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Clearly to clear it. Clear lead to clear lead and learn which master at Calvary Community Church in Tampa. Clearly to clear lead to clear lead and regular prayers and monthly support make it possible for a 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 concluding message of this teaching will be a blessing to you and your family.

logic what else he says. On in verse 11 he’s also concerned about how they lived their life. Not how you just make right decisions but you actually put it into practice. You know you can make a right decision and never fulfill it. You decided I’m gonna take and do this. I am gonna go on a diet. I have decided. You ever heard anybody say that first of the year? Well next year. Well next year. So you can make decisions easy but whether can you follow through with it?

Can you do something? Learn the wisdom of making right decisions and then make the right decision. See some people know what’s right. They know what’s wrong but they won’t make the right decision. They still make the wrong decision. So he says here in chapter one verse 11, being filled with the fruits of righteousness. So does he want every Christian to have fruit? Yes. And the fruits of wickedness or the fruits of righteousness, the fruits of righteousness. But you can’t have the fruits of righteousness if you don’t have the discernment that you need to make the right decision.

That’s why verse 10 is written before verse 11. And he says in verse 12, I would that you should understand. Now he wants him to understand something, understand that the things that have happened to him so that they’re not down and discouraged and depressed because look at Paul. He dedicated his life to the Lord to serve the Lord and and look what happened to Paul. And when you read 2 Corinthians chapter 12 at all the things, chapter 11, all the things that happened to Paul, would you want to serve the Lord?

He got beat up all the time, stoned and catted nine tales. I mean, all kinds of things that happened to him. You say, well, if I serve the Lord, will that happen to me? Yeah, well, I don’t know if I’m going to serve him or not. Well, it may not happen, you should be willing to go anywhere in the world, though He may never lead you. Are you willing to go to Siberia? Are you willing to go to Russia?

You’re willing to go to China. You should be willing to go wherever God wants you to go, though He may not lead you there. But you’d be willing to if He was to open the door and says, this is what I want you to do. You see it’s the submissive spirit that we’re supposed to have, but He said, now the things that have happened to me that would turn most people off, he says, have happened unto the furtherance of the gospel.

In other words, all these things that seems to go wrong in my life have given me more opportunities to preach the gospel. That’s why in 1 Corinthians chapter 9 he says, I became as a Jew to win the Jews. I became as a Gentile to win the Gentiles. And I became as a man under the law when those are under the law. I became all things to all men that I might by all means, all means whatever it takes to save some.

So this is what he did. So in verse 12, I would you should understand brethren that the things which have happened in me have happened for the furtherance of the gospel. So then he finally gets down to, look at where I met. I’m in bonds. In Christ are men in verse 13 and all the palace in another place. He says, people in the palace have heard the gospel because of where God has placed me. So in other words, instead of cursing the dark, light a candle.

You get a lemon, make a lemonade. You’ve heard all all that. When you see like everything’s going wrong, well find out what you can do that’s right. Have people treated you wrong? Big deal. So what? Not what? As long as it was them that treated you wrong and not you that did them wrong. Isn’t that better? You can’t be responsible how people treat you, but you can be responsible how you treat others. You just treat people right because you know and God knows and God will take care of everything.

You have to worry about it. But see, when you try to make people like you and make people love you and make people worship you and make people respect you, it ain’t gonna work. You have to earn it. And then even if you earned it, they may not give it. Because praise, honor, and glory is something that comes from people and they can take it away. You ever seen a quarterback make those passes and man, he’s right on the money and he’s winning.

Yay. And then he throws three interceptions, killed a quarterback, get him out of the game. See, they gave it, but then they can take it away. Praise, honor, and glory. things that people can give. But God says if you serve Him, then He will give you praise on glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. So it all depends on who you want it from. So this is what He said. And you’ll notice as you go down through here, He’s talking about a lot of things that going to happen and all the afflictions that He went through.

But the thing is, is more people wind up here in the gospel wherever he went. You see what he says there in verse 14, and many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds are much more bold. So in the words, what happened to Paul and his attitude encouraged other people to be confident and to be bold and to do the same. And some would do it, and they’d speak the word without fear, not afraid of the consequences, because of the attitude see that Paul had.

So Paul says the things that happens to me is opportunities for people to see, hey, this is worth it. We get more opportunities to preach to gospel. Then he makes a statement in verse 15, some indeed preach Christ, even of envious strife, some of good will. One preached Christ of contention not sincerely, supposing to add afflictions to my bonds. The other of love known that I am set for the defense of the gospel. But whatever Christ has preached, more people hear the gospel.

