October 18, 2017 Show with Israel Wayne on “Questions God Asks”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

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Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 18th day of October 2017.

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And I am delighted to have back on the program Israel Wayne, a conference speaker, regular columnist for Homeschool Digest, Homeschool Enrichment, and the

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Old Schoolhouse Magazines. He's a site editor for christianworldview .net,

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an author of a number of books, including Full -Time Parenting, A Guide to Family -Based

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Discipleship, Questions God Asks, Questions Jesus Asks, and Pitching a

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Fit, Overcoming Angry and Stressed -Out Parenting. And today we are going to be discussing the aforementioned book

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Questions God Asks, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Israel Wayne.

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Thank you, brother. It's great to be back on your show. And in studio with me is my co -host, the

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Reverend Buzz Taylor. Hello once again. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. And please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question regards a personal and private matter.

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But other than that, please give us first name, city and state, and country of residence. Before we get into the topic at hand, the book that we are discussing,

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Questions God Asks, tell us how you got so actively involved in the homeschool movement.

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Well, I was sort of born into that one. My older sister in kindergarten was taken out of public school, and my mother started homeschooling her after just a couple of months in kindergarten.

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And she had had a bad experience with a teacher, and my mom said, you know what?

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I can do better than this. And so she took her out of school. The problem was, in 1978, where we were in Maryland at the time, she didn't realize that homeschooling was illegal.

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It wasn't even a term at that time, but because of compulsory attendance laws, you had to have your children in school.

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So she ended up in court trying to defend her right to teach my sister at home.

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And it turned out that the judge threw the case out of court, and so she just continued to homeschool, even though homeschooling didn't really become legal until much later.

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I was home educated. My sister was home educated. And then I was one of the first homeschool graduates in the country, and so I started getting invited to speak at conferences on the topic of home education, and wrote my first book on the topic in 2000.

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So I've actually been 25 years now of writing and speaking on the topic of home education around the country.

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So a lot of people know me from that, but I do write other books on other topics, including the

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Questions God Asks and Questions Jesus Asks books, the ones that we're going to be talking about today.

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Well, I'm looking forward to our discussion. And, well, why don't we start exactly with the question, why did you write this book?

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Some Christians may have a knee -jerk reaction to the title. There's a lot of crazy notions going on in our day and age.

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I don't know if you're familiar with the open theism movement. They teach that God doesn't even know the future,

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He doesn't know all that is going to occur in the future. They actually believe that God receives new knowledge and so on.

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But I'm certain that's not where you're coming from, that God needs the answers to questions because of the fact that He is lacking in full knowledge.

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He is not omniscient. That is obviously not what you're saying, I'm assuming. Well, I'll give you my background on the book.

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I had been doing a study through the Old Testament just in my personal daily Bible reading and Bible study, and I noticed these frequent questions that God was asking people, and it did strike me as a little odd that God would ask questions of people.

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You know, we always have questions for God, particularly when there are natural disasters or earthquakes and hurricanes and fires and all these things.

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We've even had, recently, shootings. People ask questions of God, like, well, if God is so good and loving, then why do bad things happen in the world?

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Or why do bad things happen to good people? You know, all these questions people have. But I noticed God was asking questions of individuals, and some of them seemed like kind of odd questions to me.

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Like, God asked Balaam, who are these men with you? And then he asked Abraham, where is your wife,

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Sarah? And I just started wondering, why does God ask these questions? And one of the doctrines that we know to be true of God is that God knows all things.

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God is omniscient, and so I certainly don't buy into the viewpoint of open theism, that God is still learning and growing and evolving, and all those kinds of concepts that are embedded within open theism.

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But I also thought, you know, for God to be asking these questions, there must be a reason, because Jesus talked about how we would be judged for every idle word that we speak, and so these questions can't be idle words.

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You arbitrarily or capriciously, there must be a reason. So that was why

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I started to dig into these questions in more detail, to find out what the purpose and the focus was behind the questions.

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Well, why don't you start with the first question that you addressed that God asks? Yeah, well, the one that I addressed first in the book is the one that God asked

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Job, you know, because when you think about Job, for example, there's this whole litany of questions that Job is asked, and you know,

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Job's in a situation where he's enduring suffering, and he's just had his whole world fall apart.

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His children have died, he's lost his possessions, he's facing physical health problems, and he's got these boils that have broken out all over him, and so he's really soul -searching, and he has these friends who are accusing him of sin and saying, this is your fault, and the reason these bad things have happened to you is because somehow you've failed in your spiritual life, and so he calls to God, and he says,

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I want an explanation. I want an answer. I want you to explain to me why these things have happened to me, and interestingly,

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God doesn't really answer his question. He more answers the question with a question, and asks a litany of questions that all kind of boil down to, where were you?

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Where were you when I formed this earth? Where were you when I created everything? And essentially, he's just asking

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Job, do you realize that there is a God and you're not Him, and do you realize that I am completely all -powerful and all -knowing, and are you willing to trust that I know what

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I'm doing here? And you know, sometimes that's how God relates to us. Sometimes God doesn't give us the answer that we hope for our struggle and for the difficulty that we're going through.

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What he does instead is he gives us himself, and we have to learn how to trust in his sovereignty.

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Do you think that one of the reasons why God asks questions is to get us to really think about why we are asking our own question to begin with?

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Absolutely. Jesus did this in the New Testament as well, but you know, I think when you ask the right kinds of questions, it can help people to cut past their own biases, their preconceptions, their presuppositions, and to help them to assess what their foundational starting points are, their prime maxims, if you will, that I think sometimes we have these prime axioms, rather, that we have these beliefs that undergird our worldview, and sometimes those beliefs are false.

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And so I think God asks questions sometimes to cut past that and help us to really get to the bottom of what the issue is.

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And you know, I think God asks questions of people in the Bible because he wants them to stop and think about their own presuppositions and assumptions and biases.

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Well, we already have a listener from Slovenia who has a question for you.

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His name is Joe, and he says, Dear Brothers Chris and Israel, thank you for leading us to seek deeper and more vibrant relationships with God by seriously contemplating the questions he asks in Scripture.

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And Joe is going to be asking a question that is actually going to be the topic of our next interview with you, but I'll read it anyway.

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His question is, my question specifically is about the questions Jesus asked.

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Did he ask questions as requests for knowledge about things that in his human nature he did not have, or did he simply ask thought -provoking questions to draw out his hearers and challenge them rhetorically to get them to think more deeply?

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Or are there cases of both, lack of knowledge and thought -provoking questions? If so, please give examples of each and explain the differences between them.

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This is a great topic with many practical benefits. Thanks for sharpening us today. That is interesting because we know as a very young child the scriptures teach that Jesus did grow in knowledge, which is a mystery to us because he was the

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God -man. He was fully God and fully man at all times. After his being conceived, he was fully man, that is.

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He was always fully God, and there was never a time when he didn't exist. But when he was conceived in the womb of Mary, he was fully

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God and fully man at the same time. So there is a mystery about Jesus and his growing in knowledge.

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If you could address that. Yeah, absolutely. Well, there's a doctrine that's called the hypostatic union, and what this talks about is this relationship between the divinity of Christ and the humanity of Christ.

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And we're told in Philippians chapter 2 that Jesus was in very nature God. In John 1, we're told that the

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Word was with God and the Word was God. So there's absolutely no question about the divinity of Jesus.

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But there are interesting questions related to that that we'll get into in a future broadcast, but were there any limits to Jesus' knowledge in the humanity side?

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Like, when Jesus was born when he's two years old, for example, did he know how to speak every language that could possibly be spoken on earth?

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Did he grow up knowing how to be potty trained? Did he automatically know not to touch the hot kettle?

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You know, there are things like that that the scripture doesn't necessarily tell us, as you said in Luke 2, it tells us he grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man, so it certainly does show a growth of understanding on kind of a human capacity level.

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But on the other hand, we're told frequently in the scripture that Jesus knew their thoughts, and he knew what they were thinking, and that he had special knowledge, and so he would ask certain questions based on things that he knew somehow divinely.

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And there are other times in the text where it talks about how he saw something and he observed something, and he would ask the question based on something that he saw and observed.

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And so it's interesting how there are definitely questions that he asks based on prior knowledge of people and individuals that he couldn't know from a human standpoint.

