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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.

Tonight’s message is a light message. You know, you go get pain cage and get the heavy syrup heavy syrup or you can get light syrup. This doesn’t have a lot of calories in it. So this is, this would be, you can eat this all day long and it won’t, you won’t gain weight. All right? Are y’all happy? Look at me and give me a big smile. I want to look at everybody. I want a big smile out of you.

All right. Has everybody smiled on me today? All right, Tom, Tom, when’s the last time you got a good woman? All right, let’s turn in our Bibles to the book of James, a book of James. Every once in a while I kind of like getting a little few things out of the book of James. Tonight, I just want to talk to you about what is your life? And there’s a few things that God has said about life that we need to always be cognizant of it.

Realizing that it’s not long. It was just the other day I was born. And here I am now getting old. And it won’t be long before I’ll be checking out of here. And you know that song we just sing? I’ll meet you on the other shore or something like that, whatever it was, somebody in heaven. That song was long time ago, it was at least three minutes ago. And but here in the book of James in chapter four, I went to look in verse 13, verse 13, because this is a lot about how we do things and plan things.

Go to now, ye that say, today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, continue their a year and buy and sell and get gain. Whereas you know not what shall be on the moral, for what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time, then vanishes away. for that you ought to say, if the Lord will, we shall live and do this or that. But now you rejoice in your boastings. All such rejoicing is evil.

Therefore do him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not to him it is sin.” Some good verses. And it kind of helps us to realize that James is a book about us living for the Lord, serving. And that this is what we should do, and there’s things in here about looking into the Word of God and doing what we are supposed to do with one another. So there’s things to watch out for, and the rebuke of the tongue, and all these things that are mentioned, and he says there’s fighting among you, and all these things, because you get your eyes off of something.

Christians can so easily get distracted by other things. I often have that half on one, I’m driving on the road. You can get into a trance and you’re looking straight, but after a while your eyes get glazed and you can’t even see the road and you’re looking straight at it. And then there’s other people who are driving and they’re everywhere. And they’re driving wherever they look. Now Betty knows that wherever I look to, I turn the wheel to her.

And she says, yeah, yeah. I don’t know why, but I do. Yay! Scared to death. I just get back on the road. Because, you know, I won’t even think about it. And if I go to turn the radio on, I turn, I turn. And so you’re not supposed to do that, but I just, there’s something to bother this thing. Now nobody’s gonna ever wanna ride with me. But you know you gotta keep your eyes on the road, but if you get into a trance, you’re not gonna see all the beauty.

somebody says slow down yank Smell the roses. You don’t have somebody saying, stop and smell the rose. I did one time and a beast on the nose. So I don’t do that anymore. But here in the book of James, it’s one good key out of these verses that life is uncertain. We don’t know how long we have. Wouldn’t it be neat if you knew, well, I don’t know if it would or not. What if you knew exactly how long you had to live?

Would that be frustrating? Would it be encouraging or discouraging? Or what? It’s better not to know. I think it’s just better not to know. But anyway, look at the first thing I wrote down here. Scripture always speaks about the brevity of life. And doesn’t say that it’s how long it’s so long, it’s the brevity of life. It’s like a smoker, it’s like a vapor. It’s here for a little while and you’re gone. But that’s what God says. Now, I guess in relationship to eternity, that’s not very long.

I look at 75 or 76, you know, whatever. And that’s a long time. And yet it’s just, happened so fast. And there’s some things that I have done in my life and I want us to look at a few things that maybe you have done in your life. Look at the next statement. There’s only one step between me and death. It makes one think of eternity. The uncertainty of life should make us think about things that are really important because we know we are not going to live here forever.

So we ought to try to find out what’s the most important things to do and do that. And to believe the right things and to guard your testimony, guard your life. But sometimes that works with people, sometimes it doesn’t work with people. Some people say, this is the only life I’ve got and I’m going to enjoy it while I can. And then they go wild. The next statement, we do not know what tomorrow may bring forth. Now you know some ideas about things, if you’ve lived long enough, you know that certain things are going to happen, but there’s no guarantee that any of those things will happen because you don’t know you’re going to be here tomorrow.

