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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 I want to talk to you on the subject, the value of hope, the value of hope. Now I know I could ask some people, where are you gonna go when you die? Well, I hope I’m going to heaven. That’s not the kind of hope I’m talking about. You know, that kind of hope is, well, I hope I am, but I don’t know if I will, so it’s not based upon anything definite, but you know, there’s always that possibility.

And I’m doing the best I can. Now, that’s not the kind of hope that we’re talking about. We’re talking about that living hope that comes from the Word of God. That hope that we call trust and confidence in what God’s Word has to say. But on those notes that you have just received, those are very valuable. Do not throw those away. Do not lose them. In about a thousand years, they’ll be worth something. But there’s a couple of statements that I want you to write down, wherever you can on that paper.

I know you don’t have a lot of room on there, but if you can find it to write this down, Our life is not to work for God, but to walk with God. When you study the book of Genesis, and it talks about Enoch walked with God and was not for God took him, because he had that kind of a testimony, he pleased the Lord. You see, you can work for God and not be right with God, and you can work for God and not walk with God, But if you walk with God through life, you will work with God.

So I don’t look at myself as I’m working for God, I’m working with God because he says, we’re labors together. So you’re laboring together. So that’s how you learn how to rest in doing what God wants you to do is because you know that you’re working with him. Now without him, you can do how much? Nothing, but with him, you can do everything you’re supposed to do. You and the Lord can handle any problem, any situation. You and the Lord.

So remember that. Another statement that I think would be good to write down. You may work without walk, but you cannot walk without work. But here’s a statement I want you to write down. You get closer to God by agreeing with God about your value. You get closer to God by agreeing with God about your value. You see, you look at yourself the way God sees you. Not the way you see you or the way other people see you.

You may feel this morning you’re the most worthless, useless, helpless individual there ever has been on the planet earth and God sees you of great value, greater value than the whole world. Think of all the sure, the gold, the diamonds, everything that’s in value in this world And God says, your soul is worth more than this world. That’s how valuable you are in God’s eyes. So you need to know that. Another statement that I want you to write down, but this is one that I was thinking about, learning how to do maintenance in rush our traffic of life.

You see, it’s one thing to trust Christ as Savior. You know you have eternal life. You know you’re going to heaven when you die. We study the Word of God so that we’ll know how to maintain our walk with God, not just to start, but maintain the walk. It’s one thing to start a race. It’s another thing to finish the race. You buy a house, gonna have to do maintenance work. This church got maintenance work. We’re always doing maintenance work.

When it comes to yourself, do you have the spiritual intellect, the knowledge on how to evaluate a situation. Can you examine your own life? And if you examine your own life and you see something that’s wrong, do you have the spiritual maturity how to fix it yourself between you and God? Now that’s growing in the Lord and a lot of people they have no clue on how to maintain that walk with the Lord. And yet it’s the most important thing you’ll ever do in this life.

So you study the Word of God so that you might know the will of God. I know this. Sometimes you can examine yourself and see, I got a call. But you might want to go to the doctor and he might tell you, you’ve got pneumonia, we’ve got about a week to live. You see, there’s other people who can diagnose better than what sometimes you can. And so whenever you’re gonna examine your own life, remember the Word of God can examine you better than you can on your own.

That’s why the Lord pales us about seeking counsel. Other people who might be able to help us. It’s like going to the doctrine he says, you’ve got cancer in your kidneys. Well, I’m going to get me a second opinion. Okay, it’s in your lungs. Well, you probably meant you want to get another doctor to give another opinion. Not just a guess that whatever might be the wrong. Have you ever noticed that sometimes they call it the practice and you wish they were experts and knew what they were doing, but they’re practicing on you?

And well if that don’t work, try this. Oh if that didn’t work well let’s just try this. Oh if that didn’t work, well let’s try this. And you think they cannot always accurately diagnose a situation. But see this is why you learn the Word of God because when you study the Word of God or you come to church on Sunday morning, Sunday night, or Wednesday night, you are being examined by the Word of God. It’s seeing things in your life that you don’t see and to try to reveal to you and convict you of areas you might need to correct.

So spiritual examination by the Word of God is the best examination you’ll ever have. But But you’d be surprised as we get older in life how many times we go to the doctor. And you’d be surprised how big our medicine cabinets has grown. Where you used to be able to just open it up and all you had in there was your razor and you know the shaving cream. Now you’ve got a whole cabinet here and you’ve got another cabinet over there and they’re all filled with prescription drugs.

