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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… 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 Bibleignmenistries.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 and turn to the book of 1 Corinthians. What’s a good chapter? Chapter two, very good. First Corinthians, chapter two. We know if we live long enough, we learn a few things in life. There was a time when we didn’t know anything. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And you look at a little baby that’s just laying there, can’t talk, can’t reason, and you have to teach it everything that you wanted to know. WoundedCHAPTER=]? But I’m also wondered when does a sinful nature come alive?

At what point? But I guess we really don’t need to go there. We just know that it does. Sooner or later, that little angel of a little child will begin to act like a little devil. We all have a sinful nature. There’s a lot of things we’ll learn in life just by the mere fact that we live and experience things. And you can tell a little boy, don’t touch that stove. He’s going to try to touch the stove and see what you said.

It was true. And whenever he did, he knows it was hot. He just learned something. And it might keep him from doing that again. Anytime we learn something and we know it’s wrong, and there’s bad times. Right? It’s amazing how many people repeat. repeat over and over and over again, the same thing, same mistake, we just keep doing it over and again. History repeats itself because that’s what we do. Either we don’t remember or we don’t care to remember.

Now in the Bible, God says something that I want us to look at, but you notice there in 1 Corinthians in chapter 2, look at verse 7, but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the foundation or the world unto our glory, which none of the princes of this world knew. So there’s some things that they did not know because he says, for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

But why didn’t they know it? Then they wouldn’t have had to crucify him. In other words, there’s an advantage of knowing something. Ignorance is not always bliss. But then he makes his statement, but as it is written, I have not seen, ear hath not heard, neither has entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that love him. And generally we stop right there. But look at the very next verse in the first word.

But as he says, God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit, the deep things of God. And so there’s things that man on his own, natural man, cannot find out about God. And so all these scientists, whatever ability they have and all the knowledge that’s in the world is human wisdom, you cannot know God through it. You may know there is a God, but you don’t know God. To know God is to have eternal life. But he says, I have not seen, ear hath not heard.

And then he makes a statement, God hath revealed them through His Word. So there’s a lot of things God has revealed in His Word, but has God revealed everything in His Word. No. He says, the secret thing belongs unto the Lord. So the Word of God, as powerful it is, it may not reveal everything there is to know. Unless there’s clues and all that kind of stuff in here, we haven’t even begin to scratch the surface. We often tell, especially college kids, the Bible Almost as knowledge, puffeth.

Up. It means it makes you think you’re smart, just because you know something. And there’s a lot of difference between having knowledge and having wisdom. They’re not the same. Chances are you don’t have wisdom without knowledge, but you can have knowledge without wisdom. Wisdom is the application of knowledge to the experiences in life, and it was the right decision that you made with the knowledge that you had. So we’re supposed to study the Word of God. Now, notice what he says in verse 10, but God hath revealed them unto us by his spirit, for the Spirit sure to all things you, the deep things of God, the things that were hidden to man’s knowledge, man’s eyes that he cannot see here and understand.

Well, through the Bible, we can see and understand some of these things. And so there is an advantage. Now, it’s amazing that this is right here in the book of Corinthians because the Corinthian Christians exalted themselves because of how much knowledge they had. But they were fools, but they thought they were wise. He says, I wish you were wise. He said, I even told you, I wish you were fools so that you might be wise. Now take your Bible and turn all the way over there to the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 1, chapter 8.

First Corinthians chapter 8. and look there in verse 1, verse 1. Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Everybody has some knowledge. So even to the Corinthian Christians, they all knew something. They weren’t totally naive. But did they know everything that they needed to know? They had all kinds of gifts, talents, abilities, but they were exalted in their own mind. They were filled with envy, jealousy, and they caused divisions in the church.

14 major problems that the Christians had here in Corinth. And then he notes what he says. If you don’t have this verse underlying you ought to unline, it says, knowledge, puffeth up, love, or or charity edifier. It builds up. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. And so you want to have the knowledge that you need, but love is the application of the wisdom that you have to build people up in the Lord. And notice what he says in verse 2, and if any man think, you ought to underline the word think.

If he means think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know. Now think for about this first minute. Regardless of what you have attained at this point in your Christian life, you know nothing compared to what you ought to know. And even after 75 years or 80 some years, whatever you have a pain to and all this knowledge that you have and all this nothing you, because how wise you’ve been did you know there’s that’s nothing compared to what you ought to know.

