ARME 2: Canby, OR - May 2010

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

ARME Bible Camp

Stephen Bohr

Martin Kim

Ivor Myers

Taj Pacleb

Lisa Quade

Daniel Vis

Question and Answer Session

Dear Heavenly Father, I want to pray the prayer of Moses for these speakers this morning in Exodus 4.12 that you would be with their mouth and you would teach them what to say.

We got a lot of good questions from you folks.

We'll get through as many as we can in the next half hour.

I want to begin with the first question, the only question we got about Army's secret weapon.

Is there more power when 2 or 3 are gathered for prayer, or where a whole church or conference prays for an issue?

Certainly, there's no limit to the power of even 1 person's prayer because God is the power behind prayer.

Whether it's 1 person or a group of people, there's no limit to God's ability to answer that prayer.

But in a special way, God is looking for unity among his people.

And so when 2 or 3 people come together in agreement, as it describes there in Matthew 8, I think that's the verse he was talking about, that question, There's special power because the people come together in unity.

If you remember on the day of Pentecost, when they were praying in the upper room, they all came into agreement and won a court, and God was able to pour out his power in even greater measure.

And so part of the answer to that question is the unity that we experience as God's people that enables God to pour out his power in special ways.

How do you explain the way God worked in the Old Testament times using war and bloodshed of so many in order to advance his cause?

Would we not cringe at the thought of God working in this way today?

How can we understand the God of the Old Testament with the life of Jesus?

Or maybe another way to say it, why does God, you know, it almost seems as God is violating His own commandment, thou shalt not kill.

I actually just did a presentation on this in Michigan.

And it was looking at the issue of how God dealt with, or how God was seen to be in the Old Testament.

And if you look at the issue of the flood, for example, you might look at the flood and say, you know what?

God killed innocent children in the flood.

That God actually provided a way of escape for those who are willing to take it.

Now remember this, that the Bible says all have sinned, and if we believe that premise that all have sinned, then all are worthy of what?

It would be like a criminal on death row arguing, how dare you put me to death?

So God has the right to wipe us all out, period, because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

However, God manifests mercy and grace, amen?

And what you will find is that very often we will read stories in the Old Testament and take those stories and not realize that in these stories that were written, very often all the detail of that story may not have been included in that story.

We know that if God, the Bible lays out the principle that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

If we see, look at the principle of how God acted and apply that principle across the board, we will see that God was actually indeed just in everything that he's done in the Old Testament.

In the flood, did God provide, let me put it this way, Did God provide a public option?

Those people said, we're not getting on the ark.

We are going to choose to go against the word of God, and they defied God.

And as a result, they were wiped away of the flood.

Did God provide a way, an opportunity for people to escape Sodom and Gomorrah?

People chose to stay, and as a result, they perished.

If you look at how God, I know I'm doing a long answer here, but this is 1 of those kind of questions.

If you look at when God spoke to Israel and told Israel, I'm going to lead you into these lands and displace the people there because of the abominations that they were doing, God said, this is how I'm gonna move them out before you.

Now if you're in a city or a country where it becomes infested with hornets what are you going to do?

The very fact that these people remained in the places that they were, showed their defiance against who?

How many opportunities did God give Pharaoh through these plagues to repent of his ways?

Many, and Pharaoh chose not to take any of those opportunities.

So as we begin to pull these characteristics of God and see how he dealt with nations around him, you will read, Again, I did an extensive study on this and I would recommend it to those of you who wanna look at it.

God always gave the people an opportunity to escape before he brought the sword of punishment, always.

Just to add on to that, the Bible teaches that God is a God of mercy and a God of justice.

And many people try to divorce those 2 characteristics from each other, but they're 2 sides of the same coin.

God can be just and merciful at the same time.

And the greatest demonstration of that is the cross.

The death of Christ on the cross showed the mercy and justice of God simultaneously.

The justice of the law said that the wages of sin is death.

Death needed to happen because the law was broken.

He had to be consistent with that characteristic.

But at the same time, he was also merciful because instead of letting us die, he died in our place.

And so we see this justice and mercy also in the most holy place of heaven sanctuary Which is where God wants us to go by faith And so I believe that we as God's people in the last days We will have the true picture of God's character that we might be able to demonstrate it throughout the world because we will have a most holy place experience.

I just wanted to mention that if someone wants an excellent resource on this issue, the best book that I've read is available from Steve Wahlberg's ministry.

It's called The Character of God Controversy.

And he deals with all of these stories of the Old Testament, the destruction of the Canaanites, the flood, the Sodom and Gomorrah, at the foot of Mount Sinai, the apostasy and making them drink the gold and all of these things.

And it does it in a way that is very Christ-centered, very cross-centered.

So the book, The Character of God Controversy is an excellent resource.

I think it's important to know that the results of sin will lead to death.

It's not a question of if, it's just a question of when.

So I don't know why we're so offended God does it sometimes now versus waits till the end.

Can I just add something to that very quickly?

Remember this, that hellfire, the final punishment of the wicked, the same question could be asked, why is God destroying the wicked?

And the reason will be, as Taj pointed out, is because they rejected the opportunity that God had given them at the cross of Christ.

The fact is the wicked are going to beg God to destroy them.

When I pastored in Wyoming many years ago, I went to visit this lady who hadn't been to church for many, many years.

We got to talking and I was wondering why she wasn't coming to church.

She says, well, At church they showed this movie on John Hus, and they showed how this faithful man of God was burnt at the stake.

She says, and I just cannot understand how God could allow something like that to happen.

Back to Menu

Question and Answer Session

Transcript

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Sound Doctrine