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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 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made through the Bibleline website at calvaryoftampa.org. We pray that you’ll enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s concluding message of this teaching will be a blessing to you and your family.

You ever hear of a guy named Jonah? What did Jonah do? He ran from God? I know Christians have been running from God most of their life. Oh, they’re saved. They have eternal life. They’re gonna go to heaven when they die. But they’ve been running from the Lord. Not to the Lord, not with the Lord, but from the Lord. I’ll bet you there’s people sitting here right now. You have spent years of your life running from God because you will not do what God says to do.

You can still be on your same job, same home, same church, but been running all your life because you never yield to do what God wants you to do with your life. Maybe you’re afraid of being a failure. Maybe afraid God won’t come through. Maybe you think God’s gonna leave you hanging out here on the limb and you were afraid to get out there. So by cause of fear, you won’t do anything for God. You won’t step out. You won’t live by faith.

You know that’s a lack of love. That’s a lack of love. Because see, if you really believe God loved you, you would try anything. You’ll do anything. You’ll tempt anything for the Lord. Nothing could hold you back. Love can do that for a person. There’s a lot of power in love because I know God loves me. I want to do as much as I can while I can, as long as I can in the body that I have until God calls me home.

John the Baptist. What a man. What a man. No man like this man. What Jesus said about him. He ate bugs. I mean, who wants to go around with a man who eats bugs? Locust? Live like a wild man? I mean, God can’t use a guy like that. He’s looking for the guy in a three-piece suit who’s looked up to him with dignity and respect. I’ve lived long enough to see that there’s people that I will think, I can’t use that person because that person won’t clean up their life.

And then I look at a person who’s got a clean life that God doesn’t use because the heart’s not there. You do know that you can be all nice and clean and sweet and pretty, and you can look all decked out this morning, and you can really look sharp. You’re looking at mirror and you’re an epitome of help, but rotten on the inside because you’re hard ain’t right. You do it to be seen of men. That can be hypocritical.

It’s not because you love God or you love people. Sometimes I believe there’s people who just want to do enough to keep God off their back so that God doesn’t chase them. But they lived close to the edge. You never know what point. What is he going to take the key them off? What little word before they explode? You ever heard of somebody named Martha? Mary Martha. Martha worried about everything, didn’t you? Worry, worry, worry. I mean, God can’t use a worry word.

And yet, there’s a lot of people with nothing more than just a worry warrant. Worry all the time, can’t sleep at night, can’t work during the day. They don’t love because they can’t trust. You see, when you really love, you can trust. Do you trust your husband? Do you trust your wife? Can you trust your kids? Can you trust God? Who do you trust? You know, it’s a shame to go through life without anybody to love and no one to trust.

To put everything that you have in yourself. Look into yourself, trusting in yourself. What a terrible way to live. When you Bible says, cursed is a man who put his confidence in flesh, or trusting in himself, or to exalt himself. Mary Magdalene, well, she was demon-possessed. The Samaritan woman, she’d been married five times. I mean God can’t use her. And yet he used that one little link to reach a whole city of men. Was Zacchaeus? Anybody heard the story of Zacchaeus?

Zacchaeus was a we-wee man and a we-wee man was he. He climbed up in the Sycamore tree to see what he could see. And as the Savior passed that way, I don’t forget the rest of it. He looked up in the tree and he said, Zach, you come down. I’m going to your house for tea, whatever. But a whole story in the Bible, because he was a little man, but not just that he was a little man, he was a tax collector, and everybody loves them.

Think of how you feel right now about the IRS. Don’t you just love them, but God used Zachius. It didn’t matter who they were. When Christ was choosing his disciple, He didn’t give everybody to… He even chose man that would fill with the devil, O Judas, who never trusted him. But God gave him a chance. See, God loves us. Is that we don’t learn how to love. Look at the chances God gives and the forgiveness that he has to have.

And the reason he doesn’t use perfect people, there aren’t any. Neither are you. So just get the chips off your shoulders and stop exalting yourself and stop looking down your long fairs, you’ll go nose and thinking you’re like Kellogg’s corn flakes just a little bit better. You ain’t. We’re all the same in God’s eyes. We’re sinners. We’ve all come short of God’s perfection. These disciples, well, you can always depend on those disciples. They just fell asleep when they asked them to pray.

They just all fell asleep. They couldn’t stick with it. Peter, well, what did Peter do? Oh, he just denied the Lord. You’ve never done that, have you? Peter did. Did God still use Peter? Still used him. Paul, well, you know Paul, he was just too religious. He was taking all those Christians and putting them in the prison. So God can’t use a man like that. One day a lightning bolt struck him, hit him, knocked him to his knees, and he says, Lord, what will thou have me to do?

