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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 concluding message of this teaching will be a blessing to you and your family.

You want a sharp, powerful life? Then have a sharp, powerful message. Something that people need. You know that is one of the things that brought me out of my shell. You realize that when I was young, I was shy. You’re not buying that, huh? But it’s the truth. I didn’t want to be around anybody. I like being a loner. If I had my way today, I’d get myself a cabin on the side of a mountain, up on the backside of Alaska someplace, and live all by myself.

I don’t know what I’d do with bed even. But knowing what I know, knowing what I know, I can’t afford to do that. Because the knowledge that I have of the Word of God says, I’ve got a message. Somebody needs to hear the message. message of how to have the free gift of eternal life. There is no greater message than that, the greatest thing in the world. I know there’s a lot of wonderful people in this old world, the greatest of all time and the greatest of this of all and greater than it, but my measure of a man is Christ himself.

I want to be like a lot of people, but I want to be more like him. Dr. Hudson once said, if when I die, I’m going to be just like the Lord. Why can’t I be more like him now when I can be the most good? I love to hear him when he said, I heard him say that about three or four times. I’ve been in a lot of meetings with him. He would say some of the little jewels that I’d just hang on.

I loved them. He was a great, godly man. But the measure of the man that you want to be like is the Lord Jesus Christ. He ought to be your hero. He ought to be somebody you want to be just like. He’s the Lord. Walk in him. Imitate him, say so in the book of Galatians and also in the book of Ephesians. Be like the Lord. He’s also to be my might, means my power. Every man mature in Christ has to have something that’s in him that gives him the power to do what he does.

Now in the book of Colossians, you only find that one reference to the Holy Spirit, and if you’ll look there in verse 8, you will see that one reference in the whole book about the Spirit. Now there was a man, a paphorous who evidently became a fellow soldier with Paul and a co-labor and a co-prisoner. And he was no doubt at one time he was the pastor of this church. And he led a lot of people to the Lord and taught them a lot of things.

And now he’s over there with Paul. And so he’s told Paul, hey, we got a problem in our church. We got problems. and people don’t think Jesus is all we need. They think there’s more truth out there and more wisdom out there. And there’s this Gnostic teaching. You see, there’s people who claim to be an agnostic. It means to be without knowledge. And I agree with them. They are without knowledge. But there’s some people who say, I don’t know, you don’t know, nobody knows, and nobody will ever know, and you don’t know anybody that’ll ever know, nobody knows!

And then there’s others who think, well, I don’t know, but there might be some who do know, but I don’t know, and so I can keep looking and searching. I want to tell you there. I’m not an agnostic. I’ve settled it. I know there’s a God. I know what I am. I know who’s I am. I know where I’m going when I die. I’ve got answers. I know that I have eternal life. I know that I’m going to live with the Lord for all eternity because I know the word.

The word tells me all I need to know. The word nastik means knowledge or no. I know not without knowledge. There’s some people who brag about how much they don’t know. But here I want you to see this because I I think it’s important. You see here in verse one, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God and Tamotheus our brother to the saints and the faithful brethren in Christ, which are at Colossae. Grace be unto you and peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now when it says God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, down in verse six, it makes his statement, which is come unto you as it is in all the world and bring forth through as it death also in you. Since the day you heard of it and knew the grace of God, our Father, God in truth. In verse seven, as you also learned of Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is for you a faithful minister of Christ. In verse eight, who have declared unto you your love in the spirit, you’ve got the father, the son and the Holy Spirit, all three right there in these couple verses.

Because you see, there’s something that God wants us to know, and that is two main things. One has to do with what God wants you to be filled with, and then God wants you number two to walk with. You see, the whole chapter is broke down into two simple little illustrations. One is doctrine and impractical. A doctrinal is that you may be filled, that you may be filled, but filled with what? Well, that’s what we’re gonna look at. And that you may walk worthy.

See that chapter three and four, the other one chapter one and two. So as you read chapter one and chapter two, you will see what God’s talking about being filled with. Why are you complete? What hath God done? And what does he want you to do? because of what He hath done. So that’s why you studied the Word of God. Now, there’s the Judaism, the law keepers. There were people that were trying to put them under the law. We saw that in the book of Galatians, and also in the book of Acts.

