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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 air. 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.

Turn in your Bible to the book of Revelation. We’re gonna start at the last book and go to the first book. That’s a good way to do it again. Revelation chapter 22. Now there’s something that you definitely have to keep clear. You’ve got to really keep it clear. Over here, see there’s an orange sitting right here. Over here, there’s an apple. There’s an apple, and there’s an orange. That’s an orange over here. And an apple over here, you can see that.

You’ve got to be able to see them. They’re not the same. Things that are different are not the same. This orange is not this apple and this apple is not this orange. And you can’t and you shouldn’t try to put them together because then they lose some of the characteristics when you try to put them together. Now that’s what happens with grace in words. Grace is one thing, works as another. And never the twain shall meet, to keep them separate.

But isn’t the Bible say that after you trust the Lord, we’re all under grace, right? You believe that? We’re under grace. Romans chapter 6, verse 14, we’re under grace. Well, if we’re under grace, why do we have to work so hard? I mean, we’re under grace. Well, if you’re under grace, that means you don’t have to do anything. And yet, there’s a problem because we’re gonna get rewarded for our works, but we’re under grace. Now, something is not compatible.

we’re trying to mix these two things together. Now before you get saved, the devil wants you to believe that salvation is by works. Now after you get saved, he wants you to concentrate on this grace, doing nothing. And so what do most Christians do? Nothing. Because it doesn’t matter. Now I had to battle this thing years ago when I was 22 years old. I already knew I was saved by grace. For four years I was saved. I knew I had eternal life.

And now I’ve got to decide what I’m going to do with my life. When I made up my mind what I wanted to do and believe in that it was what God wanted me to do with my life was to do something. So to do something you have to prepare. To do nothing you don’t. It’s how simple it was. If I don’t want to do anything I don’t have to prepare. But if I do want to do something I got to prepare.

And so it determined my decisions in the course for my life. Now I want you to look there in the book of Revelation in chapter 22. Look what he says here in verse 12, after all the comments that have been made to the book of Revelation and he’s sent these letters to the churches so all these things have been done. I’ve gone through the tribulation period, gone through the thousand year reign upon the earth, the great white throne judgment and then he says this, and behold I come quickly, quickly spent 2,000 years, but a day with the Lord is nothing.

2,000 years. It’s already been. He says, Behold, I come quickly and you get this and my reward is with me. My reward is with me. So He’s coming and He’s going to reward and He’s going to reward according to grace or according to works. Look at the first. My reward is with me to give every man According, as his work shall be. Now, this is one of the last things in the whole Bible that God tells us. Why do I want rewards?

Why do I want the rewards? Why do I believe in rewards? I’ve often made the statement that I don’t serve the Lord to get rewards. But I do serve the Lord to get rewards because God wants me to work to get rewards. So therefore, I work to get rewards. But that’s not my mural motive. My motive is the Lord that’s behind the reward. God wants to reward you. But now grace, I can’t reward you for that. Grace is free.

Grace is without works. But that salvation, that’s getting us to heaven. Our works must be important. It must be important enough that one of the last things he says is that I’ve got rewards, and I want to give it to every man according as his work shall be. So do you believe that if that’s true, every man that knows the Lord, including women, should work for the Lord. And to work for those rewards, God says that we should, it’s even a command in the scripture to work for rewards.

So therefore, I believe that God says it, it must be worth it. It must be something to it. There’s a lot of time, and I was talking to somebody about this just recently. You know, in Hebrews in chapter 12, he talks about such a great cloud of witnesses. Let us run our race alone. And I’ve often wondered that I, yes, believe that that cloud of witnesses could be all those Old Testament saints that have come before us, that have already testified.

They’ve lived by faith and did what God wanted them to do. And now they’re in heaven. And we have all these witnesses that did all of these things. Testifying as to the grace of God working in their life. And like the Apostle Paul had made a statement, his grace was not bestowed upon me in vain, I labored. I’m under grace, I labored. So there has to be an understanding of what do you mean by laboring under grace. Since we’re under grace, which is our position, it is possible that yes, God has given by grace everything we need to serve Him.

