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Bibleline Bibleline, here God’s word on Bibleline, here God’s truth on Bibleline. Welcome to Bibleline with Dr. Ralph Yankee Arnold, pastor of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida, clearly declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ through the radio and the internet. Your regular prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the You can reach us toll free at 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made by clicking on the donations link on the BibleLineMinistries.org homepage. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s first part of this two-part message will be a blessing to you and your family.

We’ve got a few things I wanted to share with you. I want to talk to you first about the word faith. We know how important it is for by grace or you saved through faith and that not of yourself it is the gift of God not a works list any man should boast. If we’re saved by faith then faith must be very important. And we get faith because faith come with by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.

So when somebody explains the gospel to us then that’s how we get faith. to trust in what we’ve heard. And so it’s an interesting thing. It’s something that we all ought to remember because faith is just that important. So the reason we read and study the Bible is so that we can develop our faith, knowing what to believe, knowing how to believe, learning how to live. See man is always trying to figure out and develop things. he likes to develop a better way to go to heaven.

But think about it. The way God made it, it was simple for everybody to go. The way man does it, nobody gets to go. You realize man’s religion, nobody gets to go to heaven any other way than what the Lord says. But man thinks he got a better plan, a better way, and he just doesn’t have it. Man thinks he can find a better way to happiness. So yes, we want to go to heaven, but God has the best way.

He has the only way. And when it comes to happiness, everybody wants to be happy. But everybody has a different way of how to attain this happiness. When a person says happiness is not a destination, it’s a way of travel. And that happiness sometimes comes from happenings that’s good. But when the happenings are not good, then you’re not happy. So we’re happy when everything’s going our way. But man tries to find happiness in a lot of things. So he chases the wrong thing, chases his dreams, and usually like little soap bubbles they pop in his hands.

And believe it or not, I think there’s a better way even to health. Man thinks he’s found the best way to health, but it’s not how long you live life. It’s how well you live the life that you do live. What’s the difference in trying to, well, why try to live to be a hundred years old if you still wasted your life? You just wasted a hundred years. I’d rather you live for 20 years and give it all to the Lord than live a hundred years and not give it for the Lord.

So yes, you should try to, you know, maintain a certain way of living, how you eat, getting them proper rest and sleep and things like that. And to realize that these bodies are just a tool that we use. It’s the house that we live in. And so when you talk about faith, when you believe what God’s word says, it gives you a better way to stay healthy because it talks about merriment. It’s like medicine to the bones. the joy of the Lord is my strength.

And there’s certain amount that affects the physical body when you stay right with the Lord. It doesn’t mean that every time you get sick you got sin in your life, but you should have overall the desire to want to serve God and please God and realize that my body belongs to the Lord and you keep it for Him. But faith is reading and studying the word of God so so that you and I can know that, yes, not only how to go to heaven.

How to be happy, how to stay healthy, and then also a better way to hope. You realize there are things that we live for every day anticipating that tomorrow is going to get better. Tomorrow it’s going to get better. The check’s coming in the mail. Somebody’s coming to see me. Somebody’s fixing to leave. But you’re always hoping that something will be better. I don’t believe any of us live with joyful anticipation of everything falling apart. Now, it may fall apart, but we don’t have joyful anticipation of that.

We want things to get better. We always like to have good health and good finances and good security and good peace of mind. And so faith is a tremendous thing. I wrote this down and I want to read it to you. Grace is the money God puts into an escrow account ready for your withdrawal when needed for his service. I thought of that today and I wrote it down. I thought it was pretty good. Let me read to you again.

Grace is the money God puts into an escrow account ready for your withdrawal when needed for his service. It’s not everything, but for His purpose. And if we keep that in mind, we have all that we need to do the work of God. Whatever it is, God’s going to hold me responsible for will be made possible. If I’m faithful and I serve the Lord, I believe God will meet my needs as long as I need it. Now, there’ll come a day when time will be no more and there’ll be no more birthdays and we’ll be out of here.

But to understand it, many people think there’s a better way to reach the heathen. I do believe that God has already given to us a plan, a way of reaching the world, reaching the lost. I don’t believe that we have to compromise on the gospel to begin a socialism. I don’t believe that we ought to be in the entertainment business, though I believe we ought to enjoy what we do, but that ought not be the thrust of our ministry.

Our music, though, I think it’s good, but I don’t believe that that ought to be the thing that we strive for and shine for or known for. I believe that the most important thing that we have in our ministry is the teaching, the preaching of the doctrine of the Word of God. If we can’t hold people with the truth of God’s Word, then we don’t don’t need Feinstein. They don’t need to hold them anyway. If people can’t learn to love and appreciate the Word of God, then what are we doing?

