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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 first part of this two-part message will be a blessing to you and your family.

I told you this morning I was going to be speaking on a particular subject. I lied to you. I don’t know, I didn’t. But I want to read a couple of scriptures and then I want to give you some principles that I think would be very helpful. Betty and I have been married for 54 years and if God should tear it, we hope it will be 108. What will be old, won’t we? But there are some things that can help us in our marriage.

So a few things that has helped us, I think, would be a blessing to you. But first of all, I want you to take your Bible-looking Ephesians, chapter 5, the book of Ephesians, in chapter 5. See, there are certain causes of divorce. And a lot of times, if you don’t know what causes it, you duplicate it. You do it all over again. And you just think, well, we’ll work harder the next one or the next one or the next one.

But remember, anytime that there is divorce and remarriage, it sows the seeds of corruption in the next generation and it’s not the wisest thing. But people don’t always do the right things. I’m so glad that God is a God of second chance and third chance and fourth chance and that God loves us and forgives us and we sometimes don’t always make the right decisions. But there is a principle that’s laid down in God’s word of why he says to do this and this.

So if we would learn from that, it could help us tremendously. But here in Ephesians in chapter 5, I just want you to see this very quickly. Look at it in verse 18 where he says, and be not drunk with the wine, but we’re in his excess, but be you filled with the Spirit. The Holy Spirit controlling you is why the wives can submit to their husbands, and the husband can love their wives and children obey your parents and the Lord, because it’s right.

So all of this has to deal with people under the control of what God wants in a family. And so some of the causes of divorce, of course, is just simply put down as somebody’s not doing something right. And so it’s sometimes it’s because of the principles of finances that have been broken, and a lot of stress and strain because of finances. And sometimes they just go on the rocks. And as I’ve said before, sometimes those rocks are in the bedroom.

And so marriage is fall apart. Also the discipline of children. You have children and you don’t agree on how they’re to be raised. Also, they problem with your love life. You don’t love each other like you used to. And so there’s problems there. And also there’s a problem of in-laws. and you can’t get married without having in-laws. And sometimes in-laws can really destroy a home. Why do you think the Bible says to leave mother and father and cleave unto one another?

But a lot of times it’s hard to leave mother and father and they keep running the family. And so it causes trouble down the road. But I wanted you also to take your Bible, look in the book of Matthew 25, Matthew 25. Matthew 25, in this little portion of scripture, I just wanted to bring out the point that you’re talking about how that God sees things. And here in the book of Matthew 25, it says in verse 34, Then shall the king say unto them on their right hand, Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

For I was hungry and you gave me meat. I was thirsty. You gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in. So you and I know that talking about how that you’re treating somebody else. and you and I are commanded by scripture to see other people as valuable as God sees them. So if God sees great value in another person, well then we should see great value in another person. And you shouldn’t treat them differently than you would treat the Lord.

Because they’re made in the image of God and so it’s very important how you treat people. I’ve said this before and I really don’t mind how bad people are to me. I’m just glad it was them being that way to me and said to me being that way to them. You can’t control what other people say and do or how they think and feel about you. But you can control what you do. Therefore you will be held accountable. I will be held accountable.

And so if you are the so-called the strongest one spiritually, then you should take the spiritual initiative and do what’s right regardless, always seek to do right. That’s why we study the Word of God. Now look in the book of 1 John chapter 4, 1 John and chapter 4. on chapter 4 and notice what he says here in verse 20, verse 20, because the Lord has a lot to say about this thing of love, love, love, love. And we love to hear about love, so we love to watch movies about love.

And he says here in verse 20, if a man say, I love God and hates his wife, He is a liar. You say, you read any of that. Yeah, I know. If a woman say, I love God and hate your husband, a liar. For he that loveeth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? If your mate has trusted Christ the Savior, are they not a brother, sister, and the Lord?

So when the scripture tell us this, would it mean that if a man say I love God and hated his brother, he is a liar. And you can, it’s okay, but if you’re not married to him, if they’re not married, then it’s okay to, you can hate them. No, it doesn’t matter who they are, regardless of who they may be, love them. And so the scripture tells us to do this. So he says, how can you say you love God, whom you haven’t seen, and you can’t even love somebody that you do see.

