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

There’s people that just can’t believe that the gospel is free. They can’t believe that it’s simple enough that all you had to do is trust. They want to get somehow some credit for what’s being done. So God says that no flesh or glory in His present and then look at the verse, verse 31. That according as it is written, he that gloryeth or bragged let him glory in the Lord. In other words, all the religions of the world, think of how many there are and they’re all adding something to the gospel.

And when they add to the gospel, that’s pride. They’re adding in, we’re going to help. We can do something. And God says that no flesh, no person. Now that works good in the simplicity of the gospel so that no lost man can take credit for his salvation. But look at something else. Look at in verse 18, where it says, for the preaching of the cross is to them that perish, foolishness. But unto us which are saved, it is the power of God.

What makes the gospel foolish? Is it because it eliminates the efforts of man? And now he explains what he means by this statement. He says, if the princes, the nobles of this world had known what they claimed to know, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. See there in chapter 2 and verse 7, but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory, which none of the princes of this world knew for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

So now, when it comes to serving the Lord, I know that salvation is free, even Ephesians to a non-not of works, lest any man should boast, or any man get credit, any man get glory. God gets all the glory for our salvation. But you notice that as I read this, everyone will say, yes, but, yes, but man’s got to get some glory in here somehow. And so they said, well, you’ve got to have this changed life. I would venture to say that over the years, the preachers who correct me and tell me that I have this easy believerism, I always thought it should be easy.

I mean, Christ did the work. And all I have to do is believe it. So what’s hard about getting saved? It’s not. It is easy. But it’s easier for people if they clearly understand what you’re saying. But if they don’t know what you’re saying, it’s hard. When you add works to it, now you’ve complicated it tremendously. It means you’ve opened up a whole new can of worms and people can’t get it. That’s why I understand this statement and always remember that I gave it to you at the beginning when I started.

Believing on Christ is not a commitment to serve but a decision to trust. You have decided to trust the Lord to save you. If you had to be saved by committing your life to Christ, that means you are trusting your performance. You get then the credit. You helped. That’s pride. And there’s anything that God hates, it is pride. So now once you trust Christ to save you, aren’t you glad that you don’t have to deal with pride anymore? It’s all gone.

Well, doggy. you have trusted Christ as Savior and you’re born into God’s family, you’re have eternal life and God will never cash right, you can never take credit for your salvation. God did that. But now for your life that you’re going to live. Is it the will of God that we as His children Serv him. Yes. But there’s a lot of people who will not serve the Lord. So that must mean that they weren’t really saved. Is that what it means?

No, it means you’re disobedient. It means you’re a rebellious. That doesn’t affect your salvation because that was based upon what God does. Now, after you trust the Lord, God has promised things to those who will serve him. Not good what he says during verse 9 of chapter 2. Chapter 2 in verse 9 says, But as it is written, I have not seen nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that are saved.

No, it doesn’t say that. This is though that love him. Can you be saved and not love the Lord? Yes. You were saved because God loved you, not because you loved him. God’s word tells us over and over again about how we should love God, how we should love one another. It’s not automatic. We don’t automatically love each other. Some Christians even hate each other. I admit a lot of those. Christians can still get upset with each other and argue with each other and do all kind of thing.

Christians can do all of this. That doesn’t affect their salvation though. But God promised certain things to those that love Him. And if you will love Him, Here’s what God has done. God has chosen to save those that trust Him. And then there are those that God has chosen to bless in a certain way, rewards you when you get to heaven if you love Him. But you don’t have to love Him. And if you don’t, well then you’re not going to have the blessings of this life like you should.

You’re never going to have the joy and the peace that you could have had. You’re not going to have the rewards in eternity that you could have had. So in verse nine, the things which God has prepared for them that love. So God has prepared something different. I don’t know what it is. I don’t care what it is. I just want it. And therefore, I believe that if I serve the Lord, I believe God will have to keep His word and God will do what He says.

Now hold your place here and look there in the book of Romans. The book of Romans, Romans in chapter 8. Romans chapter 8, you’ll remember there’s a verse that everybody claims as their favorite verse. Favorite verse in the book of Romans. Chapter 8 verse 28. Understand in verse 28, and we know that all things work together for good to them that saved. No, that loved God. So say, you can be saved and not love the Lord. But there are things that God will do for those that do love Him.

