Wes Peppers

ARME 12: Triafalgar, IN - Sept 2012

ARME Bible Camp

How to Study The Bible Part 2

Father in Heaven, we thank You so much for the blessing that we have to love You and serve You.

We just pray now that You would be with us, close to our hearts, and that You would draw near to us.

All right, the next thing that you want to do in your reading is you want to read how?

Well you want to read thoughtfully, we covered that.

And I'm not even going to spend a lot of time on it.

Now let's take an example from John chapter 4.

We're not going to read it, but I'm just going to give you the punchline.

You can mark it down and go back and read it tonight.

Who's the main character in John chapter 4?

And so Jesus meets her and He talks with her, and He shares with her who He is, and she accepts Him, and then she goes into the city and she tells everybody, and everybody comes out, and they what?

You guys are familiar with the story, all right?

So let's suppose that I read that story through.

I read it as a third person through the first time, yeah?

Alright, so I just read it to see what the story's about.

The second time I read it, I go through and I read it from the viewpoint of Jesus.

As Jesus is standing there, let's just pretend that I'm just, I mean don't take that the wrong way, okay?

Pretend that I'm Jesus and I'm standing there at the well and it's noon and it's hot, and here comes this woman down to the well, right?

Now what was wrong with that picture right off the bat?

People didn't go at the hot part of the day to draw.

They went in the morning, they went in the evening.

So immediately I recognize something's wrong, yeah?

So I'm reading the passage and I'm thinking to myself, what is Jesus thinking here?

So I read that through and you can find, You could spend 2 hours doing that.

Then I go back and I read the chapter again.

And I know why I'm going out to the well at noon.

And I'm going to the well, and there's a man.

And he comes up to me and he says, And imagine if you were that woman and Jesus were saying those things to you, how would you feel, right?

As Jesus goes through, he reveals to her that he is the water of what?

And she says, she says, Sir, give me this water that I may drink always.

He says, you've rightly said you have no husband because you've had 5 men that were not your husband and the man that's with you now is not your husband.

He was revealing her sin, her history, right?

And immediately she recognizes him as a prophet.

Now, put yourself in that picture, imaginatively.

Jesus is speaking to you and He says, I have the water of life, but before I can give it to you, I need to do something.

I need to point out your sin, I need to reveal your sin, right?

And so, do you understand how you do this?

And so, we can get an experience from the woman and apply it to our own life, reading imaginatively.

Now a very neat side note is that he said, You've had 5 husbands and the 1 you're with now is not your husband, how many is that?

Jesus was the seventh man that had an impact on her life.

And he's the 1 that completed her, changed her, and made her what she was always trying to be and always wanted to be by being with those other men.

Then you go back and you read the chapter again.

And who do you read it from this viewpoint of?

The disciples come back and Jesus is there, and they're like, my goodness, who's he talking to?

He's not only talking to a woman, but she's a Samaritan.

And they approach and they're listening to the conversation and imagine what were they thinking as he was speaking to her, right?

And imagine that you're the someone inside the city, and here comes this woman inside the city, and she's going crazy, and she's saying, come hear a man who's told me all things that I've ever done.

And if you heard her say that, what would happen in your heart?

You put yourself in the passage, and you read it over and over again from different perspectives of different people.

John chapter 5, you have the man by the pool of Bethesda.

You read the story as Jesus, you read the story as the man, you read the story as the bystanders, you read the story as the disciples, looking at all these crippled people, you see how that works?

And what you'll find as you do this is that the words that Jesus speaks to those people, you'll find Him also speaking to your own heart.

Just like He revealed to the woman at the well her sin before he could save her, Jesus is gonna start speaking to you about your sin that he needs to take away from you before you can have a full connection with him.

How to Study The Bible Part 1

Father in heaven, we're delighted to be here today, and we're delighted to be at Army, and we're just so thankful, Lord, for the messages of heaven we've already received.

