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 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.

Those people that have already trusted the Lord have the Holy Spirit, spirit. Already have laid that foundation. They’ve been saved, but there’s babes in the Lord. So you can’t get them saved again. And so he says there in verse four, they’ve tasted the good word of God, the powers of the world to come. If they shall fall away, if they could, but most people are not sure if this is talking about, you know, here’s these Old Testament saints and they came up to the gates, the door of Kedishparnia, and they were ready to go into the kingdom and they rebelled.

So God wouldn’t let me go into the kingdom. Therefore, this is talking about those who have got to the door of salvation. They’re almost ready to go in and they didn’t believe and so now it’s impossible for them to be saved in the future. So they’re lost. They were almost or some people say they were saved, but then they fell away. And it’s impossible for them to get saved again. Well, like I’ve said before, if a man could lose a salvation, there ought to be at least one story in the Bible of one man that lost his.

You can’t find it. Or if a man could get saved and then lose a salvation and get saved again, there ought to at least be one story story or an illustration somewhere in the Bible that says he did, but you can’t find it because it’s not there. Because once a man trusts Christ’s Savior, he is saved forever. That’s why it’s impossible for him to get saved again. If he could fall away, he can’t get saved again. Why? Because there’s no more sacrifice for sin.

So when you get to chapter 9 of Hebrews and chapter 10 of Hebrews, there is no more sacrifice. It means if I could lose my salvation because of some sin that I produce after I’m saved, how can I get saved if this sin took my salvation away? Christ is not going to come down and pay for the sin because He’s not going to do it again. He did it once and for all. Now either it’s included in the package deal or you’re forever lost and that’s why you can’t get saved again.

Just understand once you trust the Lord your His child and you’re saved and you’re saved forever and that’s the best news in all the world. Now look in Hebrews in chapter 12, the book of Hebrews in chapter 12. If you obey what God says, then God says that He is going to bless your life. He’s going to use you. You’re going to be laying up treasure in heaven and that’s why He makes a statement in Hebrews chapter 10 verse 35, cast not away therefore your confidence which hath great recompense of reward because you see when you have confidence, you do the work.

But you do the work, you get the rewards. Therefore don’t cast away your confidence. And so you keep your confidence in the Lord. It keeps you served in the Lord because you know that when you get to heaven, it will be worth it all. But what about those that don’t do it and they sin willfully against God after they’re saved? Well, you know, there’s a verse here in the Hebrews that says that. Let’s look at it very quickly in verse 26 of chapter 10.

What if, okay, there’s no more sacrifice for sin? Well, what if I sin on purpose? Well, I assure you, most of mine are. They talk about it, you know, well, it means you don’t practice sin. I’m an expert. Most people are. But look what he says in Hebrews chapter 10 verse 26, for if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, They remain if no more sacrifice for sin. But a chastening hand of God upon his children.

God is going to whoop the tar out of you. And that’s why he says in verse 30, for we know him that have said, vengeance the longeth unto me, I will recompense sayeth the Lord, and again the Lord shall judge who? His people. So God is going to chasten his children. So you and I as a child of God. We have been made partakers. of his wonderful salvation, so great a salvation. We’ve been made partakers of this fellowship of all the believers, and we have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit that indwells us.

We have been made partakers of a common call to honor the Lord, to serve the Lord, and to be whatever God wants us to be. So we have taken part in something that’s the most wonderful thing in all the world. All right, what if you don’t want to do it? Well, then God says, look out. And so chapter 11 is where God says, now before I give you chapter 12, let me tell you, there’s a lot of people who went before you.

A great crowd, he used cloud of witnesses, the Old Testament saints, where I told them what to do and they did it. And Therefore, I want you to do the same. And he tells us to set our eyes upon the Lord and to do what God says do and to consider him when we get down into scourries. So look in verse three, because you’re running the race. You’re going from childhood to adulthood. And the key is to keep trusting the Lord, keep believing what God says.

Obey him. So he says, for consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners endured. So this word is used several times and the word is very important because it’s talking about some things that you will not enjoy, but he does tell us that we should endure. And you see that in verse seven, if he endure, there’s things that he endured for us. Now he says, I want you to endure something for me and the affliction that you’re going to go through.

He also refers to this same verse in the second time of the chapter two in verse three, where he says, endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. So God wants us to endure some things in this life. He doesn’t remove all the problems, all the heartaches. He says, I want you to go through it. I want you, when you get ready to think about quitting, just consider him. Did Jesus Christ quit when the going got tough, rough, hard?

People said things against him, all kind of things happened, but he never quit. So the only way for you to finish your race, and you will finish your race, if you keep your eyes on him, if you lay aside that besetting sin of unbelief and keep trusting him and not cast away your confidence. But let’s say you don’t do it. What is he gonna do to me? Well, you are free to rebel against the Lord. You can choose whatever sin you wanna do.

