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Bibleline Bibleline, here God’s Word on Bibleline, everywhere, every time. 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 prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the air. You can reach us at 813-884-4328, or you can donate on the homepage at BibleLineMinistries.org. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, and that today’s message will be a blessing to you and your family.

But now notice what also he says here. He makes a statement in verse 15 when the Lord told him, he says, but the Lord said unto him, go thy way, for he is a chosen vessel unto me to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. And look in verse 16, you’re underlining it. For I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake. In other words, he was causing me to suffer.

That’s what Jesus says. Why persecuted thou me? Now God’s gonna fix it to where He’s gonna get persecuted and He’s really gonna suffer. And did He? Oh, did He. Look what He says down here in verse 20. He said, and straight away or immediately, He preached Christ in the synagogue that He is the Son of God. or the crisis, deity. This is why they didn’t believe that Jesus Christ was who he claimed to be. He says that he claimed to be God.

And they heard that. They just didn’t believe it. But all that heard him were amazed and said is not this. He that destroyed them, which called on this name in Jerusalem and came hither for that intent that he might bring them bound unto the chief priests. So they had a problem with disciples of Christ. Trust in this man. They didn’t believe he was genuine. And so Barnabas comes along and he’s the comforter and he kinda comes alongside and kinda shows him the roots and introduces him around.

And remember, he didn’t run around with the apostles, Saul appalled him, but he was there and he saw things. But now they don’t trust this guy. take it by them turn hold your place where you were in the book of Galatians, the book of Galatians, chapter one Galatians chapter one. Now Paul is bringing a lot of persecution upon himself because now he’s preaching the very message he used to condemn and look what he says. This is awesome. He says in verse six now he had gone to Galatians led these people to the Lord and Lister and Antioch, Iconium, and Derby.

He says, I marvel that you are so shown removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ, unto another gospel, which is not another. But there be some that troubled you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. Now how do you pervert the gospel of Christ? Ad works to it. See, if it’s free, I don’t know why you can pervert it, it adds something to it. And the only thing you’re going to add to free is work.

a cost, a price. If it’s free and no longer free, it’s because now you got to pay a price to get it. So that means it’s been a no, it’s been perverted. So this is what they were doing. Perverted in the gospel. Now, down in verse 10, he says, now do I now seek to persuade men or God? Do I seek to please men? For if I yet please men, I should not be the servant of price. In other words, you got to make up my mind.

You’re going You’re gonna serve the Lord, you’re gonna serve people. Now you can serve people, but who do you please? You can’t always please everybody. You can’t please people all the time because people change. They’ll be for you today and against you next week. I can preach a good sermon the day and preach everything. That was a great sermon. That was a wonderful sermon. But the next Sunday, if I preach something they didn’t like, they didn’t wanna come back.

They didn’t even come back. And they don’t even have to tell you why. They just, you know, checking out a few other places. For the gospel’s sake, because we’re not clearing the gospel. Oh well. And so if you let stuff like that bother you, you won’t keep moving. You’re gonna, well I don’t want to offend that person. Well I don’t want to offend them. And then I don’t want to offend them. And it’s just, you don’t be able to say anything.

What can you teach as far as truth? Because truth is offensive. So he makes a statement here. If, or if I yet please, man, I should not be the servant of Christ. Now look what he says. For I certify you brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after me. Now Lord, I didn’t get this message from man. He said, I got this from the Lord. I got it straight from Jesus Christ. See what he says there in verse 12, for I neither received it of man.

Neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ, the gospel. He preached was by revelation of Jesus Christ. Christ revealed himself to the apostle Paul on the road. And later on, he was on the other place of Damascus. But look what he says here in verse 13. For you have heard of my conversation, that means you’re the manner of life. You’ve heard of my manner of life in time past in the Jews’ religion. How that beyond measure.

