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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 Bibleignmenistries.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 Ephesians, the book of Ephesians chapter 1. Ephesians chapter 1, I want you to know that how God sees you is a lot better than how you see you. And he really knows you. But we often talk about the identification truths, meaning that I was crucified with Christ. I was buried with Christ. I was risen with Christ and I ascended with Christ. I want you to look in Ephesians chapter one and verse three, where he says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.

Now that means that when we get to heaven, we’ve already got the blessings waiting on us, but in God’s eyes as though we’ve already received them because you see God can’t lie. It’s in concrete. He doesn’t make mistakes and he doesn’t stutter. So what God says, it is true. Even though we may not see it that way, we see us down here in this ugly old world and we often talk about the pie in the sky and we’ve got to live in the nasty here and now.

But I want you to notice this in the book of Ephesians in chapter one, it says in verse 14, which is the earnest of our inheritance, which is the down payment. In other words, the Holy Spirit, that was promised by Jesus Christ to his disciples that he would ask the Father and the Father would send the Holy Spirit. So when you and I trust Christ’s Savior, according to verse 12, talking about Christ, in whom ye also believed, and that’s why he says, in whom ye trusted after that, you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, And whom also, after that you believe you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.

So we have the Holy Spirit that seals us in Christ. And so where Christ is is where we are. Because God sees us in his Son. That’s why when God sees us, He doesn’t see us having our righteousness. He sees us having the righteousness of Christ. Because He has given to us His robe of righteousness. We’re made as perfect as righteous as God. And so he makes a statement that you and I, even though we’re saved by grace, we were also determined by God, ordained by God to bring forth good works.

So we look there in verse 10 of chapter two. In verse 10, he says, for we are his workmanship. In other words, God saved you by grace. It was his work, not your work. If there’s anything, this verse ought to show. It is his work, not our worst. It’s not by our worst list any man should boast, so all that we had to do is accept what Christ did for us. He gives us eternalDenver. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus.

That means your new birth is because you’re now in Christ. You and I will never fully understand this until we get to heaven. And then how much your letters? No, I don’t know. But look what he says, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Now does God want us to produce good works? Yes, God has ordained you to perform good works.

God is not willing that any should perish, but will some people perish? Yes. So people can deny and defy the will of God. A child of God, you may have eternal life, you’re going to have it when you die, but you can defy the will of God for your life. God may want you to serve him, but he gives you a free well, a choice. He does not make us trust him. He does not make us serve him. But he will cause you to suffer the consequences of your decisions.

So there’s verses that talks about you do not mock God. What does it mean to mock God? It means don’t make fun of God. Don’t think you can play games with God and get away with it. as though you can sin anything you want and get away with it. No, you can sin and you can choose whatever sin you want to commit. But God is also free to judge you any way he sees fit. And it might be to take you home before your time.

Now he could let you just live down here and be miserable. But God will chase in his children. So you know that, you understand that. And when he makes a statement here, unto good works was God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. So I believe that it is the will of God that we walk in good works. It’s the will of God, it’s what God wants us to do. Now, if you will, look there in chapter three of Ephesians.

Chapter three of Ephesians, it makes the statement of verse 15. Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. and earth is named. So there is a whole family of God. There are those that have already gone on to be with the Lord, but they’re still part of our family. We are down here, they are up there, but we’re in the same family. And so he says, while we are here and not there, there’s something he wants us to know.

And he says in verse 16, that he would grant unto you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man. So it is the will of God, yes, to produce these good works. It’s also the will of God that by the Holy Spirit of God that lives within every child of God, to strengthen us, to strengthen us that we might perform the thing that God has for us in the inner man.

So while we’re here in the body of flesh, we are to live in the new man, in the new birth. So that means that God wants to strengthen us and make us strong enough to do the things we’re supposed to do. Now in chapter four, it talks about the old man, the new man, a choice. It is not the will of God that we walk into flesh. It is the will of God that we yield to the new birth and walk accordingly.

So there’s things that God wants us to do. Even though God already sees the end from the beginning, we are going to be there. It’s like we often say, you know, I’ve already cheated, I read the last book in the book of Revelation, the chapter, and we win. Yet we win, we win, right, because we’re gonna get there. We’re gonna be there, but not because of anything. We’ve done, but because of what Christ did for us. But that’s not all there is to it.