But then He tells us something that’s wonderful. He lets us know that regardless of anything that happens in life, nothing can ever separate you from the love of God. See up here, He’s talking about us loving Him, but you look down here in verse 35, who shall separate us from the love of Christ. Always remember this, when you talk about God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, they are all three equally God. Neither one of them are less God than the other one is God.

You know like God the Father, well he’s more God than God the Son and he’s more God than God the Spirit. No, they’re all three equally God. So when the Bible says for God love the world. You know that also means that Jesus also loved the world because Jesus is God and the Holy Spirit so loved the world because the Holy Spirit is God. God so loved the world that He gave it only begotten Son but the Son loved the Father and the Son loves us because the Son is God.

So the Holy Spirit indwells each one of us because you see the Holy Spirit is God and so I have God living inside of me. But now look what he says here in verse 35, who shall separate us from the love of Christ, tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword, at his written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long. We are counted as sheep for the slaughter, nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that had loved us.

You see how he loved us, hath loved us. Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. Now because of this great love that He has for us, that God says, I got something special for you if you love me. And I’ll prepare something special if you love me. And in the Gospel of John, he talks about if you love me I will reveal myself to you. I will love them that loved me. You mean he doesn’t love the other?

No, I’m going to love you in a special way. But what he’ll be able to do for you, what he’ll be able to do to you, how he’s going to reward you in heaven. So does it make a difference? But you see, all these things are based upon choices. If I was a Calvinist, I would think everything is predestined and I don’t really have a choice. But God has chosen to give us a choice. And He says, not everyone will believe on Him, few of these that are mighty, and few of these that are noble, and few of these and more of the others, but it’s only because they choose to accept the Lord.

See, people that are rich, most of them probably think that they don’t need the Lord. I will someday and they put it off and I don’t know what in the world I would have done with my whole life if it hadn’t been that I know the Lord. It has really, and they keep writing things about, well, if you really believe it, I’ll change your life. Well, buddy, it did change my life. I am not the same guy that I used to be.

Believe it or not, you know me now, but you should have known me. No, you shouldn’t have either. But we have, and I have been changed, but the change is not what saved me. It doesn’t prove that I am saved because I’m a preacher. So even if a man was to have a three-piece suit and he stood up in this pulpit, I’d want to ask him the question. If I had never met him before, I said, Sir, where are you going when you die?

Well, I’m a preacher. What’s that got to do with anything? That doesn’t mean anything. Well, I’ve seen them in the choir. That doesn’t prove anything. I have nothing to do with proving that you’re saved because well, I just put a check in the offering plate. Well, what does that prove? That has nothing to do with you going to heaven or hell. Can you do all those things and still go to hell? Can you be safe and not do any of those things to go to heaven?

Yes. But see, some people just don’t get it. They don’t get it. But look what he says here. We are more than conquerors through him. That love does. And get this in verse 38. I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor death nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Whether you love Him or you don’t love Him you are loved with an everlasting love, a love that cannot end and nothing can ever separate you.

This is eternal security at its best. Nothing can ever cause you to be separated from the love of God. And he’s talking to believers, not lost people. Now look there in verse 28. Yes, we should love the Lord because of what he done. But see, that is given to you as a choice we choose. God chose to give us a choice. And he says that he would save all of those who choose to accept Christ. Christ, and He’s chosen to reject all of those that reject Christ.

But He’s also promised things to those that will love Him, that will serve Him, will follow Him. Now look at what He says up here in verse 28. He says, for we know that all things work together for good to them that love God to them who are called according to His purpose. Now His purpose is revealed down there in the last part of verse 29, where He says that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. See, the reason He made salvation free is so that they could have brethren that would be just like the Son.

God wanted the Son to have brethren just like Him. And this is why even in the book of Hebrews in chapter 2 it says where He is not ashamed to call us His brethren. And the only reason is because we have been made pure and holy like the Son. but it was not by our works. He gets all the honor, all the credit, all the glory. And so this image that he talks about here that we would be just like the Son because of what the Son did for us, then he tells you how he predestinated.

What did he do? So in verse 29, for whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son. Our new birth is in the image of the Son. It has no sinful nature born of the Father. We are children of God. We were are not at this present time in our practical life just like him as people would look upon us. But in your new birth, your new birth is in the image exactly of the Father.

