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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 concluding message of this teaching will be a blessing to you and your family.

How do you explain love? God give me a definition of what it means. I want you to take your Bible and look there in the book of Ephesians in chapter 3. The book of Ephesians in chapter 3. And look there in verse 17. In verse 17 says, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in, oh, there’s that word again, in love. May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and the length and the depth and the height and to know the love of Christ, which passes all knowledge or human understanding.

That you might be filled with all the fullness of God. Evidently, without being filled with the love of God, you cannot be filled with the fullness of God and the fullness of God I believe is hid in the Son Jesus Christ. Give me a definition that manifests the love of God and you’ll have to come up with the name Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the manifestation of the love of God. So you can’t get higher than Him and He He says, if you try to bring him up from the nets, where is God?

Where is the limits of Christ? Is his arm too short that he cannot reach, that he cannot save? And the love of God can reach down to the lowest man. But believe this, we’re all on the same shelf. You see, there’s a lot of base people in this world. I’m gonna talk about those that are base. You know, the down and out, the wine of those wicked, wicked people out there. And then he comes along and says, but there is no difference.

We’ve all sinned. psychiatin reach, who we consider the lowest then he can reach everybody else in between. Paul says, I am the chief of sinners. If he can save the chief, he can save all the Indians. All of us are all sinful. And we cannot and will never be able to understand why God loves us. But he did tell us that he did love us. Explain it all, we never will. But when you talk about the love of God, Christ can reach down to the lowest man and take him to the heights of heaven.

How far is that? And his love is as wide as it needs to be to reach everybody in the whole world. Remember somebody says, how much does God love me? He says, he loves me this much. And then they owe them to the cross. He loves you so much. There’s nothing left. He gave you all his love. You are loved. You’d be surprised when I’m talking to people how they sometimes seem to look at me a little bit different when I was saying no.

And I look at him like dead in the eye. You are loved. God loves you. The reason he paid for your sins is because he didn’t want you to have to do it. He loves you that much. He’d rather die than live without you. You are loved and I’ve watched them sometime and they’ll be like they don’t get an all-sad and they’re fighting the whole back tier. Telling a person God loves them is the it melts more people than anything I have ever seen in my life.

When you explain it, because see everybody wants love, but we want genuine real love. This kind of we’re talking out up here, that’s not real genuine love. We talk about love and grace, it’s got to be for everybody. It’s got to be for all people, or something is wrong. I wrote this also. Lord, my journey to a better understanding began when your servant Raymond Jackson shared with me that you loved me. This was my first glimmer of your love toward me through your son, Jesus Christ.

My acceptance of Jesus Christ as my Savior was not out of a heart of love but a fear of hell if I didn’t. That’s just being honest. I didn’t trust Christ because I loved Him. I was told He loved me. That was good enough. I just wanted a firing insurance, so I wouldn’t go to Hell. And if I trusted Him, He would save me. I took Him at His Word. I believed Him. And I knew I had eternal life.

As I began to grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, I had never considered myself to be someone of great value. Little value would demand a small payment due to little love. was I simply part of a group that God loved the world? Or was there a real, true personal love for me as an individual? I know God loves the world, but I still wanted more knowledge than just that he loved the world. Have you ever felt that you were special?

God created you just a little special. In every family, there’s always a pet child, and I’m here. No, but we know. And since sometimes God created me for a reason, I’m here for something, you know, a real personal reason. And it’s true. Though God loves the world, He loved you as an individual. Remember, He didn’t just create the world. He created a man, then a woman. And God saved both of them. Well, God so loved the world. There’s two of you, but I only chose one of you.

Now, both of them, why did God pay so much for so little? You realize God is loving. Look at this world that He made, and He loves us. Look how small and significant we are. And in spite of all of that, God loves you. This great, big, wonderful Almighty God loves us. The more I studied about Jesus Christ, the more I saw that His love was growing deeper, higher, wider, and warmer, and more fulfilling than anything I have ever known.

It was true God is love and it was personal because it’s knowing that He loves me personally, Yankee Arnold. He knows me. He loves me. Now, I don’t mind Him loving Bob Gilbert, but I am glad He loves Yankee Arnold. I know he loves Peter Amato. I know that. He didn’t know that. But he loves me. So I wrote these three little marvels down. The marvel of it all was that God loved me at all. I marvel over that, that he loved me at all.

