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 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.

In the Book of Romans, we have been studying, especially last week, week about the role of government. And that was in chapter 13, the first few verses. Now we’re still in Romans chapter 13, but we’re going to look at verse 8 down to verse 14. And not many verses, but there’s a lot of good things that are mentioned here. At the beginning of the book of Romans Paul says that I’m a debtor to the Greeks, know the barbarians and to the Jew and he says that I’m ready to preach the gospel to them that are at Rome also.

So we know that Paul knew that he was a debtor to preach the gospel and that’s what he did. After you go through and you read all these chapters that we’ve gone through and studied, he comes down to say, oh, no man anything. Now, this is not a matter of not having some indebtedness. Indeadiness is not totally wrong. It’s just that if you agree to pay so much on a certain month, then you should pay that on that month.

There’s nothing wrong in having a light bill, but at a certain time that you agree you pay the light bill. And that’s the way it is anything. You may have to buy a house. Well, lo and behold, you may not be able to pull out $150,000 and put it down. You might want to have to make payments. But if you agree to a certain amount at a certain time, you should do that. So, because you’re agreeing to a certain thing.

You may back car like that. But what you have to watch is you don’t overextend where you can’t do it. And so the Lord says, there’s one thing that evidently we do. Oh, because if he says, oh, no man anything, but he says here. But to love one another. Well, that means I’m in debt to love. So if I’m in debt to love one another, then I should do what? Pay my debt. Pay my debt. So as you live your Christian life, we are in debt to pay the debt.

We’re to pay the debt we owe. There are lost people in this world and God wants us to love them. There’s Christians and we’re supposed to love them. There’s people that you work with. Go to school with. Pay your debt. Pay what you owe. What do you owe? Well, I owe them love. We’re in debt. And we should pay the debt. So God will allow different people to come into your life so that we can pay what we need to.

Now I want you to notice something. We’ve gone through chapter 12, halfway through chapter 13, and then he talks about this loving one another. And as he says here in the last part of verse 8, for he that loveth another had fulfilled the law. Now I thought we weren’t under the law. Well, remember this, the law cannot produce love. The law cannot produce love. And so when God He wants us to live by grace means He wants to live by love.

The law can’t produce that. So when we love God and we love people, then you have a motive for why you do what you do, but love has its own set of rules. Notice He will mention some of the laws, and the reason for that is simple. When you talk about the moral law, going all the way back into Exodus. The first four is about loving God and doing right by God. Oh, you owe God. The next six has to do with what you owe man, so that you have a responsibility.

So if you fulfill love, then you fulfill the law. You love God, right, and you love your neighbor, right. So these things about, you know, thou shall not lie to your neighbor. Thou shalt not kill or murder your neighbor. You’re not supposed to covet what your neighbor has. And you’re not supposed to hate all those things. Commit adultery. Well, see, if you don’t do those things because you love, love keeps you from doing those things that would be wrong and hurtful to your neighbor.

See how simple that is? So the key thing is if Christians love one another, but that’s always a difficult thing to do. But look what he says. In verse nine, for this thou shalt not commit adultery. All right. These are all sins against your neighbor. Thou shalt not kill your neighbor. Thou shalt not steal from your neighbor. Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor. False witness just means thou shalt not lie, as it says in your Testament.

Now shall not covet. Desire what somebody else has, because when you covet something that somebody else has, you automatically lost focus on what spiritual things are. You focus upon material instead of spiritual, so you made a choice. God wants you to have nothing between you and Him, where the Lord is more important to you than anything else in your whole life. And if there be any other commandment in case you think He might have left out something, that’s included too.

I shall love thy neighbor as thyself.” Now we’re assuming, we’re assuming that you love yourself. When you look in the mirror in the morning, you say, ah, you honk. What do you say, John John? Don’t you ever die. So you love your neighbor as yourself. And if that was true, there’s a lot of you that don’t really like themselves. But now I want you to see this. And chapter 14 starts off in verse 1, him that is weak in the faith.

So he tells us how we’re supposed to treat those that are weak in the faith. Now, look in chapter 15 in verse 1, we then that are strong to bear the infirmities of the weak. So he tells us what the strong is supposed to do. So there’s Christians that are weak. weak, there’s Christians that are strong. So he’s hitting everybody. So there’s things that are revealed in the scriptures that helps us to know what we should and should not do.

Ask yourself this question now. Are you one of those Christians that are strong in the Lord or weak in the Lord? Don’t ask somebody else, am I strong or am I weak? Just ask yourself. whether you’re strong or whether you’re weak will make a lot of difference on how you perceive things. Your perception is so important. How do you perceive what God says? Now when we go up here where he says, oh no man anything. But love. If we love the lost, I wonder what is his greatest need?

