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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.

I’m supposed to talk on fathers. How wonderful they are. How perfect they are. You even got an amen on that one. The woman I take going, oh me, oh me, oh me. But anyway, I want you to take your Bible and turn to the book of Luke and chapter 1. Luke, chapter 1, There was a man that was going to be born into the world. God had something that he wanted him to do. And the reason is because homes and families were falling apart.

We’re living at a time now when there’s an awful lot of damage being done in our home. But the root cause of America’s problems is one, pastors and churches are silent and passive. On the subject of what has actually been taking place politically in our country, what is marriage as though nobody knows? God says between a man and a woman, period, that’s it. God’s the one that defines it, not government. And that’s where it ought to stay. And we have here in the book of Luke, where it makes a statement in verse 15, for he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink.

He shall be filled or controlled by the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb. Many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah. He says to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just to make ready of people prepared for the Lord. One of these days all of us are going to meet the Lord.

And part of our responsibility is to prepare people to meet the Lord. Believe it or not, the main responsibility of all fathers is to prepare their children to meet the Lord. going to meet the Lord. And of course, the wife’s responsibility is to help the husband fulfill the responsibility of preparing the children to meet the Lord. Now, if every family did that, everybody would be prepared to meet the Lord. That day will come. But we don’t always do everything that we’re supposed to do.

And sometimes people don’t know really how to punctuate things. Let me read this to you. An English professor wrote the words on the board, a woman without her man is nothing. As the students to punctuate it correctly, All the men, the males in the class, they punctuated that sentence and said, a woman, comma, without her man, comma is nothing. And they went and sat down. Then the women went up there and they took the same sentence and they wrote, a woman, colon, without her comma, man is nothing.

It depends on perspective. The women see things one way and the men, of course, see things another way. It’s amazing how two perfect people can get married. And then have all those problems afterwards. I mean, how can that happen with two perfect people? I was going to write a book, The Myth of Marriage. You know how you hear? And they lived happily ever after? And they lived happily ever after? Have you met somebody like that? I asked somebody one time, I says, of all the families you know, the married people out there, who would you want you and your wife to emulate?

I mean, who do you see out there that is that family that you really look up to? And he sat there and he said, okay, well, what about you, ma’am? They couldn’t think of anybody who had a family like they wanted. They wanted a family where the man and the woman actually love each other and love their children, love the Lord for the right example. You’d be surprised how much damage there is in the home. I’ve married a lot of people over the years and I’ve joined them together in holy deadlock, wedlock.

And I’ve often wondered what’s happened to all those families out there. This one preacher, he had a man come to see him. He says, preacher, he says, if you make a mistake, is it right for somebody to profit from your mistake? He says, no, son, that’s not right. You shouldn’t profit from others’ mistakes.” He says, okay. He says, no, last year when you married me and my wife, you’d yell, could I have that $25 bank? They asked a couple of little kids, what is it like to be married or how do you decide who to marry?

Everybody’s always fighting this issue. This one little boy, this 10 years old, says, you’ve got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like if you like sports, she should like it that you like sports, and she should keep the chips and dips coming. Now there’s a smart kid has insight. Another one that was aged 10 says, no person really decides before they grow up who they’re going to marry. God decides it all the way before, and you get to find out later who you’re stuck with.

Anything about how you found it out, You know, two people conned each other. You conned them, thanking the hey, I’m the king, that knight in shining armor that you’ve been waiting for all your life. And she believed you. And then you knock her judgment. Why should you knock the judgment? Look who she married. But some people just never get it. And they say there’s such a thing as a generation gap. And it’s difficult in the days in which we live for all families to get everything together.

And children sometimes don’t really understand what’s going on. And they see a lot of disruption in the home and rebellion in the home. And mom and dad’s hollering and yelling and all that, you know, and the kids and all the fighting. But during a quarrel with his parents, young Michael, he cried, I want excitement. adventure, money, beautiful women. I’ll never find it here at home, so I’m leaving and don’t try to stop me.” And with that, he headed toward the door.

