James White: The Foundations of Presuppositional Apologetics

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In this chapter 1, we are looking at the subject of presuppositional apologetics, which pretty much makes everybody's eyes roll back in their heads and go, wow, this is going to be really super exciting.

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If you've watched any of the debates that Jeff and I have done, either together or we've done some separately with various atheists, you have encountered the subject of presuppositionalism and presuppositional apologetics.

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It is a foundation stone of our church, and so that's why we're covering it.

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And what I'm doing this week is I want to cover the biblical basis, the biblical foundation.

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I wasn't, I'd never even heard of anything like this when I was a young person. When I first started looking into apologetics,

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I was at a Southern Baptist church. I was not knowingly reformed at that particular point in time.

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And so one of the first people that I ran into was Norman Geisler and sort of a classical apologetics approach and various theistic proofs and all those types of things that go along with that.

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And it was during seminary that we had, I had a seminary professor, and no one could understand what he was talking about in the apologetics class.

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It was the only apologetics class that was offered. And no one understood where he was going. No one understood, you know, why aren't we talking about theistic proofs?

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And in one class I remember him saying, Thomas Aquinas proved the wrong God. And I'm, but thankfully he had us reading

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Francis Schaeffer and he had us reading Blaise Pascal. He didn't have us reading

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Van Til and Greg Bonson, but he did have us reading material that was at the same time helping me to get my theology straight on salvation, the sovereignty of God, things like that.

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And it all came together during the course of that particular class. I think I was the only one in the class for whom it all came together, but it was very, very helpful in understanding.

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And once you understand the theology, and this is so vitally important.

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I've been involved in apologetics for many, many years now. I always chuckle whenever Jeff says,

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I've done, been doing this for many, many years. And I just sort of go, yeah, OK. And then

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Luke goes, actually it's more like you've been doing it for many centuries. And it just goes on from there.

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But I have been doing this for a long, long, long, long time, and I have learned it's vitally, vitally important.

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Listen, the way you do apologetics must flow from your theology, not the other way around.

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Hear what I'm saying? The way you do apologetics must flow from your theology.

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Your theology determines your apologetics. Why? Well, what's apologetics? It's giving a defense to faith.

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You have to define the faith before you come up with a way of defending it. So, if you were to talk to any of the great generals in American history, or any other place, for that matter, and you were to say to a great general, defend, his first word's going to be defend what?

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Because how you're going to defend is depend upon what it is you're defending.

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If you're up on a hill, you're going to do it differently than if you're down a valley. If you're out in the ocean, whatever.

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What you're defending will determine the methodology that you use to defend it.

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So we have to have our theology clear. I cannot tell you how many times

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I have encountered people in evangelicalism who come up with a methodology that for them works, and then they alter and move their theology to fit the apologetics that they've come up with that they think works.

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It's backwards. It's backwards. We can't do that. That's not honoring to the truth.

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That's not honoring to Christ. We can't do it that way. And so we have to start with the theology that we've already laid out.

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And when you have that theology, when you understand the sovereignty of God, when you understand the deadness of man in sin, when you understand the fact of the revelation that God has given of himself in mankind's own creation, there's really only one consistent way of defending the faith at that time.

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And so I want to look at three texts of Scripture. I'm not going to be able to open them up fully for you.

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I highly encourage you to take more time to, there's obviously lots of great resources and my assumption is that Jeff's going to take where we get this week and go from there into application, what's called the transcendental argument, all this other type of stuff.

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But it's very, very important. My concern, honestly, is that at this point a lot of people go, it's just a bunch of philosophy, it's over my head, it doesn't matter.

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That should not be how any of us view it. None of this should be over anybody's head who is a believer in Jesus Christ.

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We're talking about fundamental foundational truths. And you will discover that if you understand these things and you stand firm on them, it will give you a foundation to deal with not only with the

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Mormons out there at the Christmas light stuff and the Jehovah's Witnesses when they come to your door or whatever else it might be, but all the whole range of attacks upon the

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Christian faith. You will be able to stand firm if you understand these things. So let's begin with Romans chapter one.

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I'm going to run through this so fast. I once did a debate on homosexuality in South Africa and I had, if I recall correctly, two and a half minutes to cover

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Romans chapter one. Try that sometime. A bit of a challenge. I'll take a little longer than that here.