You see, we have an old sinful nature, and the old sinful nature hates things that God has told us to love. And it loves things God has told us to hate. So therefore we have mixed emotions, but it’s the flesh. So the man that doesn’t love his wife the way God says is walking in the flesh, The woman that doesn’t love her husband the way that she is is walking in the flesh and that’s not the will of God So that’s why he says when you’re controlled by the Holy Spirit.

This is what I want you to do So does God have the authority to tell his children how to live? You have to resolve that and you might yes, he does he has all authority He is the chart, He is the boss. So we listen to Him. And whatever He calls sin, we call sin. And whatever He says is okay, it’s okay. So you study the Scriptures to find out what is acceptable to God. And so God tells us in His Word.

Now another scripture I want to look at is found in the first Corinthians. First Corinthians in chapter 8. First Corinthians, in chapter 8. And notice what he says here in verse 12, verse 12. But when you sin so against the brethren, don’t exclude your mate, don’t exclude your kids, put them in that number in that group. So sometimes we think and we want everybody else to think we’re such a great Godly individual and we fail right there where it’s really important those who know us the best.

True. Sometimes we’re a nice and sweet and kind to everybody but those that are the closest to us who really know us. And look what he says, but when you sin so against the brethren and wound their weak conscience, you sin against who? You sin against Christ. So did you know that when you mistreat your wife, you’re sinning against Christ? When you’re not doing right by your husband, you’re sinning against Christ. Boy, I love the Lord, but you sin against the person that God told you to love.

And so you can be filled with bitterness and resentment and hatefulness. And you’d be surprised how it can permeate your whole life. And you wonder why we’re not happy and we’re not getting along. You know, there’s a lot of marriages that just don’t make it. Sometimes there’s people who are together legally, but marriage is gone a long time ago. People no longer love each other. They’re just enduring each other. And maybe even praying, Lord, I love my wife so much you could take her home if you want.

I want her to enjoy heaven. But you have to be careful how you pray, because it can come back upon you. But he says, you sin against Christ. Now let me just mention a few things to you because one of these things contribute to difficulties between people. And so number one is refrain from speaking disagreements. I had to counsel a marriage couple one time and I says, now Now the key is this, find out what irritates your wife and avoid it.

You find out what irritates her and you do it. I says that’s backwards. You enjoy, after all these years, if you really know your wife, you ought to know what takes her off. True? You know how she’s going to respond. If you do this, she’s going to do this. I says, then why do you do that? Because you know what she’s going to do. And then just smile. Now do you think he really wants to heal things or he enjoys seeing her explode?

I’ve talked to a lot of people over the years and they don’t seem to get it. Remember this, there is no law that says you must correct every person or your mate when you disagree. Do you feel like if they say something and they’re not right, you have to come in. You’ve got to say something that said it straight. One thing that I’ve learned is this, I’ve listened to a lot of things and I want to say something and I have to bite my tongue because I always love to set a situation right and I found out after a while, it really sometimes doesn’t matter.

You know in the book of Proverbs chapter 15 verse 1, anybody know what it says? A soft answer turneth the way wrath. If I was to make a comment, I know that would be like lighting a fire. So the best thing for me to do is not always have to comment. always feel like you have to correct and have to straighten out of situation because it’s not going to happen. I’ve said this, if you make three right decisions in a row, your wife will think you are brilliant.

Now if she doesn’t think you’re brilliant, then it’s evident you’ve never made three right decisions in a row. But if you make three wrong decisions in a row, she’ll think you are dumb. And why should she trust a dumb individual? So before you make a decision, try to make them right decisions. And then she will trust you more. You see, it has to be earned, just like children when they start becoming a teenager. They are like, trust me, trust me, trust me, trust me.

Say, I don’t trust you. It has to be earned to be trustworthy, means you’re worthy of trust. And so sometimes when you just get married, it’s hard to trust the other one. Where are you going? Who you wanna see? How long are you over there? And we give them the third degree. All right, you don’t trust? And so it can destroy because it breathes the envy and the jealousy. And it’s very destructive. Love should be able to trust. Now, number two, divide areas of choice so that you don’t have to make all the decisions on everything.

Try to let the wife say, okay honey, you can decide this, and I’ll decide this. So all of the big decisions in the family that he makes and all the little decisions I make. But it’s good that if you delegate responsibility, now if you’ll notice, I do not try to make all the decisions in the ministry. I delegate responsibility. I don’t tell Peter every song the same for the choir or the firehouse five or anything of I have an overview and I want certain things to be done and I let him do it.