His dad got up and followed right behind him and turned around and says, Dad, I mean, don’t try to stop me. My mind is made up. I’m going. He said, son, I’m not trying to stop you. I’m going with you. It It would be great if everybody did everything right, but they don’t. But you know, raising children is not the easiest thing in the world. One day, this mom, she had her little boy sitting there in the church with her.

The preacher had gotten in. She knew it was going to be difficult for him to sit that whole time while the preacher is up there talking. Halfway through his sermon, she leaned over and she says, son, now you keep quiet now. keep quiet and very still. Because if you move or say anything, the preacher will forget where he’s at. And they’ll have to start all over again. The little kid never moved a muscle.

You’ve got to know how to work with children. Or you can do it like the other couple of them. You make one sound that will take you outside and kill you. I’ll never forget one day, whenever our little children, they always sit with us in church. Our kids when grown up, they sit with us in church. It didn’t matter how small they were right there. We taught them the sit still, be quiet. But it’s difficult for kids. So, when they would mess up, I’d have to get up, take my little boy, or my little daughter, and take them outside.

And then I would talk to them about how much God loved them. And then I would show them how much I loved them. And then I would, yes, you mean you spanked your kids? Yes, I did. because I loved him. And they would cry and then I would bring him back into the ceremony. After a while, they stopped all of that. They’d sit there in church and behave themselves. We had a young man by the name of Tim King.

I led him to the Lord. He had a little boy and his little boy, they were sitting right down here and he started messing up. Just wouldn’t sit still, featured him, caused a disruption. He was a deacon in the church. His little boys over to mess it up. So he reached down there, he got up his little boy. This is doing the church service. Search walking down there. Everybody in the church knew where that boy was going. The boy knew where he was going.

He got across and started across the back of the auditorium and the little boy in daddy’s arms. He hollered out as loud as he could. Y’all pray for me. Everybody erupted. Y’all pray for me. See, kids need to learn, you know, that prayer, well, it didn’t work in his case, but everybody needs to, and even today, you’ll read in the newspapers how that there’s people that are killing each other. men are killing their husbands. I mean, their wives. I had it right, I think.

Wives are killing their husbands and people that are splitting up and the jealousy and the second and the third wives are, it can lead to chaos. It can lead to murder. In this one moment, she was sitting on the stand and the prosecutor was looking at her. He says, ma’am, when you poisoned your husband with that cup of coffee. As you set there at the table with him, did you have any sense of guilt, sorrow, pity for the man?

She says, well, at one moment I did. Yes, I did. At one moment I did. He said, well, what was that? When he asked for the second cup. There’s people that are doing each other in. Sin is a terrible thing. It gets into the home and It’s like an octopus, it gets into everything and it ruins. And so there is a price to pay one day a man. Driving down the highway saw this lamp on the side of the road.

He stopped, he rubbed the lamp and a genie popped out. The genie says, ask any question you want and you’ll have it. He says, I want a job that nobody else can do, something that’s impossible, something that’ll really make me shine. I want that job. The genie says, okay, poof. You are a housewife. You gotta be careful what you’re asking for. It’s one of the most difficult jobs in the world. I never really understood all that my wife went through.

Now we’ve been married, we just celebrated a week and a half ago, 52 years. So I’m not a novice. I’ve been married for a little while. And it looks like a keeper, like we’re going, no, hanging there for us. But we didn’t start off that way. There was a lot of problems. You say, well, what caused you to be able to stay together for so long? What, well, I guess one man says, he was celebrating his 50th anniversary. Well, what do you owe it to?

He said, well, after 25 years, we took a trip to Israel. And it’s been 25 years ago. I’m going back for you need to understand that. Listen, if you don’t learn to laugh in marriage, you’re going to cry a lot. You can have a lot of sorrow. Lot of things that happened between a man and a woman is something that you will laugh about later, maybe. and kids. Kids do the stupidest things. But that’s why they need parents who love them and understand them.

