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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 Bibleignmenistries.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 Romans. The Book of Romans. Anywhere in Romans, it will matter. I won’t be all over the place anyway. But we’ll start off in the book of Romans chapter 6. We often call the book of Romans a book on justification. How that a sinful man, and God spends a few chapters telling us just how sinful we are. And if you read the first three chapters, it doesn’t look very good. And we’ve all sinned, let God be true, every man a liar.

And we know that the law condemns everyone and the whole world is guilty before God and how that the wages of sin is death. So no man has a hope and lo and behold Christ comes. That changes everything. So he died on the cross paid for our sins and it says and we’re justified by faith and not by the works of the law in Romans 3 28. And in chapter before it gets very interesting because it lets us know that God says we’re saved by faith, that the promise might be sure to all those that believe.

Otherwise nobody could be sure if it depended upon man’s work. But since it’s free, you can know you’re going. That’s how simple it is. When you get to chapter 6, it talks about how that when Christ died, we died. So it’s a wonderful chapter on how you and I are supposed to reckon ourselves to be dead and live unto God and walk in newness of life. How wonderful it is and how easy it sounds and how difficult it is to live.

So by the time you get to chapter seven, there’s a rude awakening. You know, wonder, uh-oh, here I am. I’m child of God and I want to serve the Lord. Why do I have this problem of this old sinful nature in me that wants to tear me down, lead me in the wrong direction and just keeps getting me in trouble? So we looked there in Romans in chapter 7 and you’ll notice in verse 12 where it kind of gives us a little bit inkling of what the law is like.

It says, where for the law is holy, the commandment holy, and just and good. So there’s nothing wrong with the law. Nothing wrong with the law. There must be something wrong with something else. Hmm. Oh, it’s us. There’s something wrong with us. You see, we don’t always want to fulfill the law. And then the time that we do, we can’t. So we’re a failure either way. We really mess up. So he makes this statement here in verse 14, for we know that the law is spiritual.

Nothing wrong with the law. But by the law is the knowledge of sin. Now that’s good when you’re lost and somebody explains the gospel and you’ve got to be perfect to go to heaven and say, no, you know you’re a sinner. So that’s wonderful to use the law to show a person that, well, we broke it. But what if you’re saved? You’re saved. Do you have eternal life? You’re a child of God. Does the law still let you know when you’re sin?

By the law is the knowledge of sin. Does it still work if you’re a Christian? Hmm, I wonder. Paul was a believer in the Lord, and he had something that he struggled with for a long time. And we believe by the time this chapter was written in the book of Romans, Paul had been saved about 25 years. So he wasn’t a new Christian. He’d been struggling with something. But not long the goal I preach to certain. Only two Greek words, one was Poéo and one was Praso.

Poéo means you don’t commit one single act of sin, not one. Praso, praso, practice. It’s a different word and it means to habitually commit. So when you read in the book of 1 John in chapter 3, many translations use the word translated as praso means to habitually practice, to practice sin. So he says, if you’re saved, those that are born in the God won’t practice sin. Well, most people I know don’t practice it. They’re just experts at it. But it’s not talking about, and it’s not the right word.

In 1 John 3, the word is poeo. It means they don’t commit one single act of sin. So there is a problem because of translations that, well, when you have a certain theology, you put it into the Scriptures when you’re translating it because, well, it can’t be It’s got to be this instead of just translating it like the King James has it. But I want you to notice this word here in verse 19. The Apostle Paul says, for the good that I would, I do not.

But the evil which I would not that I do. This word do here is not poio. It’s prasal. Prasal means to habitually commit. The Apostle Paul is saying that he habitually commits sin. And yet, when you read over there in the book of 1 John, whosoever is born of God, won’t do that. So they used the wrong word there, and they put praso there, which would cause the apostle Paul, must evidently not be saved. But I know that Paul was saved.

And so they’ve used the wrong word, give it the wrong meaning, and it changes everything. So when Paul says here, I want to do what’s right, And at the same time, I find myself not always doing the right thing, not always saying the right thing, thinking the right thing. And so as you go down through the book of Romans in chapter 7, I want you to look at in verse 14, where it says, for we know that the law is spiritual, but notice the last part of this verse, but I am carnal.

Now carnal is not a word we usually use for the lost man, but the saved man who is in the flesh. I have a flesh nature. I still have an old sinful nature. And that’s why I do what I do. So now I’ve got to try to figure out how can I perform. So you see there in verse 18 he says, I know that in me that is in my flesh developed no good thing, but how to, he said for the will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not.