And I pray, Lord, that during these next 2 hours, that we would have very much of an instruction on how to study your word and that we would take these tools and methods and as we learned them, Lord, they would not just be nice things that we learned at Army but stayed at Army, but that they would become real in our lives, that would become real in our hearts.

And as we open Your Word, and as we study to show ourselves approved before You, I pray, Lord, in a special way that You would just refresh us with Your Spirit.

You would give us fresh insights and new thoughts.

And Lord, biblical messages that would change our lives radically.

Lord, we need revival, we need the Holy Spirit, we need a fresh outpouring of your Holy Spirit.

We know that all revivals have been started by earnest prayer and sincere study of your word.

So we ask today, Lord, at Army, that this would be a revival.

And Lord, we pray that this would be the last Army.

Not because we don't like army, but because we want Jesus to come.

And we pray today, Lord, that in our hearts we would be ready.

So we look to you, Father, during this hour, and we pray for your spirit to come.

Give us understanding, give us wisdom, give us clarity of mind.

We ask these things in Jesus' name, that all God's people say, Amen.

What I want to share with you this afternoon, I like to call finding the pearl, digging deep into the treasure of God's Word.

And what I'm going to share with you, I'm not going to tell you a bunch of stories, I'm not going to entertain you, I'm not going to preach a sermon to you, but what I'm going to give you are practical instructions, practical methods that you can take with you back home wherever you are and you can begin applying these in your lives.

In fact, you don't even have to wait until you get back home.

And I believe that these things will be a benefit.

I hope that they'll be a blessing to you.

And we're gonna look at a lot of nuts and bolts, so I'm gonna really pray that you guys don't get lost, and we have a lot of information to cover in 2 hours, but I hope that it'll be logical and clear for you.

So we're just going to go ahead and get started.

I wanna share with you an interesting statement that I just came across not too long ago.

When a man is too busy to spend time with God, he is busier than heaven ever intended him to be.

If you have found yourself to be too busy at different times to spend time with God through prayer, through Bible study, and I would also add to that, witnessing for Jesus, then you are busier than heaven ever intended you to be.

He wants us to dedicate a portion of our day, every day, to spending quality time with Him.

How much time should you put into Bible study?

I always say, as much as it takes to know that you've been in the presence of God.

As much as it takes to know that you've experienced his spirit.

Well, when I first became a Christian, I just wanna share with you my own experience.

All my hopes and dreams of becoming this big NFL football star were crushed when I tore out my knee.

And I had all these different things going on in my life.

And I looked around at the world and I said, man, if This is really what the world is like, why would I even want to be a part of it?

And so I thought about suicide, and as I thought about suicide, God began to bring to my mind the concept that I needed to study the Bible.

And at that time, I was an atheist, I thought, study the Bible, why would I do that, right?

Why would I have any desire to study that book of fables and fairy tales and a bunch of garbage that all of my professors who have PhDs spend a third of their class making fun of?

But finally I agreed, because the more I tried to put that thought out of my mind, the more it grew.

All right, and so I began studying the Bible trying to prove it wrong.

And that was the greatest blessing of my life.

And let me tell you, friends, if you will search the Bible with all of your heart as the Bible says in Jeremiah 29, 13, God says He will be what?

And if you put all of your energy into it, you will find God and you will find that pearl.

So after I came to know Christ, I began to study the Bible.

And I was living alone, I only went to class 3 to 4 hours a day, I had no job, so I had all day long.

And for about 2 years, I spent 8 to 10 hours a day studying the Bible.

I didn't touch Ellen White for the first year, I just read the Bible, I read the New Testament about 15 times.

And let me tell you, here's a universal principle, that the more time you put into your personal devotional life, the more you're gonna get out of it.

The more time you spend seeking to draw near to God, the more you're going to experience Him drawing near to you.

And so what I'm gonna share with you today are some things that I use in my own personal study.

These are some things I've developed myself, some things I've borrowed from other people.