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But I want to just run through the text, emphasize certain things, lay some foundations, take notes, and let's dive in.

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You know the text. For the wrath of God is being revealed, not will be revealed, but is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

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You cannot suppress something that you do not already possess. When you think about that term, you think about,

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I was trying to suppress a cough. What does that mean? It's already there. You already have that tickle in the back of your throat or wherever else it might be.

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Your body is wanting to do that and you're trying to suppress it, you're trying to hold something down. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

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That term to suppress, katakanton, is to hold something down. It's like being in the pool and you get that ball, you get that beach ball or a smaller one, whatever it might be, and you're trying to hold it down underwater.

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You have to extend energy, you have to expend energy to hold it because that thing wants to come up out of the water.

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Well, that's the situation with all ungodly and unrighteous men because they are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.

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They're holding it down. They possess it, but they are holding it down. Why? Because that which is known about God is evident within them.

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Now, that could be within them as within humanity as a whole or within them as in internally to each one.

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Could be understood either way, and I think both are actually true. But Paul says, that which is known about God, not that which may be, or if you go through enough theistic proofs and you study the ontological argument and all the rest of that kind of stuff, you'll come to know the truth about God.

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No, because that which is known about God is evident within them.

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Why? For God made it evident to them. God has extended divine power to reveal his existence, the truth about God.

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He has extended divine power to make it evident to his creature man.

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So when the atheist says, I don't see any evidence, what he's doing is he's suppressing, he's engaging in philosophical tomfoolery to suppress what is evident right in front of him, and the fact of the matter is when you have any lengthy conversation with someone like that, you will eventually discover they cannot be consistent.

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They're going to have to borrow from God's world to even be able to speak, because God has made his existence evident to them.

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They will eventually give evidence of that. God made it evident to them.

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How? For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, both his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made.

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Now notice what's been, what's revealed. It's not the Trinity, it's not justification by faith, it's not the coming of the cross.

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Some people try to say that the gospel is in the stars, in the sense that you can somehow look at various constellations and come up with the entire gospel message.

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That is not what the apostle says. He says his invisible attributes, specifically his eternal power and divine nature, his eternal power, there is a

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God, he is the creator, his divine nature, he's the one that sustains all things, these things have been clearly seen, how?

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Being understood through what has been made. God created the universe in such a way as to testify to his creature man, made in his image of his existence.

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So being understood through what has been made so that they are unapologetus, without an apologetic.

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They are without excuse. You might say, well, man, you haven't been on too many web boards recently, they've got so many arguments, it's amazing.

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That's right. Believe me, I was engaging atheists before there was an internet, when we were using bulletin board systems and stuff like that.

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I have files full of letters, yes, letters. You'd actually print it out on a piece of paper, you'd fold it up.

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They had these really cool thing called stamps. And I'm so old, you used to have to lick them.

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You'd put them on the envelope and this guy in a uniform comes along and takes it away.

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Weeks later, a response comes, yes, that's how we would do it. Yes, I know that atheists have all sorts of arguments, but they cannot be consistent because they live in God's world.

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That's the issue. That's the point. They are without a consistent defense, an apologetic.

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We are to have that apologetic because we're living in God's world and we are submitted to him and we are accepting his revelation.

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The scripture says they are unapologetus, without an apologetic.

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For even though they knew God, and you have to drill down here.

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I've dealt with various movements even within the Reformed community of people who just had to come to the conclusion, nope, nope, man doesn't know that God exists.

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Man could come to know, but man doesn't know. It says, even though they knew

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God. Some people would say, well, this is only a specific group of people, this isn't all of mankind.

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The reality is, if you look at Romans 1, Romans 2, and Romans 3, put it together, the conclusion from the apostle is going to be

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Jews and Gentiles. All the Gentiles, all the people of the nations, they're being addressed really in chapter 1.

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In chapter 2, the Jews are going, that's right, you're right up to this point, good job, our scriptures say the same thing, which of course they do.

