My son and the repentance of God

I am working at home today and my son came down and asked if he could ask me a question. Sure.

"I am reading 1 Samuel 15 for Omnibus today and I read that God regretted that he made Saul king over Israel. Since God ordained everything that takes place, how can this be real regret?"

What does a father say? With a big, thankful gulp, I offered a silent prayer of gratitude to a God who would bless me with a son who thinks while he reads and is not afraid to ask hard questions.

I grabbed my Bible and turned to 1 Sam 15. I then pointed out not only the verse at 1 Sam 15:35, but also 1 Sam 15:29. "Son, how can God not be able to regret and regret six verses later?"

Blank stare. The dawning recognition of a deeper complication. "I don't know."

I would have loved to just tell him what I believe. But I wanted him to go read it somewhere. Maybe that is still telling him, but it would be good for him to read someone other than me.

I sent him here.

Praise God.

Teaching at Living Water Community Church

In February, 2007, Pastor Tom Steller and I had the opportunity to fly to my hometown of Vancouver, WA, and teach a weekend seminar on the Bible study method called "arcing." The following two links are for audio from that session. The first audio is where I taught through the arc for 1 Samuel 12:19-25. I had recently preached on this same passage before a bunch of seminary students, and now had the opportunity to preach through it to a church congregation learning to study their Bibles. I hope you can tell the difference between the two! Click here to listen to the first sermon.

Arcing 1 Samuel 12:19-25

This second audio is from the very last session of the weekend. I was to close out the weekend by teaching through the arc of Romans 11:33-36. It was a sober and wonderful moment. Unfortunately, the last ten minutes of the audio were lost! The whole weekend was supposed to have been videotaped and yet nothing turned out except for about seven hours of poor audio. This is the very last twenty minutes.

Arcing Romans 11:33-36

This passage is so profound and deep; I wish my exposition of Paul's wonder at the depth and riches of God's wisdom and knowledge had survived technology!

1 Samuel 12:19-25

I preached my second of two sermons for preaching class on February 25, 2007. The assignment was to preach on any Old Testament text.

Right click here and choose "Save Link As" to download an mp3 of the sermon.

Any feedback would be welcome.