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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 concluding message of this teaching will be a blessing to you and your family.

Living by grace means living according to what God did for me. I do for somebody else, else because now I’m representing God. I’m his child in this world. So this is what he said, now looking verse 13 of chapter two, looking for that blessed hope. So while we’re here in this present world, I’m supposed to live with my eyes looking for the blessed hope, not the blessed tribulation, the blessed hope. That’s Christ coming back. And he says this, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.

Here in verse 11, He’s talking about grace, and then here in this verse, He’s talking about good works. So the grace of God is to produce in us good works, did not the grace of God produce in God and in His Son the good work that was needed to save our soul. So we’re saved by works, but not ours. We’re saved by work, but we’re saved by His work, not ours. Please understand that. Somebody can go out here and say, Jake, say you’re saved by works.

hours the work of Christ. And so therefore, he says, this is what he wants us to do. Now, take your Bible and turn very quickly over to the book of Romans and chapter four. Romans and chapter four. Romans and chapter four, you’ll notice that it makes the same statement here that I mentioned earlier about Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And a lot of the people in the Old Testament found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

In other words, they needed it and God saw it. God saw that you needed His grace. That means God saw that you needed to be gracious to you and give you some extra power, extra love and a little extra of this or whatever it is you need. Whatever grace can do, He’s going to give you a little bit extra because of what you’re going through and because you’re looking to Him and it’s amazing how many times in the Old Testament, you’ll find the word somewhere mingled in there.

The word humility or humble. Because when you’re humble, that means you’re dependent upon God to do. But when you feel with pride, it means that you’re going to do it and it has nothing to do with God. And so God hates the proud. He says, to resist the devil and he will flee from you. There are some people who do not resist the devil. And that’s why he has victory. But the devil doesn’t have to have victory. He says resist the devil.

The only way you can resist the devil is God says, you might need a little bit more grace. Little more grace. Because you’re gonna face different things every day. And so as you live your life live by grace, then you’re dependent upon the Lord to help you through this day. And there’s some Christians who, well, they don’t depend upon the Lord for anything. They’re filled with pride. I can handle it and do it myself. And they have no idea how far they have drifted from the Lord.

You see, living by grace is what keeps you close to the Lord. He says, if you will draw nigh unto me, I will draw nigh unto you. And I’ll show you that just a minute. But here in verse 1 of chapter 4, what shall we say then that Abraham, our Father, as pertaining to the flesh and see those two words, hath found. He found something. I lived for 18 years and I finally found the truth. My father-in-law explained the gospel to me and that I could be saved by faith in Christ alone.

That’s grace. God would be gracious to me. He went to the cross, paid for my sins, and somebody told me the good news. Now, I could either accept God’s grace or I can reject God’s grace. But when you accept God’s grace, you’re accepting God’s love. you reject God’s grace, you’re rejecting God’s love. I wanted God’s love. That’s why you’ll find in the book of 1 John in chapter 2, 3. He says, Beloved, now are we the sons of God, Beloved.

How do you become a Beloved? Let God love you. Let God love you. And then after you trusted Christ’s Savior, let God keep loving you. And you let Him keep loving you by cause your heavenly Father knows that you’re his child knows you have need and he delights in meeting our need. And so he allows things to come into our lives that kind of make you come a little closer. So you have all these problems in life, all the heartaches, these testings and trials and people turn against you and all the things that can happen.

All of us just to push you a little closer to the Lord so that you’ll humble yourself to the Lord for a little more grace. Now notice what he says he found. For if Abraham were justified by works, he asked where of the glory but not before God. For what’s if the scripture Abraham believed God? It was counted him for righteousness. Not at him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace but of death. He found grace. Abraham found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Now take your Bible and go back there to the book of James, the book of James. Now you know that we’ve studied before in chapter one and two and in chapter three talks about the tongue. In other words, sometimes somebody will come along and I remember I used to have to, and I don’t know why it always happened anyway, but when I was in school, it was always if a guy was walking down with two or three his buddies and I’m walking down the hallway this way, if you get too close, if your eyes make contact, you got to fight.

There’s going to be a fight. But it didn’t happen in life about it, but with me it was always, I got to fight. So I didn’t know when or how, but I know that sooner or later we’re going to have it out. And it did, it did. I never started a fight. I never called, ever started a fight. But I had to have fight all the time. This one I never got killed like, come close. But I wanted to try to kill a couple of kids.

And that’s just the truth. But it was me or them. And so somebody would finally break up and I had one guy he had my head underneath the water and he was trying his best to drown me. I’ve already then fought six. They would take turns. And I had fought six and now I was dead tired, I couldn’t move. And he had me. And it hadn’t been for a black boy named Melvin. He had to kill me. But later on the same kid, well he wound up falling off a tractor and the tractor ran over his head and killed him.

