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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.

Anyway, I want you to follow along with me on a few thoughts that I wanted to share with you. I want to talk to you about his God just as he fair. Does he always do right? Well the Bible says that God is a good God and he’s always just and doesn’t make any mistakes you know. So I want you to take your Bible and turn to the book of Genesis in chapter 18. Genesis chapter 18. You notice there’s a few things that are mentioned here because when we’re studying prophecy in the Bible, prophecy is those things that God knows is going to take place and He chose certain people to tell about it.

Sometimes He came and told it Himself and prophecy is going to be which lies ahead of us, things that we can’t make happen. So there’s some things that God told Abraham. So this is one of going to take place. This is going to happen. And he even told him when it would take place. So if that happens, you got me, God had to do that. So he’s pretty smart. Now look in chapter 18 of the book of Genesis. Now here’s Abraham, he’s minding his own business.

He’s watching over the herd and he got out of cell phone and now he didn’t know where to go all all the time, so he uses GPS. He did something back in those days, he didn’t have nothing like what we had today. I don’t know if we’re blessed or not. I asked the lady on the elevator the other day, and she got on there and she’s on her cell phone and she just went, I said, what did we do before we ever got these things?

I said, you won’t believe this, but I was in a restaurant and I walked by this table and the man, the woman, and three children, everyone of them sitting there with their cell phones. and not a one of them was talking to each other, but they’re all on their phones. And I know what they’re doing. And then I find out, a lot, I’m doing the same thing. I’m doing some of the same thing. It’s like an addiction. He gets a hold of you.

But anyway, here in verse 1, he says, and the Lord appeared unto him, Abraham, in the plains of Vamory. And as he said in the tent door in the heat of the day, He looked up and low, he saw three people walking toward him. So anyway, he introduced himself and they introduced themselves and so he ran. Now here’s a man that’s 99 years old. They get this. See there in verse 7, but Abraham ran unto the herd and faced a calf, tender and good and gave it unto a young man and he hastened to dress it.

So how fast can you run it 99? Remember this is right before his son Isaac was going to be born. So that’s that’s an old man in pretty good shape but he was past the age of being able to I guess have children or his wife was and so they were they were old they’re up in age. So he says in verse 9 and they said unto him where is Sarah thy wife? If he’d have been here and asked me that question, I said, well, she’s shopping.

Most of them are shopping. But anyway, and he says, we hold in the tent, and he said, I will certainly return unto the according to the time of life, and lo Sarah thy wife shall have a son. Sarah heard it in the tent door which was behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age, and it seems to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So, she heard. She laughed. See verse 12? Therefore, Sarah laughed within herself.

Nam. The Lord says later, the angel of the Lord says, I heard her laugh. Well, she laughed with in herself. So evidently, you know, the Lord knows when you’re laughing, even if you don’t make a sound. Does he know when you’re praying when you don’t make a sound? In other words, the Lord is even capable of reading your mind. Knows your thoughts, knows everything about you. But she says in verse two, after I have waxed, oh shall I have pleasure?

My Lord be an old also. And the Lord said unto able to be a man. him. Wherefore did Sarah laugh saying, shall I of us sure to bear a child with your mold? And so here’s a verse that if you’ve never underlined it in your Bible, it’s a good verse to underline because there’ll be times when you’ll wonder, is my problem too hard for the Lord to solve? Nothing is too hard for the Lord. And he says here, is anything too hard for the Lord?

In other the words, this would take a miracle. God would have to intervene. But He told them what was going to happen. She’s going to have a son. And then says in the time of life, how long it’s going to be from now. So you know it’s a minimum of nine months. And so she’s going to have this child. That’s prophetic. Now God in His Word has told us many things that’s going to take place before they happen. And just like when Christ came the first time, that was told about in the Old Testament around 300 something prophecies when Christ came was crucified came back from the dead all those things talked about in the Old Testament.

