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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 air. 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.

I want you to take your Bible term to the book of Ephesians, the book of Ephesians chapter 5. Now I know there’s a verse in the Bible that says, walk in the spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Now you’ll have to admit that if that’s true, you have to be fairly strong. I mean, to walk in the spirit and not walk in the flesh, you have to be pretty strong in the Lord. Not to walk according to the lust of the flesh because the lust of the flesh and the lust of life into pride of life is so strong.

The lust of the eye is so strong. You’ve got to be strong not to do those things. So just think how strong you’ve got to be in the Lord. It means you’re the desire for the things of God is got to be stronger than the desires of the flesh. That’s difficult to getting yourself to the place where you’re so strong. Now, which would you say is the strongest? A spiritual man or a carnal man? Who’s the strongest? It depends on what you want to do, right?

If you want to go the things of the world, which would be the strongest? The carnal man would be stronger if he wants to go after the flesh. But if you want to go after the spiritual man is stronger. So you got to find, well, what does God want? Where does God want you to walk? So you’ve got to be pretty strong in the Lord. Now, most of the scriptures is not just to win us to the Lord, convinces to not what we ought to do is trust Christ, but trying to get a Christian to be strong in the Lord, getting a believer to trust the Lord with his life.

It’s easier for me to win people to Christ than it is to challenge him to serve the Lord. It shouldn’t be that way, should it? But it is. you have to win thousands to the Lord just to get several hundred to go to camp. And then hopefully you’ll get a few that’ll dedicate the lives of the Lord, and maybe 20 years down the road, there may be four or five of them that’ll do it. Because the devil is so strong, the world power is so strong, it keeps knocking off God’s children.

God that one, got him. He don’t get everybody the same way, but when you read 1 Corinthians chapter 10, some fell because of this. Some fell because of this. Some for something else, but not everybody fell for the same thing, but he has a way of working on you until he finds a way to get you to fall. Satan does not quit. He’ll follow you to the grave trying to get you to fall. Try to put things in your way so you’ll stumble.

So you’ve got to be a little observant in what’s going on. So in the book of Ephesians in chapter 5, I want you to look at it in verse 1. 5 and verse 1. Be therefore followers of God. You’d have to be strong just to do that. Follow the Lord. You’ve got to have something inside of you that says, I want something better than what I have. I want to go in a different direction. Now you don’t do that to be saved, but because you are saved, it is still the will of God that his children imitate him.

Be imitators of God, be imitators of your father. It’s difficult to imitate your daddy, your father, if you don’t know him, if you don’t know the Lord. So one of the keys is you’ve got to know the Lord, not just as savior, born into his family, and he’s your daddy now, but you’ve got to know some things about him and to imitate. So you can kind of be a good example of what Daddy wants in his child. And so this is you’ll find mentioned throughout the scriptures here.

But look in verse two, and walk in love. Doesn’t that require a certain amount of strength? You’ve got to be strong enough. It’s one thing and it’s so easy, isn’t it easy? Walk in love. Oh yeah? How? The imitators, okay, how? Well, tell me what? Tell me how to do the job. So just walk in love, those words are easy to say. Now there’s a little bit more difficulty when you try to put it into practice and what you’re going to do.

But all these things, and like in verse three, but fornication, all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not be once named among you as become of saint. In other words, it’s not one time. You’ve got to be strong. That would be hard unless you’re strong. If you’re strong in the Lord, you can do all of this. But as you get down through here, you find out that there’s saying God wants you to do. Thank God doesn’t want you to do.

So look at verse 15. Verse 15 says, See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise. So if you’re going to walk circumspectly, that means that you’ll have to be wise in order to walk that way. Most children are not wise in the Lord. There’s a lot of people who’ve been saved for years and are not very wise, so they’re not very strong. Because we have to put the word wisdom and the word strong in the same category.

If you’re not wise, you’re not strong. And if you’re not strong, it’s because you’re not wise. Because if you’re wise, you’ll be strong. But since you’re not strong, you’re not very wise. See the connection? So if you’re weak, means you’re full. Because you see, there’s things that God wants us to know, so that there’s things that He wants us to do. So you gotta know the will of God, know the world of God. And look what He says in verse 60, it’s redeeming the time.

You gotta be strong to do that. you have to have a certain amount of wisdom to redeem the time, to buy up opportunities, redeem at the time, buying up opportunities, take an advantage of the opportunities that God sends your way. But you see, that means you have to recognize what an opportunity looks like. Most people fail because opportunity comes disguised as work. And nobody’s looking for that. They’re looking for anything but, but this is why it’s so important. Looking verse 17, wherefore be not unwise.