And I don’t believe that we have to go into the entertainment business like many churches have done and they draw a crowd, but then you have to keep being like the world to keep the crowd. And then once you’ve got the crowd, what you gave up to reach the crowd, you can’t now instill because not to do so would split it. So people begin to compromise. They compromise to get a crowd. have to compromise to keep it. If we want to do God’s work, God’s way, then we have to just stick with the book, preach the Word, and I believe that’s so important.

But we still believe that the one of the greatest things we can do is win people to Christ. And it’s not happening everywhere. We should not belittle that. It is the most important thing in all the world. Now the other night I told you that faith is is alive because the Word of God is alive, faith is alive, and because Christ is alive, the Word is alive, Christians are here, we are alive, and we ought to live. They’ll come a day when we can’t live here anymore and it’s going to be very important that we do what God says to do.

And I mentioned to this that faith gives us assurance. When you read the Bible, your confidence grows and when confidence grows, you become a sure of what you’re doing, why you’re doing it. You know that you’re going to heaven. You understand more about the Christian life and the problems that happens in life and all the temptations that comes and why we need to be found faithful. So faith can give us something. Faith is like getting money. Now a lot of people would love to inherit a million dollars.

Solomon asked for wisdom. I asked for my faith to grow because with my faith, for my grace, or you say through faith, look what my faith got me when I put my trust in Christ. Look what it did for me. Just a little bit of faith in the right object. I got eternal life. I got to be a child of God. I get to go to heaven when I die. You realize how much a little more faith can get me.

Now there’s problems in life and there’s tribulations and trials and all those things but a little faith can give me victory over this one and over this one and over this one and I can I can have a victorious Christian life. Because of faith, taking God at His word and believing it. And we know that the Bible talks about in Romans in chapter 4, that Abraham staggered not at the promises of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith believing.

And faith is believing that what God has promised He will perform. Do we believe that? And we can commit our whole lives to live by faith. We know there’s a little phrase that goes, the just, the shall live by faith.” And then he takes the just and we have a whole book that’s dedicated to just the just. Shall live, Galatians, in other words, Roman, and then Hebrews by faith. Three books explaining just those six little simple words that it comes from Habakkah 2.4, the just shall live by faith.

And so So it’s quoted, it’s used, and then we get to the book of Hebrews, and a whole chapter dedicated to explaining the success of faith, the results of faith, what it produces in a person’s life. So faith causes anticipation. I want you to take your Bible and just look there in the book of Romans in chapter 8. The book of Romans and chapter 8. chapter 8, you’ll notice down here in verse 24, where it says, we are saved by hope.

But hope that is seen is not hope. For what a man seeeth, why did he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience, wait for it. You see, there’s things God says He will not permit us to see. Because if we could see it, we would no longer hope. We live by hope, joyfully anticipating what God has for us, joyfully anticipating how God’s going to meet our needs, how God’s going to bless, how God’s going to discipline.

But see, if He revealed everything, then there’s nothing to look for. There’s nothing to wait for. So we live with that anticipation that, you know, just like the whole world waited and grown and travailed until one day when everything’s going to be, well, it’s going to be peaceful. As he says up there in verse 22, for we know that the whole creation, grown and then travail it and paint together until now. But not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves grown Even within our system, waiting for the adoption means the changing of these bodies that we have, the transferring of us into a new home that hasn’t happened yet, but we, with patients, wait for it.

Because as long as we’re in this body, we have aches and pains, we moan and we groan. Sometimes we don’t like to get up in the morning, sometimes we don’t like to go to bed either, sometimes we don’t like to go to work. I wouldn’t like to do anything. But the cause of life demands that we keep going and we keep pushing. Be so easy to quit and just give up. But hope does this force. And this is not like, well, I hope the Lord’s coming.

I hope I hope I hope I hope. No, this is a joyful anticipate. He is coming. I will get my new body. It will happen. And so we live by faith. And I don’t have to see how God’s going to work things out. I don’t care how God works things out. I just put my confidence in the Lord and keep smiling and keep getting up and just enjoy life. You take that faith away. You just took your confidence away.

You took your boldness away. You stripped yourself down to nothing but the flesh. But it’s the faith in what God says that closes a man with the dignity and integrity and the decency with everything that he needs to keep maintaining that Christian walk. that he needs for the Lord. So in Hebrews chapter 5, don’t you look over there at this verse, Hebrews chapter 5, the Bible talks about how they were dull, a knife that’s dull, doesn’t cut too well.

