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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 Bibleline Ministries dot O-R-G 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. Whatever you trust Christ as your Savior, the Lord gives you a new birth. You’re born now into God’s family. This one is born of God. So you were born into the world. You don’t mind if I use an example, do you? Alright. Here’s Rosie. Okay. She’s 19 years old, right?

She’s 19 years old. Okay. She has a flesh birth. When you look at her, you can see her flesh birth. Alright. Today she trusts Christ as Savior. God gave her a new birth. This one is born of God. She’s been born twice, but this one’s only 24 hours old, not even that. So she didn’t get rid of the old nature. God just gave her a new birth. This one is born of God. And so she has within her these two births.

And this one has been using this body for 19 years. And God says, now I want this one to use the body. And this one over here says, no, you ain’t. In this one it says, well, God told me to take and have dominion over the flesh, the body here. Well, I’ve been here longer than you have, and I’m in charge, and you do what I say do. And so is she going to have a battle? She’s going to have a fight on her hands.

And this one says, I’m going to go to church tonight. This one says, I don’t want to go to church. You’re going to say, home, watch back men. So she has this fight that she’s got to go through. And she came very close to doing that tonight. So you have these two births and there is going to be this battle. Now look down at the next scripture, Galatians 5 or 16 through 21, God has not removed the old nature or improved it, nor has God taken away anybody’s sinful desires.

So you still have the old sinful nature that you were born with. And so now you’ve got to learn how to deal with that. So these scriptures right here are very important to remember. So let’s look at this. I say then, walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. This shows that the believer must walk in the Spirit or he will walk or fulfill the works of the flesh.” So you have these two verses.

This one was born of God. This one, see, doesn’t have a sinful nature because God doesn’t have a sinful nature. You became God’s child. In this one, you have an no sinful nature got it from your mom and daddy and they got it from theirs and all the way back to Adam and Eve. So you got this word, this conflict that goes on. So he says walk in the Spirit that means let the new birth be controlled of the Holy Spirit.

Now you don’t see the Holy Spirit. You don’t really even feel the Holy Spirit. We often say no I can feel it in my soul but you won’t feel it in the body. But it’s truth that you know. So as a child of God, God wants me to read his words. So the Bible is God’s word, his mind on paper. The Bible is a love letter to God’s children. So God says that if I will read his love letter that he wrote to me, I’ll find in God’s word what he wants me to do.

This is the word of God. So in the Word of God, you find the will of God. So if you want to do the will of God, what is your will? What do you want me to do, Lord? And God says, this is what I want you to do. This is how I want you to think. This is what I want you to say. This is how I want you to live. So if you will let that control your life, then he won’t control your life.

So if you walk in the Spirit, you will not fulfill the desires of the flesh. You still have all those sinful desires. you’ve always had. Because he got it and changed this one. He just gave you a new one. But what else he says here? For the flesh, lust against the spirit, spirit against the flesh. These are contrary to the one to the other. So that you cannot do the things that you would. But if you’re be led of the Spirit, you are not another law.

The flesh is under the law and the spirit is under grace. And these are positional truths, and I’ll show you this in a minute. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these? Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, less diviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, barriers, simulations, wrath, strife, sedition, to heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, reveling, such like. This is a list of all the things that a believer can commit if he walks in the flesh. All right, look up here. You have a new bird.

You have an old bird. God says, if you submit yourself to the will of the flesh, the desires of the flesh, and walk after the flesh, this is what a Christian can produce in his life. Can a Christian commit adultery? Evidently, yes. Can he commit murder? Yes. You mean a Christian can do all those bad things? Yes. Before you ever get saved, isn’t it true that you could do anything you wanted to do? live any way you want. Well, of course.

But if you trust Christ to save you, so get to go to heaven, right? Of course. That’s why we tell people God can forgive you of all your sins. We ought to go to hell and we ought to pay for him, but He paid for all of them. So the payment He made was for all of our sins and He gives us eternal life. Let’s say, for example, here’s a baby about to be born. But before that baby is born, the mother says, now a little Johnny, before I let you be born.

Now you know I want you to do right. In the little baby says, Mom, I want to be born. I want to live, but I’m going to do and live any way I want. Now, can a baby be born and then decide to live any way he wants to live? Didn’t you? Didn’t most people born into this world? You do whatever you you want to do, live however you want to live. Think however you want to think. But if you told that child, you have to promise to be good before I let you be born.

Now he has a sinful nature. But if he could talk and reason, and he would say, Oh, Mommy, you know I’m not going to do anything wrong. I’ll be a perfect little boy. You are though he’s He’s lying. He’s lying because he has a sinful nature. He was conceived in sin. It means with a sinful nature. He’s born that way. So now when you trust Christ to save it, you have a new birth born of God. And so he says, all these things can be in a person’s life.