So I don’t make a lot of the decisions. I’ve delegated responsibility and I hold a person accountable. I don’t tell James all the decisions to make in Reformers Unanimous or Jesse in ranch or in O’ana because you see if I did I have to make all of these decisions. Well my life is a lot easier if I don’t have to try to make all the decisions. I just want them to make decisions within a boundary of the will of God in this ministry and they got a lot of freedom within a boundary.

Same as me. I can’t do everything I want to do but I have to work within the boundary, the framework of this ministry. So in the family then there has to be a boundary, things that I can do and I should do as the head of the home and there’s things that Betty will decide upon. I love it when some things I don’t have to decide. I’ll be honest with you. This is going to hurt. Being honest. I don’t cook.

I don’t know how to cook. I can’t even boil water. She’ll tell you I don’t even do that. Now Peter over here, he’s a cook. He could cook anything. And there’s other people that know how to cook. And I marvel at that. But I’ve never asked her to preach. What are you laughing about? But there is an area of my responsibility. I feel very comfortable so I never asked my wife to write my sermons for me. Now she sometimes will say, you know, Yankee, I think that was a good sermon and she might even have a few little ideas at times and I don’t mind that but I’m the one that decides what I preach, not my wife.

When it comes to eating, what do you want? Food? I don’t care what it is. If I can eat it, that’s acceptable to me. And so I very some have too many desires, but we go out to eat and so forth like that. There’s things that you can choose and there’s others, things that they can choose. But learn as you grow in the Lord with each other over the years. See it’s like climbing a mountain. When you get to the top, you don’t want to be there alone.

And so whenever you help each other up the mountain, when you get there, you’ve got somebody to talk to about how we got here and all the problems you had. But remember climbing a mountain, it’s not those great big old boulders that will be your problem. It’s going to be those little loose gravel, the little loose stones that you cause you to lose your footing. It’s the little things that you say doesn’t matter when everything matters. Everything matters. Even little things.

Little decisions. Even the way you respond to each other. And so you always haven’t cut each other some slack. You know you’re not perfect. And neither is she. Nobody’s perfect. We have an old sinful nature. Accept that. don’t expect perfection from each other. And when somebody messes up, ah, I got you. That’s one for me. Don’t do none of that stuff. That’s childish. And so you don’t want to do that. Remember, the more areas you must agree on increases the potential for more disagreements.

Think about it. The more areas, well, we have to agree on everything. Well then you are increasing the areas of more disagreement because not everybody agrees on everything. Disagree? And let it go. We don’t agree, but we still love each other. So there’s an element of understanding that you’re not going to agree on everything. And don’t try to say this is what’s wrong with some of the marriages today when they talk about, well it’s a 50-50 proposition. No it’s not.

It’s a 100% proposition. It means the man is responsible and the wife is to submit herself to her husband’s authority. And sometimes that’s very difficult. You say, well, I don’t trust his judgment, then you should not have married him. You say, well, nobody made you do that. But if you’re going to do that, remember God has set up boundaries. there’s a role that you have to play now. And so because of this, you are to submit yourself to one another.

It doesn’t mean 50, 50. It means that you submit yourself to God, and she submits to you, children submit, and that’s what it means by one another. Everybody is under authority. Nobody is exempt. But understand the chain of command. And if you will do that, and the husband loves the Lord and loves his wife and loves his kid, he’ll try to make the right decisions for the family. But if the husband doesn’t, then the wife is going to suffer consequences.

The kids will suffer consequences, and their grandkids will suffer consequences. In other words, he says in Exodus chapter 20, unto the third and fourth generation, our influence is going to affect those that come after us. And that’s why it’s so important. So the husband, though he’s the head, should delegate certain responsibilities to the wife. The third thing I want to mention is have some time and activity apart from one another. You ever seen boy meets girl. Oh, they just spend so much time together.

They’re on the phone each other, they call each other, they just got to be with each other 24 hours a day, it’s just boom, boom, boom. And then after a while they’re sick of each other. And the reason is because they’re bending too much time, pump them to each other. Because they’re not learning something new, there’s nothing to share. After you know it all, okay now, now what? But see, you have to have time apart. And the same thing with a wife and a husband.

