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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.

I want to talk to you a little bit about something I think is very important. We don’t sometimes take our decisions that we have to make seriously until we know that there are consequences to our decisions. And God, was he wrong? Did God make a big mistake by giving to us a free will? I mean, you know, all this year, problem came because he gave us the freedom to choose, we’ve made some wrong decisions. Adam and Eve made the wrong decision didn’t they?

When you say they made a bad decision, they probably didn’t think it was going to be that bad of a decision when they decided. But boy, it was a blunder. The blunder of all blunders. Now you may not think that some of your decisions are that bad at the moment you make them because you don’t see the consequences right away. In the book of Ecclesiastes in chapter 8, He talks about because sentence against an evil work is not executed right away.

The heart of men is, I got away with it. And you didn’t get away with it. It ain’t over yet. God is a patient God and He waits for us to correct things. Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we don’t. We just forget all about things. Until down the road and all of a sudden you get a flashback. It happens. Boy, sees girl. I love girl. sees boy, I don’t love you. Boy, I will make you love me. I’m going to lock you into a room and treat you like a dog, starve you half the death until you love me.

Do you think that’s going to work very well when you’re trying to make somebody love you? The way you want somebody to love you is to be free to voluntarily choose to love you, correct? Well, God could have done all of that to us. He could make us love Him by forcing us, but it would not be love. Love has to be free. You can’t make your children love you, you can’t make your husband love you, you can’t make your wife love you, you can’t make anybody love God because it has to be a voluntary thing that you do on your own.

So I will take away all of your freedoms and make you my slave against your will. Would that be called free will? I’m giving you a free will. I’m not going to let you have a choice or then it’s not free will. But we believe that God has given to us the power of choice, reasoning power to make decisions. Charlie Bean, he just sent out a little note. And he had one little statement in here, a paragraph. And because he goes with what I want to say tonight, I want to read it to you.

Grace is risky. To understand the Father’s forgiving grace later. We must first see his initial grace in giving his son freedom to make bad choices. Now we’re talking about the Father and the prodigal son. Since the Father obviously represents God, doesn’t this tell us that God created us with the freedom to make choices? Can the possibility of reciprocal love exist under any other condition? in grace or risky. This Father can determine to love, but not to be loved. Nobody can keep you from loving things or people or God, but you can’t make anything or anybody love you.

You can love whoever you want. That’s what breaks people’s heart is when they love somebody and they don’t love them back. And that’s really breaks everyone’s heart. And some of you have probably gone through that. And we give them all your love. And the thing is they don’t love your back. And so be heartbreaking. God loves us so much. He set us free. He loves us so much. He gave us a free will. And let you have choice. You can choose to love Him, choose not to.

He made a payment for the sins of the world, and then you can choose to accept it. You can choose to reject it. But are there any consequences to our decisions? You may as a child of God, you may choose to serve the Lord, and you may choose not to, but are there consequences to your decisions? Yes. Now, the last part of this here, he says, love is not always returned. We are not pre-programmed robots, but free agents with moral responsibility.

destroys the theology of determinism that teaches all actions are preordained. God loves only some, chooses only them to be saved and they cannot resist His will. Now that’s what some people say, that God has predetermined every action of every person, good or bad. That’s why everything is the will of God. That’s similar to what Muslims believe when they say it’s all the will of Allah, it’s all the will of Allah. And there are people who put that same meaning to God and self, the true and living God.

God is willing to risk the rejection of his free love rather than have a predetermined compliance to his forced love because voluntary love brings him glory. If we had no choice and we were forced to love God, that would not and does not bring glory to God. So it has to be voluntarily. Now who can make you love God? Who really can make you walk with a Your Heavenly Father? Nobody. So I want you to look at your notes here.

Freedom is having the ability to choose, your free to choose. The Lord saved us and He said us at liberty. You see, I’m not under the law where I have to serve Him. I’m under grace. It means that I’m free to choose. And so I can choose to live by grace by making the right decisions, but I made my own voluntary decisions. I choose. And many people don’t believe that you really have the power to make a choice. God has pre-programmed all of us in a certain way where we will do whatever he wants us to do, and we really don’t have a will.

So I want to give you some verses that we show you choice, choice, choice. So look there in your first scripture reference there, Exodus 17 and Moses said in the Joshua, choose us out, men go out, fight with Amalek. He tells them to choose. That means he gets to make a choice of all the people that he has. Choose out some men that go out and to fight. So he was given the ability to choose. And his choice would give him consequences because of the quality of the men that he chose, because of the battle they were going to fight.

Now that’s in Exodus and chapter 17 where the The Lord talks about and then came Amalek. I preached a whole sermon when I first came here years ago and it was all about Amalek. But look at the next statement. In Deuteronomy 14, 24, where it talks about the Lord thy God shall choose to set his name there. See, there was a place where God was gonna put his name. God makes choices, but it wasn’t that he chose you to save you from hell over somebody else.

