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Bibleline Bibleline, here God’s word on Bibleline, here God’s truth on Bibleline. Welcome to Bibleline with Dr. Ralph Yankee Arnold, pastor of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida. Clearly declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ through the radio and the internet. Your regular prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the You can reach us toll free at 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made by clicking on the donations link on the BibleLineMinistries.org homepage. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s first part of this two-part message will be a blessing to you and your family.

Today is the Memorial Day weekend. I want to talk to you about being a citizen of heaven and a citizen of the United States of America. First of all, that which is spiritual and then that which is physical. I want to have you take your Bible and turn to the book of Galatians, the book of Galatians in chapter 5. You’ll notice in your notes about the freedom from the yoke of bondage. We should love our freedom. When Christ went to the cross, He purchased freedom for us.

So in the book of Galatians chapter 5, He warns us about being entangled again with the yoke of bondage. People that are free should not want to be enslaved. There were many people who left the old country and came to America for the freedom to practice their own faith, the freedom to worship, to form a government that would allow us to believe what we want to believe, realizing that every individual has certain rights given to them by God to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

We were privileged to be born in a great country. And then many people have come to this country because of the freedoms that we have. So I would say as America do not become entangled again with the yoke of bondage. And you go from freedom back to slavery by the changing of your laws. And the reason you change the laws is because we’ve changed our God. So it’s the changing of the gods. That’s how we’re going to lose our freedom.

One of the other things I’d like to just make a comment, no extra charge for this. We are looking at a country today that’s not just about the fake news and all the things that are going on trying to destroy this presidency, it’s about all throwing this country. It wouldn’t matter who the president is. There are people that are bent on destroying our form of government. They do not want our Constitution. They do not want us to practice our faith.

They don’t want anything to do with God and the Bible and individual rights that are given to us by God. They want to scrap all of that and simply have the majority will rule. And you say, well, there’s nothing wrong with that. Yes, there is. Majority is not always right. But under a Republican form of government, not the party, but the form of government, it It is so that we can have the protection of every individual and that the majority cannot strip away the right of one person who has not violated the right of another.

So they are free people. We don’t have a king in America. We don’t have a dictator in America. You and I are the bosses. We have some people who work for us, but they forget this. I just wanted to remind you of it. So we are not to be entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Now look at that verse one more time in verse one, stand fast therefore in the liberty where with Christ hath made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Now here in context, we’re talking about the legalism. That comes in Christianity. Now I want you to notice there in your notes. And you’ll notice there in Romans chapter 3 verse 19, I’ll just quote it from these, your notes there. I want you to see this. Now we know that what things, so ever the law, saith, it’s saith to them who are under the law. Now get this statement that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God.

So the first several chapters of the book of Romans is to convince us that in spite of all the evidence that God has given in creation and all the evidence that God has given to revelation, that man has rebelled against the evidence. And he doesn’t believe that either there is a God or that we’re accountable to God and they changed the glory of God into the creation of man. and worship man the creation instead of God. So God came to the conclusion and he wants us to know about it so he says there is none righteous no not one.

There’s none that doeth good no not one. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God or short of God’s perfection so we’re all in the same boat. So God says all the world is guilty before God. And if they’re all guilty, then they all have to die. So that’s why we, yes, we’re born, we live and we die. So the Lord says it because we are under the curse. You see, God gave His righteous law. It’s holy.

Nothing wrong with God, nothing wrong with perfection, there’s nothing wrong with the law, it is perfect. It’s spiritual according to Romans chapter 7. The problem is not what God did, it’s what we’ve done. We are sinful. We have been born into this world under the law and we are under a curse because curse it is every man that continues, not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. So no man fulfills the law.

So when you hear people tell you you got to live by the law, impossible because of our old sinful nature. There’s nothing wrong with what God said. The problem is that you and I were born with an old sinful nature and the law says if you sin that you die. So how can a man get free from the curse of the law? From the curse of the sinful nature that we’re born with and the curse of death. So when Christ came into the world, He was going to produce this freedom for us, how we can get free from the law and free from the sinful nature that we have and free from death.

God laid it down in His Word, promise how He’s going to do it. He came into the world and He did. The only thing you and I have to do is accept what He did for us. So now look at this statement. How could guilty sinners be free from the curse of the law? We want to be free from it. How could guilty sinners be free from the curse of our sinful nature? You have an old sinful nature. You were born with it.

