Bibleline Radio Show – 2013-08-06 – The Believer\’s Standing And State Pt.2
Transcription:
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
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. How do I know I’m saved? God says I was. Where did he, when did he say? He told me in his word. He that believed on me, had to have a lasting life. How do I know I have eternal life? God said I did. He said if I believe it, I can’t have a lasting life.
Is that good enough or not? All I’ve got is his word. Isn’t that good enough? You don’t trust your feelings. And you’d be surprised how many people they trust in their feelings. No. faith in the facts that can produce the feelings. But when you don’t have faith in the facts, don’t you dare trust the feelings. Number two here, the walks of the saint do not attain these progressively. In other words, me being a child of God is not the result of me progressively, little by little, growing in the Lord.
Because now I go to church and I give money and I try to live wholly, doesn’t help me to be one eye-oater, more a child of God than I was 50 years ago when I trusted him as my Savior. In that little old living room that night when I trusted Christ as my Savior, I was every bit a child of God. Now, as time has gone on, I have grown as a Christian, but I am still just as much a child of God.
I’m not more of a child of God. I am a child of God. That’s my position. I mean, just because I’m, you know, I’m 68 years old. I am really my dad’s child now. I’m no more my dad’s child today than I was the day I was born. Just as much, then is now. That don’t change. So your position in Christ doesn’t change. Now, let her see, they are not given on the basis of human merit. In other words, your position in Christ, your salvation, is not the result of anything that you do in this life.
That’s the first three that leaves you on the negative side, but it’s not. What it is, look there, let her deed, they are obtained completely at the moment of salvation. This is your position, your union, your standing. Happens the very moment you trust in Christ as your Savior. They are realized only by divine revelation. How do I know all this is true because of divine revelation. God’s work reveals these truths to us. When I got saved, I didn’t have a Holy Ghost fit, I didn’t jump shout, hooten, hollering, kick my heels together and lightning bolts, striking children up down the spine.
Nothing happened. I thought this is a total of blood. Cause I’ve already heard about the, oh, look at these feelings in the line. Nothing happened to me, but it didn’t work. Cause I got a trust in these feelings. Like this boy and this girl were kissing. And he had children going up down to Spine. Her popsicle was dripping. Let her f. They are eternal and never changing. This relationship is true of every believer and visible only to God. The only one that can see that you are truly a child of God is God.
I want to believe Peter Amato has trusted Christ as a Savior. Savior. All I have is His work and He ain’t God. God knows whether He really believes it or not. God knows if you really have trusted Him as Savior or not, but I can lie to you and you can lie to me. I can deceive you and you can deceive me, but none of us can deceive God. So being saved is only because God says so in way you know you’re safe because God said so.
Then that doesn’t change. Nobody can fool God. So… Are you saved? Do you know for sure you’re going to heaven when you die? You do not look at anything in your life as the evidence that you’re saved. God pity those preachers that give you a list. 10 ways on how to know you’re really saved. And they give you a list of all these things, and how to know you’re really, well you’ll love one another. You’ll want to pray. You’ll want to go to church.
You’ll change your life. And they get all these things. They just gave you a list of all these things. They just gave you ten reasons to doubt your salvation Because if you don’t do them I must not really be saved and then they’ll have some evangelists come in and he’ll convince them and half the church And half the deacons and everybody else that you’re not really saved because if you were really saved you were not gonna think this way You won’t do this I Must not really be saved Glory salvation we had 50 people come down to the front and got saved today It was the deacon, two elders, piano player, Sunday school teachers.
No, all he did was get everybody to question and to doubt their salvation so he can get them resaved again and he’s a great evangelist. I’ve been an evangelist. I know what they do. And I don’t like it. I despise it. It’s not the Bible. Only way you know you’re saved is because somewhere along the line, did you or did you not accept Jesus Christ and Him alone as your only hope of going to heaven. And once you did, you are saved.
You have eternal life. Look at${ the next statement. The state depends upon the walk of man. So after you’re saved, how are you doing? So you’ll find out especially like in the Thessalonians that talks about that I may know your state. I may know your state. That means the condition that you’re in. You may have eternal life, you’re going to heaven when you die, but what is your spiritual condition today? Are you walking with the Lord or have you gone astray?
Are you moving forward? Are you moving backwards? Moving backwards is where people call by your backsliding. No Christian can ever backslide and lose salvation. None. Nobody has ever been saved twice because the only way you can get saved twice is you got to get lost after the first time you got saved and you can’t get lost so how can you get saved again? You can’t. Impossible. See people make up all kinds of things but if you rightly divide the word of truth anything that God tells you that you have to do concerning your works then that has to be referred to service But it’s about what God does for you, then that’s grace.