God can choose a place and God can choose a person and God can choose a thing. You see, God can make many choices because God’s free too. But He also gives to you and I the opportunity to make choices to serve or not. Look there in Deuteronomy 30 and verse 19, that verse down, I call heaven and earth to record this day against you that I have said before you life and death, blessing and cursing, Therefore, What does he say?

Choose life. Now, if they were already pre-programmed, they have no choice. If everything was already determined, they have no choice to make. And so when he says life and death, blessing, cursing. You see, concerning your life, God will allow you to make decisions that can destroy you. You can choose to get on certain drugs and take your life. You can make a choice to get on alcohol and Get drunk and drive 80 miles an hour down the expressway wrong way Like it’s one woman.

She was watching the news and she says honey I know you’re on your way to work and you’re on the expressway, but I want to warn you that That’s hurt it on the news. There’s a guy on the expressway going the wrong way. So you look out for them He says that ain’t nothing. He says everybody I see he’s going the wrong way but There are consequences to your decisions And he says, therefore choose life that both thou and thy seed may live.

In other words, to extend physical life. I was with Ray Stanford one day and I said, Ray, I said, how come you think you’ve lived so long? He said, my mama lives so long. She was almost a hundred. He said, I believe God gave me long life because I honored my mother. Now you can make it on a lot of mistakes and a lot of areas, but God says in the book of Ephesians, he says that thy days may be long upon the earth.

Because he, under Israel law, parents had a way of shortening a child’s life if they rebelled against him. They could take him to the city and stone him to death. That’s how you could deal with a disobedient child. If they had done that in my time, out of him dead, I’d never lived. My daddy did enough, tried to kill me. He just left me alive just enough to survive because he needed somebody to throw the rocks out of the field.

So anyway, I’m glad I had a purpose in living. But God, see, made a choice. In verse 11 of chapter 31, when all Israel has come to appear before the Lord thy God in the place, see God chose a place which he shall choose. So God makes decisions, God makes choices. Now he makes him concerned people also and we’ll see that. Look at the next one. Joshua 24 verse 15, And if it seemed evil unto you to serve the Lord, L.O.R.D., Jehovah Himself, choose you this day, whom you will serve.

You see, you can choose who you will serve. And you may choose to serve the Lord and you may choose not to serve the Lord. Now, one of the problems that Joshua and that first generation had is, you see, they got to see what God did in delivering them through the wilderness and all the miracle they had and the battle they fought and got into the land. And after a while there was got peace in the land a little bit, but the next generation, they didn’t have to fight for anything.

They were already there in the land. And so it’s harder for that generation to be strong in the Lord because you see, they didn’t have to struggle in order to get what they had. They got it because Mummy and Daddy fought it and they got it. The reason our generation is so easy to give away our country because they didn’t do anything to get it. We didn’t have to fight for it. If our founding fathers were here today, they’d take up arms and they’d take our country back.

I got no doubt in my mind. No, anyway, look at the next statement. In 2 Samuel 17, 1, and moreover, I’ll hit the fail, said unto Absalom, let me now choose out 12,000 men and I will arise and pursue after David this night. Is he saying he gonna make a choice? And there were the consequences, these decisions that they make. Every day you and I make decisions about what we’re going to do or not do. Where we’re gonna go and not go.

What we’re gonna eat and not eat. Sometimes you know you’re going on diets and so on. I can’t eat that because that’ll make me gain weight. Is it what makes you gain weight? Anything that’s good. Anything is good makes you gain weight. And so I don’t even have to eat. I can just look at it and gain weight. Anybody like that here? Yeah, I’m glad to see that. I’m not the only one. I’ve never even seen a calorie, but evidently when I go past the dessert table, they jump out and get a whole over me somehow.

But there are choices, so you’ve got to try to stay away from it closest. I opened up the refrigerator and there was a piece of pie in there. I looked at that piece of pie and it says, taste me. Taste me. I said, I will not come on, tell me. Just one little taste. Betty won’t know. I said, a lot. She will too, because you’ll tell. It’s the highest thing I’ll tell you. won’t be here. That’s how she’ll know.

That woman is better than Sherlock Holmes. She can know when I just either looked at something I’m not supposed to look at it or she can tell and I tell you just drives me up all the time. I think she’s got a photographic memory or she got not only eyes in the back of her head she got on the side of her head. Leave the next statement. Where he says in 2nd Samuel 24 12, go and say unto David, thus saith the Lord, I offer the three things.

You see David had made a mistake and he, you know, you can trust the Lord or you can count, how many people if I got that I can put my trust in, but Lord was a little upset with him. and he says, I’m going to punish you. He said, I’m going to give you three choices. What do you want? So he got to choose his form of punishment. Wouldn’t it be neat? But not a one of them was pleasant.