I persecuted the church of God and wasted it. So it was a bad man doing a lot of bad things. And so does that mean that God overrode his will? No. He could still have rebelled and not believed in the Lord, not accepted it, and he didn’t have to obey God’s will concerning his life. But he had an encounter. I don’t know of his encounter with the Lord was greater than the one that I had. 75 years I’ve never had a moment like that moment, 57 years ago in that little old living room in Athens, Georgia, when I broke down and went like a baby.

be. And I never saw anybody else to get saved. I didn’t know how anybody else did anything. All I know is if what this man told me is true, I’m going to hell. And I want to go to heaven. And I trusted Christ as my Savior tonight, that night. And that was the beginning of the most wonderful thing that could have ever happened in my whole life. That night was important to me. And that was as important to me as that event that happened with, what’s that guy’s Paul.

Now, give what he says. How I wasted it, looking verse 14, and profited in the Jews’ religion above many my own equal or my own age, in my own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my Father, and then it plays God. For me to hear the Gospel, and he believed on the Lord. Turn in your Bible to the book of Philippians, Philippians chapter three. And look there in verse 20. Last week we talked about heavenly things and earthly things discerning between the flesh and the spirit.

And as you have already attained certain amount of knowledge, walk according to the truth that you have. So God doesn’t expect me to walk according to truth that I don’t know and haven’t had a chance to learn But I am responsible to do what I can with what I have and here in verse 20 look in verse 20 Because the day is coming While we’re going through all these things and we’re all the suffering we’re going through and these bodies the longer we live The older they get and more they break down and all the repairs we have to keep to get them so one of the reasons for trying to repair these old bodies is because it It means that I’ll have to move out if I don’t take care of it and we’ll be checking out of here.

I don’t mind going whenever the Lord wants me to go. But He says in verse 24, our conversation, the word here, conversation, several places, some place it means your manner of life. And then sometimes it’ll talk about your citizenship. there in Philippians in chapter one and just noticed on there in verse 27. And Philippians chapter 1 verse 27 says, only let your conversation be as it become of the gospel of Christ. Well here’s not talking about your citizenship, he’s talking about your manner of life.

Your manner of life should be according to your citizenship. You are a child of God from in heaven now live like and act like it. And that’s why you have the same word, but it has too many. Just like you could use the word pool, P-O-O-L. And it’s the right word. But you could say, you know, I went and shot a game of pool. And I went and swam in the pool. Then we all got together and went to Disney World in a pool.

You’re talking about a book, but you can use the same word in a lot of different ways. You just gotta find out, well, what’s the context? What’s that? A carpool. See there you gotta have a little help along the way. And so back there to Philippians in chapter three, looking verse 20 again. For our citizenship is in heaven. Remember when Jesus says you must be born again means born from above. So if you’re born of God and God’s in heaven then you were born of God.

So God’s in heaven. And that’s where you’re sitting, that’s where you’re at your place of birth. Now of course physically when I was born I have a place called Reimer’s Bird. And I’ve had people ask me, I don’t know, for 50 years or more, where were you born? Where are you from? And I hate to tell them. Because when I say, well where are you from? Well I’m from everywhere. I’m from everywhere. I’ve lived in a lot of places, I mean a lot of places.

But they want to know where were you born. And I said, look, you’ve never heard of it. You have never heard of where I was born. And I was born in Reimersburg, Pennsylvania. Oh, I’ve never heard of that. That’s what I said. You’ll never, never heard of it. And so then I have to try to tell them about where it’s located. So I was living up in Pennsylvania for about seven years when I was about seven years old, about 14.

And we lived in a place called Wagley. Everybody’s heard of Wagley. Nobody’s heard of Wiggly. How many of y’all have heard of Wiggly? Nobody’s heard of Wiggly. I lived in Wiggly, Pennsylvania. It’s about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Anybody ever heard of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania? See there. So we lived in suburbs. Well, we was out in the country, but we lived there for seven years. And I’ve never met anybody in all these years who’ve ever come from Wiggly, Pennsylvania.

and I’ve never met anybody in all these years who was born in Reimersburg, Pennsylvania. Why God allowed me to have that honor and that privilege. I must have been the only person ever born there. But I guess I’ll keep moving on, but that’s, that was my citizenship. Right now I’m living here. On one of the notes that I sent out at the newsletters, and also it was being on the notes for today, I put on there, Jesus did not come into existence when he was born in Bethlehem.