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But then it also seems like there are times where he sees a situation like with the man at the pool of Bethesda, because Jesus looked at the man and he saw, and the

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Greek there gives the text that it was observational knowledge, that he knew the guy had been there for a while, he could tell by looking.

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And so he asks the man, do you want to get well? So I think in the humanity of Jesus, we have

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Jesus seeing needs and asking questions to set a model for us that we could do the same thing.

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You know, he gave us an example that we should walk in his steps, but there's many, many cases, you know, like when he tells

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Nathanael, you know, I saw you when you were under the fig tree, and he makes these statements about his foreknowledge that's truly part of his divinity.

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You know, I think that in those cases it's very, very clear that he's operating from the level of the divine.

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But regardless, Scripture is not entirely clear as to how that aspect of him growing in wisdom on the human side worked, but at no point does that call into question his divinity.

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The Scripture is adamant and clear about the divinity of Christ, and being fully

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God, he certainly had access to divine knowledge.

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Yeah, one of the most perplexing statements that Jesus makes is in Matthew 24, verse 36, but that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the

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Son, but the Father alone. Can you explain the context of that, and what is

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Jesus talking about? Is the deity of Jesus somehow, because he is in human flesh, is his omniscience being somehow thwarted by the other members of the

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Trinity? How is this working, and does the Bible even really give us the answer to that? Well, there is a doctrine called the communicatio idiomatum, which is

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Latin, and it basically means the communicable attributes. So it's easy for you to say. There are certain attributes that belong to God alone that cannot be transferred to another person, and these attributes are his eternality, his omniscience, his omnipotence, and his omnipresence.

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These are things that are unique to God, and he can't transfer those to another person.

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You and I cannot take those things on, and yet in Jesus' humanity, he was not omnipresent.

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He was present at one place at one time, and so in human form, Jesus in human form is not omnipresent in the same way that we think of God being omnipresent, and so there are questions about could there have been limitations on his omniscience during his human life?

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Some theologians think in Matthew 24 that he's merely speaking to that small span of his ministry on earth, that perhaps his knowledge is limited on the date and the time of the return during that time of his humanity.

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Scripture's not abundantly clear on those things, so we do know that, you know,

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Jesus in a human body was not omnipresent. Scripture's not abundantly clear on the aspect of omniscience, but we know that he didn't become less

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God. I think that's the important thing. He didn't become less divine in any respect, or less

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God in any respect, because of his humanity, and whatever aspect of limits there may or may not have been there, it would have been exclusively in submission to the

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Father, because he said, I don't do anything except that which I see the Father doing, and that which the

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Father tells me to do. So he lived his life in submission to the Father and gave us an example in that respect.

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Well, thank you, Joe, in Slovenia, and thank you also for providing us with an American address where your daughter lives in Georgia, where we can send the book that you just won as a result of submitting your question.

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You just won a free copy of Questions God Asks, Unlocking the Wisdom of Eternity by Israel Wayne, and that is a compliment of our friends at New Leaf Press.

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So thank you very much for participating in the show today. We also have Daniel in San Jose, California, who says,

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Hello, brothers, could you ask Israel Wayne if he could explain what Christians need to know in order to answer a question from the

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Almighty God? I guess what I'm asking is, shouldn't we have some sort of understanding of Scripture and the attributes of God before we can answer a question from God?

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If we do not know God, can we rightly answer Him? Being that we would want to answer truthfully, and God is the source of all truth,

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I hope this makes sense. Well, I hope I understand the question correctly, but I would say that really, before you can answer any question of any significance in life, you have to know

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God. Jesus said in John 17 3, this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true

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God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. And we also have the admonition in Hebrews 11 6, that without faith it's impossible to please

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God, because whoever comes to God has to acknowledge that God is, and that He rewards those who diligently seek

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Him. So even the most basic questions of life really can't be understood outside of a theistic framework or a belief in God.

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I just had this conversation the other night, I was doing a seminar, and we were talking about education, and somebody brought up the aspect that mathematics, for example, is religiously neutral.

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And I said, oh absolutely not, it's impossible for mathematics to be religiously neutral.

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And they said, well I don't understand, how could that be? You know, there's no religion in mathematics.

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And I said, oh it is inherently religious in every way. And they said,

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I don't get it. And so what I said was, you know, you have assumptions that you bring into any discussion, presuppositions that you, a priori assumptions that you bring into any conversation with mathematics, for example, just even knowing 2 plus 2 equals 4.

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How can we know with predictability and certainty that 2 plus 2 is always going to be 4, that it won't be 5 on Tuesday and 13 on Friday and 87 on my birthday?

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How do we know that with certainty? Well, the reason is that math as a category exists because it comes from the mind of an infinite logical creator

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God who created math to reflect his nature, character, and personality.

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So math exists as a concept in the universe because it comes from the mind of God.

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So the more that we understand who God is as the creator, the more we have a framework for understanding why mathematics makes sense.

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Whereas if you take the opposing worldview, which is that everything came into being 4 .6 billion years ago because of a cosmic accident that matter and energy and gases just blew up for no reason and that mathematics came out of the cosmic

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Big Bang, that epistemologically doesn't work because you never have order and precision and consistency coming out of a system of chaos and randomness and chance.

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An explosion never makes anything more orderly, it only makes it less orderly. And so our understanding about God informs absolutely everything that we believe and every discussion, not just in religion, not just in morality and ethics, as important as God is to those topics, not just as important as God is to theology, but to every possible question that we have in life, ultimately it goes back to that starting point of knowing

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God, because nothing can be more basic and more foundational than God.

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And if you replace God with something else, that other thing becomes your God. So I agree completely with what

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I think you're saying, is that in order for us to really be able to answer any question with certainty and any question with accuracy, we have to understand who

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God is and how he has revealed himself. Well, thank you, Daniel, in San Jose, California, and you have also won a free copy of Questions God Asks, compliments of New Leaf Press, and thank you for providing your address.

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So we'll have that shipped out to you by our friends at cvbbs .com as soon as possible.

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That's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, and we thank Todd and Patty Jennings for their faithful support of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and for mailing out all of our winners their free books,

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Bibles, CDs, DVDs, and other items that they win for asking a question on the program.

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Let's go back to the Garden of Eden again, where we have God searching for Adam and Eve, asking, where are you?

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Which seems an odd thing for an omnipresent God to ask, but if you could give us a fuller description of what's going on here.

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Yeah, you know, one of the questions that I always ask when I was writing these chapters is, who is this question for?

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And so I sort of take a Sherlock Holmes approach of, you know, who is in the situation, who are the players, what's the scene, and so you have the situation where Adam and Eve have sinned, and they're hiding from the presence of God, and God calls out to them and says, where are you?

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And I ask myself, who is this question for? Well, it can't be for God's benefit. You know, it's not like God is sitting in Heaven, wringing his hands, saying, oh no, what has happened?

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I built this garden, and I put this guy in there to tend it, and he's gone.

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And, you know, now who's going to take care of the garden? I'm going to have to call an angel off of what he's doing and put him in there, messes up the whole celestial ecosystem, and oh,

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I know, I'll call out to the guy, and maybe he'll show himself, and we can solve this little problem.

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I mean, certainly that's not the correct context to think of this. So God knows exactly where Adam is, and God knows why

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Adam is hiding. So then I say, well, who is the question for? Well, it has to be for Adam, but what is it that God wants him to think about?

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And so if I'm Adam, and I hear this question, where are you? The first thing that comes to my mind is

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I start looking around me, trying to find a fixed reference point to decide where I am geographically, and I probably say, you know,

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I'm behind a bush. Right now I am hiding behind a bush. That's where I am. Do we think that Adam didn't know where he was?

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Well, of course Adam knew where he was, but the question is actually not a geographical question.

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The question is actually a relational question. Embedded in that question is more inherently, why are you hiding?

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Where are you, and why are you not in fellowship with me in the way that you always have been?

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You know, we were told in Scripture that God walked with Adam in the cool of the day, and they had fellowship, and they had a relationship, and that was the very purpose for which all of us initially were created.

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We were created to know God and to have fellowship with Him and enjoy Him forever. And so Adam has cut himself off from this.

