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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 Bibleignmenistries.org homepage. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s first part of this two-part message will be a blessing to you and your family.

Well, it’s good to see you all this morning. Jan, come up here just a minute. put this in your right hand and hold it out to your side. A little bit for the right there, right there, right there. Alright. I want you to take your Bible, turn with me to the book of 1 John. 1 John, and 1 John 1, 1 John 1. I want to explain a few things to you so that you understand the importance of a chalom God, learning to go to the Lord with his problems.

And you might know you’re supposed to do that, but you may not think it’s that important, but it is very, very important. Now here in 1 John in chapter 1, I want you to look there in verse 3, chapter 1 verse 3, that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you. That ye also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things right we unto you, that your joy may be full.

This then is the message which we have heard of Him and declare unto you that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son cleanses us from all sin. Now this is a wonderful, wonderful chapter, portion of scripture that deals with our fellowship with the Lord and about our walk with God.

Straighten that arm. Now turn to chapter 5, 1 John chapter 5. Don’t lure it. Is that arm shaken? Now if I was to ask you the purpose of that glass with that water in it half full, some of you may think the subject is it half full or is it half empty? Most people would think something like that, right? But now there’s another purpose for this glass with this water. And the thing is when he first put it out there, it would have been, it wouldn’t have been any problem whatsoever.

It’s not, is it half full or half empty? It’s how much does it weigh? And because it maybe doesn’t weigh much, it can’t make that big of a difference. Well, it depends on how long you carry it. It depends on how long you hold it. Now, I would mention to say that if we don’t give him a break, he won’t be able to do this the whole hour. Do you agree? So, the longer you hold that, has it affected your arm in it all far.

It has. But it didn’t when you first did it. No. No. But if you keep holding it there, it’s going to your arms going to have to come in or go down, right? Chances are it’s not going to go up. No. Okay, put it right here. Give them a big hand. I’ve ever appreciated that. As a child of God. Little bitty sins. That you commit or that people commit against you. They’re so small and so little you don’t even have to think about them.

But you see some things get in your craw and you can’t get it out. Some things that people say and do hurt and you think about it. But if you stop thinking about it, it’s okay. In other words, if you don’t mind it don’t matter. But most people do mind and it does matter. And the longer you carry sins in your life, well, not going to your heavenly Father and getting taken care of. You see, at the beginning it doesn’t matter too much.

But the longer you carry those bitterness in that grudge, it turns into hatred. And all of those things to get even. Because the more you hurt, the more you want to make sure somebody else hurt. But you see, when you learn the power of forgiveness, you don’t worry about trying to get even with anybody. You’re not trying to hurt anybody back, right? Because it’s not bothering you. You and I let too many things bother us. That’s why we can’t focus upon what God wants us to do, because we’re thinking about something that somebody said or did to us, and we have a problem trying to get rid of it.

It’s kind of like this. You know, there was a little Sally and little Johnny. They decided to go see grandma for the summer vacation. Well everything’s going long fine. But one day you know a little Johnny got a slingshot. Now I used to have a slingshot. I used to be very good with the slingshot. I could ring a doorbell with the slingshot. I mean from across the street I was good. We used to have kids pick up sides and we would have slingshot fights.

We would really try to hit them. That was the purpose. We shoot at each other and we try to hurt them if we could and we aim for the head. I mean we were kids but that’s what we did. Nobody died from it close but nobody died and we did it with BB guns. But you see whenever your kids are staying at you do but anyway getting back this Sally and Johnny had a slingshot. And so he went out in the woods and he was trying to hit trees and whatever he could, but he wasn’t a good shot.

I could have given him a couple lessons. But he came back. And then where the mama’s pet goose was walking and he thought, I can’t hear anything anyway. So he just thought he’d just take a shot. He they go right dead in the head. Fell over dead so he quickly got that thing and he hid it in the wood power. Sally saw him. She was watching. Noontime came and they were told to get something to eat and so grandma so Sally I want you to help me do the dishes.

She says oh that’s okay Johnny wants to do She says, remember to goos. Johnny, he doesn’t. Later that evening, grandpa wants to go fishing. He says, your kids want to go fishing. Yay! And grandma says, no, Sally has to stay and help me do the dishes. But grandma, Johnny wants to help do those in my place. Remember to goos. So he stays and she goes, and he says, I’m not going to go fishing. After he finished doing it, he says, Grandma, I’ve got to confess something to you.

He says, I young. I killed your pet goose. She says, I know him. I was sent here to when I was watching. I was just wondering how long he was going to let Sally make you her slave. What should he have done right off the bat? And she wouldn’t have been able to see. The devil will always try to throw up in your face. Hey, you remember years ago? You know how you really messed up? You know you did this and you did that.