So if he doesn’t want you to be unwise, he must want you to be what? Wise. That’s understandable. So then he says, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. So you have to understand what is the will of God. What does God want? So if you understand it, there’s a certain amount of strength that comes with understanding. Then he says in verse 18, be not drunk with wine, wearing the zest, but be filled with the spirit. To be filled or controlled by the Holy Spirit, you’ve got to be strong in the Lord.

And fulfill what God wants you to do, making melody in your hearts to the Lord. Do you know it’s so difficult to get songs out of your mind that you’ve heard 30 40 50 60 years ago that When you was there walking in the flesh and you loved it anyway And they can stick with you on the walls of your mind and they can be recorded and they can play back When you least expect it Things you’ve seen or done or whatever they’re on the walls of that mine up there So to do the right thing, you’ll have to be strong.

And you’ll notice what he says here in verse 21, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. Do you know that takes a lot of strength, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t that take a lot of strength? To do that, wives submit yourselves to your own husbands. Then notice what he says in verse 21, husbands love your wives. Wouldn’t that take a lot of strength? Love the wife only when she’s obedient.

That’s what it says? Love her only when she’s well. Only, no, no, no, no, it doesn’t have nothing in it. Love your wives. You’ve got one, love them. But you just don’t know what I’m married to. I don’t care what you’re married to. Love her anyway. Look what she’s married to. So you go through here and you see all these things that require so much spiritual strength. Look what he says here in chapter 6 and verse 1. Children obey your parents and the Lord for this is right.

It goes down through here and says, on with thy father and thy mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee. You can’t teach your children to do right if you don’t do right. He starts off with you, parents, be ye followers or imitators of God, walk in love. Now he’s saying teach your children to do that. But doesn’t that take a certain amount of spiritual strength? Certain things you have to know in order to fulfill what the word of God says.

And verse four, and ye fathers, provoke not your children are out. Now just doing this, and raising them up in the nurture and the admonition, you’ve gotta have some wisdom. You’ve gotta know something. So all of this through here is talking about be filled with the spirit. Because the Holy Spirit is that power that you need, The one who’s gonna teach you the word of God, the one who’s gonna lead you, that one is supposed to be that helper, the one who comes alongside, that help you be strong enough to do all the things you are supposed to do.

And lo and behold, you get to verse 10. Finally, finally my brethren, then he’s, look how much he writes still after his finally. Finally my brethren, and here you are, those words, be strong in the Lord. and in the power of his might. Now that means in the power of the Holy Spirit, because he mentioned that in chapter one, about when he prays for the saints and how they’re supposed to be strong in the Lord and the power of his might.

So he says in verse 11, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand. I mean strong enough to stand. And then he says here in another verse, look in verse 13, wherefore taken to you the whole armor of God you may be able to withstand, that means you’ve got to be strong enough to do that. And then in verse 14, stand therefore, that means you’ve got to be strong enough to stand. There is a war and you’ve got to be strong enough for the war.

Look at verse 18, pray in all ways with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. There’s work. You’ve got to be strong enough to do all these things that God wants us to do. So God wants His children to be strong, strong the Lord so that you’re not limited by all these excuses that people give, or why you are not found faithful. Moreover, it is required in their story that a man be found faithful.

And that’s something we can do. Take your Bible and turn all the way back here to the book of Joshua. Joshua comes right after the book of Deuteronomy. And you’ll notice in the book of Joshua, and we’ve covered this before, but I want you to look at it just a little bit different. Because now God has got a new man at the helm. Moses has passed away. And now it’s Joshua’s turn. He has been in training for 40 years.

I’d like to be second man for 40 years. Now lo and behold, he gets his opportunity. So he says here in verse five, “‘There shall not any man be able to stand “‘before the all the days of thy life. “‘As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee. “‘I will not fail thee nor forsake thee. “‘No man can be able to stand against you “‘all the days of your life. “‘Man, a life I take on Arnold Schwarzenegger and all these muscle bound guys, come and see if you can take care of me, where’s Bruce Lee?

I’ll kick him in the shins. Now, it’s not talking about that kind of a battle, but he’s talking about the enemy cannot overwhelm you and defeat you. Now, Joshua later on, yeah, they had to, you know, the city of A.I., there was a problem with the sin of A.I. But not because of actually what Joshua did himself, but Joshua made up his mind. I’m going to serve the Lord. He says, for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

So he says in verse 6, see that word? Be strong. End of a good courage. In verse seven, only be thou strong and very courageous. Did you know that God tells us to be strong? So in the New Testament, and you take the book of Joshua, Joshua and the book of Ephesians really complement each other very well. Because he’s talking about Joshua, like putting on the whole armor, protecting himself and doing what God says to do and do it.

