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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 a 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 concluding message of this teaching will be a blessing to you and your family. Look at number three. You see the ultimate warrior needs the ultimate enemy. You’ve got to have somebody that’s the strongest because you got to put him down. An enemy that’s trying to destroy you, there is no bigger, no greater enemy than the devil himself. Now he’s bigger than me, more powerful than me.

But I’ve got weapons that he can’t defeat. See, he can’t win as long as I have my weapons and I use my weapon and I stay alert. But a lot of people won’t stay alert. They won’t use the weapon because they don’t trust the Holy Spirit. So they fight him in the flesh. They don’t trust the word. So they trust their mind, their own intelligence, their own philosophy, what they think about everything. Instead of fighting God’s battle, God’s way.

Look what I have here. The devil which is the prince of the power of the air is invisible to the naked eyes. How would you like to fight the enemy and you can’t see him? He can see you but you can’t see him. But if there’s a battle, I love to seen what Cass’s clake could have done in the ring with an enemy like George Foreman, but he couldn’t see him. Wouldn’t that be fun? Well you and I have an enemy that we cannot see.

He’s very strong, he’s the most powerful there is. And he’s got all kinds of little helpers. Have you ever seen a bad guy come up against the good guy, but he always has to have all of his cohorts with him. In case I can’t outdraw you, my six budge is going to mow you down. I used to wonder if I could have lived in the wild west days. Fastest gun alive, fastest gun alive. You know, when you think you’re the fastest gun alive, who would you look for?

Somebody who thinks they’re the fastest gun alive. So I’d go after Al Marshall or somebody. So when it comes to serving the Lord, God’s given you all this ultimate stuff because there’s an ultimate enemy. I mean, there’s no greater enemy. There is none greater. So how are you doing in your battle, in your war, in your fight? Here’s what he uses. He’ll use the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of Now, we talk about the lust of the flesh.

There’s desires of the flesh. He may use sex. He may use drugs. All these things the body desires. And so many of God’s people can’t fight the ultimate battle because you see they already have lost the battle with habits in their life. With the lust of the flesh, the desires of the flesh. And see, there’s desires that you have to do. have like , and the devil will dang the light in front of liferiend the},{” of life, and the devil will dang the devil will drink it, and people will chase him.

The devil, he offered Christ the kingdoms of the world and showed it to him in a moment of time. And Jesus says no. No. What has he tempted you with? You see, you’ve got that ultimate battle and when, if you lose all these little skirmishes with the lust of the flesh and you’ve got an old sinful nature. And the devil is going to lure you like he lures everybody up. These three things is all the toll he needs to get you.

It’s all the toll he needs. The lust of the flesh. The lust of the eyes, the pride of life. It’s all that he needs. That’s how he got out of the name. That’s exactly what he offered to Christ. And then the Bible says in 1 John, this is what he’s offering to you. Because I want to be somebody in this world. So you’ll give up what God wants you to have. And the lust of the flesh, and you’ll let your sex drives destroy you.

And you’ll have habits in your life that God can’t use you because of your sinful habit. and he ought to put you on a shelf and not use you. You’ll always wonder, I wonder what I could have done if I’d have just done what God wanted me to do. Well, I just, God, they can’t use me. Well, he can’t use you because you won’t use the weapons that he offered you. You see, you don’t have to fail. You don’t have to lose.

You lose because of a choice that you make. So look at number four, The ultimate warrior needs the ultimate battle plan. There has to be a plan. And you plan your work and you work your plan and you work your plan as long as your plan or work when your plan don’t work you change your plan. Got that? You plan your work and your work you plan, your work you plan as long as your plan or work when your plan don’t work you change your plan.

But the plan that he gave 2000 years ago still works. Still works. The gospel is still just as powerful. The Holy Spirit hasn’t changed. The mess has not changed. You and I, if we’ll do things God’s way, you’ll be surprised we can have God’s blessings and God’s victories and God’s results. Because God has a plan. Look at number one, fight by any means according to the will of God. It’s not just do whatever you want to do. Fight according to the rules.

And first Corinthians in chapter nine, it talks about, I fight, not as one that beateth the air. In other words, I don’t do shadow boxing. You know, pretending he’s there and just swinging at nothing. Paul said, I’m in a real fight. He said, they work because they want to try to get this corruptible crown. He says, I’m after an incorruptible crown. A crown of victory that I never lose. Glory that will never fade away. down here, there’s all kinds of little things you can get and you accomplish this and they give you a little trophy.

