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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 by clicking on the donations link on the BibleLineMinistries.org homepage. 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.

We’ve been going through the book of Acts and it’s amazing how much good stuff is in the book of Acts. It’s going to be a hard time to get through it. We’ll probably be somewhere in the middle of the millennium when we finish this book. But in the book of Acts and chapter two, Acts chapter two, it starts off talking about the day of Pentecost, the day of Pentecost. And it says in verse 1, And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.

And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as a fire, and it set upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. There was dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men out of every nation to heaven. Now when this was noise to broad, the multitude came together and were confounded because that every man heard them speak in his own language.

And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, behold are not all these which speak Galileans. Then I want you to take your Bible and look there in verse 16. But this is that which was spoken by the Prophet Joel, had shall come to pass. In the last days say, if God I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh. And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy and your young men shall see visions in your old men dream dreams.

And on my servants and on my headmates, I will pour out in those days of my spirit and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath. blood and fire and vapors of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before that great and notable day of the Lord come. And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Now this is something that took place 50 days from the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That’s what the word Pentecost means. And it was scheduled. It was part of the memorial feast in the Old Testament. And we’ll look at that in just a moment. But I want you to know that there is a difference between law and grace. Now you know in the Old Testament, Moses came up to the Mount Sinai and God gave to him the law. And then here, the word of God tells us that the Holy Spirit came.

And so there’s a difference between law and grace. Law and grace. Does a man say by law or is a man say by grace? So I think there’s some interesting things that I want you to see here this morning. So take your Bible and turn there to the book of 2nd Corinthians and chapter three, 2nd Corinthians and chapter three. The scriptures tell us here in this chapter, starting at verse six, some things about the law and about grace. When you see the words, holy spirit, it’s referring to that time period that we call the church age, the grace age, and where we are today.

The time between Pentecost and the rapture when Christ comes back for us. So you notice there in verse 6, make sure you study your Bible. I love it when people have a Bible and they look at the scriptures and you mark your Bible. Very important. says who also had made us, able miniatures of the New Testament. Not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter, killeth, but the spirit, giveth life. That is a reference to the dispensation of law and the dispensation of grace.

And the difference between words and freedom, where you have bondage and liberty. So there’s two different things here. I believe that you’ll see that whenever Moses was given the law on Mount Sinai, that there’s things that they said all that he hath told us, we will do. And of course the penalty of not doing what he said do would be death. So God along with the moral law gave sacrificial laws. He gave them civil laws on how to run their nation.

sacrificial laws was in case they broke the other law. So if you do this sin, you make this sacrifice. And so this was an administration of death and they lived under fear. It was all based upon their performance, how they lived. Could they fulfill the rightistic demands of the law? So you have this in verse 2. But if the administration of death, written and engraven in stone, was glorious. So whenever Moses came down the mountain, he had these two tables of stones in his hands, and the Bible says that whenever they saw Moses they could not behold his face because his face glowed, and he had to cover his face and be veiled.

And he says not the children of Israel could not steadfastly Behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance, which glory was to be done away. How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious? So the what we have now is The administration of the Holy Spirit during that grace age It’s more glorious Than the law that produced death the spirit produces life And if you thought that was good, you ought to see this one.

If you thought that was a good message, you ought to hear this message. The message of grace were by the Holy Spirit of God, give it life. And so it makes the statement here in verse 10, for even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect by reason of the glory that excela. In other words, the glory of the finished work of Christ on the cross, giving to man liberty from sin, death, and to grave. The law could not do.

The law demanded but could not perform. The law was weak in that you and I could not keep it. Israel could not keep it. 1500 years proved no man could keep the law. Why? You couldn’t keep the law. You’d have to be perfect. That one day Jesus was born. And when Jesus was born, He was perfect. He was the only one who could keep the law because He was the only one that was perfect. No man can totally satisfy all the claims of the law.

And the law condemns everyone. It does not give life. It does not show mercy. The law does not have compassion. The law does not have love. The law doesn’t have forgiveness. The law doesn’t have grace. It demands death. And so since we have all sinned, we’re all condemned. But then the rest of the story. Here’s Jesus, who goes to the cross, pays for the sins of the world, comes back from the dead, and it’s sent to Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost fifty days later.

