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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. From Reach Us Tool 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 concluding message of this teaching will be a blessing to you and your family.

I believe that Jesus Christ coming to the world was a great thing. born because it was prophesied. But we’re not told to celebrate his birth, but we are told to remember, and this is why we have the Lord’s communion, his death on the cross, about the blood, and about the body. But if there had been no birth, there had been no body, there had been no blood. and his body, the Bible says, hast thou prepared me? And that body was to be the payment, the sacrifice for our sins.

Jesus Christ would have to die. And so he died and he paid for our sins. He came back again from the dead, but it says down here in verse 51, look in verse 51, and he went down with them and came to Nazareth and and was subject unto them. But his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. Jesus increased in wisdom, mentally, and statute that’s physically, and in favor with God spiritually and man, so you have socially. So in all these areas, Jesus Christ grew as a child, and He listened and He learned.

Someone asked the question, at what point did Jesus come to understand He was the Son of God? That was to be interesting. In spite of all these things, there’s things that He still learned. But the Bible talks about how He laid aside some of those few attributes as far as not use them as the Son of God and as a man He had to learn. And as a man He got tired. And as a man He got thirsty and as a man he got hungry and He was abused and shamed spit on and beaten all those things, but he was still God in the flesh Jesus Christ was God in the flesh.

He was God and He was man He was the man God in the God man. He was perfect and so you and I one day will understand a little bit more than what we do right now, but it’s taught in the Bible. So I want you to see this. Look there in verse 25 of chapter 2. You know at this time you think, surely there ought to be somebody that was expecting Jesus Christ to be born. Well lo and behold, there are a few that the Bible talks about looking for the Messiah.

So in In verse 25, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Ghost was upon him. Waiting for the consolation of Israel, that’s Jesus Christ. He was waiting for this one to console the people. They had all these problems, all these weaknesses. you read Isaiah 61 and talks about and the spirit of the Lord was upon me and at the knowing me to preach the gospel and blah blah blah and also to anoint the most anoint this and do this and to heal the broken heart and then to set the captives free you know that Jesus that’s a reference to him.

So he says here in verse 25 and it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. Here’s an old man the Bible says in Jerusalem his name was Simeon. And the Lord revealed to him, you’re not going to die until you see the Lord’s Christ, the Lord’s Messiah, the one that He prophesied. Wouldn’t you like to have something like that happen to you? I would like to say, the Lord told me last night in a dream.

Yankee, you’re not going to die. You’re going to get to go up in the rapture. How would you like that? I wouldn’t mind that. But I’m not coming for a hundred years. What? I don’t know when he’s coming, but whenever he comes, I’m looking forward for the upper taker, not the undertaker. So I love for the Lord to come back in my lifetime. I really would. Hank Listerm always talked about that. He was ready for the rapture. Oh, he talked about the rapture.

And anybody who talks about the rapture a lot, It seems like you also have this burden to try to get as much done as you can. Just keep giving a gospel, as though nothing else is as important as that. If you get a chance, if you can read the book that I did on the gospel-driven man, it’s through it all the way. That’s why it’s called the gospel-driven man. I had a guy call me up yesterday. No, he wrote me a letter.

Rope and nice letter. And he says, I like that book so well. He said, my wife and I, we read that book, and we want to help get that book in as many hands as possible. And we’re willing to give you so much money, pay for the books so that you can send it out free to anybody that supports the radio broadcast. Anybody that supports the radio broadcast, you send it to them for free. He should now pay for it.

And the shipping charges. Wouldn’t it be something? It’s awesome. So I says, I’m in a state of shock. I says, I have to get back with you later and so we can start this thing because I’m Fort. I love the idea. And that way he’s not just buying a book and giving it somebody, it’s called somebody else to write in for the book, but maybe help to keep the breakers on the radio. So however the Lord wants to work things, I’m all Fort.

I can’t believe that I want to get the gospel out more than he does. Can you believe, can you have a greater burden for souls than God? I feel that God has a way. And this is why I was mentioning this and I’ll mention it later on in the church service. Yesterday when we had about 70 people, trust Christ’s Savior in the morning, yesterday’s service, we had about 155 in here and about it. Peter came up here and he was peaking, somebody else was peaking.

We always have a professional peaker. You can’t just do that. you have to know how to peek, be professional peakers. And just to see so many that trust the Christ. And so after it was all over, I went in the office, put my Bible up, came back, and I caught a talk to a few people. And this one man and woman were standing there, and they had a little baby. And I said, so this is the one that was competing against me today, and they left.

