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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. For regular prayers and monthly support, make it possible for a 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 concluding message of this teaching will be a blessing to you and your family.

all these afflictions, and what can I give to God for all that He’s given to me? And He may allow you to have many afflictions. We want to thank the Lord and praise the Lord when everything is going great, and we have pleasure, but what when pleasure turns to just being miserable? And there’s things in light that can just be nothing but misery, and you’re gonna lament. There’s a whole book in the Bible call the book of lamentation. You ever heard of it?

Lamentation. Lamenting because of the things that are happening. And so He says in verse 13, I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all of His people and look in verse 15. This is one of the things that makes going to heaven such a precious thing because of all the afflictions that God’s people are going through in this life. But God can use you wherever He puts you, wherever He places you.

So understand that precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. So it’s not a bad thing to die. But it’s a wonderful thing to know the Lord in the days of your living when He says, I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. Now I want you looked there at your notes. A person wrote this, Esther Felice, she wrote, and I got a couple of thoughts from what I was reading.

And then I was looking through the book of lamentation. And then I read what an expositor Bible commentary had to say on certain little parts, so I thought I went through this in for you. Because I think all this stuff goes together. Now, you don’t think about some of these things like this until you go through something. And I remember where I was last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, I haven’t forgotten it so far. And some of y’all asked me how I’m doing, but I got to play, I got to stop saying fine.

It’s a fake fine. You know, like there’s fake news, there’s a fake fine. How you doing fine? And fine is not telling the truth, if it’s not the truth. True? Well, isn’t it true that as you study the Old Testament scriptures that many of God’s people things were not fine. They suffered. Would you like to just sit down and talk to a man like Joseph and see how he was doing? Joseph, how are you doing fine? How’s things going?

Everything’s going wonderful. But he went from the pit to prison to the palace. But now notice, wrote What would happen if we remove laments from the Bible? We would lose powerful testimonies. We would lose an entire book, limitation. Much of the Psalms and we would lose a powerful way of communicating with God when life does not go our way. Lamenting is an essential spiritual discipline that we cannot forsake on this side of the fall because it offers us a way to keep the conversation going with the only one who can save us when life gets hard.

Sometimes there’s things in life nobody can solve and you’ve got to go through it and there’s nobody but just you and the Lord. Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit can be grieved. Jesus led us in to His lemons on several occasions. And Scripture teaches us of a God who experienced emotions and lets us know about it. Ephesians 4.30 says, and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God whereby you’re sealed unto the day of redemption. Now the next statement is in bold, but think about this.

No one laments or grieves more than God. So why do we put pressure on ourselves to keep a happy face? We want to be happy. We want to be filled with joy, but sometimes it’s not there and it’s not real. And sometimes we can put on a false front, a false face. But as you study the Scriptures and you study the Psalms especially, day-to-day open man, he really tells you how he thinks, how he felt. He told you about his hurts and the griefs and the rejection and the people that were against and all the things that happened.

He didn’t hide it under, well, fine. But we do. Most times because we don’t really believe that people really care about how we’re really doing. Do you think that? Because that’s just something we always have. Well how are you doing? Terrible. Well good. Pray for you. never even listened or heard what they said. And if a person said, well, you got an hour? Well, I can’t right now. Do you really wanna know? Do you really care? And so it’s something to think about.

Look at the next statement. We traded in our sorrow and forgot we will be sorrowful while we are rejoicing. We have sung the happy songs in church, prayed the happy prayers, told ourselves, always be thankful at the expense of silencing the grief We left unresolved in our hearts. Is there times when some things have never been resolved? Can you have conflict with somebody and never get it resolved? And it hurts you to this day. Can there be things that have been said or done between husband and wife, or mother and dad, and the children, or grandchildren, or people on a job, a boss, or anything like that, things you’ve gone through and the hurt’s still there and it’s been years.

And you carry grief all those years. And even though you’re a mature in the Lord, And you can forgive, but you can’t sometimes forget. And the hurt will be there for years and years and years. And you just got to have to go through that. That’s part of living life in this world because you’re not going to forget everything. You can’t just wipe everything away. You’re going to have grief. We live in a sinful world. We have old bodies of ours that’s fallen apart and things that happen to us that causes us a lot of grief.

Get the next statement. is a passionate expression of grief. It’s the cry of our heart that is usually full of anguish, sadness, or heartache. We know God is close to the brokenhearted, yet we have forgotten how to be broken ourselves. We know that God inclines to hear our cry, but have we let our disappointments be heard. Do you talk to the Lord and share with the Lord and you’ll notice how David talked to the Lord. But he cast all of his cares upon the Lord, yes, and he talked to the Lord about all of his troubles and Lord helped me speedily and he prayed about Lord, about all those enemies out there to try to do me harm.

