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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 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 message will be a blessing to you and your family.

Today’s Sunday school lesson is on the eternal security being the gospel. And this is part three. I’ve already given you two, this is the third part. I want you to understand, call it so important, you cannot have a crack in your foundation. Everything you do in the Christian life is based upon the stability of your foundation. And if you get the foundation wrong, your house is going to be built upon sand. You will be more stable, more secure, more faithful, more unmovable, everything you ought to be if you’ve got a good foundation.

Now we often talk about salvation by grace here at Calvary Community Church, and we should. That’s what salvation is all about. But can you defend that position. You know it, you believe it, can you defend it? So it seems like sometimes we repeat things over and over and over again. Things you’ve heard most of your life, but you have to hear it, you have to be established in it, because everything else in the Christian life is dependent upon you understanding the foundation.

The scripture says there is no other foundation than that which is laid which is Christ Jesus. He has to be the foundation upon which we build. And Christ is the only foundation. He is our total foundation. And as this says in the book of Ephesians, it was the foundation that was laid by the apostles and the prophets. That That is why we’re able to build ourselves strong. You will not be spiritually mature, strong in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ if you’re not strong in the gospel.

The gospel is our foundation. That’s what puts you or places you upon the foundation which is Christ. Therefore, I believe the thing that helped me the most in my whole Christian life is my father-in-law securing me on eternal security. There’s a lot of churches, and this is the truth, a lot of preachers. It seemed like they are afraid or ashamed of one’s saved, always saved. Because it seems like it just gives people a license to sin. No, God doesn’t give people a license to sin.

People are going to sin. I would rather them go to heaven than to go to hell. So yes, we have a good, clear gospel message. That is our foundation. And so therefore I want you to look at your notes here, the first paragraph. I doubt the salvation of any man who doubts his salvation. Does that make sense or not? If they doubt their salvation, I should doubt their salvation. But I want to know why they doubt their salvation. I used to be saved, but I’m not sure anymore.

Okay, now what’s the problem? What did you have to do to get saved originally? Do you understand? Did you really believe? And whenever you trusted Christ, did you know you had eternal life? Did you know you were saved from hell? What did you believe? So therefore when a person says, well, I’m not sure anymore, why aren’t you sure anymore? What are you trusting in? What have you done lately that caused you to question or doubt? Now I really don’t care about all their sins.

I don’t like to get into it. I just know that everybody’s a sinner. But they think if they do something really bad, they’ll lose their salvation. Okay, what if you do something really small, a little white lie? You know, I just a one little bad thought. Well, I didn’t commit murder. You know, I didn’t rob a bank. What degree of sin do you have to commit to lose your salvation? So look at the next statement. He could either, one, be unsaved because he trusts his works to save him, or two, unclear because of insufficient.

doctor no teaching after salvation. Do you think that’s possible? You got saved, you trusted the Lord, and then afterwards you didn’t get grounded as you ought to. You didn’t learn anymore. You didn’t get involved and study the word of God, or somebody taught you some bad doctrine. That is possible. And so therefore you have reasons to doubt your salvation. You can doubt your salvation. But what you got to do is find out what did the person do to be saved?

And then you’ll know why they think they’re no longer saved. So sometimes yes, you win people to Christ. And sometimes you’re able to give people assurance of salvation because of what they’ve done. I never tell a person, I try my best, never to tell a person they’re saved. I say, God says, if you do this, you’re saved. God said. So it’s always between them and God. I don’t want somebody, well, I don’t know what I’m doing here in hell.

Yanki said, I was saved. Well, I just said that because Peter said that. So you don’t want your salvation dependent upon anybody or what somebody else says. That’s why you want to know what does the book say. So important. Look at the first statement here. Always question the salvation of anyone who does not believe that he has eternal life or anyone who believes he can lose it. The gospel is the good news of how a man is justified by faith alone.

Now, even today in our morning service, I will be discussing a little bit about how that you must be justified before you can be sanctified. Some people are trying to, even in their Christian life, they call it, you know, you’re being a sanctification. That means you’re progressing in your Christian life and you’re walking with the Lord. But if you’ve never been justified, you can’t even start on the road of sanctification. Because that’s for believers. You must be justified by faith first.