But there’s two things that I’ll give those to you later that we need to have, in which God is going to reward us for. So in Romans in chapter 6 and verse 14, it does make the statement that you are an eye or under grace. One of the reasons not to believe in rewards is not to believe his words concerning this matter. Does Christ say anything about rewards? Does God say anything about it? And if he does, what does he say about it?

What does he want us to do about it? And therefore, it is very, very important. Grace cannot be merited, but take your Bible and turn to Romans in chapter four, Romans and chapter four. We are always sometimes confused by the doctrine of divine grace and human responsibility. When we’re talking about what God has done and what God will do based upon what He wants, God can do many things. And He has told us in His Word, God will save whosoever believe it.

It’s not based upon a man’s works, but God’s grace. God saves a person by faith and faith alone. yet at the same time I want you to notice there is in the scriptures this thing about works but look what he says here in verse 4. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace but of death. So there are rewards but rewards are earned rewards is a debt to be paid and grace cannot be. Grace is is the unmerited favor, getting something from God we did not do anything to merit.

But does ———————————————— the Lord want us to serve the Lord? Now think about this, we often quote these verses. For by grace are you say through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God not of works. Unless any man should boast. And then the very next verse, for we are his what? That would do good works. So, good works is in the plan of God, but you can’t make the orange, the apple, and the apple, the orange.

You cannot change the characteristics of either one. The Bible says in Romans and Chapter 11 and verse 6 when it says, and if by grace it cannot be of works. And if it is of works it cannot be by grace. They too are separate. You will get very confused into Christian life if you don’t keep them separate. You can learn how to totally trust the Lord for your eternal destination by faith alone and what Christ did on the cross for me.

Therefore, after 53 years, I have no worries or doubts about my salvation one iota, because I know that it was free. it was the gift of God. It was not by my works. So my works can’t get it. Grace must be eternal to be grace. It has to be eternal grace because the human individual cannot add to or take away from it not being grace. Man can’t change grace. Grace is grace. And this is a wonderful thing to known.

But that is our salvation of which you and I hear, don’t worry about. But now to him that worketh is the reward. Now when we’re talking about service, it is working for rewards. That is something that God wants us to do, and that is to work, to do the thing that God wants. So salvation is not earned, it’s not of works. Rewards are by works. Now, can it be distorted? Whether it’s grace or words. When you add them together and you take grace and add a work to it, it’s no longer grace.

But if you take rewards and add grace to it, then it’s no longer works. When we talk about going to heaven, you can’t add works to that. When we talk about rewards, you can’t add grace to that either. So when he says that every man will receive his own reward according to his own labor, it can’t be that God’s going to give you rewards that you didn’t earn. He can’t give it to you if you didn’t deserve it. You must deserve every reward and you can’t expect God just to say, well, it really didn’t matter.

I’m going to give him to you anyway, because then works would be destroyed. And we’re not actually getting what we deserve because rewards are something you deserve. So when Christ says that He’s coming back soon, His reward is with Him to give to every man according as His work shall be. Means you earned it, you have a right to it, He owes it and he’s paying it and he has to do it.

If you think I’m saved by grace and I’m going to just peddle my life away, I’m not going to do anything, but it won’t matter. I don’t know those words whenever Clinton made those statements. What does it matter? You know, just four people dead yet. Now, what does it matter? All right, let’s just pretend now we go to heaven.

What difference does it make? If you do not believe that it now makes a difference, you’re not going to make a difference. Your life is going to be lived and you will not have a difference in your life. This is why me, Yankee Army, this is why I had to go to Bible college because of what I believe. I knew that when I get to heaven, I don’t want there to be one reward that I could have earned and I didn’t get it.

I wanted every reward I can get. So the question comes down is it selfish to want rewards? Remember salvation is by grace. There can be no selfishness there. But in the sense that you want to go to heaven, is it selfish to want to go to heaven? I mean I did trust Christ as my Savior because I didn’t want to go to hell. Well, you should be so selfish. But I did trust the Lord because I wanted some fire insurance.

I didn’t want to go to hell. So I was concerned about myself. And I did want myself to go to heaven. And I am so glad that I am going the Heaven. That’s the best news in all the world. But now when it comes to rewards, does God want us to have these rewards? How serious of an issue is this? As bad as God wants us to get to heaven, it seems like he wants us to have these rewards just as bad.

