South Shore Pentecostal Church

Tina Ouellette: Welcome to the Apostolic Truth Radio program with Pastor Craig Ouellette, a radio ministry of South Shore Pentecostal Church located in Whitman, Massachusetts. At a time when many Christians do not know what to believe, South Shore Pentecostal is honored to bring you clear biblical teaching on which you can confidently build your faith. Thank you for joining us.

J. Craig Ouellette: Amen. Let's look at these scriptures here this morning, starting with Numbers 32:20. We're back there in the Old Testament, the fourth book back there. They're about ready to come into the land of Canaan, and so Moses is talking to them. So in Numbers 32:20, Moses said unto them, "If you will do this thing, if you will go armed before the Lord to the war, and will go all of you armed over Jordan before the Lord, until he hath driven out his enemies from before him, and the land be subdued before the Lord, then afterward ye shall return and be guiltless before the Lord and before Israel, and this land shall be your possession before the Lord. But if you will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the Lord, and be sure your sin will find you out."

Now let me just clarify that scripture before we go on because I might forget. If you're not familiar with this passage, what it's talking about is they've conquered two kings on the east side of Jordan near Ammon and Moab. Sihon and Og, they've conquered them and conquered the land. The tribe of Reuben and the tribe of Gad and half of the tribe of Manasseh said, "We've got cattle. This land is good for the cattle. Can we stay on this side?" And so Moses said to them, "If you don't come with us to fight, you're going to discourage the other tribes that are going over there."

So they said, "Well, we'll come over and fight with you. Just give us this land. We'll put our children there and our wives and build enclosures for the cattle, but we'll come over and fight until the land is conquered and done." So that's where this passage comes in here. He says, "If you'll do this, if you'll do it, then the Lord's going to be with you. But if you don't do what you said, then your sin is going to find you out." And so the point here really is our sins do catch up with us eventually if we don't deal with them the way God wants us to deal with them.

So let's read on these next scriptures here. Psalm 85:10 says, "Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." You probably wonder how mercy and truth can meet together and righteousness and peace can do that because you've got people today that are divided. "Well, I think we need peace." "Well, I think we need to be right." "I think you need to be merciful." "I think we need truth." But here it says there's a place where they can come together. Amen. That's what the scripture is telling us.

Romans 6:23, a scripture more familiar to us. Romans 6:23 says, "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." 2 Corinthians 5:10 says, "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." And then finally in Ephesians chapter 2 verses 4 and 5, it says, "But God, who is rich in his mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, by grace are ye saved."

Let me explain the title a little bit. I think probably you might think it's weird. But when you go to the store and you buy a product, especially something you would eat, it's got a shelf life. The product's fine until it goes beyond the shelf life, and even beyond the shelf life sometimes it's good for a little while. So what we're trying to say here is God is a merciful God, but there's a time where God's mercy is not going to be extended to a person. So mercy does have a shelf life.

We have the promise of salvation from God through grace. We just read that in Ephesians 2:4-5. And when we talk about grace, grace is something we receive that we don't deserve. But mercy is when we don't receive what we do deserve. Grace is something we're getting that's good that we don't deserve. We don't deserve salvation, but God provides it. We don't deserve the blessings of the Lord, but God provides them, even for people that aren't living for God. They still get blessings of God. If it wasn't true, then all the things that happen in the world, they wouldn't be able to partake of those things.

But mercy is we've got a debt or a judgment coming against us and we don't receive that judgment or have to pay that debt. That's mercy. So we didn't receive what we deserved in that situation. We find out that mercy is a foundational principle for Israel. At the school where Ben and Asher go, one of their primary scriptures is Micah 6:8, which says, "He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God."

Those are good words. Those are good words for all of us every day. This is the attitude that God is trying to get us to cultivate personally in our lives, in our families, and everything. So we see that the Lord is a God of mercy. And throughout the Old Testament, we see the Lord dealing with his people in mercy. The Bible states that Joseph, sent down to Egypt by his brothers, resists Potiphar's wife's advances, and he's thrown in prison. He's lied about. But the next verse says that Joseph found mercy after being cast into prison, and God showed him favor. So God was merciful to Joseph in that circumstance.