How to perform? How do I live this wonderful Christian life when I want to and then when I don’t want to. And so he makes this statement there in verse 14, but I am Colonel and here’s those three little words sold under sin. What it means is you sold yourself back into slavery. You sold yourself back into slavery. You see when we choose to sin, we choose to be a servant of sin, which means you chose to become a slave again.

Before you and I were saved we had a sinful nature and we couldn’t serve God, we couldn’t please God. So the thing is, and if you look there in chapter 6, and verse 11 he says, likewise, recon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed, understand. In other words, you’re supposed to live as though the sinful nature is dead and you’re supposed to keep them dead. But you and I know we keep resurrecting them and making very much a life.

And he goes, well, it’s everywhere we go, that old sinful nature. He said, wouldn’t it have been easier if God would have just taken away that old sinful nature? You know what I found about doing? Finding me a real good doctor and lay on that little durney, you know, and tell him, okay, doc, I want this operation. I want you to go in there and find that old sinful nature and just cut it right out of wouldn’t that be interesting?

If we could find out where it is. Everybody’s got one, an old sinful nature. Well why don’t we just have a surgery and cut it out. They cut out everything else. You know you get a bad gallbladder, you cut it out, bad kidneys and stones and get them out of there. What have you got bad cancer? They cut it out? Well find that old sinful nature and just cut it out. Wouldn’t that be so wonderful? Don’t that sound good Tom?

No, you can’t do it. Oh, you can’t do it. See there? There’s always somebody that messes up the whole message. I was just speaking to you going to perform an operation on somebody that wanted to have that done today. So I got a real sharp knife in the office. But what I want you to look at here is he says in verse 11, Right, right. We’ll reckon you also yourself to be dead indeed under sin, but alive under God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And verse 12, let us not, therefore, let not sin that old sin, that will therefore reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in the lustor. Now you still have the old sin for nature. You still have the lust of the flesh, but it says don’t yield to them. And she said, that’s easy talking. That’s easy preaching. How hard is it for you to get mad? To lose your temper. You know, it’s real hard, right? I mean, you really, you know, you can hold it back and nobody can make you get mad, right?

But that long. The Bible says one of the fruits of the Spirit is long suffering. It means it has a long fuse. You ever see anybody short fused? Say something, boom, man, they can explode so fast. Now look in verse 13, we live in this physical body. So it says, neither yield to your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God as though they are alive from the dead. See when Christ died, you died. When you believe He did it for you, His death, burial, and resurrection would put to your account.

So that’s why it says you were crucified with Christ, you were buried with Christ and you came back again from the dead and you’ve ascended into heaven. God sees you and I as seated into heavenlies. Boy, what am I doing in the nasty here and now? Well, here we are. Can you live the way God sees you? See, God used to see you as a lost man in the flesh. Now he sees you as a saved man, a spirit man, his child, and here we are.

So what do we do now? So he makes this statement in verse 16, he says, no you not, not to whom you yield yourself servants to obey his servants he art to whom you obey, whether sin and the death of obedience under righteousness. See before you and I did not have the capabilities of pleasing God, we couldn’t serve him. Now that you and I are saved, Yes we can. That’s why he says in verse 17, but God be thanked that you were the servants of sin, the Old Sinful Nature, but you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered into you, which was the gospel.

You heard it, you believed it, you were saved, and now, now, in verse 18, been then made free from that Old Sinful Nature. You’re free from it. You have been redeemed and you are separated from your old sinful nature by new birth. You have a new one. The new birth is spiritual birth. The old one is a flash birth. And so now, he says in verse 24, when you were the servants of sin, you were free from righteousness. You couldn’t do what God wanted because of your old sinful nature.

Now you have a new birth and now you can do what God wants. and you still got the Old Sinful nature. See, you’re a boy or I’d do with it. How do I handle this? Man, that’s interesting. Can’t wait to see what I’m going to say next. There ought to be a way out of this. I then got myself in pretty deep. But once you trust the Christ is Savior, you know you have a new birth, born of God.

Believe it or not, there is a story, an illustration in the Old Testament that teaches the same problem. Now remember this, when we talk about the nation of Israel, instead of a think of it as a nation, just think of Israel as a person Israel. Jacob’s name was changed to Israel. So just think of Israel as a person, a saved person because Israel is a type of the new birth. That’s why it was because of a faith child. Remember Isaac?