He was just changing his residence. See, he has a citizenship up there, but he moved down here temporarily for about 33 and a half years. And that’s what we’re doing, we’re only here temporarily. But sometimes it seems like it’s been a long time. So one of the days it’s gonna all be over. I was sitting in the office just a minute ago and I looked at the wind and there goes, I’m Marshall, I saw him walking by there. No, he’s 88, 89 years old.

And he’s walking down to, you know where he’s going? He’s going back here to teach his class. 89 years old and I watched, he was just walking along. And I thought, you know, that’s only 14 years older than I am. 14 years I’ll be 89 years old, almost 90. Now 90 is an old time to live, isn’t it? That’s a long time to live. So I don’t know if I’m going to make it that long, but if I don’t make it, it won’t be my fault because I’m going to try.

I’m going to try. But there might be somebody else that has another option for me, but we’ll go through that. But look what he says, what’s going to happen. From whence we also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. So the Lord Jesus Christ must be in heaven. heaven. But he also says, he indwells me. Christ in you the hope of glory. So Christ is in me, but also he’s in heaven. You see, the Holy Spirit lives within me and he’s the Lord.

So the Bible says, my body is the temple of God. So either the Holy Spirit is God, Jesus is God, God’s God, the Father’s God. I mean, they’re all, I think it’s all the same one. I don’t think when I get to heaven, I’m going to see three gods. I think I’ll see one God and that’ll be Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the Father. I and the Father are one. He that have seen me have seen the Father. How says I’ll show us the Father?

How can I show you the Father? You’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. I am the Father. You say, you understand all that? No. But I believe it. Now notice what he says in verse 21. When he comes back until then we have got to live in where we’re living, who shall change our vile body. Well, he could have said it a little nicer than that. I mean, that’s not very nice way to say it. That these old bodies of ours are vile.

Well, we live in a body of humiliation. In other words, we have limitation. Our brains as great as they are, we don’t know everything. We don’t remember everything. And yet they say they haven’t even been able to invent a computer that can match the human brain or work as fast as it does. And I’m amazed that whenever I ask it one question and I hit that button, and less than a second it can give me about five million hits.

On that one thing that I put in there, you know I did one time, I just typed in the name Yankee, and I was kind of curious of what that thing was going to do. I just typed in Yankee and all of a sudden, boom, it just loaded it. And next thing, I mean about a second and I knew about all the New York Yankees. Everybody’s here who’d been calling Yankee. And I guess after about a million pages, I could probably find my name in there, but I was not going to go through all of them.

But if I put Ralph Yankee Arnold, now that’s different. Or if I just put Yankee Arnold, but if that narrows it down, I can find mine very well. But one of these days, one of these days, we’re gonna be changing these old vile bodies. Have you noticed, and I’ve had a few people at time, they come by the house, you know, not a lot, they come by the house. And Betty’s got, and Trina put pictures, you know, when I was younger on the wall.

Oh, oh, oh. She’d never done that. And they see my younger pictures, and they say, who is that? That’s, that’s Yankee. No, really, who is that? They did his tour one day. And sometimes, if you’ve gotten out about 20 or 30 of your pictures down through the years, and you’re looking, you see, oh my stars, I wonder who all these other pictures are. If you were to try to pick out the one, now this one really looks like me, you know, 30 years ago.

These bodies are getting older and sooner or later, it’s a body of humility. Means you can’t think the way you can’t run like you used to, you can’t do the things you want to do, Your body starts locking down. Look up here, let me show you this. See my face, my head. Now, that’s as far as I can go. I can’t go no further than that. But my whole neck, my whole head is locking down on me. Now I should be able to put my chin on over here.

Now probably some of y’all can do that. Look at that, you just did it. And mine’s locking down, I can’t go no further than that. Right there, and if I try any harder, I got aches and pain, buddy. And if I go that way, that’s as far as I’ll go. Try to play golf, and you’re supposed to go all the way back and keep your head, keep your eyes on the ball. Not turn the body too. I turn this, it goes with it.

