This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.

Bibleline Bibleline, here God’s word on Bibleline, 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. and 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.

Look what this scripture says here in verse three. Wherefore, I also said I will not drive them out from before you, but they shall be as thmiscorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you.” Their gods will be a snare unto you. Do you think that it would be good if our politicians knew the Word of God, that they could see down the road the results of decisions that they make? You see, they can’t see, they got blinders on.

can’t reason and that’s why it’s so important. Well we’re here in chapter 2 and verse 3. Wherefore I also said I will not drive them out from before you, but they shall be as thorns in your side and their gods shall be a snare unto you. So he sent those people that are in the land, they are going to be thorns in your side. Now, is that the only kind of thorns that you can have that can just bug you to know in?

But remember it’s because they tolerated the enemy. We’re not here to bridge, you know, from Christianity over to the religion of Islam or any other religion. And we’ve got to show them how taller we are. Now let me just mention this to you. You can take ice cream and you can take camel dung and mix it together. It really doesn’t hurt the camel dung, but I wouldn’t eat the ice cream. Do you understand what I’m saying? You can have Christianity and you can try to mix it in with the religion of Islam.

It won’t hurt the religion of Islam, but you want to see what it does to Christianity. Christianity is pure truth. It is based upon truly what the Word of God says, and you don’t mix it with anything. It is so important for God’s people to know what is right and we’re supposed to protect it. America has become, not just a Christian nation, we have become a melting pot for every religion in the world. All the religions in the world are here in America.

And it’s just like trying to build up the Tower of Babel. Everybody’s trying to become one. But we have all the religions and it just keeps on to you, melt them all down. And the next thing you know, you’ll have one main religion when you get through with it. And it probably comes out to something like the religion of humanism, man-made without a God. So little by little, it’s coming and it’s coming. Now look there in verse 10. In verse 10, and also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers, and there arose another generation after then, and you ought to underline this in your Bible, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel.

They didn’t know the Lord. The next generation down the road. Do you think it’s important to reach the kids for the Lord? They’re the one that’s going to be growing up and becoming the adults and making decisions on down the road. So yes, I do believe that’s important. But this is a generation that didn’t have to do the fighting. They didn’t see all the things that happened. They didn’t see the battles. They just heard. You see, there’s some people who have to fight for what they get.

And it’s amazing I’ve watched this over the years. You know… When you have parents that didn’t have anything, and their children had to struggle and fight to get whatever they got, they had to work work work work. Nothing given to them, they had to work and make it. Then when they get that good cushion job and that good security, I don’t want my kids to have to go through what I went through. But you know, that might be why you are what you are because you worked.

But we don’t want our kids to have to go through, why not? Why not make the kids work and struggle in order to make it? I think we have robbed a generation because we want to cushion it for them. We don’t want them to hurt like we suffer like we had to suffer. But all those things, sometimes I believe, we’re a blessing. that we learned that nothing was given to us on a silver platter. If you wanted it, you worked for it and it taught you some work ethics that you didn’t get something for nothing.

You’ll work for it. But you know, there’s a lot of people today that’s never had to work for anything. And they don’t know the meaning of the word and it can destroy them on down the road. It is so important to learn these things. Look what he says in verse 11 and the children of Israel did evil in the side of the Lord. they didn’t know the Lord, and they did evil. Then He says they’re in verse 12, they first shook the Lord.

They didn’t know Him. They did evil. Then first, they came. So whenever you do that, there is a price to pay. Now look what He says there in verse 21, I also will not henceforth drive out any before them of the nations which Joshua left when he died, that through them I may prove Israel, test Israel. In other words, you didn’t do the total job, but I’m going to use those left over people and they’re going to become a thorn in your side.

And I’m going to use them to test you. you. And so in the book of Judges, over and over and over again, Israel refused to learn. They would not learn. Things would go bad. They’d cry out to God, had sinned them a deliverer, a judge and the people would cry out, then everything’s okay. In the last 20, 30, 40 years and they’re right back at it again, just another cycle. And some people never learn. They just keep repeating the same things over and over and over again.

