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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 air. 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.

Don’t you take your Bible tonight? Take your Bible and turn to the book of Ecclesiastes. book of Ecclesiastes. We covered it a little bit this morning about the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, all these things. The Lord says, love not the world, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. So how would you think and how would you feel if that becomes your choice? You do have a choice and everybody has a choice.

But the book of Ecclesiastes is the results of living for the world and not God. If you want to know what it’s like to live for the world, read the book of Ecclesiastes. And you’ll find out that it comes up with everything is vanity and vexation of spirit. It’s looked at as a man under the sun and probably no further than that because it has nothing to do with well what does God have to to say. A few places are in there, but it’s mainly as a man walking in the flesh, as a man living his life without God, man making the wrong decisions about what he wants and what he wants to do.

Somebody seeking pleasure in the things of this world. And if a man chose to live in the flesh and live for this world, you cannot do Solomon. Solomon has already done it to the max. I mean, He was able to fully enjoy the world. And you ought to see how He came out and what He has to say about it. But hold your place here and ecclesiastes because I want you to start first of all there in the book of Matthew in chapter 6.

Matthew chapter 6 and there’s a few things that I want you to look at because it’ll help you and understand why the Bible tells us to seek those things that are above. Desire, heavenly things, set your affections on those things. And if you don’t, there’s a price to pay. So if you’re trying to make a wise decision, there’s illustrations, stories in the Old Testament that tells us things that people did and how they lived, decisions they made, and and the consequences.

So he says, the testimonies of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple. In the Old Testament, the scriptures written a four time were for our learning. So we can go back and study and read and learn a little bit from them. But what I want you to see there in the book of Matthew, in the book of Matthew, in verse 5, and when thou prayest thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are, for they love to pray, standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets that they may be seen of men.

They do it to be seen. And then He says this, verily I say unto you, they have their reward. Now you have to decide, do you want your reward now or later? Now or later? You can have it now if you’re doing it for people. If you’re doing it for the Lord, God says, I’ll give it to you later. Now that’s faith. Can you wait that long? Can you be patient and go ahead and do what God wants you to do now?

Because if you will, then it’s coming. Look what he also says here in verse 16, where it says, more over when you fast. Be not as the hypocrites of a sad countenance, for they disfigure their faces that they may appear on demand to fast. In other words, they want somebody to know they haven’t eaten four days or haven’t eaten two weeks to know what they’re doing, so they want you to marvel over their humility. And then he says, Verily I say unto you, they have not going to get, they have their reward.

So there are things that people want now. And sometimes I’ll have some of the little kids that’ll come in here. So they come from Sunday school and they want to go in my office because in my office I happen to have a little dish there that’s got all kind of little candy stuff in it, a little goodies, you know. And so I let him go in the office and I had, Betty had some nice big items, about six or seven, eight items, big things.

And so I said, now do you want this little one right here? Or do you want this big one right here? Now which one do you think they took? They take that big one. Now you can tell a little child and you can have a dollar bill in your hand. want this dollar or do you want this little piece of bubble gum? Well they can’t chew that dollar but they can chew that bubble gum and I’ll see most of them.

They’ll take the piece of bubble gum. There’s people who want the trinkets of the world and they bypass all the things they could have had that were of greater value. Now in life you’re making decisions. I’m making decisions and I I want you to see this because it’s important. Now look in verse 19. So in lieu of this, I should say in contrast, he says in verse 19, lay up for yourselves treasures upon us earth. No, says lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, not to do that.

That means if you lay up treasures on the earth, now think about this for a moment. Here you are, you worked hard all your life And you done saved up and you’ve got a total assets of a million dollars. And when you die, how much of it do you get to leave? Every last bit of it. And generally it’s going to belong to somebody who didn’t work or left one little pinky to get it and over run through it and enjoy all the things you, you know, denied yourself.

And so I saw in the back of this one motorhome, back to this one motorhome, being of sound mind, spending my children’s inheritance. Because they wanted to go ahead and enjoy it and let the kids fend for themselves. But it’s talking about mainly the value of laying up things in heaven, but you need to know the results if you don’t do it. What is it going to cost you? And so look what he says here in verse but lay up for yourselves, treasure in heaven.

So he’s telling us where to lay up treasure, to lay those up in heaven. And then notice in verse 24, no man can serve two masters. That’s why he’s only to have one wife. Not really, but he says, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon. And I wrote down in my notes, you cannot love God and the world. It’s gotta be one of the other.