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Then Paul turns around and says, and I was talking about you too. It's sort of like Paul Washer got his idea,

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I don't know why you're clapping, I'm talking about you. That's what Romans chapter 2 is for Jews. I don't know why you're clapping,

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I'm talking about you. That's what he does in chapter 2. You may have the scriptures and they may say all these things, you may agree that the

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Gentiles are suppressing God's truth and all the rest of this kind of stuff, but you aren't living in light of God's truth either, so that by the time you get to chapter 3, every mouth is closed.

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Jews and Gentiles, all of humanity, mouth is closed before God. That's where Paul is going.

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So, they knew God, verse 21, for even though they knew

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God, they did not glorify Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened.

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You are either going to live in light of the existence of God, but since you are made in His image, you're either going to live in that light and rejoice in it, or you're going to find a way to twist that relationship so that you can avoid

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God's demands on your life. There's a lot of ways of doing it. They're all idolatry, but there's a lot of ways of doing it.

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Religion, false religion, is a way of suppressing the knowledge of God. Scientism, drugs, sex, and alcohol.

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That way you just simply numb your thinking, so you don't have to think about it. These are all idolatrous ways of suppressing the knowledge of God, and the result is, if you're made to glorify

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God and you refuse to do so, then they did not glorify

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Him as God or give thanks, well, that's something we should think about in November. Give thanks, that's something that we should be doing every single day.

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It's required of us as creatures. But they became futile and empty in their thoughts, in their thinking.

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Sin impacts man everywhere, including the way man thinks.

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And I don't know about you, but living in our society today and trying to reason with people who have not been by grace given an understanding of their natures as creatures, wow, is this text true or what?

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How many examples have you seen just in the past week, maybe the past day, of people who are very intelligent, and yet that intelligence is twisted and turned, so you can look at the clarity of God's creation and His intention in mankind and twist it and turn it.

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And you'd be, and I would be, in the exact same situation were it not for the Spirit of God. That's why we can never sit there and go, oh,

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I'm just so much better than you. No, I'm not. But there's a massive difference between us because I have submitted to my

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Creator and I'm not seeking to suppress the knowledge of God. That's where the difference is.

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So they become futile, empty in their thoughts and in their thinking.

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And their foolish heart was darkened. The very center of mankind.

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What determines what we're going to be? No more light. The light has gone out.

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Their foolish heart is darkened. Professing to be wise. Oh, does man profess to be wise?

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They became fools. Professing to be wise, they became fools.

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And then you have the great exchange. There's two different kind of exchanges we can think of.

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Soteriologically, we think about our sins being imputed to Christ and His righteousness being imputed to us.

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That's a good thing. This is very different. They exchanged the glory of the incorruptible

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God for an image in the likeness of corruptible man and of birds and four -footed animals and crawling creatures.

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So as the image bearers of God, they have been given His revelation. They have the glorious opportunity of knowing who

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He is. And what do they do? They treat that like garbage. I'm going to exchange it.

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I'm going to give away the glory of the incorruptible God, that which we want to sing about.

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When we raise our hands and sing the doxology, we're not ashamed because we have submitted to our

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Creator. They exchange the glory that we rejoice in.

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They exchange the glory of the incorruptible God for what? An image in the likeness of corruptible man and of birds and four -footed animals and crawling creatures.

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And, of course, if you've studied anything about ancient religion, you've seen all the hideous kinds of idols.

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They put up a hideous idol in Texas recently, a big, huge statue down there, one of the many idols of the various false religions.

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But don't think for a moment that you can limit what is said in verse 23 to just simply the blatant creation of statues and idols.

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When we create an expert class of scientists, the experts say this and the experts say that.

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And they reason and teach in opposition to God's truth, in opposition to God's being the creator and maker of mankind.

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That is as much the raising of a false idol as anything else.

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Our land is filled with idolatry. Filled with idolatry.

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Some of you work at institutions that promote and are the very essence of idolatry.

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You're a little bright light in the midst of the darkness, and you often know how dark it is there, where mankind is exalted and his mind is exalted.

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And the idea of being submitted to the lordship of Christ is mocked. Foolish heart, darken.

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Exchange the glory of the incorruptible God for an image and likeness of a corruptible man. Therefore, you want to see how far sin goes?

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God gave them over. You want to walk in idolatry?

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You want to be made in the image of God, but not acknowledge it and deny him?

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God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.