I want you to take your Bible and look there in the book of Luke chapter 8 in the New Testament, the book of Luke. Matthew, Mark, Luke, in the book of Luke and chapter 8. Luke chapter 8, look there in verse 7. There’s a little story given here, but let’s just talk here in verse 4. A parable about the sower, and when much people were gathered together and were come to him out of every city and spaked by a parable, a sower went out to sow, he seed.

And as he sowed, some fell by the the wayside, and it was trodden down in the fowls of the year, divided. Some fell upon a rock, and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away because it lacked moisture. Some fell among thorns. Here’s that word again. Some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it. Now here you are, and God wants you to bring forth fruit. And thorns came up and choked. Choked.

Now, when you apply this in the right way, you’ll find out that the choking that was done by the thorns are those thorns in your side that can keep you from doing what God wants you to do. She thorns can be a good thing if it’s designed to kind of hedge you in and hold you in where you ought to be. So hold your place right here and just look quickly in the book of Jose. The book of Jose.

Jose and look there in chapter 2 and verse 6. In those eight chapter two, And look in verse 6. Because, you see, I have at times when I pray for people, and I know they’re rebelling against the Lord. I pray that God will put a hedge of thorns about them. And not because you want them to be hurt, but do you want them to be pricked by the decisions that they make that are wrong, so that they may quickly return to the Lord.

because if they don’t return quickly to the Lord, the Lord may have to use some more extreme measures in dealing with them. So he says in verse 6, therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns and make a wall that she shall not find her paths. Because see, some people, they go their own way, they do what is right in their own eyes. When you do what is right in your own eyes, there’s always there’s going to be a path of thorns.

There’s going to be some afflictions that are going to hit you and hit you hard. There’s going to be areas of your life you don’t deal with because, well, you’re just doing what’s right in your own eyes and I don’t see anything wrong with this. I don’t see anything wrong with that. So if you don’t see anything wrong with it, you let it go. You don’t deal with it. When you don’t deal with it, what you let go is going to come back and get you.

It’s like a rattlesnake comes back and it’s going to bite you. It’s going to have poison and you’re going to hurt. You’ll suffer a consequence down the road of bad decisions. But yes, I believe it’s a good thing sometimes to pray ahead of thorns around somebody who is rebellious to the Lord so that it might confuse them in the direction that they’re going. They begin to question whether or not am I making the right decision. Kind of like the guy that was the prodigal son, remember who left home after he got his inheritance, He spent everything that he had, and next thing you know, he was feeding the hogs.

And he says, he came to himself and says, what are you doing? Feeding the hogs, you’re a Jew. Well, he didn’t say it quite like that. But he says, my father has hired servants, and here I am eating corn husk with the hogs. It’s the bad times. It was the famine. All of his money was gone. Everything’s going wrong. That’s a life I’ve been hedged in by thorns. And so the children of Israel were given some thorn because of their disobedience.

And you and I, we have an old sinful nature. And if you don’t keep that old sinful nature in check, he’ll be like little thorns in your side. And he’s gonna do you some damage. And you let him get out of hand out of control. And there’s a great price to pay. So go back there to the book of Luke. back to the book of Luke, in chapter 8, and look there in verse 7, in verse 7 it says, and some fell among thorns and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it.

Others fell on good ground, sprang up, and bear fruit on a hundred fold. And when he had said these these things he cried, he that hath ears to hear, led him here. And they tried to get him to explain what you’re talking about in this parable, because there were some lessons to learn. But the thing that I want you to see is something got choked. Thorns that can choke, I want to show you what I mean. Look and look in chapter 8 and verse 14.

Look in verse 14. because they said, explain what you’re talking about with these thorns. So in verse 14 it says, and they which fell among thorns are they which when they had heard go forth and are choked. See in the other verse they’re choked by the thorns. Here they’re choked with the cares and the riches and the the pleasures of this life. Can you realize that you can be choked out of a spiritual life about the pleasures of this life?

You make the pleasures of this life your goal and it can choke the very life out of you. When you live for sports, is anything Roman sports is not? But if you live for that, it can destroy you. The cares of this world, when you get so concerned about everything and you worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, it’s sapping the very strength and life right out of your life. Lord, look what He says. He says, they’re like thorns and these thorns are not just pricking you.