There’s so much that God wants us to know and to do. And so that time between when you trust in Christ and when you get to heaven, God has something He wants us to know. He has something He wants us to do. So He makes a statement here that we are to serve a Lord, but be prepared for a battle. Now look there in verse 10 of chapter six. Finally, finally, finally my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.

Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. Now a few years ago, well a number of years ago, I was sitting in a restaurant, I had me a piece of paper, usually a bunch of napkins, and I write in scribble. And I make a few little notes here and there. And so I kept thinking about the, you know, I guess you could call it the perfect storm. Anybody ever heard the phrase the perfect storm?

The perfect war, the perfect storm, the perfect trial, the perfect temptation. It means it comes complete. It’s got everything there. Nothing’s lacking in this storm. Everything is there. All right, they don’t take much to humor some people. Am I there now? Okay, maybe I need to glue it to my face. Put a rubber band around here and put it on this ear over here and it’ll hold it right there. So, but you know, it’s very difficult for me to maintain a train of thought.

When so little can humor so many. I guess it could be kind of like, you know, the sermon I preached one time on the camel and the net. There’s a sermon. But anyway, to think for a moment about the perfect storm, you’d want to have everything just right when you think about a guy by the name of Job. Wouldn’t you say that that was the perfect storm? I mean, there was nothing lacking there. He had everything go wrong. I mean, his wife, that would be just a storm in itself.

She only thing she did was tell them, why don’t you just curse God and die? Really encouraging words. What about when you lost 10 kids? That would have been a storm in itself. That some people have to go through and have to, really that would be a great trial of affliction. What about if you lost all of your cattle, all of your wealth, you know, your money in your bank in the stocks and bonds and you lose all of that all at one time.

That would be in itself would be a pretty good sized storm. Or if you lost your help, and he even lost his help, everything seemed like happened. So it’s as you go through life, we get bits and pieces of this as we go. But the perfect storm for all of it they hit at one time. Have you ever thought that sometimes when you go through something It seemed like when it rained, it pours. It seemed like it’s just not one little thing or two little thing.

It seemed like a whole bunch of things go wrong, all at the same time. Well, maybe God is simply given to you the perfect storm. I mean, something that tries you in every area of your life, all at once. Wouldn’t that drive you nuts? Aren’t you glad that God sometimes, he tempers some of that And just let you have one little bitty thing at a time. Isn’t God good? And you’d be surprised how you still will complain about it.

And remember, if you don’t pass the test, what do you got to do? You got to take it over. There’s a God in heaven that’s given us test. And we have to pass the test, or we have to take it over. Some of God’s children have never gotten out of kindergarten. They’re still in kindergarten, playing in the sandbox. Now, if I was to tell you, how old is Ryan? Seven years old. If I told you that me and Ryan went out and played a game of basketball, I tore him up.

Tore him up, I mean I made basket after basket. I just beat the tore out of him. Would you be impressed? Why? Because my opponent is an up to the standard of my professionalism. Now, you’re not impressed because of the competition. I mean, my opponent wasn’t worthy of me. I was so much better than little Ryan. But one of these days Ryan’s going to grow up. He might even be seven foot tall. He might even play professional basketball. Then if he comes back to play me and now I’m 95 years old and he’s 20 years old.

Plan for the you know the pros. Now I would have a challenge on my hand But if I beat him, you see, your judge not by you, you had a problem. You had a battle. But what was the quality of this battle? What was the quality of the battle? I was, I haven’t seen rest of it, but they were playing golf today. And they had these big name golf players up there.

Now, if I was playingtheless with them and they beat me, big deal, all they did was be an old man, because there’s no competition there. If you want to be rewarded when you get to heaven, you’re going to have to have a decent-sized battle, something that really challenges you. So I sat down one day in a restaurant and I wrote an outline of what I considered The ultimate warrior. It’s in my book. The ultimate warrior. I just want to give you parts of it for right now because of something I want to say.