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For they exchanged, there it is again, the truth of God for the lie.

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You could translate it as a lie, if you wanted to. But it really is, it's definite in the original language.

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And so it's, I really think it's, you have the truth of God, but I don't want it because of what that means.

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I want to stay in my sin. I want to enjoy my sin. I don't want to live the way God would have me to live. So I'm going to take that and I'm going to exchange it for the lie.

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All sorts of different kinds of lies. But they exchanged the truth of God for the lie.

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The lie that worshiping what is in the creation will bring you true happiness and fulfillment.

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It never will. Young people, teenagers, the world will tell you that you can have joy and fulfillment only if you'll walk the way your heart tells you to walk.

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If you get the things of the world. It's a lie. You're made in the image of God and you will never have true, lasting joy, peace, and fulfillment.

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Unless you live the way God has created you to live.

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Believe me, I've watched it for decades. Be aware of these things.

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Be awake. They exchange the truth of God for the lie. And we are made to worship and so we will worship.

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They worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

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Amen. Mankind will worship. You will give your life to getting things.

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Your clothes, your house, all the stuff that you think is going to make you happy.

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Anymore we will spend an untold amount of money on plastic surgeries.

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Everything to try to avoid the recognition that our life is short and brief.

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We're going to get older and stuff stops working the way it used to. That's what happens.

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That's God's way of telling you, eternity is coming, be prepared. But in our foolishness, especially in our youth, the

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Bible even talks about the foolish lusts of youth. We think we're going to live forever.

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That's why we never think about death. We never think about the people that we know who have passed away and died.

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I was going over to Metro Center, what's left of Metro Center anyways, they're about to knock it over. Big place to go when

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I was a kid. There's this one turn you can turn into going southbound on the access road on the 17.

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And there's a turn. And it struck me, it was just this week, that a young woman that I knew in high school.

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She was the same class, graduated in my class, Independence High School. The year after we graduated, she was in a

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Jeep, got a top on it type thing. Took that turn too fast, flipped it, dead.

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First person in our class to die after graduation. Then one year, never made it to age 20.

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You don't know. Our lives are short. And so the foolishness is that we would worship and serve the creature, the creation.

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That which we are a part of, rather than the creator, who is blessed forever, amen. And what comes after this, we don't have time to cover it right now, but what comes after this.

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The example of homosexuality in the next few verses is not something saying, oh this is the worst example.

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What it's doing is it's showing how far this twisting of the creator -creation relationship goes.

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Even to that which defines us. For when it says, even their women,

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I think that's Paul saying. Can you imagine the maternal instinct to want to give life and to nurture life?

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Can you imagine that becoming so twisted that you would reject that?

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And yet we see it all the time today, do we not? We see it all the time in our society today.

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This is an example of the fact that sin impacts all of mankind.

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There's so much more. Romans 1. Romans 1, honestly, if someone were to ask me, what's the one passage in Scripture that you think gives the greatest evidence of the inspiration of Scripture, it's

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Romans 1. Because mankind has been writing about himself for millennia and has never come close to the accuracy and the depth of the description of man's sin found in Romans 1.

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All the books on psychology, psychiatry, and everything else can't even hold a candle to what

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Romans 1 says. And it doesn't matter what culture you're in, it applies to all. How is this relevant to our subject?

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Very simple. Presuppositional apologetics says you must recognize the presuppositions that give rise to a person's system of thought.

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You can't simply walk up to the unbeliever and go, well, you know, this person here, this person is a neutral person.

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All I need to do is reason with them, and I just need to give them the right evidence, and they're going to go, oh, yes,

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I see that now. Yes, that's not what the Bible says about mankind. The person you're walking up to, whether they're religious, whether it's the

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Mormon, whether it's the Muslim, whether it's the secular atheist, this is an individual who has a set of presuppositions already in place.

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And what's amazing is the standard way that Christians do evangelism and apologetics basically says to the unbeliever, you get to judge whether God exists.

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So I'd like to ask you to kindly look at some of the arguments that I have that will actually demonstrate that you're a rebel sinner on your way to hell.

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Or that you have climbed up on the seat of judgment, and you don't even belong to be there.