God is free to choose the consequences. And that fair, you can choose whatever sin and God can choose whatever the consequences will be because of your choice. So you can’t just make the choice without consequences. So that’s why the Bible says here in verse three, Consider Him lest ye be wearied and faint in your mind.” So He’s talking to the believers about the course of life, about the race that is to be run. We have been made partakers of this wonderful privilege to serve the Lord.

All of God’s children were placed in Christ. His death became ours. So we’re all one big family. And now that He didn’t just take us to heaven, He’s left us here. And so we are all supposed to look out for one another to care about one another, to love one another, pray for one another, exhort one another, even at times rebuke one another for they’re good. And nobody likes that part. So he says, you’re going to have to be chasing.

So he says in verse five, the middle part of the verse, my son despised not thou the chasing of the Lord nor faint when thou art rebuked of him. For whom the Lord loved it, he chasteeth and scourgeeth every son whom he received it. If ye endured chasting is because God deals with you as a father and a son, then he gives us a wonderful illustration. As you see there, he says, you know, we have fathers, you know, people that we know, that Jason, children, and the Bible here made an interesting statement.

I’ve often wondered what he meant by that. If you’ll notice, he says there in verse 9, where he says, furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us and we gave them reverence. Showed not we much rather be in subject unto the Father of Spirit and live for they’ve barely for a few days chasing us after their own pleasure. Now that bothered me for a long time. You mean we’re supposed to spank our children for our own pleasure?

Well, maybe it’s because of this thing called partaker. You know we want to share. We got beat to tar out of when we were a kid and now we want to make sure you know what we’ve experienced. I don’t know about that. I wrote down something. Let me read it to you. A price to pay for obedience and a price to pay for disobedience. So we know that there is a price to pay for obedience. That’s why if you read Luke chapter 14 and talking about discipleship and unless you forsake all you cannot be my disciple.

So there is a price to pay in being a disciple, to discipline your life. If I wanted to go to Bible school, there’s a price I had to pay. If I want to be a pastor, there’s a price I have to pay. If you want to be a sober, there’s a price you have to pay. There is a price to pay. Okay. What if I want to be disobedient? Okay. There’s a price you have to pay. So if you rebel against the Lord, there’s a price you have to pay.

It seems like you can’t get out of this life without having to pay a price. Good or bad. Right or wrong. Obedience or disobedience? Why is it foolish? You’re going to pay a price. So well, what’s the difference? Well, I’m glad you asked. So I wrote this down. Obedience is I determined the price to pay and disobedience God determines the price to pay. Think about it. If I decide to serve the Lord, I decide what price I’m willing to pay.

How much am I willing to dedicate my life to the Lord for? How bad do I want the will of God for my life? So because I want that, I have to watch how I think, where I go, my attitude, what I see, what I hear, what my little hands will do, where my little feet will go. I have to watch everything. I have to watch everything somebody says about me or to me. You have to watch every area of your life.

There’s a price to pay and nobody can make you pay that price. But you can determine how much you want to be used by the price you’re willing to pay. Some people want a lot but they don’t want to pay the price to do it. They want to wear the medals but they don’t want to fight the battle and they don’t endure the hardness. But let’s say you want to be rebellious. God gets to choose the price you pay.

Don’t you sound fair? I mean think about it. Doesn’t that sound fair? It’s where partakers were part, look down in verse 8, but if ye be without chastisement where of all our partakers, then are you bastards and not sons? In other words, God says he wants to bless every one of us because we have taken part in something, his death, barrel and resurrection. We have been raised from the dead, therefore walk in newness of life. You say, well, I want to walk in the old life, now then the newness of life.

All right? You understand that there is a price to pay, whether I obey or if I disobey. You say, well, let it ask for all of that. Tough. It’s the way it is. It’s just the way it is. You say, well, I don’t want to be obedient. I don’t want to be disobeyed. I just want to be me. I’m going to serve God my own way. You ever heard that? Well, if I had people tell me that. So we have chasening for pleasure.

But you see, it’s not just that we’re supposed to get a kick out of beating our kids half to death. Or I could say, my dad, he must have been the happiest man in the world. He beat the Torah out of me. And you and I know I never did anything wrong. And you know that just by looking at me. You know I was a good kid, right? Bobby, I don’t mind you snickering, but don’t do it so loud.

Understand, chasteening has divine blessings and benefits as it’s in result. In other words, you know that when you chase in the child, if you’re doing it for the right reasons, for the right motive, you’re doing it because you want to see the end results of what you’re having to do. That you may not like to do, but you’re joyful in that it could produce some good results down the road. And even though we only do it for a, you know, this short period of time, what God does for us is for eternity.