So prophecy is not just foretelling it’s foretelling. So some of the prophets would tell forth that which has already been revealed and then sometimes they would reveal something that is going to happen in the future. sometimes it’s in the near future and sometimes it’s way on down the line. And because history repeats itself sometimes a prophecy seems like it happens over and over again because people don’t learn. They keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

It doesn’t work that away. But he also says something else about this and this is before he had a child. He says in verse 17 and the Lord says, shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do? In other words, what was he going to do? Well, see, he was on his way down there to Sodom and Gomorrah. And so as he goes down to Sodom and Gomorrah, he’s going to destroy the place. He’s going to literally blow its guy high.

But he says, should I hide it from Abraham? So he tells Abraham what he’s going to do. And Abraham, he says, now shall not the judge of all the earth do right. But he says in verse 20, I know they’re sin and what they’re doing and how wicked it is. And you’ll notice when he says in verse 19, the reason I want to tell him because Abraham is a good man, he’s a godly man, and I know he’s going to raise his children correctly and says in verse 19, for I know him that he will command his children and his household after him.

Well, Isaac hadn’t been born yet. But the Lord looks down the road and he knows what’s going to happen in advance. Does God already know what you’re going to do before you do it? Doesn’t he know all the possibilities there are? In other words, he knows what you would have happened if you took this job or if you’d have broke that leg or if he hadn’t have stopped you from having a wreck in this car. God knows all kinds of things.

We’re alive only by the grace of God. So yes, God knows all of this. And so now He says, I’m going to let Abraham know what I’m going to do. I’m going to just totally destroy this place. And so Abraham becomes an intercessor. Intercessor is someone who goes to God on behalf of someone else. So you and I, after we trust Christ, the Savior, were supposed to do intercessory In other words, we pray to God on the behalf of other people.

Now a lot of people probably don’t do that, but we’re always having prayer requests. And somebody called them and said, will you pray for me? And I’ve had people when they leave, they shake my hands, they say, pray to pray for me, I’m having a hard day and so forth. And so everybody has a rough time. Everybody’s always needing prayer. And the one thing that can kind of give you a little consolation is knowing that nothing’s too hard for the Lord.

Doesn’t He say, cast all your cares upon Him, for He cares for you? Yeah, they may go ask what we ought to do. And He says, when you pray, pray and believe. Because you never know at what point God’s going to do something. And if God’s going to do it because I asked, then I’m going to ask for as much as I can. I’m a little on the greedy side. I want all the blessings of life that I can get.

And when I get to heaven, I want all the rewards that I can get. Why? Because it pleases God to bless. It pleases God to reward you for what you’ve done for him. So this is why these things are so important to know. So he says in verse 23, And Abraham drew near and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? You know, if there’s some righteous people there, you’re going to destroy them along with those wicked people.

So the Bible says here in verse 25, the last line of verse 25, shall not the judge of all the earth do right. We have a natural inclination that God, being God, is a good God. And that God should make things right. And because we know that down here in this life, not everything is right. everything is fair. You ever have kids say that’s not fair, that’s not fair. Oh, that’s okay. Adults are still doing it. They grow up and that’s not fair.

He’s got a house bigger than mine, that’s not fair. He got a higher paying job that I have. That’s not fair. And they’re getting something and I’m not getting this and gree, gree, gree. And we want. And if someone does something to us. Well then we get bent out of shape and we want to get even. In other words, we want to make it right. You wrong me? I’m going to get you back. And so it’s just a natural thing that we want things to be just.

It’s got to be right. We think if a person is running for office and they do this wrong, they ought to be held by the same standard that everybody else is. It’s just that’s the way it goes. You just think that, you know, somebody else, if they did that, they’d go to jail. If you did that yet, go to jail. If I did that, I’d go to jail. Well, we just think those people, whoever they are, regardless of their position, well, you ought to go to jail too.

We have a uncanny sense of fairness that we’re not always fair ourselves. We don’t care if we get the better of somebody else that don’t have to be fair. They’ve even got it now where when they play football games and things like that or in kind of sports, give them all a trophy. Everybody’s a winner. Nobody’s a loser. But when I was growing up, I was in a fight just about every day. And I always wanted to win. I didn’t always win, but I had to get in there and scrap.