Well, they were trying to do the same thing here. Trying to get the people to observe days and months and years as though that’ll make you more spiritual because of the days that you honor. You’d come to church on every Sunday and not honor God, not be right with God. Oh, there’s also others that was touched, not, and taste not. Abstain from all this and don’t touch this and don’t, don’t, don’t. The Christian life is not made up of what you don’t do.

It’s made up of what you do. The Christian life is positive, not negative. It’s all the thing. If I feel my life doing all the thing God wants me to do, I don’t have time to do all the things I’m not supposed to do. I haven’t got time to get in trouble. You ever say something in wonder whether or not should you have said that? But a couple of things, let me just kind of give this to you because it’s very simple.

And as you go through the book, because Christ is the fullness of God. In creation, and you’re going to see how that Christ is everything we need in creation. He’s everything that we need in redemption. He is everything that you and I need concerning the church. And he’s the answer to everything that we have concerning the heresies of the world. And they come from a lot of sources. I have done a little studying of the Bible. I’ll try to stick it close to the Scriptures as I possibly can, but you’re supposed to know the Word of God that if I do teach air, you should know it.

True? You should know what is truth and what is not truth. The preacher does not have the corner on the market concerning truth. If you have a Bible, you have the Word of God and you’re to study the Word of God so that you’ll know what God’s Word has to say. Let me just mention this to you. The visible form. Of the invisible God. That’s who Jesus Christ is. You see, what we see in Christ is the invisible God.

What we see in Christ is the air of all creation. You see, creation came from Him. And He is the air of all creation. So all creation goes back to Him. He is the air of all of it. Everything goes back to Him. He is inherited at all. There’s a sermon in it or someplace from the book of Hebrews in chapter one. In him, the universe was created. And he is before the universe. Jesus says, in him, the universe coheres, as he says, held together.

Christ is the head of the body, which is the church, the firstborn from among the dead. We have so much to be thankful for because we know the Lord. There is an anything greater to know than God. Whom to know is life eternal? Says so in the book of John. He is eternal life. If you have the Son, you have life, eternal life. And that’s how you get to go to heaven whenever you die. Now there’s something that I wanted to show you here in the book of Colossians and you got to it yet, but we’re working on it.

But I wanted you to see this. You notice there in verse nine, where it says, verse nine, for this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to desire that ye might be filled, filled, with the knowledge of his will and get this in all wisdom. There’s that word all again, all wisdom. Do you think God just wants you to know just a little bit of his word? And you can claim ignorance.

Ignor’s this blessed, I didn’t know what God wanted me to do. Well, God bless your little peeping heart and spiritual understanding. Don’t think for a moment that there’s greater spiritual knowledge out there by conjuring up some spirit or diving into some angelic teaching or mystic teachings and new age junk, stay away from that slop. You have all you need right here. And then he says here in verse 10, that you may walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing.

So the two things that I said that separate the four chapters, the first two is that you would be filled, as he says here, with the knowledge of his will. And then in verse 10, that you might walk worthy of the Lord. So the first two chapters is gonna tell you what being filled means. And the last two chapters on how to walk worthy. Now we’re not talking about how to walk worthy of God and going to heaven. We’re just talking about how God wants us to live after we trust the Lord in this life.

and why we needed to know the Word of God. But as you go through here, you’ll find that it’s an awful lot of things, but I wanted to show you this to you. Look down in verse 16, for by Him, where is that Word again? All things, all things, all things that means is nothing left out. Nothing left out. If He has all wisdom, all knowledge, there’s nothing left out. You get Him and you study Him and you study this book, you’ll have all the wisdom you will ever need.

When you spend your time studying everything under the sun but the Word of God, it’s costing you because you see wisdom is revealed by the decisions that you make. Knowledge, you can accumulate facts and figures, but wisdom is known how to use knowledge. So he says, in verse 16, the last part of it, all things were created by Him and for who? For Him. He created it all. And He is before all things. So you see, I don’t have to wonder and imagine, I can know all I got to do is believe what the Word of God says.

Until I meet the man who’s smarter than God and smarter than this book, I don’t listen to nobody. I am sitting concrete. I don’t have to study the philosophers of the world. They call it theosophy. It means a study of God from their viewpoint. I’ve already got a book that tells me about theology. It’s right here. Look in verse 17, and he is before, and there’s that word all again. All. It’s because he in him, gl They call it theosophy.