Do we ever finish growing in the Lord? Well I finally hit that magical number and I can’t grow anymore. You know we do that in real life. There come the time when you don’t grow anymore. I mean years high as you’re gonna get and after a few years we start shrinking don’t we? We’re maybe not as tall as we used to be. So in the Christian life, regardless of how much you know, God knows how much there is to know that you don’t know.

So instead of exalting ourselves about how much we know, because as you realize there’s so much you don’t know that’s yet out there regardless how many years or whatever you put into studying the Bible and whatever you believe you know there’s so much more that you don’t know now I want you to take your Bible and look there because it’s so close first Corinthians and looking in chapter verse six and verse five. Chapter six, because you’re talking about, you know, seeking to be wise as you mature in the Lord you should gain in wisdom and learning how to apply the word of God to experiences in life.

But in verse five it says, I speak to your shame. Is it so? That there is not a, see those two words, wise man among you? Isn’t there a wise man among you? No, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren. Don’t you have somebody that’s wise enough? That you can go to for your counseling to seek wisdom, solve a problem, instead of going to those that are without learning, spiritual learning, to solve your problems. And so today Christians, many times they won’t take their problems to the Lord or to someone for counseling.

They ask people that don’t have the wisdom of God. So they are not as wise as they think because your wisdom is determined by the decisions that you make in life. Now go to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. 1 Corinthians chapter 1. Now notice what he says here in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. Because when we talk about your position in Christ, your position in Christ, your standing, it never changes. Once you’re a child of God, that is your position in Christ, that’s your standing, that cannot be changed.

Once you’re a child of God, you’re always a child of God. But when we talk about the state of man, what’s his state? It means how is he doing now? What’s he doing right now? How spiritual is he right now? Now, when somebody asked me, how is Betty doing? Well, 15 years ago she was doing very well. Is that what you mean? Well, ten years from now she’s going to be real good. Jerry, you’re talking about how is she right now?

So there’s God’s children. How are they doing now? And so these children of God were on the carnal side. It means fleshly minded, immature Christians. So he talks to them about their state, where they are now. Does it mean that you will always be there, but the Bible talks about your state in the Lord, your your Condition of how you’re doing in your Christian life. What are you going through? How are you handling it? And how strong do you seem to be?

Are you casting your cares upon the Lord that you’re really trusting him? What are you worried about? What are you going through? So there’s a lot of these things see that people don’t realize God is interested in you. I was listening to while I go when they were singing that song. There’s nothing like being alone. Part of that song, there’s nothing like being alone. No one stands alone. And I was sitting back in I thought, why did God make us?

And it came to me. He didn’t want to be alone. He He didn’t need us, but he don’t want to be alone. And yet that lonely feeling, we experience. Because that’s why we don’t want to be alone. No matter what you have and what you’re confident with, you don’t want to be alone. You want somebody, and this is what causes people to get married, because they don’t want to be alone. They can be at home with mom and dad, but I don’t want to be alone.

You know, you can be alone if you’re in a room with 1,000 people. If you don’t know anybody, And though I just closed, you can come to church on Sunday morning and it feels so alone. And I thought, God, is it possible that you could just, you were lonely? Anyway, I got a little emotional just thinking about difficult that one phrase in that one song. I don’t write a song about that. No, oh, it’s already wrote. But now, look in verse 10.

Look in verse 10. See that word now? Now one time I went through in Corinthians and we just look at the word now where it was. And so that’s an important thing because you realize like there’s something that he says now because of what he said, this is the way it ought to be. Now in verse 10, I beseech you brethren. By the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that you all speak the same thing that to be no devasions among you, that you’d be perfectly joined together in the sameKnown in the same Judgment.

Now this is good because when you get to chapter 2, he tells us about this having the same Mind and the same mind and the whole spirit lives within you and he’s to teach you these things. So you look what he says here in verse 12, see that word now, Now we have received, past tense, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.