Anybody got an idea? Salvation. So this is what Paul was talking about and because of how bad people are and you read chapter one, two, and three, people are bad. People are bad and God wants you to love them anyway. I just finished writing one of the little articles not long ago and I did some of it on Sunday morning but I’ve sent some, try to refine a little bit more and talking about this thing called love and so on and how to put it down.

But remember this, I was telling some of the college kids just more in class, but yesterday I guess it was, about the reason we want to study, you know, prophecy. Prophecy is important because it lets you know, you know, what God promised and the fulfillment of prophecy builds your confidence in the promises of God because if God promised something and it happened, well, great. That means I can trust them tomorrow. And then I can trust them the next day.

And that for a while, you didn’t live 55 years and you’ve been trusting the Lord because you didn’t sing God keep His Word. So prophecy can really build your confidence in what God’s Word says because nobody can do prophetic things accurately like God. But you have to have certain teachings. So I brought up my chart, had it up here, which all I’ve never seen before, except maybe a hundred times. And I brought up my chart, and on my chart, it’s laid out certain things.

So as you study the Bible, you say, ah, that goes here. And this, well that goes here. Oh this, that goes here. And you have a place to put it. Just like your body. If you didn’t have bones in your body, you couldn’t walk and you couldn’t talk. You’d be just one big old massive flesh rolling on the floor. I don’t even know if you could be able to roll. You’d be a jellyfish. I don’t know what you can do without a body of bones, but studying the Bible, and we’ve said this before, usually when they take, you know, the first year you take a little course called Bible doctrine.

Dr. Mark Cameron, his book that we used when I was there, and I think we’re still using that same book. I mean truth is still truth is still good. So you study Bible doctrine and it kind of gives you just a taste, a taste of different teaching in the scriptures. So you get a little bit of bibliography and you might get a little bit of theology and a little bit of, you know, Christology and pneumatology and eschatology, ecclesiology and all these things, you know.

So you get a little paste of those things just to wet your appetite, let you know that it’s in the Bible. And so you get a little bit of that. That’s great. And that helps a Christian that’s kind of weak to be established little by little. And then whenever you get a a little bit older, maybe a junior senior, well, systematic theology is Bible doctrine on steroids.

I mean, now you get into all the details and study everything that you can think of in the scriptures about the Bible, or about theology, theos, God, and you study about God, and you study about Christ, Christology. So you go through and you study all these major things So that whenever a person gets out of college and they go someplace and they say, well, where did you go to school? Well, the key thing is understanding that if they went to this school and they teach all these things, you know that they should be straight on the Bible.

And if they know, you know, they took theology that you know that they should be straight about who God is and what God did and all of his characteristics and so forth. So you understand that and then you know that they know about Christ and they know about the Holy Spirit and they know that in every one of these there is a boundary. There is a boundary and all of these are different teachings and that yet when you get down through and you study it at all, you can go really deep in the scriptures.

generally when you take Bible doctrine, it’s only three hours a semester, but when you take systematic theology, it’s a little bit more in it. Four hours for two semesters, and you’re studying and you’re getting deeper, you’re becoming more rock solid. But you see, you don’t get all of that when you take Bible doctrine, it just wets your appetite and kind of lets you know this. There’s some boundaries to him, but now you’re going to get details. Which do you think requires more studying?

Bible doctrine or systematic theology? Systematic theology. And who’s teaching this systematic theology? Bob Brooks is teaching that. So whenever you get through, remember this. You can know everything there is to know about the Bible, how we got it and all that stuff. You can also know everything here is about theology, get all the answers right, pass the test. You go all the way down even in eschatology or ecclesiology, you can get it all right. But there’s something that is supposed to cement all of these basic teachings together.

Now the theme of the whole Bible is Christ. And so if it’s Christ, is it possible for you to learn all of this and never love any of it? Is it possible to go down so deep and come up so dry that you have to prime a man before he could spit? So here you are and you can leave college and never love anything and not love God, not love one another and not love. Is it possible for us to do this?

This thing, at one time there were almost 10,000 people at Florida Bible College. And when to be needed, all 10,000 had loved the Lord with all their hearts and all went out, and the love of God was shed abroad in our hearts. Just think of what could be accomplished. God wants a work done. You will never love souls as much as God does. I used to think, Lord, don’t you care about lost souls as much as I do? Isn’t that the epitome of pride?