Abraham Isaac was a faith child. It’s not because Abraham and Sarah were able to have children, it was a miracle. So that child was a miracle. You and I don’t have the ability and the flesh anyone does to produce the new birth. It’s a miracle. Your new birth is a miracle. You are a miracle child. You are now a child of God and God did it. You didn’t do it. God did it. All you had to do is believe it that what he did was for you and you trust him and you have eternal life and then now here’s this child that grows up and gets bigger and bigger and God has promised all kinds of things, took Welcome from out of Egypt.

In the words, through the Red Sea, into the wilderness, and after you and I get saved, it’s like we came from the world which was Egypt, and we’ve been born, and now we’re in the wilderness. And then God promised that when you reach maturity, it’d be like living in the land of Canaan. Land of Canaan is not really a picture of heaven. It’s a picture of the Christian life, the victorious life. So, it’s about battles and believing the promises of God.

So, after a time of your teenage years of rebellion and all that kind of stuff, you get to go into the promised land and you’re growing up, you’re maturing. So, you have a few little battles and you have some victories. But wouldn’t it be neat if you had total victory? Israel, when they went into the Promised Land, did they have victory over all their enemies and take them completely out of the land like God told them to? No, they didn’t.

They left little pockets of the enemy in the land. And it’s kind of like when you and I trusted Christ our Savior God gave us as a new bird. He gave us a piece of land. See this body that I have, this is my land. This body is a piece of territory. This body is like the land of Israel. And lo and behold, I’m a new person, saved, living in a new land. It used to belong to a malachite.

But see, God gave this land to my new birth, belongs to me. So now I am supposed to take this piece of land and use it for God’s honor and glory. So he doesn’t want amalect that lives in this land and had it before I got here. So your old sinful nature had that piece of land before you showed up. Now here you are. You got a new birth. That body of yours, you have been bought with the price therefore glorified God in your body and in your spirit which are lost to God.

So this land was given to you by God. So God has given you a new birth and you have this piece of land. Now, are we able to get total victory with this so in the lake because he’s still in the land? But we’re supposed to have victory because God says, as he promised to Israel, when you go into the land he says, I’ll fight for you and I’ll give you victory in the land. And remember the first time they didn’t believe him.

So they spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness. I know a lot of people who never take God at his word, never grow, never mature and they just wander for 40 years in the wilderness. And even one day you’ll grow up and they’ll mature and start believing the promises of God. So here we are. So take your Bible and turn all the way over there to the book of Judges, the book of Judges. Remember we talked about Judges the other night and we talked about the Judges ruled for about 300 years and so they came all the way from Joshua and finished with a guy named Samson which is in chapter 16 but there’s 21 chapters so there’s a few other things that recorded after that.

But it takes us all the way up to Samuel. And Samuel was the one that anointed Saul to be the king, and he anointed David to be the king. But the judges, well, they were they were important. They served a purpose. And so the judges, they’ll remember the judges did not make law. God gave the law. The judges did not teach the law. They had the priests to do the teaching of the law. The judges were used mainly to execute judgment upon those that were thorns in the flesh to the nation of Israel.

So they were military commanders how to defeat an enemy. Now it’s interesting that God gave him the land. They were in there and Joshua had given him certain victory over the land. So it’s kind of like at times when you and I have this great burning desire, we want to serve the Lord. So we dedicate my eyes and my ears and my mouth and my legs and my arm, dedicate my life to the Lord. But we maybe don’t go wholeheartedly.

There might be areas of our life that we don’t surrender to the Lord. And so we serve the Lord in stages. A little here and a little there, but God is looking for somebody who is wholeheartedly wants to serve him. And because we don’t wholeheartedly serve them, we left little pockets that we have not yielded to the Lord. We kind of keep those for ourselves. And those little areas that we don’t totally give to the Lord are a little, they’re beachheads for the enemy to attack.

And remember, Satan attacks the mind. I want to show you a verse, hold your place here in Judges, but just take your Bible and turn to the book of 2 Corinthians. in chapter 10, 2 Corinthians chapter 10, and just look at this verse with me. There’s an awesome verse here that I want you to see. In 2 Corinthians chapter 10, a look what he says in verse 3. And you’ll notice in verse 3 says, for though we walk in the flesh, means this whole physical body, we do not war after the flesh.

For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. They’re not the kind you put your hands on like a you know a hangrenade or a bazooka or something like that. There’s a story of a man, Shemgard, in the book of Judges, it talks about he killed 600 men with an ox code. I mean with a spear, 600. This thing what he could have done with an Uzi. But you and I fight a different kind of a Bible. And so notice what he says in verse four.