If the Christian walks after the flesh, you can bring forth the deeds of the flesh. And so So God says that He is going to chase in you. Now most parents, if they’re good parents and they love their little darlings, when those little darlings act like a brat, mom and daddy may have to do something about that. They may have to discipline, correct them by whatever means, but because their love for them, they discipline them. We can see that in the parental realm.

Well, what about in the spiritual realm? You trusted Christ as your Savior, and yet you may choose to rebel against the Lord. And if you do, God is still going to chasten you and discipline you. But he can never cast you out. He cannot unborn you. So once you are his child, you are God’s child forever. And God may want you to be an obedient child, But you may choose to be a disobedient child But there’s consequences to your decision.

So can you live as you please? Yes Can you live as you please and get away with it? No Because God loves you and he’s gonna chase in you so understand that now If you serve the Lord God is gonna richly bless you go to page two That’s Paul Harvey would say page two All the saved are under grace because you were born in the God’s family by grace. And to live in this world after you have been saved is grace.

You did not do one thing to deserve the right to live in this world after you’ve been saved. That is an opportunity, the mercy of God, that God allowed you and me to live here after we were saved. Now Paul made this statement, I don’t want God’s grace to be bestowed upon me in vain. This privilege to live for the Lord after I was saved. You’ll see, when you trust that Christ is your Savior, God could have just took you on home.

But He didn’t. So he left you here. Because he wants you to serve him, he wants to use you. It has nothing to do with your salvation. That’s already been settled. That’s a done deal. You’re going to have it when you die. But see, God left us here because God wants us to do some things for him. See, people have never seen God. But you see, they might see God through us. And that’s why see, God is good. God is wonderful.

God is kind. God is loving. He’s forgiving. He has grace and mercy. Well, if God, wants to reveal himself through you to somebody else, then they must see the love of God through you, the forgiveness of God through you, the grace of God through you. Because see, whatever you do with individuals, it should be like, that’s what God would do. Because you’re letting what God is manifest himself in your body through you. When you see that, it’s like a light comes on.

But if you don’t, it’s just words, it’s just empty words. So we often say, you know, every man should be a channel through which God can work. So somebody wrongs you, okay? You wrong God. What did God do for you? All right, now you do that for others. I know you wanna slap their jaws. You wanna give them a how I am punch. But God says, I want you to love them. Oh boy. So up there, look at Romans 614, for sin shall not have dominion over you unless you yield to it.

But it’s not supposed to and won’t unless you yield to your old man, the old sinful nature that you have. And those desires are strong. So sometimes you wind up doing what you have the desire to do. But God said, I want you to desire to please me. And if doing the wrong doesn’t please God, then love God more so that you have the strength not to do that, which displeases him. Love is a very powerful thing. Get to the next verse.

He says, what then shall we sin because we’re not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. Under the law is a positional truth for the flesh. Under grace is a positional truth for the believer. You see, when you were lost, you were under the law. That was your position in the flesh. The old man was under the law, condemned under the curse. You trusted Christ as your savior. Now you’re under grace. And because you’re under grace, you can never be condemned because grace can’t condemn.

Grace shows kindness and mercy and goodness. So God says, you’re no longer under the law. And if you’re not under the law, then it can’t condemn you. If you can’t condemn, you can never go to hell in the future. And so you’re under grace. That is a positional truth that can never be changed. None of your actions from this day forward ever change that position that you have in Christ. This is like if I was to be able to, say I’m gonna adopt Dan over here into my family.

Sign the papers, he’s not my kid. Now I can beat the tar out of him. I can give all those weapons he needed. It should have gotten years ago, but nobody did it, but I’m gonna take care of this kid. But when does he become my kid? When I adopted him, when it’s finalized, it’s done. He’s not mine.

But I won’t. I would not adopt him into my family. I mean, I might. But God has put us both into his family. Oh, God, that one. All right, now look at the next verse. Romans chapter seven, verse one. He says, no you’re not brethren. Well, I speak to them that know the law, how that the law have dominion over a man as long as he lives. So God’s law has power. And since we’re under the law, we’re under its authority.

It has dominion over us. It can tell us what we can and cannot do. Why do you think a teenager wants to get away from mom and dad? They don’t want to be under their dominion, their laws. They want their freedom. It’s just like a train saying, you know, I hate being on these tracks. I want to go out across the plains. I don’t want to go into those hills. I want to go places I’ve never been before. But if that train gets off the track, how far does it go?

It won’t go nowhere. That was the way my mother was. She was 14 years old. She was sick and tired of all the rules and regulations, laws made down to her. She says, I’m leaving. I’m tired of it. I want my freedom. My dad came along. His name was Sean. He had a liquor steal. He was a moonshiner. And he poured on his charm. He was 31 years old. Married my mom. Got her out of that house boy. She got her freedom now.

She had six kids by the time just 23. I don’t know if she ever knew a day when she didn’t have to wash diapers, clean some little snotty-nose kid. Boy, did she get her freedom. Oh, no. No, no, no. But see, whenever you say, I want my freedom from God, did you realize you’re just like the train that gets off the track? It won’t work. There’s all kind of snares and traps out there. But if you really If you want freedom, serve God.

Serve the Lord. Where the Lord is the Spirit, there is liberty, there’s freedom. You see, God says, if you serve me, I want to keep you free from the snares of sin. See, there’s all these traps out there. You can’t see them because you’re blind to them. So God says, if you’ll follow me, I can walk you through the minefield. But if you just leave me and go your own way, you’re going to be blown sky high. You’re not gonna make it Because the desire for sin is gonna get you here and the desire for sin going to get the Bible talks about there is a well the devil a lion a roaring lion Walk at the bottom.

What’s he looking for seeking whom he? made devour There’s a devil out there and he wants to devour you and what he does is he lures you He offers you things pleasure, fame, honor, glory. Oh, oh, the boy is like me. Oh, don’t you just eat data. Oh, the boy is like me. Oh, the girl’s just woo. Really, they just love this so much, oh man, that I am. You stupid nut. Oh, you girls, that’s all you see is a hunk of flesh.

It’s made out of nothing more than dirt. This body is six foot of dirt. Could the devil shape six foot of dirt in such a way that could cause you to lose everything in this world? Think about that girl. I don’t care how beautiful she is, she can be put into a telephone booth. Could God allow something so beautiful as a woman to be put into a telephone booth? No bigger than that and would cause you to lose everything in this life for that, for a pile of dirt?

Just because of beauty, things like that, you’d be surprised how many have gone astray. The lust for money, the lust for power. And then after a while, see, they become an old man like Al, and they’ve wasted their lives. And one day you’ll be sitting with regrets as you try to get that walker moving, and you’ll wonder, where did my life go? And you’ll have all the regrets of all the things that you could have done for God, but know the devil, Lord, you would dance, and the Lord, you would dance, and you wouldn’t listen to the Lord, but then you don’t waste your life.

Wouldn’t it be better to make up your mind now? And you solve that one problem, I’m going to serve the Lord. And then you make all your other decisions as it relates to that. But if you don’t make up your mind that, yeah, you may be going to heaven, but you’re not there yet. But as a child of God, yes, we should serve the Lord. But the Lord the Lord says, you know, when you were under the law, you were under a curse.

So when you were under the curse, you had to die. So that’s why everybody born into the world, we have to die because we’ve been cursed. We have a sinful nature. We’re under a curse. We’ve got to die. But when you trust Christ as your Savior, He removes you from the curse, you have eternal life. You go to heaven when you die. So yes, I’m under this curse, but at least I don’t have to go to hell. of these days, I’m still physically, I’m going to die, but to be absent from the body present with the Lord.

I’ll be with the Lord one of these days.” So God’s Word says, it’s kind of like this. Here’s a man, here’s a woman. The woman is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. She is not to leave her husband and go marry another. The man is not supposed to leave his wife and marry another. When one of them is dead and the other one is free to get another one, until death do you part.

But people don’t always do the things they should because of sin and hardness of heart. There’s consequences. So God says, when the man dies, the woman is free. She can marry again. So what he’s saying is, when you were under the law as like a woman being married. But now, that has come. You see, Christ died and paid for my sins. So because I died, I died. So I’m free from the law. So when I’m free from the law, I can marry Christ.

I can now commit myself to the Lord. I couldn’t do it before because I wasn’t free. I was a explaneman. I was condemned. I had no freedom. When you’re condemned and on death row, you see, you can’t commit yourself to anyone. You can’t promise anything. All you can do is die. But because of what Christ did for us, He gives us eternal life. And now I am free to serve the Lord. We have the freedom to serve Christ. So we talk about even freedom in our country.

We want freedom. Freedom should be because you want to serve the Lord. Is that why people want to have their freedom in America today? That’s not what they want. They want the freedom to live in sin. They want politicians to pass laws that makes whatever they do legal. They want to have laws that justifies taking little babies out of a mother’s womb and murdering little babies because it covers the sin of a man and a woman or some boy and some girl.

It’s to cover sin. It’s to hide sin. It’s not because it’s a good thing or right thing to do. It’s a wrong thing. It’s a wicked thing. Sex outside of marriage is wrong. It’s just wrong. God says don’t do it. Because you have trusted Christ to save your God’s child, God says he wants us to serve him. Now, I don’t have time to get into the big dissertation here on Amalek, but I have covered it before, and you have the Scriptures here, and so you are going to go home, and before next week you’re going to look up these verses and you’re going to study that, because it’s an illustration in the Old Testament about these two natures, believe it or not.