All those bad things that you’ve done, it keeps bringing them up. Because he wants, That’s the only way he can snare you is try to keep bringing up your past to you. But see, one thing that’s neat about the Lord is God forgives and God has a unique ability to forget. Like this one person, he said, I just don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve gone to the Lord a thousand times. I’ve asked God to forgive me a thousand times.

The preacher says, you know, that’s 999 times too many. You see, you only have to just confess it to the Lord. That means own up to it and call it what is Lord I sinned against you. I did this. But people never learn how simple it really is. Lies traps truth sets free. And if you know the truth and you do the truth and you live the truth, you’d be surprised how much free your life will be and what God can do for you.

See, one thing you keep in mind is that you see there’s the God of the universe created the heavens and the earth. And he’s a righteous judge and he has vengeance. And he’s gonna be stole his wrath upon all those that don’t trust Christ the Savior. So when you trust Christ as your Savior, you have the God of heaven has been satisfied by that payment Christ made. But now once you’ve trusted Christ as your Savior, now that big judge, now he’s my father.

Now, as my father, you steal as a child of God, of God you say and do things you should not do and you can still offend and hurt your father and it causes him to grieve. So God has put into his word a simple little plan for his children. So his children there’s something God wants in your life. So he makes a statement here in the book of 1st John chapter 1 where he talks about, look at chapter 5 this minute, but in 1st John in chapter 1 You’ll notice it’s talking there in this verse two, for the life was manifested and we’ve seen it.

Bear witness and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested under us. That which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you, that ye may also have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship is with the father. You see, now we’re talking about you as a child of God, having fellowship with your father. So now I’m not worried about the God of the heavens and the universe and this big old bad judge and so on.

Now that’s all, he’s my father now. I miss child. So I’m not trying to get forgiveness for the penalty of my sin which is death and hell. Now that was taken care of. I’ve been forgiven of all my sins. They’ve been removed as far as the east is from the west in the depths of the sea. Never have to worry about that anymore. But now as my father I sinned against him and I offended him. And so there’s things that God wants to do.

And so the book of 1 John deals with how are you doing between you and your heavenly father? And as a child of God, he’s trying to teach us how to walk with the Lord. Years ago when I was on the floor of the Bible college, there was another man that was similar to what race Stanford was like except he wasn’t the soul when a race Stanford was. And he would say things about true spirituality is attained simply by just confess your sins to God and your spiritual.

And when you confess your sins to God, your spiritual and you have the fruit of the Spirit. You just claim it. Just claim joy and claim peace and claim, claim, claim, claim, because you have been forgiven, therefore, you have been restored and you have fruit in your spiritual. So by that page it means I chollegod. I start drinking, become a drunk. All I gotta do is just confess it to God and everything’s cool. Everything’s fine because I can fess my sin.

Now I’m spiritual. Of course, I’m not going to do anything until I get the next drink. Then drink some more. No. No. What was wrong? Forgive me. God has to forgive me. Now I’m spiritual. And it becomes a cheap way to try to stay spiritual without doing absolutely nothing to correct the problem. Ray Stanford solved that as a serious error in doctrine. A false way to use 1 John chapter one in verse nine. And so he put it into the doctrinal statement of Florida Bible College, this statement.

And I’ll read it to you because it’s in our doctrinal statement for the college here. And this was under the Christian walk. We believe every true child of God possesses eternal life. It’s justified by faith, sanctified by God, sealed with the Holy Spirit, safe and secure for all eternity and cannot lose a salvation. So we believe that once you trust Christ as Savior, you’re saved. God gives you eternal life. And it was a gift. And he won’t take it away from you.

Because if you take it away from, it’s not free. And if I have to earn it, then it wasn’t a gift. So either it’s a gift or I have to earn it. Either I’ve got to be good enough to go to heaven by my good deeds, or eternal life has got to be a free gift. It’s got to be one of the other. It can’t be two ways. And we believe that when Christ says, I love you, I pay for your sin.

I’ll give you eternal life as a gift. We believe that. However, a Christian can, through sin, lose fellowship and lose joy and power and testimony and rewards and incur the Father’s chastisement. Relationship is eternal being established by the new birth. So once I became a child of God, I am his child forever and it can never be changed. He is now my Father, I am his child forever. is eternal. Fellowship, however, is dependent upon obedience. God guarantees salvation, it is His gift to us.