You have to make up your mind. Otherwise you’d be wishy-washy back and forth. You love the Lord, or do you love this world? And the love of the world is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. And you can chase those things in life. Now it doesn’t mean that just because you love the Lord, you can’t have anything and enjoy anything. No, the same Lord told you to lay up treasure in heaven says he has given us freely all things to enjoy.

But if he can give them to us freely, you should let them go freely. that the things of this world is not all what life is about. So I want you to take your Bible and look there in the book of Luke. Luke. And I think that’s Luke chapter 12 but I could be wrong. I’ve done that before. In the book of Luke in chapter 12 and notice what he says in verse 15. Now remember every day of your life, you’re making decisions about what do you really love?

Do you love the Lord? Or do you love this world? Is the things of this world, do they mean so much to you that you would sacrifice what God wants for you? In verse 15 says, and he said unto them, take heed and beware of covetousness for a man’s life consists of not in the abundance of the things which he possesses. But isn’t it true that most people judge their life as successful or not based upon what they’re able to accumulate?

The quality of the house they live in or the car they have, the money in the bank, all those things tells you what their life is all about. It may, it may not. But there’s nothing wrong in having things of this world as long as you’re not in love with them that God can let them come and let them go. I use this illustration one time and I’ll just show you again. You asked the Lord for something and He gives it to you.

And then you share. You ask the Lord and He gives. And so you share. You ask the Lord to give you something and you become covetous. And you ask the Lord and He gives and you just keep on. And then you ask the Lord and all of a sudden it stops. You think, that’s so what? And then you lose what you had. As long as you’re a channel, and if God is free, can He give you something? Say, praise the Lord.

He takes it away. Praise the Lord. Job taught that, because that’s what Job believed. And when you read the book of Job, he says, the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. And all of this, he did not lose his integrity because he loved the Lord more than his ten children he lost in one day. He loved the Lord more than he loved his wife because she told him, well, why don’t you just curse God and die? He loved the Lord more than all of his servants.

He loved the Lord more than all the possessions that he had. He loved the Lord more. And God was free with Job to take away and to give. And so at the end of his life, God gave him back more than he ever had before. Your faith is on trial. God is always examining your life, trying to reveal to you, do you really love him or done? So that’s why these scriptures are so very important. Now look what he says in verse 16, and he speak a parable unto them, saying, the ground of a certain rich man brought forth planifally.

He thought within himself, what shall I do? I have no room where to bestow my fruit. So you can’t say he wasn’t a successful businessman. He was. He said, this is what I do. I will pull down my barn, build greater and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, I have many goods laid up for many years. Take thine ease. Eat, drink, and be merry. For tomorrow we die it.

But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee. And whose shall these things be, which thou hast provided, so is he that layeth up treasures for himself here, and is not rich toward God there.” So you have a story taught by Christ about a successful man who had more than he needed. But he thought he had many years left and he didn’t have any more time. The Lord was calling him home that day if heaven was his home.

But he’s talking about a person who was successful in this world. But that doesn’t mean that what he did was wrong. It just means he didn’t lay up any treasure in heaven. In the process of his life, he did not lay up treasure and have not lost man, can’t lay up treasure in heaven but only a believer. So take a Bible and go back there to the book of Ecclesiastes. may please the Aztees and look there once again in chapter 1, if I lay up treasure in heaven and then I die, who gets it?

I’ll think carefully. If I lay up treasure upon the earth and I die, who gets it? Somebody else does, right? Somebody else, I have to get it. If I lay up treasure in heaven and I die, who gets it? Who? I get it. So see, I gain by land, neck, treasure in heaven. Now, do I want it here or do I want it when I get there? So your time here on earth is to be a very important time.

God is gonna reward you for your wise decisions, your investments. And so as you live your life and what you do for the Lord. Can’t be lost. When he talks about rewards, he says, if you give a cup of cold water onto one of these little ones, only in the name of a disciple, barely I send to you, you shall not lose your reward. Rewards once they’re earned can’t be lost. What you can lose is what you could have earned and didn’t earn.

So once you have laid up treasure in heaven, the reason is because you can’t lose it once it’s laid up. You can lose what you could have because God wants us to receive a full reward. That means that He wants us to serve Him with all our hearts, all our lives. But many of God’s people won’t. And I used to think this way. I did something good. He got me a reward in heaven. I did something bad. God just took it away.