Because we’re always trying to solve this problem, this solves this problem, this is this problem, this solves this problem and we’re always trying to solve these problems. But nobody checks themselves. How are you doing spiritually? Yesterday I was with a friend of mine, Jeff Wales, over there in Fort DeSoda. And anyway, he came to the conclusion that after what the doctor said, he’s only got a few days to live. So he wanted to have people come over and we could be with him and we had a great time.

But see, that’s because he’s already had some evaluation made. Somebody explaining this. Now God could override, we know that. And so this is thing called hope, a living hope, the value of hope. Look there in your notes, I want you to understand the word hope, a desire of some good accompanied with at least a slight expectation of obtaining it, or a belief that it is obtainable. In other words, whatever, what are you hoping for? What do you really want?

Do you have your hope in the Lord? Now in the Old Testament, the word hope would be translated as trust throughout most of the places, but it is used in the Old Testament, the word hope, but it’s also the confidence, it’s the trust that you have in the living God. And so there’s things in life that happens to us and there’s might be hope. You hope that you’ll be able to see your grandkids again and you hope that you’ll be able to get that raise you hope.

But it may not be based upon anything that’s the credentials, the evidence, the foundation that would demand your hope. But when you take God and God be in God and He makes promises and we put our hope in what God says, we can know that it will be fulfilled. So we often say that hope is the knowing that what God has promised He will perform. It’s a joyful anticipation of what the Lord has promised that He will fulfill it.

And you had that confidence. Now I could say this morning. I’m going to heaven when I die. My hope is in what God said. But what God said is truth and it’s the evidence. It’s all the evidence I need because God cannot lie. So I can say I’m going to heaven and my hope is in the Lord because I know what the Word of God says. So my hope, joyful anticipation of something that God promises is going to be fulfilled.

Now in life, sometimes we hope that maybe the husband will get off his drinking, or the kids will get away from drugs, or they…you name it, there’s always this hope, but it’s not a hope that’s based upon clear evidence that it will be true, because you see, people can let you down. Things can fail, But God’s word never fails. And that’s why he says, cursed is the man who put at his confidence or his trust in man. But blessed is the man who put at his trust or his hope in the Lord.

Look at the next statement. Hope differs from wish and desire in this that it implies some expectation of obtaining the good desire or the possibility of possessing it. Hope therefore always gives pleasure or joy, whereas wish and desire may produce or be accompanied with pain and anxiety. When we talk about the hope, there is a joyful anticipation. In other words, what we are talking about with hope is that we want it to take place. We desire it to take place because we know it’s based upon what God’s word says and the promise of the Lord and we look toward that end.

Number two, they’re in your notes. Confidence in a future event, the highest degree of well-founded expectation of good as a hope founded on God’s gracious promises, a scriptural sense, a well-founded scriptural hope is the source of happiness. In Psalms 23, Psalms 23, where David made this statement, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. Now, sometimes we do not see things that happen in our life as things that are good. We see things that are coming down the road and they don’t look good.

we wish we could run away from it, or we didn’t have to face them. And doesn’t leave us with much hope. But David says, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me. It’s many times after I have lived for 55 years, knowing the Lord is my savior, I faced a lot of things that I thought was really a bitter experience, sad times, devastating. But now that I’ve got further down the road and I can look back and I can see the goodness and the mercy of God has followed me.

It was before me and it was happening at the time, but my perspective was not the same. I can see how God has blessed how he was leading and how he was guiding and how he was blocking and doors that he closed. And today I thank the good Lord for having such mercy. So David says goodness and mercy shall follow me. There’s experiences You’re going to go through this day and maybe this week or maybe next week that will not be good Experiences and you see no good in it But on down the road you can see how good God has been to you and God may has blessed you more than you know But you just don’t see it at this time But believing that goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life because you’re talking about the Lord is my shepherd.

If he’s my shepherd, I shall not want. One for what? If he’s your shepherd, your shepherd will lead and take care of you. Believe that. The next statement number three, the hope of Israel is the Messiah. Means the trust of Israel is the Messiah. The Lord will be the trust of his people, the hope, George III. It means to place confidence in to trust in with confidence expectation of good. Let me ask you this, do you really, truly believe in a good God?

Do you believe God is good? If you can believe that God is good and God is not evil, then God cannot do wrong to you. If God is a good God and He is a perfect God and Jesus says there is none good but one and that was God. God is good and God is God and if God is good. That he doesn’t allow all these bad evil things to happen to us without a purpose for building that Christian character in our life.