He prayed about that too. He asked the Lord to take care of them. Now this is what I also read this in the expositors Bible commentary. And I thought it was so good, but it was almost so deep that I almost didn’t understand it. I want to read it to you. It’s just a little brief paragraph, but I want to read this to you. The attitude so simple and natural and easy under ordinary circumstances here suggests a subtle continuance of wretchedness.

It is helpless and hopeless. The first while agony of the severance of the closest natural ties has passed. And with it, the stimulus of conflict. Now there has supervained the dull monot Kislyak ofitely despairnesty. TheÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂ monotony ofachelors despair. You don’t mind a little despair if it’s over in two or three minutes, but when it goes on for days and weeks and months, a dull monotony of despair. And we have no clue how many people come to church Sunday after Sunday and their hearts is full, nigh under breaking and got pressures and feelings and remorse and grief.

All those things going on and yet we see them and they put none on a happy face. And that’s not really how they are, not where they really are. Look over there, I just want to read this year one bold statement down at the bottom. At At the bottom of the page, on the second page, this statement was made, and I really like this statement because God meets us where we are, not where we pretend to be. And sometimes we want people not to know really where we are or how we’re really doing.

We want them to think of us as better than that or more spiritual than that, and so we don’t really tell the truth. So that’s why it could be, you know, fake with thinking. Fake, fine. Go back here to this statement here. This is the lowest depth of misery because it allows leisure when leisure is least welcome because it gives the rain to the imagination to roam over regions of heart-rending memory or sombre apprehension. Above all, because there is nothing to be done.

One of the things that really helps when you have a lot of heartache and grief and sorrow is something that you can do to stay busy because it can take your mind off of that grief. But when there is nothing to do and all you’ve got is leisure time to contemplate upon that misery how much more miserable you will be. This is why sometimes you’ve ever heard that statement, And an idle mind is a devil’s workshop. So that’s why sometimes it’s such a wonderful blessing to be able to stay busy doing something that gets your mind off of some of your grief.

But it doesn’t remove all the grief. It’ll be waiting for you when you get back. Look at the next statement. Because it gives a range to the imagination to roam over regions of heart-rendering memory or somber apprehensions, above all, because there is nothing to be done, so that the whole range of consciousness is abandoned to pain. Many A-suffers has been saved by the healing ministry of active duties, sometimes resented as an intrusion. It is a fearful thing simply to sit in sorrow.

I’ve been here. If you haven’t been, you will be. The mourner sits in the night, while the world around lies in the peace of sleep. The darkness has fallen, yet she does not stir. For day and night are alike to her, both dark. She is statues, in sorrow, petrified by pain, and yet unhappily not dead, be numbed, but alive in every sensitive fiber of her being, and terribly awake. In this dread night of misery, her one occupation is weeping.

The mourner knows how the hidden fountains of tears, which have been sealed to the world for the day will break out in the silent solitude of night. Then the bravest will wed his couch with tears. The forlorn woman weepeth sore. To use the expressive heberism, weeping she weepeth. Her tears are on her cheeks. They are continually flowing. She has no thought of drying them. There is no one else to wipe them away. This is not the frantic torrent of youthful tears, soon to be forgotten and sudden sunshine like a spring shower.

It is the dreary winter rain falling more silently, but from latent clouds that never break. Have you been to where it seemed like? It’ll never end. It’s so dark and that’s kind of like as a heavy cloud and a yoke of iron upon your shoulders weighing in, pushing you down and you wonder, will it ever lighten up? Will you ever see the light of day. You ever go outside and even though the sun is bright it can be to you a cloudy night because you can’t see.

There’s no hope. It’s all helplessness. The next scripture I have done here is from the Book of Lamentation because as you know the book right before Lamentation is the book of Jeremiah. He’s the weeping prophet and when you listen to him He had one sorrowful ministry. Talking to people whose face was hardened, whose neck was stiff. They would not listen, they would not yield, they would not obey. They even threw him in a pit. All the things that he went through and all he wanted to do is be obedient to God.

He even said one time he says, I made up my mind I am not going to speak for the Lord. I just will not do it. And he says, but his word was in my bones as a flame of fire. He says, and I could not stay. I couldn’t hold back. I just have to speak for the Lord. But what a price he paid. The weeping prophet, because he He saw that the nation of Israel was beyond help. And nothing was going to stop it, and they were going into captivity.

And so, yes, they lamented because of the chasting hand of God that was coming. But it says, this I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope, it is of the Lord’s mercies that were not consumed because his compassion failed not. They are new every morning. Don’t you just love these next words? You ever heard of that song? Great is thy faith. this is what it’s talking about. It comes from this verse in the book of limitation in chapter 3, great is thy faithfulness.