Do you have any guarantee anywhere in the Word of God you’ll be here tomorrow? Not any guarantees whatsoever. But we often say, and one of my slogans is you know everybody likes slogans, never do today what you can put off to tomorrow. Does that make sense? Oh, I think I got it backwards. Always do today what you shouldn’t do tomorrow. No, that’s not right. Never put off tomorrow what you can do today. Oh, I think I suppose you can do it, something like that.

I got warned over here to help me out. He’s brilliant in those areas. Look at the next statement. A man who is nanny may recall all of the past, but it cannot predict tomorrow. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve lived, you cannot know with certainty what’s going to take place. And God wants us to know this, because you’d be surprised how many times we worry about tomorrow. It hasn’t got here yet. You’ve heard somebody say, don’t cross the bridge until you get to it.

Don’t cross the bridge until you get to it. Well, how can you cross the bridge if you haven’t got to it yet. Well in your mind you already have projected yourself on the other side of the bridge and all of its problems. What you haven’t got there yet or you have to say, well cross the bridge when we get there. We’ll cross the bridge when we get when that time comes and you have then you can think about that.

So there’s some things that are little why statements here and there, but we got to realize that life is uncertain. I am so thankful that at least my father-in-law reached me when at least he reached me. That would be better not being reached at all. But I would have loved to have been reached a lot younger because I realized now I almost died a lot of times before I ever got to be 18 years old. I mean, I could have very easily have been killed so many times.

But I’m thankful that God allowed me to live and by the grace of God I trust is my Savior. And Dale back here this morning, he says, and in amazing, when you think about where you came from and what you’re doing now, I say, yes, if my dad didn’t know what I’d done, he’d probably turn over in his grave. Now, a lot of people say that and so forth. But my mom and dad, as far as I know, when I was going to, they didn’t know the Lord.

never talked about the Lord. So there was a span of life there for 18 years that I never heard anything about the Lord. I had a lot of catching up to do. And I didn’t have anybody at that time except my father-law. We only, it was him for just a small period of time. None. I wish I had somebody else that was, you know, were just like me that we could have gotten together and talked and encouraged and done something.

But there was nobody telling me what to do. I didn’t even know there were Bible colleges. I didn’t know there was other churches except that one that I was in, and that was at Northside Baptist Church in 1960 to 1962, and then me and Betty left. And I would never dream that I’d ever gone back there and become the pastor of that church for 15, 16 years. I didn’t know. But yet, the time that I was there, now we’re down here.

And I think, well, look who’s come out of that ministry up there. And John John and Trent and Justin and Tyler, and there might be some others, I don’t know, but there’s a bunch of people that did come out of that ministry. But now look at the next statement. Life is dependent. It means that we always have to depend on something. If we want clothes, we have to have money. So we have to depend on somebody to give us a job.

We’ve got to always work. You’ve got to have a place to live. You’ve got to have food. We’re dependent. Give us this day our yearly bread. Daily bread. We’re dependent upon something every day. Do you realize if God didn’t supply your next breath, what would happen to you? What if he only had enough air to last us one more breath? Oh, that would be terrible, wouldn’t it? But could he do that? Could he cut off all the oxygen? He could.

No, he could just stop the earth and let it fry on one side and freeze on the other side. He could do that. But God is a good God and an immerseful God. But life is dependent on God if the Lord will. God wants us to know that it’s not a sin to plan, but it’s a sin to plan your life without God because whatsoever is not a faith, it is sin. We’re supposed to do those things that we believe God would have us to do.

And if you don’t believe that what you’re doing is the will of God, then you don’t have the faith that it’s God’s will. And so, a sit, you should try to study God’s word and see, am I in harmony with the Word of God? Now, there’s probably a lot of things that are sinful in God’s eyes that we don’t consider it that way. Because we can, time and time, we put it in categories and we don’t think that’s as bad as the other.

And so there’s some light sins and there’s some darker sins and there’s some white sins. You ever heard of a, it was a white lie. You ever told a white lie? I mean, you wouldn’t tell a white lie, but you would tell a white lie, right? All right. Now, in God’s eyes, I don’t know if he’s, goes about color. I don’t know. But look at the next statement. It is not a sin to plan, but it is a sin to plan without God.