And it says, this story we have can take a man that is a sinner and make him perfect. The law couldn’t do that. It might have been something to have been there at the foot of that mount, which they were not supposed to get close to nor touch it, or they’d be shot through. They’d be killed. And to see the glory of the face of Moses when he come down from the mount, and to hear the thundering in the light and in the cloud rolling and all that stuff, that would have been something.

And to hear God’s voice thundering scared him to death. We see you and I don’t have to be afraid anymore. We don’t have to be afraid of the demands of the law. Jesus came, fulfilled the rightest demands of the law, and all that you and I have to do is believe it. And so God is talking the difference between life and death. Now look what He says here. And verse 11, for if that which is done away was glorious, the law, much more that which remaineth is glorious.

See in that we have such hope we use great plainness of speech. So we want people to understand what we say. So we try to study all those complicated things and then try to make it easy to understand. if you don’t understand the meaning of the scripture, there’s no power in the scripture that changed your life. And get what he says here in verse 13, and not as Moses, which put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished, but their minds were blinded, for until this day remain of the same veil, untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament, which veil is taken away in Christ.

In other words, you study the Old Testament without Christ you cannot understand. But once you trust Christ, He is the lens by which you can go back and study all those Old Testament scriptures and you’ll see things you never saw before. But the Jewish people had a veil over their eyes. They did not believe in Christ so they would not and could not see the scriptures. It was like a veil over their eyes. That’s why you may be hear this morning.

And if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, there’s a veil over your eyes. You cannot see it. And yet there’s a lot of people that will stand and give testimony to the fact that Jesus Christ is more real to them than the clothes they have on their back. They know they have eternal life. They know they’re going to heaven when they die. They can believe because they can see something that you can’t see because you don’t understand. But get this down here in verse 16, he says, Nevertheless, when it the heart shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away.

Now the Lord is that spirit and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. So the Holy Spirit is the free man to make him free. When I trusted Jesus Christ as my Savior, the Holy Spirit indwelt me. I was born by the Spirit of God into God’s family. I was set free from my old sinful nature. It can’t send me to hell. I don’t have to fear a grave because I know I’ll come back again from the dead.

I don’t have to worry about any of those things anymore. I’m a free man. And God says, stand fast in the liberty where with Christ it’s made us free and not become entangled again with the yoke of bondage. So I’m a free man. When I leave this world, when I die, I will be separated from this body of sin and death. And I will have a glorified body, and I will be with the Lord for all eternity. You see, my total liberation hasn’t come yet, but it’s as good as done, because God cannot lie and He’s given His word.

Now notice in verse 18 he says, but we all with open face, in other words it’s not veiled. Jesus Christ in chapter 4 it talks about the gospel is hid to them that are lost, in the words it’s veiled. That’s why we know that the only way we can get a lost band to see the glory of the Lord or the sea perfection is through the gospel story itself. And by believing this wonderful message you can have as a free gift everlasting life become a child of God and get to go to heaven whenever you die.

And he says here as a child of God. As I allow the Holy Spirit that lives within me to teach me the Word of God, it can change me from glory to glory. Because we can see His face. You can see the face of the Lord Jesus Christ in the gospel story and that’s why the gospel story and its simplicity and its clearness, plainness of speech, understanding the meaning thereof is the most powerful thing in the world. And so that’s why whenever you try to add works to the gospel, you’re marring the image of Christ.

You’re adding finishing touches to something that’s already finished, is to finished work. You and I can’t touch it. We don’t add to it. The Bible says, by grace are you saved through faith that none of yourselves? It is the gift of God and not of works lest any man should boast. Now, this is something that we have here because it deals with the subject of law and grace. The law that condemns And grace, that is liberty. So under the law you have bondage, a curse, and you’ve got death.