It means you want your own way that we’re naturally rebellious. How can we get free of that? This old sinful desire that we have. You see, God will not allow you and I to enter into heaven the way we are, because the way we are is not going to work there. That’s a perfect place. We messed it up down here and God says you’re not messing it up up here. So only ones who gets to go to heaven are perfect people, those that do not have this whole sinful nature, but that’s because of what Christ did for us.

Now I want you to picture, I did this before, but I’ll do it again. Over here you have a man standing here. See him? You got to see him in your mind’s eye. Anybody here got a mind’s eye? You can see there’s a man standing right there. This man standing over here, born into this world, he is a child of the flesh. He has a flesh body. He has a physical flesh body. And in this physical flesh body, he has a sinful nature.

And his sinful nature is he wants his independence to do what he wants, however he wants, without restraints. And because he wants the freedom to do whatever he wants, he doesn’t want somebody else making laws that control him. So they want to do away with laws. And this is kind of like what’s going on in the country today. But the more you let a man have the removal of all these restraints, the more restraints he’s going to have. Until it becomes a slave to government.

And government begins to tighten down the screws and next thing you know, you won’t be able to move because we’ll be under a dictatorship. Now that’s just what’s coming up. So how can a man get free from the curse of death? Because the Bible says the last great enemy of man is death. Because once you die, nothing else matters. Well, depends on where you went. If you went to heaven, Nothing else matters. But if you didn’t trust Christ as your Savior, woo doggy.

Lot of problems. Now look at the next statement. When we accept the payment Christ made for us by His death, burial, and resurrection, we are free, free, and free. Free, free, and free. I knew you’d catch your eyes. So I know I have to explain it. Now number one, look at it, by his death for me, he delivered me from the perfection of the law I could not keep. Once you are dead, the law cannot touch a dead man.

Let me show you something. You’ve probably never seen this before, but this is what helps you to understand what he’s talking about and why we should not be place back under the yoke of bondage. Appreciate the freedom that you have. This hand represents you and me. The wallet represents all the things we do that’s wrong. We call it sins. That’s what God calls it. Everybody sins. And the reason we sin is because we’re born into this world with a sinful nature.

This sinful nature is in rebellion to God. So because there’s time when we want to do right, we also want to do wrong. We want our own way. So we have conflict. But God loves us. H.R. sin, but He loves us. And for us to pay for sin, what’s the wages of sin? The wages of sin is death. So see we’re under the law and it’s a curse because it demands perfection and we can’t do it. And because we have a sinful nature, we can’t fulfill the righteous demands of the law.

So we’d like to be able to be free from this law that demands our perfection that we can’t deliver, but the wages that if you fail, it is death. And so every man who sins dies, And that’s the case of the whole world. We’re guilty. Guilty of what? We broke God’s law. Now for us to go to heaven we have to be perfect as righteous as God. And there’s nobody perfect. No one’s righteous. God is perfect and heaven is perfect.

And that’s why you don’t have to be good to go to heaven because there is no good heaven. There’s not even a pretty good heaven. There’s only a perfect heaven. And so that’s why you have to be perfect to go there. Most people think they have to be pretty good. Find that in the Bible. It’s not there. And this is why you cannot save yourself. Now this hand represents Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. He came into the world.

He was born, the Bible says, of woman made under the law. As a child born, he had a physical body, therefore he has to keep the law just like everybody else. So he was made under the law, but did he ever break the law? He did not come to destroy the law, he came to fulfill the law. And so Jesus Christ lived a perfect life for three and a half years. He never did anything wrong. So the law couldn’t condemn him because he had no sinful nature.

And everything he did pleased the Father. And because he kept the law, he was under a curse. And because he had no sinful nature, he had no desires contrary to the will of God the Father. And because He never sinned, He didn’t have to die. He was free, free, free. But because God the Father loves us, He sent His Son into the world to die, to pay for our sins. So because Jesus loved the Father, He says, because I loved the Father, even so I do.

I’m doing what I’m doing because I love my father. And the Father loves us, but we have a problem. Our sins separates us from Him. So Jesus Christ, who had no sin, did not have to die, but because of love. He took all the sin of all the world. Now, because our sins were placed upon Him. The law condemned Him. Now He is under the curse is everyone that hung up on a tree. He’s cursed because He took our sins.

