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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 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.

You got a Bible? Just might need it for the night. God, if you think I want to share with you that I hope will be a blessing to you. And if you have a Bible, turn to the book of Acts, the book of Acts. Sometimes people say, well, you know, if God has forgiven me of all of my sins, why does He tell me in 1 John 1 9, confess your sins and He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness?

I thought he already did. So why do I have to keep confessing my sins? If I have to confess my sins, every time I commit a sin, I will always be confessing. Wouldn’t that be scary? And another question that comes up is what if a man does not confess his sins? Does that mean God will forgive him of the sin? And can you go to heaven with unconfessed sins? It’s a good question, isn’t it? If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us.

So that means that is there a possibility that if you don’t confess the sin, He won’t forgive you of the sin. You see how many questions that you can actually raise on something so simple, but they’re there? So should we live in fear of the Lord coming back? Because after all, we could get the whooping of our life. And there are some scriptures that says, woah unto those unfaithful servants. Because those who knew the Lord’s will and did it not shall be worthy of many stripes.

But he that knew not the will of God shall be judged with few stripes. to whom much is given and much is required. So knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, ooh, we should all fear about going to heaven and meeting God face to face. Something about that just doesn’t sound right does it? And if you use certain logic that people use, it can make you scared half the death to meet the Lord. And I don’t think that’s, now we You can be ashamed, but you don’t have to live in fear.

And I want to kind of address that subject tonight. So here in the book of Acts in chapter 10, I want you to notice there in verse 43. Chapter 10 and verse 43. Verse 43 says, To Him give all the prophets witness that through His name, whosoever believe it in Him. Shall receive remission of sins. According to that verse, that is locked in guaranteed surety, that if we believe in Him shall automatic receive remission of sins. That’s how I read that.

But then I could have read it wrong. Maybe I understood it incompletely. I didn’t get all the details. Maybe there’s a loophole somewhere. Well, just turn over a couple of pages to chapter 13. Chapter 13 and look in verse 38. In verse 38 says, be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by Him all that believe are justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses.

So all those that believe… Are justified, justified, declared righteous from that moment on. God has declared you righteous. So how is God going to take a child of his and just beat the tar out of us at the Judgement Sea of Christ? And who was real bad there? And what if I don’t ask God to forgive me of the sins that I committed since I had been saved? Well, it does require a little looking at to see what he’s talking about.

But one more verse before we get there, look in the book of Colossians. The book of Colossians. Colossians, and there’s an interesting verse here in chapter 2, Colossians chapter 2, and you’ll notice there in verse 13. It’s a good verse to underline, and you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh. Happy, quickened together with Him, having forgiven you how many? All trespasses. You’ve already been forgiven of all trespasses, all of your sins justified forever. So how do you explain the reasons for 1 John 1, 9?

Now when we are lost, we simply confess that we’re sinners. That’s what I am. I am a sinner. After we’re saved, we confess our sins. Singular, plural, 1, I am a sinner. That’s what I am. After I’m saved, I confess my sins. One is I confess I am an apple tree. Two is I confess the apples on the tree. There are two different things here. But what I want you to see is when God says that He hath forgiven us of all sins, then what about the sins that I committed after I have been saved?

Did He already pay for those sins after I was saved? course, or he could not forgive them. So when I trusted the Lord back in 1955, no, I didn’t say 55, 1960. So in 1960, when I trusted the Lord, how many of my sins did he pay for it? But how many did he forgive me of? How many? All of them? What hadn’t done them yet. So he forgave me in advance. He could never do that. I couldn’t even give me an advance.

I’ve done them yet. But in the Old Testament did Jesus forgive and have a payment made? But it was after because they died before he ever went to the cross, but he still died for them. They were still saved by looking forward to the payment that would be made. So we have, yes, a payment for our sins. Now take your Bible and go to the book of 1 John 1 John chapter 1 and just look at this a second.

1 John is not written to the lost man. It’s written to the child of God. It’s not written on how to be saved is written to those who are already saved. But he’s got one main thing here in this portion of Scripture that is to help us to understand the rest of the content if we understand, well, what’s the purpose? So he says here in verse 3, that which we have seen and heard the clear we unto you that ye also may have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

So we’re talking now not about God the judge, we’re talking about God the Father as our Father and we are his children. And notice what the purpose of it is in verse four. These things right we unto you that your joy may be full. Now if there’s anything that ruins the peace and joy and happiness of a child of God is sin in his life. And so one of the things that we notice about this little portion of scripture is that the blood of Jesus Christ continually keeps us clean.

You see what he says there in verse 7, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanses us from all sin keeps us clean. All right that’s good for those who walk. In the light. But what about the child of God that doesn’t walk in the light? Is there such a person? Is there Christians that don’t walk with the Lord? So if they don’t walk with the Lord, they’re not going to have the joy that they should have.

Because you see, sin still has an effect upon us and it makes us feel guilty. You see, even though the sin has a sin, it makes us feel guilty. been forgiven, the sin itself you have just committed. Even though the payments been made, sins been forgiven, but see you just did it. And the sin in a Christian’s life can really wreak havoc upon his spiritual growth, upon his stability upon his peace of mindois. And rob him of the joy of his salvation.