And that’s because you have been declared judicially righteous by the judge, by the Lord and self, by God. Look there in the little box that I have there. If a man does not believe that eternal life is eternal and can never be lost, he does not believe a man is justified by faith alone. because the only way you can be justified is by faith alone in Christ alone, nothing else. Look at the next statement. Some people believe that just trusting Wasserman will save a person and give him eternal life.

But that afterwards a person can lose their salvation or eternal life not living right or by committing certain sins. So is he really trusting Christ alone? No. Now, at one time he may have trusted Christ’s Savior. Let me ask you this. Once a person trusts the Lord and has it. And afterwards he lives like the devil. Is he still going to go to heaven? Huh? What? Yes, he is. Because how he lives has nothing to do with him going to heaven.

Going to heaven is the gift of God. It’s not of works. So you don’t use your works to try to prove that you’re saved. You’re going to heaven because of what Christ did for you. Not for what you do for him. Should a child of God serve the Lord? Yes, but not to be a child of God. Not to go to heaven, but because we are going there. There’s a lot of reasons why we should. But look at the next statement.

Well, God won’t cast me out, but I could get out on my own free will. Have you ever heard people say that? I have. If you talk to enough people, you’ll hear everything. Well, God may not cast me out, but you can take yourself out. I said, once you’re in His hands, you’re in His hands. And He says, then no man can pluck you out of my hand. Yeah, but you can take yourself out. No man can take you out of his hand.

Are you a man? Well, if I’m talking to a girl, I say, are you a girl? You can’t take yourself out of his hand. But now look what he says here in this for John 639, this is Yankee’s will. Is that what it says? No. This is the Father’s will, which have sent me that of all which he hath given me, I should lose humbl”)) Nothing. And you’re something. So he’ll never cast you out, and he’llgovtrack lose you, but would raise it up again at the last day.

If you could lose your salvation of your own free will, then Christ still would have lost you. I put this in here because I thought it was good. I even made it bold so your eyes would focus right on it. Look at the statement. What verse suggests that Christ will take eternal life away from you after He gave it to you? Because it’s the only way you cannot go to heaven if He takes it away. You say, well, if I do this sin or this sin or this sin, yeah, but if you let’s say you did it, it is God who must stop saving you or stop keeping you saved.

God has to take something away from you. you. Because the only way you can lose your salvation is that he cast you out. He lost you. It’s not you letting go of him. Being saved is he has me. He’s saving me. He’s taking me to heaven. So am I going to heaven depends upon him. Doesn’t depend on me. He’s the Savior. So what verse suggest that Christ will take eternal life away from you after He gave it to you.

Find that verse because that’s the only way you could not go to heaven if He takes it back. In other words, when He says, I’m not going to save you anymore. You have gone over the line, you didn’t send too many times. That’s not in there. Look at the next statement. very, very means truthfully, truthfully. I said to you, he that hereth my word and believeth on him that sent me, hath, present tense means right now, hath everlasting life, shall not come into condemnation.

It means that in the future you cannot be condemned. But his past, past, past tense, past from death under life. God’s already have given you the free gift of eternal life. You’re going to heaven on what he did. He says he’ll never cast you out. He’ll never lose you. He says that you will never in the future shall not come into condemnation. Do you know I can sit down here right now and I can look back over 52 and a half years ago and I can still hear my father-in-law telling me that at the kitchen table.

going over that verse or in the book of Romans in chapter 8. It’s just like it was yesterday and he would say this over and over and over again and I saw this and it made it so simple and so clear. I didn’t know a lot about the Bible but one thing I knew I knew I had eternal life and I knew I was going to heaven when I died and I knew that it wasn’t because I was good.

It was because he was. That is a tremendous thing to know. Look at the last part of that verse Ammunition. God promises that a believer shall not in the future come into condemnation. How can Christ be your savior if he has not saved you? And if he has saved you from hell, how can you go there? And once you understand it and you keep it clear because when you talk to people your bold7601 is going to be because of your confidence and And your confidence is because you really believe it.

You really believe it. And you know how to defend your position. Because a lot of people, they have a knowledge of the Bible, but they don’t have a working knowledge. The knowledge doesn’t work for them. They can’t convince somebody that’s lost to trust the Lord. And then they have a difficult time convincing a Christian who’s not certain how to serve the Lord and why they should. You see, whatever you tell them, cements it in your own mind over and over and over again.