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He's disconnected himself from fellowship, and God knows why, but He's wanting

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Adam to be honest, and He's wanting Adam to be forthcoming in the face of Himself. Why am

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I hiding? What has happened here? Why am I no longer desiring the fellowship and the friendship with God that's always been so valuable and so important to me?

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And we see in the subsequent questions, you know, how evasive Adam is, and how evasive

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Eve is, and the blame -shifting and all of that. And so another thing that's super important to think about with this book is, if these questions are recorded in Scripture, they're not merely there for the person who was asked historically, like Adam, but there also must be some application for us as well.

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What is it that God wants us to think about regarding this question, and in what way is this question relevant for our lives today?

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Well, I just want to plug right now a sermon that addresses the very thing that you're talking about.

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My dear friend, Pastor Ed Moore of North Shore Baptist Church of Bayside, Queens, New York, years ago, back in the 1990s, preached a sermon titled,

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Adam, Where Are You? And eventually in the sermon, he switches the focus to,

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Sinner, Where Are You? And it's a remarkable sermon, and if you want to get a copy of that sermon, go to ns -bc .org.

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That's ns, which stands for North Shore, dash bc .org. You can also email them at office at ns -bc .org,

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and you could call them at 718 -229 -7223, 718 -229 -7223 at North Shore Baptist Church, Bayside, Queens.

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Tell them that you heard about that sermon from Chris Arnzen on Iron Trap and Zion Radio. I just strongly recommend it very much.

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It's a powerful message that obviously has been ingrained in my mind since it was preached in the 1990s.

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But we're going to our first break right now. If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

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c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. And again, please give us your first name, city, and state, and country of residence.

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If you live outside of the USA, don't go away. We'll be right back with Israel Wayne. One sure way all

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This tradition was started by my late wife, Julie, in the 1990s, and I have been continuing it after she departed into glory with Jesus Christ in 2011.

35:06

So I continue with this tradition in honor of her and, of course, much more than that, in honor of our

35:13

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and to pay tribute to you who are men in the ministry as my way of saying thanks for all you do for God's kingdom.

35:23

And so please register as soon as possible if you intend to go. We already have people flying in all the way from California to Pennsylvania to attend this luncheon, not to mention people driving here from Maryland and Washington D .C.

35:38

and Virginia and New York and, of course, locally here in Pennsylvania.

35:44

So we look forward to meeting many of you for the first time and also getting reacquainted with old friends at the next

35:50

Iron Sharpens Iron Pastor's Luncheon. Send me an email as soon as you can to register at chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

35:59

We are back now with our interview with Israel Wayne, who is discussing his book,

36:06

Questions God Asks. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

36:14

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com, and give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old

36:26

USA. And there is a very fancy theological word called epistemology, and this has to do with the question, who told you?

36:37

If you could explain exactly what epistemology means and how it is connected to this question of God.

36:45

Epistemology comes from two Greek words, episteme and logos, and episteme is knowledge, and logos in this context means the study of something.

36:55

So it's really the study of knowledge, and epistemology, if you take a formal course in philosophy in college or somewhere, you will find that it's usually the introductory course.

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And so the concept is that we want to find out how we know the things that we know, how we know it is true.

37:15

And we approach epistemology very differently as Christians than someone does if they are a non -Christian.

37:25

The Protestant Reformation, which you mentioned were coming up on the 500th anniversary of the

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Reformation, October 31st, what that did, with epistemology, was it brought back the basis and foundation of epistemology as being the revelation of God.

37:43

And theologians have said that God has revealed himself in two different ways.

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They refer to it as general revelation and special revelation.

37:54

General revelation being how God has revealed himself through the created order, through the laws of the universe, so we could call that the book of nature, perhaps.

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And then special revelation is how God has revealed himself in a special way outside the laws of the universe, which could include other things, but specifically we usually refer to the

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Scripture as being the dominant force of special revelation. So that's how

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God has revealed himself through Scripture. So we have two books, the books of nature and the book of Scripture.

38:29

And the Enlightenment, which was a time period beginning in the late 17th century in Western Europe, and then continuing really into about the early 19th century, the

38:43

Enlightenment was a rejection of the doctrines that were rediscovered during the

38:50

Protestant Reformation, the doctrine of revelation as being the source of all truth and all knowledge

38:56

The Enlightenment thinkers chose to say that rather than all knowledge coming from God and that we don't know anything unless God has revealed it to us, the

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Enlightenment thinkers said we can know truth through our own reason and rationality and our own intellect.

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We don't need God. And so the whole atheist movement today tends to lean very heavily on that approach that says we don't need

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God to know right and wrong, we don't need God for morality, we don't need God for ethics, we don't need

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God to know how to respond in this life to the situations around us, we just know this from our own intellect, our own reason and rationality.

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So you really have two composing belief systems and two competing worldviews between the theistic and the non -theistic approach to knowledge and epistemology.

39:55

And so we're really wanting to encourage Christians to understand what the biblical framework is for how we understand knowledge and how we know what we know and how we know what is true.

40:07

Yeah, it's interesting that of course not every atheist thinks alike, but the atheists that I have had dialogue with and in fact the atheist that I had involved in a debate that I organized with Dr.

40:27

James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, David Silverman, who's the president of American Atheists, the organization founded by Madeleine Murray O 'Hare in the 1960s,

40:37

David Silverman basically said that man knows what is moral and what is immoral just by what is the dominant thought, what is the dominant belief in any geographic region and any era of time in history, that's what dictates what is right and wrong.

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And when Dr. White posed the question to David Silverman, and keep in mind he is a

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Jewish atheist, he's an ethnically Jewish atheist, Dr. White said to him, so if you were being marched through the gates of a death camp by a

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Nazi, what would the greatest argument that you would have against what was happening to you be?

41:27

I find this personally offensive, is that the most that you could say? You couldn't blatantly and specifically say that it was out and out wrong, and David Silverman conceded that Dr.

41:39

White was right, which is, I remember it sent chills up my spine. The atheist really has no business telling anybody what is moral or immoral, do they?

41:52

Well they really don't, I mean they've cut their legs out from under them intellectually, with that kind of an argument.

41:59

I had an experience a year or two ago when I was traveling across the country that caused me to think of this issue of epistemology in a new way.

42:09

I was driving with my family through New Mexico on the way to California and then on the way back through Nevada, and we hit this space out there in the desert where there was this wide open space and nothing around for 150 miles, and I said, hey children watch this, and in the van

42:28

I turned the radio on and I hit the seek dial and it would just spin, the digital dials would just spin both on FM and AM, and there was no radio out there at all.

42:40

And I asked my children, I said, why is it that we can't listen to the radio? And they said, was the radio broken?

42:46

And I said, no the radio works fine, why can't we listen to radio right now? And finally one of them said, well it's because there's no broadcast tower and I said, you know, this is exactly like this issue of epistemology because God is the broadcast tower.

43:04

We're told in Psalm 19 that the heavens declare the glory of God and the skies are the firmament that tells forth his story, and day after day and night after night they pour forth speech and there's no place in all the world where their story hasn't gone out.

43:18

So the story of God has gone into the whole universe, and it's constantly being broadcast.

43:25

The apostle Paul refers to this in Romans 1, talking about how the things that can be known about God, the eternal power and his divine nature, they're clearly evidenced through the things that have been made, so man is without excuse.

43:38

Everybody has seen the revelation of God through general revelation.

43:45

And I told my children, you are a radio. You are created with the capacity to receive information, to decode it, to be able to re -communicate that information.

43:58

You're a fabulously created radio, but you have to have a broadcast tower to receive information.

44:07

You have the capacity to receive the information, but if no information is sent, then you know nothing.

44:14

And so I said basically general revelation could be like AM, special revelation could be like FM, and God is constantly sending information through general revelation, sending information through special revelation.

44:29

But the atheist basically sits in his car and says, I am an uncaused radio.

44:35

I have no cause, I'm just the result of chance.

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I wasn't specially designed in any way, and this information is coming from nowhere.

44:47

There is no God, there is no broadcast tower, there's only information. And I only listen to AM because that's all there is.

44:54

All there is is the laws of nature. They don't believe in special revelation. They don't believe that God has also spoken through FM.

45:03

And we as Christians are trying to tell these atheists, you know what, we love AM. We listen to AM just like you do.

