Can you hear that? First, I got to start out with an apology. The first apology is like, I'm really sorry that I'm interrupting all of your eating and drinking. So we're starting a few minutes early. And that introduces the second apology. I'm apologizing in advance. I'm sorry that at 1145, if I don't leave this building, I turn into a pumpkin. or I miss my airplane, one of the two. So I got to put pedal to the metal for two and a quarter hours to get to Raleigh. Then I've got to drop off my rental car. Then I got to take all my stuff and check it in and hopefully make my flight back to Los Angeles. I did the math on this. And I will be arriving at my home tonight at midnight your time, OK? So I don't want to miss this flight, or I'll be getting there sometime next week. So we're starting a little bit early. And I had a fabulous time. Since everybody's sitting in the back of this church, I'm moving up. I had a fabulous time with you guys yesterday, a whole bunch of you. But a whole bunch of you that were here aren't here this morning. I can tell you're gone. But there's a lot more young people here. And I'm really glad to hear that, because some of the things that I'm going to talk about today are going to be a repetition of some things I mentioned yesterday. The topic is different, but there's some overlap here. And I'm glad that you're able to get it, especially the young people. Because young people particularly, and I'm speaking also to the parents and the grandparents, On behalf of the young people, you are entering in a world that is so much different than I entered in. I was in high school and college in the 60s. There was a big change in our culture then. The counterculture movement, it was a huge transformation in our culture and the way of thinking. All of the new ideas then, almost 50 years ago, are now part of mainstream culture. And a whole new set of ideas are coming in, and they're not Christian. They weren't then, they aren't now. Which means that if you're a faithful follower of Christ, you're going to stand out like a sore thumb. There are a whole bunch of Christians that aren't standing out. Why do you think that is? Because they're not faithful followers of Christ. But if you're going to faithfully follow Christ, you're going to be a target. And that's why the material this morning, the stuff I talked about yesterday that some of you missed, and the organization Stand to Reason, which I represent, are so important to help you to be able to stand tall and stand proudly as a follower of Christ. as the years progress and things get more difficult. I can't get into all the details of that. You guys are largely, and I think this is good and a bad situation, where you live here, you are largely protected from a lot of things that are happening in the country. It's going to come to you eventually. But you're a little late in getting it. But other parts of the country, people are losing their livelihoods because they're followers of Jesus. This is happening everywhere, all right? The chief of... The fire chief of the city of Atlanta, no mean city, right? The city of Atlanta, like three years ago, got fired because he wrote a booklet for his church that had a chapter in it about homosexuality expressing the biblical worldview, the biblical view on homosexuality, and he was summarily fired, just like that. Now, that's the city of Atlanta. If a guy, the fire chief of the city of Atlanta can get fired for writing a private piece that's inconsistent with what the culture wants, then anybody can lose their job in this country. Now it turned out the Alliance for Defending Freedom got behind him, and just a couple of months ago, they got a million dollar award punishing the city for the violation of rights, but now you gotta litigate, you gotta take it to court. And there's a lot of people that can't do that, and they're just suffering. I'm just giving you a picture of what's coming. And I'm not a chicken little guy, the sky is falling, but there is trouble ahead. And I've been watching this for over 40 years. doing this kind of thing, defending the faith. So this material that I'm offering today I think is really appropriate for the kind of environment that we find ourselves in as followers of Christ who are to be a light to the world, alright? In the last 20 years my life, my approach to what we normally call evangelism has radically changed. And I talked a little bit about this yesterday. I became a Christian during the Jesus movement in the mid-70s. Okay, back then, evangelism was pretty easy. Everybody understood the language, they knew what the gospel was, they didn't believe many of people, but when they were confronted with it in a fairly direct way, given the simple gospel and you had a little tract that helped you out, people would sign on the dotted line. They'd say, OK, I want to say the prayer. And a lot of those people who said the prayer back then survived. I'm one of them, basically. Although I didn't come to Christ through a tract directly like that. It was the method. I understood the gospel. My brother explained it to me. And after a while, I was persuaded of it by the Holy Spirit. And then I began walking with Christ. But the culture has changed radically since then, OK? And so I have had to make an adjustment about how I communicate. And for one, the gospel is no longer simple. I mean, it is simple in itself, but that doesn't mean people understand what you say when you say Jesus died for your sins. If you believe in Jesus, you'll be forgiven and you'll go to heaven. If you don't, then you'll be punished and go to hell. I mean, this makes sense to us given the worldview that we have as followers of Christ. It makes no sense to people in the world. Now they consider that hate speech. We are communicating the grace of God made available through Jesus of Nazareth, through this incredible sacrifice that the pastor talked about this morning, and this is considered hate speech. And you are the hater for communicating that thing. So this means we've got to take stock of how we communicate