I still believe even back then God protected me. He had to because there was no reason for me to live in times that I’ve come so close to the death and it’s just a miracle that I’m alive in so I thank the Lord for that. But here in the book of James he’s talking about the things that can go on in your life and it’s amazing how much of this deals between a Christian and another Christian. Look what he says in verse 1, from whence come wars and fighting among you?

Come they not hence, even of your lust that war in your members? Now I want you to see a verse and then maybe you can connect the two because the very next book tells you I think a little bit about what we’re headed and explains a little bit better. First Peter chapter 2 and and look there in verse 11, 1 Peter chapter 2 and verse 11. And it says, “‘Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lust, which,” and you see that, “‘war against the soul.'”

There’s things, the fluffs of the flesh, you can fulfill the lust of the flesh, but they war against your soul. They will inflict you. It’s like choosing to accept a virus, that so corrupts your mind and it affects you and it can ruin your testimony. So you want to be careful of what you do. And I’ll go back there to chapter 4. Because he makes his statement there, in verse 1. From whence come wars and fighting among you? This is among God’s people.

It’s not talking about you and the lost people. Because most of your problems and your disagreement, because we live most of our time in our life in the world of Christ, the church, and the people that we know and meet. And so he says, come they not hence, even of your lust that war in your members, the lust, that means you still have the so sinful nature dwelling within you. God never changed that. In verse two, ye lust and have not, ye kill and desire to have and cannot obtain, ye fight and ye war, yet ye have not because ye ask not, ye ask and receive not because ye ask a miss that ye may consume it upon your lust.

In other words, you’ll see that there’s some verses here that looks like we’re talking about, maybe along the lines of spiritual adultery. In other words, the nation of Israel committed adultery in the sense that they took on other gods as their God instead of the true and living God. God is a jealous God. He doesn’t like to take second place. He doesn’t wanna be forsaken by his kids. He didn’t wanna be forsaken by the nation of Israel. And he always warned them not to accept the gods that were already in the land.

And that’s why when they got into the land that flowed with milk and honey, they were supposed to get all those people out of there. Plus their gods. Israel didn’t fully obey. It caused them problems down the road. It’s like given the devil a little piece of territory, he said, this house is mine, but the devil, you can have only the closet. Well, you think he’s going to be satisfied with just staying in the closet. No, he’s going to try to open the door and he’s going to try to come out and then next thing you know, he wants to live in room.

Then he wants to kitchen and he’s going to try to take every area of your life. That’s why you can’t give him any ground. No place to live. Now here in Booker James, he makes a statement here. Verse four, ye adulterers and adultresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is emmity with God. In other words, it’s like here’s God, and he loves you so much. And when you worship other gods, or you put something between you and God, as though it’s more important to you than God himself, it’s like the Holy Spirit lusteth to envy.

In other words, he loves you so much, He desired to the point of envying because he wants us so bad. And then to see his love for us and all that’s been done for us. And then we just so blindly just walk away from the Lord and fall in love with the world. See the one thing that God wants more than anything else in the world is he wants our love. And he has every right to expect us to love him because look what he has done for us.

The love of Christ constrainest us because we does judge that if one died for all, then all were dead and that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again. There’s a reason why we should love the Lord and if we love the Lord, then we shouldn’t love the world. But He says, here’s the world and you have become friends with the world. Spiritual adultery. So this is how God sees it.

We don’t necessarily see it that bad. Look what he says here. He says, do you think that the Scriptures say it in vain, the spirit that dwelt in us lust of to envy, the Holy Spirit that lives within us, lust of to envy. He’s envious of our love and our devotion. And when we fall in love with the things of this world, how it must hurt the Lord. That’s why there’s a struggle that you and I have as we go through life and every trial, every testing is because God wants you to know you can come to Him.

The world don’t have the answers. The world can’t give you grace. The world can’t not give you the strength and the glory that you need, the strength to pull away from it. But God says, you come to me. And I’ll give you a little a bit more grace where you can handle that. And he is envious of our love. He wants us to love him so much. Isn’t that what he did for us? And why he did what he did and going to the cross and paying for our sins?

So he says here in verse six, but he give us more grace, wherefore he saith God resisteth the proud. You see, the proud person said, I don’t need God. I mean, I’m glad thank you for your salvation. I really appreciate that, but I love this whole world. And I wanna take and just make it my God and I’m gonna do everything I can to satisfy the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.