Like, I care more than God. Well, and the reason was because I thought if I was God, if I was God, man, thank you, I would use him in a great way. And I had to learn a long time ago a little lesson. and be faithful with what you have, where you are. And don’t live in a dream world, but realize that all I have is this moment. Just keep planting seeds. And you may never shake the world, but you would love to plant the seeds that produce the person that might shake the world, right?

Because we don’t know the extent of our labor. We’re not good judges of our own labor. That’s why Paul says, just nothing before the time. He said, I don’t know anything against myself. He says, but one that judges means the Lord. And that’s going to take place when we get to heaven. So these things are important. Now look what he says here. Back there in verse 11, love, work if no ill to his neighbor. In other words, if you allow the Lord to take the Word of God and plant it deep in your heart where you become really solid.

Now I’ll be honest with you, at one time as I said in college class, I saw absolutely no purpose in some of these teachings. I’ll never use it. And I found out later I have used everything I have ever learned. Probably forgot a lot too. But I found out that I am so glad that I was grounded in the Bible. I don’t look outside of the Bible for extra biblical sources of authority. I know that the Bible is complete and it is the Word of God and I can put my compass and not trusting it.

So it has sustained me for 56 years. And guess what I’m going to do for the next 50 years. I’m going to keep on trusting it. And what I know about God has kept me from wandering and going astray, seeking false gods, because I know the true and living God. And so when it comes to Christ and what He did on the cross for me, for the love of Christ constraineth me, motivates me. I want my motivation to be the love that God had for me and sin in his son.

Therefore, I know what God has done for me. So I don’t serve the Lord because of what I’m going to get from God. I want to serve the Lord because of what I’ve already received. And that should be enough to motivate every person to stay faithful to the Lord for the rest of his life. When you talk about the Holy Spirit, I am so thankful that I know that the Holy Spirit doesn’t exalt or brag about himself. Jesus says, He shall magnify me.

The Holy Spirit magnifies the Son, teaches you the Word of God about the Son. People who always talk about the Spirit probably don’t have it. But the Holy Spirit is to teach you what the Word of God says. And when He talks about us walking in the spirit, and He’s walking in obedience to the Word of God. So I know that wherever I go, for 55, I know that I’m never alone. The Holy Spirit of God lives inside of me.

He dwells in me. And He is the great comforter. And when you don’t do right, He’s the great discomforter. And you’ll find that out in your Christian life. And when you talk about ecclesiology, talk about the ecclesia coming out, the called out ones, the church age in which we live. I know when it began. I know when it ends. There’s a lot of teaching today that puts us into the tribulation, but I don’t believe that. I believe it takes place at the rapture before the tribulation starts because of my teaching that I received 50 something years ago.

It has sustained me so I don’t follow every little idea that I hear out there someplace. I used to believe certain things because well the teacher told me. I didn’t have time to you know to find out whether or not they were right or wrong because I was so busy just trying to keep my head above water so my feet wouldn’t drown. And then after a while, when I had time, I could go back and read and study and talk to you.

I found out what they taught me was the truth. I am so thankful that I got what I did, when I did, where I did. And so I know what’s going to come in the future based upon what God’s Word says. These basic teaching will secure your peace of mind. It’s what causes you to be stabilized, steadfast in the faith, always abounding in the work of the Lord. Now look what he says here in verse 10, love work of no ill to his neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

It’s not that we’re under the law, but just hold your place right there and look in chapter 8. Look in chapter 8 of the local Romans. And you’ll notice what he says in verse, let’s just look there firstAFTA verse 3, where he says, for what the law could not do? What couldn’t the law do? The law couldn’t save you. The law couldn’t make you love God. The law only condemned you because no man can keep the law. It condemned everybody, but it points you to Christ.

And so he says, God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh. Not that he had sinful flesh, he was in the likeness. Came in this world, took upon flesh. But after, as you can hear, And for the sin condemned sin in the flesh. He paid for our sin, I get this in verse 4. That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, but not by us, in us. But that’s why the Holy Spirit is all throughout the eighth chapter, living within us in order to produce the righteousness of the law.

So whenever you say, I want to live a righteous life, a holy life, then by the nature of itself, it means that if love is the motivation and the thing that helps you to see and understand all this, if I love my neighbor, then I won’t try to lie to them. I won’t try to deceive them. I won’t try to wrong somebody. Always seek to do right. That the love that you have for the Lord because of what you know he loves you that it helps you to do what’s right.

