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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 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made through the Bible-lined website at calbryoftampa.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.

Years ago, there was a movie that came out, And it seemed like they showed this thing all about every Christmas called, It’s a Wonderful Life. Everybody remember seeing it? It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s kind of a story about a man who, everything in his life was falling apart. I mean, he was ready to commit suicide. Well, he even tried. And for somehow another, this angel kind of takes him back and he says, I wish I’d never been born and it shows him some of the things that would have happened without his influence in life.

By the time they got through with him, he realized that it was great to be alive, and that it ended with it’s a wonderful life. Well, the title of my sermon tonight is called, It’s a miserable life. It’s a miserable life. Doesn’t it just have a ring to it? It’s a miserable life. Now, just to be honest with you, there is a lot of people who are in nothing but misery. Even if they trust Christ’s Savior, it’s a miserable life.

I have met so many miserable people. And I wonder why are they so miserable? Now over the years I’d read different books and periodicals. And when I find a good poem, something that kind of says how I think and feel, I would cut it out and I’d save them. When I was teaching in Bible College in Colorado, I had a student there who wrote down all of my notes, jokes, and my quotes. And at the end of her four years, she gave me a copy of them, and I didn’t know she was going to do this.

There were over 3,000 notes, jokes and quotes. So I put them in a book. I still got a, well I think one copy left. Only made about ten gave me some of the ranch directors because they were always hurting for good jokes. I figured mine were good. And I always had people trying to help me out on my jokes. Every Christmas somebody would give me a joke book, letting me know that the ones that I had were stale, and that they already didn’t hurt all of them.

They say, you need new jokes. No, I just needed new kids. That’s never heard the jokes before. But I had these poems. And I have a couple of them that I’d like to even share with you tonight. But these are statements that have helped me over the years because there is time to in my life when I felt so miserable as a preacher. Not everything in my life has run smooth. I know you thought it did, but it hasn’t.

I’ve had a lot of speed bumps along the way. When I’ve gone ski and then I go down the hill, they call them moguls. There’s bumps all over the place. Experienced skiers can handle all of those and know how to switch them side to side. I only know one way to ski. That’s straight down. And whatever I hit, I hit. And most of the time I knew I’m going to crash at the end or two or three times before I got to the end.

But I love skiing. I love to go in as fast as I can. But there’s things in life, believe it or not, not that makes a man think life is not worth living. If you haven’t been there yet, just wait. You will. There’s things that can happen into your life as a Christian. Even if you are a strong Christian, you can despair of life. I want you to look there in 1 Corinthians in chapter 15. This is called the resurrection chapter.

If it’s a resurrection chapter, it is the life-giving chapter. Because the resurrection is Christ coming back from the dead. It means Christ is alive. It means that we’re supposed to be excited about this eternal life that we have. But he looked at it in verse 12. Now if Christ be preached that He rose from the dead, I’ll say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead. It’s kind of like today. You say, I believe in the resurrection of Christ.

But you live like there’s no power from his life. In other words, you have no power to live. And it seems like it’s just one big frustrating experience. One big life of failure. So how can I ever succeed? How can I win? So he says here in verse 13, but if there be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. If Christ be not risen, then as I preach in vain and your faith is also vain. Yeah, and we are found Jehovah’s Witnesses because we have testified of God that’s in the Greek.

Because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ, whom he raised not up, if, so be that the dead rise not. And if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised. And if Christ be not raised, your faith is in vain, you’re yet in your sins, then they also, which are fallen asleep in Christ, are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men, and you ought to underline these two words.

Most miserable. Wouldn’t it be a shame to say the words I believe in Christ or I’m trusting Christ and then not really be trusting Christ? Do you think there’s people like that? They know the words and they can say the words, but never really have trusted Christ as their savior. Isn’t it something that sometimes maybe even some of God’s children can talk about how much they love the Lord? I just love the Lord. But they never do anything in their life that shows that they love God.

There’s a problem. Now you may know Christ is your Savior, but you can live your life as though Christ never came back from the dead, like He’s still dead. In other words, He’s not alive. If you believe He is alive, then your life should be alive. Whatever the word of God is, it can make you. If the word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword, it can make you that way. If it’s powerful, it can make you that way.