45:09

We just recognize it comes from a broadcast tower. And oh, by the way, we would love for you to plug into FM.

45:15

There's some amazing things on FM. And they say, no, no, there is no FM, there is no broadcast tower.

45:21

We're just uncaused radios, and there's just random information floating around out there in the universe.

45:28

Man, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. I really don't. Yeah, being an atheist requires a lot more miracles than being a theist.

45:43

But moving on from epistemology, there is a section in your book, who is your brother in regard to relationships, including the relationship of Cain and Abel?

46:01

Yeah, you know, you think about the commandments that Jesus gave us about loving God and loving our neighbor.

46:07

And it's amazing how you don't get very far in human history before you have conflict and even murder in human relationships.

46:16

And I think trying to sort through life, those questions of, you know, how do we come to know

46:24

God? And how do we have relationship with him? And then the question of how do we learn how to have good relationships with other people?

46:33

I think those are two of the most pressing. And so, you know, when God asks this question of Cain and says, where is your brother?

46:40

It's so loaded with so much depth, and so much meaning, and so much application for us.

46:47

You know, even asking the question, who is my brother? The question Jesus was asked in the

46:52

New Testament, who is my neighbor? There's so much that God wants us to think about in terms of our relationship with other people, and how we interact with them, and the mentality that we have.

47:06

Do we consider ourselves to be our brother's keeper? Are we willing to consider other people better than ourselves?

47:14

Or are we in this constant struggle of survival of the fittest to compete, and to strive, and to step over other people on our way to the top?

47:27

Boy, there's just so much in that question, where is your brother? Amen. And let's move on to now, why are you angry?

47:37

Another question to Cain. Yeah, you know, that issue is one that is really a hard one to get to the bottom of, in a sense.

47:48

You know, when you think about Cain, and him being so angry that he would kill his brother, you think, well, what causes this?

47:57

And what's the root of this? And James chapter 4 gives us some insight on that, where the

48:02

Apostle tells us, in verses 1 through 3, he asks the question, what causes fights, and what causes quarrels among you?

48:11

And he says, isn't it this, that you desire something? You want something, and you don't get it.

48:17

So you covet, you kill, you fight, you quarrel. And he says, you don't have, because you have wrong motives.

48:26

And so, this struggle, this stress, this anger that Cain feels, it's not his brother's fault.

48:33

You know, James says, is it not from desires you have within you? Sometimes with anger, we really betray the fact that we don't have a biblical worldview on the topic of anger, by even the phrases that we say to our co -workers, or our family members, when we say, you are making me so angry.

48:55

Well, not according to James. James says that this anger is coming from within you.

49:01

It's not originating from outside of you, in some way. It's actually coming from inside of you.

49:07

You have desires, you have longings, you have expectations, and some of those expectations are not good, and they're not healthy, and they're not just.

49:17

And so, being willing to be honest with ourselves about our desires and our expectations is so important.

49:24

My wife and I wrote a book called Pitching a Fit, overcoming angry and stressed out parenting, and we go through a pretty systematic analysis in that book of a biblical theology of anger.

49:36

And it's so interesting how the Bible has so much to say on the topic of anger, and yet we're really dismissive of our anger most of the time, and we just think, oh, it's no big deal.

49:46

I'm entitled to it. And rarely do we think about the danger that it poses to relationships when anger is unchecked and unbridled.

49:56

Do you think one of the reasons why Cain was so angry is because he had to marry his sister? Well, probably did have interesting family reunions at that point in time, didn't they?

50:12

Well, we're going to our midway break right now. This is the longer than normal break that we take because Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida requires that we have a 12 -minute break between both segments of our show, so hold on tight.

50:29

We'll be back momentarily after these words from our sponsors, and please, if you want to join us on the air with a question of your own, send us an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

50:40

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And as always, please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old

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God willing, we'll be right back after these messages with Israel Wayne and Questions God Asks.

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And before we return to Israel Wayne, I just have a couple more announcements to make in regard to special events that some of our sponsors are orchestrating, the first of which is my own event

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He's also the regional home missionary for Reformation Metro New York, and he has been a dear friend of mine since the 1980s and a powerful preacher and speaker.

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Also the guest of honor that day will be Pennsylvania State Representative and candidate for Congress Steve Bloom, who is a devout

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Christianity in his back pocket just because he is a politician. He is a truly unique brother in Christ in the political arena, and he will have a few words to say as well.

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And of course you're going to be fed for free, and you're going to be getting a free sack of books donated by Christian publishers all over the

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United States and the United Kingdom. So send me an email if you want to register to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put luncheon in the subject line. Then coming up in November from the 17th through the 18th, the

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Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology on the theme for Still Our Ancient Foe, a reference to Satan in the great classic

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Reformation hymn by Martin Luther, A Mighty Fortress. The speakers include Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant.

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If you'd like to register for that conference, go to alliancenet .org,

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alliancenet .org, click on events, and then click on Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology, and that is being held at the

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Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Quaker Town, Pennsylvania. Then coming up in January from the 17th through the 18th, the

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G3 Conference returns to Atlanta, Georgia, the G3 standing for Grace, Gospel, and Glory.

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The theme this January is Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship. January 17th is exclusively a

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Spanish -speaking edition of the conference, and the 18th through the 20th is the English -speaking edition of the conference, featuring

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Stephen Lawson, Vody Baucom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .B. Charles, Jr., Tim Challies, Josh Bice, James White, Tom Askell, Anthony Matheny, and Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, Martha Peace, and Justin Peters.

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If you'd like to register, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com. If you attend or if you register for any of these events, please let those who are organizing these events know that you heard about them from Chris Arnson on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio.

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And last but not least comes that most uncomfortable portion of the program where I have to beg you for money.

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My advertisers have urged me for quite some time to make public appeals for donations, and I finally have succumbed to their requests because of the fact that we are certainly in desperate times financially here on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio, and we truly face the possibility of going off the air.

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And if you'd like to advertise, we could surely use your advertising dollars. Just send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put advertising in the subject line, whether it's your church, your parachurch organization, your business, your corporation, your professional firm, whether you are a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, whether it is a special event that you're having.

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If you want to advertise with us, as long as it's compatible, whatever it is you're advertising is compatible with the theology expressed on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio, we would love to work out an ad campaign with you.

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So please send an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put advertising in the subject line.

01:07:06

And that's also the email address where you can send a question to our guest Israel Wayne, and that is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:07:14

chrisarnson at gmail .com. If you have a question about questions God asks, which is the title of the book we are addressing, and if you could, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the

01:07:30

USA. And Israel, let's move on to the question, where is your wife?

01:07:37

A question to Abraham. Yeah, this was probably my favorite question in the whole book, because, again, when you think about who this question is directed to, it's really fascinating.

01:07:52

When God asks Abraham, where is your wife, Sarah, he responds and says, she's in the tent.

01:08:00

This is in Genesis chapter 18. And so my thought was, okay, now does

01:08:05

God not know where Sarah is? Well, of course he knows, he knows she's in the tent. And then

01:08:11

Abraham responds and says she's in the tent. So obviously, Abraham knows where Sarah is.

01:08:18

Now, Sarah is within hearing, so, you know, obviously, she could hear it, so it's a question for her.

01:08:24

Well, she knows she's in the tent, right? So everyone in this scenario knows exactly where Sarah is, she's in the tent.

01:08:32

But as I looked at it deeper, I realized that this is not a geographical question, just like the question

01:08:38

God asked Adam is not a geographical question. What he asked, where are you? This is a relational question.

01:08:45

And this one took me, I would say, several months of deep, in -depth contemplation and study to try to really extrapolate what's here in the text that might be lying a bit beneath the surface.

01:08:58

And I finally came to the conclusion, at least the way that I have understood this question, is that the answer to solving this riddle, or the mystery of why

01:09:09

God would ask this question, is in the chapter before. It's really in chapter 17. So in chapter 17,

01:09:16

God had come to Abraham, and he had appeared to him, and in verses 15 and 16, he tells him that Sarah is going to have a name change from Sarai to Sarah, and that he was going to bless her, and that he would give her a son.

01:09:35

And Abraham's response to that was that he laughed. He showed disbelief, he showed a lack of faith, ironically, you know, because we know he is considered to be the father of faith, but he showed a lack of faith in this moment, and he laughed.