God can use every bitter thing you and ever I go through because God knows what he’s trying to make out of our lives. So remember that. Number four there in your notes. A belief that amounts to certainty, a hope that’s based upon evidence that gives you a certain security, This is truth and this will happen because it’s based upon the word of God. God promised. So my hope, my blessed hope is in the Lord. Look at the next statement.

Number five, I’ve said this many, many times to cherish the expectation or a belief that it is obtainable. In other words, God has promised me a home in heaven. Can I know positively, assuredly, secured home in heaven, can I expect to receive that? Yes, I can. Why? Because it’s based upon me earning it? Because he promised. And God can not lie. So my hope, this joyful anticipation of attaining that which God promised is as rock solid as can be.

And I can live now with the joy of my new home that I’m going to get. It’s not, well, I hope I get it. I hope I hope I hope I hope I hope. No, it’s an assured thing. Let me go to the next statement. In the book of Job in chapter six, I want you to take your Bible and turn to the book of Job. The book of Job in chapter six, a few verses that we’ll look at while we’re there in the book of Job.

Job was a man who had a, well, he had a rough day. He’d lost an awful lot. He lost 10 kids in one day. He’d lost the confidence of his wife. She lost confidence in the Lord. She says, Joe, why don’t you just curse God and die? And he lost all of his health. He lost his wealth and he lost his servants. He lost his animals. He lost so much. And yet he maintained his integrity. says, God give it in the Lord, take it away, blessed be the name of the Lord.

So he was having a rough day. And he also had some friends who came to see him and they had some things that they were off just a little bit in their judgment. But here in the book of Job in chapter six, look what he says here in verse 11, what is my strength that I should hope? My strength in me, what is my strength that I should hope? In other words, when you don’t see how you are going to do something and you don’t know a way out and you don’t know how to handle something.

Where is your hope? Is it in you? Then you can have a false hope, a hope that’s not built upon something that’s stabilized because see your strength isn’t always there. You can’t always make things happen the way you want to. He says, what is my end that I should prolong my life? What do I have to live four. And this is what Job was talking about. He said, I don’t have the will, the desire to go on. And this is what he was talking about.

And he had some friends who came to see him and lo and behold, they were telling, it’s because you got this in your life and that in your life and so forth like it. And he knew it wasn’t true. And so there was a price that he would have in the pay. Now look there in Job chapter 7 and verse 6. Job chapter 7 verse 6, just right across the page here. Look what he says. When he talks about his flesh in the previous verse, but look at verse 6, my days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle and are spent and you ought to underline these two words in your Bible without hope.

When you live your days and it It seems like there’s no hope. Is it because you’ve got your eyes off the Lord? Because you keep your eyes on the Lord, there’s always hope. It’s when you take your eyes off the Lord and I don’t have the strength to carry on. I don’t know how I’m gonna handle this or how I’m gonna face this. And as we get older, some of us, we’re gonna have more problems than we’ve ever had in the life.

We think we know now how to handle them. Yeah, right. When you get older, we’re professional warriors. We’ve really learned how to do a good job now. And then look what he says in verse seven. Oh, remember that my life is wind. Mine I shall no more see good. In other words, he’d already come to the conclusion, I’ll never say anything good anymore. It’s the end of it all. And when you read the last chapter in the book of Job, God giving him everything back.

You see, that’s how he felt at the moment. But later on, lo and behold, he was able to look back and say, surely, goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life. And he saw that all these things that happened to him was good because he was able to use them. Look how many people have been helped and so blessed because Job went through this experience and wrote it in a book. you and I can find out some things we never would have understood.

God doesn’t have to always tell us everything that’s going to happen. Look there in Job chapter 14. Job chapter 14 and look at verse 19. Job 14 verse 19, now some of us have seen the power of water and what it can do. He says, the waters wear the stones but Now that’s going to be pretty powerful. The consistency of water running over rocks can knock off sharp edges and smooth the stones. Thou washes away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth.

Thou destroyed the hope of man. Thou destroyed the hope of man. When man puts his confidence in the wrong thing. When man puts his trust in the wrong thing, God can destroy the things you trust in. Remember, here’s God and here’s you. And anything you put between you and God, God is a jealous God and God can reach up there and pull that right out of there. Because God doesn’t want anything to come between you and him. He’s a jealous God.

And he wants to be more in your life than anything else. Christ even put it this way, if you don’t love me more than mother and father and brother and sisters, he says, you cannot be my disciple. You can’t walk with me. In other words, you’ve got to love me more than anything else in this whole world. And those are hard things for us to understand. But now, look there in verse 19 of chapter 14 when he also says in verse 20, Thou prevail us forever against him and he passes.