A soul winner is an ultimate warrior, but I want to leave off the word soul winning for right now. I just want to talk to you about being an ultimate warrior. Because the ultimate warrior has got to look for the ultimate war. War, he doesn’t have anything. I mean, little skirmishes, oh, little skirmishes, but you want a big battle. Something that really shows what you’re made out of. As they say, what kind of metal do you have? I mean, do you have, you know, a piece of rebar down your backbone?

Or a piece of spaghetti? What are you made out of? How tough are you really? So that’s why when they have competition, they have all these football teams get out there and knock each other around and try to see who’s the best. And then they keep on going until they finally get to the Super Bowl. And hopefully they’ve got two worthy opponents. And that’s what all it is, knocking out everybody until they get to the two. That’s the best.

And then they get in there and go at it. Because you see, they know that if you’re going to win, you’ve got to have a worthy opponent. Well here you are, God wants to reward you. And He got the perfect, the ultimate weapons for you to fight with. already designed where you’ve got the ultimate enemy, the devil, the devil. And you are going to have a battle, and now I’m not talking, somebody asked one time. I said, do you believe in the devil?

He said, I sure do. Married a sister. Well, anyway, the ultimate warrior needs the ultimate weapon. The ultimate weapon, according to Division 6 17, is the sword, which is the Word of God. So God has given you the ultimate weapon you need to fight the ultimate enemy in the ultimate battle. Isn’t God good? He didn’t tell you to fight a battle and then give you nothing to fight with. That would be terrible. Also, he says, the strength, which is the Holy Spirit.

So he gave you a sword, the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit. And if you know how to use them and let the Holy Spirit use you, you’d be surprised. You may have a chance of winning. So it’s not like that God didn’t give you what you needed to fight this ultimate battle. It’s just you didn’t use it. what God made available. The next point I brought out was the ultimate warrior needs the ultimate mission. What does God want me to do?

I don’t want to do some little bitty thing. I want the ultimate mission. I gave this one. One of the greatest things that a man can do in his whole life. Alright what is the great thing that God has? He gave us the great commission, the great command. Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature and lo and behold, I am with you always, even until the ends of the earth. So we have been given a command.

That is a big command. You mean how long do I have to do this? I mean, do I do it six months. The Mormons do it for two years. They go on a mission trip, pay their own way, and they don’t get nothing, no help from back home, and they got to go and off on their own, a crown around the world and live for two years and do that and they come back. Every one of them. And here we are and nobody wants to do that.

Nobody’s prepared, but they do that. And they reach millions and millions and millions of people. God’s people have the truth. And most of them cannot commit themselves to it, because the devil defeats them, defeats them. And I think it’s something we need to ultimately think about. The mission, which is to preach the gospel to every creature and in every generation, is that I’m not responsible for the next generation except to reach the people of this generation that’s supposed to reach the next generation.

So my responsibility is to reach in the trained people who can reach the next generation. You see it’s one thing to win people to Christ, it’s another thing to reach people who can reach somebody else and then somebody else and somebody else. That’s what makes church so important because you learn the discipline that you need. To serve the Lord. The message. I mean, if you got a mission, you ought to have a message. And the message, of course, is what God given to us to go into all the world and preach the gospel, not just anything that you want, but the gospel, the gospel itself.

And the gospel, of course, is the death, Berlin resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is what He did for us so that we could be justified by faith. And so the ultimate warrior needs the ultimate enemy. Now I know you may think your wife is the ultimate enemy. You may think it’s your husband. Sometimes you might think it’s the kids, or is that boss you or you? No, those are only people that the devil uses. Sometimes you need to think what’s behind this?

What’s behind this? Have you ever noticed sometimes that little woman is just so sweet, nice and kind? All of a sudden she can turn mean and ugly. Just that quick. Now, don’t blame everything on the devil. I don’t want you to do that. Sometimes she is just blaming me. And then sometimes you can’t figure them out. But you have an ultimate enemy. One that’s worse than all the others. So your boss may be bad, but he’s not the ultimate enemy.

And your wife and kids make, and husband, but they’re not the ultimate enemy. I’m not your enemy, but there is an ultimate enemy that’s behind the scenes that you cannot see. And the Bible describes him as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour because he’s hungry as can be. And he devours you and you’ll notice in the book of Galatians in chapter five, he says, love one another and be kind one to another and do not devour one another.

