Good morning and welcome. I don't know about you, but it feels a little bit like the first day of school today. A new classroom, some new faces, and a brand new subject for the next few weeks. I'm looking forward to going through this study with you. It's something that's I probably got my first exposure to apologetics formally about six or seven years ago. And it's one of those topics that has just kind of grabbed a hold of me. And so I've had a desire to put something like this together. So I'm looking forward to doing that this summer. I hope that it will be an encouragement to each of us. Let me begin with the word of prayer. Fathers, we come to your presence today. I ask that you would be with us in spirit and in truth. Give each of us the courage and the conviction that we need to skillfully defend the truth of your doctrines and your faith. We ask that you would bless us in Christ's name. Amen. So I like to start things with kind of an attention getter. So here's our attention getter today. What would it take to get you to give up your faith? What would it take? My death. Death? Would death do it? Not to really give it up, but I would not give up my faith. Okay. Anybody else? You know, we sit here in safety and Think about people over in Uzbekistan, for instance. There are places where they are pointing a gun at it, and they have over the eons, over the centuries, I should say. Do you have your faith or die? We don't face the kind of persecution in this country that... It's easier for us to say, You know, kind of an easy believism. There is a biblical answer here. The answer is you can't give it up if it's true. But let's take a look at what Paul says. I'd like to point you to a passage in 1 Corinthians 15. It's safe to say that Paul was a vigorous apologist. And we have an example of his apologetic here in this passage. Let me start in verse 3. Paul says, For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, although some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he also appeared to me." Then down to verse 12. Now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But, if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testified about God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. So let me back up and ask the question again. What would it take for you to give up your faith? Proof that it's wrong. Yeah, specifically what in this case? The moldy body of Christ, right? Now if James Cameron or some other Hollywood celebrity or investigator is able to produce the body of Christ, then what would we be forced to do at that point? We would have to give up our faith, wouldn't we? How do you verify that it's in fact Christ's body? Just playing the what if for now. If we could show that Christ's body did not come back from the dead, that's what Paul's saying here. Now it's probably a little bit late to produce the body. But they couldn't produce it in the first century, could they? The point is that our faith is not just based on a feeling or an impression, and it's not the idea that our faith is a blind faith. Have you ever heard that expression? It's not it at all. So let me point you to your notes here. If Christianity violated either reason or reality, we would be required to give it up. If Christianity violated either reason or reality, we would be forced to give it up. It violates neither. And that will be the basis for how we defend our faith. That it's based both in reason and reality. It's historical and it's reasonable. It's not that we believe just because we want to believe. Or we believe because it makes us feel good to believe. Or we believe because it gives us a sense of meaning and purpose in our life. But fundamentally we believe because we've heard the propositions and we have accepted those propositions as true and have submitted ourselves to that as a result. Let me also point you to Matthew 22, 37. This is one of about three different verses that basically say the same thing. Here Jesus is being questioned and he's asked which is the greatest commandment in the law and his answer is You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Now what's significant about that passage? Yeah, the mind is involved, isn't it? And not just part of it, but all of it. So this, the Great Commandment, when we look at the Great Commandment, it's important to notice that it does not separate faith and reason. One of the things that we'll see as we begin to look at the objections to Christianity or religion in general, is this idea that somehow or another faith and reason are separated and divorced from each other. I've got science and you've got faith. And so I've got proof and evidence and I can run experiments and I've got a grasp on reality over here with my science, but you just believe in something because you want to. It may not have any proof to support it, or even worse, the proof is against it. And that's a popular kind of way of trying to define what faith is, but that's not a biblical definition of faith, is it? And we'll see the hypocrisy of that statement, because what happens is, regardless of what you believe, you have some kind of faith. You have some kind of commitment to a set of ideas that can't be tested and can't be proved, whether you put your faith in science or whether you put your faith in Christianity. So in effect we're all starting in the same place, it's just a question of which one of us has a better starting point, which one of us has a stronger foundation for what we believe. Notice too, and I won't go through the passages here, but there are a number of passages in the book of Acts that point to this. It was Paul's custom to reason with any who would listen, Jews