When they came through the Red Sea and they come out the other side, they sang that song and Miriam got the tambourine and the women followed and they said God's great and they were worshipping God. Moses said that the Lord in his mercy had brought forth the people he had redeemed. God could deliver us and just leave us where we're at. God can save us and leave us in our mess. But he's a merciful God that will come and not only save us but deliver us out of a lot of the things of our mess that we're not capable of dealing with. God is able to heal us and bring us above. Amen. We might have all kinds of imaginations and things, but God is able to heal our mind.

Jesus was a real man. We lied against him. We abused him. We rejected him. Yet he can look at us and love us. And he has not forgotten the cross as a man. Amen. So that means God can do the same for us. God can bring us to a place where I can remember an ugly situation and not be consumed by it. I can remember an ugly circumstance, an unjust one, something that I thought was unbelievable and I didn't think I could ever recover from, but now I look at it through the eyes of God and I can be like Joseph and say, "They meant it for evil but God meant it for good." Hallelujah.

God is able to do that. When we're in the middle of that, we think it's not possible. We think we can't ever get out of that. But God is bigger. God is able to change our thinking. God is able to give us a perspective we didn't even know existed. God is able to let us see something from an angle that gives us a whole different understanding of what's going on. It's like the children of Israel. The Babylonians are coming up. Some of them are going to be carried away to Babylon. They're being cast out of the holy city and they're probably thinking, "I thought God loved us. Why is God sending us to this pagan city?"

Then God tells the prophet, "Tell them I'm sending them away for their own good. They're the ones I'm saving because there's going to be destruction here. I'm taking them out to avoid the destruction that's coming." Amen. They needed a different perspective. God is able to help us. Sometimes we've gone through some things and we think, "Why did I have to go through that?" But if we hadn't gone through it, we might have gone through something that was worse. Oh, let's give God praise. Lord, we thank you, Jesus. We thank you, Lord God. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Paul could have gotten bitter. He's doing all these things for the Lord. He's been beaten five times in the sea, whipped a number of times, and rejected by his countrymen. But he says, "That I might know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings." He finally realized, "I'm getting beat, but it helps me understand Jesus better. I'm getting whipped, but it helps me understand the Lord better. I'm going through all these things, but it helps me understand the love of God that he endured that for me on the cross so I could get something from him."

So I get a different perspective. Paul didn't sign up wanting that, but after he'd gone through it, he understood that God was helping him to understand something he couldn't have understood by his own thinking. In the Ten Commandments, the Lord stated that he would show mercy to those that love him and keep his commandments. That's why we're always saying, "Obey the Lord, follow the word of God, obey the Bible." Amen. When you obey God's commandments and follow them, God puts mercy in your life. Listen, we are not going to know what God has delivered us from until we stand in heaven.

Sometimes you think, "Where is God?" and you didn't see all the angels turning things aside every day for you for the rest of your life, keeping you safe. You thought God wasn't paying attention, but God had sent angels to protect you from people that meant evil against you, from people that were drunk and high that didn't know what they were doing and God was turning them aside. He just didn't send you a note to let you know he did it. God has worked in our lives many times. We don't even know what God has done in our lives even before we came to God.

We might have gone through some rough places, amen, but God put us in those places because it protected us from something else. And we come and we know God because of his goodness. God is often working in our lives. We think we did so good at work. We think we did so good at our school. We think we tried here and there when it was God that said, "Here's the answer," when God said, "Study this," when God said, "Don't do that, come over here." We didn't even know God and God was helping us through. Hallelujah. Amen.