That’s what God does, that’s gift. So salvation is one thing, service is another. God wants all those born into his family, that salvation, to serve him. But nobody serves the Lord till you’re saved. And if you are saved, you may serve him and you may not serve him, but you’ll be disobedient and God may have to chasing you because of it. But it is the will of God that all of his children live like his children. Act like it, talk like it.
So your condition, your day by day, how you’re doing, well that determined by your walk. Your communion, where are you? You may have like I talked about in Sunday school, you have union, but you may not have communion. You may not have the unity. How can two walk together unless they be agreed? It’s not like I’m going this way, God. If you want to have fellowship with me, come on. Uh-oh, wrong way. God says, this is the way I go and it’s a holy walk.
And if you want to walk with Him, you come over here for the Lord is and you can walk with God. So having things in fellowship is like two fellows in a ship. You’re getting along and you’re walking together and there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s purpose. So look at the next statement there. Number three, your state, your walk is determined by moment by moment. It means why you’ve been sitting here. Did you realize why you’ve been sitting here? You could have been thinking some holy thoughts?
Isn’t it wonderful? And you could have been thinking about your husband. You could be thinking about your wife. You could be thinking about your boss. You could be thinking bad thoughts while you’re sitting here. So the state could change from moment by moment, but aren’t you glad that regardless of the state that you may be in, the condition spiritually you may be in has nothing to do with your standing in Christ. That can never change. So even though since you trust the Lord, there may be a lot of fluctuation.
You may be up here one day and down here the next day. Up there the next day and down here the next day. There’s some Christians there up here and here’s the line of normal. And journey is high above the line of normal that a Christian goes. When he goes down, he goes that same distance below. And then when they come up and they go down, what God wants you to do is learn how to walk on an even teal.
Some Christians they are so emotional. Oh, they saw this one thing. And then the very next day they’re pitiful. They’re all excited. They’re pitiful. That’s not being very sober minded, not stabilized. or the thing is going to happen in life? Yes, you may not walk around all day with a smiley face on, but neither should you walk around all time with a, like you’ve been baptized in lemon juice. There’s no charge for these extra little things that I’m looking, but look at the next statement.
They relate to the believers walk on earth. This is your state, your condition, how you’re doing, and that’s why you should always be checking yourself spiritually. How am I doing spiritually? Now, I know I’m a child of God, and I know my Lord wants me to walk a godly walk. How am I doing? How was my thought life? Do I watch my tongue? Do I act and talk and sound like a Christian should? Now, if you don’t want to be rebuked all the time, I hope it hurts so much that you correct it so that you don’t have to be.
And sometimes nobody will say anything because they know that you’re going to say something back to them. Because they know if they can see that little splinter coming out of your eye, you probably can see the two before coming out of their eye. Letter B, they are temporal and constantly changing. The condition day by day, it’s always, did you know you can sit here and have joy in fellowship and you can walk out that door and something goes wrong and somebody just cause you to break down the weep.
Sorrow can hit so quickly. Depression, discouragement, so quickly. Everything can be great and you can get one phone call with some bad news. Or sometimes just the phone ringing can do it to you. I wonder who that is. I don’t know what’s one of the kids. And we automatically think bad. And sometimes we’re going on past experiences. Number three, they are understood by the concepts of spirituality and her carnality. In other words, understanding and discerning where you are spiritually is determined by your spirituality.
Where are you spiritually? Can you detect in your own life when something is wrong? If some dirt got in your eye, can you tell it? Yanki, did you know you had an arrow sticking out of your eye? I didn’t know that. Duh? An arrow? Did you know there’s some Christians that they can do so much wrong and it doesn’t even bother them? Like they’re insensitive. They’re not teachable. They’re not pliable in God’s hands. Their whole body is one big scar.
There’s no feelings left. You need to say sensitive that when the Holy Spirit prompts you, you can sense it. To talk to somebody or to do something, to read a certain scripture, how you answer things, all these things are so important. Look at letter D. They are necessary for all of your growth and service is your discernment. That’s why you read and studied the Word of God because every day is different. Tomorrow might bring some good news and it might bring something bad.
Tomorrow you may lose a job, lose wealth, you might lose health. Who knows? Nobody knows tomorrow. But spiritually, if you’re strong enough between you and God, you can handle it. But if you’re weak, they can destroy you. The problems of this life are designed in such a way that if you do not serve the Lord with joyfulness of heart, He said He’ll put a yoke of iron upon your neck until it destroys you. Look at this. After a disrelationship affects our mind, emotions and our body.