So just hold your place and look at this over here in. Chapter three, look in« Chapter three, where hes a statement there in verse 18, my little children, read into believers, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but indeed and in truth. So is it the will of God that his children do right by what they say and what they do? You’d have to say yes in truth. But it’s so easy for God’s children to deceive themselves and to thinking that that was a little sin so it doesn’t matter.

It wasn’t one of those great big I haven’t robbed a bank, I didn’t kill anybody. So the more you study of the word of God, the greater your discernment of right and wrong. You see how righteous and holy God is and you see what sin does. So you as a Christian know that whenever you do that which is wrong, you have a thing called conscience. your heart. And look what he says here in verse 19. And hereby we know that we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before Him.

For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. See all this is concerning your personal walk with the Lord. And nobody else can do this for you. But every one of us need to understand that sin in a Christian’s life brings with it a weight of guilt, shame. And that’s why he’s talking about abiding him that when he shall appear we will not be ashamed before him at his coming.

And some Christians are ashamed of the testimony of the Lord. Some Christians are even ashamed of the gospel. shame to tell people how to have eternal life. And so they’re afraid it’s going to offend somebody. It’s like being ashamed of it. That’s a shame. It really is. Now back here in 1 John chapter 1 you notice what he says here in verse 6. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness we lie and do not the truth.

So is is it possible for a Christian to sin after he’s saved, to say or think that he’s walking in the spirit and in reality he’s not. To think he’s walking in the light and he’s not. To think he really has the true joy of the Lord and he doesn’t. So you look down here in verse 8, if we say that we have no sin, as to say I don’t have a sinful nature, you singular. What’s the next three words?

We deceive everybody but ourselves. We deceive ourselves and you’re not walking according to the truth. See this is about a personal thing. So in verse 9 if we confess our sins, if we confess, but confessing is not so that God will get right. God didn’t do anything wrong. So it’s not about what God needs to do, but it’s about what we need to do. So confessing to the Lord removes our personal guilt. We’re simply claiming something that God must do.

You see, as we live our Christian life and And we are now in the process of serving God or not serving God. And you do that which is wrong. Then God says, if we confess the sin. He is faithful and just to forgive because he that is not for God benefit. That’s for your benefit. That’s from my benefit to simply believe what’s already been done. You see, if you don’t understand and you think that now because of this sin, God is going to punish me for some great thing and maybe take my salvation away because there’s people, you ought to see the emails I get.

people trying to explain this verse to me. That’s all I’ve never read it before. And that God, if you do not confess your sin, then that means God can’t forgive you of your sin. So is it possible for a Christian to commit a sin and not ask for forgiveness? And if God is going to forgive you because you confess it, well, what if you don’t confess it, then you have unforgiven sin? And if you have unforgiven sin, sin, you can’t go to heaven.

That’s a sign that Christians can lose their salvation by committing sins in the future that you didn’t get forgiveness for. See how logical that is? The only thing is it’s not according to truth. It’s not according to what God said. So if we confess our sins. He is faithful, he must. If he’s faithful, he will, then he has. And so you read it in a little bit like he must, he has accepted, believe it. So when I do something that I know that that I should and I know what it is, it’s sinful, it was wicked, it was wrong.

God has forgiven me, but I should confess because I need to realize this has been forgiven. And this is something that I can believe because I can keep walking with the Lord. If there’s anything that will stop you and you’re walking with the Lord, it’s believing that you’ve ruined it now, You’ve really messed up. You didn’t fell in the mud and God will not forgive you. God can’t use you anymore. And your sins will weigh you down. But if you know and understand, this is the sin that Christ died for 2000 years ago.

He’s already paid for it. He’s already forgiven you. Now the key of confessing your sin is so that you will forgive you, so that you will forgive yourself, so that you don’t live the rest of your life in guilt because of what you fail to do for the Lord. That can truly destroy a Christian and his walk with the Lord. So that’s why he says don’t deceive yourself. In verse 10 if we say that we have not sinned, we make him what?

A liar. But God says, accept it because it’s been done. Now take your Bible and turn all the way over there to the book of James chapter 5. James chapter 5. And you’ll notice there’s a couple things mentioned here. Because we often think, well, you’ve got to be forgiven of all of your sins in order to go to heaven. If there’s one sin that God did not forgive you of, then you can’t go. But then this verse here could cause you a problem.

Look there in verse, let’s start there in verse 14, chapter 5. He says, is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church. Let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. and the prayer of faith shall save the sick. And the Lord shall raise them up. And if he hath committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.” Wait a minute. I thought they were already forgiven. Well, see, here’s a person that’s committing sins and he could have forgiven, but understand.

When a man wrongs another as in the book of James, when he tells us about the things we say, the things we do, chapter 3 talking about the tongue and the sharp things that we say, the damage that we do, the fires that we start. In chapter 4 about the desires that we have and not humbling ourselves and so forth. And then by the time you get to chapter 5 here, if somebody is sick because of sin in their life, then God God says, confess the sin.