The second marvel was that God loved no one more than me. I marvel over that, that God loved me at all, and that God loves nobody more than He loves me. The third marvel was that God loved no one less than me. Think about it. He don’t love anybody more than you, and He don’t love anybody less than you. But the marvel of it all is that He loves you it all. And I wrote this down because there’s religions that are mutilating the love of God.

When they change the truth of God’s manifestation of His love into something ugly. You see, when you limit the payment that Christ made on the cross, you’ve done a disservice in justice to God Himself. To say that God loves them, but God doesn’t love you. What man can be so arrogant and feel with such hatred to say that God doesn’t love everybody. When God says he does, God says he does. men that say he doesn’t. I don’t slather jaws.

Our religions are hateful to the core because they steer people away from the love of God. You see, when God made salvation a free gift and churches, preachers want to add works to the gospel, you just rob the truth of the gospel. You just rob people from the love of God. Understand how much God loves you by requiring works for salvation. God can’t save you unless you turn from your sins. God can’t save you unless you commit your life to Christ and promise you’re going to live for Him.

Stop being bad, start being good, and then tell everybody just as I am. Let’s all stand and sing 25 verses of just as I am, or is it just as you ought to be? No, God loves me. And yes, I believe that when you trust Christ to save you, Savior, God can change your life. He changed mine. But it’s because I yielded to His teaching. If I don’t serve the Lord, live like the devil. I’m just as saved as I’ve always been.

I can’t get any more saved than I am. I am saved. I can’t go to hell. There is no fear of hell in this 6 foot of mud body. I’m going to heaven. Christ and all His manifestations of His love to limit the number of people God loves to only a few and not all is hateful and limits the love of God because they can’t stand in a pulpit and tell a person, look God loves you because they don’t know if he really does.

They can’t say, Christ died for you because they don’t know if he did. So it’s just general hoping to hit the elect, the one that God chose, but to understand that this gift of eternal life that you might hear about, but unless you were in the chosen, the offer is null and void. It wasn’t meant for you. It’s not really for everybody. It’s just only for these few. I call that heresy. I’m still talking to the Lord. Woe to the man that shrinks the sacrifice of Christ’s death for all, for all sin, for all people to be limited to only include the few that were previously chosen by God is that the height of blasphemy.

God forbid that a man would turn the love of God into a religion of hate. Because when you teach a person that he has to earn it and he realizes he cannot earn it, or even if he trusts in his works for salvation, the day will come at the great white throne judgment when all those people are going to be so filled with hate because somebody lied to him. They had somebody lied to them and told them that it was by your good works.

Salvation was free and they didn’t tell them. Or it’s free for everybody but didn’t believe that. Did you know that if you limit God to only loving certain people and Christ dying for certain people? Did you know that personally yourself you’ll become that kind of a person that limits your love and limits the gospel and who you talk to. But when you understand that it’s for everybody, anybody, makes a whole world a difference who you can talk to. Because God can save anybody.

I tell you this, I was talking to this one person and I’m sitting in the hot tub, enjoying the good life. roasting, hot blazing sun. The water was hot. And this man and woman was in the hot tub. And I looked at him, I noticed he had some broad shoulders. He’s under the waterbed, he got broad shoulders. And I looked and I said, you’re athletic, aren’t you? And he said, yes I am. I said, you look like you must have played football.

He says it did. I says, give me a favor. I said, sure. I said, would you stand up? He stood up, standing out of water like this. He looked like he had been chiseled from granite. He built kind of like myself. I hate standing beside somebody like that. Makes you look so bad. I hate him. I says, who’d you play for? He says, I played in the NFL. He mentioned about three or four NFL teams. I says, what’s your name?

He says, Marcus. Marcus Allen, he said, no. He said, that was some time back. He says, Marcus Thinkpin, he says, I played for the Buccaneers right here and a few other teams you mentioned. I said, can I ask you a question? He said, sure. I says, do you know where you’re going today? I figured that chances are sometimes people who are looked upon in the eyes of the world as somebody, they won’t talk to them. Well, I’m afraid to talk to them, like them or something special.

There are people that most people will look over and won’t witness to them. So I gave the gospel to explain it. I says, that makes sense. He said, yes, it does. I’ve never heard it like that before. His wife was sitting there and she got a little teary eyed. And she says, I’ve never understood it like that before. Now see, some people have already trusted Christ of Savior. Some just can’t express it as well as they’d like to. And so whether or not you went them to the Lord, you honed a few of their skills where they can maybe define it a little bit better.