Be thou an example, and he was. And so you have somebody that is a good example of what God wants us to do in the book of Ephesians. And then as you go through here you read that, now look in verse nine. Have not I commanded thee, be strong, and of good courage. Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee, whether so ever thou goeth. Now, the Lord has laid it down, and what He wants us to do, how He wants us to be.

But we do have a problem from time on how to get there. We’re told where we are. We’re told what God wants us to be. But now, this performing bit in between here, well, we can get so confused at time because we’ve got to live day by day. And there’s things that happens and those is for a loop. And there’s people that are dying and loved ones and people losing jobs. And you say, well, I could serve the Lord, but I didn’t know this was going to happen.

And I wouldn’t be so down and discouraged, but I didn’t know this was going to happen. Well, you mean you’d be all right if God just told you everything in advance? Well, you had no other purpose of the testing if He told you everything in advance. God never told Job why he was doing the Job, what he was doing. He didn’t know what was going on. All he knows is what was happening, but he was being tested. Now take your Bible and turn to the book of Proverbs, the book of Proverbs.

Proverbs in chapter 1, we’ve said this before, but Proverbs, it’s like pro-inverbum, I mean more than meets the eye. I mentioned a little bit about this in Sunday school Sunday. But the book of Proverbs is a book about wisdom and it’s a collection of many wise sayings. Solomon was considered a wise man, one of the wisest men that ever lived. And yet this wise man made a lot of dumb decisions. But even his dumb decisions of things that he learned from doing the wrong thing, well, he was able to impart a little bit of that.

So notice what he says here in verse one of chapter one, the proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel. What’s he gonna talk about? To know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding. See, there is strength in knowledge, strength in understanding. And that’s why you and I are supposed to grow strong, and he talks about in the book of Peter, talk about growing in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Strength to stand strong is because of the knowledge you have about God and how it relates to your life and what you can stand against.

Otherwise, we become very weak because we have nothing to guide us, but the flesh. and the flesh, well, we’re easily heard. We’re offended, we’re envious, we’re jealous, we’re all those, you named the sin and there we are. How can you live a life above that? Ah, you gotta be pretty strong. So the Lord allows things to happen to reveal your weakness. So now, you know, I gotta, I need to work on that. Ah, I need to work on that.

And we haven’t arrived. There were, I don’t need any more help. I have finally arrived. Really? Well, we may have a little bit more work to do. Now, look what he says there in verse 5, a wise man will hear and will increase learning. Man of understanding shall attain under wise councils. Those two little words, wise counsel, that means you and I should listen to people who have wisdom. When you want to know something ask somebody that you have confidence that knows how it relates to the will of God.

Sometimes people ask for people from people advice, but they want to hear what they want to hear. So they ask people who they think will agree with them. Very something we ever ask people, you know what you think, what do you think I ought to do? When you already have your mind made up, this is why you don’t seek counsel because I’ve already made it my mind of what I’m going to do and then you’re going to do it.

And you’ll find out that Bible talks about there is safety and a multitude of counselors. But not just any counselors. You read the first Psalm and it said, I will not walk in the council of the ungodly. Because there is ungodly people that have counseling and they love to tell you they’re a little tidbit and a little words of wisdom. But you’ve got to be able to say, what does the Word of God say? One of the things that helped me throughout my Christian life is having people that I believe knew the book and I trusted them.

Betty’s dad who led me to the Lord knew the Bible. Now he didn’t know everything about the Bible, but he knew enough to get me started in the right direction. And he was set up a lot of nights. And he was sitting there and teaching me the Bible. See I didn’t know this Bible story. I didn’t know a lot of, I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know there were books in the Bible. I was 18 years old.

I didn’t know that with John 3, 16 in the Bible. I didn’t know there was a gospel of John. I didn’t know any name of any book in the Bible. I didn’t know there was an Old Testament, no, I didn’t know the Bible. People say, you’re born here in America, you’re probably, I know what, yeah, I know, but I didn’t. But he was spent night after night and he would teach me the Bible and I listened to him. So this old man taught me a lot of wisdom about how to appreciate this book.

He nailed it into my mind on this eternal security. And he would hammer that all the time. And he’d talk about blessings, chastening. And he would always warn me, blessings, chastening. And he would teach me. And I’d listen to him. And I had a difficult time applying some of his stuff, but I believed it. He would show me in the Bible and I would learn it. And I started marking, but I got some good understanding. When I went to Florida Bible College, I set myself into a position where I could have a multitude of counselors, people who were wise concerning the Bible, because I knew, if I want to be strong in the Lord, I got to be strong in wisdom.