But under grace you’ve got liberty, blessings, life. Two separate things. Now I want you to take your Bible and go with me to the book of Exodus. The book of Exodus in chapter 31.XXX, in chapter 31. Way back there in the Old Testament, Exodus 31, and looked there in verse 18. Whenever we read this story of the crossing of the Red Sea and into the wilderness, we know that Moses was going somewhere. and so he had delivered Israel from Egypt and they had crossed the Red Sea and into the wilderness approximately 50 days.

So from the Passover to the time they got to the foot of Mount Sinai, it was about 50 days. It was in the third month but But see, this was already the Passover toward the middle of the month of April. So time was moving on. So it says in verse 18, and he gave unto Moses when he had made an end of communing with him upon Mount Sinai. Two tables of testimony, tables of stone written with the finger of God.

So God said that he had done these things and gave him to Moses and told him to get down from the Mount. And he says, I got some bad news for you Moses. He says they’re in verse six, that you need to get down to because the people are, they done gone wild. And Aaron your brother, he ain’t helping the situation none. So in verse six and they rose up early on the morrow and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings and the people sit down to eat and drink and rose up to play because they made a calf and began to worship.

they said, where’s Moses? He’s been gone so long. We don’t even know where he’s at anymore. And so the people were led astray. So in verse 7, and the Lord said unto Moses, go get thee down for thy people which thou brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. Now I thought that these were his people, and Moses only did what God says to do. It looks like God is blaming Moses. He said, those people are yours that you brought out of me, you’ve put their do it.

Like God said, I’ve washed my hands on these people. You know what God wanted to do? He wanted to kill them all. God was on the verge of killing them all. And lo and behold, Moses intervened and he says, this is definitely a stiff neck people, minor in verse nine. So take your Bible and look there in chapter 32, Exodus chapter 32. And you’ll notice there in verse 28, you’re on the line verse 28. You see the giving of the law.

Moses hadn’t even got down from the mountain until he broke both of the tablets that he had in his hands. So who was the first one to break the law? Moses broke all of them. But anyway, God gave him another set. In verse 28, and the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses and you ought to underline this phrase. And there fell of the people that day about 3,000 men. 3,000 people died approximately 50 days after the Passover.

And it was all because they did not fulfill. Fulfill the law. The first thing it says, thou shall have no other gods before me. And the first thing they had done is they had made him a golden calf and made themselves a god and began to worship a golden calf. How dumb. But that’s what they did. Now you wouldn’t do something like that. Would you I? Mean you know the Lord and he saved you gave you eternal life and you know you’re going to heaven you die So don’t you worship the only true and living God there is or do you worship your job?

Or do you worship your money or do you worship kid you worship your spare time you worship the sports? What is it you put in the place of God? You could be guilty of the very same thing they did. You see jealousy in God says, he is a jealous God, it means you don’t want to be replaced. That’s why a girl hates another girl who tried to take her boy. She don’t want to be replaced. Jealousy. So here is at the law.

Mount Sinai. Three thousand people are killed. Take your Bible and turn down to the book of Leviticus chapter 23. the book of Leviticus in chapter 23. Leviticus 23, and you’ll notice that there are some things that happens every year when they got into the land. When they got into the land, they were supposed to have these seven feasts, these memorial services. And these memorial feasts were times where they would remember what God had done for them. And so as they go through these saying is you’ll find out that these were to happen then every year in real time so that it happened.

The first four would be in the spring and then much in between and then the last three feasts would be in the fall. And they all represented something, real things. But they also had a spiritual significance to them also. It wasn’t that they just came out of Egypt and across the Red Sea. And next thing you know, you’ve got the law. But there was timing in this thing also. So there’s the Passover. Then they had the Unleavened Bread, which was the debt was paid, no sin.

The first fruit. And then the Passover, the Feast of Trumpet. And then they had the atonement. and then the Feast of Tabernacle. So these things that are mentioned in these verses throughout the 23rd chapter, all of it for a reason. And you see there, when it talks about in verse four, about the Passover, he says in verse five, in the 14th day of the first month, had even is the Lord’s Passover. Now their first month was April, so here you had when Christ would die on what day, what month, and it told it thousands of years in advance.