Not necessarily to God, but to the person you’re wrong. And if you’re sick because of the people that you have wronged and sinned against, they can pray for you. You can pray for them. And the sin, when it’s confessed, you can be healed. If the sickness is because of the wrong that you’re doing to somebody else. You see down in verse 20, let him know that he which converted the sinner from the era of his ways shall save a soul from death and show how to multitude of sins.

This is because sin in a Christian’s life. This is taught by physical death. It’s not not save a man so he can go to heaven when he dies. This is to the believer. This is talking about the prayer of a righteous man and someone intervening because somebody might have wronged. So that’s why it says in verse 16, confess your false one to another. If you have wronged one another, you just don’t go around confessing all of your sins. Really, would you want to do that?

We want to have a confession both set up here tonight so that I can confess all of your sins and let’s just really go at it. You first. You say, what is your sin, Yantim? Well, mine’s gossiping and I can’t wait to build somebody. Now, so you don’t have to do that, but if you have wrong somebody, then you might need to confess to them and they can forgive you. You see, if you put it to where it belongs, that God has already forgiven us.

So whenever you confess, this is a sin that Christ died and paid for. This is a sin that I have been forgiven of. So therefore, for my joy. And if I don’t believe it the way God means it to be in His Word, then I’m going to be one miserable Christian. There’s a lot of Christians who never forgive themselves for the things they’ve done after they’ve been saved. They live like a whipped individual for the rest of their life.

I have met so many Christians that just feel like I can’t do it, I can’t make it because I fell, I’ve messed up now, it’s all over, and they never forgive themselves and they become miserable, bitter Christians. God’s forgiven you. You forgive yourself. He’s already done so. So I believe it’s to help the individual so much. Now go there to the book of 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians in chapter 3, 1 Corinthians chapter 3. There is a verse in the book of Hebrews in chapter 6 that says that God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love.

And the Bible talks about those who, because of their love for others, their labor of love. And I mentioned this this morning in Sunday School that I believe there’s a difference between work and labor. Now I know it seems the same, but as I brought out, this church is the result of somebody’s work and we look at it and say, this is a work. we see something that’s a work of art. Well, that’s the work that you’re looking at, but the labor that produced that work you may not know.

You may not know everything that went into producing that work. This is why the Bible says God is going to reward every man according to his own work, according to his labors, because only God knows the labor that went into the work that you have done for him. And I mentioned this, we go back here on third Sunday dinner and we walk in there and we said, Oh, this is happy. It’s a lot. He said, I know, look at all that food.

It just, you know, miraculously appeared. And we sat down and look at this work of art. And all we got to do is sit down and eat it. Isn’t that wonderful? Now we see the work, but we didn’t see the labor that produced this work. And so God is is the one who’s going to reward because there’s things that you’ve done for him that nobody’ll ever see. Nobody knows the pressure that you’ve been under. Some people can come to church on a Sunday morning and had absolutely no pressure.

Everything went smooth. And somebody else, they got up and everything went wrong. They alarmed and didn’t go off right. The wife didn’t iron the shirt, can’t find your shoes. Everything goes wrong. Paperboard didn’t deliver the paper so you can’t do your crossword puzzle. You’re in a bad mood. You told your wife you wanted two eggs, one over easy and the other one hard. She cooked the wrong one too hard. Holds them in the other one. You’ve always got something and your day can be terrible and you could have had a flat tire on your way.

Somebody could have cussed you out for some reason because you pulled in front of somebody. By the time you hear your nervous wreck, but you came and you don’t know of anything that you did purposely on doing wrong, but it just seemed like everything falls apart. And God says he’s not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love. the reason why you do what you do. So he makes a statement here, every man shall receive his own reward in verse 8 according to his own labor because see he’s going to judge our work but he’s also going to judge the labor that went into the work.

The reason why you did what you did, the wise. And so there’s a lot more involved and so there’s going to be this rewarding stand. Now some people think that that’s going to be a place where God’s going to just, you know, beat the Torah out of us because we’re going to be just good and bad and it’s going to be bad. So we know that some bad stuff. I don’t believe that we’re going to be standing at the judgment of Christ in a glorified body and my heavenly Father’s going to beat me with many stripes.

I didn’t feel that. I didn’t feel that. I didn’t feel that. Why? I got a glorified body. I didn’t feel that. Now I don’t believe that you can take verses out of Luke where it talks about the servant and many people want to take those and apply those to the Christian at the Judgement Sea of Christ and we need to be afraid. No, I don’t believe God’s going to punish any person at the Judgement Sea of Christ. When the Bible says here, if you’ll look at this, in verse 10, according to the grace of God which is given unto me is a wise master builder.

I have laid the foundation another built it there on but let every man take heed how he built it there on. Now when talking about building upon the rock you don’t build with sins. He’s going to judge our works things we did for him. It’s not a judgment of our sins. Our Our sins were judged at the cross. We’re not going to heaven and stand at the judgment seat of Christ and answer for our sins. He answered for my sins.

This is about my works, what I did for the Lord. 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 4081 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. Cada can meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day, believing that the Lord is coming soon, just keep looking up.