So I’ve given out trophies. I’ve even had to buy some first on where I can get them. And so you go on to these trophies. Well, God says, I’ve got some trophies for you when you get to heaven because you fought some battles down here and you won. This is what God wants for us. Look at number two, if now is the time to be saved, then now would be the time to witness. Yes or no? A man can’t be saved without hearing the gospel.

So if now is the time to be saved, then now is the time to witness. If now is the time to witness, now is the time to fight. Well, I’ll fight tomorrow. You realize you have to fight every day of your life. Well, today there are no lust of the flesh And there are no lust of the idea. There’s no pride of life. So I won’t have to worry about it for this week. It’s going to come next week.

Or do I have to fight it every day, every moment of my life? For over 50 years I’ve been fighting this battle. Because you see, Christ made the statement, or it says in the book of Volkalations in chapter 5, verse 1, stand fast, therefore, in the liberty where would Christ has made us free? Freedom isn’t free. In the Christian realm, you have to stand. In Ephesians chapter six, you have to fight. It’s either fight or lose. Fight or give up.

It’sHOUSE fight or you’ve lost everything in the Christian life. The Christian life is a warfare. It’s a battle. There is a plan, but God has given to you and I everything we need to win. Number five, the ultimate warrior needs the ultimate mental toughness. Now I want you to take your Bible and look there in the book of 2 Corinthians in chapter 4, 2 Corinthians and chapter 4. And look there in verse 1 and verse 1. He says, and it’s on page 12, 32, and verse 1, therefore seeing we have this ministry as we have received mercy.

and here’s three little words. We faint not because of the ministry. We don’t faint. It means we don’t quit. In the battle you may get tired and you may get weary and you don’t want to do it. But there’s no let up. There’s no vacations from it. We faint not. Why would we do all of this? Well look there in verse 15, verse 15, for all things, and you ought to handle the line, for your sake, it’s for somebody else.

Paul says, I do all this for your sake, for your sake. Another place you’ll find it’s for the gospel sake, it’s for Jesus’ sake. And sometimes yes, for your own sake. But there’s a reason why, And when you understand the reason, the cause behind it, that motivating factor that you need in your life that causes you to keep going when it doesn’t seem like there’s victory. There’s many battles that I have had to fight, and it just doesn’t seem like it’s worth fighting.

Sometimes it seems like I’m not going to win. A friend of mine was driving down the road, he was a preacher. And he saw two kids fighting on the side of the road. So he pulled alongside and he parked his car and he watched these two boys fighting. One was a big kid, one was a little kid. And the big kid was just beating the tar out of this little kid. But the little kid was scrappy and he’d get back up and he’d go at it again.

And finally the big kid just knocked him down again. And little kid, get back up. So the preacher got out of the car, walked over there and started chewing out this big kid. He said, you leave that little kid alone. You can see he’s small and you’re big and that’s not right. And the little kid said, oh, Mr. Please, Mr. Don’t stop this fight. I’m just getting my second win. I’m just getting my second win. He didn’t want it to stop.

He wanted to fight. It might mean some other people I know. You’ve got to have some fire in the gut. You’ve got to have something that says, I don’t care how big the bottle is. Me and God, we can tackle anything. You and God are a majority. You and God, He says, without me you can do nothing but with me you can do all things. Why? Because Christ can do all things. And there’s where your victory is. Now look there in verse eight.

He says, we’re troubled on every side, but we didn’t quit. We are perplexed, but we didn’t quit. Verse 9, persecuted, but we didn’t quit. Cast down, but we didn’t quit. He says, you go down through here, and every one of these is mentioned for the reason He wants you to understand. We didn’t quit, because we didn’t faint. just because it gets bad, just because it gets hard, just because there’s troubles, so because we get perplexed sometime, sometimes you get confused, just keep on fighting, just keep doing right, don’t never stop.

I was wondering if I could ever find a nice little illustration that kind of goes with, you might get defeated at times and little skirmishes, but it’s not the whole war, not the whole battle. I mean a guy may knock you down in the third round but you got back up, and still win the battle. Here’s a man in his deeds and his age. When he was 22 years of age, he failed in business. At 23, he ran for legislature and was defeated.