So you and I have been blessed with the Word of God, the Holy Spirit to teach us the things of God so that all of us may have the same mind. And the same judgment. And if we all think the same way, we wouldn’t be envious and we wouldn’t be jealous and we wouldn’t be better. We wouldn’t be hateful if we all thought the same way. If the Holy Spirit teaches me and the Holy Spirit teaches you, shouldn’t we agree?

If you’re yielded to the Lord and I’m yielded to the Lord, wouldn’t that solve the problem? We’d be on the same page. We’d be in agreement. Don’t you think if the husband and a wife, if the husband is right with the Lord and the wife is right with the Lord, why don’t they get a little? That should be on the same page. True? So there should mean this division and so forth between. Look like this. Now look in verse 13, which things also we speak not in the words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual means.

So you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you to teach you the things of God that no man could have known and it rises above the level of human understanding. But in verse 14 he said, but the natural man. Now remember he wants them to be all of the same mind, all of the same judgment. So there’ll be no, now one thing you’ll notice as Paul goes through and explains these things to all these people with all these problems.

He doesn’t cast doubts upon their salvation. He could have said, well that’s a sign you must not be saved. You won’t find that in here because that’s not the truth. He doesn’t say well that’s because you’re, no he says you’re a babe in Christ. You’re carnal-minded. You’re not seeing and understanding a lot of things and he says that’s why you got this problem. But he doesn’t question their salvation. Regardless of how carnal they may be. So he says here the natural man, which is the lost man, receive if not the things of the Spirit of God.

For they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them because these things of God are spiritually discerned. And they don’t have the Holy Spirit within them, the lost man, to discern the things of God. But you do. And this is why he makes this statement in verse 15, But he that is spiritual or spiritually minded He can judge all things Yeah, he himself is judged of no man because you see man Lost man cannot and should not set in judgment upon the believer because he cannot know the things that God has and what God teaches to the Christian.

It’s a different world all together But you and I, as we studied the Word of God, we studied the Bible because the Bible is the mind of God. So when you study the Bible, you’re studying God’s mind. If you study God’s mind, then you’ll know how God thinks. Well, if we all knew how God thinks and we think that we God thinks, then we should get along. It’s because of S-I-N in our life that’s not dealt with. And so we get filled with bitterness and envy and jealousy and all the things that we don’t like But so how does God deal with that?

But look at in verse 16 For who has known the mind of the Lord that he meant struck him But we have the mind of Christ Who is the one that can counsel God when God was going to create the heavens and the earth? Did he ask you how to do it? What did he ask you how to do? Nothing? That’s how much wisdom you had to offer. And he didn’t need your input. But God wants to give you input.

So he gave you the Holy Spirit so that he might teach you the mind of Christ. So when you have his mind on how God thinks on every subject, it’ll make you wiser. But knowledge puffs up. that you can be gain a lot of knowledge. You can quote scripture, find every book in the Bible, fashion anybody else, and you can read, have your devotions, and never let the Word of God change your life or change your thinking. So he makes a statement in verse 1 of chapter 3.

And I brethren could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. He didn’t say they lost. He says, but you act like lost people. You walk as lost men. See, that’s what he’s making the statement there in the last part of verse 3. You walk like men. You walk like lost people. The natural, you’re living like a natural man, like a man that doesn’t know any truth. So he really, you know, kind of…

Clean’s their plow here. So he says, your babes in Christ. See, he doesn’t go through and try to convince them that, well, maybe you really aren’t saved. He doesn’t do that. But now that’s what a lot of people will do, especially Calvinists. There’s Calvinists don’t believe you have an old nature because after you get saved, well, the old nature is gone. And all you’ve got now is your new birth. And you’re not going to want to go do those same because he’s dead, he’s gone.

And then he found out, okay, now what? Now let me mention this to you. That church that almost 50 years ago that I went to and spoke up there in Minnesota, the preacher that was there, he left and went to Alaska. And later on I went to Alaska on three different occasions. But he left the church. And so the old people that stayed there really did not like and appreciate the people that started the new church down the street.

They started the good news Bible church and the ones that I had led to the Lord, they went there because they didn’t want them in their church because they didn’t believe the way they believed so they could do it. Where are they going to go? And so they started their own church. Years have passed. And so just recently they got, they said, because if you’re really saved, you’re not gonna wanna go out here and live like that. You’re not gonna do those things.

