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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.

Take your Bible. You got a Bible? Turn to the book. A book that you’re always familiar with. familiar with you know the one that you go to probably every other day the book of Haggai the book of Haggai the one you got committed to memory this is on page 962 in an old school field reference Bible you got Haggai and Zachariah Malachi so if you find in those you’ll be in the area but look there in the book of Haggai in chapter 2, chapter 2 of Haggai.

And you’ll notice there in verse 7, verse 7, and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come. I will fill this house with glory, Seth, the Lord of Hosts. Now who do you think he’s talking about the desire of all nations. You see, everyone, they may not know who he is, but everyone really wants the Lord. They just don’t know who God is. So they’ll choose the God of this world or some man may God or make themselves God.

But everyone knows that there’s something missing in their life. Now sometimes if it’s nations that can desire something, so they’re means they’re desiring something but is the expectation there. Do you really expect that desire to be fulfilled? You can have desires but know that they’ll never happen. Now we might say that there’s desires of our presidency that want certain things to be done. There’s other people in this country that don’t desire the same thing. So sometimes people don’t know whose desires are going to be met.

If I was to say to you, I have expectations. Expectations of living to be 100 years old. Now that might materialize, but it might not. But I can have expectations. I can expect that one day I’ll be rich. You can expect one day you’re going to find that girl you’re looking for or that guy you’re looking for, or you can have all kinds of expectations. We got new years coming. We’re supposed to have new expectations of what? But now if I told you I was expecting.

Now that has a different connotation to it. Now if some young woman says I am expecting what would you think she means by I am expecting? She’s gonna what? She’s gonna have a baby. So a man can be expecting but you don’t say it that way because you can expect a lot of things. Be expecting to speak this morning. Be expecting to sing a special this morning. Expect it. You can expect a lot of things, but generally don’t say, you know, a man is expecting, but it’s okay for a woman to expect.

And she is expecting in generally, it’s three-four and two, she’s like, oh, I’m gonna have a young man. So there are desires and this desire of nations. nations would love to have peace and joy. They just don’t know how to get it. You see, when you don’t know the truth, any error will do. And so they come up with communism and all the other isms and spasms, trying to develop a form of government. But you can’t have this form of government that produces all of this wonderful bliss they’re trying to produce upon the earth and trying to manufacture something.

It doesn’t seem to be working. So that’s why there are people that think, well, if there’s only one government, then who are you going to fight against? If everybody was ruled by a few elites that know the answer to everything really smart and the rest of the people were just you know like cattle they just follow then everything will be fine all we got to do is just get the right people to lead and all the rest of them can follow and we would have peace upon the earth and a one world government one world religion everybody just believed the same or nobody I don’t know if I could believe anything, but there’s something that God has placed inside of us, this great burning desire.

We want to be free. We wish we weren’t as bad as we were, that we didn’t have this whole sinful nature, that everybody would just love everybody, but none of that’s true. But let’s just pretend for a moment in a moment that there’s no God, that there’s no Bible, and we’re nothing more than just people. We’re just people, but there is no God. Then a lot of things that people are trying to do will make sense. Then it belongs to the power of the mind.

Those that have the power to do something didn’t do it. And it doesn’t matter what you have to sacrifice. If you’ve got to sacrifice, you will casualties along the way. As long as you get and reach your gold and produce a utopia upon the earth, then everything would be fine. And so if there is no God, then of course evolution would be true, and we just came about by the process of evolution. And so we’re just animals and seeking to enjoy a better life.

And so we try to figure out what’s the least harmful to everybody. And so we’ve got to do away with anything it has to do with, no, all these religions and so forth. Because they just start more wars than advice fighting for their faith. Let’s just do away with all of that there. just everybody just believe the same thing. There is no God. And so therefore, we’ll all have peace and it all makes some some sense. But the problem is that there is a God and there is a heaven in hell and men do have a sinful nature and it does have to be curbed.

And so there’s a lot of things that’s in the word of God. I want you to take your Bible and turn to the book of Luke. The book of Luke and chapter two. And Luke chapter two, Mary was going to have a child. This is the desire of nations that has come. Jesus Christ is the burning desire of so many of the Jewish people that were living even a thousand of them. They wanted to be the one that would bring the Messiah into the world.

So the nation of Israel was expecting a child to be born. And not only was the nation of Israel expecting a child to be born, there were certain families that were expecting the child to be born. And you would think, well if they were expected it, they would have an idea, now when is this child going to be born? So some of the things you think about is what kind of a baby was this. I was trying to think along the lines of, okay, how would you describe this baby?