But you’ll be moving on, it won’t matter. But sometimes they’ll be stronger in their faith. Sometimes they’re really trusting the Lord and they never understood it before at all. I don’t know, I don’t worry about that. But I thought it was so interesting. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t have to ask them, says, are you an elect? Are you one of the chosen? I mean, I don’t want to waste my time, and I don’t want to waste your. Would they have known what I was talking about?

I don’t think so. But could I, even though I’d never met him before, could I say, God loves you? Can I tell him that? Can I say, Christ died and paid for your sins? Can I tell him that? That is so wonderful. But you know, that’s the truth. And when you tell a person they have to live good enough to go to heaven or to prove that they’re saved, you just open up a canon where I mean cause them to hate the true Christianity.

That’s not the way it is, not the way it ought to be. I wrote this. Lord, some people here are saying that you really don’t love the whole world. And they Christ didn’t pay the sin debt for all people. They say that you didn’t truly mean what you said. Would it not be the epitome of dishonesty? The tele-person that God loves you and made a payment for your sins. But if God didn’t choose you by giving you the faith to believe this offer of eternal life, it is now null and void.

Should I preach that on a Sunday morning? Look, I know you’re all here, but I don’t know if you’re one of the God wants to save or not. God has eternal life as a free gift and he’ll give it to those he gives the grace to and the rest of you I’m sorry but it doesn’t apply to you. Now listen to me there’s guys who preached that garbage and I’d venture to say 90% of all Baptist churches even have parts of Calvinism in their teaching and unless you know the truth you will not see it and you will not discern it.

It’ll just be that that they’ll just simply tell you, well, you know, if you’re a Christian, you won’t do that. If you’re really saved, you won’t live like that. If you’re really saved, you’re not going to have those desires anymore. If you’re really saved. You say, well, I’m really saved. And you still do things wrong and say things wrong and think things wrong and you know it. But see, it’s a twisting of the truth of the gospel. The test of the gospel is it must be grace free.

No string to take. None. And it has to last forever. See when I got saved years ago, I didn’t promise God anything. I didn’t have to change anything. It was I was trusting Him. See salvation, believing on Christ and making the decision is not a decision for me to work for the Lord for my salvation. It was a decision to trust Christ for my salvation. So I trusted Christ as my Savior. He said He would save me and give me eternal life.

That’s how I know that I’m going to heaven whenever I die. Think about this again. You know in Isaiah 64, 6, it says, If all our righteousness are as filthy rags, why would you use filthy rags as the evidence that you’re really saved? I’ll repeat that statement. Some of you just woke up. If all our righteousness are as filthy rags, why would you use those filthy rags to prove that you’re saved? I got one last page here. And I know that you want to hear my closing remarks.

Lord, would there be heresy to preach the gospel to the lost by sharing how you failed to give faith to all believers? To believe? Lord, if that’s the only way anybody can be saved. Why did you love all of us? Why did you fail to love us all? And Lord, why did you fail to make a way for everybody to be saved? Why would you do that only for a few, but not for everybody? Well, when you let Jesus Christ die for everybody, instead of just a few people that you wanted to go to heaven, they select few.

Would we sit in judgment on God, we would? See, God has to be just when He’s judged. By the unjust, everyone does have faith, and that’s simply the ability to trust. You see, God doesn’t have to give you special faith. He just needs to give you the gospel, a special message, so you can put your faith in it. So you can trust that too to hold you up, and it might. But if it lets you down, that ain’t my fault.

I had a parent one time when they sent the kids our camp, and they were bratty, and I said, look, If your kid goes to camp and come home and acts like a brat, you remember he acted like a brat before he went to camp. If there was no greater love than the death of your son, then there is no greater evidence of your love. Think about that statement. If there was no greater love than the death of your son, then there is no greater evidence of your love.

If you did not love everyone, how would I know that it included me? If Christ did not pay for all sin, for everyone, how do I know you paid for mine? How do I prove he paid for mine? What’s going to be my evidence? What makes me different from you? Or you different from me? So I believe that he loves us all. And Christ is the manifestation of God’s love. And that’s why the more you study about Jesus Christ, you’ll see how much and how big, how wonderful the height, the depth, the breadth of his love.

Understand it in this life, I doubt it will ever be able to. But I can tell you this, I believe God loves everybody. I believe that when Christ died, He died for everybody. And I believe God wants us, as He says in the book of Romans in chapter 5, verse 8, that the love of Christ is manifested to us. The love of Christ is manifested. But God commended His love toward us, and that why we were yet Saint’s or sinners.