It means a study of God from their viewpoint. I’ve already got a book that tells me about theology. It’s right here. Look in verse 17, and he is before and there’s that word all again, all. It’s because he in him, gloleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, all things that were done. done all the wisdom of the world. He has it. Why is all this so important? Well, it’s because in the last part of the verse 18, you see what he says, that in all things, all things, He might have the preeminence.

Nothing above him. Nothing more powerful. No wisdom greater. We have all we need in the Lord. Let me just, there’s others, but let me just kind of say a good time. Look in chapter two, look in verse three, in whom? In whom? Are he and you ought to on the line or circle this little word again. All the wisdom, all the treasure of wisdom and knowledge is found in Christ. When you study the book of Proverbs, you’ll hear it talking about, I wisdom hath done this and I wisdom hath done that.

And I wisdom, like a woman who has seven pillars that she builds upon and all is talking about the Lord. It’s the Lord. He is wisdom. Now, I want to give you just seven quick things in the time that I got remaining. Colossians chapter one. Anyway, look there at what he says here in verse 12. I want to give you just seven words that I think are very important. In verse 12, giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet.

That word, meat, means fit. fit to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. Here’s what God says. God is light, the devil is dark. Christ is light on the light of the world. The world is in darkness. There’s things that God knows, we don’t know. And God says men love darkness because they’re deejereval. So I am and you are, or all of us were, in the kingdom of darkness. We were living in sin, born in sin, into a dying sin, and we had no hope.

And then the light came. Jesus Christ pierced into this darkness, came in here and became a light Do anybody would look on how to have the free gift of eternal life and live forever because without life, it’s death. And so God says that when we believe we are transformed from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of lights. And now God says that when you trusted Christ as your Savior, you had been made fit to inherit the saints in light.

You got something. Christ did it all. You just got in on it because you were found in Christ. Oh look what he says here. In verse 13, who hath delivered us, there is deliverance in Christ. But who needs to be delivered? You and I do. You see, we have an old sinful body. Do you want to live in an old sinful body forever? I don’t. We don’t want to do some of the bad things that we do, but we have a sinful nature living in our body, and we do sin.

We’d like to be delivered from that. We’d love to be delivered from all the sin and the hearty, the sickness, the death, the eternal separation. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be delivered? Well, that’s what Christ did. He delivered us. And then I want you to see the word there in verse 13, and hath translated us. Did you realize that you have already been because of being in Christ translated from one kingdom into another kingdom? I trusted Christ as my Savior and that night, that moment I was placed into the kingdom of God.

God calls that a translation. I went from one to the other. And just a moment of time and that’s where I’ve been ever since. Now I’m still living in this whole world. I still got this whole sinful body and it’s getting older and older and more problems. But you see, there’s something else that’s mentioned here I want you to see. Look at verse 14, in whom Christ we have redemption, remember, if whatever we have in Christ, it’s complete. Don’t need to add to it.

So here he says, we have redemption through his blood. If I have redemption, I have been redeemed, I don’t have to have it done again. It’s already a done deal. I have redeemed, in other words, I have been redeemed, means I have been bought and paid for. Somebody else paid my sin debt. Through his blood, I have been redeemed. Did I do anything for that? that? No, he did this for me. Therefore, in my eyes, in my mind, in my heart, he should have the preeminence and everything in my life.

Think about it. It shouldn’t be a battle in your Christian life, but it should be a reality in your Christian life. Because of what you know, it affects how you live. I can say that that the knowledge of the Word of God has changed my life. And I love the last part here. The word forgiveness, I have been forgiven.

Forgiven, the reason God can’t forgive me is because He paid a debt for me. God can forgive me, but see, God couldn’t just forgive me because His law demanded I had to pay for my sin. But Christ came, fulfilled the law, and paid the debt so that God can’t forgive me as though I never committed a one. And when He died for me, how many did He die for? All of my sins, they’re all paid. And because of that, I have been what you call reconciled to God.

Well, I looked there in verse 21. you that were sometimes alienated enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled. You see, there’s God up there, and here’s us down here. And we’re at war with each other. See, God wants me to do something, and I want to do what I want to do. We’re not on the same page. We are in conflict. Sin is me crossing God. Sin is me violating His command. Sin is when I transgress a definite boundary, thou shalt not, and I did, and so did you.

We have all broken God’s law. We’ve all transgressed. So the Bible says Jesus Christ came. Took all that, nailed it to its cross, paid for all of my sins. So that when I accepted this payment, God accepted it. I accepted it. Peace. I have been reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. You know, I think it’s a wonderful thing. And then the last little word I wanted you to see, but there’s a word there in verse 22, in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy.

You see, I am going to have a transfiguration someday where I’m going to be changed in a moment, the twinkling of an eye, and caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and I’m going to be presented to the Lord. But I’m going to have on his robe of righteousness, not mine. Look up here. This hand represents you and me, the wall that represents sin. I saw this this morning, some guy did it. But see, God, He loves us.

He hates our sin. He hates what we do wrong. And the Bible says that we’ve all done things wrong. That’s why we’re all sinners. And that’s why God’s got to pour out His wrath upon us. Well, I sure wish I could make God be at peace with me. Or how can I be at peace with God? You know, there is a way, but it’s not by your works. See, to go to heaven, you have to be perfect as righteous as God.

None of us are perfect. None of us are righteous. We’ve all done things wrong. We’re all in the same boat. Nobody’s perfect. We’re all guilty. We’re all gonna die. The thing. We’re all in the same boat. Nobody’s perfect. We’re all guilty. We’re all going to die. The thing is, where are you going when you die? If you died right now, where would you go? Now, this is when it really became good news to me. Because I heard I can’t save myself.

I can’t earn my way to heaven. This hand represents Jesus Christ. He’s the Lord, God in the flesh. He came into the world because He loves us. He hates our sin because our sin separates us from him. So Jesus Christ who had no sin didn’t have to die, but because he loved us, he took all the sin of all the world and paid for it on the cross. That’s the redemption in his blood. He came back from the dead and he said that if I would believe that he did it for me, I would be forgiven of all my sins.

If I am forgiven of all my sins, I would be forgiven of all my sins. sins, there’s no sin for me to pay for. There’s no sin to keep me out of heaven. All my sins are forgiven. Not because I did something good. It’s because of what he did. He died and paid for my sins. So when I believed that, he puts that payment to my account and I get to go to heaven because you see, I have been reconciled.

Reconcile, there’s nothing between I have eternal life. And God said, He’ll never separate me from Him. He’ll never leave me. I am His forever. And so shall we ever be with the Lord. Let’s pray, shall we? With every head bowed and every eye closed and no one looking around. Would you just talk to the Lord and say something simple like this? Lord, I’m a sinner. Friend, we all are. That’s just being honest and unbiddenate. and admit it. We’ve all done things wrong.

But Christ died for you. Will you believe that? He paid for all of your sin. Not some of them. He paid for all of them. The ones you haven’t even done yet, He paid for 2,000 years ago. Would you believe He did it for you? You know it would be different if God told you to do 10 incredible, impossible things, but He didn’t. He just says, will you believe that I did it for you, that I loved you? And friend, if you’ll believe he did it for you, he said he would save you and give you eternal life.

You get to go to heaven on what he did for you. You didn’t earn it. You don’t work for it. You see, it’s a gift. God says, for by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves. It’s the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast. So in the quietness of this moment, I’m not going to have you forward, not going to Have you stand up or come forward? I don’t want anything from you.

You don’t have to fill out a card. But right where you are, would you say, yes, preacher, that made sense to me, and I will trust Christ as my Savior this morning, and I’ll like you to pray for me. Would you slip you in it very quickly and put a right back down? Is anyone at all? Just slip it up and put a right back down. Anyone at all? If you have trusted Christ as your Savior, are you studying the Word of God?

Does your life match up with the doctrine in the Word of God? Our Father, we thank you so much for this time together. Bless each one. Bless in our study as we go through the book of Colossians. Thank you so much for all you’ve done for us and for the opportunity to come together. Give us a good week. Bless each home in Christ and 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 The Bible is provided by the Bibleline radio by Dialing Tool 3, 100-576-3771. That’s 1-800-576-3771. To listen to today’s 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 broadcasts 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.