That’s what these verses are talking about. We’re going to go into such a city and we’re going to do this and this and this and we’re going to get gained. God says, maybe you will, maybe you won’t. Because there’s somebody else that’s in charge of life. And God can let us make decisions, but we can always tell what’s going to be the consequences of those decisions. We can plan, but it may not be the right thing to plan. depending upon yourself, your own skills, talent, abilities, knowledge, all those things, God is going to do a work.

Now if we get time to come back to Daniel chapter 4, never can measure his prize. It takes the whole chapter, but it deals with this. And God had to deal with him very harshly because he looked at this great kingdom that I have done. Look at my majesty. Look how great I am and the Lord made a nut out of him to go away, thinking process, and he wound up in the field like a maniac. Anyway, it only took seven years for him to learn a lesson.

Now, some people learn faster than that. Some people live and learn, never learn. Now, to get this, life is accountable. Now, what we mean by that is that there is a purpose to life. There is a plan to life. There’s something going on. If we were just accidents, then of course, there’s no purpose to it. You just do whatever you want to do. Nothing matters. Nothing matters. But this little statement I wrote here, what, soever, will be, will be, is wrong thinking.

And it’s the will of God. Everything happens to the will of God. No, it’s not. There’s people are going to go to hell, and that’s not the will of God. There’s people that are Christians and are rebellious, and that’s not the will of God. Not everything is the will of God. And so God has grieved at times. He has rat at times. So no, God doesn’t get his way on everything because he gave us a will to choose, the ability to think freely of coercion or the force of anything outside of ourself.

We can freely make decisions. And there are consequences to our decisions. No purpose, nothing matters is wrong thinking. But do we do this sometimes? Like, well, it doesn’t matter. Who cares? It’s my life. I’ve heard a little bit of everything. I guess at times in my life I’ve said the same thing. I mean I’m no angel. I’ve got a sinful nature like everybody else and if it hadn’t been for verses in the Bible kind of pulling you back, pulling you back.

There were restraints upon you. And you think a lot of things but sometimes aren’t you glad that you live long enough not to have done all the things you thought about? Aren’t you glad that not everybody knows all the things you did? Aren’t you glad that nobody knows what you said? thought about. Isn’t that wonderful? Just knowing that nobody knows what I thought. And then you think, well God knows, oh I hope we don’t tell. Hope we don’t tell.

Hope we don’t tell. Look at the next statement. There is a divine purpose. God has a plan and everything matters. You see either everything matters or nothing matters. It’s got to be one way or the other. Has it ever occurred to you that nothing has ever occurred to God. Don’t you like that statement? In other words, you just got yourself in a jam and you don’t know what to do. You’re frustrated and it never occurred to God that was going to happen.

God didn’t know that. And God really loved us and He knows everything that is going to happen to us. He knows what people are going to say and what they’re going to do. And He may not stop them. He loves you to let you simmer a while. Stute for a while. He doesn’t always immediately open the door that you want them to open. He doesn’t always close the door. You want Lord, if you want me to go through this door, open it.

And he doesn’t, like God, did you hear what I said? I mean, I spoke, you’re supposed to jump. And it’s like nothing happens. God will let you make decisions. And God will also make you, let you make wrong decisions. See, what we want to do is blame God if I made the wrong one. It was God’s fault because I asked him for the wisdom. He didn’t give it to me. Well, he gives it to you when you ask in faith and you’re patient and you wait for it.

Did you wait for the answer or you just take things in your own hands? Jump the gun, it’s possible. Look at number four, a look at the past of your life. What do you see? All right, I’m say 76 years old. I look back over my life, what do I see? Do I see accomplishments? Do I see accomplishments? Do I see any failures? Do I see any guilt? Do I see a lot of undone things that I wanted to do and never did?

As there are places I wanted to go and I never got to go. As you look back upon your past of your life, does it bring joy, guilt, shame? What do you think about? Because see, somewhere along the line, this is you. This is your life. I remember years ago they had a TV broadcast. This is your life. And they would bring in somebody and they would say, this is your life. And they’d bring up some of your brothers as to they have a thing in 40 years or some parent or a grandparent or something like that.