And yet the word of God tells us in the previous chapter, the word of God is alive, it’s quick, sharper, sharp. It’s sharp. And in verse 11, some people are dull. Now that ought not be, because the Word of God, whatever it is, can make you alive. It can make you sharp. It can make you powerful. So that you have everything you need. Faith makes a Christian alive. And if you study the the word of God, it can make you…

Discerning of the right and wrong, the things that you should do and shouldn’t do. And it’s so important. Now look what he says in verse 11, of whom we have many things to say and hard to be uttered, seeing your dull of hearing. See when you get where you don’t want to hear, you get to where you don’t want to do. You see in the book of James, he talks about be doers of the word and not hears only.

Well, if you got where you don’t want to hear, then it’s because you’ve got where you don’t want to do. what God says. Always keep listening to God. And don’t think, well, I done paid my dues. It’s over now. I done reached my peak. There’s no more for me to learn. And now I can just coast from here on in. No, we don’t know. It’s always diligently striving all the time. Llewitti says in verse 14, verse 14 is what helps us to have awareness.

See, some people live and and they’re not aware of what’s going on. They’re not aware of opportunities. They’re not aware of temptation. They’re not aware and they get caught. They get trapped because they’re not sensitive. But look what he says, but strong meat be long after them that are a full age. Those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern. So you’re learning discernment by studying the word of God. The word of God is where you gain the faith, the confidence that you know, and you can discern what the will of God is in situations.

So we strive for those things. Another one is we know that it’s great to have access to something. For example, we have these guitars up here, and we know that we can plug those things in. But if we never turn on the power, it doesn’t matter if you got it plugged in. If you don’t turn the switch that gets electricity to them, it doesn’t help any. Now, they have access to the power, but if we don’t plug in both ends and turn on the switch, then they don’t get the power to it.

You and I, by faith, we have access to God. We have access to the throne of God, that we can go to and get all that we need to help. And God says, without faith, it’s like nothing’s plugged in. Live by faith. Live with your confidence in the Lord. and it’ll take your eyes off of your own talents and your own abilities. You’ll learn how to trust Him and God will work in your life. He really will. So faith will do something for you that nothing else can do.

When you start losing the idea of who you are, what you’re supposed to do, the Christian life, what is it that God has for me? When you understand what faith will teach you, then you’ll understand your position in the cause of Christ. See everybody needs to know, who is my authority? Who do I answer to? Who do you answer to? If you know the word of God, we all know we all answer to the authority. God Himself. We answer to the authority of this book.

Faith keeps it clear and sharp in your mind. Do you believe that the authority of this book is real, that he really knows what’s going on. Do you question the authority of the Bible in any area of your life that you are not willing to trust him in? This is where your faith comes in. Can you trust him when you don’t understand? See, sometimes we think that we have to always understand everything in order to trust. No, you don’t.

I just know that I trust him because I know he’s the authority. he doesn’t lie and I can put my confidence in the Lord. And I don’t know how he’s going to work out certain things but I have to trust him and I believe that he will. Remember this, faith in the Lord produces action. No faith you won’t do but if you do have your confidence in the Lord it will make you a person of activity. Now there’s some people who are active but produce nothing.

Work but never produce, even witness and no results. If you do the right thing the right way, I believe when he says, follow me and I will make you fishers of men, it’s not like follow me and you’re fish but you won’t catch anybody. What is the purpose of me fishing? The catch. And if I don’t catch and I’m gonna try to study, I don’t know what maybe I’m not fishing right. And you know one of the things that faith will do.

When you read the Bible, instead of the Bible, for some reason or other, it’s amazing how it works. You develop this sense of approval. You want and we’ll see you in the next one. God’s approval. When you read and study the Bible, you not only want to do something for God, you want God to be pleased. You want to please God. Now, if you don’t read the Bible and don’t study the Bible, you’re not going to have that desire.

You see, when you feed these desires, these spiritual hunger pains, they grow and become greater in your life. Just like a man that feeds the desire. of the flesh and those desires can grow and become little monsters and ruin your whole life? Feed these hunger pains, the desires that you have, and those desires can grow. And next thing you know, they can control your whole life and you’ll have so much that you want to do. Now, I want you to take your Bible and turn with me to the book of Matthew, the book of Matthew.

Matthew and chapter 9, Matthew chapter 9, Matthew chapter 9 is an interesting statement, but many people will read that and then they forget all about it for some reason, but look in chapter 9 and verse 35. And Jesus went about all the cities and villages teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, healing every sickness and every disease among the people. I often thought, well if I could do that I could draw a crowd too. Couldn’t you?

