This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.

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.

Alright, we have been studying in the book of Romans and little by little, little one of these days halfway through the kingdom we’re going to finish the book of Romans. Book of Romans chapter 8. One of our favorite verses in the Bible is Romans 828. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Now there’s a lot of things that God puts down that are going to be for all of God’s children, whether you love them or you don’t love them.

There’s some things that God has said. But there’s also some things that God is going to do for those that love him. Those that love him are those that’s going to serve him. But not all of God’s children love the Lord. Not all of them will serve the Lord. And the motive for our serving the Lord is because we love him. But you’ll notice in the book of Romans, he’s talking about a few things and you’ll see there in verse 14 of chapter 8, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

The Holy Spirit can only lead God’s children. He doesn’t lead the lost man, he leads the saved man. But he also talks about where heirs of God join heirs with Christ. And so he says in verse 17, in the middle part of that verse, if so be that we suffer with him, we may be also glorified together. Now there are certain words that are found in the 8th chapter that you’re going to find in chapter 9, 10, and 11.

Now I know I’ve said it before and it’s true. You can read chapter 8 and take 9, 10, and 11 and kind of pull it out of there and set it aside and go from verse, the last verse in chapter 8 and go straight to chapter 12 and verse 1 and 2. I beseech you therefore, brother, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies live in sacrifice and so on. Which is your reasonable service. So our service is supposed to be based upon that which God has done and what will help you in your Christian life is knowing what God has determined that will never change.

See you don’t mind going through some things here in this life and the suffering that you’re going to go through, the hard day and all the things, if you understand the endgame. In other words, you know what’s going to happen in the end. For example, when the Lord in time passed, when He looks down to that long telescope of time and He says that He has foreknown, I guess God been God, He ought to know the end from the beginning.

So He has chosen certain things. He’s chosen how a man is going to be saved. And that’s explained in chapter 9 and in chapter 11 of the book of Romans. How did God choose? God says in chapter nine that he chose not by works. And in chapter 11 he says he chose by the election of grace. So the issue has already been settled before anybody was born, did he, no good or bad? So God chose to save a certain way, but God chose to save those who chose to trust Christ.

So God has already decided He is going to save all of those who will trust Him. So predestination is the security of the believer. So when you have believed on Christ, if you understand that very moment you trust the Lord, there are some things that have been guaranteed. One that you will be in heaven, that’s guaranteed. and he’ll never cast you out and he’ll never lose you. And that you have been justified by faith and that you’re going to be glorified someday.

So, in the 10th chapter, especially talks a little bit about, he will save all those that call upon him. Because in chapter 8, it talks about those who have been called. So he’s called, but how does he call? The Bible says he calls by the Gospel. So he uses the Gospel 2nd Thessalonians chapter 2, in verse 13 and 14, especially verse 14, He calls through the gospel. So we are commanded to go in all the world, preach the gospel and through the gospel people here and they understand and they can choose to trust Christ as their Savior.

So those who choose to trust Christ as Savior God says, I want you to know these things. So you’ll notice there in chapter 8, look what he says in verse 28, And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God to them who are the called according to his purpose. So God calls because God has a purpose and when he has us go out with the gospel and he speaks to the lost man through the gospel, it’s the Holy Spirit that illuminates the person’s mind so they can understand the gospel but then it’s their choice whether they will either accept or reject.

So when you get into chapter 9, you’ll see that it’s talking about accept or reject, accept or reject. So look very quickly there in chapter 9 and you’ll notice when he says this in verse 9, for this is the word of promise. At this time will I come and Sarah shall have a son. And not only this but when Rebecca also hath conceived by one, even by our Father Isaac, and then if you skip those two verses and just jump down there of the next verse where he says, it was said unto her, the elder shall serve the younger.

As it is written, Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated. Jacob have I accepted and Esau have I rejected because see it’s a reference I believe to the two births. Even though Esau was born first, the flesh birth was rejected and it’s the second birth birth that is accepted. So God has given us these two births and it’s a good illustration from the very beginning. But whenever we get into the study of some of these nice big fancy words, it can be a little on the scary side.

