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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.

Well, I thought I would give you a message tonight on faith faith and the face of fear. Now you may not know this, but everybody. Everybody lives with a certain amount of fear and we can’t get away from it. And I want you to take your notes, but turning your Bible to the book of Proverbs chapter 29, Proverbs chapter 29. And there’s just one verse I want to show you here and look there in verse 25 verse 25. The fear of man bringeth a snare, but who so puteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe.

In other words many a man has walked into a trap and I wrote a little statement down on my notes here, I believe most Christians forsake the Lord out of fear that the Lord will not give them the best. Because we all know we only get one life to live, one trip through, no reruns, no instant replays, just one trip through. And it’s hard for us to trust a God that we cannot see, to make the best decisions for me.

I’m here and I can see and I know what I want. I know what I want to do. I know what I want to be. So therefore, I can trust my judgment because I can see life and I can’t see God. How do I trust God? And so sometimes I think people believe that God is going to withhold the best from you. Why do you think it is when teenagers are underneath their parents’ rule? When they get old enough, become a Now you can get out on their own, they go wild.

Because they know their parents of hell back from them getting all that fun on the other side of the fence. And they just got to experiment and see what they’ve been missing out on. And they walk into a trap. And so many lives have been ruined, so many scars upon the people. Turn in your Bible to the book of Jeremiah, the book of Jeremiah. chapter 2, Jeremiah chapter 2, just a couple verses I wanted to run by first before we get into our notes there, but Jeremiah chapter 2.

And look in verse 13, I preached not long ago on this verse, well a bunch of them, but having to do with the book of Jeremiah. But in verse 13, says, for my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters. I had a lady call me up the day on the phone. She had a question about, you know, the Holy Spirit in the book of John in chapter 7, when she’s talking to him on the phone and she says, does that mean really rivers of water that come out of your belly?

I says, just a moment. And so I told of the scripture. I said, it says, and on that great day of the feast, Jesus stood in Christ and if any man thirst, let him come in to me and drink. And as the scripture have set out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. She says, really? Rivers of living water coming out of your belly? I says, man, I says, let’s just read the rest of it. This fake key of the spirit which they that believe on him should receive.

See, when I hear the gospel, and I trust Christ as my Savior, God gives to me eternal life. When I explain that to another person and they believe it, they receive eternal life. And when they explain to somebody else, they receive eternal life. And so it just flows from one to the other. But it’s like a spiritual river that you don’t see. It’s all because we share the gospel with individuals. She says, oh, okay, that makes more sense. Thank you, ma’am.

Anyway, I gave her some scripture. She says, call me back in two months. You know, I’m Dr. Arnold. Read these two verses and call me in a week, you know, something. But now notice what he says here in this verse, for my people have committed to evil. They have forsaken me the fountain of living water. And hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. In other words, when you leave the Word of God, when you leave the Lord and you don’t serve the Lord, who can give you the best in life, people give that all up and bill for themselves, broken sisters in a world that won’t hold water.

And they spend all their life trying to build something in order to be happy, to have peace and joy and whatever they want in life, and it’s cracked. And they work and they put their money in bags that have holes in them. What a waste. To waste your whole life and you only get to live one time. And so many people have thrown it away. Now look in chapter 6 of Jeremiah chapter 6 of Jeremiah and look in verse 16.

Every one of us at times are going to come to a crossroad trying to make the best decision we can. This one guy says, I don’t worry about where I go. I just make up my mind at the time. He says when I get to a crossroad and I don’t know which way to go, I just take a stick, throw it up in the air, and whichever way it lands that swear go. He says, sometimes I have to throw it up ten times.

Because you still have a will and you know which way you want to go. And sometimes it doesn’t matter what right is. We want to do what we want to do. And majority of people live their lives according to their own pleasure. And so people live according to whatever pleases them. When I tell a person that you can trust Christ as your Savior and live like you please, they just don’t get it. Because isn’t that true? Most people already live like they please.

But isn’t it better to know the Lord and know you have eternal life and choose to please the Lord? There’s nothing wrong with that. But you as a child of God may choose not to walk with God. But remember, salvation going to heaven is always the gift of God is always free. you’re going to come to in your life after you trust the Lord, crossroads. But look at verse 16, thus say if the Lord stands ye in the crossroads or in the ways and see, ask for the old paths where is the good way and walk therein and ye shall find rest for your souls.