It affects it. So this is your walk. Remember I was teaching in the book. Ephesians. The first three chapters talks about the walk of the believer. So you’re supposed to walk according to your wealth. It’s just like in this life. Aren’t we supposed to live according to our wealth? In other words, according to our wealth. In other words, according to the means you have, I know people who always live above their means. You ever know anybody like that? Sooner or later, you’re going to get trapped.
You’re going to be caught. And you’re going to find out that you can’t live here. If the income is only here, we call that indebtedness. And this is why you ought to do everything in your power, not to have a lot of debt that you can’t pay because to do so, you’re walking into a trap. by which the devil himself is able to manipulate you. And remember, the borrower is servant to the lender. And so you have to keep those things in mind and watch yourself.
Don’t over extend yourself. Look at the next statement. Unconfessed sin breaks our communion. Two things I put under that. Broken communion breaks our walk. Broken walk breaks our fellowship. Confession of our sin forgives us of our sins. Forgiveness of our sins restores our communion. Our communion with God restores our walk. Our walk with God restores our fellowship. I’ve heard so many people say, first John 1-9 is just a rebound. And if we confess our sins, it restores your fellowship.
That is not what the verse says. It says, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanses from all unrighteousness. If you don’t restore the walk, you can’t restore the fellowship because the fellowship is according to your walk. It gives you the communion that you have between you and the Lord. It’s a place to begin to walk. He can forgive you for what you’ve done. But if you don’t serve Lord and walk with the Lord, the fellowship is not going to be restored.
God didn’t break the walk. God didn’t break the fellowship. You did. And only you can restore the walk. God doesn’t restore the walk. You break it, you restore it. And that means commune with the Lord and you talk to the Lord and you admit to God, I have sinned against God. I won astray. I did this. Confess it means to name whatever it was. And then you walk with Him. He doesn’t change. God’s still there. He’s always there.
Did you know that the perfect will of God lies as close as the next decision you make? You can have the perfect will of God for your life by the next decision you make. and you can have not the will of God by the next decision you make. So in your walk you’d be surprised how quickly you can deviate from the will of God and how quickly you can get back to the Lord. If you fall in the mud what should you do?
Later, just lay there, just lay right there in the mud. That’s what a lot of Christians do. No, first John 1 9, you can get about it a mud. But the walk isn’t restored to restore the walk. Now you start walking with God and doing things in common with God and having fellowship with God. And you’ll find out that the walk is restored. The fellowship is restored. And that’s something that you do. This is underlined. Look at it. Confession of our sins and of itself does not restore fellowship.
If the walk is not restored, then the fellowship is not restored. But God wants us to walk with Him. He wants us to talk to them. It’s just like Mama says, son take out the trash. I will not. Nobody’s going to be happy. So where Mama’s not happy, nobody’s happy. And so the kid may get a whooping and the kid may say, mama, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Will you forgive me? Yes, I will. And everything’s wonderful. No, it’s not.
You still haven’t took out the trash yet. Take out the trash. You still got to be obedient. And a lot of people, they say, well, just, it doesn’t matter if you’re sin, just confess it and everything’s fine. No, it’s not. Just like I said before, if I take my arm and I lay it up here and I take an ax and I cut off my hand. It’s a rather dumb thing to do. Sure was, but I didn’t need it right now, so I don’t care.
Well, later on, when I try to tie my shoes, try with one hand. You know, I need my hand. I made a dumb decision. I confess it to you. It was sinful. It was wrong. And God says, I forgive you. It doesn’t put my hand back. Becoming alcoholic and ruining your kidneys. Lord, I’m sorry. It was wrong. God said, I forgive you. He didn’t give you new kidney because of it. That what? because you can best the sin, you can ruin your marriage.
Lord, I was wrong. I doesn’t restore the marriage. She might have already done a left marriage. Somebody else, don’t fall into that false spirituality trap. There’s consequences to sin in this life after you trusted Christ as your Savior. Consequences. And some of those things are irreversible. You can’t change it. That’s why they always say, you know, don’t burn the bridges behind you. Some people say, burn the bridge. Well, I’ll be telling you what kind of a bridge. Look at the last statement down here as we close.
And I brethren, as your position, that’s who you are. You’re a brethren, a child of God. Could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, that’s your condition. But as unto carnal, that’s your condition. You’ll see, you may be spiritual, you may be carnal. But that’s your condition. That’s not your standing in Christ. That is your condition That’s your state. That’s how you doing Even as in the babes as your condition in Christ Because you’re still a babe now your child of God, but you may not be a Growing in the Lord you can go from a babe to a man of God.
