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Bibleline Bibleline, here God’s word on Bibleline, here God’s truth on Bibleline. Welcome to Bibleline with Dr. Ralph Yankee Arnold, pastor of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida, clearly declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ through the radio and the internet. Your regular prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the You can reach us toll-free at 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made by clicking on the donations link on the BibleLineMinistries.org homepage. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s message will be a blessing to you and your family.

I’m not sure where to start. You know what this is? This is the manual. It’s the manual. There’s been many times over the years when I hated to take the time and read the manual. I’m one of those guys that says, I’ll figure it out myself. I hate to admit defeat. I can do this. So after about an hour or two, you get out the manual and put tab A in slot B. But the The world is in a mess.

Government-wise, church-wise, family-wise, individuals. You say, well, what’s the problem? You forgot to read the manual. Forgot to read the manual. People just want to start living their life because they don’t have time to read the manual and experiment all their life. a man climbing a ladder for 20 years and then finding out that it was laning on the wrong wall. A lot of people like that. We’re gonna get a new sound board, get all kind of buttons all over it.

Just a thousand little buttons all over the place. I’m sure that there’s been times when somebody has wondered over there and they look down at that board and says, I wonder what that does. I wonder if anybody will ever know that I turned that button. See, was it here or was it there? Maybe it was the other button. And you’d be surprised how easy things can get messed up. Now, let’s say for example, you got the preacher. You know he’s never wrong.

You got Peter Amato. He’s pretty bright. We’ve got Marianne over here, and sometimes we have Greg, sometimes we got James over there, and sometimes just about anybody wants to venture over. What if everybody just do their own thing? And after a while you wonder, I wonder where the man, well look up here, a picture of a soundboard. Now, do you think for a moment we would be better off if we studied the manual and set it up according to the manual?

Why would this help us? Because you see, there’s somebody that designed that board and the one that designed the board knows more about how to work that board than everybody else guessing at it. True? We have a problem in our country today about what is marriage. Some people don’t know what marriage is. Well, why don’t we just simply find out, well, who started this thing? If we find out who started this thing, maybe he wrote a manual. Is it possible?

If you go back and study the manual, did you realize how much better we would be? Look in Genesis, the book of Genesis. See where, anywhere, just find anywhere in Genesis. But really, Genesis in chapter two. Book of Genesis chapter two. And I want you to notice something here. It makes the statement there in verse 21. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam. He slept. And He took one of His ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof.

And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made He a woman and brought her unto the man. God made a man, God made a woman, and God brought the woman to the man. Now there must be a reason, or it would have been the end of the human race. In verse 23, and Adam said, this is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. Man shall leave his father and his father. Oh, he should leave his two mothers, his mother and his father. And he shall cleave unto his wife.” Now isn’t it very simple that in the very beginning what Christ said and what he meant? Now understand, everyone born in the world has what we call a sex drive. desire for the opposite sex.

Praise the Lord. There’s nothing wrong with that. God designed that. Otherwise nobody would ever get married. But God wanted us to desire the other so that we would get married and have children and have the pleasure of this thing that God has created. It’s not dirty, it’s not ugly. It’s clean and it’s precious. Even fire is good in the fireplace, but if you put it in the attic, it could burn a whole house down. If you understand the simple principle that God laid down, sex only in marriage.

Outside of marriage, it’s all wrong. And you can’t make it right. If all the people in America, if all of Congress Supreme Court, President, if they all say it’s okay for men with men and women with women, will not make it right. You can’t make right what God says is wrong. The only ones who can alter this is the one who started it. And I haven’t heard lately that he’s rescinded or annulled his primary purpose and goal. You see, if we go back to the manual, it’ll save us a lot of problems.

It’ll work. God’s manual will work. Now the people that are in place of leadership make decisions that affect our lives, our marriages. It affects our church. It affects our government. So we’re not exempt. He’d just been studying in a book of Acts how that Paul, because he was a free-born, a Roman citizen. He had the right, according to the law of the land, to appeal to Caesar. And he did. Because he knew I’m not only a citizen of heaven, I’m still a Roman citizen.