Regardless of their motive, if they’re preaching the truth, if they’re preaching the truth, he says, and I was used by God to help challenge and motivate them because of the things that happens to me. So then he says, all this is because it will supply. In verse 20, according to my earnest expectation and my hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but there will all boldness as always. So now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death.

So he is trying to encourage Christians that are struggling in their walk. And the things that happen to me, well, things are going to happen to you too. And Paul had people leave him, but he says, the Lord’s never leave me, the Lord’s always with me. And so he was giving them words of encouragement. See, that’s serving the Lord. You’re not always witnessing to somebody and trying to get them saved. Would it be great if we could keep all of those who are saved serve in the Lord.

But some are always because of negative, bad attitudes. They see the things that happens to them as so negative and they despise it so then they get mad and ugly and sharp and critical and bitter and angry. Well, those are all the works of the flesh, which is the opposite of what God wants his children to do it. Now notice what he says down here. He says in verse 21, for me to live is Christ, the die is gained.

So if I live, Christ lives through me. So if I die, I went. But he says that’s also more profitable if I stay here for you. See in verse 24, nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you. It’s you need me. And I want to help you. I’m praying for you and that you’ll have discernment in that you’ll have more love than that you’ll have more fruits of righteousness. So Paul is letting him know how much he cares for him.

Then you notice in verse 25, and having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your, get that, your furtherance and joy of faith. If the things that happen And the hymn was for the furtherance of the gospel. Then I’m praying that what happens to me will encourage you in the furtherance and the joy of your faith. So that you’ll be stronger, more courageous, with more boldness. Because, see, you’re trying to encourage other people because you care about others and not just yourself.

One of the things that we find when the college kids is that teachers have to practice what they preach. Because they are like with magnifying glasses, they’re watching and examining the preacher, they’re jamming all the teachers. Do you practice what you preach? Or is it just a message? Or is just notes of the teacher getting to the notes of the students without getting to the minds of either one? So people want to know, are you for real? So he makes a statement here.

And all this is about you and I learning how to think, how to love somebody else and to pray for others. This is why should we as a church really, should we pray for each other? I mean, we ought to wait till you have a problem and then pray for you. You know, when you really have a problem, if you have a serious problem, then we’ll pray for you. Do you know, you can’t always tell when somebody’s having a serious problem.

Somebody faces problems differently than other people. Some people just have a problem, they just sail right through it, don’t bother them. Some people can have everything going right and they’re loaded down with burdens and problems and they just can’t handle that either. And you’d be surprised how everything can be going along fine, it’s just that they’re just miserable because they’re not either, their heart’s not right with the Lord, you can be in the right place during the right thing, all your bills are paid, got money in the bank and all that stuff and still be a miserable Christian.

Pray for everybody all the time upon remembrance of them. Some people use a prayer list, some people just can remember. I have done this. I’ve come in here and I’ll come up here and I’ll deal with them from the view. I’ll try to visualize every person in the church and I’ll pray for them as I state them in my mind. I was up there in Georgia and I’d go in there and I would pray and I’d look out there and pretend like I could see all the people that are sitting there.

And I pray for every individual. Now that takes some time. Sometimes I can do that while I’m driving my car. I don’t close my eyes. I don’t close my eyes. I was driving with this one man up here in Duluth, Minnesota. And he picked me up from the airport and he was going to take me to the church. So he picks me up and we got a little ways to go. He says, and he’s driving and you know it’s cold outside and he’s talking about how wonderful the Lord is and how great he is.

He said, let’s just go ahead and pray. And so I’m another way, way, way. He started to pray. Lord, thank you for this day. How wonderful it is to be able to go to church today and he just went on and prayed and his eyes are wide open and he’s just having a good time. I don’t know. Now I don’t mind that. As long as his eyes stay open. And he did. All right. He’s all right. I was in fear there for just a little bit.

So anyway, notice what it says down here. In verse 26, that you’re rejoicing. See there? Your rejoicing may be more abundant in Jesus Christ for me by my coming to see you again. You want to be a blessing. If I come to see you, here we go to see your kids or your grandkids. Don’t you want to be a blessing to them or do You want to go and just be a burden to them. Now I’m so glad that whenever we go see the kids and all, Betty gets up there and she’ll help them figure out what they’re going to cook and she’ll go shopping with them and all that and I just sit around and just prop up my feet.

Don’t do anything. Now that’s the way a man’s supposed to do it. But the woman gets up there and she helps cooks the meals and then after I have really worn myself out, letting that lounge chair and they’ll say, time to eat. Oh boy, I gotta get me to go eat now. The burdens that I have. So I have to go all the way in there, maybe 20 feet, and sit down. I even have to pull out my chair sometimes, and sit down and then they’ll look at me and says, yeah, you want your prayer?