and Greeks alike. And we get a picture of that in that passage from 1 Corinthians 15, don't we? That's a very logical proposition that Paul is making there. He's saying, look, here's what we're saying. Christ was raised from the dead, but if he wasn't raised, then what? What is the logical consequence of him not being raised if that's what is true? Yeah, we're still in our sins, we're lost, we've perished, there's no hope, and we're basically stupid for believing something that's not true. And Paul is setting out a very logical argument in that passage. And we don't have the content of how he reasoned with the Jews and the Greeks, but we have a little picture of maybe how he did that. It does tell us in a couple of those passages that he reasoned with them from the Scripture. So it was a combination of argumentation and appeal to the authority of Scripture in defending the faith. So I've used the word apologetics a number of times now. What is it? What is apologetics? Where do we get that from? You'll take a look at the passage in 1 Peter 3. We will unpack that question. Let me start in verse 13. Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sakes, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil. So the Greek word there in that passage about giving a defense or giving an answer is the Greek word apologia, and that is the word from which we derive apologetics. So, polygia is a verbal defense or a reasoned argument. Verbal defense or a reasoned argument. As Rob pointed out when he quoted someone, I won't repeat, who mistakenly said, we don't have anything to apologize for. That's not what that word means, is it? It means being able to give a reasoned defense of the faith. Apologetics also involves both argumentation and confrontation. And I want to take a minute to talk about those two terms because I'll probably be using them repeatedly as we go through the study. Just like... What does the root mean? I mean, why do we have the word apologetic? What is the root of the word apologetic? That's what it is. In the Greek it means a verbal defense or a reasoned argument. I'm not sure how that got, how it morphed into that usage. But it is not the same meaning as what we say when we apologize. Maybe originally meant that, because it kind of makes sense, but it's now viewed as more of what? An expression of remorse or wrongdoing, sorrow, yeah. It's almost opposite the definition that we have here. Yeah, so we want to be careful how we understand the meaning of the terms, right? We're not apologizing for our faith. We're not saying, oh, I'm so sorry, I'm a Christian and you don't like that. We're going to be tolerant. Yes, we have to be tolerant, don't we? It's not like that. So when I say that it involves both argumentation and confrontation, again, I want to be careful here because the way that we normally use those terms can be viewed kind of negatively. And I'm not trying to imply a negative kind of context. I'm not trying to imply that when we say we're arguing with somebody that we're being mean-spirited or anything like that. What do I mean by argumentation? Debate? Yeah. Discussion, debate, you know, reason and proof going back and forth. I believe because of this. You say you believe because of that. You know, we can think of it in terms of kind of a debate. But it involves proof, right? And then confrontation. In its most helpful form, it means presenting the facts as they are. Yeah, you're kind of willing to go out there with the truth, and you're willing to challenge someone else's beliefs. And it doesn't have to be confrontational, per se, in a negative kind of sense, but it's still confrontation, in the sense of challenging someone else's beliefs with argumentation and proof and so forth. Alright, some reasons why we need to be ready to make a defense. The first one's probably kind of important because... The whole world is? Well, because the Bible says so. But yeah, there are two spheres in this world, aren't there? Those who are lost and those who are not. The world is full of ideas about what it means to be saved or how to get saved, most of which are... Man-centered. Yeah, man-centered and ultimately wrong. It's safe to say that there are two kinds of people, there are Christians and those who are wrong. Well, we could put ourselves in the same category, right? Because we're wrong about a lot of stuff. But the idea is, yeah, there are two spheres, right? The Bible only talks about two spheres. You're either with Christ or you're not. And he also points out that there are a lot of people who say and think they're with him that aren't. So we'll have that in mind as we proceed with our thoughts here. So the Bible tells us we should be ready to make a defense. But here's another one that I think is very important. And this is coming from me, so take it for what it's worth. But from my standpoint, one of the most important reasons to be an apologist is to have confidence in your faith. We've had an example here recently where Jeff Myers came to speak to our men's breakfast a few weeks ago. And he talked about the statistics that show that young people who grow up in the church tend to leave the church in droves after they leave home and go to college and start their own lives. And we ask, why is that? Think about how how singularly the world wants to try to pull you away from what you believe is true. So part of what's in view here is we want to be very, very well grounded in our faith. We want to have confidence that what we believe is true. It's not just, oh, it makes me feel good, so I'm going to believe it, and then someone comes along and gives a scientific argument or some other kind of philosophical