Sinners Christ died for us. That was God’s way given us evidence that He loves us. He made something possible for you and me. We could not do for ourselves. And that’s why it’s not a works list any man should boast. That no flesh or glory in His presence. Look up here. This hand represents you and me. The wallet represents sin. We all have sin on us. All of us are guilty. The whole world has sinned and the wages of sin is death.

So we all have a payment to make. We have to pay for what we did wrong. And that’s eternal separation from God in hell. We deserve to die. We deserve to pay for our sins. But God loves us. Wants us to go to heaven. To go to heaven you’d have to be perfect and righteous as God. No sin. There’s no sin in heaven. So how do we get rid of our sin? You have to die, and then you’re separated from God through all eternity.

So, no hope. Man cannot save himself. This hand represents Jesus Christ. He’s the Lord. God in the flesh, he came into the world because God loves us. So why did Christ pay for our sins? Because Christ wanted the world to know that he loves the Father. So in John 1431 that the world may know that I, Christ, I love the Father even so I do. I’m going to do what I do because I love the Father. And my Father is going to let me do what I do because He loves you.

So Christ took all the sin, paid for it on the cross and came back from the dead, said that if you’ll believe He did it for you, He would put this payment to your account. I love telling people, isn’t it true you’ve heard all your life that Christ died on the cross and paid for all the sins of the world? Yeah. I said, if he paid for all the sins of the world, mind yours and everybody’s. Why do we have to go to hell and pay for sin if he already paid for it?

And no, never heard of that. I says, think about it. He paid for your sins because he didn’t want you to do it. He paid for your sins because he would rather die than live without you. how much he loves you. He came back from the dead and he says the only thing you have to do to go to heaven is believe he did it for you. I says can you handle that? I said, yeah, I can handle that.

I said, well, you believe he did it for you? Yes, I will. If you believe that right now, he puts that payment he made to your account. You have a payment for all of your sins. I says, the reason I can’t go to hell today, and the reason I can’t go to hell in the future, I don’t have any sense to pay for it. Christ died and paid for all my sins. That’s how I know I’m going to heaven.

Any preacher who teaches it less than this, and explain to what I’m talking about, and that it is eternal life and it is not by your works. It’s by faith and faith alone and what Christ did and you’re trusting in Him alone. They’re twisting the gospel and they’re twisting the love of God. It’s like taking a rim brand you want to add a little moustache on this guy here and you know I’m on a laser and put a little…

The gospel is not to be messed with. You and I have never been given the authority by God that tinker with his message. God says it’s free. If God says it’s free, it’s free. If it’s the gift of God is eternal life, it’s eternal life. That’s what makes the gospel good news. Let’s pray, shall we? Every headbound, every eye closed, no one looking around. If you’re here this morning and you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, would you trust Him?

I want you to know more than anything else in the world, God loves you. And He gave the evidence to His Son. He died for you. It’s all the proof that you’ll ever get. It’s all the proof you need. Would you believe that He did it for you? He loves you just as much as He loves me or anyone else. You are loved. If you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, why not do it right now? I’m not asking you to trust the church.

I’m not asking to come forward. I’m not asking you to do anything or sign a card. I just want you right where you are. If you preach that, it makes sense to me. I want to know I’m going to heaven when I die. And today, right now, this moment, I will accept Jesus Christ as my Savior. I believe He died for me. And if you’ll believe that, He will save you from hell, give you eternal life and you can know that you’re going to heaven when you die.

Would you do that? So it hits by a nice close, no one looking around. I am going to ask you in just a moment to raise your hand. Raising your hand just lets me know that what I said made sense to you. And I’d like to have prayer for you. Is there anyone along before we close? Just slip you in a very quickly, but a rut back down. So yes, I will trust Christ as my Savior. I believe Christ did that for me.

Yes, God bless you. Anyone else? Just slip it up, God bless you. Are there others? There’s no tricks to it, no gimmicks. Not going to embarrass you. If you’re watching by internet, right there on the screen says, yes, I will trust Christ as my Savior. I pray that you will. Father, we thank You again for Your blessings. Thank You for all You do for us. And for these that indicated, by an uplifted hand that they would trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.

We know that I faith and faith alone, You’re guaranteed an eternal life. And they’ll get to go to heaven whenever they die. So thank You Lord for this day. Thank You so much for sending Your Son. greatest expression of your love toward man that could ever be. Inclation of his name. 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. 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.