Don't think that every thought that I put up on the screen is my own.

Okay, if you'd like to know where some of the resources are, I can give those to you.

But we want to ask the question, how shall we study the Bible?

How many of you have a very, you feel like you have a pretty good understanding of the Bible?

How many of you would like to know the Bible more?

Here's an interesting statement I'll share with you.

It's from the book, I believe, Education, page 189.

It says, in daily study, the verse by what?

Verse by verse method is often most helpful.

Let the student take 1 verse and concentrate the mind on an ascertaining the thought that God has put into that verse for him.

And then dwell upon the thought until it becomes what?

1 passage thus studied until its significance is clear, is of more value than the pursual of many chapters with no definite purpose in view and no positive instruction gained." How many of you have ever sat down and you open the Bible and you read like 10 chapters and you're like, yes!

And you get to the church on Saturday and say, man, I read 10 chapters.

And someone looks at you and they say, I read 20.

And someone looks at them and they say, I read 25.

And then Somebody else says, what did you learn in reading 10, 20, or 25 chapters?

GYC 2012 Acts: The Revolution Continues

GYC 2012 Morning Devotional

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Rediscovering Character

I'm thankful that 3 of you are here this morning.

It's great to be here worshipping with you this morning, amen?

It's great to be a Seventh-day Adventist this morning.

And I'm thankful to be at GYC, I'm thankful that you're here and I'm looking forward to a very exciting weekend.

What could be greater than starting GYC on a Sabbath morning, amen?

The only thing I think could be better would be starting GYC in Heaven.

How many of you think that might be possible next year?

I'm excited about what the Lord's going to do.

It's good to see that all of you have survived the Mayan calendar disaster.

And that was, you know, in the news and all these different things, but I'm thankful, friends, that the hope that we have is not built upon superstition, amen?

It's built upon the Word of God and the Word of God has been proven down through the ages.

And I'm just so thankful today that we have a solid hope, something that's real, something that's pure, something that's true, and we can celebrate that, we can worship our God this morning.

My wife is at home, She's watching online with my eight-month-old son and we actually, I think they have a picture of my son.

I don't know if they're gonna be able to put that up but there they are, they're watching at home.

And I tell you what, friends, having a child will change our life for eternity.

And what a blessing it is, little Levi is there at home.

I hope this weekend that we are going to leave GYC not the same people as when we came, but we will be changed, we will be filled with the Holy Spirit, and we will be ready to fulfill Revelation 18, the glory of God being shown into all the world.

I've been praying for each 1 of you that God's Word, God's Spirit would speak to your heart this weekend.

And friends, we want the latter rain to be poured out.

How many of you want to have that experience today?

This weekend we're gonna look at 4 different themes.

We're gonna look at several things from the book of Acts, some things that won't be from the book of Acts.

But today we're gonna talk about the roots of the book of Acts.

We're going to — and then tomorrow we're going to look at the power line of Acts.

The next day we're going to look at the driving force of the book of Acts.

And then the last day we're going to look at what it takes and what it took to continue in the book of Acts and what that means for our generation today.

The titles will be Rediscovering Character Today, Tomorrow Redefining Culture, The Next Day Resurrecting the Church, and The Last Day Reaching the cosmos.

I'm looking forward to a powerful weekend.

You know, as I was on my way out here, I was on a plane and I sat, it was, I was flying southwest, it was open seating.

And as I got on the plane, I, I, there was, I have to confess, there was a man sitting in the seat by the window, and he was actually a very large man.

In fact, he kind of like spilled over into the next seat.

And I thought to myself, I said, you know, if I sit beside this man and there's actually extra seating available, then nobody's going to want to sit in the middle between me and him." You were supposed to laugh.

I felt heavily impressed to sit by this man.

I thought, I'm going to be able to witness to this man All the way to GYC, four-hour flight.

Well, all the people came on and the stewardess said, you know, this is gonna be a very full flight.