Ooh, that hurt, that hurt. Some of them do. But There’s another kind of thorns that robs you of your life, sucks right out of you. It’s kind of like I had mentioned before, you have some of these making churches that come to town and they got this great big old vacuum cleaner. And all they do is they put it down over a city and all they’re doing is sucking up all those people and all the churches are not really grounded.

Suck them up into that and they dump them in a nice big old building and they say, Look how we’re growing. You’re not growing. All you did is just rob other people and put them together in one location. Now it’s different if you reach those people and you want them and you trained them and you did something with them. But now you’re just capitalized on them and getting all the money from all the people. And then after a while when they’re gone and that mom and pop little stores, little churches, have all faded away, then Walmart’s going to raise their prices after they get your little mom and pops out of business.

This is nothing wrong because they can do it so much bigger and better and cheaper. And so we give them our business and the little local businesses dry up. We do the same thing and everything it does. It’s all about money. Who gets the money? Instead of people making decisions based upon truth. What’s the truth? Now look what he says. This is important, but I want you to see this. In the last part of verse 14 when he says, the cares and riches and pleasure.

You see the word riches? You mean you can be choked on riches. In the goal of your life is to make money. It can totally destroy your life because that’s not the purpose of life. In Luke 14 says, life does not consist out of abundance of things that you possess. And so you can be choked out of your life because of the cares, because of riches, and says here because of pleasures. And so because people love those things, they do what’s right in their own eyes.

They don’t realize they have just destroyed their spiritual life. All you trust Christ is Savior, you’re going to heaven when you die, but you’re spiritually, you’re dead. You’re spiritually dead. You have no life at all. You live for the things of the world and that’s where you are. That’s what you got. You have been choked to death and don’t even know it. You can’t even breathe spiritually. You don’t even live spiritually. That’s why the Baba talks about a rise out of sleep, wake up, arise from the dead, because so many of God’s people have fell in love with the things of the world and they don’t even know it.

And so they just do what is right in their own eyes. But that’s back in the Old Testament when he’s talking to the children of Israel about that. Every man did what was right in his own eyes. Do you think for a moment that Christians would do that? And they lived their life based upon whatever is right in my own eyes. Well, there’s a price to pay. So anyway, I wanted you to see that and know that, but I want you to close with this.

Look in verse 10. And he said to them because they said, well, what are you talking explain something to him. Under you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to others in parables that see and they may not see hearing they may not understand. Now the parable is this, the seed is the word of God. Those by the wayside are they which hear didn’t come of the devil and take it the way the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.

So the devil is busy. The devil is at work. We sow the seed and the devil is trying to stop the seed from reaching their ears. So he’s at work. Verse 13, they on the rock are they which when they hear, receive the word with joy and these have no root, which for a while believe and in time of temptation fall away, they have no root. No, they grow, they believe. But for some reason they just can’t take off, can’t get off the ground, they just can’t start growing.

So there’s some that lost, some believe, but they don’t grow no root. So no root, no fruit. And so that’s why he says in verse 14, and that which fell among thorns of they which when they have heard go forth and are choked with the cares and riches and pleasures of this life and bring no fruit. No fruit to perfection. See the Bible says it another way in the book of John chapter 15 fruit that remains. The only fruit that will remain is the fruit that lasts for eternity and that’s people receive an eternal life.

And so that’s why in verse 15, but that on the good ground are they win, which in an honest and good heart. Having heard the word keep it guarded, protected. fruit with patience. So you have the root and you have the fruit and you have the patience. And patience has to be learned. So you are in a sense, and I is a picture of Israel in the Old Testament. There’s a piece of land. My body’s a piece of land.

The enemy were there first. First, the enemy is here first, my old sinful nature. And he’s had pretty good run of this old physical body for all these years, for 18 years anyway. Then I trust Christ as my Savior. And God says, your body, that body verse, is the temple of the Holy Spirit, it belongs to me. That land is my land. This land is His land. Do you remember some years ago they came out with a song? This land is my land.

This land is my land. This body is His body. This land is His land. And therefore I don’t want the old sinful nature, that old man, to have possession of this body. I want to keep the old enemy subdued and yield my body to the Lord. Because if I don’t, he’s going to take it away. And I don’t want that old man to take this body that belongs to God and use it for wherever he wants to and do whatever’s right in his own eyes.