What God does for us is for eternity. You see, whenever He has to chasten us, it’s because God also is concerned about the future blessings, the benefits, for all eternity of what He’s going to give to us. So we also see that God will chasten us, as He says down here in verse 10, for they, for a few days, chastens after their own pleasure, He for our Prophet. Do you understand that because God wants so much for us down the road in the future, laying up treasure in heaven to be able to be used by God for all eternity, that God is willing to bring you some pain which will later bring you pleasure, which will later bring you profit and it will be worth it all.

But until then, sometimes it’s so hard to understand how you can win. You say, well, I’m tired of fighting. I just want to quit for a while. Just because of how old you are, the race isn’t over just because you’re 85 years old. How old are you? All right, almost. If you have a pulse, you have a purpose. Do you have a pulse? You say, I can’t film one. If you’ve got a pulse, you’ve got a purpose, a purpose and living.

Also, you know, chasing it is for producing something in our life. And then look there in verse 10 where he says, but he for our prophet that we might be, and here’s that word again, partakers of his what? his holiness. Now that’s exactly what we saw in chapter 3 and verse 1 and 2 when he’s talking there about we have been made partakers of Christ, his holiness. Now we are not in heaven yet. We still live here in this whole world.

But God wants his children to live a righteous life, a holy life, a godly life. And the reason that he will chase in you and is because He’s trying to produce holiness in our life. In other words, to let us see that sin does not pay. Oh, it’ll pay a little bit. But I’m talking about it will not be to your advantage. And it’s to produce something in our life. So God has put these things into His word to help us.

You and I have lived long enough to know what a washing machine is. Right. Did you know that your clothes don’t get clean just because you lay them on top of the washing machine? What do you have to do with them? You’ve got to put them in it. And if you put them in and lay them there and they get clean, right? Automatically. No, there’s some other things that has to be done. You may even have to put some water in there.

Sometimes you have to put soap in it. I’ve never washed a thing in my life. I don’t know. I’m asking questions. And then it’s still not going to get clean. You’ve got to have something that agitates. You’ve got to have an agitator to get things clean. Now here you are, you want to serve a Lord, and God says, I want to use you. But you’re a little on the dirty side, so I need to agitate you. Did you know that God brings trials and tribulations into your life and people sometimes?

You ever heard of her? Ierns sharpened this iron. Why is iron sharpened? It’s iron because it rubs against them. And people sharpen each other. So don’t just take it because you can’t get along with somebody. Well, blessed be the Lord. There’s somebody that needs help. And them rubbing against you, they agitate you. You say, I just want to be around people that make me feel good. Then you don’t really want to serve the Lord. Look, when we get to heaven and nobody has a sinful nature, then we’ll be in heaven.

Then we’re not there. Did you know this? You’re not going to believe this, but there’s a lot of Christians that not only are agitators, they need to be agitated. When you come to church, it’s simply put this way. I’m supposed to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comforted. I am an agitator. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that. I want to live up to my name. I’m an agitator. So are you. And when it comes to certain, Lord, God will use us to agitate one another for the purpose of seeing our faults, what we like and don’t like, what we need to work on.

Isn’t it amazing how God figured all this out? Close my mind. So I look there in Hebrews in chapter 10. Hebrews in chapter 10. So look there in verse 32. He says, but call to remembrance. You know, the older I get, the harder it’s the getting to do that. I hope he comes soon. While I can still remember he’s supposed to come for me.

But call to remembrance the former days. When you were young, no he’s not talking about when you were young. He just says, I want to remind you something. In which after you were illuminated, He endured a great fight of affliction. When you years ago, when you heard it and you understood it and you saw the light, we see that I saw the light, when you saw it. And you had a lot of afflictions, but you endured that fight of afflictions.

He says, and some of these things Paul says, I was the beneficiary of your hard times, of the generosity of some of the people who gave to him. He says here in verse 32, he says, ye endured a great fight, a great fight. Serving the Lord is a battle. It is a fight. You’re always in a battle. I said, you’re either going into a battle. You’re in the midst of a battle and you’re coming out of a battle. It’s war all the time.

But endure hardness is a good soldier. Endure when you do something that’s wrong, endured the chastening. That’s no picnic either. The Holy Spirit said, you know the parents said, this hurts me more than it does you. Want to swap? But here in verse 33 he says, partly while you were made a gazing stalked, both by reproaches and afflictions, and partly while you became companions of them that were so used. See that word companion? That’s similar to the word that we have over there in chapter three when it says that we were partakers with quite a companion.

So many of God’s children are fighting together. They’re encouraging one another. They are going through these afflictions together and we know and we care and we pray for one another. But what he says, he says in verse 34, for ye had as past tense, You had compassion of me in my bonds, took joyfully the spallen of your goods. In other words, you took what you had and you gave them to meet my needs. Because you knew that when you get to heaven, you have a better enduring substance when you get there.