And then we see we're talking about he's the Lord of mercy. He's merciful. Amen. He had a mercy seat constructed and placed on the Ark of the Covenant to meet with Moses. When God's having a tabernacle constructed so Israel can worship him, right there in the center where he is, there's a mercy seat. A mercy seat showing that God understands human beings need mercy. We need mercy. We need God's mercy. He's a God of mercy. And when we look at the construction of the ark in a little more detail, like in Exodus 25:17, we find out that in that ark were the Ten Commandments.

Moses put those in the ark. The mercy seat was a golden cover with two angels on it. God said, "I'll meet with you, Moses, on that cover." So what you have is a cover over the law. The ark represents God's physical presence. It represents God manifest with us. It represents God here on Earth. So wherever that ark was, that represented the presence of God. But on the top of it, it's got a mercy seat. Even though God's got a law, his law is overshadowed by mercy. God's got a hand of mercy.

We can't make that law. We can't always keep up with that law. But if we'll go to God, God's trying to help us understand he's got mercy for us if we come to him. Amen. He's not just throwing down laws; there's a mercy that God has got. Amen. Hallelujah. When we look at Psalm 136, there's 26 verses and every one of those verses ends with "and his mercy endureth for ever." He's a God of mercy. Hallelujah. In Lamentations, when Jeremiah looks over Jerusalem that's been razed and destroyed and the temple's burned up and people are laying around dead and famished, dying from famine because of the siege in that battle there, he looks around and says, "What's happened?"

But then he says, "But your mercies are new every day." Let's read that. Lamentations 3:22. He's looking around and everything looks bad. Everything looks down. Jeremiah survived. God has kept him through this. He's seen people killed, the temple burnt up. And in verse 21, he says, "This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord."

So he said in verse 22, it's the Lord's mercies that we're not consumed. God could consume us in our sins. Listen, every time I think about it, I think about that day I drove down that expressway in Detroit and told God what I was going to do. I wasn't saved and I'm still talking to God. I don't understand that, but there I am. I don't know why I'm talking to God, but I'm telling him, "This is what I'm going to do," and I knew what I was going to do was wrong, a sin, breaking one of the Ten Commandments. I knew it, and I told God I was going to do that. But I'm alive today because of his mercies are true. I could have died there. I could have died on those streets of Detroit.

Listen, there were people that I hung around with, they were joking about rolling people. "Where'd you get that bandage?" "Oh, I was trying to roll somebody. I was trying to rob them. I got stabbed." Not ashamed. Could have been dead. But God is merciful. God is merciful. Amen. God is merciful. Do not take his mercy for granted. And every day if you'll seek God's mercy, you can find him. His compassions are new every day. But the thing we need to understand is in spite of his mercy, God is a holy God.

So when we look in Leviticus 11:44 and 45, and I know we touched that scripture on Wednesday night also, but Leviticus 11:44, God is speaking, he says, "For I am the Lord your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye defile yourselves with any manner of creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. For I am the Lord that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy." He's a holy God. And when we talk about holiness, we're talking about a God that's perfect in love and mercy. He's perfect in judgment and righteousness.

He's a God of truth. He doesn't ever err. He doesn't ever make a mistake in his judgment. We all do. He doesn't ever do something that was kind of shady or a little bit. He's always righteous. And even when he does judgment, he doesn't quit loving us, but he's got to judge us because of his righteousness. Do you understand that? So when we say he's holy, he's perfect in love, judgment, righteousness, and in truth. He's perfect in all things. So God is asking us to try to follow his perfection. He knows that when we try to follow it, we're going to fall short. That's why he's a merciful God.

That's why there's grace. He knows we can't attain to it, but he knows that that's still what we need to shoot for. So he knows that in order to reach where he wants us to be, we've got to go to him. I've got to have him enable me to live the way he wants me to live. I've got to learn that I've got to give some things over to him that I'm never going to be able to deal with. I've got to learn to give control to him. Amen. I've got to learn to let the Lord be the authority. People that have had problems with authority in their life have a hard time serving the Lord because they want to hold on to authority.

