OYC 2010: Awakened Hope

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Oregon Youth for Christ

OYC 2010 Evening Devotion

Louis Torres

We Do Not Well

Our loving God, thank you for reminding us afresh how much you love us.

And as we spend time in your Word, Give us a deeper sense of our need of You.

It's great to have something of this nature here in this place.

And I believe that throughout the weekend you'll be blessed.

There was a young little boy, he was about 7 years old, who had just, just discovered the reality of Jesus in his life.

And when he discovered that, he got so excited and so thrilled that he wanted to tell the whole world.

And he was walking down the sidewalk and came across a gentleman and stopped and said, �Mr.

Do you know that Jesus loves you?� Well the man cleared his throat and said, �Little boy, I want you to know that I'm a bishop.

Well, the little boy had no idea what a bishop was.

And so he said, that's okay, mister, it's all right.

If you have your Bibles, I'm going to ask you to turn to the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament, we find many, many interesting stories, and they have meaning for us today.

Everything in the Scriptures can be applied to any time of earth's history.

Wherever you live, wherever you are, You can have a good sense and a good feeling to know that the Bible is timeless.

It's not old-fashioned as some people think.

It's not outdated as some people may suppose.

The story that I want you to look at is in 2 Kings, the book of 2 Kings.

In the book of 2 Kings 6, we find the story of a young man named Elisha.

Now this young man Elisha was what the Bible calls a prophet.

In those days they were called seers, in other words, people who could see.

And this particular prophet had an amazing ability to sense when God was about to act, and he would prophesy or foretell that which would come to pass." In this particular situation, the Scripture reveals that there was an army that came from Syria, and this particular army surrounded the house of Elisha.

The reason for that is because every time that he wanted to attack the Hebrews, it always seemed as if though somebody knew precisely his plans and every time that he attempted something, his plans were always foiled.

And so he wondered whether or not there was some spy in the camp, and then somebody told him, no, it's not a spy, it happens to be a prophet, and his name is Elisha.

So the king then sent his army to surround Elijah's home, and when Elijah's servant realized that the house was surrounded by the enemy, there's a great host, And verse 14, if you're there, it says, Verse 14, "...there were chariots and horses and a great host, and they came by night and compassed the city about.

And the servant of the man of God was risen early and gone forth.

Behold, and Hosn compassed the city both with horses and chariots.

And his servant said unto him, Alas my master, how shall we do?

And Elisha said the following, you ought to underline this for those of you who like to underline your Bible.

He answered and said, Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.

Now obviously as I've said this man was a seer.

He had ability to see something that other people could not see.

And he said, there are more that are with us than there are out there.

And Then Elisha prayed and said, Lord, open his eyes that he may see.

And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, a mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.

And when they came down to him, Elijah prayed unto the Lord and said, Smite this people, I pray thee, with blindness.

And he smote them with blindness according to the word of Elisha.

Now, what the story finally reveals is that these soldiers were blinded, and they could not see where they were going.

And so Elijah said, Well, come with me and I'll lead you just the way to the place you are seeking.

And so he led them actually right into the inner circle of the city, and when their eyes were open, they realized that they were captives.

The king wanted to smite them, that's verse 22, and Elisha said, no, don't do that.

And so, they treated him well, they sent him home, and the Scripture says in verse 23, so the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel.

Now, that's the introduction into what we want to study tonight.

The Bible then introduces us into a great famine in Samaria.

And a great famine took place in Samaria simply because Ben-Hadad, king of Syria, gathered all his hosts and went up and besieged Samaria." Now, there is a lot of language in the Scriptures that sometimes we don't understand or sometimes we just pass over it.

But when it says, besiege the city, it's interesting.

1 time my daughter was talking to her husband And the husband was trying to impress her about how well he was acquainted with the scriptures, and he says, my eyes beseech me.

Well, it was obvious that he was not well versed in scripture, was he?