Because the little baby was sitting over here, and just the crying, how babies like to interrupt them, services. I think the devil walked down the aisle, saw the little baby pinched a little baby. But anyway, the baby didn’t win. And I asked the lady, I says, do you know where you’re going to go? And she says, yes, I do. I said, did you just crisis your Savior today? She said, yes, I did. Her husband said the same thing. And so they just heard it.

They understood. And to me, that is what it’s all about. When you’re going to leave this world, you got to know you have this is why Christ came. This is what it’s all about. This is what communion services about. People trust in the Lord. That’s what It’s about the gospel. Otherwise there’s no reason for it all this, but it is important. But anyway, as you look here, he made this statement in verse 27, he came by the spirit into the temple and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him after the custom of the law, he would be circumcised, then took he, him up in his arms and blessed God and said, Now, let us thou thy servant depart in peace.

According to thy word, for my eyes have seen thy salvation.” Now, when you go back to the Old Testament, you’ll see the word salvation mentioned an awful lot of time. But God’s salvation that was prophesied was the Messiah. And though in the Old Testament, you may not see the word Messiah all the time, but you’ll find salvation, mine holy one. Through the book of Isaiah, it’s mentioned an awful lot of time. my holy one, my holy one, my righteous servant, my branch.

Those are all indications he’s talking about his son. God’s talking about his son that’s going to come. And anyway, he kind of has a word to say to Mary, and then go down in the verse 36. And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Fanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age. You notice it doesn’t tell the woman’s age. Don’t mind telling you sometime the man’s age, but sometimes I don’t like to tell the woman’s age.

You know that’s just something. Must be a reason for that. Not sure what it is. She was of a great age and had lived with a husband seven years from her virginity. And she was a widow of about… widow, four score and four years. So she’s 84 years old, 84. Now that’s up there in ages isn’t it? That’s pretty old. And we talked about some of the people. You know what I did one day I was playing golf with a guy that was 85 years old.

And he beat me. I was only about 35 at the time after he was a man 50 years older than me. And he just beat me in off. I despised him. So they humbled me. I thought, Lord, you humbled me. And I know I’m better than him. So I was traveling through Louisiana one day and stopped at this low country club. And I walked inside and there was some magazine articles, newspaper articles about this old man, I know who he was.

But all about his economy. It was all over the walls in this little country club. Anyway, I said I want to play nine holes. So I got my clubs and I got me a golf cart. And then they said, well, we’re going to put this other guy with you. And I said, well, all right, you know, somebody else is going to slow me down. I’m glad to hit the ball and go. And so I saw him in this little old man, old man.

And he was going to walk and carry his clubs. And here I am and I’m going to ride in a golf cart. This old man is going to walk and carry his clubs. I says, I don’t need a cart. I’ll walk, carry him a club. I was just going to relax and enjoy it, you know. But if he’s going to walk and carry his clubs, I guess I might as well. So I thought, I’m going to teach this old man a lesson.

It’s time to go to school and I am your instructor. Anyway, he hit his ball and he never looked up to see where it went. He only hit it 150 yards down the middle. I got up and I know if I’m on a good day I can hit it 250 when my younger days I thought I’m gonna blow it out of the saddle. I creamed that ball and well anyway after I found my ball, cost me a stroke. He hit his ball again right down the middle 150 yards.

So all he did was 150 yards and he never looked up to see his ball and then whenever I get ready to hit my ball he’d come over and he’d sit his clubs down there and he’d put his hand on it. He’s just a little tight. He’s put his hand on there and just look at me and I looked over at him. He won the first hole. I said, I’ll get him on the next one. You know, we’re only gonna play nine holes.

And finally, I hit the ball. Beautiful. Right down the middle. That’ll teach him. He hit his ball. And he can’t hit it. No, more than 150. But he hit it 150. And it was a little off center and he hit the cart path and it bounced and bounced and bounced and bounced and bounced right in front of my ball. Have you ever thought, you know, God is trying to teach you something? This little old shrivel up man. We finished the nine holes and he beat me.

He says, but I tell you, I’m 98. I said, what? He says, I’m 98 years old. I said, okay. No, I’m not. And then he looked at me. And by the way, he said, I’m blind in one eye. I went into the golf shopping. I saw those new papers on him. It was him. And he had made the newspapers all over. I left there so humiliated. I have just been beaten by a 98 year old shriveled up man. But blind in one eye, how in the world do you brag about how good you are?

