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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 message will be a blessing to you and your family.

Anyway, take your Bible and turn to the book of… First Peter, the book of First Peter. chapter 2. First beer, chapter 2. This small epistle is written, of course, too. It kind of gives you the appearance to the Jewish people that believe on the Lord. But chapter 2 lets you know that it’s also inclusive of Gentiles. And that we have something that they never had until this time. You see, out of all the nations on the year if God raised up a special nation, and He made Israel His special chosen nation.

Israel was going to be a lighthouse to the world. To show all the nations of the world what it was like to worship the true and living God. And they would be a light where people could know that through these people, God did wonderful things for him. He gave him his word and he gave him land and he gave a special people, some special privileges that yes, they had an advantage over all the other nations or all the Gentiles.

And of course, Israel took advantage of that, right? Well, not so fast. They messed up. They really did. And by the time you get to the New Testament, the Lord did something that was a little unique. You see, there was the nation of Israel, but as a nation they rejected Jesus Christ, and He was crucified. But the Lord took believing Jews and believing Gentiles, put them together, called the church. the body of Christ. And he says, you have now something special.

So the church is special just like Israel was special. But God isn’t through with Israel. I do not believe in replacement theology where we’re replacing Israel. We’re not replacing Israel. God has set them aside temporarily, but the kingdom he promised them is coming. And the king of Israel is coming. But until then, until then, chapter two and verse nine says, but ye are a chosen generation so that you know you’re chosen to, you’re special too. A royal priesthood, because in Israel see as a nation, they had a royal priesthood.

And of the tribe of, I just, you can say, Levi, they had special privileges as the priest, and they were to teach the people the law and perform the sacrifices and so forth that were concerning the temple. So they had a wonderful privilege, and they had a high priest. But now you and I are supposed to look at ourselves as you are a priest. You are a priest. And I remember the story that Ray tells Ray Stanford. He said he was walking down the street and lo and behold this car hit this person right in front of him.

And he was walking in, not the guy against the curb and Ray got down and knew that the guy was not going to live very long. the man kept saying, call-me a priest. I need a priest. Call me a priest. I’m a priest. And he says, I’ve never done that before. I’m a priest. So the guy starts confessing his sins and so forth. I get raised, let me tell you something. And he told him about the Lord and how if he trusts a crisis, Savior, God would forgive him of everything and he’d have eternal life, go to heaven, and he led a guy to the Lord.

And right after that, he passed away. So are you a priest? Yes. You see, we intercede on the behalf of others. That’s one thing that prayer does, but also that we reach for people that have not heard the gospel and we try to get them to understand and trust the Lord. So you are something special. Now hold your place right here and just look there in the book of Ephesians in chapter two. Ephesians in chapter two. Where it makes a statement in chapter two, There’s three wonderful verses here, and as we begin our Florida Bible College of Tampa, these are the three verses that we have on our logo.

For by grace are you saved through faith, that’s verse 8, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship. See, if you were saved by your works, then you would be your own workmanship. You did it. But we’re His workmanship. In other words, what is done, our salvation is the work of God and not the work of man. So He says, created in Christ Jesus unto good words, but not because we have to do that to be saved.

But it is the will of God for those who trust Christ as Savior to walk in good works. Which God, He says here, hath ordained that we should walk in them. just because God ordained that you should walk in good words doesn’t mean that you have to or that you will. Just like He’s not willing that any should perish, that doesn’t mean nobody’s going to perish because He’s not willing that any should perish. No, the decision is theirs but it’s not His will that they perish.

It’s God’s will that we serve the Lord but He doesn’t make us it’s still our choice. So he says something very interesting in verse 11, where he says, wherefore remember, and he’s talking to the Jewish believers here, he said that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision, because the Jews were circumcised, and they were not. By that which is called the circumcision in the flesh made by hands, that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, and having no hope and without God in the world.

Look how lost you were. Now God saved individuals, but as a nation, no, not like Israel. They did not have the knowledge, the covenants, the promises, they didn’t have the word of God. So God says that you were without hope, without Christ without God in this world. And then he says, but now in verse 13, but now in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were far off or made nigh by the blood of Christ. What Christ did for the Jewish people, he did it for the Gentiles as well, it was for the whole world.