I Fed you with milk not with me for hitherto you were not able to bear it neither yet or yet able for your yet carnal That’s your condition for whereas there is among you in the Indian and strife and divisions. Are you not carnal and walk? It’s men. So can a Christian walk as a carnal man a lost man? Yes, and can you get better and fill with envy and hatefulness and jealousy and envy all those wicked things? Yes, you can as a Christian But that does not affect your standing.
You’re still a child of God But because of the condition your moment by moment spirituality or lack of it thereof, God your heavenly Father, it might have to chase in you or He may bless you. But that’s on a moment by moment walk with the Lord. That’s why just because I walk with God yesterday, I still got to walk with God today. And tomorrow you still are supposed to do right tomorrow. True? And the next day you should still do right the next day.
It’s a day by day, but is it possible just because you’re spiritual today, you’ll be spiritually minded tomorrow. You may not be You can be fleshly minded. You can turn on God and ruin your whole testimony and ruin your life Is that the will of God? No Look up here. This is you and me This is sin We all have sinned God loves us, but he hates our sin and And for you and I, we have to pay for that sin.
And because the payment for sin is death, we’re all condemned. That’s why everybody dies, because everybody’s sinned. Now to go to heaven, we have to be perfect, as righteous as God, and none of us are perfect. We are all sinners. That is our position. That doesn’t change. That’s the first birth. That’s when I was born into this old world. my position on the center. I can’t change that. This end represents Jesus Christ. He’s God in the flesh. He came into the world because he loves us, but he hates what we do wrong.
And our sins separates us from him. You see, I’m unholy and he is holy. Therefore, we can’t walk together. We can’t have fellowship together. We can’t commune together. We’re separated. So what Christ did was He came into the world and because He had no sin didn’t have to die, He took hours. All the sin of all the world upon Himself paid for it, came back from the dead. And God said that if you are anybody, would be lead that He did it for them, God would give you a new birth.
So He doesn’t change the first one. He gives you a new birth. This new one comes from God. That means God is the Father. You are the child. And God has no sinful nature, so the new birth has no sinful nature. If it has no sinful nature, it cannot sin. If it cannot sin, it cannot die. That’s why once you trust Christ as your Savior, you’re a child of God without a sinful nature that cannot sin. You said, but where do all my sin come from?
That old guy. This other one. So, Yes, I still have him. He was not eradicated. God didn’t change him, didn’t convert him, didn’t do a thing for him or with him. Give me something brand new and I am going to heaven when I die. Only perfect people get to go to heaven. That’s why you have to be perfect in Christ. If I went to heaven with this guy, he will sin in heaven just like he sinned down here. So God said he can’t go.
That’s why you have to be born again into God’s family gives you a new birth Born of God and you get to go to heaven whenever you die and this Never changes. It’s who you are. So God says Because of in this life Well, the short period of time to live I want you to live here the way you’re going to live there Up there see I will live without sin so God says I want you down here to live without sin But you say, I got this over here, I know, and that’s our problem.
And that’s the battle that we go through in our Christian life. But this one never does sin. And since God won’t let him up there, then God says, don’t let him control you down here. Makes sense to me. Let’s pray, shall we? Every head bowed and every eye closed, no one looking around. If you’re here tonight and you’ve never trusted Christ as your savior, I urge you to do so. You see, you don’t have to promise God to stop anything.
You don’t have to change your life. You don’t have to have to promise that you will change your life or to stop some particular sin. That’s not the issue. Christ paid for your sins. You don’t have to promise God how you’re going to live. That would make your religious hypocrite. And then what if you don’t keep your part of this bargain? then you’ll question whether or not God ever saved you to start with. So just forget all that junk and realize God loves you.
He paid for your sins and He will save you and give you eternal life as a free gift if you only trust Him. Believe that He did it for you and God that He would save you and you can go to heaven whenever you die. In just a moment I’m gonna ask for a raise of hand. Raising your hand does not save you. It only lets me know that what I said made sense to you and I’d like to have prayer for you in closing.
So he has bound nice clothes no one looking around. Is there anyone else that says yes that made sense to me and tonight I will trust Jesus Christ is my Savior. In preach I’d like you to pray for me in closing. Would you just slip you in a very quickly and burrap a down general law? Right where you are if you’ll believe it God will save you and give you the free gift of eternal life and he’ll never cast you out and never lose you.
The best news at all the world I pray that you will. Our Father, we thank you so much for this time together. We’re thankful for the truth that you’ve given us in your word to rightly divide so that we can understand these things. Bless each one for being here. Give us a good week. And Father, different people are going to have different things ahead of this week. I pray you’ll be close to them. And that Father, many things will happen and it reveals where we our spiritually.
And I pray that it will challenge and motivate us to become spiritually-minded, stronger, mighty in spirit. In Christ 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 home page 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, believing that the Lord is coming soon and just keep looking up.