Somebody was really important and shocked them that they were there. and they had whatever you ask for, you could get and all that kind of stuff. I used to love watching that. I even saw one they called, who wants to be a millionaire? Remember the guy walked around and he would give a million dollars away? I mean, they literally did it. Who wants to be a millionaire? And of course, if I said, me, me, me, me, me. Well, there’s a lot of things that gets us to the place where we should not be comfortable, where we are and what we’re doing and so far.

And yet God said, be content with whatsoever you have, wherever you are, but we’re not always content. We always want more. That’s just something like that’s the nature of man to want more, do something else, be adventure some, you know, and we don’t like to be bored. We want something happening, something exciting. And so this takes a whole lifetime to figure out and by the time you finally figured it out, life’s over. It’s kind of like playing golf. By the time I get to the 16th hole, I finally figured out what I’m doing wrong.

And only got two holes left to play. That is so frustrating. And now I wonder why can’t I start off the way that I ended up? It just seemed like it doesn’t work that way. But look at the next statement. No purpose, nothing matters, is wrong thinking. But you look at your past. What do you see, accomplishments? How does it make you feel? Who are they for? Whatever you did. Who did you do it for? Did you do it for yourself?

Did it leave you empty? How would you feel that you are right now in your life? Are you satisfied that you’re doing what God wants you to do? Are you right now? Are you where you believe God wants me to be? In your maturity things you’ve done, your accomplishment, or there are a lot of things in the past that really cause you a lot of grief. Even though you think about them and brings it up, if they meant, I wish I had never done that.

I wish I had never done that. Has there ever been like there’s somebody playing ping pong inside back and forth, you know, and just, you’re so unsettled. And there’s things like that that can happen to us where people, we live in a sinful world, we have a sinful body and it’s a crooked and perverse generation that the Bible talks about. This is why it’s gonna be so good when we finally get to heaven and all this is over with.

Because God is promised He’s going to deliver us one day from all of this, because we’re not going to be able to solve all these problems. Regard us how long you and I live, and regardless of how holy righteous you try to live. Not everything seems like it works out. There’s problems. There’s persecution. We talked about that in our son’s school class this morning. There’s persecution. Those who live God who will suffer persecution. But as you look back over the life, are you glad you did what you did?

There’s There’s a good decision and there’s bad decision. Now from this point on, remember, if you’re looking back at your life and you see a lot of failures and things like that and you try to figure out, no, my future that’s out there ahead of me, it’s gonna be a determinable of what I’m doing now. Cause 10 years from now I’ll be looking back on this time. I told Betty, I said, you realize we’ve been here almost nine years, a few more months, nine years.

seemed like I just showed up. Like I just came down here. Because of course I never, I don’t know how you’re supposed to look at things, but you know, I feel like I’m just temporary. But in reality, we’re all temporary. And we don’t know how long we’re gonna be here. But God is working in our lives. And despite of all the things that goes on, we live in a wicked world and we have problems. But look at the next statement, a look at your present.

This present time today, where you are right now, do you feel a loss, you’ve like you’ve lost your way? And there’s people who like, they’ve gone astray from the Lord. There’s a song we sing called, Wasted Years, Wasted Years. And I have preached in different places, and I’ve had people say, you know, I just feel so ashamed that I’ve wasted so many years. I knew the Lord, I went astray. And now I’m back, and I wanna serve the Lord.

And I got all these memories, I got these scars, and I’ve wasted so much of my life. I wish I had never wasted those years. And maybe if you think about it, don’t waste any more. You can’t go back and get, but you don’t have to waste any more. Because your future has been determined by your obedience to God today. Do you want to be able down the road at the end of life be able to look back and say, I have fought a good fight.

I’ve kept the faith. You can’t say that if you don’t do the things. You should always take a look at your life. How am I doing? This is my life. Look at the next statement. Are you totally confused? Are you discouraged? Think about where you are right now. Are you discouraged? Now, think of your mind. Why? What are you thinking about? Are you thinking about things you can change? Or then you can change it? Are you thinking about some things you can’t change?