And now because He took our sins, He has to die. And Jesus Christ died, but He fulfilled the law. He paid for our sins. And He did all of that so that we would be free from the curse of the law and from the curse of our old sinful nature and from the curse of death. And He came back from the dead. And he says, everything I did for you, I took your curse. And if you’ll accept this payment that I made for you, I’ll put this payment to your account.

And as far as the law is concerned, you died. And the law cannot condemn a dead man. You died because you accepted my death as your payment fulfilled the curse of the law, which was the dead of sin that I owed. And because you died, you came back again from the dead in Christ. That’s why the Bible talked about you were crucified with Christ. I was crucified with Him. I was buried with Him and I rose with Him and ascended with Him.

Everything He did say, He put it to my account as though I did it. And what did I do? Nothing. But I get the credit. He puts what He did to my account and therefore I am free from the curse of the law. I am free from my old sinful nature. I don’t have to fulfill their desires anymore. And I am free from the penalty of death. You see, my new birth, it’s born of God. Now watch this. This old man over here, he’s a wicked man, a sinful man, and he’s a condemned man.

He’s a child of the flesh. The Lord tells us this, we must be born again. And if you’re born again, you’re born of the spirit of God. So he said that which is born of the flesh, flesh. That which is born of the spirit, two different births. So my new birth, when I trusted Christ as my Savior, God says I had become a child of God. You see, when I died on the cross, that was the death of this old man.

And when I was raised from the dead, I got a new birth born again without a sinful nature. And without a sinful nature, it doesn’t sin. And if it doesn’t sin, it doesn’t die. So my new birth will never die. So in Christ I fulfilled the righteous demands of the law. It can’t touch me anymore. Why? Because it can’t condemn a dead man. I’m fulfilled. It demanded death and I died. My old sinful nature was buried with my body.

It’s in the members. I came back from the dead to walk in newness of life so I don’t have in God’s eyes that old man’s dead. He was crucified and I’m alive in Christ. This new birth cannot sin and cannot die. So I had been made free from the law, free from this body of sin and death, all because I trusted Christ as my Savior. And the Lord says, now that you’ve been set free. Be not entangled again with a yoke abundance.

Don’t put yourself back in the flesh and live for the flesh because the flesh, birth that we were born with, still under that old law. Judicially, no, practically, yes. And so if walk in the flesh, then I’m still going to be chastened because of my decisions. If I walk in the Spirit, there’s no chastening. There’s no condemnation. Because see, that’s the perfect birth. And that’s the one that goes to heaven. Now let me show you this. In these verses that I have done through here, and you can read some of these a little bit later.

Today in majority of churches you’ll hear these phrases mentioned. Now there’s a lot of times people say well I I stopped doing all these bad things and so when you studied in the book of Luke where these two men came into the temple one of them Says, Lord be merciful to me a sinner, and he went away justified. And one man stood there a fair see, and he says, well I’m glad I’m not like him. I mean I go to church, I pay my tithes, I do all these good things, I am so good he good he two shoes, and I don’t do all these bad things.

And the Bible says he was not justified. Because he, a man cannot save himself, cannot justify himself. When you study and you find out that there is a difference in what Christ taught and what the Pharisees were teaching is a lot of difference because they were teaching that a man had to keep the law. And they prided themselves and all those things that they were doing, but they didn’t do everything God says to do because they don’t keep it perfectly.

You hear the phrase, turn from your sins. And so many people believe that’s what the word repent means. So it becomes another message. And if just trusting Christ is Savior is not enough, then they add on, you’ve got to do this too. So that means that the message to salvation by grace is not really by grace alone, it’s plus something. So when you add something to grace, grace is no longer grace. That one work messes up the message of grace.

So when you tell a lost man that he has to turn from his sins in order to be saved, that’s putting people back under the law. You see, when you talk about the law, the Ten Commandments, the Moro law, there were some of them that talks about, you know, the first four about loving God. And the other six about your relationship to man. That’s why he says, what is the first commandment, the greatest commandment of all? Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, body, soul, and strength.