And he said, you have been created, the new man, created and holiness and righteousness. This says in the book of Ephesians. But now, note it. He makes the statement in verse 30, more over whom he did predestinate than he also called. God has predetermined before the foundations of the world that all those that believe on Christ would be made into the image of his son. That’s the reward that the son gets among many brethren. So there’s going to be a lot of people God chose to do it this way.

He made it salvation as a gift. He made it free and gave to you and I the freedom to choose. And so he says that he has predetermined to save all of those that believe. But how can you believe in whom you have not heard? So the gospel is preached. And in the book of 2 Thessalonians in chapter 2 and verse 14 where he makes a statement, we’re until he has called us by the gospel. So when Christ was lifted up, he said, I will draw all men unto me, but he draws through the preaching of the Word.

And yet he says, no man can come unto me except the Father, draw him. But how does the Father draw people to the Son? And that is by the hearing of the gospel, this love story. This story that we have is the most powerful story in the world. It’s a love story. And when we tell people how much God loves them. Remember I told you when I went down into the leaves down into the jungle there and I got a chance to talk to a couple people.

When I told them this truth that Jesus would rather die than live without you having a chance to go to heaven. They got tears in their eyes just that quick. And I don’t know if it was the way I said it or if it was that truth. When you stop and think He would rather die than live without you, having a chance to live with Him for all eternity. See without Him doing that, you had no chance, you had no hope.

No man could save himself, not even help. So Christ died just to give us the chance. Now some people think that Christ died only for those chosen ones that He picks and they have no choice in the matter. They have have no vote. And the one that he didn’t choose, they don’t have a vote either. Nobody chooses anything. It was God did all the choosing and all the saving and you had nothing to do with it and you don’t get to go to heaven.

You automatically go to hell and God didn’t do that. That’s not what he said. That’s not what he did. And so in verse 30 when he says, then he also called but he calls by the gospel. So the gospel, we were told to go into all the world and spread the word and he that, hear it my word. That’s how he calls. He calls you through the story. When you hear it, he that, heareth my word and believe it on him that sent me half everlasting life.

So he calls every person who hears the gospel, but he calls through that message, that story. That’s why that story can’t be marred. It cannot be corrupted. It’s to be told in truth. And when you add one work to the gospel, it’s like trying to add your little brush strokes to the rim brand. It’s just you don’t do that. So he says, and whom he called them, he also justified. That need to be made pure and holy. Set apart, justify just as if you had never sinned, declared in a judicial court of law as a righteous individual.

God’s righteousness is then imputed to you put to your account as though you had never done anything wrong in your whole life, as though you had been perfect all your life.” And so he says, them, he also glorified. Now, there’s a lot who have already been glorified because they’ve already died and gone to heaven, but our bodies that he’s talking about in chapter eight, we are waiting to with the redemption of the body because the bodies are going to be glorified to be made perfect.

That hasn’t happened yet. We’re still waiting on the rapture or the enraced from the dead. And this mortal will put on immortality or the corruptible will be made incorruptible. So that day is coming. But everyone who has trusted Christ the Savior, this is God’s plan. And God did it the way He did it because He wants the credit for it. He doesn’t want man stealing from Him, robbing from Him, taking credit that man did not do. And this is what it does when it adds works to the gospel.

And that is a definite no-no. Now, go back there to Romans in chapter eight and look there in verse 23. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit. Even we ourselves groan within ourselves waiting for the adoption to it, the redemption of our body. And remember, when Jesus was here, and in chapter 7 of the Gospel of John, and around verse 37 or 39 in there, He says, on that great day of the feast, Jesus stood in Christ, and if any man thirsted, Let him come to me and drink, and as the scripture have set out of his belly shelf, flow rivers of living water, which they that believe on him should be speak.

But this he spoke about the Spirit, the Holy Spirit which they would believe. But as yet see, Christ had not been glorified. Means he had not died and had a resurrected glorified body and ascended into glory. And then the Holy Spirit came right on schedule like he had promised. Now look there in 1 Corinthians again and chapter one.

So as you go down through here, you see that God made choices and the gospel message itself is humiliating to the pride of a man because he eliminates man’s efforts. And that’s why he made the statement up here in verse 18, for the preaching of the cross is to them that perish. It’s foolishness. But unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise. So there are people that are wise.