So Christ came and died at the exact day at this period of time. And then it talks about there in the verse 16. Now Christ died, but He made a payment for the sins of the world. And because He had made the payment, He was perfect, no leaven, He came back again from the dead. So there’s things that are taught in here that you can go into the New Testament find a correlation of what it means. Allegory means a spiritual teaching from a truth that found here in the Old Testament.

So we have a lot of things you can apply. What we have to watch is that you don’t try to make the scripture say something that it doesn’t say. It’s always best to find the primary meaning and then there can be a spiritual application And so you have to watch being the interpreter of the spiritual interpretation because you see everybody can have their own interpretation. And then you have no clue where you’re going next. So you have to be careful and keep things within its context.

And so you go through this and it talks about the first fruit, which is Christ’s resurrection from the dead. He was the resurrection from the dead three days later. There he is. And then it talks about the time where God says there’s going to be the feast of the past over here, we have the first fruit Christ says there’s going to be a harvest. And we are the ones because of what Christ done. It’s on the feast of first fruits.

And then we have the 50 days from the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And we have the law that was given by Mount Sinai. But in the New Testament, in comparison to that, 50 days is Pentecost. So Pentecost, you have this wonderful experience that happened. It’s similar to what happened in the Old Testament. And so when you get to the New Testament and you have the Pentecost, something else that takes place there. 3,000 were saved. You see, under the law, 3,000 were killed.

But under grace, under the time of Pentecost, 3000 are given life. So is there a comparison here? I think so. But whenever you finish chapter 23 and you go through this, you say, well, that seems like that’s the end of it. Not exactly. I want you to look there in chapter 25 of the book of Leviticus. And you’ll notice there in verse eight. And thou shalt number seven savets of years under thee seven times seven years. And the space of the seven savets of years shall be under thee forty and nine years.

So you got forty and nine years. And God breaking it down for us here. But notice when it’s supposed to happen. This was what they call the year of Jubilee or the year of liberty. When you proclaim liberty throughout the land, this took place every 50 years. You got in debt, all debts had to be forgiven after 50 years. So you couldn’t stay in debt any longer than that. Isn’t that wonderful? And if you left your land and sold it to somebody else, 50 years later, you get it back.

That way it always stayed with the people in their tribes. And so you can really blow it for 50 years, but 50 years later, you get it back. So I’d always watch the loans that you made within two or three years before it happened. But now, notice what it says in verse 9, Then shall thou cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the getth the tenth day of the seventh month. In the day of atonement shall you make the trumpet sound throughout all your land, and ye shall hallow the 50th year and proclaim liberty throughout all the land.

And then in the last part of it, in ye shall return and blood all the blood all the good stuff into here. But I believe these are representative of some other period of time. This is in real time and in 50 years this happens and so it’s supposed to happen every 50 years. Well there was a time when Israel did not obey the Lord and they did not keep the land every seventh year. they weren’t supposed to plan anything of the seventh year.

And that God would give them enough on the sixth year to laugh with the sixth year and the seventh year and enough seed for the eighth year until they got some more stuff going. But Israel, because it’s hard to trust the Lord. It’s going to be there next year. So they obey God. And they didn’t let the land rest. So God’s in a long 70 years of captivity in the Babylon. And the reason was because they owed God one year for every seven years, they didn’t let the land rest.

So God collected. But that’s why He sent them into captivity for 70 years. One year for every seven years, they didn’t obey. Can you get away with it? You can’t get away with going against God. Sooner or later, God’s going to collect. He is a good God, He’s a gracious God, He’s a merciful God, but God is going to collect. God remembers what he said. And they had said, in Deuteronomy chapter 6, all that the Lord has commanded of us, we will do.

Headed it. 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. To listen to today’s message again or to obtain a free download of any of our Bibleline programs, just go to our homepage at BibleLineMinistries.org and click on the Radio Broadcast link.

If you are in the area, we welcome you to visit us.vae The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George 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 clicking on the Calvary Community Church link at BibleLineMinistries.org. Thanks for joining us on Bibleline and now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound, and 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.