Because the word beseech has to do with encompassing or surrounding.

And so what happened was that the armies in those days, all the cities were walled cities.

I don't know how many of you have been to Europe.

You'll find in Europe a lot of the old cities were still have walls around them.

If you go to Korea, they still have the wall is no longer there basically, but they still have the gates.

There are 4 main gates in that city of Seoul.

And before, a long time ago, it used to be surrounded by a wall.

And the wall was built to keep enemies out and to protect the people inside.

And when armies came to attack a city, what they would do is they would actually surround the city, completely surround the city, and cut off all supplies that could come into the city.

The idea was this, If we could get these people to become hungry enough and weak enough, if we have to go and fight the city, they're too weak and it'll be an easy thing to take them over.

Or they'll become so hungry that they'll surrender.

In either event, it will be an easy take, and these people will become our servants." And so they were surrounded the city.

And listen, sometimes they surrounded the city for 3 years.

This was actually a long, drawn-out process that took sometimes months and sometimes it took years, depending upon how much food the city had or whether or not they had water in that city.

And so, the city then was surrounded, And since it was surrounded, they had no food left over.

And the Bible says then that they began to sell whatever they had left over to eat.

Now, I don't know how many of you remember in Haiti not long ago, and I'm not speaking about the earthquake that hit Haiti, I'm talking about before that, that things were so bad in Haiti that people were actually making cakes of clay to eat.

In this particular situation it says, look at verse 25, There is a great famine in Samaria, and behold, they beseeched it until an ass's head was sold for 4 square pieces of silver." In other words, the head of a donkey was sold for 80 pieces of silver.

And then it says, the fourth part of a cab of a dove's dung for 5 pieces of silver.

Now things have to get pretty bad for people to want to buy the dung of a dove.

And so it's pretty, pretty, pretty serious now.

These people had been besieged, And it's been long enough that the food is completely gone, and the only thing they have to eat is whatever remains of a dove and, of course, a head, for example, of a donkey.

The Scripture says then, as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, there cried a woman unto him, saying, Help, help my lord, O king!

And he said, If the Lord do not help thee, how can I help thee?

Out of the barn floor or out of the winepress?" And the king said unto her, What is the matter?

And she answered, This woman said unto me, give thy son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.' So we boiled my son, and did eat him.

And I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him.

And she hath hit her son." Now, folks, the language here is quite vivid and quite gruesome.

Things have gotten pretty, pretty desperate in Samaria.

There isn't much to eat, and mothers have turned to eat their own children.

Then the Scripture says, Something interesting takes place.

In chapter 7, verse 3, we're introduced into 4 leprous men at the entering of the gate.

Now, these particular men in those days, leopards, people who had leprosy, generally speaking were not permitted inside the city.

And the Bible reveals that there were 4 such people just outside the gate, and they said 1 to another, why sit we here until we die?

They couldn't go inside, and they were afraid of the enemy outside.

They were kind of stuck in a very awkward situation.

But they also recognized this, that it wasn't this, that it wasn't long before they would die if they just remained sitting by the gate.

Sons and Daughters

There was a group of people that were being taken to a factory and given them a tour of how the foundry operated, how they cut metal, et cetera.

And they came to a specific place where a man had a blueprint.

And they would cut the metal in a specific way, but they would have to trace it from the print.

And as they traced it from the print, there was a very fine flame that would actually cut the metal.

As they were watching this process, the operator finally had to stop because the flame would not cut through a certain spot.

And so the question was raised, why is it that the flame could not cut that spot?

And the operator simply said that when there is rust at a specific spot, the flame will not cut through until that rust is removed, and then they could continue.

And so the man took out the chemicals that he needed, took the steel cleaner, cleaned the metal, which was 8 inches thick, and continued to cut until the job was done.

In the midst of the group was a Christian who all of a sudden got an impression about the Christian experience and this particular process.

And here's what the Christian said, it struck me forcefully that this is a picture of the Christian.