argument that says, well, that sounds reasonable, so maybe that's true and maybe Christianity is not. So we live in a world that is against Christianity, is full of lies, full of deception, some of which is very convincing, some of which sounds very authoritative, but we want to be well enough grounded in our faith that when we're exposed to those kind of things, in the first place, it's not going to drag us away from the faith. So I'd say that's an important point because As we talk about this more, the goal of apologetics is not to change someone else's mind because the odds are you're not going to do that. If you measure success in terms of your ability to change someone else's mind, then you're going to be a very frustrated apologist. So, another reason. So what is the goal of apologetics then? The goal is to give an answer. It's the given answer. And I'll get to that here in a couple more bullet points. So another point is that we want to be able to respond thoughtfully in the marketplace of ideas. There are a lot of ideas floating out there about what is true, what is right, what is good, what is bad, and all those kind of things. And what I will do next week is take the time during our lesson to kind of paint the picture of what our cultural landscape looks like. So we'll have an idea of what we're walking into. So we live in a time when there are many ideas going around, and it's not a new thing. Paul experienced the same kind of thing when he was preaching in Greece. All kinds of new ideas. Everybody wants to hear the latest ideas. But the question is, what's true? And it's one thing if we talk about ideas, but if we never get around to asking what's true, then it's kind of a pointless exercise. Robert, and I would say too that apologetics doesn't necessarily mean that we're only witnessing to the lost. Because there are lots of people who are Christians who don't have the right way of thinking about certain things, and if we challenge them, then they search for the truth. And my biggest example is when Dad asked me this one question And he said, what do the Nazarenes believe about predestination? I was in the Nazarene church at the time. And I said, well, they don't believe in it. And it sparked my mind to search for the truth. And I went through the Bible and found the truth of predestination. And I left the Nazarene Church because of it, because I knew that it wasn't the truth. So I was a Christian, but I had a wrong idea about a biblical truth. And he challenged me to search for the truth. So that was a huge difference in my life. But I wasn't lost. I was still a Christian at the time. And that makes a very good point. We'll talk about how we can do apologetics in different spheres. not just to the lost or the unchurched, but even within the church. And that example makes a good example of a very effective way to do that, and that is by asking a question. Because what does it do when you ask a question? Instead of saying, no, no Carol, predestination is true, the Nazarenes are wrong. That puts them on the defensive, and you don't want to put somebody on the defensive. Yeah, so instead of engaging someone else's mind and thinking, hmm, instead now it's like, oh, now I have to defend what I believe because I've been put on the spot. And that's God's method, too. Somebody called God the Great Questioner. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about that. So, another point. Why must we be ready to make a defense in order to challenge the beliefs of others? And Carol gave a very simple example of that, how that happens even within the body. Another would be for us to be reminded that we're soldiers engaged in spiritual warfare. I remember seeing the results of a survey from several years ago, and I don't remember if it was a Barna survey or a Gallup survey, but one of those that asked the question, and this was for people within the United States, do you think we're engaged in spiritual warfare? And the overwhelming answer was, no. There was no sense that there's spiritual warfare going on, but that's exactly what we're engaged in. As we were going through Genesis, when we got to Genesis 3, what did we point out? What happens in Genesis 3? False spiritual warfare. Yeah, God says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. And from that point, and until the consummation of the kingdom, we will be engaged in spiritual warfare. So we need to be aware of that. Satan would certainly rather have us think we're not engaged in spiritual warfare, right? That makes it easier for him to do his work. Another point is because weak apologetics makes for a weak evangelism. What do you suppose I mean by that? If you're unable to give answers or talk to the issues, then you're less inclined to talk to the issues or to try to answer questions or engage people in discussion on issues. Okay, you may not have good answers to tough questions, for one thing. But if we don't have a strong apologetic, there's a tendency for us to reduce our witness to a matter of personal experience, isn't there? Oh, let me tell you about what Jesus has done in my life. Okay, let me go get a barf bucket. It doesn't matter what Jesus has done in your life, what has He done? That's the question. And that's what Paul is getting to in this passage that we looked at in 1 Corinthians. What has He done? He has died, He was buried, He was resurrected, He appeared through the disciples. He was taken up in glory. That's what he's done. So the bracelet that says, what would Jesus do is kind of weak. It's extremely weak. Why? Because it doesn't talk about the past, what he did for us. We can't just reduce Jesus to a moral model, can we? And yet