So you knew you weren’t losing anything. And always understand that. You don’t give up anything in this life of Christ that you don’t get a lot more back later. You cannot out give God. You can’t dedicate your life to the Lord more and lose. You can’t lose serving God. That’s what he says in verse 34. Knowing in yourselves. Now this is growing into maturity. Things that you know. Things that you believe. obedient. Knowing in yourselves that ye have, have, even though they did the work past tense, they still have.

Because rewards, once they’re earned and laid up in heaven, you can’t lose what’s been laid up. You can lose what you could have had. But as he says in the book of Matthew in chapter 10, verse 41, he says concerning rewards, you shall in no wise lose your reward. reward that’s earned can’t be lost. So he says, you did do this. You have something because of what you did. So he says, you have in heaven a better and enduring substance.

You’ve got something better and it adored forever. Then he says in verse 35, cast not a way therefore your confidence which hath great recompense of reward. So there’s things that God wants us to do for him. Not to get to heaven But because we are partakers of His so great salvation. Look up here. This end represent you and me. The wall represents sin. We all have sin on us. God loves us. He hates what we do wrong. And the Bible says that God’s love for us was so great.

And he wants us to go to heaven so bad, but God is so holy and heaven is so perfect that because of sin we can’t get in. So the Bible says the wages of sin is death and everybody’s sin so everybody’s condemned. But God loves us. He says you cannot save yourself, you cannot work your way to heaven. This sin represents Jesus Christ, he’s the Lord God in the flesh. Came into the world because he loves us. hates our sin because it separates us from him.

So Jesus Christ who had no sin did not have to die. He took our sins, paid for it on the cross, came back from the dead, and said that if we would believe He did it for us, He would put this payment to our account. We get to go to heaven on what He did for us. Now what He did was for all of us. So whenever I believe it, that’s put to my account. When you believe it, put to your account.

We all share the same thing. We become God’s children. We’re good to go. We have eternal life. We have the Holy Spirit. We have been enlightened, illuminated. And therefore God says, you will never cash this out and never loses. So now I have a choice. If I serve the Lord, there’s a price that I’ll have to pay. But I’m going to get rewarded for it. And I have a better and enduring substance when I get to heaven. And if I don’t serve the Lord, there’s a price to pay.

But I don’t know exactly what that price will be, but I know that He will determine what is going to cost me. It could cost me my life. It could cost me how many rewards that I could have had. It could cost me the youth, the usefulness that I could have had for the Lord. It could cost me, my family. It could cost me, my ministry could cost me. Where would you want to go? I’m not willing to pay that.

I don’t want that. I’d rather determine and just serve the Lord. Let’s pray, shall we? Every head bowed and every eye closed, no one looking around. If you’re here tonight and you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, why not just talk to the Lord right now and say Lord I know I’m a sinner and I believe Christ died on the cross paid for my sins and I’m going to trust Him as my Savior. If you’re watching by internet tonight, I hope that what I’ve said made sense, but understand that going to heaven is not because of anything that you have to do, because there’s nothing you can do.

The only thing God wants any of us to do is believe that when He went to the cross, He paid for our sins and He said if we believe He did it, that He would put that payment He made to our account. We go to heaven on what He did for us. And if you’re making that decision, I’d like to know and I’d like to have prayer for you. Is there anyone at all before we close Yes, that made sense to me and I’ll trust Christ as my Savior tonight.

We’ll just slip you in it very quickly and let it rip you down. Anyone’s all. You that have already trusted Christ as your Savior is between you and Him. It’s going to cost you. It’ll cost you if you dedicate your life to Him. It’ll cost you if you don’t. Be wise and be willing to pay the price of discipleship. Father, we thank you so much for your word you’ve given us. Bless each one. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

You’ve been listening to another great message from Pastor Arnold and we at Bibleline thank you for tuning in. In appreciation to those who support this ministry financially, we would like to send to you a copy of the Jim Tingen story. The Jim Tingen story is a true story about a young man that just couldn’t explain the gospel clearly. He wasn’t the type of kid that most people made friends with, but he knew that people needed to hear the gospel to be saved.

Believe me, you’ll be affected by this story in a profound way, and this book is offered to you as a gift for your donation in any amount. Our mailing address is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634, and don’t forget to include your mailing address as well. So for this month, receive a free copy of the Jim Tingen story with your donation of any amount. It’s a small token of our appreciation for your support of Bibleline because without your thoughtful gifts and prayers from listeners like you, we would not be able to to remain on the air.

Thank you once again for your continued support. 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. Caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day, believing that the Lord is coming soon, just keep looking up.