For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds are numbness up here. In your mind, there are strongholds. There are places where you have that are very strong and there’s places or areas, attitudes, desires lost that are not totally 100% yielded to the Lord. Satan is looking for a beachhead, just a little piece of that ground. It’s okay if you serve the Lord, but just let me have a little piece of ground, because from that little piece of ground, so you can fire front it.

Why do you think Israel over there made a mistake by giving the Palestinians the Gaza Strip or the West Bank? What have they done with those little pieces of territory that they gave them for peace. They used it to launch mortar attacks into Israel. They should not have done that. You see, you may want to make peace with Amalek, but Amalek won’t make peace with you. It won’t work. But now look again at what he says here in verse five, look in verse five, casting down imaginations.

Talk about things in your mind, and every high thing get this that exalted itself against the knowledge of God. And bringing into captivity every what? Thought to the captivity of Christ. So Christ wants to capture all of your mind, all of your thoughts. And by that, you are able to war a good warfare Because we don’t use guns and bullets and tanks. We use the word of God. Because our battle is a spiritual battle. We’re battling for the souls of man.

We keep ourselves strong and if we keep trust in the Lord, God can put us anywhere He wants us to be in the world. And we don’t have to worry. We’re invincible when you’re right with God. When you’re right with God, then God’s responsible to take care of the soldier. a soldier to supply all of his needs. But when you don’t, God’s going to have the authority as a father to do something to us. So you picture the nation of Israel and they are sometimes obedient, sometimes disobedient.

But I want you to see this. Look there in verse 6, and having an readiness to revenge all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled. You see, you have within you the desire to be disobedient, but you can do away with the disobedience by obedience. You sow there’s part of you that wants to obey, there’s part of you that doesn’t want to obey, but if you will obey, you can have victory over disobedience. Now go back there to the book of Judges, the book of Judges chapter 3.

Because Joshua is now dead, and they were now to carry on after he had died. But there came a generation of people that did not have to fight. Now we have a generation of sissies. People never had to fight for anything. It was given to them. Well, their parents had to fight battles, but now they didn’t have to fight in him. And so now they don’t know how to war. So in verse 1 of chapter 3, now these are the nations which the Lord left to prove Israel by them, Even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan.

So there’s a lot of people, never knew anything about these wars. I’ll do that. And verse two, the last part of it, as before it knew nothing thereof. There was unskilled. They never had to fight the battles. We have Christians today, and it’s just like I guess you could say, concerning our country. In the founding of our country, there’s people who knew what it was like to have to fight for our freedoms. freedoms. We didn’t have to fight for our freedoms.

It was given to us. There’s been people over the years that are fought to keep our country free, but majority of the people in America never had to fight for anything. And so how do we appreciate the freedom that we have? And that’s why we’re going to lose it. We’re going to lose it because nobody is willing to fight for it. And that takes a lot. But look what he says here. He says, I left them in the land.

Now God told them to take them all out, but because of their disobedience, God could have done it, but God left them there. God allows their disobedience to test them, to prove them. So there’s an image in land. When I trusted Christ as my Savior 54 years ago, God could have taken away my old sinful nature. Boy, that would have made it nice. But he left that O Amalek in the land to test me, to try me. Well, I be faithful.

Do I love him more than the things of the world? God could have taken away your old sinful nature, but he didn’t do it. He left an enemy in the land and says, no, you can have victory if you choose to have victory. and you can be totally defeated if you choose to be defeated. He says, if you will trust me you can have victory and if you don’t you’re going to be defeated. So you and I have a choice we can either walk with God or not walk with God.

But look what he says here. That in verse 5 he says, and the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites to hit tights and hammer rights and pizorites and the high fights and the Jebusites and they took daughters to be their wives, their daughters and gave them their daughters to their sons and what’s those next three words served there in gods. So usually as we said the other night you leave God and then you worship what’s wrong and when you worship what’s wrong then God is going to do something.

You see God does not make a servant. He He didn’t make these people in Israel. He didn’t make them serve Him. Did He let them live any way they wanted? Yes. But when man chooses to rebel against God, God is free to determine the punishment. Isn’t that a good deal? You’ve been listening to another great message from Dr. Arnold, and we hope that Bibleline is a blessing to you. In appreciation for your support of this ministry, we’d like to send to you a gift.

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Caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day believing that the Lord is coming soon. And just keep looking up.