You know God has a way of humbling you and He can really take you down quick. And all of a sudden you can think, you can remember this and you forget it. You can do this and you can’t do that. And it’s amazing how God can make you look so pathetic. I learned a lesson never to play a man over eighty-five. That was my lesson. Or not to brag about how good you are. That might have been in there somewhere.

But whenever you start and think about how great God is and how terrible we are, that it revealed the mercy of God that He was willing to come into this world, take all of us hard nutcases and do something forth because He loved us. Sometimes we’re just so unlovable. We’re filled with envy and pride and greed and we’re hateful and mean and ugly sometimes, and yet God still loves us. We have a wonderful loving God. know the day came when they couldn’t find their son, you know, Joseph who supposedly to be the father of Jesus was not really his father.

He was a legal father but not he didn’t father of the child. And Mary they had gone to Jerusalem and they were on their way back, but look in verse 41 because they had to celebrate the Passover. Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover, every year they had to do this. When he was 12 years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the Feast. When they had fulfilled the days of, as they returned, the child, Jesus, carried behind in Jerusalem.

Joseph and his mother knew none of it. But they supposed in him to have been in the company when a day’s journey, they sought him among the kinfolk and acquaintances. When they found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem seeking them. In other words, they didn’t lost your kid. I’d done that a several times. I’d leave the church and I forget about little Eddie was laying there sleeping on the pew or someplace in the church. Go all the way home and bet his where’s Eddie?

Eddie, you didn’t get him? And sometimes we’d go out to a restaurant where he and Eddie was just small but he was always so he was so complacent and just very beautiful attitude and he could just lay down anywhere and just go to sleep. Well that’s good and that’s bad. That if you walk out and leave him and One day we went with my relatives and we were up there at six flags over Georgia. Okay, and my sister and her son, she hit a little Jeff Hale.

He was just a little tight. We had gone that day to enjoy six flags. Well, while we were there, everybody had a great time. We had to meet at a certain place and leave. Well, we all met together and got ready to leave. And so we left and got almost all the back to Athens. And I says, is everybody in here? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody took it seriously. So then they began to count. And then they realized somebody’s missing.

And it was Jeff. Jeff was missing. Kay liked the head of fit. She liked the dive. Because it was getting late and we had to go all the way back up there to six flags on the other side of Atlanta. Got there and Lo-Vie Hall, he was still standing there waiting on his mother, waiting on his mother and picked him up, but scared the parents to death. Now Jesus wasn’t scared here, but somebody else was. You see, when mommy gets worried, mommy gets worried, they go back and they find him there and I saw this little cartoon the other day and it’s a little sarcastic and maybe shouldn’t be a good cartoon but it had a picture of Mary giving Jesus a bath and the tub is full of water and Jesus, little baby Jesus, is standing on the water and she looks at him and says

in and he standing on the water she says in and he’s standing there. It’s funny and yet a little maybe sacrilegious a little bit. I believe that Jesus was humble all the way obedient and when they came back he says, wish ye not that I must be about my father’s business. And he wasn’t talking about Joseph. They found him in the temple. They found him talking, look at what he says here. When they went back in verse 40, it came to pass that after three days.

They found him. There’s only a day out. They came back and they still hadn’t found him for a day in the city. So they finally found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions. and all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. And when they saw him, they were amazed and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou dealt thus with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.”

And he said unto them, How is it that he sought me? Wish she not that I must be about my father’s business. and they understood not the say in which he spake unto them. And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and you see that word and was subject unto them. He was in subjection to his parents. He had to yield to their authority. So I think it’s a riot when they come looking for him. And he astonished them with the questions with the answers at 12 years of age.

All these brilliant doctors in the temple. That’s the Son of God. And then when you’re going down there in verse 52 once again. And Jesus increased in wisdom, statue and in favor with God and man. So Jesus was raised. He went to the Passover every year. He saw, he heard, he mixed, he did the things and developed. Now that was in his humanity. He always remained God, but as a child he learned obedience by the things that he suffered even unto death, as it says in the book of Hebrews in chapter 5.

Look up here now. This is you and me. This is sin. We all have sin on us. God loves us but He hates our sin. And for us to pay for sin is the eternal separation from the Lord. But God says, He loves us. He wants us to go to heaven. But to go to heaven, we can’t go the way we are. We go the way we are. We sinned here. We’ll sin there. So God says flesh and blood cannot and then heredic, you can’t go the way you are.