And if you’re not strong in wisdom and understanding, you cannot and will not be strong spiritually. It can’t happen. So by going to Bible college and allowing those godly men who knew the book, feed me, put into my mind every day four to five hours a day, not count in steady time, preparation time and memorizing time. That was four hours a day to five hours a day for four years straight. And I had no time for personal enjoyment. I didn’t have any time for none of that.

I didn’t play any golf. I didn’t play any sports. I didn’t go to the beach. Maybe I’ve met three or four times in the whole four years that I was there. I studied and I worked and I studied and I worked. That was my life for four years. I didn’t even get time to spend time with my kids because I knew that I could have forked at all of that and just spend time with my kids. That would have been great.

But what kind of a dad would they have had? They wouldn’t have had a good dad because I’d have done whatever I thought would best let the wisdom of the world guide and protect me and do whatever I could do. But I’d be so limited. But I saw to it that all my kids knew the Lord. I tried to teach him what to do, it was right. I tried to be a good example because of what I was learning.

And I have since those days been trying to serve a Lord. But you got to have a certain amount of strength in order to do that. But that’s strength. To withstand the trials that you go through, the tribulations, the heartaches, everything you name it, you’ve got to have a certain amount of strength that comes because of what you know. So by surrounding myself with some godly teachers, and they would pour into me day after day after day, and I said to her, and I listened, they’d teach this verse and they’d give an illustration, and it’d be about everything.

And some of the stuff they taught, I thought, I don’t need that, I don’t need that, and I don’t need that. I found out later everything they taught me I needed. I’ve used just about everything I’ve ever learned. And it was one verse that Grace Davenport had us learned, I have no clue why, but I learned the verse and memorized it anyway. Enter thou unto thy chambers and shut thy doors about thee and hide thyself’s at work for a moment to this thing dignity be overpassed.

But I memorized the verse. I had no clue what the world is meant. I still don’t. But anyway, we’re moving right along. You’ll get out through here and he makes these statements and he says, now, the day will come. Look says here in verse 26. I also will laugh at your calamity. I will mock when your fear comeeth because your fear will come. In other words like Job says, What I have feared has come upon me. What I have feared has come upon me.

And so, evidently, Job was afraid for his wife. He was afraid about his health. He was afraid about losing his kids, about losing his wealth. All the fears that he had come upon him. It means that you can gain a lot of things and love the Lord but still have fear of what you can lose. God had a lot of lessons to teach him. He said, Now you can either listen to me now, or you’ll wish you had listened to me later because sooner or later, say your foolishness will get you into enough trouble and you all have the answers and you’re going to come crying to me and God says, and I’m going to laugh.

Because you didn’t listen and learn the things that you could have learned when you should have learned them because if you learned the wisdom now, those wisdom and understanding is the answers to the future problems. The problems are going to come, there are troubles that are going to happen. And God says, prepare. So you know that the arrows are on their way. So you prepare, so whenever this happens, you can stand. When that happens, you can stand. Have you ever seen people totally fall apart.

Why? Why should a Christian fall apart? Isn’t he put together any better than the people of the world? There’s people in this world who are put together better than some Christians. They can handle their problems better than some believers because they worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, and they live in fear. Listen, something is missing. to be spiritually strong, take something. That’s what I want to show you tonight. See what he says in verse 27, when your fear cometh as desolation and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind when distressed, get to distress and anguish cometh upon you.

Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer. They shall seek me early, but they shall not find me. For that they hated what? Knowledge could have kept that anguish and kept that distress from being that. So something that you don’t know has brought this on. Ignorance is not bliss. There is a price to pay. So he says, I’m going to teach you a few things, and this is what you need to know. That’s why the study of the Word of God is so important.

Notice in chapter two, where it makes a statement in verse two, so that thou incline thy ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding. See, more people are so interested in trying to make a living, but they never learned how to live. This is the book that teaches you how to live. And if you know this, you can learn how to make a living. But you can learn how to make a living and never learn how to live.

What to live for? And so there’s sorrow when you make money. There’s sorrow when and you keep money and it can be sorrow when you lose money. It’s all can happen. So the things of the world are hard to get, hard to keep, and great sorrow when you lose them. This is your invitation to join us for our third Sunday dinner held in the Florida Bible College of Tampa building on the Calvary Community Church Campus. The dinner is a family-style, covered dish dinner, and a great way to showcase your favorite dish and pick up new recipes.

Each month, you have the opportunity to invite your family and friends to join us for our Sunday morning service at 1030, and then stay for our third Sunday dinner immediately following noon. Third Sundays at Calvary Community Church, where you’ll be fed spiritually and physically. 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. Cara can meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day. Believing that the Lord is coming soon, just keep looking up.