that's part of what happens in a very weak view of Christianity. Jesus becomes a good model for us to follow, and even non-believers may say, oh yeah, he was a good teacher, a good moral teacher. But there is a place for personal testimony. What I'm saying is that the tendency we have in our culture, because we tend to be relativistic, because we tend to be pluralistic, is that we tend to reduce everything down to personal experience. Well, I had this experience, so therefore, here's what happened in my case. Well, and somebody else is going to say, well, that might be meaningful to you, but, you know, I like Buddha, so I'm going to follow Buddha. That's what's meaningful to me. See what I'm saying? But that's what Herod did there. to Jews and Gentiles alike. I realize relativistic subjectivity is rampant, but let's not run at the other extreme and just talk about objectivity. Because we've personally experienced, Jesus has met us, and we are different because we've met him. We don't want to eliminate that from apologetics. There's a place for that in apologetics. That's all I'm saying. And I think especially after people have watched your life. Yeah. Except for my family. That's often screen work too. Or even the WWJD bracelet. It's sometimes springboard for further discussion. When I first became a Christian, through the ministry of the Navigators, you've probably all seen the bridge illustration. So I just, in my room in the dorm, I just put a blank in a frame on my bookshelf to spawn discussion. And I can think of one, case where someone came in my room and said, what's that? And so then it was a discussion spawner, so to speak, to get into. Yeah, a conversation starter. When it comes to witnessing, part of it has to be that our personal experience is grounded in an objective truth. I think if we have that connection, then we can bring that in. But when we live in a pluralistic culture, we want to try to reduce everything to individual experience. And so we want to be careful that that's not all we've got to rely on. We want to be able to speak to what is objectively true, not something that is just meaningful for you personally. So next point, how do we defend the faith? And a couple of thoughts to put here. One is by offering proof, and proof can take the form of both reason and evidence. Does that make sense? Now there might be a tendency to try to reduce proof down to only one of those components. If we are empiricists and we want to be able to measure and touch and test everything, we might say that proof is just a matter of evidence, what we can put our hands on. If we're rationalists, we would say, no, no, no proof is in whatever we can reason with our mind. But neither one of those by itself works as a philosophical system. The faith involves both of those. And Paul is demonstrating both of those in the way that he speaks to the Corinthians in the passage we looked at. Both reason and evidence. Another is by asking questions. You might say turning the tables. Because it's not just that we have to defend our belief system, But why shouldn't everyone else have to defend their own as well? So asking questions can be a very effective way to do that. And it can also be a good way to be confrontational without being off-putting or offensive. No guarantee of that, because the kinds of questions that you're going to ask may still be offensive to someone even though you're not being offensive in the way that you ask those questions. I think it also shows value to the person you're speaking with. I think that was one of the major reasons Jesus did that, because he valued every individual he spoke with. And so that they can see that it's not just about us ramming our ideas or our beliefs into them, but we want to hear from them where they're coming from. Yeah, so it's a good way to connect and engage and that would be a necessary step in terms of being a good apologist, right? We've got to be able to have a conversation and maintain a conversation. The other thing is you can't really talk to somebody if you don't understand where they are. I mean, I feel like a lot of times I've answered the questions people weren't asking. And that goes to what kind of assumptions we make. And it also goes specifically to the kind of words that we use. One of the things that we'll talk about as we go through this is the importance of seeking clarification. Because we live in a time that is relativistic, part of what we're seeing is that relativism creeping into our language. It gets harder and harder to assume that the words we use mean what they used to mean. Or the two people using the same words mean the same thing. They may mean something completely different. So that gives us an opportunity to ask those questions and kind of draw that meaning out of the discussion. So offering proof and asking questions is two ways that we will spend a good deal of time looking at as a way that we defend our family. Now next, how do we measure success? What does it mean to be a successful Apologist. Our first answer might be, well, we're successful if we persuade someone else to give up what they believe and become a Christian. But is that really the case? Yeah, we have to recognize that that is a divine miracle that has to take place, isn't it? None of us has the ability to regenerate another person's heart. but God may use our witness as part of the way to do that, to begin to open someone to the truth. So, don't expect that you're necessarily going to persuade someone. That doesn't mean we don't argue, but the measure of success is not whether we have convinced someone to change their beliefs and become a Christian. We could almost think of apologetics