The longer you keep doing it, the least chance you will have a doubt in your salvation or not understanding the Christian life because you’re doing it all the time. You’re always teaching somebody else. Stay at it. If you get to where you never talk to anybody, after a while you lose. Because you don’t use it, you lose it, and you become unstable. Look at the next statement. What sin can condemn a believer? And you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh hath he quickened together means to be made alive.

With him, get this, having forgiven you all trespasses. That means you overstep the boundary. You broke a law. Thou shalt not step on the grass. You stepped on the grass. And God says, everybody has trespassed. Overstep the boundary. We’ve done something we were told not to do. So we’ve all sinned against God. Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us and it took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.

Now in this one church they had a big, you know, wooden cross. They put it up here in the front. And then they had everybody in there with a little piece of paper and they wrote their name on it. And I don’t know if they put down there any of their sins but to put their name. And every one of them came down and they took the hammer a nail and they nailed it to the cross. After a while that cross had these little notes all over it, totally covered where people had put their name on it and they did this at the end of a service.

So everybody was getting up and coming down and it was representative of, you know, Jesus Christ paying for your sins. He died for you and took everything that was against you and nailed it to his cross and he paid for your sins. It’s a good illustration. I don’t see anything wrong with it. You do everything you can to try to submit it in your mind. I have a stone in my office sitting on my desk and it has, it’s a rock, just a rock, pretty rock and it has on there number one First Rock.

I got that from Lee Patton. He preached a sermon one time at his church on the first rock. When they brought to him the woman that had sinned, caught in adultery, and says, let him that hath no sin cast the first rock. So he gave out a little first rock to everybody. And so he says, when you think about that, remember, you’ve also got sin. And so you can cast the first rock if you have no sin. It kind of keeps you in perspective about not being so quick to criticize everybody else for all their wrongdoings.

Everybody fails. Everybody sins. Everybody comes short of the perfection of God. And after you trusted Christ as your Savior, Savior, He has forgiven you of all sin. Forgiveness of sins means you don’t have to pay for them. In the Old Testament talks a lot about forgiveness of sin. David talked about it. And his pension over and over again. And that was the purpose of the sacrifices they made though it never took away sin. But they were to believe in a Savior that one day would.

That’s why whenever even the woman in Samaria, she says, we’ve heard, come and see if this This is not the Christ, the Savior of the world. Christ, the Savior of the world. So they knew that Christ was going to come and save. That’s what He’s about. The next statement at the bottom of the page. The only way you could ever be condemned in the future would be if there was a sin you could commit for which Christ did not die.

If Christ did not pay for those sins and you lose your salvation, how can those sins ever be paid for? But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice forever, sat down on the right hand of God. He offered one sacrifice for sins forever. So either he paid for all of them when he came and made a payment because he says he’s never coming back to make another payment. payment forever. Now, if you could lose your salvation because you committed a sin, Christ didn’t pay for it, how is that sin ever going to get paid for?

Because he ain’t coming back to make another payment for our sins. Do you know if he had to come back and pay for our sins that he didn’t pay for the first time, he only paid for them up to the time you believe, he wouldn’t get off the cross. Because we’d keep him there. He’d be on there today to pay for what you did. And tomorrow he’d be on there to pay for what you did. And then every once in a while I’d probably commit one.

Everybody will be keeping them up like he’d never get off. But when he came, he made a payment for the sins of the whole world once and for all. For all he made a payment forever. Set down what because the job was done. It is finished. And if you lose your salvation, he died only once and he won’t die again. So you can never get saved again. That’s why even in the book of Hebrews and chapter 6, you cannot be saved again if you could lose your salvation.

If you could lose it, you can’t get it back. And you can’t lose it because it’s not in your hands. You’re not the Savior. So you see, when you trust Christ as Savior, it’s like you took your soul and you committed it to Him for safe keeping. You ever take money and put it in the bank for safe keeping? It may be safe, it may not be. But you commit yourself, that’s why He says, I am not ashamed. I’m not ashamed in whom I have believed.

and persuaded that He is able to keep that which I committed to Him. He’s the Savior. Turn your page over, page two. At the top of the page, is there one sin that Christ didn’t pay for? No, He paid for all of them, who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity. all iniquity, all sin, Titus chapter 2 and verse 14. Also, it says, be it known unto you, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by him get this, all that believe are justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses.