And then when I come back, I hope that the ball’s still there. It was when I left just a minute ago, and it’s amazing how difficult it is to hit the same thing when you didn’t lost sight of it, and come back in a split second by to make contact. But anyway, I didn’t have that problem years ago. I only got that since I came to Florida. I don’t know. I really don’t know. You don’t even notice it. And then those of you who have ever tried to get out of bed and say, our body get up and the body says, I will not.

And you say, body get up. I say, I will not. And it’s more difficult as you go. And I used to get up. I sit there and I relax. and then I’d get up and all of a sudden my legs didn’t want to work. And I didn’t know, and then I had to try to tell them which one I go first. I left foot of the right foot and I like the mama bear talking to the baby bear. Follow me baby bear, but mama, which what do I start off on?

Boom! Just do it. Don’t worry about which leg goes first. I had this thing on the bottom of my feet one time called I don’t know if I, I don’t know what it was, some fancy name for it. And if I touch it, it was like touching glass, shooting all into my feet. And I couldn’t hardly walk. And it was so sore I could not hardly walk at all. And this was about 15 years ago. And I mean, whenever I got up and I tried to walk, I could not walk.

Get out of bed and you try to walk and anything. If I gotta go through this for the rest of my life, maybe he’ll cut it short. And I had to wind up buying some special shoes. I saw them advertise. And in the back of it, it had a spring about this big. And going, boom, boom, boom, boom. And so I’d slide the ball on the bottom of my foot. I’d bend in my toes back. But the tendons were so sore.

I could not hardly walk. So I had to get these special shoes. And I wore them for about a year and a half. And after a while, that stopped. No, it’s fine. But why did I have to go through that for a year and a half? When I first came down here… I ), I went out with Dan and somebody else, Jan Velasquez, and we were playing a little game of golf, and I went back and I thought, oh that hurts, oh that hurts.

I had a shirt on, but it was kind of light, but it was it was rubbing again, and I thought, why am I so sore? And I opened the thing up and they saw, and they looked and it says, you blistered. I had blisters all over me. What in the world was that? I said, well, golf is too important a game to go check that out. So we had to finish playing, but I was in torture. And so I decided to go to the doctor and he says, you got shingles.

I said, shingles, what’s that? He says that. I said, but I don’t want them. I says, take them away. He says, and about a month and a half they’ll go away. And I remember coming up here to preach, and I had on my coat and tie, and all of a sudden, because that went around and it went up the back of my head and nothing. And I would have sharp pain shoot up to my head and I thought I was going to die.

One Sunday morning right here, I had to, I took five pain pills, just so, because if I didn’t, I had to go home. But I should have went home anyway because five pain pills, no, no, no. I don’t think anybody knew that I wasn’t drunk. I think they probably thought I was. Huh? Oh man, that was, I don’t want that on anybody, but that was a terrible experience. But I hadn’t done anything. I didn’t catch it someplace. They just said to because you had chicken pox when you were young.

That’s not, I don’t know if I had a chicken pox or a turkey pox. I don’t know. They said I had something and man, these bodies are so, do you realize you’re living only by the grace of God? That old ticket could just stop like that and you’re gone. One last breath. I’m used to practice, you know, because I thought at Fiverr, you know, God never cut off my breath. I wanted to give God a chance to change his mind.

So I would get into the water and not practice holding my breath so long I could hold it. So if that ever happens, I can hold it long enough to God to see if he wants to renegotiate. You say, that’s kind of stupid. Yeah, I know, but when you know, want to die and you had so much pain and I tell you a lot of things can happen to you. And I was down at Florida Bible College and I was about 22, 23 years old and I had just lost my job.

Both kids got sick and here I am. I’m laying on this table. I had to go to the emergency room. I said, honey, I don’t know what it is but I got a pain in my side and I thought he was going to take another rib and make me another woman. But anyway, I had this pain and I said, I can’t stand it. So I went there and I’m laying there. And the doctor walked in and he says, what’s wrong?

I said, that’s why I’m here. Tell me. I hate it when they want me to tell them all everything that’s going on. I thought, you’re a doctor. You’re supposed to find out what’s wrong with me. But they don’t do it that way. In no words. I said, I got a pain right here. So he went and he mashed. He says, I heard. I said, no. He let off real quick. Yeah! I like to come off that table. He says, you’re kidding me, you got to take your kidneys out.