God guarantees reward and fruit to the obedient Son. God guarantees chastening and loss of rewards to the disobedient sons. Rewards once earned can’t be lost, but you can lose what you could have had. Because when you serve the Lord and you do what’s right, you’re laying up treasure in heaven. And the reason God said, Matthew chapter six, you’re laid up in heaven is so that you can’t lose it. But if I can mess up the next day and then I lost the rewards and why I lay them up because I ain’t got much hope for tomorrow, that I’m going to live a perfect pure life.

I used to think it was like, you know, I’ll do something really good today. Lay up treasure in heaven. And then the next day I do something wrong. God takes them away Don’t I gotta do some more good got some more but the next day I mess up again. I lost those I Thought at this rate. I’m not gonna get anything I Got a better idea. I’ll do real good today and at the end of the day So if I’ve laid up some treasures blow my brains out and get a pair and get it before I lose them.

Does that make sense? Until I read here in the book of Matthew in chapter 10 Where God says you shall in no wise lose your reward He also says you know wise be cast out to same principle. Once you trust Christ is Savior, He can’t lose you. And once you serve the Lord and earn rewards in heaven, you can’t lose those. But you can lose what you could have had. Here you are, you trusted Christ as your Savior, and God may give you some time to live.

All right? With this time that God’s given you to live, how you doing? So we also have an adoption statement this statement. God does not cast out disobedient children. Why? If He did, He wouldn’t have any kids at all. If God saved you today and then He’d take it away from you, if you use something bad, nobody’d get there. Because everybody still does things wrong. I fear to do this. Like how many here can say I’ve never done anything wrong in my whole life?

be somebody says and then I had to say you’re lying so I won’t even do that anymore. I used to tell them, I mean you’re here never stolen thing in your life. I’m afraid somebody’s going to raise their hand and I’m just totally thing. You know they’re lying so how you don’t do your wallet because they’re going to steal a lot of shit to get a chance. But notice this, he does not permit his children to live as they please without discipline and guidance.

So God does not allow his children to do whatever they want to do, live any way they please without discipline, without correction. So you know that your heavenly Father who loves you and given you the choice to obey or disobey doesn’t take away your salvation if you make the wrong choice. But there might be consequences that you’ll have to pay for and you’re not going to like those results. So 1 John 1 9 is not a verse for salvation, but a precious promise to Christians for cleansing and forgiveness.

1 John 1 9 does not guarantee restoration of fellowship or restitution from physical damage caused by sin. Okay, here I am. And I decide to become a drunk. I just keep on drinking and next thing you know I’m a drunk. And I realize the error of my ways confess my sin to God and God forgives me, but that doesn’t mean that he heals cirrhosis of the liver. It doesn’t mean the damage that’s been done to my body is automatically healed.

It doesn’t restore my body to good health just because I confess to him. Oh, this satisfies. Oh, this satisfies. I just can’t get enough of it. Why don’t I satisfy? And you smoke that camel. Can you imagine kissing a girl and she smells like a camel? But you can do whatever you want. I’ll grab you smoke now than smoke later. later. But anyway, here you are and now you’ve got lung disease. You’ve got infasema. You’ve got all this hardening of the arteries now and all the things that come together.

And then you realize, as a Christian, I shouldn’t do this. Lord forgive me and God can forgive you. But it doesn’t give you a new set of lungs. The damage is still done. It does not restore that. Like the farmer who goes, I hear and he’s got 10 acres of ground. Lord, it looks like it might rain today. So I’ll just wait. Lord, it looks like his sunshine and it’s going to be too hot. I’ll just wait. So by the end of three months and he doesn’t have anything done.

And he goes to the Lord and says, Lord, I sinned against you. I really messed up. I didn’t plan anything. Would you forgive me? God said, sure, forgive you. Oh, all of a sudden there’s a fruit all over the yard. I mean, the fields are already just something. No. Just because you confessed the sin didn’t put fruit on the ground. There’s still a price to pay for your negligence, the consequences of your bad decisions. Grandma, I killed your pet goose.

I forgive you. I forgive you when you did it. Didn’t make the goose come back alive. It was not restored. A wasted life is not restored because you confessed your sins. Now everything is wonderful. Now you still got bills and you did all kinds of things and ruined your life, made bad decisions. Now God is going to help you deal with those things. But understand there’s a price to pay for rebellion to what God’s word says. Let me read this to you.

It is heresy to teach that confession of sin produces spiritual fruit. It doesn’t give it to you. You see, I messed up. Okay, God forgive me. God forgive me. Now I’m in a place that I can have fellowship with God. And now I did that so that I could walk with God. But that doesn’t give me fruit that I should have had, if I’d have planted, but I’d done right. Now, it cleans the plate so I can now walk with the Lord.