Now I’ve gotta go to work. So I have prayer. Thank you Lord for the food and the hands that prepare it. And I mean every word of it. And then we sat there and then I have to fill my plate. Then I’ve got to eat. No, let’s can worry you out. I mean, just plumb, talk it out, I am. And then when you get through, I get a chance to go back to my seat. And the women get up and wash the dishes and get everything ready.

Now, do you see anything wrong with this? No, you don’t say anything. You women are going like this. It’s the man’s world. But it would be a man’s world if there wasn’t the women that does all this other kind of work. You say you’re a macho. Yeah, I know. I know. It’s like this woman said to her husband says, why in the world did I ever marry you? And he says, well, I don’t know why I married you either.

She says, well, I do. He said, well, I don’t know why he made you all so beautiful. And yet, so does it. She says, beautiful so that you’d like us and dumb so we’d like you. So whatever it is, they con each other and now they can’t get out of it. So it’s a wonderful life. But anyway, it’s always thinking about like the Apostle Paul, he wants them to be filled with joy. So you see there in verse 26 that your joy your rejoicing may be more abundant In the words not just what you have now, but I want to that to be increased and you’d have even more and more joy Then you know it’s in verse 27 only let your Conversation your manner of life yours It’s about you Your manner of life Paul cared about them and everything that was going on in their life

Your manner of life as it become of the gospel in other words What is the purpose of your life? It should be according to the purpose of your life and it boils down to the gospel And that’s why Paul says all these things that happens to me is for the furtherance of the gospel. And when he says, I am set for the defense of the gospel, he defends the gospel, but it’s also that he took advantage of these opportunities that seems to go wrong and he was able to get the gospel out.

Now look in the last part of verse 27 where he makes the statement that whether I come and see you or else be absent I may hear of and you ought to underline these two words your affairs your affairs so when he talks about I want to hear how you’re doing your state he knew about their standing that’s outstanding in Christ doesn’t change but your state means how you’re doing from moment by moment with this problem and then this problem and how you how you handling things.

So he makes a statement here in verse 28 and in nothing terrified. You ever heard of terrorists? They said now we’re not gonna let the terrorists change the way we live. Go to the airport and tell me that. See whether or not they said about a million people got guns over the holidays. Why? The fear of terrorism. We are afraid of terrorists. And it may be good reason, good cause. But even though they are terrorists and things can happen and people can lose their lives for the believer, we’re supposed to be trusting the Lord.

I do believe that I’m supposed to trust the government to deal with these terrorists so that they don’t bother me. So I can live a quiet and peaceful life. But he makes a statement here in verse 28, and in nothing terrified by your adversaries, which is of them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation and that of God. Nothing terrified by your adversaries. Your adversary. words in your life, what are you afraid of? If you think about it right now, are there things that you’re afraid of happening?

What about this new year? Are you afraid that you won’t be able to lose all that weight you promised that you would? You’re afraid of not having enough money, hospitalization, the costs are going up? What fear do you have that can terrorize a Christian? Can a Christian live in terror? Well, hold your place right here and I just want to show you a verse. Look there in 1 John 4. 1 John and chapter 4. Now look there in verse 18.

This is written to the Christians and it was written so that your joy may be full. You can’t have joy and this fear all at the same time, the fear that comes from not trusting the Lord. So he says in verse 18, there is no fear in love, but perfect love tath out fear, because fear hath what? Torment. And he that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him because he first loved us. If a man say I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar.

For he that love, if not his brother whom he have seen, how can he love God whom he have not seen? So therefore does God tell us to not only love God, but to love one another? So here in 1st chapter of Philippians it’s talking about why and how to love? And so he tells him about the benefits of learning discernment in verse 10 and then because of the right discernments you can be filled with the fruits of righteousness.

So Paul prays for those people that this would permeate their life and that you would live as though the gospel is your motive of why you do what you do because it was for Him. And then He talks about in verse 28 your adversaries. See if the Lord’s in something you can believe the devil is too. If the Lord wants you to do something the devil doesn’t want you to do that. Whatever it is the Lord wants you to do the devil doesn’t want you to.

Now regardless of how the devil wants to keep you from doing it you know the Lord wants you to so you’re gonna have some problems you’re gonna have adversaries things that will go against you. Try to rob you of your peace of mind, rob you of your joy. And so he says here in verse 29, but unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ. Get this. Now this is a very important part of the verse, not only to believe on him, but also to what?