They won't give that authority until they're dead sure that that person's going to do everything the way they want. And if there's any fear of things not turning out, they're going to hold on. Sometimes they're not holding on because of evil motives; it's just because of what's gone on in their life they're not willing to let go and put it into God's hands. But to live for God, you must let go. I must let go. I must put it into his hands. It starts with a conviction: I know I'm a sinner, and I know I'm on my way to hell. That's where it starts.

Then it starts with, "I don't want to go to hell, I want to be saved," so I'm going to repent. But then the next thing is when I repent, I understand God's asking me to live a different way and I realize I don't know if I can live that way. But that's the way I'm going to have to live if I want to get to heaven. So, God, now I'm going to do this, but I need you to help me do it. And I'm going to step out in faith to do it. That's the walk of faith. That's how the Bible tells us we live by faith. It's the right realization: I can't do it, but God's asking me to do it, I must do it, so I'm going to have to step out. You're asking me, I'll do what I know how to do, but I'm going to need you to help me to do the rest. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.

And that's what we do on a day-by-day basis. So he's a God of truth. Deuteronomy 32:4, "He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he." So when we talk about his holiness, he's perfect in all moral aspects. He's perfect in everything. But when it comes to moral aspects, he's perfect. We, when we come to our moral aspects, we all fall short some place. The Lord has got to balance his mercy with truth. This is the point. He is a merciful God. But because he's holy, he's a God of judgment. There has to be a balance, a way that he can be merciful without being unjust, a way that he can be forgiving without being unrighteous. This is what God has got to do. This is why the cross had to come, because this is how God went about it.

So mercy and truth, righteousness and peace are found in Jesus Christ. Remember we read that Psalm? Mercy and truth have met, peace and truth have kissed each other. How does that happen? That happens in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the truth, but he is the merciful God. He is the Prince of Peace. He's the Prince of Peace, but he's also the righteous God. So it's all met in the person of Jesus Christ. So if I want mercy and truth applied to my life, I've got to go to Jesus. I've got to come to the Lord. Amen.

So again, we're made alive and we're quickened through mercy by salvation in Jesus Christ. We read that in Ephesians 2:4-5, "But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace are ye saved;) and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Now sometimes when you're down here, you feel like heaven doesn't exist. But spiritually speaking, the Bible says we're already sitting there. We're sitting in heavenly places.

Colossians says we've been translated into the kingdom of his son (1:13). So in the spirit, when you get into the spirit, you start to feel the heavenly aspect. That's why we're always saying, "Get in the spirit," because once you enter into the spirit, you start to realize the reality of heaven, the reality of God, the reality of Earth. You start to realize that what's here is a temporary thing. Amen. And so God deals with all of that. So we're made alive in Jesus Christ because of God's mercy. He's provided a way that we can all be made alive.

So again, we know all this, we're talking about salvation. You've got to come to salvation. You've got to do it God's way. You've got people that say all kinds of things, "Just believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." But the Bible lets us know if I really believe on him, I'm going to do what he says. If I believe on him, I believe his word. You've got people say you don't need to be saved, but the Bible says we're saved by baptism. "Don't need to be baptized to be saved," but the Bible says I need to be baptized to be saved.

The Bible says salvation is applied in our lives through repentance, water baptism in Jesus' name for the remission of sins, and receiving the Holy Ghost. That's how salvation is applied in our lives. Now we're not talking about feeling God; we're talking about being saved. You can feel God and not be saved. Whenever you have an idea, you need to try to measure it against what the Bible says. That's the way you can tell whether what you're thinking is true or not. Some people say, "Well, I know that I'm saved because God talks to me." No. God talked to Cain. God talked to Balaam. They weren't right with God. God gave Balaam prophecies. So just because God's talking to you does not mean you're saved.