If it’s sharp, it can make you sharp. Whatever the word of God is, it can produce. And so He says, if in this life only, do you know one of the greatest benefits to believing that what God says is true are things that happens beyond this life. We’re looking forward to the day when we get to heaven, but the thing is we’re not there yet. Can Christ do anything for me now, today? Or is it just something that, okay, He saved me, but then He’s like, let me alone and I’ll see you when you get here.

And I have to do the best I can, make my own way until I die. Or can I live with the hope that Christ lives in me now? I want to read something to you. God is a tower without a stare, and His perfection loves despair, because faith is born in despair. When you have totally come to the end of what you can do, when you totally feel trapped. You have no talent, no ability, no wisdom, and you don’t know how to deliver yourself.

That’s right where God wants you. Now some people take a long time to get there. Some people get there real quick. Kind of like going down a sliding board. Hard to stop halfway. Many people have to go clean to the bottom before they look up and realize the one that can help me is the one I’ve been running from. Now you can say the words, but it doesn’t affect your life. And you can become of all meant most miserable, despair life.

Even want to commit suicide. You know, there’s all kinds of people with all kinds of reasons on why life is not worth living. And yet some people have all the money they want. Some can have a wonderful family. They can have all Whatever, great job, money in the bank, and yet no desire to live. There’s got to be something more, something better. He emptied my hands of my treasure store and his covenant grace revealed. There was not a wound in my aching heart, but the bomb of his breath had healed.

O tender and true was the chastening sore, in wisdom that taught and tried, till the soul that he sought was trusting in him, and nothing on earth beside.” I love that. I’m always looking for certain things that express how I think and how I feel or what I’m going through. You see, faith works better when there is no natural hope. Let me read that again. Faith works better when there’s no natural hope. If there be but a straw for sight to cling to, then faith finds difficulty.

George Mueller says, remember it is the very time for faith to work when sight ceases. In other words, when you can’t see a way, you don’t see with your natural eyes how God can change things or deliver you. When it seems beyond your ability to perform, when you want something more, isn’t it true that most of us live every day of our life believing that the next moment is going to be better? Tomorrow is going to be better. My finances is going to be better tomorrow.

My help is going to be better. We always live with that anticipation. It’s going to get better. And then when it gets worse, that is devastating. And it strips us of all of our ability to trust in ourselves. You talk about how God can so humble on individual because God wants to exalt the individual, but he must empty you of yourself to take away all of your pride and humble you. Nobody likes to be humbled. Nobody wants to be put on a shelf.

The greater the difficulties, the easier for faith. As long as there remain certain natural prospects, faith does not get on as easily as where natural prospects fall or fail. You know, there’s a lot of truth in what has been said here. Jehoshaphat cried out in his despair. And I want you to see this verse. Look all the way over there in the Old Testament to the book of 2 Chronicles. Second Samuel and Second Kings and then second Chronicles. And look there in Second Chronicles and chapter 20.

Chapter 20. Things were pretty bad for old Jehoshaphat. He would have a bad day. So he decided, I need to pray. So he prays to the Lord. He asked God a few questions, you know. Just look in verse six. And he said, oh Lord God of our fathers are not thou God in heaven. Looking verse seven, are thou not our God who just drive out the inhabitants and so forth? In other words, are you only the God of the past?

Jahasafat needed a God of the present. I need something now and he calls upon the Lord. So look there in verse 12, where he says, Oh, our God will thou not judge them? Forget this, for we have no might against this great company that cometh against us. Neither know we what to do. Ever been there? Have you ever seen a problem so big, you just don’t know what to do. And it can hit you in a hundred different ways, and it doesn’t matter tonight how strong your faith is tomorrow could be a different day and things can happen tomorrow that quick that can cause you to question and doubt God and wonder whether or not am I in the will of God?

The devil loves to cause God’s children to worry and to fret but we talk about the resurrection of of Christ. Oh, we believe that. Never doubt that. Well, don’t you understand what that means? He is alive. He tells us in His word to pray, but pray believing, not doubting, because a man who doubts is a man who wavers and he says he’s a double-minded man. Let not that man think he shall receive anything of the Lord. See, it’s easy to talk a great battle, but then when you actually have to fight the battle, that’s a different story.