Okay, how good you’re trying to be, you’re not good enough. That’s a perfect place. If you were to go to heaven right now, the way you are right now, you’d lie up there. You deceive up there. You’d be trying to deceive God. You’d be lying to the angels. I know a couple of men, they’d probably be chasing the angels. Don’t look up here. God, you can’t save yourself. That’s why you need a savior. And the only way to be saved is to get a new birth.

This one isn’t good enough. So here is Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, came into the world because He loves us, hates our sin because it separates us from him. So Christ took the sin, paid for him to cross, came back from the dead, and He said that if we would believe it, He would give to us as a free gift everlasting life. We would be born into God’s family. And he says, as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become the sons of God.

See, now I got something that I didn’t have before. Now I’m a son of God. Here I’m just the son of man. I’m just a flesh birth. So God didn’t do anything with this one. He gave me a new birth. And this new birth, I have a new nature. The Holy Spirit in 12 of me. And now that I’m a child of God and the can’t sin, can’t die. That’s why I’m a child of God for all eternity. But God wants me to serve Him, to walk with Him, and not to walk into flesh.

He says, do not make provision for the flesh. Why would He have to tell me not to make provision for the flesh that you may fulfill in the lust thereof? Because you still have the potential of fulfilling the lust of the flesh, because you still have it. And it means that you as a Christian, if you make provision for the flesh and walk in the flesh and after the flesh and fulfill the works of the flesh in somebody’s eyes, you might be looked at as you can’t really be saved.

Look how you’re living. Well, wait a minute. God’s the one that says that I can do all these things, but it’s not as well. So Christians can defy the will of God. Don’t you know and don’t you believe that God wants you as His children to live a good, godly, holy life? Wouldn’t you believe that? Do you? All the time? Faithfully, wouldn’t it be great if we all did everything right? But we don’t. That’s why God says in the word, forgiving one another.

We wouldn’t have to forgive one another if we didn’t wrong each other, would we? And would he have to tell his disciples by this? Shall all men know that you might be disciples that you love one another? Is ought to be automatic, but evidently it’s not automatic. Just because you’re married, it’s automatic that you’re going to get along. It’s automatic that you’re not going to offend each other because if you get married, you’re not going to want to hurt each other.

You’re not going to want to say anything that would offend each other. Right? I mean, after all, if they were my kid, my kids wouldn’t do that. Why can you get sidetracked again? Let’s pray, shall we? Every head bowed and every eye closed, no one looking around. If you’re here this morning and maybe you have I’ve never understood this before, but I hope that what I’ve said will help you to get a grasp of it. If you have never trusted Christ as your Savior, say you don’t have a new birth and you don’t get to go to heaven when you die, you must be born again.

You must accept Christ as your Savior. Notice I’m using the word must. Now, this is what you must do. You must believe that you are a sinner and that Christ died for sinners, that He paid for your sins. And if you will trust Him as your Savior, He will give you everlasting life. He’ll give you the free gift. Would you believe it? I’m not going to have you forward, not going to embarrass you. But right where you’re sitting, if what I said may sense to you, I’d like to know it.

And I’d like to have prayer for you. And I’m going to ask if you just slip you in it very quickly. Is there anyone else who says, yes, preach that that made sense to me. And I will trust Christ as my Savior this morning. I want to know that I’m going to heaven when I die and I want you to pray for me. We’ll just slip it up very quickly, but I’ll rip it down in with it all. In with it all.

Wait just a moment. Are you sure that if you died today, you would go to heaven? If you have trusted Christ as your Savior, do you see why, yes, you can be a child of God and be obedient and you can be disobedient? But if you’re disobedient, your heavenly Father will chase in you, discipline you. He’ll never cast you out and never lose you. But he may say, come on home. But if you serve the Lord, trust Him, walk with Him.

God will bless your life. Father, thank you so much for this time together. Bless each one for being here. We also pray, Lord, your wisdom. We seek your will in Christ and in your prayer. Hello, this is Peter Amato with Bibleline. And we hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s program. We’re so thankful you’re supportive, Bibleline, and we would like to offer you a free gift. During this month, for a gift in any amount, we’re going to send you Dr. Arnold’s teaching series on the book of Colossians.

Paul writes to a concerned pastor about false teachings that are entering his church. Some were teaching that one could find additional and greater knowledge outside of Jesus Christ, which is not true. Paul teaches that Christ is the head and we are complete in him. This teaching series is certain to help you in your spiritual growth, so email, call or write to us today to receive your CD series on the book of Colossians. 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 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.