It's good he's talking to you because that means you can get saved if you'll listen to him, but just because God is talking to you does not mean you're saved. "Well, I've got joy." Well, again, Acts chapter 8, they had joy but they didn't have the Holy Ghost. "I got healed." Acts chapter 8, got healed, didn't have the Holy Ghost. "Got baptized in Jesus' name." They got baptized in Jesus' name, didn't have the Holy Ghost yet. "Got delivered from demons." They got delivered from demons and still didn't have the Holy Ghost yet. You have to measure your thinking against the Bible.

The Bible says we need to repent, get baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost. And the Bible lets us understand that the early church knew people got the Holy Ghost when they heard them speak in tongues (Acts chapter 10). By obeying that plan of salvation, we identify with the Lord. That's why it is what it is. He died, was buried, rose again. We die to sin. We repent. We talked on Wednesday night, we said John the Baptist preached a baptism of repentance. That's an immersion of repentance. It's not a singular event. Baptism means to be immersed.

So he was teaching not just repent today but get an attitude of repentance. So even with us as Apostolics, we need an attitude of repentance every day. Every day I need to search my heart. Every day I need to check am I okay with God? It's not about whether I believe in God or not, it's is my heart right? David said, "I can have secret sins. I can be presumptuous. So forgive me from my secret sins that I might be doing that I don't even know." I'm just saying that to say that just illustrates we need God every day. We need a repentant attitude every day.

Then if I'm really dead to sin, I want to get buried with him. That's what water baptism is. I'm getting buried with Jesus. That's why you put the name on. You're not getting buried with the Holy Ghost, and you're not getting buried with the Father's spirit, God. You're getting buried with Jesus. That's why you get baptized in Jesus' name. You're taking the name. Amen. And then God will raise us up with the Holy Ghost. It's a resurrection. The Bible says that after three days and nights, the spirit of God came back into the dead body, he became alive.

We repent, get baptized in Jesus' name, when we get the Holy Ghost, the spirit comes into our dead body, dead from dying to sin, and makes us alive again. That's why they preached that. It identifies us with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Amen. And so he rose again in a glorified body. We rise up a new creature in Christ, the Bible says. "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." Amen. When I get born again, I become a new creature. I look at life differently. I handle life differently because I'm not the same creature I was before. Amen.

So I'm going to live differently. The devil will try to convince you you're not a new creature because you might have some habits you've got to break, some things that you do automatically. You've done them so long that you do them without thinking. But when they come up, you give them to God and you claim, "I know that's wrong, I repent, and I'm claiming I'm a new creature in Christ." Salvation provides the blood of Jesus as the one sacrifice for our sins. And once we're saved, the blood of Jesus washes away our sins. If we sin after being saved, the Bible says if we confess our sins, the blood still works to wash away our sins.

That's 1 John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Now he's writing to the church. He's not writing to sinners. I probably should back up to verse 7, "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another." Light means truth and spirit, the word of God. "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path." The spirit of God, he said, "Let there be light." God is light. Light is spirit, it's word, it's truth. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanseth us from all sin.

So you get saved and you continue to walk for God, that blood is there, available, when I make a mistake and confess it, to continually work and cleanse me. Now even though it's available, if I don't confess it, it doesn't cleanse me. It's not an automatic cleanser. But when I confess my sins, now the blood is there for me. Amen. Verse 8 says, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." And he's not talking about habitual sin primarily. Many of the things he's saying, he's talking about you get saved and then you continually sin in a certain area and you're not trying to resist. You're just saying, "Well, that's my thing. That's God's allowing me to do that," but you know the Bible doesn't allow that.

The Bible doesn't allow it, God's not allowing it. Amen. Doesn't matter if all the churches get together and make an encyclical and publish it on the internet. If it doesn't agree with the Bible, then it doesn't agree with God. Amen. So the blood of Jesus is working. And then verse 9 says, "If we confess our sins," we're living for God, we make a mistake, "if I confess it, he is faithful and just to forgive us, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." "If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us."