See, people, they want to wear the medals, their victories, but they don’t want to fight. Well, man, you don’t get these unless you win the battles. So there’s things that God says in his word, Neither know we want to do, but look at the last part of that verse, but our eyes are up on the… They were at the end of themselves, but God had him right where he wanted them, looking to him and trusting him. So sometimes God has to pull the rug out from under you.

He has to turn off the lights. He locks all the doors. When it appears that there’s no means of provision in any way, and you’re totally left destitute except for him. He’s all that you have left That’s just when you begin to live Now if you can stay that way and put not your confidence in the house that you own or the money you have in the bank Or any of your health that you have so you may have all those things today and say well I don’t need anything right now.

Everything is wonderful. I Want to be as dependent upon the Lord with all of those things is if I didn’t have anything Do you realize how easy it is to get lifted up with pride? You are tested just as much by the abundance of things as it is with the lack of things. They both try your faith. Can you be just as faithful with all of God’s provision or when it seems like the apostle Paul I’ve suffered need? I need it and I’ve had to learn to do without.

But still you go on. Look at Bible, look in the book of Philippians in chapter 1, the book of Philippians and chapter 1. Tremendous statement here, made by the great apostle Paul. And look here in verse 21, he says, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. Okay, well, what if there is no Christ? Well, what if he didn’t come back from the dead? Most people are trying to find out what is their worth living for?

Now, stop and think. take Christ out of the equation. Okay, there’s no Christ. There’s no God. And it’s just you in this life. What would be the value of life? What would be the purpose of life? What am I now living for? If there is no God, there’s no life past this life. And I am here in this life now, and I see all the sorrow and the misery, the destruction, the disease, the death, If there’s no answers, what would be the value of life?

What’s wrong with me taking somebody’s life? There’s no God. What’s wrong with me doing whatever I want to, to get whatever I want? It doesn’t matter who I walk on, how I treat people, because there’s no God. There’s no consequences down the road. So therefore, I must take vengeance upon anyone who wrongs me because I don’t want to be wrong and I’m going to get even if it’s the last thing I do. You see, you’ll be of all people most miserable because there’s really not anything worth living for if there’s no God.

There’s a long life for my wife and my kids. Did you know you can lose your wife and your kids? You can lose them? Nothing flat. You lose your job. Lose your health. And some people have wrapped their whole lives around things they can lose. And that was their purpose in living. I know parents who have given everything for their children and their children hate their guts, despise them. What nothing to do with them? And yet they can do everything in the world for them.

But they don’t appreciate it. They expect you’re supposed to. There’s got to be something more. better to live for. But look what he says here in verse 22, but if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labor, what I’m going through. Yeah what I shall choose I don’t want. I’m in a straight betwixt to having a desire to depart and to be with Christ and you ought to underline this in your back, which is far better.

This is far better. In other words Paul always lived what I know that eventually I’m gonna be with Christ it’ll be far better. So we know and we live and go through whatever it is because we know there’s something better. But that’s in the next life. But can God help me in this life? Can He help me now? Can He meet my needs? Can He give me the strength and the grace that I need to go through whatever these problems may be?

I believe that He can. Let me read this to you. Nothing left to do but fling, tear aside, and simply cling. One billow passed another rolls to meet thee, across thine onward track. On every side new trial seems to greet thee, as if to turn thee back. Until thy soul overwhelmed in darkness sinking can raise some mis-of-eyes, yield to his will, And while thy flesh is shrinking, his purpose recognized. Oh, that’s good. But I would always read and I would clip out little things and then I put them all in one piece of paper.

Some of these I’ve got over 40 years ago. I was with Dr. Lee Robertson, who was the president of Tennessee Temple. I was 22 years old and I went to go to Bible school and I went to summer school. And because I had a lot of people that I led to Lord, he asked me if I would be the first full-time soul in a for Tennessee Temple. And I was in his office one day and he gave me a book called Crowded to Christ.

And I was going through so many trials and tribulations. My wife and kids was in another state, I’m living in a rescue mission. All kinds of things was going wrong and he gives me this book after a few months and says I want you to read this. And I would sit there late at night and I would read this book. And it would talk about the trials of your faith. In other words, understanding that there’s a God who has a higher purpose in your life.