as a form of pre-evangelism. We're trying to set the table. We're starting to challenge what someone believes and get them to begin to think about why they believe what they believe, and to think about ultimate things. So it could very easily open the door to a presentation of the gospel. So we measure success in terms of having answered the argument. That's one way to look at it. We've given a response to something that someone says. It doesn't mean they changed their mind about what they believe, but we've given an answer. And another is that when we get someone else to think about what they believe... If any of you listen to a program called The White Horse Inn, you know their tagline is, know what you believe and why you believe it. So we don't just believe anything for any reason, but we have a good reason for believing what we believe. And part of what we do when we are defending our faith is trying to draw out the reasons why other people believe what they do. So success is measured in terms of proof, not persuasion. Have we given an answer? What do you mean in terms of proof? Ultimately... But you couldn't prove it, in a way that people nowadays think of proof. Well, that doesn't mean it's not proof. Even if I don't think it's proof, it's still proof. So how are you using the word proof? By providing a reason to answer. Could we say truth? Sure. That's what's in view. The question is, what is true? What is objectively true? And our answer is giving proof for what is true. We can just say it. We can just say if somebody raises the question of the problem of evil, say, well, actually, it's not a problem. It's not, right? We can resolve that problem as Christians. But we haven't really answered the objection that was raised by the person who asked the question. I'd be interested to hear it. That's one of the major objections that people raise, and that's one that we'll spend some time talking about. And it can be reconciled, right? Otherwise, we'd be in trouble. I don't say that you could provide a truthful answer, but it wouldn't necessarily be considered what most people would say as proof. The funny thing is that most of what they say can't be proven either. That's exactly what I'm saying. So they'll talk about evolution and millions and millions of years, and they can't prove it. We at least have this. And they have carbon dated from... Yeah, somewhere in there, there has to be an appeal to ultimate authority. There's a question of authority, right? Do I individually get to determine what is true, or is there some authority that's outside of me? So in the case of Paul, we see him reasoning from the Scriptures. Well, what is Scripture? Scripture is authoritative. So if we answer the question, what about the problem of evil, we can certainly appeal to Scripture when we do that, because Scripture is what resolves that problem for us. We understand that God created the world perfect, and yet He created man with a will that was mutable. And man, by his disobedience, did what? Where did evil come from? It came from us. It didn't come from God. It's not a bad reflection on God's character, it's a bad reflection on us because we're the one that brought evil into the world. We may not understand completely why God allows evil, but we can even put that in context. If you're not a Christian, it's hard to do that. I guess you could say it's hard to do that even when you are a Christian. Why does God allow evil? Why does He allow so much suffering? But the Bible helps us understand that by saying that He has a good purpose for it. That He can use it to work good, even though from our standpoint it's certainly bad, He can still make good come out of it. What's the best example in the whole Scripture of that? There's a better one than that. Yeah, what is the most wicked act that man has ever perpetrated? Killing the Son of God. And yet, what did God do with that? He used that to redeem the world, didn't He? So He can bring ultimate good out of the worst act of evil. But we'll talk about those kinds of things. Those are the kind of objections that people may raise, and we want to be able to provide a thoughtful answer to that. And it's not something that we're just saying out of our own heart, so to speak. But scripture helps us answer those questions. I don't think you're saying this, but it can sort of sound like I have all the answers. You really have to be careful of sounding like you're saying I have all the answers. I mean, I'm sure that everybody has wrestled with a lot of things that the scriptures say. And it does say in Deuteronomy, the secret things belong to the Lord, our God. But the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever so that we can do all this law. So God gives us everything we need to do what he wants. But he definitely doesn't tell us all the answers. And so, you know, I mean, I don't think you were saying that, but I just think when we're talking to people, we have to be careful that we don't come across as sounding like we think that we know. Yeah, one of the biggest questions that we don't have the answer to is why. Why does God do what He does? Specifically. Why did He do this rather than that? That's not something that's been revealed to us. It may never be revealed to us. But if we ask a question, a hard question, like in the matter of predestination, why does God choose so-and-so and not this guy? Those are questions that we can't touch. So yes, there are certain things, lots of things, that we cannot answer. Yeah, the potter can do with the clay what he chooses. And that's basically the answer. That's the answer that Paul gave, isn't it? Who are you to say to the potter what he can