Here’s some thoughts that were also gleaned. It’s hard to find a person in the Bible who was without grief. And from them we learn that lament is a passionate expression of grief where God may choose to meet with us. From Adam and Eve down to John, who was exiled on the Alipat must, had times of grief. Isn’t that true? Even John, in an old age, was exiled. He enjoyed that, loved that, but did God use him?zhen a letter to all of the seven churches and all indignation that was revealed to him by being caught up in.

What’s going to happen in the future? Tribulation period. Christ coming and powering great glory going to going to the Holy City coming down. Remember John said it and I, John saw the Holy City coming down from God out of heaven. Pronunciation. We champion messages of joy and stories of overcoming in the church today. Don’t we like, when people come to church, we want our music to be interesting and exciting, uplifting, enthusiastic. We want him to have people to have a peace and a joy.

And when they leave church, their load has been lifted a little bit and they thought more about the Lord. Well, that’s what we want. But not all people are gonna be there. It would be wonderful, but it’s not reality. And some people will leave with a heavy heart just like they came with a heavy heart because the point of all their grief has not been dealt with. Or they’re going through some things that they can’t get their mind off of.

Some people are worried about some doctor appointment they’ve got. Maybe worried about whether or not is it gonna be cancer? Am I gonna have leukemia? Am I gonna have this? Or how am I gonna pay my bills or this problem? All kinds of things that goes on. that are not eliminated because, well, I went to church, and you still gotta live with it. But hopefully there’s something there that lifts your spirits enough that can give you joy in the Lord, but not in the world.

Because we’re not of this world, but we’re in this world. We live in this world, and we’re gonna have the grief that we’re gonna have in this world. You’re gonna have afflictions in this world. So look at the next statement. Yet look at the book of Psalms. or the books written by Jeremiah or Paul’s ministry of tears. These giants of the faith weren’t afraid to get honest with God when life was falling apart. We were in good company, biblically speaking, when we were lament.

Now you read the 11th chapter of 2 Corinthians about Paul and what all he went through. It’ll break your heart. And that was a picture of his whole life. That wasn’t just happeningource time and it was all over the world. No, that was his whole life ministry. all those things that happened to him. This was 10 times better than Indiana Jones. You know, he always going from one crisis to the next, to the next. Paul lived there for his whole life, all because he just wanted to serve the Lord.

But he had afflictions in this life. Things that hurt, saying that lead you into despair. He says we were even beside ourselves in 2nd Corinthians in chapter one. What are you talking about? We were nigh unto death. stood. hope, but God delivered us out of them all. Look at the next statement. We begin our services with upbeat songs in the church. We attend Christian conferences where we hear a motivational message. We turn on the Christian radio to a positive and encouraging station in our kids attend schools where they are told that they are lights of the world and conquerors, but where are our laments?

What about when it’s not like that? When it’s you’re not there and you’re going to a lot of grief and you’re going to face grief in this life. And the more you love the Lord, the more you want to serve the Lord, there’s going to be probably more affliction, not just because you’re here, but because there’s a devil working against you. People are going to work against you. And they’re just plain natural griefs that come naturally just because you’re in the human race.

The next statement. If David had not demonstrated lament, we might have had a hard time relating to him. Most of us are not unknown to be kings at a young age. You see, when David talks about him being the king, I really can’t relate to that. Because I’ll never be a king, but I am a child of the king. I’m the child of the king. But when he talks about all of his heart, he can problems and heart breaks and all those things, I can relate to everything he says, nor what it’s like to be rejected for people to hate you.

Tastes evil things about you. There’s a lot of sorrow that he went through. I can relate to that. I can relate to that. I can relate to that. I can’t relate to him as a king because I’ve never been a king. But look how many things that we can relate to. And I believe that’s one of the points that God wants us to see. When we think of David, it’s not his kingship that we relate to, but all the things that he had grief about that caused him to lament.

Yes David lamented his sin, but David also lamented when he was following God. David was being obedient and as David was doing the work of the Lord, lamenting prayers were still a part of David’s communication with God. And here’s one of those songs. One of those scriptures. A prayer when he was in the cave. I cried out unto the Lord with my voice. With my voice unto the Lord that I make my supplication. I poured out my, what’s that word?

My complaint before him. Are there going to be things that you as a child of God are going to complain about? David did. Unless everything is going your way, you usually have something to complain about. If your wife don’t do her thing you want, you might find reason to complain. If people don’t treat you right on the job, you might have justification to complain a little bit. But do you complain to the Lord? Because God can do some things about it.