01:09:51

And so he's told that he's supposed to no longer call his wife Sarai, but he's supposed to call her

01:09:58

Sarah, this new covenant name that reflects the promise that God is going to fulfill his covenant and bring them a child.

01:10:08

So what's interesting about this is that Abraham has known Sarai her entire life because it's his half -sister.

01:10:17

So for 89 years, he's called this woman by a certain name, Sarai, and now all of a sudden he's supposed to start calling her by a different name.

01:10:27

And we are not sure, you know, what that conversation was when he goes to her and says, look, your name is no longer

01:10:36

Sarai, but it's Sarah, and every time I speak to you from now on, I'm going to call you by this new covenant name that will reinforce the fact that you are going to have a child.

01:10:49

This is supposed to be an act of faith on his part and a daily reminder of God's promise.

01:10:56

But what's interesting is the time lapse between chapter 17 and 18, we're not sure exactly how much time it is, but it was certainly less than a year, probably a few weeks or more when

01:11:07

God reappears to him. And he asks the question, he says, where is your wife, Sarah? He uses that covenant name, and Abraham says, she's in the tent.

01:11:18

And the next thing that God does is he reiterates that promise that she will have a child.

01:11:27

And what was her response in verse 10, in verse 9 of chapter 18, he says, where is

01:11:35

Sarah, your wife? In verse 10, he says, I'll return to you this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.

01:11:41

And then we're told that she laughs, that Sarah laughs, and she acts incredulous, like she's never heard this before.

01:11:48

Like, this is new news to her. And she says, well, after I'm old, how could I have this pleasure when

01:11:55

I'm old? And it's very interesting, because God turns then to Abraham, not to Sarah, but he turns to Abraham in verse 13 and says, why did

01:12:06

Sarah laugh, saying, shall I bear a child? Is anything too difficult for the

01:12:11

Lord? What's interesting is you have no reference or no record between 17 and 18, these two chapters, to show that Abraham even talked to Sarah, that he ever told her.

01:12:22

I mean, she acts like she's hearing this for the very first time, and I think there's really good reason to believe that either,

01:12:29

A, Abraham never had the conversation with her, hasn't been calling her daily by this new name, or that if he did, he didn't communicate it in faith, because she sounds really incredulous when she hears this, like it's new news to her.

01:12:44

So this chapter was the most fascinating to me, because his question to Abraham is obviously not a geographical question.

01:12:51

He knows she's in the tent, everybody knows she's in the tent, but the question is, where is she relationally on this whole issue?

01:12:58

Where is she relationally on this whole covenant promise thing about having a child? And I think it's a great chapter on marriage, and it really pulls out a lot about, especially for us as husbands, how we're supposed to be spiritual leaders, and we're supposed to be leading our lives and our families in faith, and it seems to me that Abraham wasn't doing that adequately here, and that this question is a bit of a rebuke from the

01:13:23

Lord. So reading the chapter in context will give people more, you know, they'll be able to see how

01:13:29

I fleshed this out a little bit more clearly, but I think what makes the most sense of the text is that God is rebuking

01:13:39

Abraham for not communicating this the way that He was commanded to, and building faith in his wife.

01:13:46

Well, you actually kind of answered the question from one of our listeners, but perhaps you could elaborate.

01:13:54

Ronald in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, asked, do you think that God was really angry with Sarah for laughing?

01:14:04

After all, it was probably an instinctual or guttural reaction to a very comical notion that any of us might find funny without really meaning to disrespect

01:14:15

God, and do you think that God actually had them name their son Laughter, because that is what

01:14:22

Isaac means, as some kind of a chastisement, or was that something that they could look upon endearingly?

01:14:30

Yeah, those are great questions. You know, I think his response was that Sarah gets embarrassed at a point, and she says, oh,

01:14:38

I didn't laugh, and God just simply says, yes, you did laugh. Yeah, right.

01:14:47

So I think that, you know, in that sense, I think that there's a gentle rebuke to Sarah, but the focus is really not on Sarah and her lack of belief, it's really the questions pointed to Abraham.

01:15:00

Abraham, where is your wife, Sarah? And then, why did your wife,

01:15:07

Sarah, laugh? The responsibility for this is actually put on Abraham, and I think it shows us that Abraham had not communicated this message in faith as he was supposed to, and he's had adequate time to do it, and he didn't do it.

01:15:24

But you know, you think about, if you were told to call your wife a different name, and every time you spoke that name, it was to be a remembrance of the covenant promise.

01:15:33

I think that's why he said, why did your wife, Sarah, laugh? And where is your wife,

01:15:39

Sarah? He's needling Abraham a little bit on his responsibility as a father,

01:15:44

I believe. And so the name Isaac, you know, was that a punishment, or was it endearing?

01:15:51

I suppose there's room for disagreement on that. I tend to think that, you know, Scripture tells us that God understands our frame.

01:15:58

He understands that we are but dust. And, you know, Hebrews 11 talks about Abraham being the father of faith, and I think this just shows us a human side of Abraham, that he didn't do everything right.

01:16:11

He wasn't perfect, and yet God still used him, and used Sarah, and I think that God, he disciplines us, but he does it for our good.

01:16:21

Hebrews 12 tells us that. We've had fathers who discipline us as they thought best. God disciplines us for our own good.

01:16:28

And so I think there was some discipline of the Lord in this, but it's loving discipline. He's a loving father, and yeah, he disciplines us, but he does it in love for our good.

01:16:37

Well, thank you, Ronald. You've also won a free copy of Questions God Asks, and please make sure we have your full mailing address, so CVBBS .com,

01:16:48

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. CVBBS .com can ship that book out to you. And once again, we thank

01:16:54

New Leaf Press for providing us these free copies of this book. Well, regarding, once again,

01:17:03

Abraham and Sarah, the question that we should all be asking ourselves every time that we become impatient with God, or we lose hope, or get discouraged or depressed, is anything too difficult for the

01:17:19

Lord, if you could address that? Yeah, well, let me back out for just a minute, and I'll take a run at that.

01:17:26

If I was writing down the different questions, I told you this came out of my own personal Bible study through the

01:17:31

Old Testament, I started writing down the questions. It stunned me that most of these questions really dealt with the big questions of life, the questions of origin, epistemology, the nature of God, marriage, faith, and I just started thinking, wow, these are the big doctrines of the

01:17:53

Christian life. Our relationship to God, who He is, our relationship to each other, and so I was really amazed that it was almost like this is a kind of catechism, if you will.

01:18:07

It's sort of a systematic theology manual that God has given us where He's guiding us through the main core doctrines of the

01:18:16

Christian faith through the questions that God asks, and so there were 19 of them that I covered in this book.

01:18:23

The sequel, Questions Jesus Asked, covered 20 completely different topics, and that fascinated me as well that the topics that Jesus addressed in the

01:18:33

New Testament were completely different topics than the ones God had addressed here in the Old Testament, but this topic of faith is so important because this is central to the entire

01:18:44

Christian theology, and again, coming up on the 500th anniversary of the

01:18:51

Reformation, this is probably the primary doctrine that was rediscovered or that was promoted by Martin Luther during the

01:19:02

Reformation was the doctrine of justification by faith. And you know,

01:19:07

I don't want to get too far out here into a theological rabbit trail, but I think sometimes we've made a false assumption that prior to the

01:19:19

New Testament, God's people were justified by law and by keeping the law.

01:19:25

Right, that's a major heresy, actually. Yeah, and today we're justified by grace.

01:19:31

Well, the fact is that God has only ever justified people by faith, and so God has justified people from all time throughout all history by faith, and so we really have a great blessing, you know, in the point in time in which we live to have the whole narrative, the whole overstory of Scripture, which certainly

01:19:58

Abraham didn't have, but anyone who has ever pleased God has done so on the basis of faith.

01:20:06

And so Abraham, not having the Bible, not having the New Testament, he believed

01:20:11

God, and God credited it to him as righteousness. And so God expects the same thing for us today.