But they said, we will not. See some people think that God’s already determined everything that’s going to happen. All the decisions that anybody makes, God’s already pretty determined for the foundation of the world, that isn’t true. You’re living right now and you’re making decisions right now. And you can choose to please the Lord or you can choose not to please the Lord. But you see, remember this, going to heaven is always free. That’s the gift. What you have when you get to heaven and the blessings of life not depend upon choices you and I make here in this world.

Now, don’t you look there in your Paul stated, from henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. You will always bear marks in the mind that reveal fear, grief, joy, despair, and hopelessness, and the countenance of every believer. You see, you have a countenance about you. You have a face that sometimes revealed the way you really think and feel when you’re not aware that somebody’s watching you. Now we can come to church and we can put on our Christian face.

Everything is wonderful. How you doing? Fine. But down deep inside, nothing may be fine. But we can fool people, we can deceive people. And so Paul says, I decided I’m gonna serve the Lord. And when you read in the book of 2 Corinthians in chapter 11, he talks about all the things that happened to him. Remember last week when I talked to you all about grabbing the cat by the tail? Well, that was a man by the name of Mark Twain.

Look down there several down there. Mark Twain stated, A man who carries a cat by the tail will learn something he can learn and know of the way. How many of y’all have ever picked up a cat by the tail? Not a very wise decision. Is he going your own direction can be like that, and you’re going to learn a lot of bitter experiences? And even a Christian can seek to serve the Lord and do all the right, and then there’s people they’re going to do you wrong.

To lie, to have you in the back, all the things that can happen to you and leave scars upon you. But if you’re going to serve the Lord, you’re going to get scarred in this life. Some people don’t want any scar. They don’t want to do any battle, so they’re not going to get to wear any medals. See, God’s going to reward you for what you did for Him. But we don’t want to hurt. We don’t want to suffer.

We’re afraid of consequences of whatever might take place in life. Look at the next statement, Adam, I’m not my Adam and Eve now, Adam, He said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid. Fear was caused by one sin. How many sins did he make? Only one sin. And it produced fear. You see, whenever you’re not doing right by God, your disobedience, mentally or otherwise, can cause you a lot of mental anguish because you know you’re not honoring the Lord and it can produce guilt.

And then that guilt becomes like a weight of iron. And as he says in the book of Deuteronomy, he says, I will put a yoke of iron upon your neck because thou serveth not the Lord thy God with joyfulness of heart. It says until it weighs you down until it destroys you. So there’s pressures in life that can just rip your heart right out of you whenever you choose, when you come to that crossroad and you make the wrong decision, you’re going to go down a wrong road.

And everybody talks about the day, well, we don’t want to go back. We don’t want to go back. If you got off the road, the best way to get back on the right road is to go back where you left the right road and make sure you do what’s right by the Lord. IfFlora, if you leave the Lord, you need to get back to the Lord. The next statement, God stated, and he said, Who told me that thou was naked?

Who? See, Adam already knew. When you do wrong, you know it, don’t you? You see, maturing in the Lord is when nobody else has to tell you that you’ve done something wrong. You see, maturing in the Lord means that you’re aware of what you did and you can correct the problem. But see, if you don’t correct the problem, then God may have to step in. That’s what he’s talking about in Corinthians in chapter 11. When he talks about in many or six, some are weak and some are dead.

And the reason is because God says he cannot condemn you with the world, but God is going to have to chasten you, chasten you, because you did that which was wrong. Has thou eaten of the tree? Where have I commanded thee that thou should have not eaten? The very first sin was because he broke a command. It wasn’t like, you know, if you want to eat that fruit, it’s no big deal. It really doesn’t matter. But it might have been difficult for him to understand what is death, what is death, because everybody is going to die one of these days, and we will.

So he says here, Sarah stated, then Sarah denied saying, I laugh not for she was afraid. And she said, but thou didst laugh. The Lord knew the reason for her laughter. In other words, she heard that she was gonna have a baby and she laughed because she was old and Abraham was old. And so she, she laughed. She laughed because she was afraid. So the laughter was a cover up. have you ever seen here’s the line of what we call normal?

