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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 1-800-800-800-800-800. hundred five seven six three seven seven one online donations may be made through the Bibleline website at Calbury of Tampa dot o-r-g. 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.

I want you to take your Bible turn to the book of Luke the book of Luke gospel of Luke, Luke chapter 24, Luke chapter 24, looking verse 25, Jesus has come back from the dead. He is alive. And he says in verse 25, then he said unto them, O fold and slow of heart to believe, all that the prophets have spoken. Think what he just said. Do you know the Bible has been written for all these years, and there’s people who still will not believe what the Bible says.

And yet it was all prophesied in advance. Everything about Christ. He came right on schedule. He lived like he was supposed to, died like it’s prophesied. Everything was there. It wasn’t hidden. What Jesus did was not in a corner. Everybody could see and yet people will not believe it. And yet one of the greatest, to me, evidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the miracle that He performed on me. I’m not the same person that I used to be.

Something happened to me over 50 years ago. I mean, something really happened to me. Something that changed the course of my whole life, changed my destiny because I was introduced to Jesus Christ by my father-in-law. In a little old living room, it wasn’t in a church. I didn’t go to church. My dad was a bootlegger. You see what’s that? He sold corn in jugs. My mother drank it and my sisters drank it and I preached against it. But the That was the most exciting day in my whole life.

The day I met Jesus Christ when I was confronted. Someone introduced him to me and I saw him for the first time. You see, I always thought Jesus Christ was a cuss word. It’s the only time I ever heard it. And I found out that that’s the most precious name in the world. And a lot of times I hear people using his name in vain. If it wasn’t for the Lord, I’d probably would take a two before and hit him over the head with it.

Because they wouldn’t like me talking about their mama that way, or their dad that way, or their children that way. But they talk about my Savior that way. But that’s all right. He’s going to get him in the long run. Here he says in verse 26, “…aught not Christ who have suffered these things and to enter into his glory and beginning at Moses and all the prophets he expounded into them and all the scriptures, the things concerning himself. Do you realize how much scripture he must have covered in a short period of time?

All of them. I thought, man, what did he do? Just transplant it? Just take all that and put it into your mind all at one time. The teacher that he must have been. But look what he says there in verse 44. And he said unto them, these are the words which I speak unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning me.

Then open here their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures. You know, unless God opens your understanding, you won’t understand the Scriptures. You can sit and read it and study it from the day you’re born to the day you die, but if God doesn’t turn a little light on where you can see it, and that’s because of the element of belief. Can I believe what God said is true? And truth will always lead to more truth until you find the source of truth, which is Jesus Christ Himself.

He is the truth. Take your Bible and turn to the book of Isaiah chapter 53. The book of Isaiah chapter 53. Now I do not have the time. Jesus may have been able to do that in about 45 minutes and cover all those scriptures in the law, in the prophets, and in the Psalms concerning Him. I’m not going to be able to do that this morning. So I want to take one portion of scripture and the Old Testament and show you something.

You probably have seen it a hundred times, but look at it one more time, because it’s so important and it’s so precious. In Isaiah chapter 53, it starts off with a question who had to be leaved our report? It’s kind of like somebody writing, you know, in an obituary, a 750 years in advance. And it’s going to tell you who’s going to be born and it’s going to tell you how he’s going to live and going to tell you how he’s going to die.

And then he’s going to tell you that he’s coming back from the dead in advance. So he says there to whom is the arm of the Lord reveal. The arm of the Lord is a reference to Jesus Christ, the power of God. The Bible makes his statement in verse 2, for he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, as he root out of a dry ground. You see, Jesus, his birth was prophesied in the book of Isaiah, chapter 7, verse 14.

He says that, therefore, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. Jesus was called Emmanuel, means he is God with us. Jesus Christ was God. It’s mentioned in advance. And look what he says about him. He shall grow before him as a tender plant as a root out of a dry gram. He hath no form of calmliness. And when we shall see him, there’s no beauty that we should desire him. If you were in charge of designing your looks, would you look different than you do today?

If you were in charge, if you could decide how you would look, what would you look like? Is there anything you would change? When you look in that mirror in the morning, do you say you, Tiger, don’t you ever die? Or when you look in that mirror, say, I hate the way I look. When I was bigger than the other, my ears are lopsided. I’m going ball. I got wrinkles. I got unwanted freckles. What would you change? And yet here was Jesus Christ coming into the world.