God can use him, and God did use him. Use him in a great way. Timothy probably had an altar. And if God can use Lazarus, he can use anyway. He said, why? Well, see, he was a dead man. If God can use a dead man, he can use you. Do you know in the Bible that talks about God using a jackass?

And the old jackass was talking to Balaam. Well, never Jonah was out there on the hillside overlooking the city of God was going to destroy the city or not of Nineveh. And God used the gourd. It came up and put shade over him. He was so thankful for that gourd. God showed it in from the sun. And then God made a worm. Put it in the gourd. It killed it. Now Jonah was mad again. He says, you have more concern over that stupid gourd than those people down there.

Some people never get their priorities straight. Take your Bible and turn there to the book of 1 Corinthians, the book of 1 Corinthians, in chapter 13. 1 Corinthians chapter 13, I want to show you very quickly the eight things that love is greater than. So you’re in verse 1, 1 Corinthians chapter 13, though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love. I am become of sounding brass and tinkling. Some love is better than the ability to speak in any language.

Some man wrote a book called love in five languages. I’ve never read the books, so I have no idea what it’s about. But I know that because of how many languages there are. Love is better than all languages. And it says in verse two, and though I have the gift of prophecy, understand all mysteries and all knowledge. And though I have all faces that I can remove mountains and have not love, I am nothing. So the ability to speak in languages, the speaking the tongues of angels, the gift of prophecy, the knack of solving all mysteries, knowing everything.

And then he says there, I can remove mountains. Love is greater than that. In the faith of move a mountain and have not love. So love is greater than all of those things. It’s greater. The resource to feed the world’s pre-opore. If you could in verse 3, and though I be sure all my good is defeatable, if you could be not just one person, if you could feed the whole world and not have love. Love is greater than that.

There’s a lot of people who give to a lot of humanitarian things. You can look on the TV and they’ll show you some little puppy dog, some little kitty cat tears in his eyes, and you’ll get out your cheek, but you’ll start writing out because the compassion is there. Now you can do all of that, and I’m not against you helping anybody, but love is more than that. Did you do that because of the dog that cat or because it made you feel good.

What was the motive? It takes a relief off of you. It shows you, it shows that I’m kind. It shows that I love, and that’s why I did that. Check your motive of why you do what you do because God checks the motives. When they show that little kid on the TV screen about only 25 cents a day, or only 50 cents a day, or only a dollar a day, or $20 a month, and you can help somebody pull a childhtt, and compassion is there, because there is a sense that we care about others.

And I think it’s wonderful that people do care. Otherwise, there would nobody be given to anybody and we ought to learn to give. But it doesn’t go deep enough. There’s more to it. It’s a temporary satisfaction because those animals you just kept alive, they’re still gonna die. That little girl, she’s still gonna grow up and maybe she’s gonna die and she will die. The greatest love is trying to meet their greatest need. What is the greatest need? You’ll have people talking about, there’s kids that are not going to have Christmas.

Where’s the saying of the Bible that everybody has to have Christmas? Every kid has to have a toy. Where’s the saying of the Bible? Or what about those people that are hungry? And every Thanksgiving, we’ve got to have this soup line so that we can give everybody a Thanksgiving day meal. What about all the other meals for the other 364 days? Do I feel good because I did this one deed at this one time? Or do you look deeper?

What is the greatest need? And their greatest need is to know God. It’s good that we can do the others. Don’t misunderstand me. Don’t you do that. I say what I mean. But whenever you understand, there’s something greater to live for. And that is so that they know the love of God, that God has shed abroad in this whole world through the gospel of Jesus Christ, that people need to know the Lord. Because you see, eventually, all those people that got that meal, or those that got that toy, they’re still gonna die.

They’re still gonna die. What was their greatest need? We need somebody to really love them, more than the surface. And I think it’s good that we can maybe give aid at times of people in other countries, but along with that, you ought to come a Bible or a heaven track or some missionary to say, this is what we’re really about. And this is why we do what we do because of our love for the Lord. Anyway, those are my humble opinions, I just like expressing them once in a while.

Let me show you this. In 1 Corinthians chapter 13, I want you to see the eight thing that love does. Look what love does. And verse four, charity is the word for love. Love sufferth long. It is kind. Love envy if not. Love vonteth not itself is not putt up. Does not behave itself unseemly. Seeketh not her own is not easily provoked. Thinketh no evil. Rejoiceeth not in iniquity, but rejoiceeth in the truth. Beareth all things, believeeth all things, hopeeth all things, endureeth all things.