Offer for his say. Have you done any suffering lately. Great. That’s the will of God. Now, how do you handle suffering? Oh, not so good. That’s why it says, rejoice always. Again, I say rejoice. A lot of things in life. We’d love to be able just to erase those things that we don’t like so that we don’t have to go through them. But you know, the Lord doesn’t talk about removing all the heartaches, the grief in life. He just wants to give us the strength and the grace that we need to bear it.

So he says here in verse 30 having the same conflict which you saw in me and now here to be in me. In the words maybe you’ll experience in your life things I’ve experienced in my life, the same conflict. As we go through life, we pretty much have the same conflicts. True? We’re getting older. There are problems with that. Beaten your needs, close to where? In-laws, kids, grandkids, parents, dying? Generally we go through pretty much the same conflict, but not everybody handles the conflicts the same way.

That’s why he prays for them that they will learn the discernment and grow in their love and care for one another. That’s why chapter 2 really gets into what you’ve heard, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ. So when we talked there in verse five down to verse nine and so forth, these verses, even though they talk about the incarnation of Christ, it’s the complete circle. When Christ left heaven, come down to the earth, even under death and went back to heaven, the complete circle.

Let this mind that he had be in you, you are born of God in heaven, And there’s your citizenship. And you’re here to do a job and you’re going to die and you’re going to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. Complete circle. I want you to look up here. This hand represents you and me. This wall of represents sin. We all have sin on us. God loves us. Now He hates our sin, but He loves us.

But for us to pay for sin is eternal separation from God in Hell. But God loves us. He wants us to go to heaven and to go to heaven. We have to be perfect as righteous as God. And none of us are perfect. We’ve all sinned and come short of God’s perfection because of sin, see we can’t get in. And God says you cannot save yourself. You’re already condemned. There’s nothing you can do to remove yourself from the condemnation.

This end represents Jesus Christ. He’s the Lord God in the flesh. He came into this world. Why? Because He loves us. He hates our sin, but He loves us. So what did He do to prove that He loved us? What if He said, well, I love you, but He didn’t do anything about it? Love made him do something. So he took all of our sins paid for it. This showed us how much he loved us. We’d have to pay him back.

He paid for our sins and we didn’t even ask him to. There’s no guarantee that we wouldn’t even believe it. But it made it possible for everybody to have eternal life. And so God says he paid for our sins and came back from the dead. And if we would believe he did it for us, he would put that payment to our account and we go to heaven on what Christ did for us. If you’ve never trusted Christ, I urge you to trust Him.

Let’s pray, shall we? With headbound eyes closed, no one looking around. right now in the quietness of this moment. Would you just talk to the Lord and say, Lord, I know I’m a sinner and I believe Christ died. I believe He played for my sins. And I’m going to trust Him and Him alone is my only hope of going to heaven. And if you’ll trust Him, God said He would save you, give you eternal life. Would you trust Him?

If you will, I’d like to pray for you. Would you slip you in a very quick limb, put it right back down? Am I going to have you sober, but right where you’re sitting? See, that made sense to me. But your head is still bowed and eyes closed. and eyes closed and you have what I spoke on this morning. You that already know the Lord. Some of you have already made up your decision, but you that haven’t and you’re not sure about what God wants you.

Would you pray about it? Would you do what somebody asked me to do? Yankee, would you just pray about it? Would you pray to the Lord? Lord, do you want me to come to Bible college? Do you want me to take a night class? What do you want me to do? What does God want you to do concerning your finances? Are you really supporting the Lord’s work the way you should? That you have no guilt that you’re failing the Lord?

I don’t know. I never look at the books. I don’t care who gives what. But I’m talking about one day we’ll have to give an account of the Lord. But this morning you say, yes, I want God’s will for my life. And I will pray about it. Would you just let me hand it very quickly and put it right back down, see what it all? Yeah, well, if you’ve already made up your decision, I pray this in the Lord’s favor.

Our Father, we thank You so much for all You’ve done for us. Bless each one, dear, and we pray, Lord, that those that are watching by the internet would also see and hear and understand, trust Your Savior, and let us know by just clicking on the computer. We commit this day to You. Thank You for all You’ve done. Bless us in Christ and we pray, amen. Are you a new listener to Bibleline? Do you enjoy the teachings of Dr.

Arnold? Well, if you’ve never contacted us before, we want to give you Dr. Arnold’s book, The Gospel Driven Man. Every day we receive many emails from folks who have questions about repentance and salvation, about faith in works, and about how to share the gospel with friends and loved ones. This book, The Gospel Driven Man, covers all those topics, and we want all new listeners of Bibleline to receive a free copy. There’s no obligation, no donation necessary, simply call us at 1-800-576-3771, or write to us and request your free copy of the Gospel-Driven Man.

The mailing address is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Again, don’t forget to include your mailing address, and God bless you, 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. Taught 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.