So anybody can come nigh on the God through Christ. In other words, everybody can go beyond the veil in the holy of holies, and to the presence of God, because his body was the veil that was torn or rent, his flesh, so that we could have access to God. So we made this statement in verse 14, for he is our peace who hath made both one and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us, having abolished in his flesh the enmity Even the law of commandments contained in ordinances for to make in himself up to Jews in Gentile, one new man so making peace.

And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby. Keman preached peace to you which were afar off and to them that were nine. So the same gospel is preached to Jews and Gentiles so that all can simply by faith and faith alone. And as he says in Ephesians 2, 8, 9, by grace or you save. So everybody saved the same way. And so God made something new, something different. So you and I are this something different.

We are the body of Christ. We’re in what we call the grace age, the church, the church made up of individual believers. And so we are special, just like Israel was special. They had high priests, well we got priests. But he says Jesus is our high priest. So we only have one high priest. They had many high priests in the Old Testament, but they… Died, but our high priest never dies. And so we have someone that’s in the heavenlies that’s been touched with the feelings of our infirmities.

And that’s the Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ. So go back there to the book of the first Peter in chapter two, where he makes his statement. E.R. had chosen generation, a royal priesthood, and holy nation, but it’s a spiritual nation. You see, we don’t have tanks and guns and words, and we don’t have an army in which we fight with the horses and bayonets. We fight a different war, a spiritual war, for the minds of individuals. See if we don’t win them by their minds, we can’t win them because we’re not to use force.

Only the force of truth is the only way we can build our army. It’s the only thing. But look what he says here in verse 10. But in time past, we’re not a people. Are now the people of God. It means you weren’t as a nation the people because individually there’s people, Gentiles that trusted the Lord. you see as a nation known. But now he says, you are special and are now the people of God, which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lust, which war against the soul. Now remember this, God has saved your soul, giving you as a free gift ever lasting life. So you’re going to heaven whenever you die. But now Satan wants to war against your soul. He wants to ruin your life, ruin your testimony any way he possibly can. And so he makes the statement here that war against the soul. What wars against the soul?

The fleshly lust. You and I have an old sinful nature. and we are at war with it. You see, it wants to use the body. God wants to use the body. Who wins? It’s a choice that you and I make. So as we make the choices about what I will and will not do, it makes the difference whether you have war on the soul or peace in the soul. Look what he says in verse 12, having your conversation or your manner of life honest among the Gentiles that whereas they speak evil against you, as evil doers, that they may buy your good works which they shall behold glorify God in the day of visitation.

So are you and I supposed to bring forth good works? Yes. Are they to be seen by people? That’s one of the reasons you do it. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify God, which is in heaven. So yes, sometimes it should not be the mode of the light, just to be seen of people, but you are seen by people. You are read by other people. So all the things that happens to you is telling a story about what’s important to you.

Do you really trust the Lord and look to Him and live for Him? And see, if you don’t, it’s going to be revealed by the decision to make. So people judge you by your works. And that’s why James chapter two comes in is that you are to live a certain way. Show me your faith without your works. Have fun.

But I can show you my faith by my works. If I say I love the Lord, all I have to do is how do I live? How I live my life should be the proof that I love the Lord. Now you may know Christ is your Savior and you do not have to serve the Lord. You don’t have to change your life. One of the statements at Ray used to make all the time that really made a difference in why so many people trust the Lord through him.

He says, I remember that man asking me or telling me about the Gospel. He explained Ephesians 2, 8, 9, 4, by grace as you say through faith, not of yourselves, not of worship. Let’s any man should vote. He says, you mean to tell me I can trust Christ as my Savior and live as I please. He would always say, and live as I please. Now most preachers will, well, no, well, you, no, you can’t live as you please. you just took away grace.