In the words, he wants you and I to serve him. because He wants to reward you. He can’t give you these rewards because they’re earned and if you don’t earn them you can’t have them. Therefore I knew that if I got to heaven and I didn’t get any reward because I didn’t know what to do, it was because I didn’t know what the book said. So my purpose in going to Bible school was to know the Bible so that I could know what God wanted me to do so that I could run my race intelligently and stay within the guidelines of what God says that you have to be disciplined in every area.

So if you’re going to run, you’re running to win. And he talks about in chapter 9 about getting the reward, winning the prize, the prize that is set before us. God seeks to motivate us by these rewards. And we are reward motivated people. What am I going to get out of this? So because of this inward desire to have all of it God wants for me, I would hate to see the look on his face when I get to heaven.

And he’s sitting there like with, you know, yank it. Look what I had for you. Look at all this that I was going to give to you. at what I was going to do with you, so I could have used you in the kingdom or however for eternity. I don’t know, but I would hate to see any anguish at all upon his face and says, Lord, I didn’t love you that much. I didn’t love you enough to dedicate my life to you.

I didn’t love you enough to study your word. I wanted to be something else. Lord, I wanted to do this and be this and go there. I wanted this and I didn’t love you enough. to study your words so that I could be used by you. I threw all that away because I thought, it doesn’t really matter. There’s got to be some kind of theological thinking that’s going in the minds of every child of God that doesn’t serve the Lord with all their heart.

There’s got to be a reason. Is it because they don’t believe that it’s important at all? If they don’t care. Their own life is more important than what God wants. And that’s why I have for 53 years been pursuing. I pursue the knowledge that I need. I pursue the will of God knowing his way and his will and his work. I pursue after souls. I pursue him always pursuing. And if you don’t have something inside that drives you, what do you have?

I can’t yet figure out why any of God’s children wouldn’t want to serve the Lord with all their heart, all the days of their life. I cannot fathom that. And I know about the Old Sinful Nature. I have one. I have every reason not to serve the Lord that anybody else has. I could say, well, it’s my life. I can do whatever I place and I want to be this and that and the others will. You know, but most people never stop the thing.

Lord, what do you want me to do with my life? What do you want? And find out what that is. And then have that joy and the satisfaction of doing what God wants you to do. That’s something to think about. Look in John chapter 4. The Gospel of John in chapter 4. Notice over there in verse 33, well let’s just look in verse 30, 31, where the disciples came back, they had been in the town, the Berghu king and so on, you know, and they came back.

In verse 31, in the meanwhile his disciples prayed him or asked him, saying, Master, eat. But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that you know not of. In other words, what had he been doing? had he been doing that he could say I have me to eat that you know not of. He was talking to a woman about how to have eternal life. He was talking to a little woman at the well. That was more important to him.

I must needs go to Samaria. And this is more satisfaction to man than food that you’ll eat. This is more real, more powerful, more precious. And look what he says here. In verse 34, he says, Jesus said unto them, my meat, get this. My meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work. Now, that statement right now. their alone. Mind me, my desire, that what satisfies me is to do the will of Him that sent me and to finish His work.

So Christ has a reason. He had something that He was honed in on. Every person has to have something that He considers worth living for. Now there’s not much in this world. If you stop and think about it, the whole world is going to go, it’s going to explode one day. Everything is going to be burned up, everything. The only value of anything on this earth is people’s souls, the souls of people. So you project yourself past the explosion of the earth to something more solid that’s going to be in the future that will be eternal.

And you look at that and you think, that’s where I’m headed. That’s where I’m going to be. It’s kind of like, you know, little kids, they grow up and then they get to be teenagers. They get on that teenage bridge and know it kind of sways back and forth. They can’t go back to childhood. They don’t want to go to the adulthood. They don’t like what they see there. And so these teenagers think they were going to stay right here all their life and then they ain’t gonna happen.

This is where you’re headed. You’re not gonna stay here forever. You’re gonna get older. All it takes is a little time. You’re gonna go from 14 to 15 to 16 to 17 to 18, 19 makes you know you can’t stop it. You can’t stop it. You’re gonna grow up whether you like it or not. Well you may not grow up. And you may even grow out. Well, anyway, we’ll change the subject, but you’re headed someplace. In heaven is where we’re going to be.

Can you project yourself into the future as you could do time travel? We’re in heaven. We’re at the judgments of the Christ. And the Lord calls your name and you stand before Him. And the Lord is able to show you all the opportunities that He gave to you. He shows you every trial that you had and the trophy that was waiting for you and the reward for all the suffering that you went to, all the times that you bribed on Him and you gave Him glory.

And all the tribulation and you didn’t complain and murmur and you didn’t back-bite and you didn’t curse God. all these opportunities and God has said, look at all that. I was keeping the books on you. And all those things that you had to go through, I saw all of that. I knew everything. And it says, I’m sorry, but you don’t get any rewards because rewards are not given by grace. These rewards has nothing to do with how much I love you.

Oh, I love you, but the rewards you have to earn these. Getting here was because I loved you. These rewards, well that’s because you love me. Do you love me enough to sacrifice your life for me? Do you love me enough to work for me? And if you do, God says I want to pay you wages. Look what He says, they’re in verse 35. Say not ye. There are yet four months and then comeeth harvest. come with harvest, be the whole life send to you, lift up your eyes, look on the fields for their white, already to harvest.

And he that reaperth, receiveth, wages, and gather a fruit on the life he turned. The thing about being a soul winner is the fruit lasts forever. It’s fruit that lasts forever. And God says he pays wages. He pays wages to those who are soul winners. You say, well, how much am I going to get out of it? You can bet your bottom daughter. Well, you ought not do that. You’re going to have great rewards, great riches because God owes you for your labor.

And you and I don’t really know exactly how much that’s going to be. But God says it is worth it. Now look what he says in verse 37. And And hearing is that saying true, one soeth another reaping. I sent you to reap that whereon you bestowed no labor. Other men labored and you’re entered into their labors.” People going in summers spreading the seed and some, you know, watering. And next thing you know, you come along and you reap for other people’s labor.

And then somebody else is going to reap where you have labored. We just keep sowing the seeds and we’re to be found faithful and doing this for the Lord. But labor, labor, labor, labor is works and works God is going to reward you for. It will be worth it all. Take your Bible and turn to the 2nd Peter chapter 1. 2nd Peter chapter 1. And the thing that you need to keep in mind is you cannot make somebody trust Christ a Savior.

And you can’t make somebody serve the Lord. Because that’s got to be, that’s between them and God. You can’t make a person do these things. You just hope that something that you say and do will influence a person. But look there in 2 Peter in chapter 1, look in verse 3. And verse 3 says, according as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness. Now just think, by grace God has already given to us by grace that we didn’t deserve what we need that pertains to life.

You see, just to know that you have eternal life and they’re going to heaven, you were saved by grace. It was by God’s grace that he left you here. It was by God’s grace he gave you the Holy Spirit. See that’s something you didn’t deserve. An opportunity to serve a Lord that was free. And to live your life God has injected a few things into your life like troubles, trials, that all these testings. All the things seem like it goes wrong.

Those are nothing more than opportunities. Problems reveal what you don’t know. Something maybe you can’t solve. And that forces you to go to the Lord and ask Him for the wisdom so that He can teach you more. So every problem you have you can’t solve is to show to you what you need to learn. So there’s things God wants you to learn from every difficult situation and it’s to be looked upon as a blessing and not curse. That sounds easy preaching.

But if you could only listen to what he’s saying. So God has given us these opportunities. So He now wants us to keep in mind these two main things. The decision to serve and the diligence to work is our contribution. Thank God rewards. We hope you’ve enjoyed this lesson today from from Dr. Arnold and Pray that Bibleline is a blessing in your life. We are so grateful to our listeners and supporters who help us accomplish so many great things for the Lord.

During this month to every person making a financial donation in any amount, we’re going to send to you the DVD teaching series on how to witness to Roman Catholics. Many Catholics love the Lord so much, but sadly they are lost. Although the Roman Catholic Church uses words like grace and mercy, they rely upon works as the cause of salvation. So many wonderful people are being deceived by the world’s largest religion, and this DVD series could help you win them to the truth.

Again, we’re so grateful to those of you who support this ministry. 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 for supporting Bibleline. 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.