01:20:18

He expects us to believe God and to put our faith in Christ, and that doctrine of justification by faith is really the strand that runs all the way through Scripture, and it's so key, it's so important, and I think it's, you know, so great that God addresses this issue of faith and trust in him, even in the questions that he asked in the

01:20:41

Old Testament. Amen, and that's justification by faith alone, as the

01:20:47

Reformers said. Yes, if works were required, works that were pleasing to God were required to justify men in the

01:21:01

Old Testament, then all of our Old Testament heroes would be in hell, because none of them would be able to perform works that would merit heaven.

01:21:12

No human being could. Isn't that exactly why Jesus Christ had to die on Calvary?

01:21:19

Absolutely. Yeah, when we talk about sola fide, you know, faith alone, this is so central and it's so key.

01:21:27

And yet, you know, what a, how firm a foundation, right, that we have, that we can completely throw our entire weight upon the merit of Christ, and that we know that our faith can hold on that.

01:21:41

If it were on any other foundation, we wouldn't be able to be sustained, but on the merits of Christ and his work on the cross, and his sinless life, and his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, we have in him, in the person of Christ, every reason to rejoice in our justification by faith alone.

01:22:08

Amen. And we have a listener, B .B.

01:22:14

in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, asks, I do not want to broad -brush, but are there not dispensationalist

01:22:22

Christians who believe that in the Old Covenant, men were justified by their works?

01:22:30

Well, you know, I think within evangelicalism today, I think we have cliches that we embrace, and Sunday School theology that we embrace, and that we repeat and regurgitate, and sometimes we're not careful, we're not precise in the way that we explain justification, and the way that we explain the doctrines of salvation, and grace, and so forth.

01:23:01

And I think we've gone sloppy within the last hundred years in the way that we have communicated the

01:23:11

Gospel, and the way that we've communicated soteriology, and I just am disappointed that more

01:23:18

Christians don't understand clearly that faith is always what has justified it.

01:23:25

I think we do have that dichotomy where we like to promote the idea that in the

01:23:31

Old Testament, people were justified by the laws, they were justified by grace, and it's not precise, it's not, you know, and I just think that comes from really not digging into the

01:23:44

Scripture closely enough for ourselves, and just being spoon -fed Sunday School theology.

01:23:50

And that's why shows like this are so important, right? I mean, to learn things, and to continue to grow, and be willing to change, and you know, sometimes we cling tenaciously to things that we've been taught that we think are true, or think are precise, and you know, just like Apollos was taught the way more perfectly by Priscilla and Aquila, we have a great opportunity sometimes to have the way taught more perfectly to us by Bible teachers on radio, and I'm grateful for this show.

01:24:16

And Chris, I want to really, I don't know if you're to be commended for this, but your listeners asked some of the best questions

01:24:23

I've been asked so far, talking about this show. You have some astute listeners. Chris Yeah, well,

01:24:29

I don't know how I could take the credit for that, but other than the fact that the guests that I select seem to be drawing a intelligent audience.

01:24:40

David It's encouraging. It's encouraging to hear people that want to know the Word of God and to study it deeply. It's so encouraging, so inspiring.

01:24:47

Chris Amen. And isn't there some misunderstanding regarding the

01:24:53

Old Covenant, because of the fact that, first of all, the

01:24:59

New Covenant is a new and better covenant for a reason, and in the Old Covenant, which had earthly aspects to it, where someone could be removed from the physical covenant of Israel because of their disobedience.

01:25:18

And so people often get the wrong understanding of that, meaning that they perhaps lost their salvation, or perhaps that they needed those acts of obedience, those deeds of obedience, they needed them as a requirement for salvation, rather than being a part of the physical covenant of Israel.

01:25:43

Am I on the right track? David Yeah, I think I understand what you're saying. I think I understand what you're saying. You know, the fact is, there is a correlation, and James talks about this.

01:25:51

There's a connection, there's a correlation between faith and works, there's a correlation between salvation, you know, saving faith and obedience.

01:26:00

And as Christians, when we truly believe, we will have acts that correspond with that.

01:26:08

But the question is, you know, the horse and the cart, which comes first? And so obedience is really the reflection of our faith.

01:26:18

It's the reflection of the fact that we love God, and that we want to do what pleases Him, we obey

01:26:24

Him, you know, because we get to, right? But I think, you know, the view that we sometimes have of the old covenant is like, you know, they had to perform, they had to do all these things to earn their way to God to be good enough, and if they didn't do all the right things, they get cut out, cast aside, and so forth.

01:26:45

You know, the fact is, God has always looked to people's hearts.

01:26:51

He's always looked at faith, and faith with Abraham had to do with him doing certain acts, leaving the land of his father, being willing to sacrifice his son, believing

01:27:05

God to have a son in his old age. There were expressions of his faith or things that he did, but those things didn't justify him before God.

01:27:15

His faith justified him. So the same way, you know, we will do things because we love

01:27:22

Christ, we will do things to be obedient to Christ, but we do those things because we're justified.

01:27:29

We do them because He loved us first, and we love Him, not to gain our merit before Him and not to try to earn our way to God's favor.

01:27:39

We could never earn our way to God's favor. Amen, and we are going to our final break right now.

01:27:46

Oh, and Bibi, you have also won a free copy of Questions God Asks by Israel Wayne, compliments of our friends at New Leaf Press, and also compliments of CVBBS .com,

01:28:01

who will be shipping that out to you. That's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com.

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Don't go away. We'll be right back with Israel Wayne right after these messages from our sponsors.

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01:32:02

and make sure you mention Chris Arnzen and Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. And we are back now with our final 25 minutes or so with Israel Wayne, and we are discussing his book,

01:32:13

Questions God Asks. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question before we run out of time, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

01:32:22

chrisarnzen at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

01:32:31

USA, and only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private question. And now we move on to the question, what is your name in reference to Jacob, if you could?

01:32:44

This one I think is also a favorite of mine, because it's so complex, and there's much more in the chapter than we'll have time to deal with here.

01:32:55

But you know, you think about that wrestling match that he has with the angel of the

01:33:00

Lord, and the question that is asked to him, what is your name?

01:33:06

It just seems like such an odd question, because again, does the angel of the Lord not know who he's dealing with?

01:33:14

Does he not know who this person is? You know, I can't conceive of a scenario where this angel of the

01:33:20

Lord is just randomly walking through the woods and stumbles on a guy, and they start wrestling randomly, and then he's like, man, who are you?

01:33:29

I don't know who I'm tangled with here, right? No, I mean, he went specifically there to wrestle with Jacob, but Jacob was a guy who his entire life had sought a blessing, and he had wanted to be blessed, but he tended to seek the blessing through his own strength and his own flesh, and really met his match with his uncle

01:33:54

Laban, who was a very conniving and cunning manipulator, and he struggled his whole life trying to gain a blessing, and now at this point where he's going back to try to make things right with his brother

01:34:09

Esau, and he's trying to make a fresh start, he's met by the angel of the

01:34:15

Lord, and he hangs on to this angel of the Lord, and he says, I won't let you go unless you bless me, and the response is, what is your name?

01:34:27

I think that's just a fascinating question, and so what is it God wants him to think about?

01:34:32

Well, what does Jacob mean? His name means one who grasps at the heel, and figuratively, that means one who deceives, or one who lies, or one who manipulates, and I think

01:34:44

God is wanting to ask Jacob, do you know who you are? Are you willing to come to grips with your own nature?

01:34:53

You're asking me to bless you, but are you willing to really be honest with who you are in your flesh?

01:35:01

And he finally does. You know, he says, I'm Jacob, and when you think about the context of that, the last time that he had asked his earthly father,

01:35:12

Isaac, for a blessing, he was asked the same question. Who are you?

01:35:18

What is your name? And he lied, and he said, I am Esau, your firstborn, and he got the blessing from his earthly father through a lie, through manipulation, and I think what

01:35:31

God is trying to communicate to him here is that you're not going to get the blessing from God through lying and manipulation, because you can't lie to God.

01:35:40

God knows everything. He knows you, and so the question is, are you willing to confess who you are and be honest?

01:35:49

And when Jacob does that, when he says, I'm a liar, I'm a deceiver, I'm a manipulator, then

01:35:54

God says, you've struggled with man, you've struggled with God, now your name is going to be changed.

01:36:00

You'll no longer be called liar, deceiver, manipulator. Now you'll be called Prince with God, and he had his name changed, and I just think it's such a powerful story.