You’re not going to be the perfect parent. There are no such individuals, but marriage is a wonderful thing. Have you ever found out or wondered why you can’t teach a young boy or a young girl how to run a lawn mower or a vacuum cleaner? But they can drive a car, nothing flat. When they’re 16 years old, that complicated, 3,000 pound machine, they can figure it all out. But they can’t figure out how to run a lawn mower. They don’t know what it’s for.

Or a vacuum cleaner? You see, part of being a good parent is teaching the children how to do things, how to be a a good wife or how to be a good mother, a good husband, a good father. And they learn that because of what they see, not just what they hear. But mom and dad are supposed to be like a little bit of heaven on earth. Most homes are like hell on earth. I came from one. My daddy was a drunk.

No, he was not an alcoholic. He was a drunk. That’s part of the words that God uses. Alcohol don’t sound so bad. My dad was a drunk. My mom worked in a beer joint. She sold it. My sisters, they drank it and I preached against it. But it’s where they came from out of the depression. It was the only thing they could do to try to make a living in their mind and dug wells and made a little bit counterfeit money, but not much.

And his name was Shine. So there was a lot of things that I never learned from my mother or my dad. And I wound up living with somebody else because of the hardness of the times. Now, I mentioned this earlier, but I eat oatmeal three or four times a week. I’ve been doing it for 30, 40 years. I think it’s one of the best foods you can eat, but It didn’t always start off that way. I’ll never forget when I sat down and I sat all the cereal.

My mom says, how do you like that oatmeal? I says, it’s pretty good. It’s a little hard to get down, a little dry. She said, well, how long did you cook it? I says, you pose a cook it? I, to this date, I don’t cook meals. I never asked my wife to preach. Don’t ask me to cook. Now Peter here, he can cook, he just make and do everything. I don’t know anything he can’t do, but I don’t cook.

That’s what I got a wife for it to do those things. I don’t wash clothes. I don’t even know how to, one time I tried it. Everything came out pink. I had to just give that up, just too costly. Just some things I don’t want to know how to do. But there’s things that makes a family a family. If the man will just love the Lord so that he can love his wife, And see, if you don’t love the Lord, you’re not going to love your wife right.

The wife needs to love the Lord. So one of the things that helped us over the years, 50 of them, 52, is because we both love the Lord. And when you love the Lord, the closer you get to the Lord, the closer you get to each other. But most families today, they don’t love the Lord. It’s all about me. Make me happy. Please me. Now, if you learn to please the Lord, then God says, if you want to please me, I want you, please your wife.

I want you to please your husband. But see, there has to be something on the inside of it that motivates you, that helps put all these things together. I remember a lot of times when I go to the Georgian, especially at Christmastime. I love Christmas with the kids, the grandkids. They all get over there at my daughter’s house, and we sit around we have a lot of fun I don’t know why there’s must be something to it I’ll sit down and the little lounge chair there and I am so comfortable and the grandkids have come in there And I don’t know why they know I don’t have much hair up there but for some reason rather they like to play with my hair and They will twist it and They’ll try to make it stand up straight They put roll it, put bobby pins in it, and

I’m sitting there and they’re decorating my hair. And I said, don’t do that. I don’t want you to mess with my hair. Whatever you do, don’t touch my hair. Well that don’t work. They climb up on both sides and they both are just pilling in and then they got to get the camera and take a picture. I said, I know this is going to be on Facebook. It’s going to be on Facebook. Nothing is safe today. Big. And one day, a little abbey, she got up there.

And she’s playing in my hair and says, Abby, don’t pull my hair. And she says, Abby, don’t pull my hair. That hurts, hon. Don’t do that. It hurts. And I’m being honest. And I’m afraid that she’s going to pull out what little I got left. And she’s pulling my hair. Abby, don’t pull my hair. She said, pop, I’m just trying to get my gum out. Now, you haven’t had that happen? God pity you. But there’s all kinds of things that make a family.