do with the clay? So sometimes that is the answer. Yeah, and so we don't want to sound like we know the answer to every possible question that someone can raise. there is still a way to be prepared for most of the common kinds of questions that people are going to raise, objections. Robert, could we talk about proof a little more? Because I think that's kind of crucial if we're providing arguments that we say provide proof. I think we have to understand what some people Well, here's an example, kind of a ridiculous example. The atheists will look at the universe and say, I don't see any proof of God's existence. What does the scripture say? The heavens declare the glory of God. We give witness to Him day and night, constantly. So, we support that because we believe the scriptures. And we believe the scriptures by faith. So my argument really is founded in my faith. And I don't see where that provides proof to the atheist who just simply doesn't see God in that universe. The Bible is a historical book, however, also. And many of the atheists and other people with worldviews will try to discount the Bible. But it's a historical account. It can be proven accurate by other historical documents as well, right? Yeah. So there's argument from evidence. Everything the Bible says has happened or exists that can be proven has been proven. And the Bible has been proven accurate in every way that we can think to measure it, which gives us, I think, confidence to say that based on what has been proven and what you can't prove, this is a far more reasonable argument. Either that or we finally got to get to the point that atheists are saying, OK, we can't both be right. One of us is wrong. And if I'm wrong, I'm going to end up like you. If you're wrong, you're going to end up like me. But that's kind of a get-off-the-stage-hard-to-admit-it. There's only one of you is once. If you're witnessing to somebody, and all you're saying is, the Bible says this, and the Bible says this, and the Bible says this, the likelihood of you getting anywhere with them is going to be pretty slim. It's better to throw it back in their court and say, why do you believe this? Or how do you prove this? Or you believe this, but this is your contradiction. It's funny, after listening to a lot of this apologetic stuff that Robert and I have listened to going back and forth to church, I'm now getting to the point where I say, wait a minute. doesn't make any sense at all. Why did he say that when what he said just a minute ago, he said this? Those are in direct opposition. Those are the kind of things you have to pick up on, the contradiction in their belief system, and just ask the question. How can you believe this when you said just a minute ago this? Instead of saying, the Bible says this, get them to question what they believe first. But how does that provide proof? So going back to the proof thing, how would you prove your faith that God is? Most people think of proof, they think of something like geometry, where you went back and you said the area of a rectangle equals the length times the width, and there's some formal method of of showing her that, and everybody can agree on it, and proof means that if everybody looks at the same thing, they will all agree. But on apologetical issues, there's not that kind of proof. We might think it's proof, but the atheist doesn't. Well, there's some proofs in the scripture, especially historically. I think it was Josh MacDuff that wrote a book called Many Impalable Proofs, so there are some. Who wrote that? Anyway. Henry Morris. Henry Morris? Then that would have been taken from the world around us. So those things turned out to be proofs. Well, there's a quote from Paul from Acts. So some things are that we can have proof through, for instance, the world around us and what it says in scripture, creation. I think it's like Reverend said earlier, it all boils down to ultimate authority. You have to have ultimate authority. That's based on a presupposition that you start with. Everybody's got presuppositions, and those presuppositions, quote unquote, cannot be proved in the way that most people use the word proven. I mean, they can be very reasonably and rationally discussed, and we can present issues and ask questions that will help people come to our view of the world, of truth. That's the way most people use the word truth. That's not a good word, I don't think. Here's the argument of the presuppositionalist. The presuppositionalist, and this is in the school of Bonson and Bantill, would say the proof of Christianity is that without it you can't prove anything. That's kind of a heavy idea to throw out on the table this early in the game. But that's what it boils down to. If you do not have Christianity as the basis of your worldview, you can't prove anything. If you're an empiricist and you say, well, I believe in science and I run these experiments and I do this and that and that's my proof. Well, what is the basis for you being able to do experimentation? Well, you have to assume things like the uniformity of nature, that what I do today I'm going to get the same result if I do it again tomorrow. What is your basis for believing that? If you believe that the universe is completely random, that there's no reason behind anything, then you have no basis for assuming the uniformity of nature that is the basis for you being able to do your empirical science. But they will... fight with you on that. They will say, order came out of chaos. It doesn't make sense. But they will hang on to that. And we say, well, why do you believe that? What we say to ourselves and everybody else, our beliefs are based on our faith. But our faith is based on the Bible, which gives us a lot of proof about this and that. Now, if you will admit that your beliefs are also based on faith, then we can have a rational discussion. But that's not going to happen, is it? They're not going to admit it, but they're going to one-up you. I believe in observability and... It's just nuts. You can't... I've got it, I've got it. The question is, give me any random event and show me how that led... from chaos to order rather than order to chaos, and they can't do that. I know that, and they're committed to At its base, it's irrational. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. And that's why you bring up the questions, because then they may start realizing that my foundation is crumbling. You're trying to get them to start thinking. And a lot of scientists who believe in evolution are changing. And we don't know the number. We're afraid to talk about it. We keep hearing it. on Dr. Carson because he doesn't believe in, you know, here's this incredible medical doctor and the academia. He was invited to do the commencement address at Emory University. Objected. He doesn't believe in evolution. How can you take him seriously? Never mind what he's done and accomplished. I say that because my niece's husband is getting a DVM and a PhD at the same time, and he is a classic scientist. Scientism is his, you know, We got into it last, he lives close to, when we go to Mayo's, we always visit, and last time we were there, it was fascinating. He made an observation, I believe, I believe human beings are And that's the scientific. His wife just went out. Wait just a second here, buddy. But it's opened up a lot of work for all of us. It opened up a conversation about marriage. And we'll see where it goes. I've sent him some books. The science angle, no one has ever refuted the second law of thermodynamics, have they? No. Things tend toward chaos. So how do you explain how it got so organized? Yeah. From the ultimate authority. Yeah, it took something. It took, well, See, that's reasoning. We haven't talked about reasoning in what Schaeffer has described as a reasoned faith. We don't make a blind link to faith. We have reason to believe. But that's part of the distortion, and part of what we'll talk about is how the ideas of what it means to have faith are distorted. That's what I meant when I talked about the importance of defining your terms. Recognize that regardless of what you believe, you have a faith commitment, which is that you are placing your faith in certain things that must be true in order for you to build whatever your particular worldview is. In Christianity, we do the same thing, but what do we have? We have the authoritative Word of God on which to build that foundation. God gives us the presuppositions that we need to be able to do what we do. All those other belief systems don't have that. And that sort of goes back, having what we've been talking about, sort of goes back to this, we're in a spiritual warfare, because the irrationality is, Satan has blinded the mind of the unbelievers. So, I just read a biography of Brother Andrew, saying that he was a communist and Muslims also. We're not fighting the communists and the Muslims. We're fighting the devil. And they have blinded the mind. I mean, to me, the classic thing is when the Lord raised Lazarus from the dead, and the Pharisees just said, let's kill him because he's blind. You know, I mean, that's totally irrational. But so if we're not praying, And fighting from that angle, we're getting nowhere, no matter how good our apologetics are. Let me kind of pick up on that idea and go back to the question that Rob raised about proof. Even when someone is raised from the dead, is that adequate proof to convince someone who doesn't believe that Christ is the Messiah. Not according to Luke. No. And in fact, what do the scribes and the Pharisees do? Jesus is running around doing all these miracles and signs and wonders, and instead of attributing his authority to God, what did they do? They said, oh, it's by the devil that he's doing these things. He says you ask for signs and wonders, I give them to you and you still don't believe. So, that's not a good case. So, there's a difference between what we present as proof and what someone else is willing to accept as proof. Someone who is determined not to believe is not going to accept anything as proof. There's an expression that Greg Bonson uses. He says that when you confront someone with an argument, they come up with what he calls a rescuing device, which gets them out of the problem that you've created by presenting that proof to them. They just come up with another way to try to get around it. So it's still proof, but that doesn't mean it's going to be accepted as such. What may happen to us as a result of defending our faith? There's some risk involved in that, isn't there? Paul even warns about it in that passage to the Corinthians. So no matter how winsomely, no matter how convincingly we may present arguments that support our faith, that doesn't mean people are going to receive them nicely or like us for it. So there's a danger there that we need to be aware of. There's a potential cost that's associated with defending our faith. Now this is a point that Carol raised a little earlier with her comment. Apologetics operates both inside and outside the visible church. And I've got a passage there from 2 Corinthians that gives us some support for that. In chapter 10. Starting verse 3, Paul says, So Paul is expressing his concern about the potential for false teachers creeping in. How can we defend against that? Or how can we be on guard against that? Know the truth. Know