Have you done that? No, you haven’t. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. You haven’t done that either. So we break the law. And so whenever you take people and you say you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to love the Lord. So they tell them you’ve got to make Christ the Lord and the Master of your life. Submit yourself to the authority of God and promise to serve God. You’re placing people under the law. They got to perform or they can’t be saved.

And when you tell them to stop being bad, turn from your sins, you see that’s both extremities. Stop being bad, start being good. Promise to serve God, do right, do good, and don’t do bad. That is bondage, that is law. And God says, be not entangled again with this yoke of bondage. When I trusted Christ as my Savior in 1960, God gave me as a free gift, everlasting free gift. It wasn’t contingent upon how I lived. So how I live had nothing to do with getting it or keeping it.

It was given to me by grace. I did not deserve it. I was under a curse. I could not save myself and I could not keep from dying. I could not deliver myself nor anyone else. And because of what Christ what Christ did for me, I now have eternal life. And so I am not going to place myself back under this law. You see, a man in the flesh, he cannot produce a spiritual life. That’s why this person born in the flesh is under the law.

Why should I, who had been set free from the law, placed myself back under the law. And this is why in Galatians, he says, why don’t you have this peace or this joy, this happiness? It’s all been taken from you. Look down to the bottom of the page there. To preach that a lost man must turn from sin or make Christ the Lord and master of his life is to annul the sacrifice of Christ. It puts a person back under the law and demands how he must perform.

If true, this becomes a life of do’s and don’ts. This is a return to bondage. I don’t serve the Lord because I have to. I serve the Lord because I want to. And if I don’t want to, I still have eternal life and I’m still going to heaven when I die. And I don’t have to worry about, well, are there evidences of salvation? I don’t have to give any evidence to anybody that I’m saved. I’m saved because of what he did for me, because I believe what the Scripture says, he doesn’t believe with me, half everlasting life.

Based upon what he says, that’s all the evidence I need. God said so. How do I know I’m saved? Because God says I’m saved. He said, if I trust him, he gives me eternal life. How do I know I have eternal life? He said, if I trust him, I have it. And he says, I have it because I trust him, I got it. And I don’t determine whether or not I’m really saved, gloriously saved because, well, I’m a preacher.

That’s how I know I’m really saved. Well, what about all the people who are not preachers? Well, I go to church. I give money. That’s the proof that I’m saved. No, it’s not. A lost man can go to church. And a lost man can give money. And a lost man can do all these things just like you can. Does that mean he saved? No. Salvation is the gift of God. Now notice there in the book of Galatians and turn to chapter one.

And notice what he says. In verse six, Paul says, now there were people who were trying to put the believers back under the law. He said, I marvel that you are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ, which is the gospel of Christ. You see the gospel and grace are the same. The gospel is good news. And the good news is it’s to say by grace. And grace means you’re not saved by your works.

And the test of grace is no works. If there’s works added to grace, it’s not grace. Now there is a verse in the Bible, and it makes a statement in the book of Romans chapter 11 and verse 6. And if it’s by grace it cannot be by works, otherwise grace is not grace. But if it be by works it cannot be by grace, otherwise work isn’t it? And how simple that is? In other words without my coat. That’s grace with my coat.

That’s works. And the Bible says if it’s by grace, well then it’s not by works. Otherwise grace isn’t grace. But if it is by works, it can’t be by grace. Otherwise work isn’t work. It’s simple. It’s either one way or the other. You cannot earn your salvation. Earned in it means you deserve it. Grace means you don’t deserve it. And yet there’s people that say, well, you got to deserve it. Don’t let people put you back under the law.

Don’t you trust in your lifestyle as the proof that you’re saved? Or whether or not it proves your loss? You’re saved or lost because you either did or did not accept Jesus Christ as your Savior. Men, reserve the last Saturday of the month for the Iron Sharpen’s Iron Men’s Bible Study in Breakfast at Calvary Community Church. Join us at 730 for a home-cooked breakfast. In 8 AM, the featured speaker of the month will present a one-hour classroom style, men’s Bible study, in a relaxed atmosphere where questions and dialogue are welcomed.

The scripture tells us that Iron sharpens iron, and this men’s Bible study is open to those of all levels, whether new believers or mature Christians. The Iron sharpens iron men’s Bible study and breakfast. Don’t miss this monthly opportunity for fellowship and the study of God’s Word. 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 in looking up.