But you’ve got to learn how to laugh at things because some things, they make you cry. They’ll make you weep. How would you take your Bible and turn to the book of Matthew and chapter 5? Real quick, Matthew chapter 5. All that was just my introductory remarks. Now we’re ready to get into the message. Matthew in chapter 5, I want you to notice something here in verse 13. You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has lost its savor, where would the shall it be salted?

If it is henceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trod under foot of men, I want you to think about something just for a moment. You remember years ago when they used to have this little commercial camanera, where’s the beef? You know, it’s a little old lady. Where’s the beef? I mean, she had to make a million dollars. It was everywhere. everybody was saying it. Wherever you went to a restaurant, where’s the beef? Where’s the salt?

Where’s the salt? You see, you need a man with some salt. That means to have a spine made out of steel, a man that got some salt to him. You see, you need salt in the man himself to know what he believes Because salt, see, is a preservative against decay, against something being rotten. Salt is what every man needs to be. Christ says, you are the salt of the earth. But just stop and don’t think about the world. I want you to think concerning yourself.

Here you are, you’re a man. Are you the salt of your family? Are you the preservative of your family? Are you that which holds it together and you try to get out of your family anything that would cause your family to decay or to rotten? Are you trying to preserve that which is good for your family? You’re the man. Be the man. You are the salt. Where’s the salt? Where’s the man with some salt? I’m afraid there’s not too many men today that have the salt.

Not only for himself, because, see, if you’ve got some salt for yourself, then you want to make sure that you don’t say and do things that destroys your own life. Why would you do that? Because if you’re not around, you can’t protect wife and children. So you want salt and you get salt from the Lord. You get purpose from God. You get a mission from God. You get drive from God. Motivation from God. You get it from the Lord.

The Lord is what every man needs because the be the leader every man needs to be. He needs to know how to love, how to protect, and how to provide those three main things. How to love, how to protect, how to provide. That means if you can’t do it for yourself, and ladies, always look for the man that’s got some salt, is what he’s doing going to preserve his life, in the sense that he is a good man, a godly man, a man that walks with God and seeks to do what’s right.

You see, when you marry that man, you’re going to put yourself under his authority. And what kind of a man is he going to be? Is he a man that’s going to be able to preserve the home, the family? Is he going to try to preserve those children and see that those kids are taught correctly and that they have some salts and preservative in them? You see, it’s the Word of God that preserves us, that keeps us. Our minds are fixated upon the Lord.

the Lord with all mine heart, lead not unto thine own understanding in all my ways, acknowledge God, and he shall direct thy paths. And so you and I, we need the Lord. And we need to know the Lord because we’re the salt of the earth. But did you know it also makes a statement here in verse 14? You are the light of the world. You’re the light of the world. See, light dominates, salt dominates. The man is supposed to dominate the home, not the wife, not the children.

Wife and the children are not supposed to run the home. The man is supposed to run the home. Be the man. Be the man. Take leadership. Assume responsibility. God gave it to you, but how you rule, how you lead is so important. That’s why God says that we’re supposed to love our wives. And He talks about when men get right with the Lord, their hearts are turned to their children. Do you love your children? I love my children. I want my children not only to know the Lord, I want my children to walk with God.”

Now they may not, but don’t let it be because Daddy didn’t try to be the best example he could be. At least you make that effort. But don’t give up on him too soon because you see, don’t judge him under a teenager and totally everybody is. Give him a little time, like another 20 years. You’d be surprised how they come around and say, You know, maybe mom and dad wasn’t so stupid after all. You know, the longer I live, the smarter my mom and dad seems to be.

Because they also know you’re going to die soon and they want the inheritance. Be nice to your kid because they might determine the nursing home you go to. So you see, one hand washes the other. But you lies that position that God has given to you and I to be the leader in the home that that we ought to be. God says, you don’t take a light and hide it under a bushel. A man should not take that which God’s given to him and hide himself under a bushel.

No, you’re the head of the home. Act like it. Think like it. Study the word of God so you can be everything you ought to be to the wife, to the children. You see, your wife needs to know you love her that much that you’re willing to fight, to be the leader, and the protector, and the provider. 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 2 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 by the line 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. 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. Friends, 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.