And there’s people that many times will go below the line and above the line. And generally, when you get overexcited when something good happens, you go just that far below when something bad happens. You’re like a yo-yo. The key thing is if we can get to where you run smooth, you don’t get overexcited or get down and depressed because it can happen very quickly. You’ve got to learn how to be stabilized. And that comes only because you have matured in the Lord where you can trust the Lord was whatever is coming.

Look at the next statement. Jacob stated, and Jacob answered and said to Laban because I was afraid. Now as you go through these, you’ll see that you are not the only one. Who’s had fear? You’re gonna face fear. I have a little bit of fear about my daughter. I have a little bit of fear about my wife. I got a little bit of fear stepping out on the, um, the limb and having a, um, fourth missions conference and inviting all the alumni to come.

There’s always an element of fear. But if you don’t do something, you’re coming to a place where you’re going to be. nothing. But whenever you do something, there’s always the human element, the flesh, because we don’t know the outcome. We don’t know what people will do, because so much of our lives depend upon what others are going to do or not do. So we have to live with that. And so I wrote down two things, and I think I wrote those on the back.

Yeah, just take very quickly look on the back at the top of the page. Fear sees the problem, faith sees the solution. So we see problems all the time and as we get older we see problems we didn’t see 20, 30 years ago. And we know that we’re running out of time and you hope that you see here’s my life and here’s my money and what you want to do is plan on it whenever you run out of life, you run out of money at the same time.

Wouldn’t it be great? But when we’re going across here and you see that I’m going to outlive my money, do we have a problem? Then you have a problem because you see how I’m going to do this when I don’t have any of this. you see yourself physically having physical problems. We’re going to have physical problems and financial problems. You name it, we’re going to have them. So the next statement I wrote in here, and I’ve used this many times since I’ve been here, courage is fear that says its prayers and goes ahead.

You see, whenever he keeps telling them, especially in the book of Joshua in chapter 1, is I was with Moses, so I will be with thee, therefore be strong and very courageous. You see, if If there is no fear, there’s no reason to have courage. Courage is though, even though humanly speaking, you’ve got fear, but because of God, you’ve got faith. And your faith should override the fear. Otherwise, none of us would ever do anything that God wants to accomplish in our life.

All right, go back to the other page there. You see, Jacob stole the birthright. He saw it didn’t like that. He said, I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna kill that brother of mine. His brother ran. Well anyway, he went over to the layman, worked over there for about 14 years, got him two wives. He only wanted one, but he got two. And he came back, but on the way back, he was kind of scared. He remembered, he remembered 14 years ago, my brother was gonna kill me.

Now he’s coming back and he’s afraid. So he says here in verse 31 of Genesis 31, and Jacob answered and said to Laban, because I was afraid. For I said, for adventure, that would have take by force thy daughters from me. This is when he was talking to Laban. Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed, and he divided the people that was with him and the flocks and herds and camels into two bands, and he let them go one way and he goes to sea.

So if something happened, he didn’t lose everything. Do you think the men of God and the Bible had fear? And they all face some of the same things you and I will face in our lives to be afraid. Look at number one here. God told Abraham, do not be afraid. I want you to read that verse because that’s in Genesis 14. Genesis chapter 14 and verse one. He had been to a battle because of Sodom and Gomorrah. He delivered a lot.

And so it says here in verse 20, And blessed be the most high God which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand, and he gave him ties of all. He did that to Melchizedek. And the king of Sodom said unto Abraham, give me the persons and take the goods to thyself. . . . . . . . . . Them wicked people. And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have lift up mine hand unto the Lord, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take from a thread even to a shoe latch it, and that I will not take anything that is dine, lest thou should have say I have made Abram rich.

So if only that which the young men have eaten and the portion of the men which went with me, then he says in chapter 15, in verse 15. one after these things. The word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision saying, see those two words? Fear not Abram. I am thy shield and your underlyingness, thy exceeding great reward. In other words, you got me. You got me. One of the greatest treasures you’ll ever have is you know the Lord.

It’s not going to be all the possessions that you have and all the securities of life is your greatest security is me and the Lord alike this. And you’re walking through life with you and the Lord. There’s a song the treble layers used to sing in Georgia. I heard them back in 1960 to 62. The lady’s name was Pauline Phillips. It was just three of them. They called themselves the treble layers and they would sing a lot of great songs.