Did you know one of the greatest things you can live for is the purpose of which God created you for? And when you don’t know what it is, it’s like you’re always searching, always trying to find it, but never arrive. And there’s people who live their whole lives and never find out what is it that God had for me. What did God want for me? And they stripped themselves of all the reasons for living. And they simply go through life and they’re miserable.

Because see, the true inward joy comes from the inside of knowing that all of it’s true and you believe it. And that faith in what God says is worth living for. It’s the power that you need to restrain yourself from doing things that you shouldn’t do. But God’s ways have never ceased to be through the impassable and the impossible. Terror and rage must give place to trust. To be wrecked a right brain’s relief, relief instead of rage. In other words, when you know that there is no other way for you to get something done make something happen and you’re at the last you have to trust the Lord and see what God’s gonna do.

Can God get me out of this? And that’s what God wants. You know when God looks upon the whole earth, remember it makes his statement, the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth looking for a man whose heart is right, that God can make him strong on his behalf. God is looking for The one thing, He’s looking for faith. He’s looking for somebody who has faith in Him. When God wants to get a great work accomplished, He’s looking for the man that has the faith in Him to do the work.

And God will use Him. Wrecked outright on Jesus’ breath. Only wrecked souls thus can sing. Little boats that hung the shore, fearing what the storm may bring. find on Jesus’ breast all that wrecks souls made by rest. So from the time that you’re an infant to old age, let it be forever settled in your mind. You know, I was watching TV one night and they were advertising anti-aging cream. Anybody ever seen anything like that? Anti-aging cream. So believe it or not, I have developed an anti-aging pill.

You take it and guarantees you will not age another moment. And it contains arsenic. I thought I could make millions off of this. So you just take one of these pills and guaranteed anti-aging. It will just take your life and you won’t age anymore. But listen, before me lies on unknown sea, the past I leave behind. Strong waves are foaming at the prah, the sails bend to the wind. Sometimes I know not when or how. All things will be revealed.

And until then, content, am I, to sail with order sealed. Do you believe in can you trust the Lord to reveal things to you as you go? Or do you have to have them lay it all out for you so you can decide if you want to go or not? I had to make up my mind years ago, I’m going to serve the Lord. I don’t know what’s down the road. I don’t care. I’m going to follow the Lord wherever He leads me.

I will go. Nothing else matters. The winds, the waves, It doesn’t matter. I am supposed to live believing that my Heavenly Father will not lead me astray, and yet, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me, and he will comfort me. Because I know when it’s all over with, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Because I can see past this life so that I can enjoy it while I’m here because I have this hope.

My joyful anticipation, it’s all true, though I cannot see it. I believe it to be real. Once it was my working, his it hence shall be. Once I tried to use him, now he uses me. You realize how many people go through life trying to use God. They just want God to be their sugar daddy, their Santa Claus. But they have no desire to love him, to walk with him, and be content with his presence. And be joyful in the things of the Lord has nothing to do with things, has nothing to do with help, has nothing to do with wealth.

It is the Lord’s presence himself that means so much to you. It will cause you to have the strength and the grace that you need to want to walk with and please him. I want you to take your Bible and look in Ephesians chapter 2. We know that we’re saved by grace. Ephesians 2, 8, 9 says so. For by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourself, it is the gift of God, not of works. Last day, the man should boast.

Somewhere along the line, somebody explained that to us and we believed it. But God didn’t take us home the day we trusted him. Well, wouldn’t that have solved a lot of problems? If He took us all of the heaven, the moment we trust the Lord, there would have been nobody here to tell me about the Lord. So God left us here so that we can tell a few more. But look in verse 11, wherefore remember that ye been in time past Gentiles in the flesh who were called on circumcision by that which is called circumcision in the flesh made by hands, that at that time you were without Christ, been aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in this world.

There’s three things that I see in that one verse, without Christ, without God, without hope. 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 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. Live broadcast of our services may be seen by going to our church website, calvaryoftampa.org.

Thanks for joining us on Bible Live. Now a closing thought from Tester Arnold. Friend, 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 and just keep looking up.