01:36:11

That whole narrative there is such a powerful story of what God does in us when we finally come to the end of ourselves, and we're willing to acknowledge who we really are and allow

01:36:25

God to change our nature, allow God to change our identity, and so that question is in the

01:36:30

Bible for us as well. What is our name? What is our identity? Because, you know, the name and the identity are really synonymous, that your name is who you are.

01:36:40

It reflects your identity, and so being honest about our identity of who we are in the flesh,

01:36:46

Paul said, in my flesh there dwells no good thing. And really, until you can come to that acknowledgement and that confession that in me there dwells no good thing, you really are not at a place where you are able to be justified, because you have to first acknowledge that you are a sinner and that you are desperately in need of God to change you fundamentally and regenerate you by the

01:37:19

Holy Spirit. So that chapter to me is just such a wonderful passage on redemption and restoration, and there's so many life lessons for all of us in it as well.

01:37:30

I think God's asking us that question as well. Amen, and obviously that whole story of Jacob and Esau turns on its head the whole notion that we were talking about earlier of earning our favor with God by what we do.

01:37:48

You know, it's not like Jacob was the better brother or something, and yet Jacob he loved and Esau he hated.

01:37:59

Right, and what is really the proper response when you realize that God has just demonstrated his unmerited favor to you, not because of who you are, not because of any good thing that you've done, but despite who you are, despite the terrible wickedness of your heart, that God has chosen to first appoint you and to save you from the tyranny of yourself?

01:38:25

What is the only proper response? I think the only proper response to that is gratitude and worship, is to just say,

01:38:31

God, I don't understand why you've chosen me, I don't understand why you have selected me and saved me,

01:38:38

I don't deserve it, I don't understand it, I can't even really explain it and articulate it in a way that makes sense.

01:38:45

I'm just thankful, I'm just grateful, and it really should be the overflow of a heart of worship.

01:38:52

That's the only appropriate response to the unmerited favor of God. This is

01:39:00

Buzz Taylor who has something to say. I can see why this is also one of your favorite questions on all of them, because his name was changed to Israel.

01:39:08

Exactly, yes. It does kind of play into an extent, because I've had to, over time, think about the meaning of my name.

01:39:21

Another possible definition of that name, Prince of God, is also one who struggles with God.

01:39:28

And in my life, I've had, and we all have, those struggles of having to wrestle through things, and that's part of why

01:39:37

I love these books that ask questions, because I've asked a lot of questions in my lifetime, and I think people who have struggles, who have questions, they're going to find a lot of answers in this book of questions that God asks.

01:39:53

And we move on to another interesting question that God asks of Moses. What's in your hand?

01:40:00

Yeah, you know, the staff of God that ends up, it's what this,

01:40:07

Rob, the staff ends up being called, that Moses is making excuses before God and saying, oh,

01:40:12

I'm not capable, I'm not qualified, I can't possibly do what God's calling me to do.

01:40:19

God takes something very simple, and He says, okay, this is, you know, this staff, this rod, this is going to be a symbol of me working through you to accomplish my purposes.

01:40:35

And it's interesting how the terminology shifts from it being called the staff of Moses to being called the staff of God, and it really is referred to that throughout the rest of the narrative.

01:40:47

And it's interesting how God uses it to bring plagues to Egypt, He uses it to bring water out of the rock,

01:40:56

He uses it to part the Red Sea, and so on. There's these many things that He uses to bring victory and redemption to His people.

01:41:07

But when, at the end of His life, when Moses takes this staff in His hand and He uses it for His own selfish purposes, and He strikes the rock when

01:41:16

He's not commanded to, He's told to speak to the rock, it's interesting that that staff disappears from the biblical narrative, and we never hear it referred to again in the

01:41:28

Bible. It completely just disappears from the biblical record. And I think it's a warning to us in ministry that when

01:41:37

God calls you to something and He takes something insignificant, you know, which whatever we have in our hand, right, whatever we have to offer is totally insignificant and lifeless, and God can take it and make it something powerful and make it something that impacts people's lives and brings hope and healing to people.

01:42:00

And I think that's a wonderful thing, but we have to remember we can never take that back and try to use it for ourselves, and we've seen that happen with ministries, haven't we?

01:42:12

Where someone starts out in ministry serving the Lord, helping others, ministering to others, and then at a certain point they become possessive of it, and they try to take it back and use it for their own selfish purposes, and God will not share

01:42:28

His glory with another. And there's great judgment for those who selfishly try to use the things that are meant to be used for the glory of God and the ministry of other people when they try to use that for their own selfish purposes.

01:42:47

C .J. in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, says, I hope this is not too far off topic, but since you mentioned the staff of Moses, I was wondering if you believe the magicians of Pharaoh actually performed miracles, or were they merely tricks?

01:43:06

D .L. Wow, what a great question. You know, I think one thing that—I'll just share this.

01:43:13

Yesterday as I was driving home from Massachusetts and New York, I did some seminars out there.

01:43:21

I was listening to Janet Parshall on the radio, and she had a guest on there who's written a book about how we as Christians have tried to dismiss the supernatural, and that we've almost become

01:43:34

Christian rationalists in trying to explain everything supernatural away in the

01:43:40

Bible with a naturalist explanation. And I guess

01:43:45

I would say that I think that we need to be careful that we don't try to create a scientific, rationalistic, materialistic explanation to everything that happens in the

01:43:57

Bible. There is a supernatural realm, and it seems to me like, in the context that it's given, that it's presenting a supernatural phenomenon that occurs there.

01:44:12

Some people say, well, it's just sleight of hand, or an illusion, or something like that. To me, it doesn't seem like the text reflects that.

01:44:19

Again, I suppose it's a point where Christian scholars may view it differently.

01:44:24

But I think there is a danger to trying to come up with these rationalistic arguments.

01:44:30

Even on the Red Sea, I saw a documentary where someone was trying to say that there was a sandbar in the

01:44:37

Red Sea that caused everybody to cross over, you know, that there's a certain point of the year where the water becomes really low and that people could cross over on a sandbar, and I'm just thinking to myself, well, how did all the

01:44:50

Egyptians drown, then, in the sandbar? I think there's sometimes a danger in just becoming

01:44:58

Christian rationalists, and so I tend to lean towards a supernatural explanation of that. Yeah, and obviously, though, there's a big difference between a miracle that God is performing and a miracle that a satanic individual or entity is performing, and there seems to be disagreement over whether this is the actual satanic being or person performing miracles by Satan's power, or is

01:45:29

God just allowing this person to perform a miracle? You know, there seems to be some disagreement over that kind of thing amongst brethren in Christ.

01:45:40

Yes, but I think the final thing that we can agree on very definitively is what is demonstrated through that story, the power of God over these false gods, the power of God over the magicians, the power of God over the alternative truth claims and the alternative, you know, worship and so forth, that God is exalting himself as being the only true and living

01:46:10

God. That definitely is the takeaway of that that we can be certain about.

01:46:17

Yes, and we should never dismiss the idea that there are powers of evil going on in this world.

01:46:27

Obviously, the power of our sovereign God, who is omnipotent, makes any other power child's play in comparison, but that doesn't mean that those things don't exist, those things, those supernatural things.

01:46:44

Yeah, I think of the line in Martin Luther's hymn, and again, going back to the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, you know, one of the lines of his famous hymn is he says, and though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, you know, he believed in the power of this unseen realm that we do battle against, that Ephesians 6 talks about.

01:47:09

But ultimately, we can thank God that it's his truth that triumphs through us, and that God is greater, and that we don't have to fear the powers that, you know, are of the enemy.

01:47:23

We can trust in the power of God because it is almighty over all. And you also bring up in the book, who made your mouth in reference to Moses?

01:47:35

Right, and I talk about the opportunity, the wonderful opportunity that we have to have our mouths used for God's purposes, and God, I think, is asking us that, and I think

01:47:47

I equated in that chapter to evangelism, because sometimes we feel like, well, I'm not gifted at evangelism, or I can't do apologetics,

01:47:55

I'm not an eloquent speaker, I don't know how to talk to people, and we make these excuses just like Moses did, but God asks him, who made your mouth?

01:48:04

It's not ultimately us doing, saying all the right things and communicating all the perfect arguments and so forth.