But I do not read people’s commentaries that I don’t agree with their position. I don’t want their reasoning into my mind. But there’s once in a while I’ll see something and somebody writes something and I’ll see it. But I don’t study their stuff. I try to study the book and go through what does God’s Word have to say. And some of this is along the complicated side. But now if you take the 9th, 10th, and 11th chapter out and go from chapter 8 straight into chapter 12, you’re also also going to miss a lot of stuff.

It’s not just the past, present, and future of Israel. It is that, but it’s more than that because chapter 9, chapter 10, chapter 11 is telling you why you ought to have the confidence that what God promised He will fulfill. But the question comes up, Lord, didn’t you promise Israel? Didn’t you make some covenants back there, didn’t you make some agreements of what you were going to do and how that the children of Israel is going to be set up as a nation and they’re going to rule the world and all that.

Then you promise all of that? Well, God, if you didn’t keep your word to Israel, how do we know you’re going to keep your word to us? So he gets into explaining what he really promised and why it has not yet been fulfilled but what he’s going to do in the future. So when you understand the security that God has given concerning the nation of Israel, it should give us a little bit more confidence that in this time between the time we trust the Lord and the time we get to heaven, however long we’re going to live, we can have this hope, this joyful anticipation of what God promised will happen.

So that’s why in chapter when he talks about the creation of the world, groaneth and travail together until now. The whole creation is waiting to be changed, our bodies that we have, and who shall deliver us from this body of death. And God says to the Holy Spirit, so we are going to have these bodies changed and in these bodies we groan. And the older you get, the more groan and you’re going to do. But the things that happens to us in life, if you understand what God has promised to the believer, then you don’t have to worry in the meantime.

And that’s why in chapter 8 just look down here in verse 35, where he says, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Contribution to it, no. Now can these things be good, though these things happen to us during our lifetime? Now, we have the Holy Spirit who intercedes to God for us. We had the guarantee it was God who sent his son and it was Christ who died for us. So you got the father, the son and the Holy Spirit on your side.

So who can be against you? Who can take an overpower God, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and keep what God promised from happening? Therefore you and I have such great security. So even though we have tribulation, can the tribulation work together for good? Yeah? Can distress, yes, persecution, famine, nakedness, the peril, sword. I didn’t like that part. For vice-sake, we’re killed all the day long. In other words, we’re living in a body of death. We can die at any moment.

So we live with the fear of death all the time. But we know the end result. We know that God says He said, I’ll never cast you out. Well, that phrase, He’ll never cast us out. In these verses He’s talking about what can separate us from Him. Well, the question comes up again in chapter 9 and chapter 11 talking about, well, did God cast away His people, which He foreknew? Well, wait a minute, if He can cast Israel away, why can’t He do that to us?

Didn’t He promise Israel? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, this is why you don’t want to take chapter 9, 10, in 11 out of this and just study it straight across, you can and you’ll learn a lot. But chapter 9, 10 and 11 gives you a lot of insights to what he’s talking about in chapter 8. So if you understand that, then you’ll like chapter 12 even more because then you know he’s talking about which is your reasonable service.

So salvation is one thing. Service is another. But you can serve the Lord a lot better when you have confidence that what God promised He will do. And though in this life we may have a lot of things that goes on that can cause us a lot of heartache and aches and pains and all these things. Nothing can separate you from the love of God because there’s things that God predetermined before the foundations of the world that those who trust Christ, this is what God says.

So He makes a statement there in verse 29 of chapter 8. For whom He did for know, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren, more over whom He did predestinate, then He also called, and whom He called, then He also justified, and whom He justified, Then he also glorified. Now, I know this sounds a little on the wild side, but just follow me for a minute.

Way back here, before the earth began, do you think God being God knew what Adam and he were gonna do ahead of time? The Bible does tell us that Jesus Christ was crucified in the mind of God before the foundations of the world. So that means that God had a plan before he ever made the first man. But God can allow people to make their decisions. But God knowing the future. Do you think he knew that Yankee Arnold was going to trust the Lord in 1960?

You think he knew that? I surprised him. He didn’t think I was and I surprised him and I did it anyway. No. So God already knows. But God can take those that he foreknows that you’re going to trust Christ as Savior. you’re going to believe on him. God has chosen to save all of those that will believe. Now, God does not make you believe and God doesn’t just send people to hell because he didn’t choose to save them. I do not believe in Calvinism.