in our culture, how we use the message that has been entrusted to us and communicate it in a way that is compelling and persuasive to people, a way that is understandable to them so the Holy Spirit can use that and begin working in people's hearts. And this is why I've changed my approach. I'm not trying to get people to sign on the dotted line when I talk to them about Christ. I'm not trying to get people to pray to receive Christ. Partly as I've reflected more on the New Testament, you never actually see that in the New Testament. You don't see altar calls in the New Testament, you don't see people being challenged to receive Christ. I'm not against that, I'm just saying that isn't really the New Testament motif. There's a different motif you see in the New Testament, okay? I call it a gardening motif, because before you can have a harvest, You always have to have a season of gardening, right? Before you have a harvest, you have to have this season of agricultural effort. And you guys understand that living in this neighborhood. I drove all around your community with Tony yesterday. He's shown me all his works and stuff. And you understand. This agricultural notion is true also with the gospel, okay? And people don't come to Christ just like that. They don't hear the gospel, the simple message, and bang, they're in. Instead, what they do is they hear a little bit here, a little bit there, and they don't like it. But after a while, as the Holy Spirit moves, they start thinking about it. And this was my story too, even 50 years ago almost. And they start thinking about it, and little by little, the Holy Spirit draws them in, and they get persuaded. And how is that little by little accomplished? By Christians doing it little by little by little by little, gardeners in the field that are making a difference, okay? Not the harvest, that's down the way. Rather, doing the gardening that makes the harvest possible. And my conviction is that if you do the gardening well, the harvest is gonna pretty much take care of itself. and I talked yesterday about John chapter 4 with the woman at the well and Jesus is talking to her then she goes off to Sychar to tell her community about all the things that this man has told her and the disciples come up and he tells the disciples that you are about to reap where you did not sow. You were about to reap where you did not sow. And in that comment, there are a couple of things embedded there. One of them is you got one field there, that would be Sychar in that particular case, that village, that community there in Samaria. But you also have two different seasons. You have a sowing season and a reaping season. You have a gardening season and you have a harvesting season. And you also have two different kinds of workers in the one body of Christ, one team, One field, two seasons, and two kinds of workers. You have gardeners and you have harvesters, you have sowers and reapers. And a lot we talked about yesterday, we spent most of the afternoon and early evening, some of it we spent eating. But a good portion of it we spent learning some tools to be more effective gardeners. So that if each of us does just a little bit, as I put it, we try to just put a stone in someone's shoe. We give them something to think about. We don't have to press. for the end game, get them to sign on the dotted line. We don't have to do that. If we just do a little bit, give them something to think about, then that's something as a whole team doing that, gardening, the harvest is largely going to take care of itself. So part of the adjustment for me as a follower of Christ, looking at the changing culture and trying to adapt the truth of the gospel to the new ears of the culture means focusing more on gardening than thinking about trying to get a quick sale, so to speak, all right? That's one thing. The other thing is I began to think of myself not in terms of evangelism, but in terms of a different New Testament motif, a different word in the New Testament. And that word is an ambassador. And that's what I want to talk about here for the morning, for my brief time that I have this morning about being an ambassador for Christ. And when you think about an ambassador, think first about an evangelist. Evangelists are people who come in and preach to the unsaved, right? They preach at them, they preach to them, and they annoy them a lot, you know, a lot of times. That's the way evangelism is viewed by the culture, and sometimes we think of it that way too. We don't want to annoy people. We don't want to put them off. We don't want to get in fights with people. I understand that. I don't like that either. And actually, if you're fighting with somebody, and you're angry, and they're angry, they're not in a persuasive mood, okay? But when you think about, instead of being an evangelist, in the way we think of it nowadays, you think about yourself being an ambassador. Oh, doesn't that feel a bit different? And being an ambassador is like genial diplomacy. It's kind of a friendly enterprise, as it were. So this is another way in which I have shifted my approach. I've tried to think more on the one hand, using one metaphor, as a gardener, doing a little here, a little there, not trying to close the deal, but just getting people thinking. chipping away a little bit, knowing that there's other gardeners that God has placed in the field to eventually bring a harvest in somebody's life. But I also think of myself as an ambassador for Christ. And that has modified my whole, the way that I engage people, all right? Not in a harsh, kind of challenging, evangelistic, you know, turn-or-burn mentality, not a style like that. No, the truth is still the truth. and turn or burn, that's a reality of the world. It's not just the Christian view. The fact is, someday everybody is going to stand, every single human being is going to stand before God, that would be God, in the person of Jesus, and give an account for their life. And this is not going to be a very pretty picture. And either Jesus will have paid for their crimes against God, or we pay. Either Jesus will have paid or we pay. That's the simple calculus there. That's reality. So turn or burn does describe reality, but notice how turn or burn sounds different than the way I just characterized it a minute ago about standing before, all the truth is there. And it's still pretty scary. Sometimes people say when I put it that way, you're trying to scare me. I said, yes. but I'm scaring you with reality, okay? But I'm trying to put the issues in language that are more understandable to the people. So let's talk about this concept about being an ambassador for Christ. If you have a Bible, I want you to turn to 2 Corinthians 5. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 20, and this is where Paul uses this notion of being an ambassador for Christ. So here's what he says. He says, ambassadors for Christ. As though God were speaking through us, we beg of you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. A couple things I want you to see out of that passage. First of all, Paul says we already are ambassadors. If you are a follower of Jesus, you are Jesus' representative. I am here as a representative of Stand to Reason, the organization that I work for, okay? I'm also the president, and since I founded it, you can make yourself president. It's kind of convenient that way. But nevertheless, you are going to draw conclusions about the organization I represent by the representative of that organization. Okay? And as an ambassador for Christ, all of you who name the name of Christ are representing Him. Okay? An ambassador is somebody who stands between two parties. A sovereign and the party the sovereign is trying to reach or do business with. And the ambassador is the representative. So if we were ambassador from the United States to some other nation, for example, the people in that nation are going to see the representative. They don't see the sovereign. And they draw conclusions about the sovereign from the representative. And this is what Paul is saying. We already are ambassadors for Christ. It's not something we're going to be later. We're representing him for good or for ill. One way or another, we're reflecting Jesus, or at least we're reflecting what people think is Jesus. And so when they look at us, they are going to draw conclusions as though God were speaking through us. They're going to draw conclusions about God from the way we live. And if we're nasty and crabby and objectionable in some inappropriate way, well, that's the way they're going to view God. Dads, if you are really harsh with your children, I'm just going to tell you, this is how it works. They are going to think that the God you represent, their Heavenly Father is like their Earthly Father, and they're going to transfer that. Why? Because at that moment, for good or for ill, You are an ambassador for Christ. You are representing Christ. So that's how that works. When I began thinking about that notion about being an ambassador for Christ, I thought, well, I already am one because I'm a follower of Jesus. So I am, I am, portraying something about God in my behavior and not just in my professional life. I promise you, like this morning, I am on my best behavior. All right? But what about when I get on the plane? What about when I get home and I'm talking to my two daughters who are teenagers? That's not easy, especially for an old guy like me, right? or with my wife, okay? I am no less an ambassador for Christ in my home environment than I am on an airplane or in front of an audience, okay? So I started to think, well, how can I be a better... ambassador given that I already am one? And I began to think, well, what kinds of skills or capabilities does an ambassador need to be good at in order to be a good ambassador? So you just think about for yourself, if you were a sovereign and you needed to choose somebody to represent you as an ambassador, we're not thinking spiritual terms now, just political terms, what kind of qualities would you be looking for in that individual. Sometimes I poll audiences, but we don't have enough time for that. It's interesting, though, when I ask, what would you be looking for in an ambassador? I get all these religious answers. I said, no, no, I'm not talking about religion. Someone like Jesus, somebody who believes in the Bible, all this stuff. They're trying to give me the right answer. I'm doing the preaching, so he must want to hear Jesus. That's the answer. No, that's not it. You would be looking for somebody at certain capabilities, right? Like for example, they would have to know something. There's a knowledge component. You're sending them with a message to another people, they would have to know what that message is, at least adequately to communicate it. They wouldn't necessarily mean to be an expert in all foreign affairs, but there's a knowledge component, all right? But there's more than that because if you have a person who has the knowledge but has no capability of navigating in conversations with people, well that knowledge is, that's not going to be communicated well. So there's a wisdom element, okay, an ability to tactically maneuver in conversations so you can be effective. knowledge and wisdom. But there's also a third quality, because you have somebody with knowledge and this cleverness of maneuvering, but turns out to be kind of a jerk, you know? A womanizer, a drunk, or just plain old nasty. Now you know the character of that ambassador is going to undermine your message. So it turns out there's three things that are necessary for any ambassador across the board. They also apply to Christian ambassadors, okay? You have to know something. You have to know the basic concepts of the kingdom of God that you're representing. You don't need to be a theologian. You don't need to be a philosopher. You don't need to be a Christian apologist like I am, and an apologist is someone who makes a defense for Christianity, gives reasons why Christianity is true. And when I say true, I mean true like the way gravity is true. to the world as it actually