The Holy Spirit is seeking to produce in us God's perfect design.

If the life is unblemished, He is able to continue his efforts, but if we become cardinal or backslidden, his work of shaping us is hindered until the area in question has been thoroughly cleansed.

Let's pray together as we consider God's Word tonight.

Father, we thank you for thy Word and you've promised that you will give us understanding.

And we're thankful that we can claim that promise tonight, not because we have anything worthy that we can commend ourselves to you by, but because Jesus was willing to make a way for us through His blood.

Tonight's topic is Sons of God and Daughters of Men.

Now if you have your Bibles, I'd like you to open up in your Bibles to the book of Genesis, Genesis 6.

In the book of Genesis 6, I want you to read a few verses there.

Here's what it says, The sons of God saw the daughters of man, that they were fair.

And they took them wives of all which they chose.

And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh, yet his days shall be in 120 years." There were giants in the earth in those days, and also after that when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bared children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

And God saw the wickedness of man that was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Now, there are several things here that I should bring out.

When I first started working as a Bible worker, many, many moons ago, I was doing a Bible study with a young couple, and they were very enthused about what they were learning, so much so that they decided that they wanted to commit their lives to God.

But 1 day I discovered there was somebody visiting them.

And it turned out to be a lady who happened to be of the Jehovah Witness church.

I was concerned because I was very excited that this couple was coming our direction and all of a sudden here shows up this lady and we call it in the church language sheep stealing.

Well, I was not very happy with that, you understand.

After all the hard work that I was doing, and she was trying to steal them.

And so we began to study, and in essence what she did was she put up a test, and she wanted to demonstrate that their particular persuasion was better than ours, and the 1 who can explain the Bible best would be the 1 to win.

Well, let me say this to you, no 1 ever wins a debate, but I was in a situation where I had to defend myself.

Now I was a young, young, young lad, and in comparison to her, she obviously had been doing Bible studying for a while.

In fact, it turned out that she was the wife of the leader of the Jehovah Witness Church in that area.

And so I was a little bit concerned because I was not as well versed in the Bible.

She took me to this verse that we just read, the sons of God married the daughters of men, you see.

And then she went about to say that these particular sons of God were angels from heaven that came down and got married with these women and that's why they were giants.

I said, so these sons of God are angels from heaven?

She said, because in the book of Job it says the sons of God came to meet with God.

So I said, so you're telling me then that these angels came down and had relationships with the women and that's why they were giants?

So I said, well, the flood came, and what happened to those angels?

She said, well, they went back to heaven.

That didn't make a lot of sense to me, so I asked the question.

I said, you mean these angels who came down and defiled themselves, God allowed them to go back into heaven?

I don't suppose anybody had asked that question before.

It just seemed reasonable to ask that question.

And so she said, no, they didn't go to heaven.

And then she gave 1 of these nervous laughs, you know, and she said, why don't we start our own church?

And I said to her, why don't you join my church?

Well, she left, and my sheep were not stolen.

But there are many people today who are confused about that verse.

There are people who believe that these are angels.

How many of you don't want to raise your hands?

Well, in reality, there's a lot of confusion about this section.

And let me say this, I've written a book called Bothersome and Disturbing Bible Passages.

Well, it's a little small book, but it has over a hundred verses of Scripture that are difficult to explain.

And I did the research on all of them and gave the biblical answers so that people can actually find the answers to those verses of Scripture that are difficult to understand.

In fact, in Guam, I'm hosting a program called Straight from the Bible.

Now you probably heard Doug Batchelor, Pastor Doug Batchelor's program called Bible Answers Live.

Well, Doug Batchelor, Pastor Doug Batchelor, actually uses my book.

He called me up and said, asked me for permission to use my book because there are answers in my book that he hadn't thought about before.

So I'm thankful that he is able to find it beneficial for himself.

And so I've done a lot of studying and finding those difficult texts.