01:48:14

That doesn't save people. You know, a good argument has never saved anybody. When people are saved, they are drawn by the

01:48:23

Holy Spirit, and does God use the spoken word, the preached word? Yes, of course, and so we're grateful we get to be used in that capacity, but it's

01:48:34

God who saves people. We don't save people. We don't have the capacity to save people through a clever argument or the right kind of evangelistic method.

01:48:43

God's not asking for us to be perfect in terms of our ability to communicate, but he is wanting us to be willing, and so it's a great challenge to us, through the life of Moses, to be willing to let our mouths be used for him to reach other people.

01:49:01

Now, in the case of Moses, God himself made it clear that he was choosing

01:49:08

Moses for some very important history -making tasks. Don't you think that we who live in this day and age, where God is not audibly speaking to us and appearing to us in visions and so on—at least that's where I'm coming from as a cessationist—don't you think we have to recognize what our abilities and gifts are?

01:49:37

Not everybody is called to be a teacher or a preacher. I think that one of the greatest lies that adults tell children, which seems to be a credo for our day and age, is that you can do anything if you set your mind to it or if you believe in it hard enough or whatever the case is.

01:49:58

But that's not true, is it? Well, of course we all have gifts and we all have inclinations.

01:50:05

I have a gifting toward teaching. I actually don't feel that I have a natural inclination towards evangelism in the same way that I do with teaching and discipleship.

01:50:17

You know, like Ray Comfort. I think of a guy like that and I think, oh, he's just wired to do evangelism. That's just how he's built.

01:50:23

I think there's some truth to that, that we have different inclinations, but at the same time, I think all of us are called to represent

01:50:30

Christ. And when I'm sitting next to somebody on an airplane or in a bus or working next to somebody,

01:50:38

I can't let myself off the hook and say, well, I would share the gospel with them, but it's just not my gift.

01:50:45

You know, I think all of us have an obligation to be willing to share with other people what

01:50:52

Christ has done in us. And I think the burden just needs to be off of us for results.

01:50:58

You know, I think that's really a pressure that's been put on us sometimes, that we have this expectation that we're responsible for their response.

01:51:07

We're not. We aren't responsible to, you know, make them get saved or whatever.

01:51:13

Our responsibility is to represent Christ and let the Holy Spirit be the

01:51:19

Holy Spirit. God has to save people. We can't. We just have to be faithful. Yes.

01:51:25

And when it comes to our evangelizing the lost, that is a command to everybody.

01:51:30

That's where the difference would be. Not everybody's going to be called to be a pastor or an evangelist, evangelist in the sense of the term that they are a preacher who has been called of God into the ministry.

01:51:46

But we are all commanded to not be ashamed of the gospel and to preach the word and to evangelize and to correct those in error and so on.

01:52:02

If we are faithful followers of Christ, this is something that we all have to do, even if we don't think that we have an oratory gift or anything like that.

01:52:14

Yes. Yes, absolutely. Well, I think we have time for one more question before I have you summarize what you most want our listeners to walk away with today.

01:52:28

We have another question that we have.

01:52:35

Why are you on your face? Yeah, this is a question that was asked to Joshua because they had gone to Jericho and they'd had this phenomenal win where God moved powerfully and they saw the walls of Jericho fall down and then they go out in their next campaign and things go really bad when they go to Ai and they're terribly beaten in battle and Joshua turns to God and he's on his face and he's crying out to God and he's trying to really understand what's going on here.

01:53:13

And the angel of the Lord comes to him and he says, what are you doing on your face? And it's interesting how the

01:53:22

Lord reveals to Joshua that Achan was hiding sin in the tent and that the blessing of God was not flowing and that they needed to deal with the sin that was clearly separating them from God's blessing.

01:53:43

And so I talked in that chapter about the importance of checking our own hearts and being willing to deal with sin that God exposes in our lives and not leave it buried under the tent, not try to hide it and conceal it because God's aware of it,

01:54:00

God knows about it, and just to be willing to uproot that and get rid of it so that we're not hindered in terms of the blessing that we should be experiencing in our lives and our ministries and so forth.

01:54:16

And so again, a sobering question for each one of us of, you know, it's important to have prayer and spiritual disciplines and those kinds of things and we need to be mindful of that and continue and be strong in spiritual disciplines, but we also need to be mindful that we don't open ourselves up to especially a lifestyle of unrepentant sin because that just destroys our effectiveness in ministry and really ruins our fellowship in many ways as believers with each other and with the

01:54:54

Lord. So lots of great lessons in these chapters and all these questions that God asks people are extremely relevant for us and we can apply them to our everyday life.

01:55:08

Darrell Bock Amen. And if you could summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we go off the air.

01:55:15

David Morgan I think that God is trying to show us through the questions that he asks that one of the best ways to teach is not merely to instruct, as important as that is, but also to ask questions.

01:55:29

And I've learned a lot as a parent. I've learned a lot about how to communicate better with others in evangelism, through apologetics, through Bible teaching, in asking questions and drawing people out and really helping them to assess their own biases and preconceived ideas and presuppositions and all of that.

01:55:53

And that the reason that God asks us these questions is ultimately he wants us to know him better. He wants us to understand him and have relationship with him and relationship with one another.

01:56:03

And so we can learn more about ourselves, we can learn more about God, we can learn more about our relationship to God and others through the questions

01:56:11

God asks. Darrell Bock Amen. Well, I want to make sure that all of our listeners have all of your contact information.

01:56:20

First of all, if anybody wants to order this book,

01:56:26

Questions God Asks, you can get that through CVBBS .com,

01:56:33

CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for Bible Book Service dot com. And of course, you can also go to the publisher's website,

01:56:40

MasterBooks dot com, MasterBooks dot com. We want to thank MasterBooks and New Leaf Press for providing these free books that we gave away today.

01:56:50

And if you could, let our listeners know about how they can personally contact you. Chris Yeah, I speak at a lot of conferences and churches.

01:56:59

If you're interested in having me speak at your family camp or other events, please visit FamilyRenewal dot org,

01:57:07

FamilyRenewal dot org. And they can also visit me on Facebook forward slash

01:57:14

Israel Wayne Author and forward slash Family Renewal. And I'm also on Twitter at Israel Wayne.

01:57:21

And my wife and I have a podcast that we do where we talk about family issues. It's called Family Renewal.

01:57:26

You can look it up on Google Play or iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. But we would love to connect with you.

01:57:32

And if you want to join our email list, it's FamilyRenewal dot org forward slash subscribe.

01:57:38

And we can let you know when we're going to be speaking in your area. Mike By the way, just out of curiosity, where did you speak in New York?

01:57:46

Chris I spoke in Brooklyn at a Baptist church in Brooklyn. And we also did a seminar in York, Pennsylvania.

01:57:54

So we were kind of doing an out east trip. And then we spoke in a place in Connecticut. I think it's called

01:58:00

Plainville, Connecticut. Something like that. Mike Yeah, yeah, there is. And I think there's a

01:58:06

Plainfield in Connecticut, too. But... Chris Yeah, so we did an east coast trip.

01:58:12

And my wife and I are in Chicago right now. We're going to fly tomorrow to Seattle for the

01:58:18

NOAA conference at NOAAconference .org with Ken Heum and Way of the Master Ministries.

01:58:24

And Emile Wayne is going to be speaking there. And Kevin Swanson and several other internationally known speakers.

01:58:30

So we're excited about going out to the west coast for the Washington NOAA conference.

01:58:37

And so we would love to see any west coast folks out there. Mike Great. Yeah, well, I immediately think of a friend of mine out there,

01:58:45

Bill Webster, who is a apologist and author who's written a number of books.

01:58:50

I'll make sure I let him know about that. He lives in Battleground, Washington. And maybe he can make the trip out there.

01:58:57

Well, I want to thank you so much for being our guest today. I want to thank everybody who listened to the program today.

01:59:04

Don't forget about the pastor's luncheon next Thursday, October 26th, 11 a .m.

01:59:12

to 2 p .m. That's absolutely free of charge to all men in the ministry, pastors, elders, deacons, power church leaders.

01:59:18

If you'd like to attend this free event, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:59:27

And you can register that way. Put pastor's luncheon in the subject line. I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater