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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.

Take your Bible and turn to the book of Psalms, the hundred and third Psalm. I am Had somebody Meet me in the hallway tonight and they was talking about having a pity party And of course, you know, we had to stop having pity parties Because nobody would come So anyway, I want to explain a few things to you on some things that are just plain pitiful. Have you ever seen somebody that’s really pitiful? Have you ever listened to somebody that really sounded pitiful?

When it seemed like the whole world is crashing down around them and they don’t have anything to live for or on or with and just, it’s just a bad day. Some days just not your day. day. In the 103rd Psalm, it says, bless the Lord, O my soul. And all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Now, if you only had that one verse, that’s a pretty good verse in the Bible. If there was no other verses in the Bible, that’s the Bible.

That’s a pretty good verse in the Bible. just bless the Lord, O my soul. Look in verse two, bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. What are the statements that I mentioned to those in ranch last night? Well, what if, what if, tomorrow you only had what you gave thanks to the Lord for today? Would you have anything tomorrow? You know, a lot of people, they are just, they’re not thankful. They’re not grateful. Did you know a lot of your peace of mind and happiness is learning to be content with what God’s done for you and what He is doing?

And a lot of people just don’t have peace of mind. Their mind is in pieces. But to understand that if tomorrow came and you only had what you were thankful for today, You know, you may not have much tomorrow. Because sometimes people focus only upon all those bad things that happens to them, and they forget the goodness of God. You know, the Bible talks about even in the book of Romans in chapter two, the goodness of God lead us day to repentance.

The goodness of God is what causes a man to change his mind. The goodness of God, if you really think about it, can cause a person to want to serve the Lord after he trusts Christ’s Savior. But whenever you don’t see the right thing, you don’t wanna do the right thing. It’s just how it works. But look what he says here, “‘Bless the Lord, all my soul, “‘and forget not all his benefits. “‘Don’t forget. “‘We are so easy to forget the things “‘that God has done for us.'”

And then he says in verse three, “‘Who forgives all vine inequities, “‘who healeth all thy diseases.'” You know, we got the first part of that right now who forgive us all of our sins. You know, God has forgiven me of everything I’ve ever done wrong. And there’s quite a few things. Probably not as much as yours, no. Remember one time I preached a sermon on my sin worse than your sin? No, my sin’s better than your sin. Heh. Well, I can’t remember the whole sermon, but I mean, it was a long line.

I guess it depends a lot on your perspective. But it says, who forgive us all vine and equities? If God forgives you, that means He can’t hold it against you. It means that you can be justified, just as if you had never done anything wrong. Did you know that God forgiven you of all your sins is eternal security? Because it’s eternally forgiven. You know, once he forgives you for sin, he can’t bring it up again.

And if he forgives me of all my sins, then I am eternally secure. Well, right? Of course. Now, one of these days, I’m literally going to get my new body. So I will one day be totally healed from all the diseases of this world. God’s going to give me a new body. You remember this morning when I mentioned to you about me talking to a couple and telling them the little story about dying when they were 85 and they could have been there 10 years earlier?

What me and Betty was sitting there talking with Mr. Mrs. Poulson. And when I finished saying that we could have been there 10 years earlier, Betty just nice and calmly just looks at me and she says, you want to go now? I really didn’t understand how to take that. So I just made no comment whatsoever. Mrs. Polson came unglued and just laughed. So anyway, I’m going to stick around for us for a little bit more so I can antagonize somebody else for change.

But he says in verse 4, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who crown of thee with loving kindness and tender mercies who satisfied thy mouth with good things so that thy youth is renewed like the eagles. Well don’t that sound just like all kind of good stuff, good stuff, good stuff. And yet if you focus on the bad things, you’ll be down in the dumps. You know the best way to stay out of the dump is just don’t go to the dump.

You know where the long-range it took is garbage? To the dump, to the dump, Doo-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah. Oh, well, we’ll ride along. I don’t think y’all appreciate all the little jewels that I give y’all. In verse eight, look in verse eight, the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plantius in mercy. He will not always chide, neither will he keep his anger forever. He have not dealt with us after our sins, aren’t you glad? No reward is, according to our iniquities, and then he says in verse 12, for as the east is far from the west, so far I have to remove our transgressions from us.

He takes them away. You mean all those bad things that I did that would keep me from the presence of God have all been removed. And by faith in what he did on the cross for me, I have eternal life and I get to go to heaven when I die. Boy, that’s good news. So do I have anything to be thankful for? I can thank the Lord for a lot of things this very day. Now there’s always a few things that happens that we don’t like, and we don’t want to repeat of them.

But there’s enough to be thankful to the Lord for. Otherwise, you’ll focus on all the bad things that are going on, and you’d be surprised how pitiful you can be. Look what he says here in verse 13. Like as a father, Pidith his children, so the Lord pity us them that fear him. In the words for a father that has compassion. There’s a little cross between the word pity and piety. Talking about feeling someone else’s hurt within you, especially when you see someone else in such tragedy and distress.

Sometimes there’s not much you might be able to do. and so you pitied them. You wish that they weren’t going through what they’re going through. You wish you could stop them from hurting, and sometimes you can’t stop people from hurting. And some people just have to go through it. I wish I could always wave a magic wand and take away all the hurt and pain that people go through, but it doesn’t really work that away. So take your Bible and turn to the book of Job, the book of Job.

Job in chapter 19. Job, chapter 19. Now Job, as you know, had a problem. He had a real bad problem. And one of the main problems was that God didn’t tell him what he was doing with him. You see, Job was trying to serve a Lord and do everything right that he knew. But there was a devil. And the Lord, I guess the Lord was kind of proud of Job. And he wanted to kind of stick it to the old devil.

And it was the Lord who initiated a confrontation. He says, have you, and he’s talking to the devil, he said, have you considered my servant, Job? The devil says, yeah, but I can’t get at him because you put a hedge above him and you didn’t prosper everything he does. Whatever he does, he prospers and I can’t get to him. He says, but if you take away that hedge and let me get at him and take away his things from him, he’ll curse you.

You see, God wants us to be tested. God wants to prove to the devil that he has somebody that loves him more than the things that they have. In other words, not just the gift that we receive from him, but we love him. Even if he took away everything else that you have, would you still love the Lord? So God at times will allow the devil to take away everything that you have to see whether or not do you really love him more than those things that he gave to you.

And to see whether or not are you going to curse God? Are you going to maintain your integrity? Are you for sale? Well anyway, as you know the story, things went pretty bad. And Joe blost a lot of stuff. He lost 10 children in one day. He lost all of his health. He lost his wealth. He lost it all. And I guess you could say that, well, did God pity him? God didn’t even pity Joe. God saw what Joe was going through and even God didn’t pity the man.

But that’s okay, maybe his wife did, though, huh? No, no, his wife didn’t even give him a pity party. She just told us, why don’t you just curse God and die? So she wouldn’t have a pity party for him either. Well, what about his friends? Well, his friends that he had, they wouldn’t have a pity party for him either. They wouldn’t come. Well, what about his relatives? All of his relatives. Now they wouldn’t tell a party for him either.

I mean, here’s Job was not a friend, and nobody seems to care what he was going through. Oh, he has some three wise guys, some so-called friends that try to tell them, you know, joke, the reason you’re going through this is because you got sin in your life. You’re living a wicked life, but nobody knows it, but God doesn’t. He’s chasing you. He’s getting you. Why don’t you just come clean, Job, and confess everything to God, and everything will be all right?

Job says, I haven’t done that. It’s not the truth. And Job even got to where he cursed the day he was born. He wouldn’t curse God, but he cursed the day he was born. You ought to read the whole book of Job one day. But look what he says in verse one. Then Job answered and it says, How long will you vex my soul? And break me in pieces with words. These ten times have you reproached me. You’re not ashamed that you made yourself strange to me.

And be it indeed that I have erred. Mine erred remaineth with myself. If I have done wrong, you don’t know what it is. And nobody else says, and he says, I don’t know of anything that I’ve done to cause all these things that have happened to me. You know, sometimes in your life, something happens, first thing you do is, I wonder what I did wrong. You know, maybe you didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe there’s a God in heaven who wants to see whether or not do you love him, or are you gonna curse him?

Do you question and doubt the provision of God? He takes away your job, he can take away your health. And if God does all those things, what do you think about God now? It’s so easy to think just the sweetest things about the Lord when everything is going good. So now I want you to look at in verse 13, He had put my brethren far from me. My iniquantness are fairly estranged from me, my brethren, no pity there. In verse 14, my kids folk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me.

Well, there’s no pity there. In verse 15, they that dwell in my house, my maids count me for a stranger. I’m as an alien in their sight. Well, there’s no help there. Verse 16, I call my servants. He gave me no answer. Nobody listens to me. Nobody obeys me. Nope, no pity there. It’s like nobody cared what he was going through. Nobody had an answer or a word of comfort that would help him. Now, whenever you get down some day and really discourage and think and there’s no purpose to live, no reason for living.

Read the book of Job. You can’t get much lower than Job. And the Bible says yet he maintained his integrity and he did not curse God He even told the Lord you can just take me on home if you want to I’m ready to die In verse 17 my breath is strange to my wife in the words you don’t even get close enough to smell his breath Probably smell pretty bad. You know he doesn’t already got some kind of disease Some say it was maybe cancer Some says it was just big old boils all over his body, but he was sitting in an ash heap and scraping himself in his sores with broken pieces of pottery.

He didn’t have walkings on the corner. I mean, this was a long time ago. Job is one of the first books written probably in the Bible. He says in verse 18, young children despise me. So everybody was against him. No pity party there. Verse 19, all my inward friends are my close friends abhorred me. And they whom I loved or turned against me. And he hadn’t done anything wrong. And sometimes it just seemed like you cannot explain it. Did you know that you might even want to serve the Lord and do right?

And all of a sudden your wife turns on you, your children turn on you, or your husband turns on you, your mom and dad, everybody for some reason or something. You can’t explain them. Everybody just turned against you. And it can make you to the place where you get mean and ugly and want to fight back and take revenge and treat other people the way they’re treating you. Because of patience, patience. Did you know that there is a God who created the heavens and the earth, and he’s not too busy?

That he cannot and does not give you personalized attention. He is watching over every one of us. He knows how much you can take. He’s like, can I take no more? God knows how much you can take. And when you say, I can’t handle anymore, it’s amazing. He’ll dump some more on you just to show you. Yes, you can. And that’s why, and you need to learn, like he says, my grace is sufficient for thee. My grace is sufficient.

God gives you the grace that you need day by day. He doesn’t give you the grace that you need to bear tomorrow’s burdens. He gives you grace on a daily basis as you need it for this moment. When tomorrow comes, God will give you all the grace that you need to face tomorrow. And that’s what we’re supposed to believe. There is a God in heaven that is so concerned about every one of us, that he is wise and how he uses all the problems, the headaches, the distress and the spares of life to get us closer to Him.

If that’s true, has He been working in your life lately? Oh, just wait, then He’ll start maybe tomorrow, or next week, but you can rest assured you’re either coming out of a problem or you’re in the midst of a problem, or you’re going into a problem, but it’s a seasonal thing. And sometimes when it’s springtime, you should always know summer’s coming, And when it’s summer, you should know that fall is coming. And when it’s fall, you should know that winter’s coming.

But when it is winter, you should know that spring is coming. In other words, see, it goes in cycles. God is always testing you. It’s kind of like, you know, in a box and ring, you know, they hit you, and then they back off. And then they hit you, and then they back off. The Lord may hit you upside to head to get your attention, and then he backs off a little bit. He says, hey, did I get your attention yet?

No? Boom! How’s that? And so, kind of like the guy’s playing football and this guy roughed the other guy and ref those down. That flag is a 15 yard penalty. He says, you stink. He said, another 15 yard penalty. How do I smell now? So you see, there’s always something going on. So he lost his family in his possessions. No pity there. He was afflicted and he got no pity. Wife turned on him, got no pity. His friends turned on him, got no pity.

Who is the man? To be pitied. I want you to realize that one of the people that really needs to be pitied is a person who has a profession, but not a person who has a profession. but not a possession. You see, you can be a professional in a lot of things, but not possess the most important thing. Did you know that there’s a lot of preachers in this world and they profess to know God, but they don’t know God?

Pity that man. That man needs to be pitied. Because, see, he will talk like he knows the Lord, but he doesn’t know the Lord. Do you think there’s a lot of people like that? Think of all the people that go to church and they believe that because they do this, they’re gonna possess eternal life. But you and I know that you can’t possess eternal life just because you go to church and you try to do what’s right because we know you can’t earn it.

But people profess that they know the Lord, that they love the Lord, and yet they don’t know the Lord, because they do not possess eternal life. The key is that you must know Christ as your Savior, you must trust Him as your Savior as your only hope of going to heaven. So you see with them, pity the man that has no salvation, pity the man that doesn’t have the Holy Spirit, pity the man that, not permitted to walk with God.

You know, one of the greatest things I have enjoyed in my 51 years since I trusted Christ as my Savior is, I have salvation to live for 51 years, knowing that I can’t today or in the future ever go to hell. You don’t have to pity me. I possess the most important thing in all the world. I have the Holy Spirit of God living within me. That is a great possession. You see, I’m rich, I’m very rich. I have something that I cannot lose.

A missionary one time says, a man is no fool who gives what he cannot keep. They gain what he cannot lose. Once you trust that Christ is your Savior, and as you give whatever you have for the cause of Christ, you can never lose it because you’ve laid up treasure in heaven that you will have for all eternity. I have the free gift of eternal life. How much you think that’s worth? How much is that worth? Can you put a price tag on it?

Are you a rich man tonight? Oh, our woman? Are you rich? You think about it, what you really possess. But there are people who profess to have what you have and don’t have it. And they’re going to find out one day when they leave this world that they never really trusted Christ as their Savior. And how dark of a day that’s going to be. When they knock at the door and says, Lord, Lord, have we not? And he says, depart from me.

I never knew you. I don’t know you and you don’t know me. Yeah, you can pity a lot of people, but I pity that man. To pity those people that will spend an eternity separated from God. You see, there’s a lot of people that are living today, living without life. Wouldn’t God call it dead man walking? You see, without the Lord, you’re a dead man. You’re a dead man. A dead man, but you’re walking around. You’ve got human life.

You’ve got the physical life. But you don’t have eternal life. You don’t have that quality of life that comes from God. So there’s a lot about this present life you cannot enjoy because you don’t have eternal life. Christ says, I came to give life and to give it more abundantly. We call it the abundant life. Not just that I live, but I have abundant life. Something that’s really, really, super, super good. I… Have Christ. And if you don’t have Christ, you don’t have eternal life and you don’t have life.

I want you to look at this scripture with me. Look over there in the book of Colossians chapter 3. The book of Colossians. Look all the way over there in the book of Colossians. But look there in chapter 3. It says in verse 1, If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. where Christ siteth on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. In get verse 3, 4 ye are dead and your life will wait a minute.

If I’m dead, how can I have life? You and I are to be dead to this world but alive unto God. You can’t really begin to live until you know Christ as your Savior. And he says, if any man will lose his life for my sake and the gospel the same shall find it. But if you live for anything else then you’ll lose your life. You’ll lose the purpose of your life. So there’s a great lesson here. There’s people who, you see, they possess eternal life and there’s those that do not possess eternal life.

And the difference is night and day. It’s a dead man walking. You see, when I did not know Christ is my savior, I, I was a dead man, separated from God. But now that I know the Lord, I have been united with the Lord, never to be severed. So all the people in the whole world that are not united to the Lord, don’t have eternal life. They’re all alone. They’re separated from the Creator that made the heavens and the earth.

And there’s really nothing there. It’s an empty shell. It’s not knowing who you are, what you are, where you’re going, what you’re doing. And it leaves them totally empty. And all they have is just here and now. But you and I that know Christ is our Savior. See, we’re living for eternal things. Look what He says there in verse three. For you’re dead and your life is hid with Christ in God. Now get this in verse four. When Christ, who is our wife?

He is our life. So without Christ, they do not have this life. There’s a life that you and I are able to live that the lost man cannot live. He cannot have the peace of God, the joy of the Lord. He can’t have it. It only belongs to his children. The fruits of the spirit like love, enjoying peace, and long suffering gentleness and goodness and faith, and faith, and temperance, all those are things that belong because they come from the Holy Spirit of God that lives within us.

So you and I have something that the world does not have. 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 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 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.