Then chapter 2 verse 1, "My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." He's trying to instruct the church: "I'm trying to instruct you so you don't sin, but if you do sin, go to Jesus. We've got an advocate." Confess that sin, and that blood will wash your sins away. That blood will cover your sins. We're told in another place, in the book of Hebrews, it says we're told to come boldly to the throne of grace to obtain mercy.

A lot of times when we say, "Come to the altar," what we're trying to do is get you to come to a place where you're taking a step of faith and come to a place where God will work on you. That's why we have altar calls. There's something about the altar where God is stronger up here. If you've ever sat in the back and sat in the front, you'll notice a lot of times it's a lot stronger in the front. I understand you can't all fit on the first pew. But it is stronger up in front. And I'm not saying that there's something wrong with sitting in the back at all.

But what I'm trying to say is when you come closer to where God is working, the presence of God gets stronger. And if we take Jesus as our example, he didn't just walk by and beam his spirit out to every town that he walked through. But as he walked through, people cried out and sought him out and came to him, or he'd say, "Come to me." Jesus isn't walking around in a physical body, but his presence is here, and we come to the altar. The altar is a place where you can receive if you come in faith. Now sometimes you've got to come with a little bit of doubt, but you can pray, "Lord, I believe, but help thou mine unbelief."

In other words, "I believe you can do it." Usually the question is, "I know you can do it, are you going to do it for me?" That's usually the big question. "What if I go up there and get disappointed?" But if you step in faith and believe that God loves you and you reach for God and you reach out for what God's got for you, God will meet you at the altar. There's something about getting out of that pew and saying, "I'm going for what God's got. I'm going to have what God's got." And when you decide you're going to do that, God is going to meet you.

I've heard many stories of people that were struggling with God or fighting with God and resisting God. Finally there was a move of God and they decided they were going to go to the altar, and before they ever got halfway up the altar, God hit them because they had opened their mind to go to the altar to receive what God had got for them. Amen. God doesn't come to the altar because the pastor says, "Altar call." God doesn't come to the altar because we pass the threshold and there's more than three people here. But God comes to the altar when somebody's hungry.

So if you're sitting in the pew waiting for somebody else to move to the altar, you could spend a lot of services waiting for what God's got for you. But if you're willing to go to the altar whether anybody else is going, no telling what God will do for you. Amen. No telling what God will do for you. Amen. The Bible says that, again, we're talking about God's mercy. But the problem of sin is sin is an offense against God's holiness and righteousness, which must be judged. There's going to be a day of judgment for the world. There's going to be a day of judgment for every soul that's ever been created. Past and future, there's a day of judgment for all of them.

When people that are saved don't repent, their sin is not covered by the blood of Jesus. So what I'm trying to say there is if you're saved, but now you sin and you don't repent of it, that blood's not working in your life. You don't get an automatic pass. We've got to come to God again. Again, this is why we study these things in the Old Testament. The tabernacle was there. God was always there in the tabernacle or the temple. But there were different types of sacrifices a person brought based on what the need was.

We don't have to have all those different kinds of sacrifices, but what it's trying to tell us is we still have to go to God in the spirit to meet those kinds of needs. Sometimes they brought a sacrifice for sin. Sometimes they brought a sacrifice for a vow. Sometimes they brought a sacrifice for a peace offering or a thank offering. Sometimes they brought a sacrifice to make a commitment. These are all things spiritually that we have to apply in our lives. Sometimes you come to the altar just to give thanks. Sometimes you come to the altar because maybe you're making a vow to God.

Be careful when you make a vow. Make sure that that's what God wants you to do and that you're going to do it. Do not make a vow and don't keep it. It's better not to make a vow to God. The Lord's merciful and long-suffering, but again we read in Romans 6:23, "the wages of sin is death." Sin in anybody's life that's not dealt with the blood of Jesus is going to have to stand before God and there's going to have to be a payment for that sin. What God's always trying to get us to do is apply the payment today.