I mean, we’d get in school. And if you walked down the hallway and the kid was walking this way here, if you made eye contact, you just about had a fight after school. And buddy, how many times I’d get in the fight? No reason. It’s just, that’s just the male thing. That’s just what the kids do. And so I’ve been in a lot of lot of fights. And some of them I want and some of them I haven’t. Now the way that I got my nose broke, for example, I was 17 years old, solid steel.

Well, even I was 17 years old. And we live in part of New York apartments up in and they had this youth group. So they wanted somebody to be the president of the youth group. Well, they liked me enough so they yanked me to the president. Okay, so I got to be the president of the youth group. I mean, it wasn’t many kids. It was no big honor. But we decided to have a dance one night. Now this is before I knew the Lord.

I didn’t know the Lord. I was at a loss of a hound dollar when the end of a soup bone. So we had this dance and everybody had to pay a dime. I have a brother. His name is Little Man. We got crazy names. And I got cousins that, one of them is named Brother, one is Fay, a Naeo, Kitty, Frog, Stikham. I mean, but that’s always our name. You know, it’s just crazy. But anyway, we’re having this dance and everything’s going to go on fine.

I’m over there talking to Betty. I’m flirting with Betty. That’s my wife now, but we weren’t married at the time. So where’s this over there talking? And I’d rather do talking with her than, you know, dancing or anything like that. So this one kid walks over to me and says, Yankee, that boy over there, and he pointed to him, he said, he’s picking on me. Tell him to leave me alone. Alright, I got to go solve a problem. So I walked over there and I said, and he was a little kid.

I said, look, you got to leave this kid alone. If you don’t, I might have to ask you to leave. And I was managed to buy it. I walked back over to see Betty. Well, it wasn’t long before a couple of kids came running over to me and said, Yankee, you know that kid you told her to behave? I said, yeah, yeah, yeah. He went to go get his big brother. I thought, OK, big deal, big deal. It was a big deal.

He went and got his big brother. So I was talking to her and everything was going along fine. All of a sudden I saw this shadow past the streetlight and it kind of blocked all the light coming in from that window. And then kid come running over to me and says, he’s here. He’s here. He said, who? He says, his brother. He went and got his brother. I don’t worry about it. I should have been worried about it. But I was in rest in Maine.

talking to Betty. I wasn’t bothering nobody. Anyway, he came in and he was huge. He just got out. I didn’t know this at the time. He just got out of the chain game from working on the rock pile. This guy was tall, muscle. I mean, he was solid. And he walked in. And he says, where’s his Yankee fella? And I said, he’s gone. And I did. So I said, that’s I walked over toward him and everything was fine. Everybody stopped, the music stopped.

Everybody stopped doing it. So I walked over to him and he says, did you tell my brother you’re going to kick him out of here? I says, I’ll tell you what happened. I told him what happened and he kind of understood that. He knows his brother. And he was 19, I was 17, so he was older than me, bigger than me, stronger than me, and mean him looking than me. And so he was, you know, he accepted that. That’s fine.

my brother, a little man. And he was four years younger than me, so he was only about 13 years old. He looked up at that guy and he looked over at me and said, Yankee, kick him out. Okay, bro, fine. He didn’t pay his dime. You come in here, you gotta pay your dime. Yankee, he didn’t pay his dime. Kick him out, kick him out. That’s the rules. Can’t, don’t pay your dime, you can’t come in. Man, it’s okay, shush.

I mean, we’re getting along fine. He was getting ready to leave. but my brother would not let it alone. So finally he kept on until that big guy got so irritated with him, I got irritated with him. I could almost prophesy what was fixing to take place. I had an idea what’s gonna come in just a few minutes. So anyway, he reached over there, he got a hold of my brother and picked him straight on him, straight up, he’s hanging him in the air.

And he came back with his business, He’s fixing to deck my brother. So I jumped over this chair and I hit him and I hit him and I hit him. When I got up off the floor, I noticed some kids come run over to me. I had gone down on the floor and he went down too. But there was a hockey board, about a two by ten and it went right across my face. And it took my nose and put it over here.