is, okay, and it's not just true for me. We give reasons and we also answer challenges and objections. And so this is what we help the body of Christ doing. But you don't have to be, to be an effective ambassador, you don't have to be any of those things, but you do need to know the basics. the foundational thing, so there's a knowledge component. We call that, at Standard Reason, accurately informed mind, okay? Then you need to be able to maneuver in conversations, that's what our session yesterday was about, and we call that an artful method. And then you need a character that is like Christ that reflects Jesus' character, his goodness, his kindness, his grace, et cetera. That it commends the message, it doesn't detract from the message. So we have an accurately informed mind, knowledge. We have an artful method, wisdom. We have an attractive manner. An attractive manner, which is character. And what I'd like to do with the rest of the time we have... is to take each of those three areas, so there's my outline for this morning, and talk a little bit about what it looks like for a Christian to be developing, it's a process, as an ambassador for Christ in the area of knowledge and wisdom and character. Okay, let's start with knowledge and accurately inform mind. And here I mean an accurate grasp of the basics concerning the kingdom as they apply to current culture. So I've added this late because this is really important. It isn't enough to be an ambassador. It isn't enough just to know the truth. You have to know the truth in a way to explain it so it fits in with the understandings that current culture has about spiritual things and about what's right and wrong, whatever. Culture's changing all the time. The gospel doesn't change, but the way we communicate the message does. Paul says, I've become all things to all men, right? To the Greeks, I became a Greek, not under the law. To the Jews, though I am not under the law, good sermon, I still Act like that. I am respectful of the law when I'm talking to Jews. I become all things to all men in order that by all means I might win some. So this is what I'm talking about. We have to understand the truth, but we have to have enough understanding of the culture to know how to integrate or communicate that message in a way that makes sense to the people with whom we're communicating, okay? And this involves two different things. On the one, it requires a defense and an offense, and also answers and questions. So I'll explain that to you if you're taking notes. Just put one, defense, offense, two, questions, answers. And these two are related. In Colossians 2, verses 8 and 9, you can look it up if you want, but I'll tell you what it says. Paul offers a warning. He's telling the Colossians, he says, do not be taken captive by philosophy. And by the way, he doesn't put a period there, it doesn't end right there. There's nothing wrong with philosophy in general. I have a master's degree in philosophy. It's really helped me as a follower of Christ. It's helped me to understand truth better and also to communicate truth more effectively in the culture. The concern is not philosophy. It's a particular kind of philosophy, view of the world. Do not be taken captive by philosophy and empty deception according to the traditions of men, according to the elementary principles of the world instead of according to Christ. And so what Paul was saying is there's two ways of looking at the world. There is Jesus' way and everybody else's way. Jesus got it right. Everybody else, insofar as they disagree with Jesus, get it wrong. Those are the philosophies of men. However, they are very appealing. They look great. They sound good. They're so appealing, they could take you captive, is what he says, if you're not careful. And he says, don't be taken captive by this, don't be taken captive. So there's a sense in which we have to have a defense, we have to be careful that we're not taken captive by the ideas in the world that are hostile to Christ, okay? So there's a defensive element. Now he's not saying circle the wagons, although he's telling you to be careful. because then he offers another thought in a different book, 2 Corinthians 10, verses three and four. You can mark that, but I'll tell you what it says. Here Paul says, the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh. In other words, they're not empowered by human ability. He's talking about spiritual warfare here. Now I think there's a lot of confusion about spiritual warfare. We think of spiritual warfare, many do, in terms of power encounters. So we're going to pray a certain way against the devils and we're going to bind the demons and all that stuff. Well, yeah, there might be some legitimacy to that, but I do not think that is the main thrust of scripture regarding spiritual conflict, okay? I think spiritual warfare is principally not power encounters, but truth encounters. Remember, the devil's a liar. He's lying to the world, and he lies to the church. And if we're not well equipped with our understanding in the knowledge area, we'll buy into some of these lies, all right? And Paul says, no, be careful. Colossians, don't be taken captive, but that's on the defense, but go on the offense. The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. What fortresses? And he goes on, next verse, we are tearing down speculations. And every lofty thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God. And we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. And there he's talking, not I think about having pure thoughts, he's talking about having true thoughts about the world. Because what we are doing is we are looking at the falsehoods that the world is raising up. And that is a spiritual attack on the truth. And we are combating those falsehoods with the truth. Indeed, we are tearing those fortresses down. We are all those lofty things raised up against the knowledge of God. So here we have a two-fold thing here. We are being careful we're not being taken in, and also we have some capability to say that idea that's really popular is false. And here's why. but do it in a nice way. Okay, that's what Paul's talking about in this particular case, a defense and an offense here. Okay, that's our positioning. But then we have this other element, answers and questions, knowledge about the facts of Christianity. I've already referred to this. and knowledge about some of the challenges that are being brought. You can't tear down the speculations unless you don't know what some of those speculations are. And they are changing from generation to generation. They're very different now than they were when I was a young man and thinking about Christianity. Some of the same things are still in place. They're classics and they always come up. Problem of evil, for example, whether God exists or not. But now you got a whole bunch of new things. And they are largely related to what one of my buddies calls the pelvic issues. All the sexual things, the gender things, all of that stuff. LGBTQ, transgender, transitioning from one gender to another, pronouns, all of that stuff. The world is coming unglued about this right now. Incidentally, how many people know who Bill Maher is, the comedian? Really? Three people? Okay, he used to do a show called Politically Incorrect. He's not a Christian, he's anti-Christian, but he's a classic liberal, and he is coming out now against all of this nonsense that the left is producing. He's angry, and he's funny. And so he's doing these screeds now as part of his own show against leftism and all the nonsense that is passing as wisdom from the left and being forced upon our culture. And he's speaking out about it. He's big enough that he can't be cancelled by these guys, though they're trying to do it. Now if the culture is getting Bill Maher's attention, you know it's bad. because he's pushing back against this. And so are some atheists that are doing the same. Stories I can't tell you right now because I don't have the time. But the point I'm making here is that they are seeing the foolishness and they are giving answers against it. They are aware of the questions that are being challenged, that are challenging common sense in this case. He's not defending Christianity, he's defending common sense about the world. Now we know the world is a certain way and it's really obvious. In human beings, sex is binary. Male, female. That's from the beginning of time, because that's how they are fruitful and multiply, as evidenced by all the children here, which is wonderful. And some of you are doing a really good job at that, too. I've talked to some of your families, you know, we got lots and lots. Cheaper by the dozen, right? But I got two, and I can't imagine having 10. Really, it's... Anyway, nevertheless. Actually, if I had ten, when you guys had ten, right now I'd have all these kids supporting me, you know, and I've had grandkids to spoil, you know, but that's why I started late. In any event... There's something obvious about the world. You don't need a Bible to know that. But we know why it's that way. It's because that's the way God made it for human flourishing. So what I'm doing now is I'm just introducing some very basic things about knowledge of the truth, the world that God made. that helps us to speak against the obvious foolishness that the world is trying to push on us. One advantage to the crazy things that are happening right now is these, the people that are pushing them, they are obviously false. They are obviously false. That sex is binary for human beings. We're also bipedal. That means we have two legs. Now some people may be born with one leg or no legs, but that doesn't mean human beings still aren't bipedal beings. And by the same token, since there are some people who are confused about their sex, it doesn't change the fact that human beings are binary, male and female. That doesn't change reality because some people are confused. Right now, we are exalting and championing confusion. And even Christians are getting confused. And so part of what I do is say, just because the world is confused doesn't mean we need to be confused, okay? All you have to do is look at the nature of reality and in scripture, which reflects the nature of reality, but you don't even need scripture to know this. and then we stand for what is true, the world that God has made. So this is a broad kind of thing. So we need to answer the questions, the particular challenges that are coming to Christianity. And again, stand to reason, this is what we do. You might mark str.org. S-T-R, stand to reason, dot org. That's our website. You want answers to a lot of these challenges, we're dealing with them all the time. We're doing conferences right now for young people, and let's see, how far are you from like Augusta, Georgia? Is that very far? I don't know. It's not a couple hours? I don't know what it is. We have a conference that's in April there. We do these conferences for young people, and we don't check IDs, so a lot of you folk can come too. We're not going to keep you out. But it's principally for middle schoolers and high schoolers. And we have the best speakers on the planet that communicate in these things. It's great, plus it's fun. So we're not throwing candy at kids, we're throwing them our tough stuff. But we're communicating it so those young people can understand. And we fill up the thing. 2,000 people, Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, a month and a half ago, holds 2,000 people. We put 2,300 in that church. Okay, we had a church two weeks ago in Seattle, holds 1,100, we put 1,325 in it, okay? We're in two and a half weeks, we're going to be in Minneapolis, that's a church that holds 4,500. We've already got, actually a week and a half ago, we had 2,500 students already signed up a month in advance for this. What are we doing? We're passing the baton. We're giving them the knowledge that they need. to communicate with the culture, all right? It's there and it's available. So this is the kind of thing that Stand to Reason can provide. There's other organizations that do it as well. But I realize that in this culture you have a unique difficulty. And the unique difficulty is, you know, you've got, well, everybody's Christian, supposedly. Everybody's Christian. And one of my mentors, J.P. Moreland, a philosopher, lived on the East Coast. He was at Liberty. University and he moved to the West Coast. Why'd you do that? Well, in our community, you got lukewarm Christians, you got lukewarm heathen, and you couldn't tell them apart. So I moved to the West Coast so my daughter could be raised in an environment where you could tell you had robust Christianity and your robust heathenism, okay? But that represents a difficulty for being an ambassador because if you ask somebody, well, are you a Christian? They say, yes. Well, you don't know what that means. because you live in a culture where, well, I'm not Jewish, and I'm not a pagan, so I must be a Christian, or I used to go to church or whatever. And so I think this is a unique difficulty, and I face it too in my travels, talking to people, all right? And sometimes I find it's necessary to ask them, what exactly do you mean by that? I'm just curious, I'm not trying to be condescending or anything, but when you say you're a Christian, you mean what? Because they might say, well, I'm a Christian, but I don't go to church, or I don't hang out with other Christians, I don't whatever. Well, to me, church going isn't like the, what would you call it? That isn't what necessarily marks a person as a Christian. What marks a person as a Christian is their love for Christ. And then we gather together because we love Jesus and his people and the body of Christ, you know. I don't want to stick a person in church every Sunday just to have them in church. Because being in church every Sunday is not going to make them a Christian if they don't already love Christ. So I'm going to be aware of that distinction and I'm going to have a conversation with them to figure out what exactly is going on. Sometimes I'll just ask them, instead of asking if they're Christian, if we're touching on spiritual issues somewhat, I just say, do you love the Lord? Now then I gotta quickly answer that one, if they're not Christian, because that's the measure, isn't it? If you love the Lord. I love the Lord. Most of you, I presume, I could tell from your behavior and your interaction, you love the Lord. That's why you're here. You're not here to fulfill a Christian requirement of the law, like circumcision. Back to the sermon today, you're here because you love Jesus. And sometimes figuring out in this kind of community about where a person is is a little bit more difficult than where I'm at, all right? Because where I'm at, there's a lot of hostility towards Christians when you get into this conversation. But not here. It's OK. It's cool. but you don't know where to go from there. I remember when I was in junior high, no, I was 17, 17, so I was high school. I wasn't in junior high when I was 17. Let's run that through again, you know, one more time. And my girlfriend's sister, I was raised Roman Catholic, and so I had all the Roman Catholic stuff to say. I go to church on Sunday, I dare dutifully, because it was obligatory, and then when people ask me about my religious convictions, I say, well, I'm a Roman Catholic, and here's the reason I'm a Roman Catholic. I just rattle off their standard reasons. And then Faye, my girlfriend's older sister, who was a woman of the world back then, she was just like 19 or something, but she was smart and she was asking hard questions, all right? And she said to me, now think about this question. I'm rattling off about Roman Catholicism. And she said to me, do you really believe that? I never had anybody ask me that before. Do you really believe that? And I paused, and I thought, and I said, no. And that was the end of my association with Christianity, Catholicism and Christianity. Catholicism was Christianity to me for about five years before I came to the Lord at 23, okay? But notice the question. It was a question to get to the heart of the issue. Is this really your conviction? Are you living as if this is actually true? Okay, I know there's snakes out here, you got water moccasins, you got rattlesnakes, you got eastern diamondbacks, you got, what was the other one you got? You got big pygmy rattlers, you got three different kinds of rattlesnakes around here. You gotta be careful, especially if you're hoofing around in the cornfields and whatever. If you knew there were rattlesnakes in your backyard, how would you act? when you went out the back door. You'd be looking around all the time because you believed it was so. And so your conduct would reflect your conviction. So now the question is, and this may apply to some people here, oh yeah, you're a Christian, really? Do you really believe that? Do you really believe it's true? And if you really believe it's true, Are you living as if it were so? Do you love Jesus? So that's a question for anybody in a Bible Belt kind of circumstance, all right? And sometimes it's hard to get through that, but as an ambassador, this has to do with the knowledge part. You know, people get the basic convictions about Christianity. They might have the details, but they don't realize that what belief means is trust. Now I'm, you know, 10 minutes I'll be leaving and I'm heading for the airport. Pedal to the metal, right? I believe that airplane can get me to LA. It's Delta so it's, now don't expect luggage to arrive. That's what that stands for. I believe it. But I do not exercise trust in that plane until I get on the plane. Do you see the difference? You can have a belief that and you could also have a belief in You can have a belief that, and a lot of so-called Christians believe that, and they can rattle off these things. But it doesn't affect their life at all, except for maybe they're showing up at church and eating some stuff and drinking some, you know, whatever. Coffee and gut bombs, belly wash, whatever. So they're hanging out, but when it comes to their individual lives, Sundays. Not their lives. It's their activities on Sundays, okay? That ain't Christianity. That's what the Jews had. Formalism, no spiritual life. Okay, knowledge and accurately informed mind, it includes all that kind of stuff I'm talking about, so I'm speeding forward here. Wisdom and artful method. Wisdom is an artful method. We spent three hours yesterday talking about a way of engaging people using questions, okay. I found that this is the most effective way to maneuver in a culture, especially if you don't know much, to maneuver in individual conversations. And I suggested two questions that will help you. And they are meant to gather two different types of information. Now, before I tell you the two questions, and I'd like you to write them down if you've taken notes, I want to make an observation. When you're asking questions of other people, Is there any obligation on you, if you're asking questions, to defend your own convictions? Audience participation time. The correct answer is no. There's no pressure on you. If you're just asking people about their own convictions using questions, there's no pressure on you, okay? And this is one of the reasons, as we talked about yesterday, It makes it so much easier for people who are a little timid or a little concerned about the culture and push back from people, which I'm very sympathetic to, to start engaging. But you engage as a student by gathering information of certain sorts. And so when people raise objections or offer their own ideas about spiritual things, you always want to get more information about that. And the simple question is, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by that? There's lots of variations. I gave a bunch of examples yesterday. Somebody says, oh well, believe in God, that's irrational. Really? In what way is it irrational? I'm curious. That's what do you mean by that question. I gave an anecdote about a conversation I had with a witch in the state of Wisconsin. And she is wearing a pentagram around her neck, which is an occultic symbol. So I asked her about her jewelry. What do you mean by that? I used different words, but essentially I was drawing her out. That allowed me to get in conversation with her. That was very friendly and somewhat fruitful. The point I'm making is this is a very simple question. And even when people raise challenges against Christianity, so well, the Bible's been changed. What do you mean it's been changed? Tell me more about your objection. Talk about it some more. Now you might be thinking, well, I don't know how to even answer that. Don't worry about that at this point. Just get more information. If you can't answer it, you can't answer it. But here's the key. I found this to be true many times. I gave some anecdotes about this yesterday, that if you ask people to explain their contrary view more thoroughly, they can't do it. And they can't do it because they never thought about it. And then this becomes unsettling for them and they start wondering whether their view is any good. It's just a little chip, chip, chip, a little gardening, okay. So the first question to navigate well is just ask people what they mean or what they believe and ask for clarity. What do you mean by that or some variation? Here's the second question and that is, How did you come to that conclusion? Or some variation. How did you come to that conclusion? So you think there is no God. What kind of God don't you believe in? What do you mean by that? Maybe they don't believe in some guy with a long beard sitting up in the clouds somewhere. Okay, I don't believe in that kind of God either. Maybe they don't even believe in any kind of spiritual thing at all. I don't know, I just want them to let me know. Okay, then when I get a real clear picture on the God they don't believe in and what they mean by their atheism, Then I want to know, why do you think there is no God? How did you come to that conclusion? What are your reasons for that view? That's the second question, some form of that. Notice though, I'm still gathering information. First information on their view, second information on the reasons for their view. And in either case, am I advancing my own view? And you're thinking, what good is that? I'm supposed to preach the gospel. Be patient. There's a time for that, but there's a whole lot of people that won't preach the gospel because they're too scared, and so they're sitting on the bench, and if they have these two questions they can use to draw people out and make conversation, just those two questions will accomplish tremendous amount of good. The Holy Spirit can use that. We talked about that yesterday. I wrote a book about this for those of you who didn't know, it's called Tactics. a game plan for discussing your Christian convictions, okay? I can't sell anything to you now because they're in the car and I'm ready to go, but you can go on Amazon if you want to. But the point is, there's a whole thing there. These two questions are the core, though. If you just start using these now, if people begin challenging your convictions at university or the job you're at or whatever it happens to be, and they raise a challenge, just ask them for more information about the challenge. Let them flesh it out. Don't be afraid of it. Then have them give the reasons why they think the challenge is legitimate or their own convictions are true. Okay? And then when they do that, you can just say, okay, let me think about it. But see, now you've got information to think about. Even if you can't answer the challenge, you can still be thinking about it, but you're forcing them to clarify. And that can have an amazing impact on them, even though you're not advancing your view. So knowledge and accurately informed mind, wisdom and artful method, okay? Characters and attractive manner. Characters and attractive manner. Now this one's real easy. I got four minutes, four and a half minutes. Break it up into two categories. Christians, when they represent Christ, are either too naughty or too nice. That easy to remember? They're too naughty or they're too nice. Now when I started out as a new Christian 49 years ago, I was very, very aggressive. And I know it's hard to imagine. Lord's been working on me since then. I was spreading a whole lot more heat than light. I had to tone it down. Because scripture says defend your faith yet with gentleness and reverence. You know, the Lord's bondservant is not to be quarrelsome, but patient when wrong. Wait, where was that? I never saw that. Well, the first one is in 1 Peter 3, the second one is in 2 Timothy 2. Okay, so it's, yes, we are to stand up for Christ, yes, we are to defend the faith, but we're supposed to do this in a careful, respectful fashion. This is not a gladiator event. All right, but this is the way a lot of these kinds of discussions are engaged nowadays, especially on the political spectrum. Who can draw the first blood and the most blood? This is not our project. We're communicating something different. So we want to maneuver as ambassadors, but be gracious. If we come across crabby or grumpy, look at people, and I gotta be careful with that myself, because I get really mad about things that are happening in the world, and I come on. Some of you can relate to that. If I come across that way, you know, with a non-Christian in a discussion, oh, yeah, that Christianity looks really attractive. I wanna hang out with grumpy people like you, right? No, no, no, doesn't work, okay? So we gotta be careful that we're not too nasty. And we've gotta give credit where credit's due. If somebody else makes a good point, even if we disagree with it, what's wrong with us saying, you know, that's a good point? I understand the objection. I had the same objection before, maybe, or I can understand in your circumstance why you'd say that. When I talk to an atheist who is an atheist because of the problem of evil, I get it. I can see that. Now, I think there are all kinds of problems with being an atheist because of the problem of evil. That's a different talk. I actually think the problem of evil is a good evidence for Christianity and against atheism, not the other way around. But nevertheless, the point is I can acknowledge when they've got a legitimate point, alright. I did a conversation at the University of Tennessee with a professor there about homosexuality, okay, and same-sex marriage a number of years ago. It was a platform discussion before an audience. I looked for every single time that I could agree with what he said. I could legitimately agree. You know, because I didn't want to seem like the totally combative, nasty guy. Sometimes they made good points. We ought to be loving to people who have different lifestyles than us. Is that Christian? Absolutely. We don't expect non-Christians to live like Christians. That's 1 Corinthians 5 stuff. Paul says we judge people in the church, not outside of the church, because Christians are supposed to live like Christians, right? Outside of the church, they live like non-Christians. Why is that an issue? Okay, so I'm going to try to agree with everything I can with that guy to create a more genial atmosphere, and then at the points where there was distinction, then I had to stand up and be countered on those particular things. But this is all part of the character aspect, so sometimes we're too naughty, other times we're too nice. And the point here is that we never wanna say anything that's gonna upset anybody. We just wanna be really nice and really sweet, and we figure if we're really nice and sweet, this will be the way I represent Christ. Well, I think that is a way, an appropriate way to represent Christ, but it's not enough. And I'll tell you why it's not enough. If being nice is your way of doing evangelism, you will never be able to outnice a Mormon. They are the nicest people in the whole world, but they stand for a false theology, okay? And so you've got heavy-duty competition if nice is the way that you are going to evangelize, all right? Nice is important, but it's not adequate by itself. We have to speak up. we have to communicate, okay? We have to tell people the truth. We have to navigate graciously with the knowledge that we have so people can see the truth embodied in our lives as ambassadors for Christ. Let me sum up this last point by putting it this way. This is worth writing down. Christianity is offensive enough. It's already really hard. Don't add any more offense to it with a bunch of works that don't belong, with a bunch of complex theology that is irrelevant to a non-Christian at this point in their life. Don't add any more, with a lot of attitude that's annoying, don't add any more offense to it. However, that's the first half. Christianity is offensive enough. Don't add any more offense to it. However, we cannot remove the offense that's inherent to the gospel. We cannot remove the offense that is inherent to the gospel. What is that? It's that thing right there. It's the stumbling block of the cross of Jesus Christ, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, Peter called it. And when Christians want to get kinder and gentler with the culture, they remove the core because that's the most offensive element. We remove that core and we have nothing else to say. We have nothing to say to the world. So we want to stand tall with clarity and with common sense regarding these issues. answering the challenges, representing Christ as a good ambassador for Christ with knowledge and accurately informed mind, wisdom and artful method, and character and attractive manner. Let me pray for you. Father, this has been a sprint, but I pray that you would take the things that I've offered, from your word to my brothers and sisters here and encourage them to be more effective ambassadors. And for those who maybe have asked the question, Do I really believe this? Their honest answer is no. I pray that you would convict them of the reality of the judgment that is to come and that the only rescue is in your son, Jesus Christ, our rescuer, our savior, and it's his name I pray, amen. Thank you and goodbye. I'm out. Okay, thank you very much.