If it’s really free. Really free. Then I can accept Christ as my Savior, the free gift of eternal life, and live like I please. That’s a powerful statement. It makes the difference whether you really get it or not. Because most people, most preachers, don’t really believe that you can trust Christ as Savior and live like you please and still go to heaven when you die. And yet that is the truth of the gospel. Do I tell people and try to get people to live as a please?

Or do I try to spend a lot of time, even in all my lectures that I give, trying to convince people why they should serve the Lord? Because I don’t want you to use your liberty as a license for sin. See what he said in verse 16? as free, verse 16, as free not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness or as a license to sin. In other words, I’ve got permission from God to live any way I want.

No, God has to give you permission to live any way you want. You have freedom to choose what God wants is for you to serve Him, but you may not. So He says, this is how you and I are to make a difference. Where’s a no truth and live truth? And that’s our biggest weapon we have. So look at what He says. In verse 12, you ought to underline that statement where He says, they made by your good works, which they shall be whole.

So people are watching you. It is meant if you’re a teenager, college age kid or an adult, people watch to see how you respond to all the pressures of life. They watch to see the decisions that you make. Good or bad people judge you. You see, we often make a statement because it’s in the book of Samuel where it says, the Lord see if not as man see it. Man look at the bone the outward appearance, but the Lord look at the bone the heart, but you ain’t the Lord.

God sees the heart of an individual. True? But what you can’t see is the heart of man. You can see what he does. You can hear what he says. You can see how he lives. And that’s the only way you and I. See clothes don’t make the man, but it’s 90% of what you see of him, or it should be 90%. So you and I are supposed to be able to judge. You say, you shouldn’t judge. You hear people Not, not, not, not for the judge, not for the judge.

Judges to be not judged. As though I never read that verse before in the book of Matthew 7. But it didn’t say not to judge. It says first of all get the two before out of your eye so you can see clearly to see the splinter that’s in somebody else’s eye. So it doesn’t say you can’t judge. It’s not trying to be just critical. But we’re used discernment. Some people have a hard time distinguishing between just being judgmental and critical and discerning.

See, if you can study the Word of God and you learn truth, you can discern air. So you can listen to somebody and you can say whether he’s right or whether he’s wrong. You will know whether or not when the election comes up and you know a person stands here on this issue and somebody else stands here, you can discern right and wrong. you judge it by what the word of God says, so you learn discernment. Now it’s one thing when you simply want to just condemn people, just to be critical without the purpose or the goal of helping the person to see better, to walk better, to be a better person.

So you’re to use your discernment as a tool to help people to see better. just patch yourself on the back and say, you know, I see everything. Well, I am so intelligent. I can see all the dirt in everybody’s life, and you can become a wicked individual because you use it to hurt people. You use it to destroy somebody else’s character, which is not what you’re supposed to do. The Bible says, ye that are strong. It says, help restore those that are weak, not to put your foot on their neck and push them into the mud.

So the Word of God. Verse 13, look at verse 13, submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether it be to kings as supreme or on the governors as unto them, get this as unto them, get this that are sent by him. for the punishment of evil doers, for the praise of them that do well. So people are supposed to do well and government is there to punish those that do wrong. Why? So that you don’t have to do it.

See, God doesn’t want you and I taking vengeance upon somebody. A man goes into my son’s home, takes a hammer and kills him. He did. He was 28 years old. So what am I supposed to do? So I got my double barrel shotgun and I blew him away. No, I didn’t. I have to let government do its job. And even though they found the man guilty, but two of the detectives forgot to read the man his rights. So they couldn’t use any of the evidence.

So they gave him eight years, cut that in half, he got four years. He’d already been there two years, so he got two more years. And that’s justice. It may not be justice. But you see, the government has the power. I may disagree with it, and I did. But I have given that to the Lord, and therefore I don’t have to worry about it. My conscience is clear. I even tried to get the guy that did the murder to try to trust Christ as Savior.

I told him, I said, you can escape the justice down here. I said, but you cannot escape the court of divine justice. That’s coming down the road. And I said something that’s more important is where you’re going to spend eternity. And I think I showed that one day here too, y’all. How many of y’all remember that? Okay, y’all saw that. But that’s what I had to present in court. But if you don’t have an understanding that’s what makes you so bitter and critical because you want to get even.