And so therefore you don’t try to take some man’s wife or somebody that doesn’t belong to you. You always seek to do what’s right. You don’t want to steal from somebody, you don’t want to commit murder. And those are things that comes from the flesh. But it’s not the will of God for you. So you fulfill the law because you love the Lord. The law of 11, the Lord will produce a righteousness in your life that law could not do.

When you kept the law you became prideful. Look at me how great I am. But when you do it because of the Lord you thank the Lord for giving you salvation and giving you the indwelling Holy Spirit and then teaching you what love really is about. These things are so important. Now look at verse 11 of of chapter 13. In verse 11 says, and that knowing the time that now it is high time to awake out of sleep, to awake out of sleep.

Now, when they talked about up there, they were concerning neighbor. Remember, it already talked about us loving one another in chapter 12 all the way through. Now when it talks about loving our neighbor, would it be the say to let it be lost. Love my neighbor. Now is the word neighbor referring to those lost people out there? Or is it talking about the believer? If it’s the believer, that means we don’t have to love the lost. But if it’s to the lost, that means we don’t have to we’re loved the believer.

Or is it possible that whenever you read in the book of Exodus, when it talks about loving your neighbor, you think the word there might refer to everybody. It could be for anybody. Love anybody. And so we’re not supposed to be in debt to anybody. So God wants us to love everyone. And that’s how you pay your debt. Sometimes when I see a person, and sometimes, believe it or not, I don’t really always want a witness. I know that you’re going to stay in the shop.

But sometimes I’ll go ahead and witness because I know I owe that man. I owe that woman, the gospel. I owe them. I’m in debt to them. And I want to pay my debt. It’s a different way of thinking. But you can’t win everybody, but when you get a chance and you can, maybe you need to do it. But notice what he says here. It’s high time to awake out of sleep. In other words, as time moves on, I’ll look up here.

I was saved 56 years ago, 18 year old. Now it’s 50 years past 56. Now, I’m still waiting for the day when the Lord’s gonna come. I’m still waiting for the day when I’m gonna get my brand new body. Now, I could get it a lot quicker than I think. But I don’t mind waiting for the rapture. That’s alright with the Lord. But when that happens and I’ll be delivered from this whole world, salvation doesn’t always mean save from hell.

I’ve already been saved from hell. But I’m still waiting to be delivered from this world, delivered from this old body. As he says in chapter 7, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? This old body is going to die. So there’s a day coming. He says here, this day as he says here in verse 11, now is our salvation near than when we believe. Now see I I believed way back there, 56 years ago. All this time has passed.

Now tell me, if I’m almost 75 years old, wouldn’t you say that I’m closer to my deliverance than I was before? I’m closer to that moment. Wouldn’t you agree that I’m close to running out of time? Good possibility? No, I don’t know how much time I’ve got out here yet. I’m hoping for about another 50 years, but it might be tomorrow, but it’s closer. Now hold your place right here and look there in the book of Romans in chapter eight again.

The Bible says that in this life, in this life, until we get to heaven, we’re going to suffer. In other words, things are not gonna go our way all the time. So what? Big deal. And the Bible says that sometime will be defrauded. In other words, somebody will wrong us. That’s okay. Notice what he says in verse 18, for I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

So we know that we’re living in the present time, but we know that there is a future time where we’re gonna be in glory, where it’s perfect. We’re gonna have a brand new body and a brand new world. but we’re not there yet. So in this life, in this body, we’re going to suffer. And so as long as we’re in this body, we still have an old sinful, what? Nature. And if we still have an old sinful nature, that means you’re still gonna do things wrong, right?

You mean to tell me that regardless of how deep you are in all these various doctrines, you still have that old sinful nature? Getting all that education, do away with it. You know, wouldn’t it be neat if we could just go to the emergency room? Dr. Sir, what can I do for you? Well, Dr. I got this old sinful nature. I don’t know where it is, but if you could just scan me and find that thing and cut it out, I’d appreciate it.

Wouldn’t that be awesome? I mean, it’s gotta be somewhere in there. Like I mean, you can’t find it. And just take it out. Well, one of these days, you don’t have to worry about taking it out. It’s gonna take you out. It’s time to make plans for the summer. Join us for summer camp July 9th through the 13th and fits Gerald, Georgia. At summer camp, teens ages 13 to 18 will enjoy fun competitions while learning about the Word of God.

Over the years, hundreds of kids have been reached with the gospel at summer camp. This is your opportunity to make summer meaningful and memorable for a teen in your life. The cost of summer camp is $150. If you’d like to donate a summer camp scholarship, you can do so by calling 813-884-4328 for more information. 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.