You could do that. You’d draw a crowd. If I could walk on water, I’d draw a crowd. If I could feed 5,000 I really could draw a crowd. But we can’t do none of those things. God didn’t say do that. So He gave us something and He didn’t say we had to draw a crowd. Preach the gospel to every Creole, one by one, if that’s sowing to one by one, one by one. Do what you can. You’ll notice right here when he makes the statement.

And when he saw the multitude, he was moved with compassion on them because they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep, having no shepherd. You see that word compassion? When you read the Bible and you study it, faith causes you to have compassion. Faith not only gets me salvation because I trusted Christ as my Savior, because I saw He had compassion for me. Now, in serving the Lord, God wants us to have compassion. But faith is what gives you this compassion.

When you believe what God says about heaven, when you believe what He says about hell, and you know where people are going, and as He says here, they were like sheep, having no shepherd. Nobody to lead them. Nobody to guide them. Well then do what you can. That’s serving the Lord. doing what you came of what you have, where you are, and leave with the results to the Lord. And so chapter 10 after he says, pray you therefore the Lord of the harvest that he will send for the labors into the vineyard.

And so then he says in chapter 10, when he had called them unto him, you see, you have to believe that you have been called by God to do something special. The Apostle Paul says that I saw this light on the Damascus road and the Lord spoke to me. And he showed me what great things I was going to be able to do for his name and how much I was going to have to suffer. And he said, the king will grip.

He said, I have not been disobedient to this heavenly vision. In the book of Philippians, he talks about this high calling, a calling from on high. God has a reason for me to live. God had a reason for me to be here. He has something He wants me to do. And I heard it with a year of faith. I read the word of God and I saw the need. And I’ve told the kids in college class, I says, when you really understand it, and you hear that God wants me to do this.

And then you know that there’s people in hell that wants me to do this. And there’s lost people out there that wants me to do this and there’s the Holy Spirit that lives inside of me that wants me to do this. How can I do something else? But you have to hear the call of God and believe this is the will of God for me. And if you can do that and see that and sense that, believe it. You’d be surprised what your faith will do for you.

It gives you the compassion. Then you want to meet that compassion because God is calling you. Then you look there in verse 5 where he says, then the 12 he says they were sent forth and see that word commanded, they were commanded. There was compassion, a calling, a commanding. He told them what to do. He told them where to go. And as he gets into the later part of the chapter, he talks about whatever house you go into, whatever city you go into.

See, it didn’t matter where you went as long as you went. Go into all the cities, cover every house, reach anybody, everybody. Can I witness to the wrong person Can I witness to the wrong person? How is that possible? It’s not possible to witness to the wrong person. So it is worth it and so it doesn’t matter who they are. We had a guy that came here the other day, might have been yesterday and Betty had him come down the aisle and she opened the door and says Yankee, he’s got to do some work.

She looked at him and she says go over there and sit down, he wants talk to you. So he came in and smiled at me and said, I’m just a few minutes you trust the Lord. Okay, go to work. But there’s something you’ve got to hear. You know what’s a blessing to me is having a wife who is concerned, who thinks of that. She’s as good as any preacher will ever be. And that woman, she will witness and she passes out tracks.

She prays for people. She will go to the hospital goes to the nursing home, she’ll go into the home that she’ll do anything. She’ll pick them up and she’ll take them. She’ll do anything she can for anybody. It doesn’t matter. And I think she’s going to run herself down. But if she’s going to die doing this, she couldn’t be any happier. And I think when the Lord’s through with us and faith wants you to hear that word, well done, well done.

I would rather wear herself out for the Lord and His work. Then for anything else we could ever think of. Look at another one. I want you to see this in verse 14. And whosoever shall not receive you nor hear your words when you depart out of that house or city shake off the dust of your feet. But see there is concern because he says here in verse 15, Verily I send you it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and more in the day of judgment than for that city.

You see, there’s a comparison here, but there’s also concern here. Do you know why the Lord says, going to all the world and preach to God for every creature because God is concerned for every person? If He’s concerned, should we be concerned? We should be concerned. I’m thrilled that we’re getting more done with the radio and the internet, the YouTube stuff. But you know everything that we do, cost, cost, cost. There is a price to pay. And we’re just, our nose is just above the water line so we can’t, our feet don’t drown.

But, you know, every once in a while I feel like my feet are getting soggy. But the Lord just keeps us going, and we’re just going until we can’t do anymore. But just go until you can’t do anymore. So you just trust the Lord that He’ll supply and so forth. And sometime I get totally amazed at how God does all of it. 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, 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 40-811 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. Believe in that the Lord is coming soon. Just keep looking up.