He has a body. a body that he could have made him the most handsomeest man in all the world. Now, those men in here, now that’s what we would have done. I’d have probably tried to make myself look like that with a Jane Hayslip. Is he here this morning? Is he here? Where? Why is he sitting back there? You know, the guy’s 68 years old and he still looks like I do. I would have tried to do something that, you know, Jesus, he could lose himself in the crowd and they wouldn’t even recognize them.

He just looked like a plane of ordinary individual. No, no, I’d have done something about that. But it says, there was no beauty that we should desire him. Now, this is before he went to the cross. He just looked like any old plane ordinary individual. But look what he says in verse 3. He is despised and rejected of men. Now, you know, if I was going to write this, I said, everybody loved him. Everybody wanted to be just like him.

It looks like nobody wanted to be like him. They despised him. He made the world came into the world and the world wanted nothing to do with him. You know, that’s about the way it is today. People want nothing to do with Jesus Christ. They can accept every religion in the world and put it into schools and all that kind of stuff, but don’t talk about Christ. You can pray in the name of anybody you want to, but don’t say in Jesus’ name.

Jesus is so offensive to so many people. People are offended by Christianity. They’re not offended about all the other religion, but they’re offended by Christianity. They don’t want the Bible. They don’t want God. They don’t want our Jehovah. They don’t want Jesus Christ. He is despised and rejected of men. See, Jesus Christ is God in the flesh. When you reject Christ, you’re talking about rejecting the God that created the heavens of the earth. And there’s only one true and living God.

There’s not many gods. There’s only one true and living God. He says in the book of Isaiah, I don’t know of another God. Now God says, I don’t know if there’s another God. I’ve never found another God. There is no other God. He is God. He is God. And it says in verse three, He has despised and rejected him in a man of sorrows, acquainted with griefs. And we hid as it were our faces from him. He was despised and we esteemed him not.

Jesus Christ was not loved and accepted by everybody. Even the religious crowd wanted to put him to death. What a nothing to do with him. How would you like to be God in the flesh? come into this world and look how your creation that you created, look how they treat you, they found no fault in him. He had never done anything wrong, a perfect individual. You know, you can think you’re doing a pretty good job until you come up against somebody who really does a good job.

And you can think of the little workmanship that you create and do is so great Satan, till you see an expert that’s got theirs. But Jesus Christ was perfect. Do you rely just by the fact that He was perfect? Was a rebuke to those who were not perfect? Truth automatically reveals, exposes air. He says here in verse 4, Surely He hath borne our griefs, carried our sorrows. That’s the sicknesses and the disease. while he was here before he ever went to the cross, there’s so much that he did.

And they were lying up and it says even late into the evening and he healed everyone that came to him. He could heal anybody of any problem. He could make the lane to walk, the blind to see, the death to hear, the dumb he could make him speak. He could even raise him from the dead. We could do all of that. And the common people heard him gladly. And I believe there’s people today that still are searching for the truth.

I was one of those individuals that for years, I wanted to know God. Even when I was in the Navy and I find myself up here in Pensacola, Florida, in a commissary store, you know, joined the Navy and see the world. And I was up there. And I’d go out there on the beach late at night and I would climb up into that little lifeguard stand. And late at night, nobody would surround just me and nature and I’d talk to God.

And I’d say things to God because I wanted to know God. And I prayed to God. But I didn’t know God. And then one day when Betty’s dad sat down with me in a little living room and started explaining it to me. I don’t remember a lot of times that he talked to me, but this night it was like somebody just turned on a light and I saw it and I understood. I was an 18 year old smart alec, nor all teenager.

You ever seen any of those? That knows everything, can’t tell them anything? But for some reason or other, I saw it. And it made more sense to me than anything I’d ever heard in my life. That night I trusted Jesus Christ as my savior. And I knew I had eternal life. Now some people accept Him, and some people reject Him. Now, you may be here this morning and you have never accepted Jesus Christ as your savior. You just don’t believe it.

Nobody can prove God to you. Nobody can prove that Jesus Christ came back from the dead, can’t prove it. We can believe it, we can state our reasons, our evidence that convinces us, but they may not convince you. If they don’t convince you, I have no hope for you. I can’t make a person believe. I can’t make a person trust. But I’m not talking about you trusting me. I’m just a man. I’m not talking about you trusting this church.

It’s just a church full of sinners. I’m not talking about you changing your life. I’m talking about there is a God in heaven that created the heavens and the earth. And He came into this world. And nobody has ever done the things that this man has done because he not just a man, he was the God-man, the perfect God-man. And it makes a statement here in verse five, but he was wounded, now he’s on the cross. Now we’re talking about What he went through for our transgressions, he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.

The chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed. And look at verse 6, this is how God sees the whole world. All we like sheep have gone astray. Baaah, we’re just sheep. Sheep are some of the dumbest animals in the world. The turkeys might be right in there. I worked on a turkey farm. You used to kill them all the time. And they would look at me with one eye and I’d be heading right toward their head and with that electric knife and they just look at me.

I would have a clue. This guy’s fixing to do me in. But look what he says, but he was wounded for our transgression. He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our people upon Him with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to His own way. See that’s rebellion. See isn’t it true that everybody wants their own way to do their own thing? We don’t want to do what God says.

And if we wanted to, we were disobedient. We can’t perfectly obey God and everything. He even gave the Ten Commandments, God’s standard of righteousness and holiness, and everybody has failed. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, body, soul, and strength, and you haven’t, and neither have I. We love us. I love me. But most of us don’t love God. We love the world, but we don’t love God. And you made this statement here. And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

So according to this verse, how many has gone astray everybody? And the Lord hath laid upon him Christ the iniquity of us all. See, some people don’t believe Christ died for everybody. But the Bible says he died for everyone who went astray. So if everybody in the world goes astray, and he laid all the sins of all the world upon him, then evidently he died for everyone. There’s nobody who has been so bad that God can’t save them. But I can tell you this, there are some people who think they’re too good that God can’t save them.

You see, if you think you’re so good to go to heaven the way you are because I’ve been good, God wants you to know you have gone astray and you have sins And He paid for your sins. That’s the only way that you’ll get to heaven is believe in He did it for you because you cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, save yourself. He makes a statement here. In verse seven, look how lowly this lamb was.

When John the Baptist saw him, he says, Behold, the lamb of God which taken the way, the sin of the world, the sin of the world. But he was a lamb. That means a lamb doesn’t defend itself. A lamb is just led to the slaughter. And when they got ahold of Jesus, he did nothing to stop them. Although he could have called 10,000 angels, the song he just sung. He could have called 10,000 angels. But how many did he call them?

He let them do to Him whatever they wanted to do. Some of them said, hey, if you’re who you say you are, why don’t you come down from the cross, save yourself and save us? Now me, I would have come down, zapped Him and then went back up. But He didn’t do that. If He had come down, He couldn’t have saved anybody. He had to die for our sins. And so He says here in verse 7, He was oppressed and he was afflicted.

Yet he opened not his mouth in his defense. He didn’t try to justify anything. He didn’t try to just let it alone. And let people call what he wanted to, beat him however they wanted to beat him, nail him to a cross, piercing his side. He let them do to him whatever they wanted to do. Yet they even beat him with a cat of nine tails, put a crown of thorns on his head and beat the thorns down into a scalp.

Yes, he was one bloody mess and he allowed him to do it. God, God, he could have stopped anything, everything. But he stopped nothing. He was a lamb led to the slaughter. You see, the nation of Israel, they were looking for their knight in shining armor to come back on this white horse and deliver them from the iron hill of Rome. And here comes a lamb, a lamb. Now one day they’re going to find the wrath of the lamb that’s mentioned in the book of Revelation.

Vengeance is coming. Well, look at the Bible. what he says in verse seven, yet he opened not his mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before her shears is done. So he opened not his mouth. What would you do? Don’t we always want to feel justified? Somebody says or accuses us of anything. We want to get even, defend ours. He did nothing to defend himself. He listened to all the accusations didn’t retaliate.

Didn’t getopened with anybody because his hour had come. His hour had come. You see when he was born into the world he wasn’t born and that’s the end of it. No. He was born that he might die. You see you and I we needed somebody that was perfect to take our place. See I may love you an awful lot. But I can’t pay for your sins and satisfy God. Why? Because I got to pay for my own. And I know you love me.

And any one of you would be willing to die for me. But it won’t work because you have to pay for your own. You see, if somebody was innocent, than that would be different. But there are no innocent people. We’re all sinners. We’re all guilty. So Christ came into the world and He says, a body has thou prepared me. And that body became that which bore our sins and He died on the cross. You see, God can’t die. So He He was born into a body and there he can suffer death.