And how do you explain them from the Bible?

So let's have a Bible study tonight, what do you say?

And let's try to figure out this question that's before us.

So, First of all, when we talk about the sons of God, and people refer to that as being angels, there are only 2 places in the Scripture that refer to angels as the sons of God.

So those of you in TV land, if you have your Bibles, If you don't, you can go and fetch them, and turn to Job 1.6, and here's what it says, Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.

By the way, this is a wonderful text that I have used for people who don't understand or know that there are actually beings out in space.

In fact, 1 day I was flying from New York to California, and I happened to be sitting between 2 ladies.

And so I was praying which 1 I should witness to, and I was going to witness to the 1 on the right, and it turned out that she was a Christian.

So then I turned to the 1 to the left, and it turned out that she was basically an atheist.

Pentecost

Let's pray together as we study God's Word.

Our Father, we're so grateful for your kindness to us.

And in the name of Jesus, we pray that you'll take this meeting into your hands and do for us what you only can do.

And thank you for hearing us and answering us, Father.

I was in a country called Hungary, and I was holding an evangelistic meeting.

The pastor had his pastoral duties to fulfill, and 1 of those was to visit a patient in the hospital.

He asked if I would go along, and since we had other things to do, I accompanied him.

And when we arrived at the hospital, we entered into the room in that particular country, in that particular hospital.

They had kind of like a ward where all the people were in, and the beds were pretty close to each other.

And I came up to the gentleman that we were to visit, and there was a living skeleton lying in bed, just nothing but skin nothing but skin and bones, a terrible sight to see, cancer was eating the man alive.

And the man was weeping, And I asked if he was in pain and he said no.

So I said, well, if you're not in pain, why are you weeping?

And his chin began to crumble And he simply said, because I fear that God would not forgive the sins of my youth.

But the thing that most concerned him was that he would enter into eternity without the assurance that he was at peace with God.

What a terrible plight to be in, what a horrible condition to find yourself in, when you're facing eternity and you don't seem to have the certainty or any assurance or any hope that there is any chance to make it on the other side.

And this evening, I want to share with you who was able to encourage him.

If you have your Bibles, I want you to turn with me to the book of Acts.

In the Book of Acts, most of the time when people think of the Book of Acts, Chapter 2, we're told that something happened in Acts, Chapter 2.

And the word that's used for that experience is called Pentecost.

And I think that when people think of the word Pentecost, people have different ideas of what Pentecost is all about.

I remember 1 time holding an evangelistic meeting and at that particular meeting there was a family, a mother, 3 girls who were children of hers, her brother and her husband.

They were all attending the meetings, and they were all charismatic.

And so they asked if I would visit in their home, and when I arrived at their home, they wanted to know what my particular thoughts were on Pentecost.

So I asked what their idea of Pentecost was.

What was that which impressed them the most?

And what they said was, the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Now, I'm sure most of you are acquainted with that particular gift.

I believed in the gift of speaking in tongues.

I'll tell you what took place 1 time, and then I'll come back to the story of this family.

I was holding an evangelistic meeting in a little town called Rio Doce, New Mexico.

The word Rio Doce means noisy, but Rio Doce is the way you pronounce it in Spanish.

It's a little town way up in the mountains near Albuquerque, New Mexico, or closer to Roswell, New Mexico.

And as I was holding a meeting there, a lady came into my evangelistic meetings, and this was the second night of my meeting, and when she was exiting, I was greeting people at the exit, and I said to her, �Good evening.� And she looked at me like I had spoken to the wall.

And so I sensed that perhaps she did not understand me.

So I said, �Good evening.� She still had no response.

And then immediately I was impressed that maybe this lady did not understand English, so I switched to Spanish.

You know, it's good to have a knob you can turn and all of a sudden you speak a different language, right?

And so she was all excited and elated that the preacher not only spoke English, but spoke her language.

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OYC 2010 Evening Devotion

Pentecost

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