I did something good. I laid it up. I did something bad. God took it away. I thought, hi, in the world am I ever going to win. So I thought, I’ll just do a whole bunch of good things one day, blow my brain, I get up here and get my reward before I lose them. Now, doesn’t that make sense? No, because that would have been bad, not a loss of them anyway. So God says, you can’t lose your rewards once they’re earned.

And the same verse that says that over there in the book of John chapter 6, where he says, you shall in no wise be cast out. We say that means you’ll never cast, but never can be cast. Well, you never lose your reward. Same thing. So it’s a wonderful thing to know. So you look back here and Ecclesiastes, now look in Ecclesiastes chapter 2 and verse 18. Verse 18 says, Yea, I hated all my labors which I had taken unto the Son because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me.

If you labor for that and that is your heart and that is your life. And that’s what your life revolved around. And when you die, it’ll belong to somebody else because you can’t take it with you. You can’t use it anymore. It’s gone. But whatever you have laid up for the Lord in heaven, you cannot lose. So as you live your Christian life, do you think that when God says love, not the things of the world, he just doesn’t love you?

you. He’s just trying to make your life miserable. He doesn’t really care about your happiness because God knows the happiness and the joy you’re going to have because you put the Lord first and that you did not waste your life. Now I’ve lived so far 74 wonderful years, well almost 74 wonderful years. They weren’t all wonderful, but I had a bunch of wonderful years in there. But I do believe that when I get to heaven, God is going to reward me for my service for the Lord.

That’s what He promised. Am I being too boastful when I say that? Or what about Paul when he says, I have fought a good fight. I have kept the faith. Therefore there’s laid up for me a crown of righteousness. And not to me only, but for all those who love the Lord. So was Paul been presumptuous and braggadoshous whenever he talked about, he served the Lord and Paul says, I labored more abundantly than they all. Whatever your reason is and whatever your motive is, you’ve got to love the Lord more than anything in the world, or you won’t do it, because in the things of this world are going to stop you.

The things you see, things you hear, all these things in the world, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, you know that praise, honor, and glory are going to stop you from living for the Lord with all your heart. Remember we talked about this morning, love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mine, body, soul, and strength. Well, that’s pretty good. And we’re supposed to love one another. The best thing that people need in this life is a good example.

They need to trust the Lord and they need a good example. And so whenever you’re help in people. Don’t worry about whether or not they appreciate it. Don’t worry about whether or not you get, you know, pats on the back and all the praise and the honor and the glory for all of your dedication because you didn’t do it for people anyway. You did it for the Lord. And you’re going to wait until you get to heaven and God’s going to reward you and you know that and so you can be patient now.

That’s what keeps you from being filled with envy and bitterness and jealousy and hatred and malice and all those nasty things you want to say about somebody. Because anybody who does you wrong and you do them right, check that up again. Kachin, you ever hear of them? Kachin, your land up treasure in heaven, and it will be worth it. So in Ecclesiastes, the joke about everything just goes in a circle. Look what he says. In verse 3 of chapter 1, what prophet hath a man of all his labors which he’d take under the sun?

It looks like we have a few college kids that were under the sun this weekend. I don’t know if you looked at them, but their faces look like they’re a little red. Either that, they’re very embarrassed about something. But they have been in the sun. Well, it’s nice to get a little sun once in a while. I used to go and I’d get so red. And I’m talking about the sun. about in a few days, man, I would turn brown.

Anyway, he says here in verse 1, one generation passes away and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth for how long? Oh, I just say it says it bides forever, but this is as a man under the sun, looking at things from the natural viewpoint. Well, that’s spiritual revelations from the Lord. And then he says the sun arises and goes down, hastens to a place where it rose and in the word just one vicious cycle. It comes up and it goes and it comes back and it comes up and it goes and he said that’s the way your life is.

You’re born and you live and you die. The next generation born and they live and they died. The next generation and it just keeps on going. Everything is vanity and vexation. In other like a great big old curse, because if there’s nothing new under the sun, then what can you do? What’s the purpose of life? Without a purpose in life, then a man only can live for this life, if he knows nothing about God. Doesn’t know the Lord, doesn’t know what God promised, doesn’t know about the world that come, the age to come, when God is going to do all these wonderful things.