Once I stand before him, I can't go back home and say, "Jesus, just wait a minute. Can I have five more minutes to pray?" When I stand before God, it's done. And God is going to judge me, God's going to judge you, and what I did with my life up to that point. Did I resist God? Did I just do what I thought I wanted to do? Did I just do the parts I felt comfortable with? Did I resist God because of what other people might say? Did I resist God because I didn't really want him to be Lord? Authority is a God thing; it's not a man thing.

The Bible says the authorities that be, they come from God. If I can't obey local authority, I probably won't obey God because God put the local authorities there. He gave them the authority. So in Numbers 32:23, again, I think people go through life situations and they've got sin but they won't confess it. They've got sin, and God's not getting them because God's merciful. God's not looking for an opportunity to get us. He's not looking for an opportunity to throw us out of the kingdom, to throw us out of the family, to send us to hell. God is not looking for that.

He's looking to keep us in the kingdom and add more to the kingdom. That's what God is looking for. But at the same time, if I've got sin in my life that I don't address, sooner or later that sin catches up with you. When sin catches up with you sometimes, it's a long time after that original sin that you were going along with. What happens to you may not seem to have any relationship, and you can be all angry by what's gone on in your life when really it's about unconfessed sin that was back there. You see things happening to people and everybody gets up in an arms, but you look at their past life, they had all kinds of things. Something should have happened a long time; they just escaped. God lets that happen in our lives.

And the people that are coming on might be unjust, but a lot of times that unjustness is coming because they've got unconfessed sin. If people do it unjustly, they're going to pay the price too. God will get them. Nobody's sliding by. He's a righteous God, a just God. Amen. Everybody's going to get it. They might slide by in this life. But listen, when we stand before God and you get a taste of heaven, a look over there, the worst thing that ever happened to any of us won't even touch what people are going to go through when they go to hell.

The longest night you ever had will seem like a party. The biggest pain you ever had will seem like nothing because it'll be for eternity. Things we go through now might be intense, they might be heavy, but they're only for a season. But when we stand before God, it's not a season anymore; it's eternity. And the Bible says we all stand before God, the judgment seat of God. We can hide our sin from others but God knows it, and the Bible says our sins will find us out. It catches up with us unless I confess it. In the spirit world, I'm getting a debt just like you take a loan out and the interest is increasing.

That debt is there. I've got a payment to God. If I'll go to the altar and repent and humble myself and say, "God, I'm wrong, I need forgiveness, I need you to help me with this," God will forgive. But if I go along just because God's not striking me, just because things seem to be okay, just because I can feel the presence of God sometimes but there's sin there, my sin will catch up with me. The Lord gives us mercy to give us an opportunity so that we can take the grace of salvation. If he didn't give us mercy, even if he put salvation out there, none of us would be here to get it. But because he doesn't judge us, that's mercy right away.

A couple examples. Achan's sin found him out. He's one out of 600,000 men. 600,000 men in the army of Israel. They go into Jericho and God says, "Don't take any of it. It all belongs to God. Let it all be burned up, all the gold, all the garments, everything." But Achan sees a Babylon garment, sees a wedge of gold, a wedge of silver, he covets it, goes and hides it in his tent. He's sinned against God. Next time they go out to fight, 36 Israelites die. Joshua's what's going on? There's sin in the camp.

They bring all the people around and find out Achan's the one that did it. Joshua says, "Give glory to God." He said, "Yeah, I took it, saw the garment, I did it, hid it in my tent." They go look in the tent and there it is. They take everything, they take him to a valley, they stone him with his wife, with his children, with everything he has, and burn them. Now he's one man out of 600,000 in the chaos of battle and no human saw him, but his sin found him out. God's trying to help us understand. David's sin found him out. King Saul's sin found him out. The sins of Noah's day, they caught up with the world.