When he was 24, he again failed in business. When he was 25, he was elected to the legislature. When he was 26, His sweetheart died. When he was 27, he had a nervous breakdown. When he was 29, he got defeated for speaker. When he was 31, he was defeated for elector. When he was 34, he was defeated for Congress. When he was 37, he was elected to Congress. When he was 39, he was defeated for Congress. When he was 47, he was defeated for vice president.

When he was 49, he was defeated for the Senate. When he was 51, he became the president of the United States. That’s the record of a man who would not give up or quit. He persevered his name was Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln. Boy, he was a defeated man. Just because you get knocked down a little bit, beat up a little bit, just because you wear a few scars. My wife and I was looking at a panel that I was thinking about putting in my living room and I built our house up in Georgia.

I thought about the knotted pine because it looked so pretty and it really knotted pine. The guy says, all these knots, he says, that’s character. We put down this hardwood floor. And some of the floor companies had set aside and knew some of it because it had all these knots all in it. But a guy told me, he says, those reveal character. Well, my wife and I, we’d like to have a little character in our house. So we took the leftovers and we had some character in our house.

Did you know there might be a lot of things in your life that are not right? A lot of habits and so forth that’s keeping you from having victory in your Christian life. Did you know that whenever you cut off some of those things, it might leave some scars in your life, but that’s your character. That’s building character. And there’s some people that’s got a lot of character because they’ve had a lot of battles. They carry a lot of scars.

They’ve been hurt over the years. It’s so important to keep this in mind. But it says I fight because I wanna win. When you get to chapter nine of First Corinthians, and we’re not turning there right now, but it’s talking about I did this that I might win. I did this that I might win. I did this that I might win, because he had one thing in mind, I wanna win, I wanna win, I wanna win. There’s something about, especially guys, that are a little on the macho side, they wanna win in everything they do.

I don’t care what it is, they wanna win. If they can’t win, they don’t wanna play. Or they play against somebody they know they can be. That’s the way I am. Somebody says, well, I have this injury in my knee from an old football injury. And this is from playing so much softball I got rotator cuff. Well, I was good at Chinese checkers. How are you laughing? I was walking down the thing yesterday. Somebody was sitting there playing checkers.

Yes, I remember they were playing checkers. And it was the difficult thing for me to do, to stand there and watch these two kids play in checkers. And I thought neither one of them has a clue what they’re doing. You know what I wanted to do? Tell them how to play. And I thought, what a stupid move. What a stupid move. But I didn’t say a word. I didn’t say a word. I said, I got to go inside. I went inside.

Couldn’t stand it. Because I wanted to play the game. Because I know I can beat these guys. Because there’s something inside of a guy you just want to win. Well, why don’t we take that into the Christian realm? Do you want the devil to have victory over your life to ruin your life? Though he’s an enemy and you cannot see him. And yet at the same time, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life can so blind you to eternal truths that you give it all up.

Look at these verses. Take their in verse 16 of chapter 4. For which cause, which cause we faint not me, we don’t quit because there’s got to be a cause that’s great enough not to quit. But though our outward man perishes means you’re going to get older and older yet the inward man is renewed day by day. In other words, outwardly, yes, your old body’s gonna kind of lose a little steam. But inwardly, the new man can get stronger and stronger and stronger.

You can grow in your strength in the Lord. But look what else he says in verse 17 for our light affliction all these battles that we’re having to face This enemy that we’ve got He says it’s a light affliction and it’s just for a moment Always think man. I can endure anything for a short period of time real short a short period of time He says for our light affliction, which is but for a moment Work it for us a far more exceeding and get this eternal weight of glory You see there’s something about people that we want praise Honor and glory everybody wants it.

So I don’t want to know that yes, you do Yes, you do God’s word is true. He said let God be true and every man’s a liar God says every man wants praise and glory. And God says that the trial of your faith, which is more precious than gold and silver, though it would be tried with fire. And his coming may be praise, honor, and glory. God’s going to give that to every person for your victories, for your battles, for your faithfulness.