Okay, well, didn’t do it. I thought I’m gonna die if you know, hurry up, I’m gonna die. Anyway, he went and he’d never come back. Look up here. This hand represents you and me. The wallet represents all of our sins. We all have sin on us. God loves us but he hates our sin. Now, for us to pay for sin, sin is eternal separation from God in hell. But God loves us. God doesn’t want us to go to hell, He wants us to go to heaven.

But to go to heaven, we have to be perfect. As righteous as God. Nobody’s perfect. We’ve all sinned, we’ve all come short of God’s perfection. And so because of sin, we can’t get in. So the Bible says we cannot save ourselves. So we can’t do anything to get to heaven because we’re already condemned, found guilty. We got a debt to pay. So we can’t go to heaven. It’s impossible. Nothing we do can get us to heaven because we have a debt to pay and that’s eternal separation from God.

We’re all in the same boat. So unless God does something, there’s nothing we can do. So Jesus Christ, this hand-represented Jesus Christ, God in the flesh came into the world because he loves us. He displayed his love toward us and while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Not when you were the saint, he did it while you were yet a sinner. So Christ, who had no sin, didn’t have to die. So he took all the sin of all the world, paid for them to cross, came back from the dead.

He said that if you and I would believe that he did that for us, he would put that payment to your account, and we would go to heaven on what he did. 55 years ago, I heard this message for the first time. I was 18 years old. So I trusted Jesus Christ as my Savior. I heard that I could not save myself. I thought I was pretty good And I had to repent, change my mind. I cannot save myself.

So I had to change my mind and trust Christ as my Savior. I repented. You see, if you are an unbeliever and you believe you had to change your mind. True? So I can lead a lot of people to the Lord without ever telling them to repent. But I can tell a person who’s lost, you need to change your mind. You need to believe on Jesus Christ. You don’t believe it now, where you believe it. And when you believe that, He gives you as a free gift everlasting life.

You go to heaven on what Christ did for you. So change your mind and believe it. That is what God wants you to do as a result of your changing your mind. So if you’re here today and you think that your good life is gonna get you to heaven, change your mind. If you think giving money, singing and inquiring, being a deacon, or not sure, whatever. I love my husband and my wife and kids. Well, that’s wonderful, but that doesn’t save you.

You need a Savior. And Jesus Christ is the only Savior there is. See, we can’t save ourselves, impossible. That’s why you have to turn from your sin. He paid for it. What He wants you and I to do is believe He did it for us. That made sense to me. So I trusted Christ as my Savior years ago. And that’s how I know that I’m going to heaven whenever I die. Let’s pray, shall we? With every head bowed and every eye closed and no one looking around.

If you’ve never done so, today would be a perfect day. This would be a good moment for you to truly trust Jesus Christ and Him alone as your only hope of going to heaven. I’m gonna ask you in just a moment to raise your hand. Raising your hand doesn’t save you. I’m not gonna have you forward. I’m not gonna embarrass you. But right where you’re sitting, if what I said made sense to you, say preach of that made sense to me.

And I wanna be certain I’m going to heaven. And right now I do change my mind. I’m gonna trust Christ in Him alone as my only hope of going to heaven. And I’d like for you to pray for Him. Friend, would you just slip your hand very quickly and put it right back down? Not gonna embarrass you. Not gonna point you out. Not gonna have your stand up coming forward, right where you are, did it make sense? Will you trust Christ as your Savior?

And what at all? Our Father, we thank You so much for all You’ve done for us, for giving us a free gift of everlasting life. And Father, we also pray that each person here that knows your Savior would realize if there’s things in their life that they’re doing that’s not right, that they would repent. Change your mind, reconsider, and see that some things need to be corrected, it could lead to a change of life because each one of us should live in such a way that shows how much we love you and what you’ve done for us.

So bless each one, your Christ name is God. 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. 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 4081 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. Believe in that the Lord is coming soon. Just keep looking up.