I don’t believe in the fatal predestination type of theology. I believe God has chosen to give man a free will and the man makes the choice. but God has determined all those who believe on Christ. He can hear, justify them by faith. He can from here, not there when you trust the Lord. He can from here glorify you. That means that God already sees the end from the beginning. That’s how secure you are. But he said, like predestination is the security of the believer.

So God calls, we hear, we understand, we trust the Lord. You see, I have not yet been glorified. I am going to be glorified, but in the mind of God, since I’m in Christ, I am already seated in the heavenlies in Christ. Now is that security or not? So nothing in between, the time I trust the Lord, and the time that I lead this world, can change that. That is security. Now not everybody who trust the Lord, I believe they have to know they have eternal life, but they may not have the full assurance that they ought to have.

And they can have questions in doubt. So this is why I believe there’s a certain value to those who love the Lord. Because if you love the Lord, then you want to please the Lord and serve the Lord. Well you have to know the Word of God. So the more you love Him, the more you read, the the more you study, the more you understand, the more confidence you have. And then whenever things seems to go wrong in life, you don’t worry about it because you know that has nothing to do with my security.

My security is based upon what God promised, and he can’t lie. So I know there is absolutely, positively, no way that Yankee can ever go to hell in the future. And I know that he will never leave me and never forsake me. So then he gets into chapter nine and 10 and 11 to show you what he means by the nation of Israel and promises that he made to Israel. So when you see that he says there’s no separation, this is why there’s the illustration of a marriage given where you know you are married and you can’t be free to marry somebody else until one of them dies.

Well, that same truth is because Christ is alive and you trust Christ as your Savior, you’re given eternal life. So neither one of you will ever die because Christ can’t sin, your new birth can’t sin. So how long will you be joined together forever? And that’s why there’s not gonna be no separate. It cannot be any separate. Nothing can separate you from the love of God, the love of Christ. So then you get into chapter nine, look in chapter nine.

And you’ll notice that this is really beautiful, but it’s scary at the same time. It’s hard for me to fathom what Paul really meant when he says, I could wish myself a cursed from Christ from my brethren’s sake. Now, does that mean that he loves them so much? He was willing to be separated from them after he just said, you can’t be separated from them. So he can’t be separated from God. But if he could, that he’s willing to do so, such love, I don’t know if I’ve ever met from any man.

I’ll be honest with you, I am not, not willing to go to hell for anybody. I’m sorry. Now, maybe I’m not as spiritual as I ought to be or as godly or as holy that I think I am. I’m glad I’m going to heaven, but I’m not ready to die and go to hell for somebody. But I’m also glad to know I can’t Though you may have the desire and be willing to you also know it’s impossible So he says this God knows my heart He says I know The Holy Spirit beareth witness I lie not So look what he says in verse when I say the truth in Christ.

I lie not my conscience Also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit whatever he meant he meant Whatever he meant, he really meant. He says that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were a curse from Christ, cursed from Christ. Now you and I know that we can’t be cursed. We cannot be separated from Christ. He just established that, that I could wish that myself were a curse from Christ. For my brother and my kinsmen according to the place, he wants his own people to know the Lord.

Now just look at something that goes along with this in chapter 10 in verse 1. Chapter 10 verse 1 where he said, brother, my prayer, heart, desire, and prayer to God that for Israel is that they might be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God but not according to knowledge, for they be an ignorant… of God’s righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.

When he says, for they’ve been ignorant of God’s righteousness. It’s not because they were not chosen. Because why should you care so much, Paul, about people that God chose not to save in the first place? If God wanted them saved, God could have just chosen them and they all have been saved anyway. but God didn’t do it. But He does tell us how He chooses. It wasn’t that God wasn’t willing to save them. It was that they were not willing to trust Him.

They wouldn’t believe that what He said was the truth. So they did not believe on the Lord. They could have, they didn’t. Now you’ll notice in verse 4 of chapter 9 and he gets into the the reasons of what God had promised. And remember, we hinge an awful lot upon the promises of God. Does God lie? If God lies in any place, you don’t know if He’s going to lie in another. So there is no verse, no scripture that says God told a lie.