Now your nose don’t belong over here. But when I got up, somebody says, Yankee, your nose looks funny. And I went to hit and it’s not there. Oh, it’s over here. Did you know ever since my nose got broke, it runs with a limp. Yeah. Anyway, somebody called the police, they got the police chair and we had to go to court. All kind of stuff. But yeah, yeah, you get in the fight. Y’all wanted to know how I got my nickname Yankee.

Well, let me tell you, I was born at a very early age. I was only a baby when I was born. But my daddy was a bootlegger, for most of life in the chain game run from the law. And he lived in Georgia, and he married my mom when she was 14. He was 31. And so he was all him and my mom, their own Georgia, all rebels, had two girls, and they were born in Georgia. They were rebels.

But because my dad was on the run from the law line, He’d run down into Florida and other places. This time he ran up here to Pennsylvania. While he was in Pennsylvania, yours truly was born. But when I was born, I was born. He thought I was a little different. I had long straight black hair all over my body. I had sideburns, I had hair going down my back. He said, I look like a little monkey. He said, I was the ugliest kid he’d ever seen in my life.

or his life. And so he was going to put me in a burlap sack and throw me in a river and drown me. People say, well, they didn’t know that wasn’t true. If it is true, that’s exactly what he’s going to do. And my mama wouldn’t let him. The doctor always got to the house. I seemed like after the kids were born, all six of us were born at home. And for my mother was. None of us had born in the hospital.

But the doctor came to the house, looked at me, and looked at my dad, and says, look, she’s like his daddy, don’t he? So he cussed. He called me a blankety blank Yankee. So I got the blankety blank before I got my real name. I don’t go by my first name, I just go by Yankee. But my mama called me Yankee Boy, my daddy called me the other. About six months later, we moved to Georgia. And so I was a Yankee born in Pennsylvania, raised in the south.

I’ve been the most mixed up person I know. I’ve been shot at from both sides. Now you know the rest of the story. That’s how I got it. Take your Bible. Also let me in the book of Matthew. The book of Matthew chapter 11. Matthew chapter 11. Now when Jesus was here, He was also a prophet. He knew the future. He also knows what would have happened if somebody else had made different decisions. Or what could have brought about different decisions?

He knew what he was doing and he was talking about if what I’m doing here had been done there, they would have responded differently. But you see, that’s not the way it always is. Hearing Matthew in chapter 11, look what he says in verse 20. There’s just a certain principles that are mentioned here, that it’s good to know. And verse 20 says, then began he to upgrade the cities where most of his mighty works were done because they repented not.

They did not believe. They didn’t believe what he said was true. Repent does not always mean turn from your sins. It means a change of mind. It means that you think this way, think differently. If you are an unbeliever, you need to repent. That means change your mind and believe. you. Whatever it is that you’re told to do. So if it’s told to trust Christ as Savior, you change your mind and become a person who trusts Christ as Savior.

But he says they did not. And so he began to up-brade them, means to chide them, to mock them, to warn them, to threaten them. Tell them this is what’s going to take place. He says in verse 20, woe unto thee, Coron, woe unto thee, Beth’s Theta, forget this now. This is letting you know that he knows everything that can possibly take place, every option. He said, if the mighty works which were done in you had been done entire and siding, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

In other words, those cities would still be here, but they were a nolly because they have to go according to the light that they have at the time. And so based upon the evidence that they had, the truth that they had, the light that they had, they would not correct the problem. It’s just like Nineveh. Remember, Jonah went to Nineveh and told him, says, God’s going to destroy Nineveh. Well, the people got right. Well, when the people got right, he didn’t destroy the city.

Made Jonah so mad. A hundred years later, God went in there and totally wiped him out. There was no mercy that time. So God knows the future, but he also knows all the varieties of things that can happen, all the possibilities. So God knows what would have happened if you went that way home instead of going that away. God knows what would have happened if you’d have run that light, if you didn’t run that light. God knows how long you’re going to live because you ate this and how long you’re not going to live because you ate this.

