Wednesday
7:00 AM – Elders’ Prayer: Room 150
7:00 AM – WOW Bible Study: Classroom B
9:15 AM – WOW Bible Study: at the Church
1:30 PM – Priscilla  Ladies Meeting: Room 150
5:30 PM – Wee College: at the Church
7:00 PM – Worship Team: Worship Centre
7:15 PM  – DV8 (youth, grades 6-8): at the Church
7:15 PM – WOW Bible Study: Room 150
7:30 PM – Prayer Meeting: The Board Room

Saturday 
10:00 AM - Event Horizon: all youth event — see www.epicLA.ca for locations
7:30 PM – Moja kwa Moja Concert: Worship Centre (note – this is a ticketed event)

Click here to download the most recent edition of Sunday’s bulletin.

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For me, it was like a vitamin shot. I have been a Christian for 35 years now. Somehow in the frenzy of everyday life – working, raising a family, maintaining a house, managing finances, etc. it is easy to lose sight of the power of the Gospel of Christ. It is easy to forget the simple truths; we were created with purpose by a loving God, we are hopelessly broken but infinitely redeemable, God loved us so much that he sent His Son to die for us. It is easy to forget that these truths will go on changing the world, and that we, the Church, are God’s chosen receptacle for this most powerful of messages. This morning I am thankful for the reminder, both of what I have been given, and of how God is calling me to love others in the name of Jesus.

What about you? How were you impacted?

About two years ago, the Lethbridge Area Youth Ministerial (LAYM) discerned that there were two urgent needs to address in youth ministry in our region:
1) the need to reach out with the good news message of Jesus Christ to students who have never heard it
2) the need to train students with leadership potential.

After almost a year of praying, talking and asking some pointed questions, LAYM invited the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association of Canada (BGEAC) to bring epicentre, a multi-phase, year-long process for students that begins by motivating students to evangelize, training them how to share the message of Jesus with their friends and culminates in evangelism and follow up. There were several reasons why LAYM discerned that epicentre was the right program to meet these two needs in Lethbridge and area.

First, it addressed the student leadership development through two primary programs:
- Primal Fuel which sees about 80 students gather once a month for mentoring, training and planning
- Gravity, a three week course which trained over 650 students in the Lethbridge area in how to share their faith with their friends.

Also, epicentre incorporates a multi-faceted approach to evangelism:
- the gospel proclaimed locally in a small group setting at Event Horizon on March 12-13
- the gospel proclaimed locally in a large event setting at Ignition on May 1
- the gospel in action through events called Transition which will seek to show the love of Christ in practical ways to the people of Lethbridge
- the gospel proclaimed internationally through Global Velocity, a mission trip to Trinidad and Tobago with Samaritan’s Purse.

The Youth Ministerial was also attracted to the year long process. The BGEAC understands that the big event is only as effective as the rest of the process. Epicentre emphasizes:
- the need for motivation, understanding that students have to want to share their faith,
- the need for training, recognizing that students need to know how to share their faith
- the need for relationship, affirming that while a big event may be a draw from some students, ultimately a Christian band is not going to draw students who do not know
Christ.

The impact of the evangelism phase depends almost exclusively on Christian students inviting their friends who do not yet know Jesus to come and hear about him.
You can help our students in sharing the message of Jesus with their friends by:
- supporting epicentre financially. Click this link to go to donate online. Be sure to choose “epicentre” from the drop down menu. The page also includes a mailing address if you would prefer to send a cheque.
- praying. For specific prayer requests, click this link.
- being a counselor at Ignition by attending one of following Counselor Training Sessions. All sessions begin at 7PM and will last one hour.
March 23 – Efree Church of Lethbridge or West Side Community Church
March 24 – Park Meadows Baptist Chruch or College Drive Community Church
March 25 – University Drive Alliance Church or Victory Church

You are right that nowhere in the Bible is polygamy explicitly prohibited. Conversely the Bible routinely holds up monogamy as the ideal. From Genesis 2:24 onwards the ideal is one man and one woman for a lifetime commitment. The standard of leadership in the early church was to be “the husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2). Where polygamy appears in the Bible it is always accompanied with conflict and pain. It seems to me that there is only one person who benefits from polygamy and that is the man. In Ethiopia I have heard painful stories from women and children who are the victims of modern day polygamy.

The Bible does not specifically say why God allowed polygamy. I will speculate possible answers. In a patriarchal society it was almost impossible for a woman to provide for herself. In such a culture women were often uneducated and therefore relied on fathers, brothers and husbands to provide and protect. The alternative was worse than polygamy – prostitution or slavery. A further consideration is that there are more women than men in the world. Infant mortality rates have generally been higher among baby boys than girls. Further, warfare in ancient times was especially brutal and exacted a high cost on the men, again leaving more women than men in the world. Of course these circumstances are each a result of the fall which the gospel has come to undo.

Yes, polygamy appears in the Bible. But let’s remember that the Bible is about the gospel, and the gospel was revealed in the context of human cultures. We need to distinguish between the gospel that leads to salvation and the culture of the people that God was dealing with. Polygamy was a feature of the culture within which the gospel was revealed.