So whatever Christ did, it was for the purpose of you being justified. could be held against you. Anything that would be against you, he took care of so that there’s no reason why you can’t be justified. Just as if you’d never send. He paid for all sin. You see, your Christian life, your maturity in the Lord, your spiritual discernment down the road, all hinges upon the security of your own salvation. There cannot be cracks in your foundation, doubts in your salvation, not to grow strong and spiritual the way God wants you to do it.

That’s why so many Christians are shaky. They’re not as grounded as they think. And then if you really get this and really understand this, did you know it’s most difficult for you just to go to any church you want to and say well it doesn’t matter. If anything matters, this ought to matter. But see sometimes when you don’t have the The stability you think you have, any church will do, any message you’ll do. They’re not as good as but it’s okay.

The next thing you know, you’re supporting the preacher, you’re supporting their missionaries and helping them to spread a message at one time you thought was totally wrong. How can that happen? Because you’ve got cracks in your foundation. You’ve got to be solid on what is the gospel? What did Christ do for me? How can you discern, distinguish between salvation and service and grace and work, keeping the things separate? So very important. Look at the second paragraph down. A believer is justified, declared righteous in God’s sight.

Why? paid for, he has been given Christ’s righteousness. And be found in him not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness, which is of God by faith. So there’s two kinds of righteousness mentioned here, the righteousness of man, the righteousness of God. So he says, and be not found having your own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness, which is of God by faith.

So there is a by-worked righteousness and a by-faith righteousness. One that you try to earn, he said, don’t be found there. But the by faith righteousness is a righteousness that God gives to you because of your faith in him. One is free when you have to earn. The when you have to earn, he says, don’t be found trusting in your works for salvation. Is that clear or is that not clear? That’s what the book says. That’s why he also made the statement in the book of Romans in chapter 10.

He says, my heart’s desire and prayer for Israel is that they might be saved, for I bear them record that they have a zeal of God but not according to knowledge. For they be an ignorant of the righteousness of God, going about to establish their own righteousness and have some not submitted themselves into the righteousness of God. And therefore he says, Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believe it. All you need is Christ.

And He made that complete payment for our sins. Look at the next paragraph. In whom you also trusted after that you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. In whom you also after that you believed you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise that the earnest which is a down payment of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchase possession unto the praise of his glory. The Holy Spirit, God Himself, comes to indwell a person the moment he believes in Christ.

He is the earnest of our inheritance. Earnest is the Greek word which means a pledge that is part of the purchase money or property given in advance as security for the rest of our inheritance. In other words, if you have the Holy Spirit today, that is your guarantee the rest is on the way. And he can’t change that. That’s the down payment. Do you think he’ll finish what he started? And the Ephesians chapter four verse 30, when he talks about the Holy Spirit, and you are sealed by the Holy Spirit of God, and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you’re sealed until the day of redemption.

So there’s a time limit and you can’t be lost. So he saves you here until you get there. He doesn’t save you for a week or a month or a year. It’s forever until you arrive safely where God has a place for you. I think it’s wonderful to know that. Look at the last statement in that paragraph. We have the new birth now. And in heaven our redemption will be complete as we receive our new glorified bodies. As he says in Philippians 3, the change our vile bodies.

That body you got, that when you look in the mirror every day and you shave and comb your hair or put on your lipstick and ah, it just looks so pretty, God said it’s a vile body. Ugh. Could have made a little bit nicer, couldn’t he? You noticed that the older, I looked in the mirror the other day. I made a mistake. I was going, not because I looked in the mirror. I had sat down at the computer and I was looking at some of the old pictures of Ranch and some of the Valentine’s Bank with things like that that we had had years ago.

And this was back in 1972. You know, I thought, that’s 40 years ago. And I looked at those pictures when that, that’s the boy you look young. And then I looked in the mirror. These vile bodies of ours. Time is moving on and we’re getting older. And God’s going to change these old bodies. And we’re going to be just like the Lord. We have a glorified body. 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. Our 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 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 Bibleline programs, just go to our home page at BibleLineMinistries.org and click on the radio broadcast link.

If you are in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Our Sunday morning services begin at 10-30 and at 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. Live broadcast of our services may be seen by clicking on the Calvary Community Church link at BibleLineMinistries.org. Thanks for joining us on Bibleline, and now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound, and we will be changed.

Caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day, believing that the Lord is coming soon and just keep looking up.