I still remember them. I used to get their records and I turned the record player up as loud as it would go and I’d lay down there and not listen to them and not sing right along with them. You should have heard me sing in back in those days. I had a lot of background music singing with me. The tripleters were singing with me. Well anyway, I thought it was pretty good. But she wrote a singing song of just me and my Lord walking together, just me and my Lord.

Me and my Lord, great song. And so sometimes as you go through life, it’s just gonna be you and the Lord. And nobody else is gonna understand everything. Some things will happen or you’ll think and feel, and you can’t just share it with everybody. And sometimes not even the closest person to you because you don’t want to put weights upon somebody else that they can’t carry. And so it’s just gonna be you and the Lord. But anyway, I want you to look there at the scripture down at the bottom number two.

God told Moses, do not be afraid. Now, I do want us to go to the book of Exodus in chapter 3. Exodus in chapter 3. Everybody’s heard of Moses, 10 commandments, Charleston, Heston. You all have heard all that. So I didn’t read the book, but I saw the movie. Well, that’s one of the first movies I ever remember seeing. And I was really impressed with that movie. And I like it when Charleston Heston stood there at the room, seeing he says, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.

Now remember that? And in your Brenner who was Pharaoh, he says, his God is God. Oh, I love that. God is God. That’s great. But now what I want you to see here is there’s, I used to say there’s just five excuses here. But I really, in reading it the other day, I said there’s really six. Because you see, 40 years before this happened, before he saw that burning bush, 40 years before before that, he had already knew. God wanted him to lead the children of Israel out.

And it makes a statement. It talks about that. You go to the book of Acts and it talks about how that he thought that God was going to deliver him. And somebody says, who made you a judge in a ruler over Israel? Well, the Lord did. But see, he was just 40 years too soon. The timing was wrong. So, because the people didn’t want to follow him after he didn’t kill the Egyptian, he feared for his life and he ran.

He’d hit on the back side of a desert for 40 years. Now he was learning how to take care of his sheep. That was the perfect training for the two million Jewish people he was going to be having to be responsible for him. But now notice here, who am I that I should go? Now that’s from verse one to verse 12. Who am I? Look what he says here in verse 10. Come now therefore and I will send thee unto Pharaoh that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.

Moses said unto God, who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh? Who am I that I should go? In other words, like why me, why me Lord? get somebody else. He gave him a reason on why he’s not the person for the job and God would always keep talking to him. And then he says in verse 11, Lord, who am I? Who am I? That I should go into Pharaoh and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt.

He said, certainly, and you see those words? I will be with thee. Did you know in most of the places you’ll find, there’s a whole list of them here about these men. But in spite of their fear, God did not eliminate their fear. He just says, I’ll be with you. And if you’ll rest in that truth, that truth can make the fear disappear. But you’ve got to have something that’s greater than the fear. And this is why there’s nothing greater than the Lord.

So whenever you’re going through life, there’s fears, yes. But God is greater than the problem. You see, whenever we hear about David and Goliath, what was Goliath? but a big problem. But he saw a solution to the problem. And the other Jews, men in the army, didn’t see the solution to the problem. But David knew there’s a solution to this problem. I know the Lord. And as you go through the Lord, the thing that will help you more than anything is your strength in your faith that you have in the Lord and you trust Him and see that God can do all these things for you.

Look what he says in verse 13 and 14, because the question now is Lord, who are you? Who am I? Who are you? So he says in verse 13, and Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers have sent me unto you, and they shall say to me, What is His name? What shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I am that I am.

And he says, thus shall thou say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you. What a name I am. I am that I am.” He says, you just tell him that. So God answers his objections. He’s afraid the people are going to say blah blah blah because he was there before and the people didn’t believe him. You see he doesn’t want to go back and rehash this failure that he had the first time because that’s exactly what’s going to happen but now it’s different because the Lord says I will be with you I will be with you.

The timing is right the timing was not right before did you know sometimes God is not against answering your prayers just that now it’s not the right time to do But sometimes he may let you wait five years, maybe 10 years, 15 or 20 years. Just because he doesn’t jump when you snap your finger doesn’t mean God doesn’t hear and God doesn’t know and God don’t answer, there’s time in it’s involved. He knows when the best time is to answer your prayer.

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 mania. 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 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.