I made up my mind years ago I am. I want to serve the Lord. I have to understand my enemy. I have to understand how it works. And I hope that this does just a little bit. Look up here. This is you and me. This is sin. We all have sin on us. God says that He loves us, but He hates our sin. For us to pay for this sin is eternal separation from God in hell. But God loves us once to go to heaven and to go to heaven we have to be perfect is right.

This is God and none of us are perfect. We’ve all sinned and come short of God’s perfection. God says you cannot save yourself. There’s nothing you can do. So the Bible says that God sent his son, this hand representing Jesus Christ, into the world because he loves us, hates our sin, because our sin separates us from him. So Christ took the sin, paid for it on the cross and came back from the dead and said that if we We would believe he did it for us.

He would give us as a free gift everlasting life. And we can know that we’re going to heaven whenever we die. Yesterday I was talking to a girl at Lowe’s in the parking lot. Maybe he was then talking. Anyway he was talking to this girl. I asked her question. She said, sure. I said, do you know for certain where you’re going to go and you die? And she wasn’t real sure. She didn’t answer me right away. I said, you hesitate.

That’s because you don’t really know for sure, do you? Well, then she didn’t know for sure. I said, can I tell you something? I’m over 71 years old and in my whole life of 71 years I only had one man who came across my path that told me the truth about how to go to heaven and nobody has ever done it since. I said do you realize and I don’t know how old you are I said how old are you she’s I’m 24.

I says so far in your life of 24 years nobody has ever told you the truth about how to be sure of going to heaven. And there’s a good possibility for the rest of your life. Nobody will probably ever tell you. So the odds are you will never hear how to be sure of going to heaven in your whole life. And I says I can tell you the answer in one minute. She said, well, I got a minute. I got a minute.

I love setting them up. She was about, really, that, I asked her, I got a minute. I said, well, let me explain it to you. So I went through and explained the gospel to her. And when I got through, I said, does that make sense? She said, yes, it does. I said, right now, where you accept Christ as your Savior, she said, yes, I will. So we’re standing there in the park and not outside the loaves. And she said, I Yes, I will.

I’ll trust Christ as my Savior. I say, well, let me ask you a question. If I came into this park in about 10 years from now, and I say to you, and I ask you, I say, where are you going to go in your diet? She says, I’m going to heaven. I said, but if I ask you, how do you know? How do you know? She says, Christ died for my sins. That is the only answer that is acceptable.

There is no other answer. When you hear that you say it by, I trust that Christ is my Savior. I believe on Christ or He paid for my sins. You’re saying the same thing. But it’s so neat to know that you have a message that can change somebody’s destiny. And it was just so neat to talk to her. And so before I left I said, you got a boyfriend? She’s like a boyfriend. I says, you better tell him. The odds are nobody will ever tell him the true way of going to heaven.

He’ll never hear it. And you might be the only one that will ever get a chance to tell him. I said, you better tell him. Anyway, Christ paid for our sins. Come back from the dead and said, if we believe it, believe it, he would give us as a free gift everlasting life. We go to heaven on what Christ did on the cross for us. Good news. Let’s pray, shall we? With the hedge bow nice clothes and no one looking run.

If you have never trusted Christ as your Savior or if you’re watching by internet right where you are you don’t have to stop anything or join thing. Don’t promise nothing just be honest Lord I’m a sinner and I believe Christ died paid for my sins and I’m going to trust him right now with my Savior and friend God said if you do it will give you eternal life. Never cast you out never lose you. Best news in all the world and I pray that you will.

Father we thank you so much for this time together. We pray Lord that we understand that our bodies Belong to You. And the own man is just there to test us, and you’re using to prove us. But Father, we pray that we’ll wind up serving You with all our hearts, and yield our bodies to You as we should. And Father, we pray for wisdom and guidance and all the decisions that we need to make here in the ministry. There’s so many people that are hurting in one way or the other.

We love them, want the best for them. We ask your blessings upon the whole ministry and every person who works here, the college kids and also for those students online and they come here on Tuesday nights. Bless us in Christ name and pray. 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 Bible line 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 Bible 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 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.