If you don’t know that, all you know is what you hear and see in this whole world. And so this is why people make the decisions they do and how they’re so miserable. We’ve got teenagers all across this world, especially here in America. Nothing to live for. We’ve got college students on campus and so on. They don’t have the slightest bit of education, understanding the difference between a Republican form of government and democratic form of government, that they would even go out and stand and vote for a communist in this country when we are guaranteed a Republican form of government in this country.

But they don’t understand it because you see it’s this is all there is. So you can have all the sex you want, live in the way you want, do whatever you want to do, and the government’s gonna take care of us. So vote for the man that’s gonna take it away from those people that work and give it to those people that don’t work. And so it’s all about power. And the politicians that will promise you that it has nothing to do, they don’t care about those babies.

They don’t care about those children. It’s not about the children. They don’t care about children, or they wouldn’t be murdered in the womb. They don’t care about those teenagers and they don’t care about those college kids. They don’t care about those college kids. They want power. It’s power to them. It’s the lust of the flesh. It’s for praise. It’s for honor. Look what Bernie Sanders is going to do for me. Bernie Sanders is not going to do anything for anybody.

Now if he wants to take his own money, I don’t mind it one bit. But he has no authority to take mine or yours. I could get sidetracked here. But I won’t. Verse 6 talks about the wind, the wind that goes toward the south. Turn his about unto the north. World’s about continuously. Everything. The rivers in verse 7 runs into the sea. All these things is, well, he kind of relating it to life itself, how empty life is, because what’s the purpose of all this life?

And so he says there in verse 13, and I gave my heart to seek out and search out by wisdom, concerning all things that are done under the heavens. So you don’t have to try to experiment in this life, trying to figure out how much pleasure you can have doing this or that. You don’t have to worry about spending life trying to build something, accumulate something because God allowed one man to have all the wisdom to do everything that he wanted to do and his wisdom remained with him even when he was in rebellion to God because he sought to find out everything about everything.

And so he says in verse 1 of chapter 2, I said in my heart, go to now I will prove with myrrh, therefore enjoy pleasure and behold this also is vanity, just a lift for pleasure, but it’s temporary. There is pleasure in sin for a season, but it’s short-lived. Nothing lasts forever. They used to have a commercial on TV years and years ago about camel cigarette, the smoke that satisfies. What if it satisfies? Why are you going to have another one?

You might remember the commercial. It satisfies. But then what do you need an element for? Because evidently it didn’t satisfy for long. And that’s the way it is in life. Do you think just because how you go out here and you have sex with somebody and oh the pleasure. Yeah. How long does it last? Then you got it again and again. And then you got right. You got to have with somebody else. It’s never said God’s way works. Put God first and serve him with all your heart.

Now look what he says in verse 17. He says, therefore, hated life. Why? Because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me, for all is vanity and vexation of sphere. In other words, there’s no purpose in it. If you, without God, there’s no purpose to anything. Because sooner or later the places of life you can’t do everything you always used to do. When you were young, then you get old and you ought to see and read the old man’s chapter in the Bible.

You know, please, yes, it’s chapter 12. That’s the old man’s chapter. That’s where most of us are already going part for about a week and just read that over about 10 times. You don’t have to describe yourself. It does a pretty good job for you. Now, some of you have already started turning there. I watched you. I watched you. But in verse 4 of this chapter 2, he said, I made me great works. I built me houses. I planted me vineyards.

I make gardens and orchards and I planted trees. Whatever you want to do, Solomon already has done it. Whatever it is you dream about and you would like to come, he’s already done it. And he’s telling you at the end of his life how he wasted his life, doing all of these things. And so he says down here in verse nine, so I was great. You want to be great? Yeah, I was great. Increase more than all that were before me in Jerusalem.

Also, my wisdom remained with me, even when he did all of these things. And then in verse 20, chapter 2, therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the labor which I took unto the sun. Whatever it is I wanted to do, I was able to do. And he tells you, look, you don’t have to do any of this because I’ve already done it. Now let me tell you the consummation of all of this. vanity and vexation of spirit.

It’s like a curse to yourself. You will be so miserable. You see, that’s why there’s so many miserable people in the world. Did you know that the happiest people in the world ought to be Christians? Because of the joy that you’re doing, the things for the Lord, and you know that God is going to reward you when you get to heaven, and you can’t lose any of those things. And you know where you’re going to be. It could happen at any time.

So for the joy of the Lord that is said before us, we should endure whatever it is God allows to come into our life because we know we can endure anything for a short period of time and our life is a very short period of time. 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 Man. 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.