But it doesn’t make you spiritual. Now I’m spiritual. Now, you can be spiritually minded. It means you mind the Spirit. It means it’s a walk with the Lord. And that’s why he’s talking about here in 1 John, look there again with me in verse 5. This then is the message which we have heard of him and declaring to you that God is light and Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth.

In other words, here you are. You say, I’m just, everything’s right between me and the Lord. Well, are you serving God? Do you know what God wants you to do? Well, no. Well, then your walk isn’t right. fellowship isn’t right. Your fellowship with God is not right unless your walk with God is right. And if you’re not walking in the light as He is in the light, you’re lying to yourself. You’re deceiving yourself. If you’re not faithful to the church and give like you should and witness like you should, something’s wrong with your walk.

And after a while you’ll become paralyzed and you won’t be able to move. You won’t even sense anything is wrong. You’ll scar yourself, become insensitive, no flexibility. And there’s a lot of Christians that are paralyzed where they can’t do what God wants them to do because they just accepted something for so long that now it doesn’t bother them anymore. Now these opening verses here is so that you and I as a child of God would realize what God wants us to know and what He wants us to do.

Now I want you to take and look there at verse 8 where he says, if we say we have no sin or means no sinful nature, we deceive ourselves. Even though you are saved and you have eternal life, you’re God’s child because you believe he died and paid for your and you’re accepting that as your payment for your sin. Does that mean now that I’m goody goody-two-shoes and I don’t do anything wrong anymore? Now my sinful desires are all gone and I don’t have any sinful desires at all.

You’re dreaming. You still have an old sinful nature because God didn’t do anything with your sinful nature. He simply gave you a new birth. Now, God says, this old sinful nature, if you don’t think you have one, you’re deceiving yourself. You, as a child of God, are still capable of all the meanness and the ugliness and the hatred that goes with any lost person. Because, see, this one here, God did not save. He only saved the soul and watched the soul whitest know.

The sinful nature is in the body and in the flesh. So when you trusted Christ as your Savior, He gave you a new birth. Now God wants you to have fellowship with Him and walk in the light walk according to truth Now get what else he says here. So in verse nine, he says If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and de cleanses from all and righteousness This is for the blessings of life here is So that when we get to heaven will have something there.

This is not about how to stay out of hell Christ took my hell I never have to worry about it. He paid for all of my sins on the crop. I’m talking here about what I do between me and my father. You see, if you was to sin against me, I’m the preacher. Well, then I need to forgive you if that’s the case and you can forgive me and I can forgive you. That’s why we sin against each other.

Now, it’s different if Peter over here, he had nothing to do with it. Or these people, they have nothing to do with it. But once you become a child of God, now you’re talking about God as your father. There’s a different relationship here. So I may do something against my wife that I didn’t do against my daughter. So you have to, well, that was forgiven. that was forgiven. I know, but this is a different situation, a different person. I’m talking about my father now.

And he wants me to have fellowship with him. That’s like two fellows in a ship going in the same direction. You’re getting along. And so he’s like, I’ll walk with God. How can two walk together unless they be agreed? So this is talking about me and my heavenly Father. So he makes a statement in verse 10, if we say we have no sinful nature or have not sinned, we make him a liar as word is not as… So then he tells us there in 1 John, chapter 2 verse 1, my little children, these things right out under you that you sinned not.

If any man sinned, we have an advocate or lawyer with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. In other words, God doesn’t want us to live in sin, but if you do, commit to sin, confess it, own up to it. Say, Lord, I’m your child, you’re my father, I’ve wronged you. But when you don’t do that and you try to carry it how long before it starts taking and building that pressure upon you. You see, there’s some things that you become very sensitive right away and you get those things taken care of.

When the Bible talks about don’t let the sun go down upon your wrath. It’s not good to let any uncompressed sins go very long. Talk to the Lord about it immediately. Always. Due to the generous offer of an anonymous Colorado supporter of Bible line, we want to make you an offer you cannot refuse. He has purchased 68 copies of the book, The Gospel Driven Man by Dr. Ralph Yankee Arnold to be given to anyone who donates any amount as they thank you for helping to keep Bible line on this station.

He writes, What would be the most important item one could receive that would be appreciated, which would answer many questions, which would be easy to read, understandable, and uses God’s Word as the source. What came to mind was your book, The Gospel Driven Man. This book has helped me and my wife considerably. We have given the book out as gifts before and continue to do so. All the basic doctrines you hear me teach on the radio is found in this book.

One book perd- per donor. So remember, mail your gift up any amount today and we will send you your copy of the Gospel-Driven Man. Be sure to include your mailing address. Thanks for joining us on Bibleline. 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. And now, a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen, the trumpet will sound, and we will be changed.

Cut 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.