouldn’t believe him. You wouldn’t trust him. You wouldn’t walk with him and you worried about everything under the sun. Because of a lack of faith. Christ over and over again talked to him to decide, but he said, Oh, ye of little faith, little faith.

Anyway, it’s we’re moving right along here. Look what he says in verse six now. He says, if they shall follow, if you could, if you could, follow off that foundation, if you couldn’t lose your salvation to renew them again, to repent, it is impossible. It’s impossible for a man to be saved, Get lost and get saved again. I’ve had people tell me to get lost, but I can’t get lost. I was saved almost 50 years ago. I have eternal life.

I’m God’s child. And as a child of God hits his will for me to grow. And I pray that I will and I’ve got to keep growing and keep maturing in the Lord. But you get to the place where you can learn how to take God at his word and trust him. You don’t have to try to make things happen. You just let it happen. God will bless you. He’ll take care of you. But I want you to see this.

In the last part of verse 6, he says, seeing they crucified to themselves the Son of God afresh. Put him to an open chain. In the Word, if Christ could pay for your sins and you trust him as your Savior, then you commit a sin that he hadn’t paid for. So now you’ve got to get saved again. It’s like Christ being crucified over again for your sin. Says he only came into the world one time. You read the chapter nine and chapter 10.

Once, you pay for sin, once, why? Because it’s a point of every man wants to die and after this, the judgment. So when Christ died for me, he only had to do it one time. He went through it twice. There is no more sacrifice for sins because the payment he made once and for all was sufficient. Now use the illustration to help you to understand. Looking for seven. For the earth, which drinketh in the rain that comes off the poment, Bring the fourth herbs fruit, meet for them or fit for them, by whom it is dressed, receive a blessing from God.

So here’s the ground, drinks in the water and produces fruit. Oh, what a blessing. But looking verse 8 for the earth, same thing. But that refers back to earth, which buried thorns and briars is rejected and is nigh undercursion whose end is to be burned. So you have a piece of ground and it can produce fruit or it can produce briars and thorns. Here you are, you’re a child of God. You’re like a piece of ground. God has an investment in you.

He wants you to drink in the Word of God and brain-forth the fruit that He wants in your life so you can be blessed. But if you don’t do that and you don’t get the rain, you’re gonna produce briars and thorns in your life. And you know these briars and thorns, they all have these little things on them. They stick you. I’m a blackberry picker. Man, for about four or five years of my life, everything I wanted, I got through picking blackberries.

I could pick blackberries with the best. But man, I’d get stickers all in my hands and then my fingers and they would be so best. But buddy, I could reach in there and I’d come out, scratch all over from them, briars, but I got those blackberries. I put them in that jar and I go down to the street and sell them for 20 cents to get into the movie theater. And I could do that with one little jar of blackberries.

But there was a price to pay for those blackberries. And a lot of Christians, they are surrounding their whole life with nothing more than briars. And they are pricking themselves and hurting themselves. They’ve made decisions for their life that it’s a destruction from the inside. It’s not that God had to do anything. Your bad decisions is going to take its toll upon you. And you’ll think, well, look what God did to me. Look what God did to me. You did it.

God didn’t do it. You only get mad at somebody because you didn’t grow up and live right and walk right. You didn’t obey the scriptures like you should have. And you wouldn’t be. No man would be better at God. If you understood God, the only reason that people are worried and sick about a lot of things and falling apart because they don’t know the Lord, the way they should know Him. Oh, you may know Christ as your Savior, you’re going to heaven when you die, but you’re not strong and in your life you’re complaining about all these briars and bones that you got.

Blame it on God. You drink in the rain and bring forth the blessings. And you serve God. I swear I knew that if I served God, God would have to bless my life. And God has. If I had a few thorns and briars along the way, yeah, boy. And I look back over my life, yeah, there’s been a trail of tears. But there’s also been a lot of blessings because I’ve gained a lot. God’s Word is true. We’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 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 home page.

If you’re in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, road Tampa, Florida, 33634. Our Sunday morning services begin at 10-30 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 Vital Line 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.