So whenever Christians are devouring each other, just because the devil is controlling one of them. And that’s why I say he’s using you to devour somebody else. So there’s a devil behind the scenes. That’s why you need to always realize the devil wants to use me. And you need to understand God wants to use me. You are the one that decides who gets to use you. Do you want the devil to use you? All you have to do is find out if he’s using you Remember, the devil always gets you to say and think and do that which is wrong.

The Holy Spirit cannot lead you wrong. The Holy Spirit can’t lead you contrary to the Word of God. So the Holy Spirit will always lead you to do right. And if whatever you’re doing isn’t right, surprise. Somebody’s got control of you. And see, they can’t control you unless they can get control of that old sinful nature of yours. I told you this, the only reason you can catch a rat with a piece of cheese is because there’s something on the inside of the rat that likes cheese.

The reason the devil can use sin to catch us with and lure us with is because we like sin. We have something on the inside of us that likes to sin. Call of those sinful nature. Well, doggy. And three of those things is revealed in the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. So sin is what can always be traced back to the thing called pride, pride, p-r-i-d-e. We want our own way.

Before you ever trusted Christ is saved, the Bible says, according to the course of this world, we all walked that away. We all had the same kind of a mind of rebellion to God and children of rebellion, children of disobedience. That’s how God sees us because we were lost. All we have was a sinful nature and we walked according to the course of the world. Now that you know Christ is your Savior, God doesn’t want us to walk according to the course of the world.

He wants us to be different. So, he says the ultimate warrior needs to fight the ultimate enemy. And the ultimate enemy, chapter 2 of the book of Ephesians, in verse 2, talks about the prince of the power of the heir, which is a reference to the devil himself. So we have the ultimate enemy. Every one of us has the same enemy. And that’s why we’ll almost all of us fight the same battles, not the same time at the same time, but in the course of our life you’ll be surprised that you will have fought the ultimate battle.

God is going to reward us when we get to heaven because of the battles you’ve had to fight. Now you may lose a little skirmish here and there, but you don’t have to lose the war. Always keep getting up when the devil knocks you down, always get back up. When you seem like you’re defeated, always get back up. Always keep walking. The next thing I wanted to mention to you is the ultimate warrior needs the ultimate battle plan. In other words, you have to have a way to fight the devil.

One is God says you don’t fight the devil according to the will of the flesh. In other words, it’s not with bazookas and AK-47s and hand grenades. You can’t fight an enemy, you can’t see like that, because it’s a spiritual warfare. So God says that He wants us to fight the battle, but it’s got to be fought and you’ll find these verses like this according to His will, according to His will. In other words, according to His will is according to His word.

So when you study the Word of God, you’re learning and getting some ammunition to fight the battle. When you don’t study the Bible, you don’t have time to study, you don’t have time to memorize, you don’t have time to go to church, you’re not getting the ammunition you need to fight the battle you’re going to face. You will have the battle, like it or not, it’s not according to your choice. God is going to allow you to fight the battle.

you’re not. Here it comes. Now it’s not more than what you could bear had you served them and studied and prepared. But when you don’t you fail. And that’s why a lot of God’s children live a defeated Christian life. So he says this. He says, now if is the time to be saved and now is the time to fight. Doesn’t it say in the Bible that now is the accepted time, salvation now? Well, if now is the accepted time, now is the time to witness, now is the time to serve.

It’s now. Most people, it is so easy to dedicate your life to the Lord which is out there and hard to dedicate the day which you do have. So you gotta keep that in mind. So the ultimate warrior needs a ultimate battle plan. God has a plan, a way that will work. How for you to stay strong. He says, do not, do not be conformed to this world because you can’t fight his war according to the course of this world.

You’re to be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove or discover. What is that perfect and acceptable plan that God has for you? So there is something God has for you and it will work. And you can fight the battles and you can win if you want to win. But if you go through life and you always feel down and defeated and nothing ever works, that’s your own fault. Do right. Find what the God talks about on how to fight the battle.

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.