Now, you know, whenever a woman has a baby and you look at the little baby, he’s like, oh, that is a pretty baby. It’s a pretty baby. Now, every baby I’ve ever seen all look like little Geronimo’s. They do like, no, little, little red Indians, but they do like Geronimo’s. But if it’s in your relatives of your family, it’s definitely a pretty baby. And you automatically look to see, you know, if it has any resemblance of you, does it have your eyes or your nose or your ears or whatever?

Now, whenever it says in Psalms 23, the Lord is my shepherd. We often say, you know, it’s different to say, he is your shepherd, but he’s my shepherd. It’s one thing to say that is your baby then to say, that is my baby. But we’re always interested in that little baby. It’s a pretty baby. But you know, sometimes people look at the baby and they think, oh, that is a precious, it’s so precious. And now the baby hasn’t done anything to deserve these titles that was just born.

It hasn’t accomplished anything great. But can you love something that has accomplished zero? It hasn’t done anything. But a mother can love that little baby, even though the baby has it, even said the words mama or daddy. Said nothing, did anything, and yet they loved. Just for the sake of that’s a child. Now, we’re often told that God loves us with an everlasting love. We did nothing to deserve God’s love. But sometimes we think whenever we read the 139th Psalm, where he talks about that before you were born, he says, I formed your body in the womb.

I knew all of your members and my thoughts are about you and how wonderful and perfectly we’re made and how appreciative we ought to be of our creator that can create these bodies for us to live in. We see when God was going to have a baby born to this world, This was not necessarily going to be a pretty baby. How many of y’all think that Jesus must have been, I mean, if you was God and you’re going to have a baby, I mean, this must be the most prettiest baby in the whole world.

Do you think he was? Do you think he was the prettiest baby in the world? Don’t you wish you had a picture? You know, somebody could have been there with the camera. Video tape and showed us the prettiest baby in all the world. But you know the Bible says this about Jesus that there was no beauty that we should desire in. So maybe he didn’t look any different. He was in a crowd. Nobody could pick him out. He could just walk through a crowd.

Nobody could. He was no different than anybody. The way anybody else thought. Maybe he wasn’t as pretty as some of the other babies. Who knows? But was he a precious baby? He was a precious baby. Was he a precious baby to God? So in God’s eyes, this was a precious baby. Remember God so loved the world that he gave his only one he had. He was his only son. And so God knew the value of this baby. This was going to be a payment for the sins of the whole world.

So have you ever seen the commercial that comes on and it says blah blah blah and blah blah blah and this is priceless. You’re priceless? I mean you can’t put a value on it. Here’s a baby that’s going to be born but you can’t put a value on it. How much was he worth? Now he was of greater value than all the people that’s all been born all put together. This one son was worth all the world. Now that must make him a pretty precious baby, priceless baby.

But not only was this baby expected to come and all these things, but you see, this baby was a little bit different because he was prophesied to come. Now how much difference is there between the word promise and prophesied? God prophesies what’s going to take place. It may be a promise or it may be a statement of fact. Well, that him promising to make it happen. But there are promises that God has given into his word. But he did promise something and the very first promise was found there in the book of Genesis in chapter 3, where it says in verse 15 that this child of this woman is going to bruise the the head of the serpent, crushed the head of the servant, but Bruce is healed.

So we believe that that’s a prophecy concerning Jesus Christ that would be born of a woman. And so as you go down to the line, you know, there’s promises that God made and the prophecies that state this in his word of something that’s going to be so people were expecting this precious child to be born because this child has to be different from all other children. Jesus was God in the flesh, which separates him from every other person that’s ever been born.

So are there prophecies in the scriptures that tells us a little bit about this expected child, promises that God has made. And so you find out that He has to come through the nation of Israel. Remember there in Genesis chapter 12 when He was talking to Abraham and he says, that I am going to make of thee a great nation. And he says, all families of the earth shall be blessed because of thee, because of the seed that’s going to come through your loin and on down the road talking about Jesus Christ.

So when you read there in the book of Galatians in chapter 3, the seed singular, which is Christ. So it tells us what Abraham was told and what Abraham believed and why God says that his faith got him the righteousness of God. So he was justified by his faith. And that was in Genesis 15 when the Lord told him to count all the stars of heaven. And to think of how many people there were going to be, like the stars of heaven, and yet out of all of those stars of heaven, and all those people that’s going to be born as a grain to sand upon the year, I got one child that’s going to be born and can be different from all the stars, and something that’s going to be different from all the grains of sand upon the year.