Bible says that in those days they didn't have a Bible, but they did have a witness. Noah was a preacher of righteousness. And they had the witness of him building that boat for 100 or 120 years. "What are you doing, Noah?" "There's going to be a flood. God's going to judge the world." They had a witness. Enoch walked with God and was not; God took him. He was a witness. The Bible says today, now is the day of salvation. Now. Every day we need to be saved. The book of Hebrews says, "To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts." (Hebrews 3:7-8).

When God calls, don't harden your heart. Yield. Don't worry about what other people are going to think; worry about God who holds all things. Worry about what God's going to say when you stand before him. Amen. Bible says we've got one life to live, then the judgment. And as we already read, we're all going to stand before the Lord. So let's stand here this morning. God's mercy doesn't have a limit; that's what we mean by a shelf life. There is a day where judgment comes and mercy's not there. Today is the day of salvation. Amen.

If you need God's mercy, today is the day. If you need something from God, today is the day. If you need help from God, today is the day. If you need the Holy Ghost, today is the day. If you need strength to walk the path that you're on right now, today is the day. Amen. If you're wrestling with things in your life, today is the day you need to come, come boldly to the throne of grace to receive mercy to help in the time of need. If you've been asking God, "I don't really understand all this Apostolic stuff," today is the day to come to the altar and get an understanding. Sometimes God gives you understanding at the altar.

A lot of times God will clarify things to you. It's in his presence where we get the understandings. I can say all these things, but unless the Holy Ghost moves on you, you're still not going to get it. Understandings come from God. As we seek God, we get the strength and the answers that we need. Hallelujah. Amen. We carry burdens that God doesn't intend for us to carry. You can come to the altar and lay a burden at the altar. "God, this is eating me up. I can't take it. I'm going to come to the altar because I know you don't want me to be destroyed. You didn't save me to lose me."

I'm going to lay it at the altar. I'm going to believe that you're going somehow help me. That doesn't mean I'm going to get up and it's solved, but it means I'm going to get up and it's not going to affect me or worry me the same way. It's not going to create bitterness in me. I'm bringing it to the altar. I'm laying it down there to give it to you, Lord God. Hallelujah. Maybe you've got all these things in the back of your life that's happened that you don't understand and you're a little angry and bitter at God. It's a good time to come to the altar, lay that at the altar.

"God, I know that you're a just God. I know you're a loving God. I know that you're greater than me. I know that you care about me. Lord, I shouldn't be bitter like this. I need some help. I'm going to give you this bitterness. Pull this root of bitterness out of me." Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Why don't we just all gather up here at the altar here if you could? Just gather up. Amen. You don't have to kneel unless that's what you feel like God is asking you to do, but you can stand and pray and talk to God.

Come on, just lift your hands and start to pray. If you got a burden, give it to him. If you got questions, give it to him. Hallelujah. If you need strength, ask him. Hallelujah. If you're struggling with things, give those things to him. Hallelujah. Come on, he's not a God that's a respecter of persons. Come on, I feel the Holy Ghost here right now. He's here to help you. He's here to lift you. He's here to strengthen you. Hallelujah. If the devil's trying to make you angry at somebody that you don't want to forgive, give the devil a black eye and say, "I forgive them anyway." "But I don't feel like it." That's okay. Your will to do it God's way will move things in the right direction. Your will to do it God's way. Hallelujah.

Tina Ouellette: Thank you for joining us today as we have studied the word on Apostolic Truth Radio. My name is Tina Ouellette, wife of Pastor Craig Ouellette of South Shore Pentecostal Church, located at 58 West Street in Whitman, Massachusetts. If you love praise and worship, you will love services at South Shore Pentecostal Church, and we invite you to come and worship with us. Sunday school for all ages begins at 10:00 AM and our Sunday evening service begins at 6:00 PM.

Adult Bible study and children's church is held on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM. You can learn more about our church on our website at southshorepentecostal.com or you may call us at 781-447-1668. If you have been blessed by this radio ministry, you can help support Apostolic Truth Radio via online giving through Venmo at SSPCWhitman. Write us today and request a free copy of today's message and join us for another broadcast of Apostolic Truth.