It is possible that polygamy may become a real issue for us today. I would argue that polygamy is opposed to the design of God for marriage. The marriage of one man and one woman for a lifetime commitment mirrors the covenant relationship that Christ has with His bride, the Church. It is exclusive and singular. There is one bride and one church.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

2. How do we know that the angel that appeared to Hagar was the 2nd person of the trinity?

I will offer a five part answer, the sum of which in my mind is compelling evidence that this was indeed a “theophany”. A theophany is a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ in the Old Testament.
(1) The “angel of the LORD” explicitly identifies himself with Yahweh in verse 10.
(2) Hagar recognizes him as divine in verse 13.
(3) The biblical writer calls him Yahwah (Jehovah) in verse 13.
(4) “The organic unity of Scripture would be broken if it could be proved that the central point in the Old Testament revelation was a creature angel, while that of the New is the incarnation of the God-Man.” (H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis)

3. Is the angel Jacob wrestled with also the angel of the Lord?

Yes, most biblical scholars consider this figure a preincarnate manifestation of Christ. In this case the mysterious figure is identified as “a man” and not as the angel of the Lord. The incident is recorded in Genesis 32. It is noteworthy that Jacob called the place Penial, meaning “it is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”

The following are a few of what are considered classic theophanies: The angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3:2); Likewise an appearance is made to Gideon (Judges 2:11,12); In the furnace of Nebuchadnezzar there is a fourth person who appears (Daniel 3:24-25).

While there are no indisputable theophanies in the Old Testament, every theophany in which God takes on human form foreshadows the incarnation, both in matters of grace and judgement.

1)      That the Holy Spirit includes this passage about Abram’s doubt.  Sometimes we have the tendency to put our spiritual heroes on pedestals and gloss over their failures, or what we perceive as their failures.  I really like that the Bible does not do this, for the most part, but lets us in on the stumbles, questions and doubts of our heroes.

2)      How God deals with Abram’s doubt.  He does not condemn Abram’s doubt but he does not leave it unchallenged.  Even before Abram expresses his doubt, God is already dealing with his fear (verse 1), reminding him that God is Abram’s protector and treasure: that there is no army big enough to prevent God from accomplishing his purpose and there is no plunder rich enough to overshadow his value.  In this whole chapter, God challenges Abram’s doubt with incredible graciousness and gentleness.

3)      That Abram’s doubt is not seen as a lack of faith.  Abram had every reason not to doubt: he had already stepped out in faith in response to God’s call to leave his homeland and his family (chapter 12), he had just experienced a great victory of faith (chapter 14) and he had just received two tremendously clear revelations from God (verse 1 and 4).  However, he still had questions and doubts.  This leads me to believe that doubt is inevitable and maybe even central to our faith.  The source of Abram’s doubt was that he believed and took seriously the promises of God to provide him with offspring and land but his experience was not matching those promises.  He has three choices: a) decide God’s promises are not true and let his experience dictate his reality and/or his interpretation of God’s promises, b) decide his experience is not true and live in unreality, pretending God’s promises have been fulfilled (i.e. imagining he has a son) or c) ask God for help in understanding how his promises can be true in light of the reality of his experience.

Verse 6 makes it clear that Abram’s doubt sprung from his faith: “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited to him as righteousness.”  This is the central verse in this passage and central to the idea that we are declared righteous by faith alone.   Paul uses this verse to argue for justification by faith in Christ and not by works in Romans 4 and in Galatians 3.

At Church at 6, it was asked if we, as Christians, enter into the blessings given to Abram.  Galatians 3 indicates that we do in the sense that when we respond in faith, just as Abram did, we become children of Abram and heirs of the blessing given to Abram.  Hebrews 11 makes it clear that Abram saw beyond the more immediate fulfillment of the promised land and promised son to the true Promised Land (a city built by God) and true Promised Son (Jesus).  We look forward to these same blessings the same way that Abram did: by having faith in the one who has paid our penalty for not meeting the conditions of the covenant and by trusting that our faith will be credited to us as righteousness so that we too can enter into the true Promised Land.

There is another interesting aspect to Abram’s life in this chapter that we didn’t have time to explore in the service and that is Abram’s evangelistic efforts.  Notice in verse 13 that three Amorite brothers have allied with Abram.  It is clear from the end of the chapter that these three brothers respected Abram enough to ride with him to a battle that they had no interest in.  This was a rescue operation for one of Abram’s relatives.  They had no stake in this battle and yet they valued their relationship with Abram enough to join him in the fight.

I see this as a partial fulfillment of God’s promise in Genesis 12:3; “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”  Abram, by living out his faith in this foreign land, is starting to be a blessing to others and to point them to a living relationship with the living God.

What I want to point out is how Abram treats his friends at the end of the chapter.  The king of Sodom comes out and demands that Abram give him the people that Abram has rescued from the four overlords.  In exchange, the king of Sodom offers to make Abram rich by letting him keep the plunder.  There’s a lot that could be said about the king of Sodom’s attitude but that’s a topic for another sermon or another blog.  Abram refuses the offer, giving all the plunder and the people to the king of Sodom because he doesn’t want the king of Sodom to be able to take any credit for what God is going to do in blessing Abram.  Notice, however, that he does not force his friends to refuse their share of the plunder but insists that the king of Sodom allow them to keep what they have earned (v. 24).

Abram realizes that the problem is not that his three friends were taking plunder, the problem was that they did not have a covenant relationship with the living God.  This is a lesson for us in the way that we treat our friends, colleagues, employees, etc.  Often we are more concerned for their moral state than their eternal state and we attempt to force our morals and faith response on people who have no faith.  Abram got it right: the problem is not that they swear or party or don’t come to church, etc.  The problem is that they do not have a covenant relationship with the living God.  Of course, we must continue to act against oppression and injustice but we must never forget that there is a spiritual oppression that must be addressed as well.  Our lives must do more than point people to a more moral or free way of living.  Like Abram, our lives must point people to God.