And he suffered for you and for me. Now some people will believe he did it and some people will not believe it. So what’s the consequences if I don’t? See, nobody is going to make you believe it. But if you don’t believe it, understand. It is still true. still happened and he wants to save you from a place called hell. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, talked more about hell than he talked about heaven. So hell is real. And if you reject Christ as your Savior, you will spend an eternity in a literal fire burning hell never to get out.

It’s forever, it’s forever. But nobody can make you believe that. I believe it. And I’ve been preaching it for over 50 years because it’s real to me. I believe this book. I have not yet found all those mistakes in the Bible that everybody tells you about. And it’s something that I can study this book for 50 years and I can’t find any of the mistakes and contradictions in the Bible that everybody tells you that are in here and I can’t find them yet.

And yet, they never read the Bible. They don’t even read it. But it’s full of mistakes and contradictions. I told them, one day I says, show me a couple of them. Just show me a couple. Well, they’re under. Show me one. They’re not in there. And I double dog dare them. Show it to me. So Christ died for you, died for me. And look what he says here. In verse eight, did he have a trial? Yes, he had a trial, but it was a mockery of a trial.

Oh, they led him to pilot and then the hair and then backed the pilot and blah, blah, blah, blah, and was all over with. He said, I find no fault in this man. You can do whatever you want to with him. I’m washing my hands of this whole matter. He’s probably still trying to get that blood off his hands. Listen, when he died on that cross, he paid for every sin you have ever committed from the time you’re born to the time that you die.

The Bible makes a statement here in verse 8, He was taken from prison and from judgment. Who shall declare his generation? You see, he never got married. So he never had any children. If Jesus Christ is not the king of Israel, Israel is forever without a king. He was the next one in line. He was the only one that could claim the throne of Israel. Nobody else could. So Israel will be forever without a king unless he comes back.

Got news for you. He is. He’s coming back. And look what he says in verse eight, For he was cut off out of the land of the living. For the transgression of my people was he stricken. In other words, he was cut off, but not for his sins. Then why did he die? For our sins. See, he had committed no wrong, had done no wrong. He had made a payment for the sins of the world and whenever he died Here’s a the son of God and He’s dying on a cross Curse it is every man is pang on upon a cross and he was hung between two thieves.

I Mean the worst place in all the world he could be And yet he did that went to all of that and Then he says here He made his grave with the wicked, with the rich and his dead. In other words, he was given a rich man’s tomb. Jesus was so poor. He couldn’t even afford, he didn’t even have a plot of ground to bury himself. He had nothing. Poor, dirt poor. And yet he made the dirt. He made the goal.

He said, the goal is mine. The cattle is mine. The thousand hills are mine. Who’s all here? I’d say, send me some of those cattle and let me have some of the gold. Yet he could do anything and everything, but the greatest thing he could do at this time is to do nothing. To do nothing. You know, whenever they had rolled the stone away and they looked in and they saw nothing, oh, the napkin, but they saw nobody. Seeing nothing is a great message.

He’s not here. He is risen. But you see what he says here in verse nine, because he have done no violence. Neither was any deceit in his room. You see, now this is a report given over 700 years in advance about the one that was going to come to the earth. How would you like to get up tomorrow morning and there on the front page? It says, all of us about somebody is going to be born 300 years from the future, and it tells everything about them.

And then 300 years pass. And everything happens just like it says. You think it’ll happen? Not with the day’s news. It happened in the Bible. It was already written. When Christ came back from the dead and He was talking to those two fellows, they walked down the road. He opened up the Scriptures and said, look, all these Scriptures were talking about me. and he opened their understanding that they might understand the scriptures. The Bible is not written to satisfy curiosity seekers, but for those who are diligent concerning truth, you really want to know, you really want to know God, God wants you to know Him more than your desire to know Him.

And any man who really wants to know truth, God can get truth to you somehow, some way. some way. And he might use people that will influence you to get you under the sounds of truth so that you can hear what God has to say. 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. Part 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 click on the spinning globe in the upper right corner of our home page. If you’re in the area, we welcome you to visit us.

The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Our Sunday morning services begin at 1030 and at 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. 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. Friends, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound. We will be changed. Hot 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.