the truth? Speak the truth? Confront errors and falses? Well, depending on business with family, friends, co-workers, you're going to have to live your faith in order to, lack of a better word, convince them. because words don't mean a lot to people, but when you put yourself in a situation where you speak kindness, truth, most importantly is prayer, is praying for the people around you, And so that the Lord will soften their hearts through the Spirit. And He will give you the opportunity to be a loving witness to them. And it happens, and we've all experienced it, that actions many times speak louder than words. And people know that you are different by your kindness, by your receptability, not giving in, so to speak, to the world. Let's go out for drinks, you know. I don't do that. Why don't you? Well, because I have obligations, and I just don't, that's not how I want to spend my time. Paul talks about the importance of guided behavior in the passage from 1 Corinthians 15 that we mentioned. And what is the result of that that he talked about? What is the result of that for those who are opposed to you? Are you talking about the last verse of the other chapter? Where he says, Be steadfast in moving what I work toward, knowing that you are quite smart in doing the work. I'm getting confused with a passage from 1 Peter 3. Verse 16. Having a good conscience so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. So it makes them look silly for bringing charges against someone who demonstrates such good behavior. My sister-in-law tells our kids, she hasn't been in a few years, but she likes to tell and my children that she knew me when I used to be a lot of fun. When I was a reprobate. But she says, you know, I knew one who was a lot of fun. I mean, it's an opportunity to tell my children, you know, it's true, I've got a lot of things I wish I had come to faith in Christ as a young child like you did, but I didn't. And as a result, I have sins that, fortunately, you have not had to deal with. But notice even in that situation, how is fun being defined? Yeah, exactly. So reverse. It's yeah, indulgence in sinful behavior. So it's, it's making, making something bad sound like it's good. You know, I think the answer to my question about apologize. Because I think an apology to someone is is a tremendous witness. If you humble yourself enough to apologize for something, some way you truly offended them. Don't do that. And I think the beauty of the Lord Jesus is his humility. And you can't love other people if you're not humble. That is the most beautiful thing, that the Lord Jesus humbles himself unto death. And that, to me, the real challenge is to enlighten Christ's humility. And if you think, and we'll talk about this next week, the culture that we live in is an incredibly selfish culture. And what you're referring to, to have that kind of humility, you have to be unselfish. It has to be just the opposite. So there's a huge contrast between what is typically seen and what is typically valued in our culture today. Let's wrap this up. One of the most powerful ways to defend the faith is to ask questions. This was a well-used approach by Jesus. And kind of a perpetual homework assignment for you, just to kind of put your radar up, is as you're reading through the Gospels, notice how often Jesus asks questions and what He's doing with that. Now a cynic could say, well, Jesus asked questions because He didn't know the answer. Well, obviously that's not the case. The Son of God knows everything, so that's not the reason why he was asking questions. There must have been some other reason. And it was to engage someone in a thought process. So, have your radar up and be looking for that as you're reading through the Gospels. We've also talked about this, an important starting point in apologetics is to recognize that everyone has a faith commitment. Everyone has a faith commitment. And then when engaged in spiritual warfare, we must make use of spiritual weapons. And prayer is a good example of that. Are we preparing the way spiritually by praying as well as using the word of God to reach others? Now, we'll unpack these next three points as we go through this summer. But for the time being, just to kind of get you started here, three simple questions that can help you defend your faith. One is, what do you mean by that? Try to draw out the meaning. When somebody makes a statement, don't assume that either you or they know what they mean by that. In fact, a lot of times, we just repeat stuff without knowing what we mean. The second one is the why question. Why do we do this or why do we do that? Why do you believe this? And then the third one is, how do you know? We're the only folks that have the right epistemology. This is how we know, because it says so in the Word of God. Everybody else is kind of flying by the seat of their pants and hoping nobody notices. So, we'll have an interesting study this summer. I'm looking forward to it and appreciate your participation today. Let me pray real quickly, and then Tammy's going to talk to us about a plan for our Missionary of the Month. Father, thank you for the time we have together. Help us, first of all, have confidence in the truth of your Word. Help us to have confidence in the authority of your Word. And help us also to rely on you through the power of your Spirit and through the spiritual means that you have pointed to to make a way for us to be good witnesses and defenders of the faith. And we ask that you would be with us today in our worship, bless our time together, bless our participation in the sacrament this morning, and we pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.