This one is going to be different. Because see this child, besides just being a precious child, a priceless child, a pretty child maybe, but this child was going to be different. Because see Jesus Christ says that this child is going to be a perfect child. There’s nothing wrong with this child. This child has no faults. He has no flaws. He has no sinful nature, and He’s going to be born into this world, and God is going to work a miracle.

So therefore this child will have a virgin birth. Now if I was to ask you, where does it say in the Bible that Jesus would be born of a virgin in the Old Testament? Where is that scripture found? Does anybody have a clue? We only got one person in here knows where the Old Testament says that, Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bury son and shall call his name Emmanuel. And there’s only one person, okay, we got two people that knows where that verse is found in the Bible.

Do I hear three? Do I hear three? 20 about all of it, not 20 about 30 about who makes it 30 about 40 about 30 about 40 about 30 about? Alright, I’ve got three. I’ve got four. I’ve got four. Anybody else know where it says? you think that that would be a good verse to know where it is in the Bible that God promised. A virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. Do you believe that’s an important verse to know about Jesus Christ?

Yes, Tom, Isaiah 7, 14. It’s a good verse, it’s one that that you need to mark down and always remember. Now does the Bible say anywhere about, oh, you know, unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, child is born as son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the everlasting father, the Prince of Peace. Where is that found? Oh, now we’re getting to where we’re just going to blur it out.

Ah, yes, where was it at? Isaiah 9, 6, she thinks. Is that right? Is she right? I think she’s right. But the Bible states that Jesus Christ would be born of a virgin and that he was promised to be the one that would be the son of God and what his name would be called. So is it important to know that Jesus was called Emmanuel God with us? And He is the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Now, think for a moment.

The Prince of Peace, that’s what the P also does. Prince of Peace. And when Jesus was born, it says, you know, and the shepherds watching over there flopped by night and said, therefore the Lord is going to be born and He is the Savior of the world. And the angels rejoice with the heavenly host and all it talks about, you know, peace on earth, good will toward man, peace on earth. And yet Jesus when He was here says, I did not come to bring peace, but I came with a sword to divide mother and father and brother and sister.

He divides. You know there’s nobody in this world as divisive as Jesus Christ. There’s no one has ever been born that offends more people than Jesus Christ. He is very offensive because truth is offensive. Because the Bible says that God be true in every man, a liar. every man’s a center. So we don’t like to be rebuked. Did you know if you just naturally serve the Lord and did right, you are a rebuke to other people that you are around when they don’t do like you do?

And they people sometimes don’t like it because you don’t associate with them and say what they say and do what they do and go where they go. And just by the fact that you try to do right, you can be persecuted for it. But truth, Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. Therefore, He was prophesied that He would come into the world. He was promised that He would come into this world. He was a perfect child.

There was nothing wrong with this perfect child. But now, we’re just saying the Bible that He was born King of the Jews. And by having an idea where that’s found, He was born King. Have we sung that song born a king? Born a king? If he’d born a king he had to be born a prince. They just had he claimed his throne yet. And then someday when this prince of peace will come and when he sets up his kingdom upon the earth he will rule with a rod of iron.

Then there will be peace on the earth and that’s talking about the kingdom. But you know Christ doesn’t have to wait until He comes and sets up His kingdom to bring peace because He says, my joy,. I give, my peace I give. God has peace that He can give to you and I and we can have it now. Do we have to wait till we get to heaven to have joy? Do we have to wait till we get to heaven to have love?

Do we have to wait till we get to heaven to have, you know, this peace? No, you can have those things now, because see, those are the fruit of the Spirit. And if God says, walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh, it means that if I walk in the Spirit, I should have some of those, you know, some of that fruit. And so you can have peace now. And then peace is not the absence of the world’s turmoil.

It’s the peace of the soul. It’s where you learn how to rest in the Lord and commit things to God and you can walk with the Lord. And it doesn’t matter what happens to you because you have an inner peace, an inner joy that the world doesn’t have. See Paul was a free man when he sat in the prison because he couldn’t capture him. He had already been captured by the Lord. He had already become a prisoner of the Lord.

They loved slave of Jesus Christ. So nobody else could affect him or bother him. And whatever they did and so forth and put him in prison, even when they chopped off his head. He was already a free man. So when you see that and you understand that, when you are no longer afraid of death at any time, you can really begin to live free. But sometimes we are afraid to trust God, and therefore we have fear. And fear produces torment.