And because I’m a Roman citizen, I should know my law. And he did. He knew what to do. That’s why he wanted to go into court. why he defended himself. Today we have people who say that Christians ought not say anything or be involved in any way. Understand this. The Bible says that we are the salt of the earth, the light of the world. If we’re the salt of the earth, the salt is the preservative. And the reason that things are so rotten in Washington is because there’s no salt in the meat, nothing to preserve.

That’s why we should have good God the individuals in place of leadership, especially if we love our families and we love our children and our grandchildren, because things are going to be affected. I want to use a simple little illustration. We’re just going to use this as a sample of a manual. There’s the manual. Over there we’ve got God. Now he started all this stuff, you know, because you didn’t know what he created the heavens and the earth. He’s the one that made man.

He made the woman. He designed it all. And didn’t just leave us, he gave us a manual, and if we follow his manual, it will work. Now. I want you to picture over here, there is no God. And there’s people who call themselves atheist. And for atheists, it means you don’t believe in God. So if you don’t believe in God, you can’t believe in creation. You don’t believe in creation because it requires a creator. So you don’t believe that anything in life was planned because that requires a planner.

It can’t be a design. That would mean a designer. ever because that means somebody had to give the law. So there is no God, there’s no personal God, there is no God. Over here we have God. So what we have is people on extreme positions trying to run homes, trying to run churches and trying to run government. Because you see, If this is true, that isn’t true, a conflict of interest. So we have people that believe that there is a God and that there is a manual, and we all follow the manual.

There’s people who do not believe that there is a God, and their manual is the will of man versus the will of God. And so when you have people who don’t believe like we believe, you’re going to have conflict So the people who don’t believe the way we believe, little by little, get in place of leadership, and you will always vote according to your religious beliefs. People say, well, I don’t use my religion as a crutch to make my decision.

Yes, you will. And yes, they do. So your religion is what you believe. And what you do is your governmental philosophy. You live according to your governmental philosophy. How do you govern yourself? What restrains you? What do you do as far as the liberties you give yourself? So you’re the one that decides all of these things. And because of what I want to do and how I want to live, then I want laws to give me that freedom. People who want to go by the manual want laws that give them that right.

Because that is the right. You’ll see the right to do that doesn’t come from government. I do believe this. When you have so many in our country that have now been raised to our, excuse me, our public school educational system, remember because it’s government, they don’t want that manual over their taught in the schools. Keep the Bible out of the school because we’re not going to go by that manual over there. It’s a stream position. That’s extreme to the right.

And they think they are more advanced. They’re smarter, more intelligent, more educated. And those that believe the Bible, you’re archaic. You don’t understand. You’re foolish. You’re in the dark ages. But they take these people over here, and they send the kids to school, all of us, And we let them train and raise and educate all of our children. But we have a balance. We take them to Sunday School and they be church once a week. And they can educate them for a whole week, six, seven, eight hours a day.

Now you tell me how our young people are going to think down the road. and you can’t talk to them about God. You can’t have prayer with them. You can’t counsel them about right and wrong. Everything is just a dirty gray, instead of black and white. What’s right and what’s wrong? So we wonder why there’s such a chaos in the world. And see, when God says, marriage is between a man and a woman. Well, there’s people that, what we don’t agree with that book.

And so many believe in the philosophy over here that there is no God in there is no God, there’s no heaven, then there’s no hell. There’s no right and wrong. It’s just the will of the majority, whatever we want. We can pass any law we want and make it right. It’s right because we said it was right. So they become a God in their own eyes. So now, because you have men who wanna sleep with men have sex together, under the guise of we love each other.

God doesn’t excuse it because it’s love. It’s wrong and it’s wicked. It’s ungodly. It’s an abomination in the sight of God. And so is women with women. So I don’t like that. You’ll be glad I’m holding back. And I am. But let me tell you this now, and you need to understand it. Because of the drive for sex, that’s why they want it to be called marriage. Because everybody knows. If a man and a woman get married, nobody has a problem with them having sex together and having children.

It’s the way it works. Society knows that. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you don’t do it outside of marriage. Outside of marriage is wrong. A man is to commit himself to that woman and hurt to him until death do they part. It was never designed by God for let no man put it asunder or divide it. It was not to be. That’s God’s ideal. But not the time because of sin and the hardness of heart. Things happen. But sex outside of marriage has never been made right by God.

He hasn’t changed his mind. But you see, if two men can get it to be called a marriage, gay marriage, well, then you can’t say anything about them having sex together because they’re married. That’s why they don’t want just a civil union. They want to redefine what marriage is. Marriage is between a man and a woman, and that’s it. God gave us that word. Man didn’t give us that word. So when you have with this men or women or even heterosexuals that don’t see anything wrong, if you’re not married, it’s wrong.

It should not be. I don’t believe men and women all go out here and commit an adultery, shacking up together, living together without being married. It is not right. It’s not a good testimony. It’s not honoring to the Lord. with the manual and God will bless you for doing so. And whenever you have children, isn’t it wonderful if children have a mama and a daddy that both love the Lord and walk in with God? I mean that’s the way God designed it.

That’s what God wants. And yes, there’s a lot of problems that we have in life, but we don’t go changing the manual. Don’t try to correct the manual. God knows what He’s doing. Let me just show you very briefly an illustration. Up here we have a stone. Here we have a hammer. Here Here we have a chisel. God made a man. God made a woman. They’re not the same tools. They’re not exactly the same. They’re both human, both made by God.

But they have a different role. You see, God has a man designed and a woman designed that when they come together, they can have a little child. I don’t think I had. But if God takes the man in his hand and God takes the woman in his hand and God has given a position of authority to the man, he’s supposed to supply the power, the pressure, the love, the strength, the leadership, and the home. The woman is supposed to submit herself unto her husband.

People say, well, it’s supposed to be 50-50. Oh, blessed be God. What manual have you been reading? It’s 100 percent, 100 percent. The man is supposed to submit himself to the Lord 100% and she submit herself to the Lord 100% and lo and behold, because of the Lord, they’ll want to keep their position. The man is to be the head of the home. The wife is to submit to that authority. And God has designed them differently because of what God wants to accomplish.

Lo and behold, they come together one flesh, a child. But you don’t want this kid to be hard-headed all his life, so you have to work on him. So what do you do? Well, the right strength from the hammer and the right position of the wife, as she yields. Now if you do it this way, you’re just going to smash the stone. Men are generally harder, not all of them, but and the woman and you can work on the child.

And when you get to working on this little girl, she’s gonna be a little girl, like mama. And if it’s a little boy, well then, it’s gonna be a little hammer. So that you know what you’re trying to build, the little boy to be like daddy, and the little girl to be like mama. Cause they’re supposed to have in that home the best examples they should ever find. The best example and role model for them is not some Hollywood star, some football player, some guy on drugs, some acid rock singer.

It should be mommy and dad, not mommy and mommy and daddy and daddy, but mommy and daddy. And there’s things that God wants us to do. And if you’ll do what God says, if the man will obey the manual, if the woman will submit herself to her husband, do you know what most marriages won’t work? you see, nobody wants to fulfill their God-ordained position. They don’t want to go by the manual. We have women today who want to rule over their husbands.

Say, this is what’s going to happen. It won’t work that way. You can try it. All you’ll do is destroy. You’ll cause that man to be nothing more than a wimp. And a man ought not ever surrender his place of authority because of stupidly the odd decision to make men ought to work hard and supply the leadership and be spiritually minded like God wants them to be. You see, we can’t fulfill our responsibility if we don’t go by the book.

There’s a manual, God made a manual. Does this lesson or woman know? Because the man is commanded by God. Love your wives. He has responsibility to his wife, to be faithful to his wife, to cherish her. You see, this is what makes a good mama. When you have those children and a mama can help raise those kids the way they’re supposed to be raised. I believe it’ll work, God’s way. Take your Bible and turn to the book of Ephesians in chapter 5, Ephesians in chapter 5.

The book of Ephesians And look at verse 18. And verse 18. He said, And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit. So it’s a spiritual thing. And a spiritual thing, believe it or not, deals with us in the physical realm. He talked about in verse 21, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. You see there in chapter six in verse one where it makes a statement, children obey your parents in the Lord.