All of them were bad decisions, bad choices. But it was God’s way, he’s gonna, but you get to choose which one you are. All right, son of a, I told you not to do that. Now that you did, I’m gonna give you three choices. You can die by hang poison or I’m gonna stone you to death. Know which way you like. Oh, and now, yeah, I’m gonna like you to one. But you see, he sinned against the Lord, and God was upset with him, and God gave him a choice.

You can choose. So he says, choose the one of them that I may do it unto thee. You know, and I heard this here about this guy. He was getting older, and he found this little lamb, so he rubbed it, and this genie came out. So I’m gonna give you three wishes. He says, well, number one, I want to wake up in the morning on a bed of money. And two, I want to have a Cadillac, pink Cadillac, sat in my garage.

And three, I want the woman to be 20 years younger than me. the next day, boom, everything happened. And he looked at his wife and she was the same age. So he ran to the mirror and he was 20 years older. You got to think about these things through, whether or not, you know, are you making right decisions? Well, anyway, we’ll move right along since y’all didn’t laugh too hard at that, sir. Look at Proverbs 1.29 says, for they that hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord.

See, it’s your choice. It’s individual’s choice. See, some people don’t like this idea of choice because, see, it’s better to say God planned everything. It’s everything is the well of God. And whatever you do, God’s already done determined that’s what you can do. Doesn’t God know the infront of the beginning? Well, yes. Does God know what I’m going to do tomorrow? Well, yes, he does. And though for how can I change it? If God already knows what I’m going to do, how can I change it?

So if it’s something that can’t change it, whatever will be, will be. Well, just because God knows what you’re going to do tomorrow doesn’t mean God made you do it. God knows that you’ve got a mind and you can think and you can change things. You don’t have to do things the way somebody might think you’re going to do them. You can change. You can make another decision. And sorry, it makes the statement here. And did not choose the fear of the Lord.

Now this verse is good because it goes with another verse I want to show you in just a minute. Now look in verse of Proverbs 3 and verse 31, envy thou not the oppressor, choose none of his ways. So that means that there are consequences to trying to be like somebody else when their ways are wrong. God tells us in His Word to be thou an example and Paul says, follow me as I follow Christ and be followers of me.

Therefore you can make a lot of decisions for your life. You can choose to read the Bible or not to read the Bible. You can choose to come to church or not come the church. Some of you made a decision about coming to church tonight and evidently some people made a decision not to come. True? Well the only reason they didn’t come is because God already predetermined for the foundation or for them not to go to church tonight. No.

Well I’m here because God pretty turned me to be here. No he didn’t. He gave you the choice and you made a decision because next week you may not be here and he wanted you to come. God wants us to know his word, so it’s a thing of obedient to come in, you can study God’s word. Here’s the next statement. Isaiah 7, 15 and 7, 16, these two verses, they kind of go together. Look at him. He says, butter and honey, shall ye, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good.

For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that thou abhorce shall be forsaken of both their king.” In other words, there’s a verse right before this. It’s not in your notes. Anybody ever heard of Isaiah 714? I wonder what Isaiah 714 talks about. Something about, if you hold on, I give you a sign, a virgin shall come and save him, a better son in shall call his name Emmanuel. A woman’s going to have a child.

And this child is going to be a perfect child. But you see, he never knew any wrong. You see, this is why they say, when you want to teach a child to, you know, to suck, they put sometimes they call it a sugar tip. Now I’m not using profanity. How many of you know what I’m talking about? You can take some cloth, I wouldn’t take a whole sock. And you can put sugar in there and you can twist it a little bit in and then the baby, they like sugar and they learn how to do that.

And so we can help them. So what you’re doing is you’re giving them a taste. When the Bible says, train up a child on the way he should go, means develop that thirst, that desire, and the way they should go. So you’ve got to give them some, they say you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink, we can put salt and salt to make them thirsty. Well that’s what you’re doing, that’s what we’re doing with people.

We’re trying to teach even the kids how to have a thirst for the things of God. Because you can’t make these teenagers in rent, you can’t make them serve God. And so many of them we lose. When they get to where they can get on their own, get their own car and get a job, they’re gone. And most of them for the rest of their life. Only a handful of ever-mounts serve in the Lord, because most of them will fall in love with the world, because they didn’t develop that taste.

That’s why he says, taste and see that the Lord is good. Desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow there by, taste and see if the Lord isn’t precious, that he isn’t good. And most people, they don’t do it. So we got to try to develop a taste in people’s mouth because they got to make that choice on their own. I wouldn’t mind having a part of it with it. Make everybody do right. You can’t. It’d be great if you could force people, but you can’t.