You want revenge. And that robs you of your own peace and your own joy. So he makes a statement that we are supposed to submit to every law, every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake because it’s for a purpose. It is to punish evil doers and not the people who do right. When it does the opposite, then government is not serving the purpose for which God intended. Now here, and as has been said before, all they had back then was a big old emperor, dictator, you know, Nero and all the rest.

They determined and they were kings and their word was law and that was it. see in America, we don’t have a king. You and I are in charge. We’re free people. We don’t have a king. We don’t have rulers over us. Congress and all thethey’re not rulers. They’re not our rulers. They’re our servants. There’s a difference. Do you know that? There is a difference. They forget it. I think we need to remind them once in a while. But We can fire people.

We can fire them. They don’t do a good job. We fire them. And I think there’s probably a few people that needs to be fired. So, fire them. Verse 14. For the punishment of evil doors and for the, and these three were praise of them that do well. Now, the thing that’s so important about this is because it’s about the Lord. You see up there in the last part of verse 12, He says, glorify God, glorify God. The reason for good work, the reason for doing right, watching what you say, where you go and the things that you do is because you want to glorify God.

God gets the glory from everything that you say and everything that you do. And God said, he would bless you because of it. Now in verse 16, very interesting verse, as free and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness. You see, God said that he had, you’ve been set free, free from the law, the law can’t condemn you anymore. Because you see, the law can’t condemn a dead man. Well, when did I die? When I trusted Christ as my Savior, his deathcontainer my death.

So the law recognizes that I have died, my sins are paid. It cannot judicially condemn me ever again. I’m free from the law. But that doesn’t mean just because I have died and come back from the dead, and now I’m the live my life in newness of life, I’m not to use my freedom. As a license to sin. You know, like some people say, do you mean to tell me if I believe what you say that I can trust Christ as my Savior and live any way I want and still go to heaven?

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. And I have had people say, well, I could never believe that. Okay, don’t. I can’t change it. I can’t change it difficult. You don’t want to believe it. But I do want you to know this. I had a person who made the statement similar to that, but they were, Nice when they said it. It means they were understanding what I’m saying. I said, do you have a child? Oh, yes. I says, once that child’s born into your family.

I says, how long is the child yours? No one. I says, once that child is yours, that child is yours. That child’s behavior doesn’t change that. Once you trust Christ’s Savior, you’re His child. You get to go to heaven whenever you die. and how you live doesn’t change that. But because that is your child and you’re the parent, when the child obeys your happy, it’s happy, your blessed, wonderful. But if the child is disobedient, is it still your child?

Yes. And so you chase in your child, not because you hate him, but because you love him. At least you’re supposed to. Somebody forgot to teach my dad all this. And so you serve the Lord because you’re going to heaven, but not to get to heaven. You and I are not supposed to have this. Well, I believe in one saved, always saved. And I do. I believe in eternal security, and I do. But I don’t believe I should use that as the liberty to do all the wickedness that I want to do.

So I’m going to go to heaven anyway. So it won’t matter No matter what I do, it does matter. Everything matters. It may not affect your destination, but it might affect your arrival. It could affect the reward you get when you get to heaven. It could affect how you serve the Lord for all eternity and what God gives you. There is a price to pay. So yes, God wants us to serve Him, but not because we have to, but because we want to Him.

So he makes this statement here in verse 16, don’t use your liberty as a cloak of maliciousness, but as the, and here’s those three words, servant. Servant, in the word servant, it’s like a bond slave. You see, I’m free, but I voluntarily choose to be a bond slave of the Lord. And so that’s what Paul was talking about. He says, I am a prisoner of the Lord. I am a bond slave. means I am a love slave. I serve the Lord because I love Him.

And if you will keep that in your mind, you’d be surprised how it can help you in your Christian life. Are you a new listener to Bible life? 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, 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 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 can meet the Lord in the air. so live today and every day. believe in that the Lord is coming soon just keep looking up.