Love never fails. Now there’s eight things there about love that love will do. And because of that, you and I, because God is love. You want a good description of what God is like. You just got it. Those eight things. Tails you a little bit about the heart of God. How that God thinks and how he feels. Well, when you and I trust Christ as our Savior, He said, his love is to be shed abroad in our heart by the Holy Spirit.

So the love that God has is supposed to be the same kind of love we express, that we express. Because see, I know people who are nice to animals but mean to people. They’ll feed some little kid in some foreign country, but not do right by the people in their own home. Check your reason or your motive. God is not a respecter of person. God loves us all. We are supposed to… Demonstrate the love of God, how God thinks and how He feels, and how we treat one another.

And as he goes down through and he says, you see love suffer from long. It means for a long time. It means you can put up with a lot. It means you’re not short-tempered. It means you’re not explosive. Because love causes you to be patient with people, to love one another. Not to bite your wife’s head off every time she says or does something she shouldn’t do. Or your husband or your kids. Because love is love, love is patient, love is kind, love rejoices in truth.

And we want to know truth, we love truth, we seek truth. Not to believe everything you hear about everybody. Beware of those who gossip. A person who will gossip to you will gossip about you. Only the difference between a person who gospels and a buzzer is one each of you when you’re alive and one each of you when you’re dead.

Kind of kills your appetite for lunch, don’t it? But you bear all things because you love. And love believes all things. Isn’t suspicious love hopes and endures and never fails. We’re to love each other, our wives, our husbands, our families, our church with an everlasting love. Our love for one another is not to be dependent upon their treatment of us. Let me repeat that. Our love for one another has nothing to do with anybody’s treatment of us. How you treat me has nothing to do with me loving you.

I should love you because I am love. God loves is because God is love. That’s what He is. And the more you want to be like the Lord, the more you learn how to love. And it kind of keeps you from being so judgmental and critical and hard and mean and ugly. There are so many Christians that grow up to be a mean old man or a mean old woman. And always trying to pick apart everything that’s done. Always looking for the dirt, always looking for trash instead of the good God uses all kinds of people.

And A lot of people will never rise up to our caliber, but we’re 11 just as much. And try to see how God might be able to use this person, how can God use this person. There’s some positions that a person can’t have because they’re not ready for it yet. But you want people to rise to the occasion. I want people to know, look, God loves you. But I also want people to know, I do too. I do too.

See, I love this guy down here. I love that woman. I love that man. I love Peter over here. I love these kids. I want them to know I love them. I didn’t mean I proved everything they do, but I love them. I care. I want the best for them. I want God’s will for them. I want God to use them. I want them to be challenged and motivated to do something for the Lord. Because God says, love the Lord with all thine heart, with all thine mind, with all thy strength, everything that you have, eight things that love does not do.

that are listed here, it doesn’t envy. It doesn’t vaunt itself. It means a vain display of what one is or what one has. Not puffed up, not exalt yourself. You see, God says if we will humble ourselves, God will exalt us. But pride exalts a man. And God says that he’ll have to humble the man. You see, Christ came into the world to minister, to serve. But we think that we are here to be served. Oh, and everybody here to serve me.

As the pastor of this church, I don’t look like it that I’m here, Lord, over you, or you’re here as my servants. I am your servant. I’m here to serve you, to help you, to do anything I can, to lead you. But my being here is not for me. My being here is for you. And I wanna lead you as best as I know how, in the right direction. I know that I have to have an example of a believer as a pastor to practice what I preach.

Because I know that one day when I stand before the Lord I’ve got to give an account of everything that I’ve said and everything that I’ve done. This is a teacher’s where we see the greater condemnation. It means it’s a greater judgment upon you because you expect more and you want people to think and to feel that maybe I’m not everything I ought to be but whatever I am, God I’m yours. I want you to use me in whatever way that you want to use me.

Love does not behave itself in an unseemly manner. Love’s sick, it’s not its own. Love is not easily provoked. Love thinks no evil. Love does not rejoice in iniquity. Remember this. Love always does what it does not have to do. You see, why in the world where people go to a foreign field, some mission to feel and leave up everything in the world, because love sends them. Love made them do that. What would cause somebody like the Apostle Paul to spend years in prisons, cold, damp prisons, and go through what he did?

Love made him do that. Love made him do that. What makes a mother get out of bed and walk the floor with the kid? She’s got hoop and cough and she worries and she prays and she’s walked the floor all night long. Love is to do that. What makes you endure the things that you go through in your marriage or with your children or your grandkids? Love makes you do that. Love them with all your heart. This is the only chance in this world that your husband or your wife or your kids, your grandkids will ever see love in action.