See, in the Old Testament we have the stories. In the New Testament we have the doctrine. We see they taught by stories, we teach by doctrine, but we use those stories in the Old Testament to illustrate these truths. So that’s why even with little children, you ever notice in Sunday school, little children love all those Bible stories? And isn’t it amazing that it’s just loaded with Bible stories? So you teach those kids those stories, but then you see there’s a reason those stories teach Bible doctrine.

So that’s why it’s so important. And God says in the book of Romans in chapter 15, He says things that were written a four time were written for our learning, written for our learning so that we can be wiser and make better decisions. So as you studied the Word of God, it should help you to learn to do right, to be disciplined. Look up here. Let this hand represent you and me and the wall of represent sin. The Bible says that you and I, all of us, have all sinned.

So we’re all in the same boat. God says that He loves us, that He just hates what we do wrong. So He loves us. And the Bible says for us to pay for the sin is eternal separation from God. But God doesn’t want us to go to hell. He loves us wants us to go to heaven. Well to go to heaven you have to be perfect. and there’s no way we’re going to make it. Because nobody’s good enough to go to heaven.

Going to church is not going to make you good and keeping the tank of man, but you came into that. So how can a man get to heaven without this? You see, if I take sin into heaven, then they’ll be sin in heaven, in death in heaven, and hatred and misery and all those bad things. Because that’s the way we are here, what would make the difference? So God says, you can’t come up here unless you’re perfect. Well, that eliminates everybody in the world.

Nobody gets to go. What Christ is talking about is this. You see, we ought to pay for our sins. And that’s eternal separation from God in hell. This hand represents Jesus Christ. He’s the Lord, God in the flesh. He came into the world because He loves us. He hates our sin. Because our sin separates us from the Lord. So Jesus Christ, see, He didn’t have any sin. But His love for us caused Him to take all the sins of all the world, and He paid for it, in full.

So the debt been paid, the sin that’s been paid. And He came back again from the dead and said that if you and I, if we would believe that He did that for us, He would put the payment He made to our account, and we’d get to go to heaven, or what He did. We’re not going to heaven because of what we’ve done, because we’re good. See, I can go to heaven now because all my sins are paid as though I never committed a sin.

He paid for it. Me and you went out to a restaurant to get a steak dinner and you paid for it. Of course you ought to pay for it. If you paid for it, I’ll put it this way. I was getting ready to leave this morning. Mr. Paulson says, we’re going to get something to eat. You want to go with us? He says, I’m buying. I said, I’m going. So we went down here and got something to eat. And you know what he did?

He paid for it. you know when he paid for it? I didn’t have to. No, I could have argued. Said, no, I’ll pay for my own, but I didn’t. I’m smarter than that. I know something when it’s free. So God says that he sent his son Jesus Christ to pay for our sins. And if we would believe that he did it for us, he would give us as a free gift of everlasting life. I’m going to heaven because of his love for me.

Let’s pray, shall we? With every head bowed and every eye closed, no one looking around. If you have never trusted Christ as your Savior, why not right now, the quietness of this moment? Or if you happen to be listening by internet tonight. I thought it was interesting last Wednesday night we had about 7,000 hits on the Wednesday night service alone. How many people that means we’re watching? I don’t know. I had somebody email me a letter and says, Pastor Armstrong, I thought you’d like to know that somebody and they named some prison, some prison somewhere.

So the guy trusts the Christ as his Savior. I’m going to email him back to how to find out who it is. But if you have never trusted Christ as your Savior right now, the best you know how well I who are you are, say, Lord, I’m Norma Sinner. And I believe that Jesus Christ died on that cross. I believe He died for me. And I’m going to trust Him and Him alone is my only hope of one to heaven.

And God said, if you If you would believe it, if you would trust Him, He would save you. If you’ve already done it, you don’t have to do it again. But if you never have, why not right now, say, Lord, I will trust Christ as my Savior and preach our likely to pray for me. I’m going to ask you in just a moment to raise your hand. Raise your hand, doesn’t save you. It just lets me know that what I said made sense to you, and I like to know and I like to have prayer for you.

Anyone before we close? So yes, that made sense to me. I want to know that I’m going to heaven. And I will trust Christ as my Savior right now in one of the all before we close. Our Father, we thank You so much for this time together. Bless each one here. Help us understand this. There is a great conflict in our lives, conflict with people, and just sometimes things don’t always go our way. Life gets hard and difficult at times.

But Father, You said You’d never put upon us more than what we can bear, but always make a way of escape that we may be able to bear it. You said in Your Word, coming to me, all ye that laboring are heavy-laden, and I will give You rest. Take upon me, up on You, and He says, My yoke is easy and My burden is light. So Father, we just come in ourselves to You. We thank You for all You’ve done for us.

Bless each one here in Christ’s name we pray. We’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 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 Bible line 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.