And so, all the people came on and the last guy got on and he walked past me and I thought, man, this is it, I'm gonna have a seat to myself, I'm gonna witness this guy, it's gonna be wonderful.

Then all of a sudden I get a tap on the shoulder, and it's the guy that went past me.

He came back and he said, there's no more seats back there.

This guy was about 6'4", and his shoulders were about this wide.

And so you have the 3 biggest people on the plane all sitting in the same seats.

This brother, the very large man, he like spilled over into the next seat, and then there was this brother sitting beside him, And I sat like this the whole time.

You think I'm joking, I'm totally serious.

And the stewardess kept like bumping into me with the, with the cart.

But I started talking to this man in the middle, the dude on the end, he like fell asleep and I thought I was supposed to witness this guy.

But the guy in the middle, he started telling me he was of a certain faith, and he started telling me how much he struggled with his faith.

And he said, I struggle with my faith because the picture I see of the, of the character of God in the Bible, He says, I don't understand how there could be such a loving God and He would burn people for all eternity.

And I said, brother, I said, this is not the true picture of God in the Bible.

And we opened our Bibles together on the plane, we had a Bible study.

And at the end of that time, the man said, man, my faith has been renewed, I'm so excited, thank you for sharing this truth with me.

You know, what that makes me think of is that there are young people all around the world who are not even in the Adventist church who want to be a part of the revolution that you're experiencing here.

There are young people around the world who would give anything to have the seat that you're in today.

And friends, there are young people who are going to be joining this church when the Holy Spirit pours out, and the question is, what are they going to be coming into?

If they came to GYC, what would they see in you?

It is my prayer this weekend, friends, that we will have such an experience with Jesus that it will radically change our lives.

Father in Heaven, Lord, this weekend we need an outpouring of Your Holy Spirit.

This weekend we need to shun worldliness and selfishness and self-seeking.

And we need the true love that can only come from Heaven.

We ask that Your Spirit would draw near to us today.

We ask that You would speak to our hearts in a very powerful way.

We pray, Lord, that we would not be the same people when we leave as when we came.

But we would be transformed, we would be renewed, we would be empowered.

And You would bless Your people and we would know that we have been in the presence of Jesus today.

This is our prayer, we ask it in His name, Amen.

In order to oftentimes understand what lies ahead, many times you have to go backward, is it not true?

In Bible prophecy we understand the book of Revelation, and many of the symbols and themes in the book of Revelation we find repeated in the, or, or first told in the Old Testament.

Every revolution had something that had to happen before the revolution could take place.

And that's what we're gonna look at today.

We're gonna look at that in the life of a very interesting character in the Bible.

How many of you have heard of John the Baptist before?

Now what's interesting is that without John the Baptist, there would be no book of Acts.

Because John the Baptist introduces Jesus onto the scene, and then Jesus introduces, He brings about the Holy Spirit after that.

John the Baptist is actually mentioned 9 times in the book of Acts.

And every time he's mentioned, it's with great reverence.

In fact, in Acts chapter 1, Jesus talks about John the Baptist, his closing words with the disciples.

John the Baptist we find in our study of Scripture, he's actually a type of the final generation that will live upon the earth.

John the Baptist, his role was to prepare the world for the first coming of Jesus, and the last generation is to, their role is to prepare the world for the second coming of Jesus.

Back to Menu

Presenter

Wes Peppers

All Recordings

How to Study The Bible Part 2

1h

How to Study The Bible Part 1

1h

Rediscovering Character

51m

Redefining Culture

54m

Resurrecting the Church

52m

Reaching the Cosmos

54m

What On Earth Is HE Waiting On, Part 2

14m

What On Earth Are WE Waiting On?

2h 13m

What On Earth Are YOU Waiting On?

2h

What On Earth Is HE Waiting On, Part 1

1h 50m

Friendship Evangelism - Part 1

1h 11m

Friendship Evangelism - Part 2

51m

Sound Doctrine