If you can’t change, let it go. Do what you can and forget the rest. Leave that in God’s hands. Or you’ll drive yourself nuts. Because there’s people, you can’t change people. Only one you can change is yourself. I was going through some of my notes the other day and I found three pages of notes front and back, all those notes. And they were all on prayer. And the first time I preached that sermon on prayer, it was three and a half hours long.

I appreciate it. Call the Bible Church a long time ago. And I’ll at least stand for, took over for the Bible, called it, had me come down and he says, I want you to see. And I was gonna be on a Wednesday night. He says, we need prayer. We need prayer. So I thought this sermon would be good. And I told him, I said, it’s gonna be done after the evening service and I’ll be speaking. And so they had to call the students there and it was full.

And it was on a Wednesday night. And I preached that sermon. I told him I said that morning I said it’s a long sermon. So I really cut it down. I trimmed it down to it was only two and a half hours. But it was a sermon on prayer. And I said one of the things we do is like the flashlight. We shine the flashlight on what we want to pray about. Whatever you want to pray about, you got to focus in on it.

Shine that flashlight on whatever it is. And then you pray about it. Then you take the flashlight and you turn it over and look at yourself. yourself. Now how can I be used of God to answer that prayer? I said, because sometimes God reveals things to you, let’s you see things that needs to be done, then expect you to turn the flashlight over and says, what are you going to do about it? You see, when you’re really concerned about reaching the lost, turn it back over to yourself.

Now what are you going to do? Somebody needs to help and acquire. What are you going to do? Somebody helps in the nursery and the youth group and the Oana. What are you going to do? So you’re always trying to find out, am I just trying to stir up problems? Am I really concerned? Did I really pray that God will be done? Well then don’t I want God to use me if it’s possible and do whatever I can do?

Because it doesn’t take much to say, you know, this is what you ought to do. You ought to be involved. You ought to do this and you ought to do this and you ought to do that and you walk out and never do anything. Boy, we ought to really support the college kids. We ought to take and send some kids to camp. We ought to have some scholarships for this and scholarship for that. We ought to have money for the radio broadcast, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You all ought to get involved, but not me. You don’t do nothing but boy, I want everybody else to do it. Should you do what you expect others to do, to do what you can do and maybe you can’t do a lot of things, But you’ll always have to remember the little flashlight illustration. When he says, pray the Lord of the harvest that he’ll send forth labors into the vineyard. You pray the Lord of the harvest. And then the very next verse, he sent them out.

You pray for the Lord of the harvest, he’ll send forth labors into the field. And then he sent them. But anyway, look at the next statement. What about your vision? Do you have a vision right now? This day, are you encouraged or discouraged? How are you looking at life? How are you looking down the road of what do you want God to do with you? What would you like to do for the Lord? What would you want to accomplish?

Or you just see yourself as a, well, I’m going to fail anyway, so it’s no sense trying. I can’t do this. I can’t do that. And you’re building wall of bricks or rangers of I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. And after a while, you’ll build yourself a little prison. And you’ve got to live in your little prison. You can’t do anything. You can’t go anywhere. You can’t be nothing because you have bocked yourself in. Well, I can’t I can’t and God says you can see all these I can’t Is just because there’s a lie behind it somewhere But when you believe the truth the truth is I can I can I can and the way you dispel the lie is by believing the truth and the truth will set you Free out of this prison that you would build for ourselves Look at the next statement

Number six, a look at the future will be determined by the things you do in the present. Your future is being determined by your obedience to the Lord today. Your future is being determined by your disobedience to the Lord today. Whether you obey the Lord or you disobey the Lord determines what’s going to happen you down the road. Whether God blesses you or has to chasing you or take you home before your time. So your future is being determined by your obedience to God today or by your failure to obey the Lord.

Very important. This is your invitation to join us for our third Sunday dinner held in the Florida Bible College of Tampa building on the Calvary Community Church Campus. The dinner is a family-style, covered dish dinner, and a great way to showcase your favorite dish and pick up new recipes. Each month, you have the opportunity to invite your family and friends to join us for our Sunday morning service at 1030, and then stay for our third Sunday dinner immediately following noon.

Third Sundays at Calvary Community Church, where you’ll be fed spiritually and physically. Thanks for joining us on Bibleline. If you are in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. And now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound, and we will be changed. 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.