For this is right. See there is something that’s right and there is something that’s wrong and that’s the responsibility that’s God given to us. So the husband in verse 23 is the head of the wife. Verse 25, husband, love your wives. Even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it. I believe it’s a good thing. It’s an honorable thing. Men have a responsibility. I believe it’s the greatest example that the Father can have is that He loves His mother and loving those children at Mother of your and be faithful to that mother of those kids.

That’s one of the greatest things you can do for your children. You’re teaching by your example. I wish we all fulfilled all those responsibilities all of the time, sometimes we fail. And when we do, we have to admit it and say, I’m sorry and forgive and keep serving the Lord. I know this. I believe that manual is good enough for an individual that if I wasn’t married, that book tells me how to live. I believe that That book has the answers to our home.

It has all that you need to know on how to raise your children. You don’t raise them by that book. You don’t raise them right. You don’t raise them right. Just because you put a food in their stomach and clothes in their back and a roof over their head don’t mean you raise them right if you don’t raise them right according to that book. There to be spiritually minded. Teaching kids about the principles laid down in God’s Word. about rewards.

If they serve the Lord, chastening if they don’t. So if they grow up, they know this. A lot of responsibility is God’s given to us. It’s be so easy just to farm it out onto somebody else and never accept that responsibility. I believe that that manual, I believe it’s good to run God’s church. I think there’s do’s and don’ts in that book. And if we do think God’s way, I think God bless us. I think when He comes to this nation, I think it would be great if we had some leaders that say, you know, I believe that manual has the answers.

And we’re going to make our legislation according to the laws written in God’s Word. There’s rights that God gave to people and we don’t have the right to violate those rights and take them away. And therefore they know that. I happen to still love this country. I love my family. I love our church and I don’t like people messing with it. Let me show you something. This is you and me. This is sin. We all have sin upon us.

God loves us. He loves everybody in the world, regardless of who you are and whatever you’ve done. I don’t care how bad you’ve been or how bad you’re going to be. God still loves you and He loves me. And the Bible says to pay for the sin is eternal separation from God. So to go to heaven we have to be perfect as righteous as God. And none of us are perfect. We’ve all sinned. We’ve all come short of God’s perfection.

Nobody’s perfect. This hen represents Jesus Christ. He’s the Lord God in the flesh. He came into the world because he loves us, hates our sin, because it separates us from the Lord. So Jesus Christ who had no sin didn’t have to die. So he took all the sin of all the world. all the people that done all the bad things and some of the bad things are you and I. We’ve all done wrong. But God said He took Him, paid for Him on the cross, came back from the dead.

And if you and I, if we would believe He did it for us, He would put this payment to our account and we get to go to heaven on what Jesus Christ did for us. I have trusted Christ as my Savior. He paid for all of my sins. He paid for all of your sins. But it was sin. And we have all sinned. And there is no difference in God’s eyes for all have come short of the perfection of God.

And everybody needs a Savior, and there’s only one. And you need to trust Jesus Christ as your Savior. Let’s pray, shall we? With heads bowed nice and closed and no one looking around. If you’re here this morning, you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior. Would you talk to him right now? Say something simple like this, Lord, I don’t understand at all, but I know that I’m a sinner, and I believe Christ died, that He paid for my sins. And I’m going to trust him right now as my Savior.

Friend, will you trust him? Would you do that? If you will, I’m not going to have you forward, not going to embarrass you. But right where you’re sitting, I’d like to have prayer for you. We’ll just slip in very quickly and put it right back down. By that you mean, yes, pray for me. I will trust Christ as my Savior this morning. I want to be certain of going to heaven. Anyone before we close? Anyone at all? If you trust that Christ is your Savior, your God’s child, if your God’s child, Son of the Lord, put him first.

Get you Bible out. That’s the manual. Start reading it, study it. You’d be surprised how he can straighten up your life. Father, we thank you so much for this time together. Thank for all the goodness you’ve done to us and for us. We thank you for our moms. We’re thankful for those that are still with us. We’re thankful for this service in Christ’s name. Hello, this is Peter Amato, and from all the staff at Bibleline, 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 Army. 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. every day. Believing that the Lord is coming soon, just keep looking up.