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That's not your place. That's God's place. You don't have the right to be judging

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God. You can't put God in the dock. God's the one who judges you. You're a pot that has been formed by the potter, and it says right on your bottom right there, made by God.

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And you're denying that. And all the other apologetic methodologies go, don't challenge that now, we don't want to offend anybody.

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We have to. We have to start there. So, think about it.

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If what Romans chapter 1 says is true, and I walk up to a person, and let's say this is a big argument for God, it's a good argument.

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And some of the theistic proofs are good arguments, in a Christian worldview. But let's say

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I walk up to an unbeliever, and I go, look at this, and man, I make a presentation like,

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I've practiced it, it's smooth, it's awesome. Maybe I have some cool graphics behind me, or something like that, you know.

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It's a TikTok version, you know, it's great. What's that person going to do?

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The Bible says, what are they already doing with the knowledge of God, that God has already given to them, that God has already made clear to them?

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What are they doing with it? They're holding it down. They're suppressing it.

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And so what are they going to do with my really cool digital presentation? They're just going to add it to the stuff they're holding down.

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How much room do I have there? I'm not sure. Whoa, look at that, I did not realize it moved that much. Okay, that would be something cool to have on YouTube.

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Me falling over, that would make a lot of money if we monetize that particular sermon. They're just going to take your arguments and your more truth, and guess what they're going to do with it?

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They're going to suppress it, just like all the other truth they're already suppressing. So what should we be doing?

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We should recognize this is a fellow image bearer of God, just like you and I.

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And they're suppressing the knowledge of God. And so what we want to do is we want to come along and we want to pry their fingers up.

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They're holding that ball down in the water, and so we come along and go, here, let me help you out.

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And you start prying their fingers up. Now they're not going to like that, stop that! No, no brother, no sister.

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Someone did this for me, I'm going to do it for you, I'm going to pry those fingers up. I'm going to show you how you are living inconsistently with what you say is true.

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I'm going to show you you're suppressing the knowledge of God. And they don't like that, but that's what you need to do.

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So if we take Biblical anthropology seriously,

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Biblical anthropology, what the Bible teaches about the nature of man.

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And we don't have to just use Romans 1, it's the clearest, most compelling element of it.

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But man, you read through Jeremiah. Jeremiah had all this stuff laid out a long time ago.

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The weeping prophet knew the depth of man's sin. And spoke in light of it.

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That's what we need to do. If we have a Biblical anthropology, a Biblical view of man, then our apologetic and our evangelism will not contradict that.

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We're not going to try to trick people into the church, and then two years after they become members, all of a sudden they go, hey, wait a minute.

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I've been reading my Bible, I'm listening to your sermon. Did you lie to me when you first witnessed to me?

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Because if you walk up to the unbeliever and you literally give to them the right to judge

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God, and then later on they find out, wait a minute, I never had the right to judge

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God. Why were you trying to deceive me? We can't do that. We have to be consistent.

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Consistency is how you honor truth. And so, if we take

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Romans 1 seriously, if we take the Bible seriously, we cannot walk up to the unbeliever and say, yes, you have the right to judge

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God. No, you have to turn around and say, you do not have the right to judge God. God is going to judge you.

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And here's the evidence that you already knew that. You already knew that.

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Oh, well, that might offend them. Evangelism is trusting the Spirit of God to make the truth of God to come alive in the hearts and minds of those he draws to himself.

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And those he's not drawing will be angered. And they may take your tract and tear it up, and they may punch you in the nose, and they may call you a hater, and all those other things.

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Yep, that's how it works. The wonderful thing is, if you don't believe that, then you have to try to fool people into believing the truth.

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Once you understand this, you don't have to fool anybody. You can be absolutely truthful 100 % of the time and talk about taking the pressure off.

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It's wonderful. It is truly wonderful. Like I said, I had three passages, and the clock is ticking quickly, so let's continue on.

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Let's go over to 1 Corinthians 1. 1 Corinthians 1, you know the text. I've said many times, in fact,

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I touched on this text this past week on the dividing line in a different context.

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But I've said many, many times, I believe, I say this especially to my fellow scholars who teach in seminaries and things like that,

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I believe that anyone who teaches a seminary at least once every three months, maybe every month, you should read through this and hear what

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Paul says, because the temptation is to ignore it. But I'll have to be brief.