So they got him a new preacher now because the other one has passed on, a lot of years has passed. And now they had a new pastor, his wife, and let me hold the preacher in the old church, started running around with one of the ladies that was in the church. Send got found out And he was a young man. And so he left the ministry. And so the question is, if he was really saved, how can he have done that?

Because if he was really saved, you’re not going to want to do that. Well, he wanted to do that. So the question is they can’t solve the answer. They don’t have an answer. That means he must have been the preacher there for years, but he wasn’t really saved. Well, he was saved and he did that. So they don’t know what to do at it. And so the preacher left. So another person’s taken over. And the person who came to the meetings that I had, who played the piano, was his wife.

And she came to the services, and then she came to the graveside, and then she came to the fellowship. But the question is people saying things that are not true. You see, they, well, if you do bad things, that’s a sign you were never saved. Now when you read the Bible, it’s a sign that you were carnal, fleshly minded. Now I want to show you this, not in the sense to try to dwell on it, but just so that you see it.

Did they have in this church somebody who really messed up bad? I mean, you know, did a wicked sin. Well, look there in chapter 5 and look in verse 1. He says, it is commonly reported that there is fornication among you and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife. Now, the chances are it was a step, mother, and they’re having sex together and the people in the church knew about it.

Not looking at verse 2. And ye are puffed up. In other words, no shame. You’re not ashamed of that. Puffed up and have not rather mourned. You mourn because it’s the wicked sin, it’s wrong, it’s ungodly, it’s not like the Lord and it ought not be tolerated. He says that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you. Does he say that he evidently wasn’t saved? No, it doesn’t say that. But when you become a carnal Christian, worldly-minded, you don’t know the limits of the depth of your depravity of what you’re going to do.

See, when you start going down a slide board, you don’t know how far you’re going to go. And most people have to go to the end before they wake up. And some people will correct the problem, some people never will. If God’s Word says, and it’s all in the book of Corinthians, some are sick, some are weak, and some are dead. So that means that there are some who are chastened and They’re dead. That never made it right with God.

So some people say, well, you may go astray, but before you leave this world, you’ll get right. You’ll come back to the Lord in the end, evidently not. You see, that’s what we would like to say. But the Bible don’t teach that. Saul was killed because of his sin, not Paul, but Saul. And you’ll find out that, well, what about, you know, those two individuals that went out and sold their land and came back, equivalent for seller? Is that who it was?

And nice and so far. They went out and did the wrong and died on the spot. But that doesn’t mean they were lost. It means that they could be chastened with death. Now if that’s true then what some people say can’t be true. You see there be one way or the other. Either once you trust Christ to save it you have eternal life forever or if you really saved you’re not going to want to do those bad things but the thing is that a lot of people do them.

How much bad can a Christian do? If you can be a carnal Christian how carnal? Well it means you’re carnal. It means your flesh, you obey the flesh, you walk in the flesh, you walk in the flesh, you fulfill the works of the flesh. You can do everything that’s in the flesh. And that’s why you need to be very careful. So this is mentioned here in the word of God. And you and I are supposed to watch our testimony.

Look what he says here. He says in verse 3, for I verily as acts and in body, but present in spirit have judged already as though I were present concerning him that have so done this deed in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ when you are gathered together and my spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ to deliver such a one on the Satan for the destruction of the soul that I read that right destruction of the flesh that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus still say but destroy the flesh in other words of God to take him home.

You say that’s pretty strong. Yeah, I know it is. But we do find in the book of 2 Corinthians where we believe the man got right with the Lord, the people forgave him and everything was cool and they went on. And you’ll find that in the first two chapters of the book of Corinthians. Now go back there to chapter 2 and verse 12. You’ll notice that he will say certain things that deals with now, now, now. So he says there in verse 12 in chapter 2, Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God.

And then he tells him why this is so important. Because the Holy Spirit is the author of the Word of God that can teach you the mind of God. So that’s why we read the Bible and we study it and so forth. 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, degree Florida Bible College of Tampa is here for you. To learn more visit online at FloridaBibleCollege.us or call the register Bob Gilbert at 850227 5325 that’s 850227 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 4811 George Road Tampa, Florida, 33634. And now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen, the trumpet will sound, and we will be changed.

Caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day, believing that the Lord is coming soon, just keep looking up.