And so many times Christians torment themselves. Now we should do everything we possibly can to prepare. You see, Jesus was the most prepared for baby in the world because he prepared a nation. And did you realize that just for Jesus to be born in Bethlehem, Africa, they were already about 80 miles to the north in Galilee. So it just so happens that they issued a decree that they had to go to their hometown to pay their taxes. See, they even had tax problems back in those days too.

And so they had to go and prepare their taxes. And here’s Mary already with child. And to go 80 miles now, all they had to do was they just got in their car and drove the 80 miles over the super highway. Or did she ride a bumpy ride on the back of a donkey, or did she walk? Or what happened? Maybe Joseph carried her eye on it. But she got there, 80 miles. Did you know that before the foundations of this world that God knew where his son had to be born.

He had prophesied where he’d be born. The promise was already made and God’s word has to be full-filled. And it was just a coincidence that the Roman government issued that decree right on schedule so that they would have to go down to Bethlehem. And they had to get there at the right time so that the child could be born and the child was born. So God prepared the arrival. And yet, look how He prepared it. No, He could have had Jesus born in a mansion.

You know, big palace or something like that. And big parades and everything that goes on. But no, He was to be born in a stable, born and placed in a manger. This is how God wanted it, but maybe people don’t understand it. Great things can come from poor beginnings. You know in the book of Oseid talks about God will bring beauty out of ashes. You realize there’s things that happens in your life that just seems like everything is destroyed.

Everything is burned down. There’s no hope. Nothing. You see absolutely no way. And all of a sudden God can bring some beauty out of some ashes. When it seems like it’s so hopeless and all you can do now is trust the Lord and you just trust the Lord and you’ll be surprised what God can do. You see now that we have been born in the God’s family and God’s eyes, you are a beautiful baby and God’s eyes, you’re his child, you are a precious baby.

And there’s things that God has prepared for each and every one of us as his children. God has prepared to give to us the day we were born, the free gift of eternal life, the gift of the Holy Spirit, given us His Word and given us a purpose. So He has prepared and all of life is prepared in such a way that each one of us, if we walk with the Lord, God can use us to accomplish His purpose.

I think it’s all wonderful. And believe it or not, when you trust it, Christ is your Savior, God gave you a perfect birth. It was perfect. Newbeth has no sinful nature. You are a child of God. And you are as precious in God’s eyes as anybody else in the whole world. Understand and believe that. And the value that God placed upon you is that, and I told this to a girl the other day, well, two days ago, I was sitting there and I was in this lobby and I was talking to this girl.

Never seen it before. I said, can I explain something to you? I said, then you probably have no clue how valuable you are to God. I said, but if you were the only person in the world and he would have died for you, that means he would rather have died than live without you. But think of who he is. If he would die for you, that means you must be very valuable to God. And it did take long for her to trust Christ as Savior.

I just thought it was so neat. And I told her after I got through, I said, no, I just want to understand. I said, no, this is what Christmas is about. Christmas is about the free gift of eternal life. People hearing about what Christ did for them and how all we have to do is believe He did it for us. And He gives us as a gift, eternal life. And we go to heaven on what Christ did for us.

Ask goodness. Let’s appreciate it. Father, we thank you again for your blessings. Thank you for the opportunity we have to just to talk about Christ, who He is and what He’s done. And Father, we look forward to the day that He comes again. We ask your blessings upon those that are not able to be here because some are ill and Father some are traveling. But we pray your blessings upon the service today, the choir and the songs and everything that goes on preaching of your Word.

Help us to be a blessing to those that tune in by internet. This year’s this year of glory. Blyt’s name is mine. Well, it’s almost Christmas, and we’d like to give every listener a Christmas gift. Just for listening, we’d like to send Dr. Arnold’s CD on understanding difficult passages of the Bible. No donation is required. We’ve compiled on CD Dr. Arnold’s teachings on difficult passages. For example, does James 2 teach that true faith will produce works? Does 2 Corinthians 5, 17 mean that a true believer will no longer desire to sin?

These and many other verses are explained in their biblical context so that you can have confidence in the agreement of all the Word of God. Call us today, toll free at 1-800-576-3771, or you can write us at 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Again, no donation is necessary, just your address so that we can send to you this important teaching. God bless you and Merry Christmas and thank you for listening to 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. leaving that the Lord is coming soon. Just keep looking up.