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For the word or the message, the logos of the cross, is to those who are perishing foolishness, moria, from which we get moron.

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I always get a laugh when I say that. I'm not sure why, but it's true. That's where it comes from.

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The message of the cross to one particular group of people, those that are perishing, what is it?

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Foolishness. It's moronic. But to those who are being saved, us, it's the power of God.

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Now think about that. The message doesn't change. It's the person who's hearing the message.

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It's their nature. And in Scripture, despite what the Pope said this week, my goodness, he did the all roads lead to heaven thing this week.

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I've always said he was minimally inclusivist. I think he's a full -blown universalist. But despite what the

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Pope said, the Bible teaches there are those that are perishing and there are those that are being saved.

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And whether you're perishing or being saved is up to God, as we're going to see here.

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But those who are perishing, those who are in the flesh, hear the message of the cross. You're telling me that a guy that lived 2 ,000 years ago in the backwaters of the

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Roman Empire, a carpenter, is the creator? And my eternal destiny is dependent upon how

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I relate to him? Don't you see

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Christianity is outdated? It's foolishness. Foolishness.

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And yet here we sit, and we see the cross as the very power of God. For it has been written,

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I will destroy the wisdom of the understanding ones, or the wise ones.

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It's sophistry, if you've heard of philosophy, loving wisdom. That's the term you used here, wisdom of the wise ones.

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And I will set aside the understanding of the understanding ones. Where is the sophos, the wise person?

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Where is the scribe, the book learner? Where is the disputer or debater of this age, of this world, who would defend what this age is all about?

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Has not God made the wisdom of the world moronic?

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Moronic. Now, I can tell you, based upon the original language, the assumed answer to the question is, yes,

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God has. But I also have to tell you, as someone who has been teaching, I started teaching at Grand Canyon in 90, so for 34 years now, that in a large portion of Christian academia, despite the fact that most of us can read this language, we don't answer the question right.

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Every time Christians fall in love with the wisdom of the world, they're demonstrating they're not listening to this text.

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Has not God made moronic, foolish, the wisdom of the world? Then why should we ever exalt it?

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For since, in the wisdom of God, the world, through its wisdom, did not come to know

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God. God was pleased through the foolishness of what is preached.

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Not the wisdom of the world, not all the

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PhDs in philosophy, but instead, God was pleased through the foolishness of preaching.

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The proclamation to do what? To make people wise? No, to save the ones believing.

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To save the ones believing. And as long as we think that it's our wisdom, and it's our getting with the program of the world, and impressing the world, we're going to miss what's said here.

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No one has ever been saved by the wisdom of the world. Instead, there is a message which is preached.

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It's the message of the cross. It's the message of a crucified Savior. God was pleased through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe.

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Why? Well, think about it. Paul knew his audience. Paul knew his audience.

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He knew how he could impress Jews. He knew how he could impress Greeks. The Jews, they asked for signs, and they asked

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Jesus for signs. What sign do you give, Jesus? What sign do you give, Paul? They asked for signs.

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And the Greeks are always searching for wisdom. Read Acts chapter 17 for a good example of that.

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But, verse 23, we proclaim Christ crucified.

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And it's hard for us in our day to understand how shocking a statement that is.

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You may have seen crucifixions portrayed in a movie, and it is gruesome.

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But those people have seen it in real life. And the term to crucify was so abhorrent in that day that many people in the upper classes would not even use the word.

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It was almost like swearing. You could not crucify a Roman citizen no matter what they did.

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That was too low a death. And so here

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Paul says, the Jews are asking for signs, the Greeks are searching for wisdom, and we preach the

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Jewish Messiah crucified. You've got to understand, if all you know is the things of the world, that is foolishness.

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That's foolishness. And Paul knows it. We preach Christ crucified. To Jews, a scandalon.

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That's the exact term. Scandalon. Stone of stumbling. A scandal. Why was it a scandal to Jews?

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We killed our own Messiah? No, not possible. To the

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Jews, scandalon. Stumbling block. To the Gentiles, morion.

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It's moronic. It's foolish. Don't tell me that some crucified

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Jewish Messiah is the creator of the universe, and by him we can have life.