I want to live for the things of this world and you can’t stop people from doing so. It’s what makes the preacher’s job so difficult. Wouldn’t it be everything? It would be so easy if all of God’s children loved the Lord. Wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t have to ask anybody to get involved in anything. Why? Because they’d want to if they loved the Lord. You wouldn’t have to ask people to sing and acquire the… Why did they want to? Why?

Because they love the Lord. You would have to ask them to help in ranch or to bring kids or to sing kids or give money for this or give them an event if they love the Lord. Their love for the Lord sees is missing. And God is envious when we love something else more than we love God who did so much for. What has this world done for us? What has Christ done for us? Now you tell me why can it make sense for God’s children to fall in love with the world And as Paul says, demons have left me because you have loved the present world.

I didn’t make that up. That’s actually in the Bible. So notice what he says here. There’s two kinds of people, those who will humble themselves before God. And as it says in the Old Testament and multitude of places, I’ll be covering a couple of messages on it. And I want to show it to you that they found grace and they humbled themselves. See, when you’re dependent upon the Lord and you’re trusting God, then you don’t have to worry because God’s going to give you a little extra grace because there’s a testing coming and you need some.

And there’s this problem and there’s those people and they said this and they hurt you here and God says, I know all about that. I’ve been hurt too. And I’m going to give you a little extra grace so that you can bear whatever comes against you. no reason for any of God’s children to ever burn out. There is none. There is no justifiable reason for any of God’s children to have burn out because He’s willing to give you more grace and that’s the strength and the power, the desire to do what needs to be done.

You can do it if you lean on Him and trust Him and but if you lift yourself up in pride and whatsoever and you let the the you can’t USL you can’t make it you’re gonna fall you can’t handle it you have a nervous breakdown not don’t think nerves breakdown I think it’s just sin rebellion against God because people are lifted up with pride but look what he says here verse six but he give us more grace and this is not to bePand this is the book of this talks about living by producing good works to doing what God wants us to do so that you can’t say I wasn’t able to do it.

God says He had enough grace for you and you can do it. So He says this, He give us more grace, wherefore He says God resisted the proud but give us grace unto the humble. Resist yourselves or submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” Remember this. Chapter four is the result if you fail to keep under control chapter three. And chapter three has to deal with the tongue and whatever is on the mind that tongue is going to speak.

And that’s why you’ll find all these things mentioned in chapter 3. And then it talks about the wisdom of God versus the wisdom of man. So just look there in chapter 3 very quickly where he says in verse 13, who is a wise man and is issued with or in due with knowledge among you? Let him show out of a good behavior, man of life, his works with the maintenance of wisdom. But if you have bitter, envying and strife in your hearts, glory not and lie not against the truth.

This wisdom to send if not from above, but is earth, actual and devilish. So there is the wisdom of the world and there is the wisdom of God. In verse 17, he says, but the wisdom that is from above, God is verse pure, It’s peaceable, gentle, easy to be understood, easy to be pleaded for, full of mercy, good fruits without partiality, without hypocrisy, and the fruit of… of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.” You see, you talk about the fruit of righteousness.

See in chapter 1 when he talks about be swift to hear. Slow to what? Slow to speak. Of man, worketh not the righteousness of God, but the wisdom of God can help the Christian produce the righteousness of God. And so that means you have to make it to your mind. Do you love the world? Or do you love God? If you love the Lord and you’ll submit yourself to the will of God, then God says He will exalt you.

But if you try to exalt yourself in pride, God’s going to let problems come your way. You cannot handle. And you will fall, and you will fall apart, and you will be filled with worry, and you won’t be able to sleep at night. Because all of those are the things that belong to the child of God that was lifted up in pride and said, I can handle it myself. There’s grace grace for every trial, grace for every mile, grace for every temptation, grace for everything.

And sometimes you have to go, there’s a place that God says you can go to get that. Was it Walmart? Where are you going to get this grace? There’s a special place you can go to get all that you need. Nobody knows where it’s found that time. Maybe it’s Walgreens. Walgreens? But where does it say this? Where does it say there ought to be a throne or place that you can go and get this grace? Where? Hebrews. Look at Hebrews chapter 4.

Hebrews chapter 4. Now you’ve already, right there in James, it’s just the very next book before that. But look in Hebrews chapter 4. Look there in verse 16. In verse 16, let us therefore come like cowards, like a bunch of wimps, boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help win whenever you need it. That means it’s open at all times. And his office is never closed. You don’t need email, you just need an email.

An email can get it for you and you can get it any time you want it. And that means all the grace that you need to bear whatever comes your way. And every one of us need a little bit more grace. Never have anybody hurt your feelings. You need a little grace to get over that. Because if you don’t get the grace, you’re going to get mad. You’re going to get bitter. And you’re going to want to strike back.