And so these two verses show you that you got to make choices. And you want the kids to make right decisions, and so like making the honey, or it’s really sweet. And praise and compliment kids when they do the things you want them to do. When they don’t do what you want them to do, you let them know that you’re disappointed. You’re very disappointed. But you love them, but you’re disappointed. You’re expected more. I expect more out of you.

That doesn’t mean you hate the kid, but you do love them. Look in verse Isaiah 65 and verse 12, therefore he says, I will number you to the sword and ye shall all bow down to the slaughter. Now get this, here’s a reason. When God tells us something, there’s usually because, because. Because when I called, ye did not answer. So that that showed that they had a choice. Why would God get on to somebody for not answering if they didn’t have a will of their own, where they were not free to choose?

When I speak, you did not hear. Whenever the word of God is taught and you can hear it and then not hear it. The Lord says, be you not here’s of the word only, but doers of the word. This man shall be half half your blessed in his deeds. So he says here, you did not hear, but did evil before mine eyes and get this, did choose that, wherein I delighted not. That means they were free to choose. Wouldn’t you get that out of that verse?

that God was not pleased with what they’re doing, but if God pre-programmed them to do all of that they were doing, how can God get upset with somebody who only did what God made them do? Because God didn’t do it. Everything is not the will of God. Now if you choose to rebel against the Lord, you could say, yes, God, it’s His will to have to chasten you. But that doesn’t delight the Lord. That’s not what He wanted to do.

He wanted us to choose life. He wants us to please Him. He wants us to delight in Him. He says, delight thyself and the Lord and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart. But it’s based upon what you delight in. Where’s that verse found? Psalms 37 verse verse, verse four. I learned that verse oh 100 years ago. Well not exactly energy. See I had a choice right then. I could have told the truth or lied and I lied.

But I confessed it so I told the truth. True. Traces over there. Look down at the bottom of the page here. I did 66 verse 4. I also will choose, get this, their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them. Now why? Because when I called, none did answer. And when I spake, they did not hear. For they did evil before mine eyes and get this, chose that in which I delighted not. chose against the will of God. So you are a free moral agent.

You’re the moral in the sense you should know what’s right and what’s wrong. And then you should make decisions be responsible for your choices. And God can either bless you or chasing you because there’s a reason why. God doesn’t just beat his children to death. There’ll be a reason. And God may even take some of his children home. Look at the next scripture, Genesis 13, 11, then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan. Who was the one who gave him a choice?

Abraham told him, says, you choose whichever way you want to go and I’ll take the other, right? And he saw that the plains down toward Sodom and Gomorrah was so watered and it looks so green grass and I’ll take that. Abraham went the other way. Abraham made a choice. He was going to live by the choice that Lot made. You see, God will allow you to make choices, and God will live with that. God will accept your choice. But you can either choose to be blessed by God or chastened by God, but you get the freedom to make the choice.

That’s why he says, stand faster for in the liberty where we have been made free. This liberty means don’t become trapped again in the law where you have to do it. Serve God because you love Him, because you want to. There’s freedom of choice. Look at the next scripture, Joshua. Most of y’all have heard this verse before. He says, choose you this day whom you will serve. But as for me in my house, what? We will what? Serve the Lord.

You can do whatever you want. But as for me in my house, This is what we’re going to do. And he was the head of his home. And so he says, at verse, you see, your witnesses against yourself, ye have chosen you, that you have chosen you the Lord, to serve him, serve him. Look at 1 Samuel 10, 24. And Samuel said to all the people, see ye him whom the Lord hath chosen. Now this is important because of the very next verse that follows it.

God chose, now looking for Samuel 12 verse 13, now therefore behold the King whom ye have chosen with whom ye have desired and behold the Lord have said a King over you. God told him at the beginning, he would rule over them, theocracy, he would rule and ask and judges that rule in God’s place. They said, we want a king so we can be like all the other nations. So they wanted a king. And so God told them, saying, tell them what is going to cost them, how did he’s going to take their men and their women, and they’re going to take them to cattle, and he’s going to take some of their land, and just tell them what they’re going to have to do.

And the king is going to be the king. And that means he’s an authority. And so God says, that’s not what you want, you can have it. So they chose to have a king. You’ve been listening to Bibleline, a teaching ministry of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida with Dr. Ralph Arnold. We pray that you were blessed by today’s message. If you have enjoyed our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, you can reach Bibleline and pledge your support to keep us on the air in your area by dialing 813-884-4328.

That’s 813-884-4328. To listen to today’s message again, or to obtain aSegue download of any of our Bibleline programs, just go to our homepage at BibleLineMinistries.org and click on the Radio Broadcast link. If you’re in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Our Sunday morning services begin at 1030, and at 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. Live broadcasts of our services may be seen by clicking the Calvary Community Church link at BibleLineMinistries.org.

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 and just keep looking up.