God knows all these things, but God doesn’t make you do them. See this is where predestination becomes fatalistic. When you believe that God predetermined everything that everybody does, no he doesn’t. Otherwise, no man would make any choices because he would be programmed and that’s not the way it is. God gave man the ability to choose. God in his sovereignty chose to give man a free will. then you make choices and you can enjoy those choices or you can suffer the consequences of those choices.

And you gain some wisdom down the road by learning how to make better choices. And so some people live and learn, some people never learn. But we’re not robots. We have a will. And God has given to us the freedom to choose. And this is why God is love and God wants to love, but there has to be an object for scathing. God wants that object that He loves to love Him back. So He created man with those two things.

We want to be love and we want to love. This is what causes marriages, usually because I love you. Oh, I love you too. Oh, let’s get married. And so people get married. And some, well, I don’t love you anymore. So it’s all based upon, well, my feelings of change and so on. You know love is supposed to be love and you can’t make someone love you. God did not want to make us love him. He lets us have the freedom to choose, and we make so many sickening decisions that gets us in all kinds of trouble.

And then somewhere along the line we say, Lord, I need some help. And then because of the goodness of God, He wants you to love Him, because of what He did for you. So the greatest expression of God’s love was sending His Son to pay for our sins, because He did something for us. for us we could not do for ourselves. And that proved how much God loves us. He was willing to let his son die for us. That’s because God loved us.

And after you trust Christ to save you, Romney does God want us to love him? Yes, but it won’t make you love him. You can accept his free gift of salvation and never love the Lord. You’re not saved because you loved him. You say because he loved you and he did this for you. So this is why it’s so important. Look here in Matthew. So he makes the statement in verse 22, but I send you it shall be more tolerable.

See those two words more tolerable means that some people have more truth than others. Some people have more light, but more understanding. God knows all the facts in every case concerning every individual. And so when God makes a decision and he’s this just judge, he can’t make mistake. God can’t do wrong. See, it’s good for us to know this because we know that there is a day coming when at the court of divine justice everything will be made right.

Not one person that will go to heaven that shouldn’t be going to heaven. Not one person will go to hell that doesn’t deserve to go to hell. But God allows things to be done according to our decisions. Over and over again you’ll reading the Scriptures where Christ said this, let it be under you according to your faith. In other words this is going to be according to your faith. What do you believe? It will be equal. It’d be justified because this will be equal to this and it’ll be justified.

So this is why we have naturally built into us this settlement of retaliation. So when it hurts you, what do you want to do back? You want to hurt them back so we can make it even. You got to make it just. We often talk about, you know, if somebody commits a crime, the punishment should fit the crime. Now you don’t want to take and have the death penalty for somebody who’s rent a red light unless they kill somebody.

But they take a life. But so the crime should, you know, and the punishment should be just. So this is why we sometimes understand some of our laws because we’re trying to make laws that gives us a civil society. It’s justice, right? Now what we don’t like is when we see somebody skirting the law and not paying what they owe to society. So some people get away with murder down here. Now those other people, they can blink their eye and they get caught on everything.

When I was in school, I don’t care what it was. If I decided to do something wrong, I always got caught. I always got caught. Like 10 people walking around, always making sure they told my dad everything that I did wrong, or make sure my mama knows. And so, and then some people can do something wrong and then they never get caught. And I always thought that’s not fair. That’s just not fair. Well, down here in this life things are not going to be fair.

Don’t miss out on all the fun. Join Pastor Jesse and Kyla Martinez on Thursday nights from 7 to 9 p.m. for Tampa Youth Ranch and Calvary Community Church. Tampa Youth Ranch is a great mix of live music, games, Bible study, food and fun where teens 13 to 18 get to know God and the Bible with their friends. Check it out online at tampayouthranch.org and see the cool pictures from past activities and all the fun you’ve been missing. No ride, no problem.

Call 813-334-4655 today for information on getting a ride to Tampa Youth Ranch. Thanks for joining us on Bible Eye. If you are in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 40-8-11 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.