So they can’t see God. They can see you. And you tell them you know Him. And you tell them that you want to be like Him. They’re looking. They’re watching. And it’s so important. You can take this same scripture and go down through here. And wherever it has the word charity, you can put the word God in there. You see in verse four, God suffer a flong, it’s kind. God envy if not. God doesn’t want him to sub. God is not puffed up.

God does not seek things that are wrong. God’s all the way through. God, God, God. And then when you get through doing that, you can do the same thing with the word Christ. And then on top of that, when you get through, put your name in there. And see how it measures up. Are you a child of love? You are a child of God. But let the love of God manifest Himself in you. And let Him manifest Himself through you.

And God will bless you for doing so. As you know, I’m cut just a little bit short. One of the reasons because I am totally exhausted. I know you won’t get mad at me for a quick and early will you? Look up here. This hand represents you and me. The wallet represents sin. That’s all those bad things that we do. And everybody born into the world is a sinner. We’ve all come short of God’s perfection. We don’t love the way God wants us to.

We don’t receive love the way God wants us to. Because of old sinful nature, we’re marred and scarred from the day we were born. But God in heaven loves us. He loves us. He don’t like what we do wrong, but he loves us. Can you in your own mind just say those words, God loves me? God loves me. Oh, he loves the world, but you’ve got to believe God loves me. And don’t judge that by anything that’s happening in your life.

It’s not the lack of finances, your bad health. No, that matters. You’re to believe. God loves me. And whatever it is, my God who loves me can walk me through whatever it is. He will not fail me. He will not let me down. Don’t try to figure out the outcome or how God’s going to do it. It won’t matter. God loves me. He hates what we do wrong, but he still loves us. And the Bible says to go to heaven, you have to be perfect as righteousness, God, and there’s the problem.

So heaven is perfect, God is perfect, but we’re not. We’re all sinners. We have all come short of God’s perfection. So we’re all in the same boat, there is no difference. But God loves me. This hand represents Jesus Christ, he’s the Lord. God in the flesh. the world because God loved me. And he sent his son who had no sin. He didn’t have to die, but he did die because God loves me. Now he hates my sin, but he loves me.

So he took my sins and paid for them on the cross and came back from the dead. And he said that if I, if I would believe that he did it for me. He would give me as a free gift ever lasting life because he loves me. And when I believe that he did it for me, he says, you can know that you have eternal life and know that you’re going to heaven when you die. These things have already been you that believe on the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.

All because God loves me. That’s 50 years ago when I heard this for the first time, and I’ve known for 50 years since. He still loves me. He still does. His love has not changed when I owe to. No shadow of turning. The gifts and calling of God are without repentance. God has never changed his mind. When he gave me this free gift of eternal life, he doesn’t change his mind. He’s not taking it back. He made a payment for my sins once and for all, and I’m going to heaven on what Jesus Christ did for me.

That’s a good story. But a lot of people have never heard, never understood. Let’s pray, shall we? Every head bowed and every eye closed, and no one looking around. If you’re here this morning, if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, I urge you to do that. I want you to believe that more than anything else in the world, God loves you. He sent his Son to die for you. Will you believe it? Will you accept Jesus Christ as your only hope of going to heaven?

God said, if you trust Him, it save you. And He saved you from hell. Give you eternal life and you get to go to heaven on what He did for you. So it has about nice clothes, no one looking around. I’m not going to have you forward. I’m not going to embarrass you. But I’d like to know if what I said made sense to you. You said, preach to that made sense to me this morning. I want to be certain I’m going to heaven when I die.

And I want you to pray for me. I will accept Jesus Christ right now as my Savior. And friend, would you just slip your hand up very quickly and put a right back down? I’m not going to have you for, but just to pray for you, right where you are. And what it all say, yes, I’ll trust Christ as my Savior. Pray for me. Anyone at all before we close? Anyone at all? If you hear this morning and you have trusted Christ as your Savior, Has God been able to manifest His love through you?

What have people said or done to you that’s made you hurt? Maybe a little bitter? Discourage you? Love them anyway. Forgive them. They’re just people with sinful natures. We all fail. Love covers a multitude of sins. Love your husband and wives, your children, grandkids. Our Father, we thank You so much for all that You’ve done for us. We pray, Lord, You will to be done in the lives of each person here. In Christ and we pray, Amen. Let me just tell you this.

Sunday School teacher was talking to her little kids. He says, what do you have to do to go to heaven? Do you have to go to church and give money? No. All the kids said no. Do you have to keep 10 commandments and have made the golden rule and pray? All the kids said, no. She said, well, what do you have to do to go to heaven? One of the boys raised his hand and says, you have to die silly.

Out of the mouth of babes. 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 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, calvaryuptampa.org. Thanks for joining us on Bible Live, and now a closing thought from Pastor 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. Just keep looking up.