It’s good that they have some life with other people so they can go and do something without, you know, thinking that they’re ungodly, the ladies want to get together. Or if you want to go some place. I’m thrilled with my wife when they’re taking going to cruise and taking my daughter and my granddaughter. And they all, just the three of them, they went by themselves. Now what do you think I did? Anything I wanted to do. And so but they had fun so when they come back and they come now I’m in my wife can get together and say what did you do?

Well what did you do? What did you do? What did you do? How did you all have? And all the fun they had and so so joyful and great. And so when I went to India my wife I spent time with my daughter and they went fishing and she got pictures of her eating catfish and native trout and all that kind of stuff. They had a great time but see you have to have some time apart or you’ll come apart.

You can’t stay together all the time like glue because you got to learn something from other areas so that when you come together you can share things and yet at the same time it’s good that you can spend some time together without killing one another. We just went to Kentucky a couple weeks ago. I could have went by myself, but my wife went with me. I’ve been on the cruise. I took her with me. But we have fun. We enjoy that.

And so as time goes on, the older I get, we spend a lot of time together. And I’ll tell you this. When I get ready to leave in the morning. She always kisses me by. And so I got ready to leave. I said, you didn’t kiss me by. She says, yes, I did. I said, uh-uh. My lips would have remembered. You remember that, hon? Hey, this was just a few days ago. My lips would have remembered. That’s romantic. And then whenever I get in the car, she’ll get up to the back window of the mobile home that we’re living in and she pulled the blinds and she weighs by to me.

But I have to wait to get the car out because I have to do that as the last thing that I do. So if I do it first… I got to stop the car, go back in, we got it all over again. And wave goodbye, but she does this. Now she trained me this way. This is not something that I initiated, but I like it. And so there’s things that you can do that will help you so that you keep doing the things that got you the where you are.

And so when I first saw her 53 years ago, I said, that’s the prettiest thing I ever saw. Did you know if I was not married to her today and she was in this church and I was the pastor and I was single, I’d be chasing her. I still think that’s the prettiest 72-year-old woman I’ve ever met. And I’d chase her and I’d get her too. Just like I did 53 years ago. So you need to focus upon one and remember this.

If you’re married, don’t spend all your time with single people. You can’t think single. You can’t live single. You gotta think married. You gotta act married. So that is a married man. I should always remember, Yankee, you are married. That means you have, out of all the four billion women on the earth, you’re entitled to that one. No other. Don’t entertain the idea because you start feeding your mind with trash. It won’t be long before you’ll be wanting to act upon that.

You got one, love the one you got, and stay with the one you’ve got. And you’d be surprised that all those on the other side of the fence are saying, oh, the grass is green on the other side. No, no, no. It’s harsh and you’ve got something wrong with your eyesight. You’re going to pay a great price. Just learn and be wise. The next thing I wanted to mention to you, realize that you are married to Jesus. Pretend that your husband is the Lord.

Pretend that your wife is the Lord. Why would you treat her differently or him differently than the Lord? Treat that person as though that person is the Lord and they deserve the respect, the dignity and all that that belongs to them. That’s a child of God. Did you know that if you don’t treat that wife right, God’s not going to do right by you. You want to really be happy and peaceful and joy. Do right. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everybody did but nobody seems to understand how this whole thing works.

But remember when you wrong each other say how do you correct that? So you’re wrong. No. Say I offend you I’m sorry. and accept it. Go on. Hello, this is Peter Amato, and from all the staff at Bible line we want to thank you for tuning in to today’s program. This month we’d like to send to our listeners and supporters the book, The Declaration of the Gospel. This is yet another book authored by Dr. Arnold, and it addresses the concerns over what is called the crossless gospel.

Is it enough to simply tell someone to believe in Jesus for them to be saved? Does the topic of sin need to be addressed in order for someone to understand what the gospel really is? What are the essential points that a lost man must be told in order for him to be saved, and what does believing in Jesus really mean? These are just a few of the topics that are covered in this book. So for the month of May, when you send a gift in any amount, we’re going to give you the book, The Declaration of the Gospel.

Our mailing address is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634 and don’t forget to include your mailing address as well. God bless you and thank you again for supporting Bible on you. 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.