You want to get even. I’ll get even with them if it’s the last thing I do. You ever have anybody wrong yet? Defraud you? Does God know about it though? Then don’t worry about God knows about it. I told my daddy about it. My daddy gonna get you. I don’t have to get you. My daddy gonna get you. Sometimes somebody will pull the legs out from under you and man I tell you it’s just like falling. And it’s just, take your breath away.

I literally can’t take your breath away. This one little boy was fighting this bigger boy. Jack Haus was driving his car. He looked over there and so he saw this big boy beating up on this little boy. So he pulled his car to the side of the road. He was gonna go over there and that big boy done beat him down to the ground again and again. And that little boy just wouldn’t stay down. He just kept getting back up.

And that big boy just kept putting him down. Jack Hiles walked over there and tried to get a hold of that big old boy and pull him off of him. That little boy said, Oh, mister, please, mister, please don’t do this. Don’t stop this. I’m just getting my second win. I’m just getting my second win. He didn’t beat the tar out of him, but he said, let’s get in my second win. When you’re down and you know that grace is on the way, I’m going to get my second win here any minute.

Don’t give up. Don’t get mad at God. Don’t love the things of the world. Don’t replace God in your life. God is a jealous God. The Holy Spirit is envious. Because see the Holy Spirit lives inside of us and He wants us to love Him. He wants us to serve God. And He is envious, lust to envy this great burning desire. You know, I’ve often wondered like, no, how can I get a burning desire for serving the Lord or winning people.

And yet that’s exactly what the Bible says He has for us. A deep, burning desire for us to do the will of God. Hope all of that makes some sense. Look up here, this hand represents you and me. The wallet represents sin. We all have sin upon us, but God, He loves us. Well, He used to love you. Now that you’re saved, He doesn’t love you as much as He used to. What do you think? He still loves us?

And you need a little grace that you think you can go to the throne of grace and just in time of need. What do you need? Well, go to Him in telling. But God loves us, hates our sin. And the Bible says the wages of sin is death to pay for sin, is eternal separation from God. But God loves us, doesn’t want us to go to hell, wants us to go to heaven. And to go to heaven you have to be perfect, as righteous as God, and none of us are perfect.

sin, all comes short of God’s perfection. This hand represents Jesus Christ, He’s the Lord God in the flesh. He came into the world because He loved us. In spite of all those bad things we did, we mentioned while ago in the Titus in chapter 3 and verse 5 verses, and we was all of those things, all those bad things. And in lo and behold, but God, but God, because of His goodness, because of His kindness, He sent His Son into the world because God loves in spite of this.

He loved us. So Christ took all the sin, paid for it on the cross and came back from the dead. And He says, the only thing He wanted us to do is believe that He did it for us. You and I could be saved by grace. No human efforts whatsoever, not because we deserve it, but we found grace in the eyes of the Lord. We found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And He saved everyone who believe He did it for Him.

Grace then teaches us how to live. Let’s pray, shall we? It has bow nice clothes, no one looking to run. And if you’re watching by internet, understand that yes, God does really love you. And that He paid for all of your sins. And the only thing you have to do is the only thing you can do is believe that He did it for you. You see, if it is by grace, it has to be totally by grace. It can’t be partially by grace, or grace isn’t grace.

It’s totally free, and it does last forever, or it’s not grace. But right on the screen it says, yes, I’ll trust Christ as my Savior. If you understand what I’m saying, I’d like to know if what it, that it made sense in your trust Christ as your Savior, pray that you’ll do that. Father, we thank You again for Your blessings. Thank You for watching over us and meeting our needs. And Father, we ask Your blessings upon these prayer requests that we brought before You.

And we just want Your hand to be upon us. Bless this church. Bless us, Lord, in such a way that people cannot deny. God had to do that. God had to do that. Bless in our college and the camp coming. We can have everything that we need. You said to bring it before You, that’s what we’re doing. And we’re trusting. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen. Are you a new listener to Bibleline? Do you enjoy the teachings of Dr.

Arnold? Well, if you’ve never contacted us before, we want to give you Dr. Arnold’s book, The Gospel Driven Man. Every day we receive many emails from folks who have questions about repentance and salvation, about faith in works, and about how to share the Gospel with friends and loved ones. This book, The Gospel Driven Man, covers all those topics, and we want all new listeners of Bibleline to receive a free copy. There’s no obligation, no donation necessary, simply call us at 1-800-576-3771 or write to us and request your free copy of the Gospel-Driven Main.

The mailing address is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Again, don’t forget to include your mailing address, and God bless you and thank you for listening to Bibleline. Thanks for joining us on Bibleline. If you are in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 40-8-11 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.