God doesn’t lie. So what He says is the truth. So then, didn’t He make in the a lot of promises to Israel. See, there were covenants that he had made. You call it the Abrahamic covenant, the Davidic covenant, where he promises the land and then he promises the king. And there’s a mother of covenants in there, but those are two main covenants that God made. Now, some covenants are conditional, some are unconditional. If it’s a conditional, it means it means it’s based upon whether or not you follow through and do certain things.

Unconditional has nothing to do with your choice, actions, or anything else depends upon what God says. So this is why you can study those things and some of the things can blow your mind a little bit, but there’s promises that God made and he will keep because there are unconditional promises God made. One of the promises that he made was to Abraham in chapter 15 and verse 6 when he made the statement that he would justify the heathen through faith and that by believing Abraham was justified by faith alone and he was justified by faith without the law because the law was not given for 430 years so there’s no way that Abraham could have kept the law but by faith so God says in the book of of Galatians in chapter three and verse six, it repeats that verse.

But in verse eight, he says, for the scripture, foreseen that God would justify the heathen through faith preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, in these shall all families of the earth be blessed, that God would justify the heathen by faith alone. Well, that’s a promise that God made. the promise could not be fulfilled unless Christ came and died for the sins of the world. Because God cannot just overlook man’s sin, He cannot just forgive people. The payment has to be made to satisfy the rightistic demands of the law which require death.

So Christ had to come in order for God the Father to fulfill His promise. So we have these promises, But he made promises to Israel also and promises to Israel that the Messiah would come. Well did he come? He came just like he promised. And they accepted him right just like they were supposed to. No they didn’t. So the king was rejected, the kingdom was postponed. But now if that’s true, how come Israel can still be his chosen people when they rejected him?

Because he said this, that the seed is counted for the promise. You see, down through the years there’s always been a remnant of those who truly believed in the Lord. Old Testament says they trusted Jehovah. In the New Testament, do we have Jews, individuals that trusted the Lord? So they trusted the Lord individually. But as a nation, the scribes, the Pharisees, the chief rulers and so on, they rejected Him. So the Lord says it’s not those who are all Israel are counted for the promise.

It’s the believing individuals. God promised and he keeps his word. And so even though today Israel has been scattered upon the face of the earth, there is still a remnant of believing Jews and there’s always been. So God is keeping his word. The children of Israel, there is still the seed. And one day it’s on all payoff, but in the meantime, You God has grafted in a wild branch, which is the Gentiles. And so one day, because of unbelief, God takes us out of here, God’s going to take His children, and He’s going to graft them back in again to the branch, to the root.

And Israel will be as born in a day. So God will keep His Word, the promises that He made. It says somewhere in the Bible, the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. Look in chapter 11 of the week. Look what he says there in verse 28. As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sake, but as touching the election, they are beloved for the Father’s sake. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. In other words, God does not, cannot change his mind.

So when God gives you the gift of eternal life, he can’t change his mind on that and take it away from you. There’s things that God has promised down the road that he will not change his mind on. And so when you know this, it gives you that security. Like today, the world seems like it’s falling apart. It’s in chaos, wouldn’t you say? Does the child of God have to be fallen apart just because the world falls apart? No, we know that one of these days the Lord made a promise that He’s coming back for us and He’s going to take us out of this world.

True? So believing that can bring comfort to the soul. That’s why He says in thessalonians chapter 4 verse 13 and then down to verse 18. But verse 18 talks about where for comfort with these words, these words are supposed to bring comfort. Knowing what God says and what God promised can give us the peace of mind. And you have that confidence, that’s why he says in Hebrews in chapter 10 verse 35, cast not away therefore your confidence, which has great recompense of reward.

Rewards are because of service. So we’re talking not about us going to heaven because that’s already taken care of, Our justification has been cleared and we’re on our way, but we’re not there yet. So we’re still living here in life, but we know that what God promised is going to be fulfilled, that we shall be presented before Him in lava and without spot, without blemish. And we are going to be adopted into His family, which we believe when these old bodies are redeemed, then we have our total inheritance.

Right now those things, in dwelling of the Holy Spirit, the down payment upon that which you yet to come. But we believe these things because God’s Word says so. 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. 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 caught up to meet the Lord in the air so live today and every day believe in that the Lord is coming soon just keep looking up