He can do things about it. He said, I poured it out before the Lord. And I showed before Him my trouble. God already knows. But He says, you have not because you asked not. Till God everything made your request known in the God. Look at the next one. I cried unto the O Lord. I said, thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living. Attend unto my cry for I am brought very low. You see why I put it in bold and why I underlined it.

There’s going to be times in your Christian life God’s going to bring you very low. He’s going to humble us. He doesn’t want to humiliate us but he does want us to learn that we can’t trust anything or anybody but him. And he wants you to look to him because in my afflictions, as David made his statement, I learned. I listened. I cried out. He also says here at the bottom of the page, wait a minute, say this, we know that the world around us is lamenting and all of creation is groaning.

That’s in Romans chapter 8. Is it time we quit faking fine and let our our limits out to. How you doing? How you doing? Would you believe that since church tonight, right before church, I must have had about seven or eight people ask me, how you doing? How you doing? True? Some of you, you said it here. You know it’s true. You asked me, how you doing? You know what I believe? You really wanted to know how I’m doing.

And so I did my dead level best because I knew what I was going to speak on tonight. I didn’t say fine. I said, well, my pain is not as severe. I haven’t had it all day and I haven’t taken any medicine, but my mind doesn’t seem to be as clear or as sharp as I like it. Now, I don’t know this because it’s just my mind is cloudy. I don’t know. But I know that I like to be transparent.

I want people to know the truth. What did I talk about Sunday night at church? Sunday night at church. I went through and I told you what’s been going on, right? I am not Superman. I’m not a Superman. I am a man. And I have a few aches and pains over the years. I’ve had a few hospital visits and doctor talks. And I had a few things that I don’t understand. I’ve had a few afflictions along the way. And I never know what’s going to happen at any given moment.

But what should I expect? Nothing? We are all going to have something. We’re all going to be blessed with these afflictions that keeps our nose through the grindstone and keeps our heart humble and contract be tore before the Lord. And that’s what you want. I hope that really encouraged you tonight. Look up here, this hand represents you and me. The wall represents sin. We all have sin upon us. Now God, He loves us. He hates our sin, but He loves us.

And for us to pay for sin is eternal separation from the Lord. Since we’ve all sinned, we’re all condemned. in. We’re all in the same boat. But God loves us once it’s to go to heaven. And to go to heaven, we have to be perfect. Because righteous is God. None of us are perfect. None of us are righteous. We’ve all done things wrong. We’re all sinners and we cannot save ourselves. We need a Savior. This hand represents Jesus Christ.

He’s the Lord God in the flesh. Came into the world because He loves us. Hates our sin because our sin separates us from God. And so Christ, who had no sin, didn’t have to die. He took all the sin of all the world, paid for them across. Came back from the dead and said that whosoever, believe it in him, believe that he did this for them, then he would put that payment to their account and they get to go to heaven on what Jesus Christ did for them.

So whosoever, believe it, hath everlasting life shall not come into condemnation but is passed from death unto life. That’s some of the best news that anybody never here. And we’ve got to do this in earthen vessels that the power may be of God and not of us. As he says in 2 Corinthians in chapter 4 and verse 7, let’s pray shall we? The heads bow nice clothes and no one looking around. If you’re here tonight and maybe you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior or if you’re watching by internet, I pray that if you haven’t trusted the Lord that you would do so.

The only thing you have to do, well it’s the only thing you can do. You can’t earn eternal life so there’s no sense trying to work for it. All you need to do is believe that when Christ died, He died for you. He paid for your sins. And He paid for your sins so that you wouldn’t have to pay for them. And you get to go to heaven on what He did for you, not because of what you’ve done.

So would you trust Him? I pray that you would. And if you are suffering from some particular thing, grieving over something, worried over something. Welcome to humanity. It’s part of life. And everything is not going to be with a smiley face. We rejoice in the Lord always. That’s spiritual. But physically, we may grieve about a lot of things because here we hurt and we go through things and it He does make a difference. Our Father, we thank You so much for all that You’ve done for us, and I pray that You would bless each one here, and help us Father to look to You and to trust You, and to be what You want us to be.

We ask You to bless us in the service, in each person to learn. Apply these things in Christ’s name, Amen. Are you ready to learn how to live your life as a strong Christian, lead others to Christ, or excel as a church worker or ministry leader? Then look no further than Florida Bible College of Tampa, with traditional and online classes taught by instructors with years of experience. Florida Bible College of Tampa can help you grow in your Christian life.

Whether taking individual classes or working toward a one-year degree, Florida Bible College of Tampa is here for you. To learn more, visit online at floridabiblecollege.us or call the Registrar Bob Gilbert at 850227-5325. That’s 850-227-5325. 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 40-811 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. live today and every day. Believing that the Lord is coming soon, just keep looking up.