You see, our rewards don’t come down here. I remember watching years ago when I heard about a guy by the name of Audie Murphy. Anybody remember a guy named Audie Murphy? 1921 years of age, he goes into the army and lo and behold by the time he’s through, he’s gotten more awards than any man that’s ever lived. Most decorated man in World War II. I think I’m right on that. A little old squirt. Just in everything had to happen.

Just right for him to be at the right place at the right time, but he did it. But he did it. Well, I never get opportunities like that. You have them every day of your life in the Lord’s army. You’ll fight some battles today. You’ll fight some tomorrow. And the next day, you’ll fight them every day. And there’s a God in heaven that’s keep them the records, he’s keeping the books and he wants to reward you, he wants to bless you, and he’s watching you to see how you’re going to fight that battle.

And he says, I’ve given you the ultimate weapons to fight the ultimate enemy. So do you, do I really have a good excuse not to fight, not to win. He said, well, I’m afraid, I’m disappointed. God hath not given to us the spirit of fear, but of love, power, and a sound mind. That fear didn’t come from God. Courage is fear that says its prayers and goes ahead. Without fear, there is no courage. And that’s why he told Joshua to be strong and very courageous.

And I will be with thee and make thy way prosperous. So God has given to us an awful lot to be thankful for, and God can and will use us and use you. So what I say, well, it’s Memorial Day, fight because one day you’ll remember all the opportunities you had to fight and maybe you didn’t fight because you were afraid and you ran. Why would you run? Don’t you have confidence in your weapons and your shield of faith?

Didn’t work and prepare and be strong. Be the kind of a person that you ought to be as Peter of Motto would say, are you in or out? Look up here. This hand represents you and me. This wallet represents everything we’ve ever done wrong. God says that we have all sinned. God loves us and I hate our sin. And for us to pay for sin is death, twice. Death, physically and death, spiritually, which will be eternal separation from God in a literal Father in Hell.

But see, God loves us and wants us to go to heaven and to go to heaven you have to be perfect. Now think for a moment. If you have to be perfect to go to heaven, are you? No. How can you go? Can you live? Or have you lived? Or will you live a perfect life? I don’t think so. You say, well, I’m going to start today and live a perfect life from now on. Sorry, you had to start it from the day you were born.

So how are you doing? So you might as well forget that. God says, you cannot earn eternal life. You cannot work your way to heaven. You’ll never be good enough. This hand represents Jesus Christ. God in the flesh came into the world because He loves us, hates our sin, because it separates us from Him. So Christ took our sins, all the sins of the world. Pateford on the cross came back from the dead and said, if you and I, if we would be lead, that He did it for us, He would give us as a free gift everlasting life and we would go to heaven, on what Christ did for us.

That’s the best news in the world. Christ did that for you. He did it for me. Don’t let the devil talk you out of trusting Christ as Savior. You will really be a big loser. Let’s pray, shall we? Head’s bow nice and close. No one looking around. If you’re here this morning and you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, would you right now and just talk to the Lord and say, Lord, I don’t understand at all, but I believe Christ died, paid for my sins, and I will trust Him as my only hope of going to Heaven.

Friend, God said, if you trust Him right now, He would save you right now, give you eternal life right now. And you can know that whenever you get up to leave, you can say, I’m going to heaven when I die, because today I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior. I believe He died for me. Friends, if you’ll do that, I’d like to have prayer for you. And I’m going to ask you just a moment to raise your hand. It’s just to let me know that what I said made sense to you, and I’d like to have prayer for you in closing.

Is there anyone at all before we close? So yes, I will trust Christ as my Savior. Anyone at all? at all. If you have trusted Christ as your Savior, do you really understand? You have been engaged to fight the ultimate battle. You’ve been given the ultimate weapons, the ultimate mission, to fight the ultimate enemy, and you can have the ultimate results, rewards that last forever. Can’t get it any longer than that. To come from the hand of God himself to say, well done thou good and faithful servant.

To give to you and I that praise that honor, that glory, that will never fade away. Father, we thank you so much for all you’ve done for us. We thank you Lord for each one here. Bless him, Lord. We pray for good service tonight and give us an enjoyable day. Again, Christ’s name we pray. Amen. You’ve been listening to Bibleline, a teaching ministry of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida with Dr. Ralph Arnold. We pray that you are 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 tool 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. 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 believe in that the Lord is coming soon and just keep looking up