Thou changes his countenance and sendeth him away. His sons come to honor and he knoweth it not. They are brought low, but he perceives it not of them. For his flesh upon him shall have pain and his soul within him shall mourn. God says there’s the problem that people have because these bodies we can’t trust them. Our mind, we can’t trust it. Even our own love that we have and our perception, the perspective that we have on life, it’s not the same as God because God says, your thoughts are not my thoughts and your ways are not my ways.

My thoughts are higher than yours and my ways are higher than yours. God wants to not put us down for how far we’ve come, but he wants to reveal to us how far we need to go. How much closer you can be to the Lord. How much greater your hope in the Lord can be, your confidence and your trust in the Lord it can be. And it can be. Look at the next statement, we’ll just read it here out of your notes in Job 17, 15, and where’s now my hope?

As for my hope, who shall see it? Not from his friends, not from his friends, because he had some friends and they gave him no comfort. They gave him no hope. And what they gave him was bad advice. You can read that. But here in Job chapter 27, I want you to see this. Job 27, Job 27, and look there in verse 8. Job 27 and verse 8. And we’ll go down to a few of these verses. He says in verse 8, for what is the hope of the hypocrite, though he had gained when God takes away his soul.

You believe there’s a lot of people that are never trusted Christ’s Savior, that are religious but lost, putting their hope and their good works to get them to heaven, and when they die, when God takes away their soul, what a shock is going to be. To find out they were trusting in the wrong thing. He says, will God hear his cry when trouble cometh upon him? Will he delight himself in the Almighty? Would he always call upon God? I will teach you by the hand of God that which is with the Almighty.

Will I not conceal? And he goes on down here and says some things that we need to be aware of. But I want you to also know there in chapter 29, look in chapter 29. 29 talks about the things that Job had done. And he says, I did all these things. I worked so hard. I was so faithful. God, why did you allow all this to happen? So he says, here in verse 15, I was eyes to the blind and feet was eye to the lame.

I was a father to the poor and the calls which I knew not, I searched out. And I break the jaws of the wicked and plucked the sprawl out of his teeth. Then I said, I shall die in my nest and I shall multiply my days in the sand. They thought I was going to die. like my little nest egg set up and I’m ready to retire and everything’s gonna be wonderful. And then it seemed like his whole world, his whole world fell apart.

Now, as you go through and you study all these things that happened, Job, it makes you want what? What? What? the world could happen to me. And yet, He said it one time when He was low in His life, I have no hope. I have no hope. But I want you to find out there is. Look there in your notes there to Psalms 31. You see, God does not want us to put our confidence in our hope in things that will not suffice.

You may put your confidence and trust in money. You can put it all in your husband. He might fail you. You can put it in your wife and she might fail you. You can put it in your kids and your kids may fail you. You see we’re human. We don’t always say and do everything we’re supposed to do. But God never fails. And that’s why you’re to put your calmness, your trust in the Lord. Here in Psalms he says, be of good courage and he shall strengthen your heart all ye that hope or trust in the Lord.

Isn’t that a good verse? That’s a great verse. Look at the next one. Psalm 71 and verse 5, for thou art my hope, oh Lord God, thou art my trust from my youth. The next one in verse 14 of Psalm 71, but I will hope the word continually you ought to circle that word. I will continually and will yet see the result of you putting your confidence and your trust and you really believe it is that you can go ahead and praise God now for what he’s going to do.

He hasn’t had to have done it yet, but you believe him and you trust him and it doesn’t matter what happens to you in life, what happens is how you handle it, how you respond to it. Everybody’s going to go through pretty much the same kind of problems we all do and we’re all going to live and we’re going to die. Put your compass and your trust in the Lord. Don’t put it in you. Don’t put it in the preacher.

Don’t put it into church, put it in the Lord. The Lord will not fail you. Look at the next statement, Proverbs 11-7, When a wicked man died, his expectation shall perish and the hope of unjust men perish him. Because when you trust in the wrong thing and you can have all the dreams that you want, but when you die, that’s the end of it. You can’t carry out any more of your wishes, of your desires, of your dreams. It’s all over.

And so this is why I put your come to your trust in Lord and serve Him. And when you get to heaven, it doesn’t stop. It’s just a continuation. I was talking to him yesterday. I said, whenever a man man this life and we go to be with the Lord in heaven, heaven is just one long eternal life. There’s no night there. We all get to heaven the same day. Isn’t that good? I like that. 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, then 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 Register of Bob Gilbert at 8502275325. That’s 8502275325. 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.