They’re so smart. This message, this story eliminates the wisdom of man. You don’t have to be the smartest kid on the block to understand it. Whenever you’re trying to make the gospel clear and simple, It should be easy for even little children to understand what right does any preacher have to make it hard for people to believe? Where did they get this authority? That’s the wisdom of man because it makes them look brighter and smarter and wiser because they figured it out.

They got it all put together and the rest of your little peons can understand it. I believe a little child can understand the gospel. And otherwise, a one is a joke. Sunday school is a joke if we don’t believe that little children can understand the gospel. That means that they can understand it. Can they be saved as little children? And most of the times you will not see the fruit in the little child’s life. And lead a teenager to the Lord.

I almost guarantee you you won’t see any fruit in your life. They give them about 15, 20 years and they might come around, but then they may not. But isn’t it true that even at this stage of your Christian life, aren’t you still struggling in certain areas? Do you have total victory in every area of your life? Do you still get down and discouraged and frustrated? So here in 1 Corinthians, it’s talking about this wisdom of man. This is why God said, He didn’t call many of those that are wise.

And the Jews sought after signs. And it’s talking about the power of God, the mighty. God said, didn’t choose many of those. Because see, the gospel was a rebuke to those that sought wisdom. And it was a rebuke to those that were just looking for sign gifts, which were miracles, power. Well, he says, the gospel refutes all of that. See what he said in verse 22? For the Jews require a sign, the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified.

He’s a stumbling block to the Jews and to the Greek, it’s foolishness. That’s why when he sees it’s down there in verses 26 and 27, this is the reason because it’s context. Not many of those are called because they won’t believe the gospel. The gospel is foolishness to those people. This is why Christ made the statement concerning the rich. They’d say the rich couldn’t be saved, but He did make the statement that it’s harder for a rich man to go to the eye of a needle than for a rich man to be saved.

Oh, can we go through the eye of the needle? Can I get the right one through the needle? Then for a rich man to be saved. It’s because He doesn’t want to admit He needs to be saved and can’t save Himself. there’s even the story of the rich young ruler that came and cried, what must I do to be saved or to inherit eternal life? And it was a good question, but the inheriting eternal life, Christ went straight to the law and used the law to show him that he doesn’t qualify.

And that he can’t get eternal life by what he does. And he says later, he says, with men, this is impossible. It’s impossible for a man to obey perfectly the law to get eternal life. So he says the disciples, who then can be saved? He says with man, it’s impossible, but with God, all things are possible. Salvation is possible with God, but not possible by man. And so when it goes down through here in chapter one of 1 Corinthians, it makes a statement in verse 25, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men.

The weakness of God stronger than men. And then he says, for you see, you’re calling, brother, as he refers to these people in Corinth. They had all of these problems. Isn’t it good that if you had to go by the change in their life, as the proof that they’re really saved. How do we know these Corinthian Christians were really saved? Well because of this wonderful, glorious change in their life. Read the book. And there’s 14 major problems. So if you were looked at the evidences, there are none.

Before we close, just look in chapter 3, verse 1. And I brethren, they’re saved. Could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with meat for hitherto ye were not able to bear it neither yet. Now are you able? For ye are yet what? Carnal, fleshly minded, materialistic. He says, for where is there is among you in vain and strife and divisions? Are ye not carnal and walk as lost men?

So by all evidence, these people that Paul says have been sanctified in Christ, brethren, becoming behind nobody in gifts. Well, if you look at the evidence, all really messed up. None of these people were saved. If you look at the evidence, if that’s what people are teaching and preaching, who in the world is saved? I love knowing that I have eternal life and I’m going to heaven when I die and it has nothing to do with how I live.

Does that mean that I don’t try to live right? I want to live as holy and Godly a Christian light that I possibly can, but it has nothing to do with trying to save myself or prove to anybody that I’m saved. I’m saved because I trusted Christ as my Savior, and that’s all. That’s all the evidence I need, because it was because I trusted the Word, I trusted what God says. Now you know, this is Pastor Arnold, and I hope that you do enjoy listening to Bibleline.

You know, Proverbs 11th chapter in verse 30 says, The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, that when of souls is wise. And this radiomanist is supported by Christians like you who have a burden for souls. I’d love to tell the story of Jesus and what He did for us on that old rugged cross. And I know you love that story too. There are many more people who need to hear the simple message of grace found in Ephesians 2 8 9, which says, For by grace are you saved through faith and that and not of yourselves.

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