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It's foolishness. Verse 24,

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I am so thankful for. And when you think about it, Paul wrote these words when the

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Christian movement was very small and didn't look like it was going to go very far. And over the next 300 years, the

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Roman Empire is going to do everything it can to stomp it out. And they're going to be

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Christians, they're going to be thrown into Colosseums, to be torn apart by wild animals as food to entertain crowds.

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And entire Christian congregations will be put in slavery and sent into the mines to dig for gold and silver.

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If you think doing that is dangerous today, in the first century it was a whole lot more dangerous.

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You were going to die. And yet, 2 ,000 years later, here we are on the other side of the planet speaking a language that did not exist at that time, and we find in the message of the cross the power of God.

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You want evidence of the divine nature of the Christian faith? But why?

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Why us? Verse 24, But to those who are the called, both

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Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

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Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

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Do we believe that? If we believe that, then we should not allow the wisdom of the world to determine how we defend a message that the scriptures themselves say will be foolish to man.

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Well, then why do we even do evangelism? To those who are the called. We don't get to determine that.

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We don't get to determine that. When you stand out there in Mesa, I remember years and years staying out there during the

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Easter pageant, and we'd hand out those tracts, the vast majority of them thrown out, spit on, torn up, and yet we all know the stories.

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Years later, that one tract, might be only one tract in a night, salvation, families, change, come to know

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Christ. We do it because we know God has his people, and we can do it with joy.

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We can do it with joy. To those who are the called, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

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Again, so much more, so much more that could be said. One last text.

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Turn with me to Colossians chapter one. I'll be brief. Colossians chapter one.

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You have the description of Christ. Hopefully if you're memorizing a scripture, this is a text possibly that you would want to memorize.

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Because when the son of God is mentioned, verse 13, the son of his love in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, you then have this incredible description of Christ.

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He is the image of the invisible God. The prototokos, the firstborn, the one having preeminence over all creation.

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For in him were all things created, whether in heaven and earth, visible, invisible, principalities, powers, dominions, authorities, all things created by him and for him.

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He is before all things, and to him all things soonest they can. They hold together.

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Here's the description of Jesus. And this is why liberal theologians try to tell us no, no, no, no, no.

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No one, I remember talking to a, at the time he was an adjunct professor at Fuller Theological Seminary where I graduated from back in the 80s anyways.

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I remember talking to a man who was promoting homosexuality in a debate over in Scottsdale, and he had just said in the debate that we needed to, we had already learned how to get beyond Paul, who was just a first century thinker, and that we needed to learn to get beyond Jesus, who was a first century

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Jew as well. I talked to him during the break, and I said, you don't believe that the apostles believed that Jesus was

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God? He says, no, of course not. I rather foolishly said,

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I would debate you on that any day. He didn't really take that overly kindly, but I would.

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Thankfully, in God's providence, by the way, he's no longer teaching. For some reason, he became a paramedic.

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I hope he's doing well as a paramedic. But anyway, liberal theologians, that's what they're all about.

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Jesus never made those claims. That developed long afterwards. When you think of what

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Paul says here, in him all things were created.

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In the heavens and the earth, visible, invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him, and he is before all things, and in him all things sunestecan, they hold together.

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He is what keeps this creation together. Now let's think for just a moment.

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What does that mean for mankind? What does that mean for you and I?

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One of the temptations of the standard, quote -unquote, classical methods of apologetics and evangelism is you come alongside somebody and you say, hey,

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I'll tell you what, you lay aside your presuppositions and I'll lay aside my presuppositions and we'll just step down here on this neutral ground and you and I, we can just, we can just reason together and we'll just let the facts lead where they go.

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Doesn't that sound great? Doesn't that sound wonderful? Let me ask you a question.

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If you believe what the scriptures say about Jesus, where do you find neutral ground?

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Where do you find neutral ground? If Jesus Christ created all things, where's the ground he didn't make?

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Where's the fact he doesn't define? The reality is, the amazing claim of the

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Christian faith is if something's true, Jesus made it that way.

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So you see, if I pretend that there's neutral ground and I sort of fool somebody into that,

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I just get them to, well, let's go to the next point and the next point and let's say I slowly over time get them to be a deist and then maybe a theist and then eventually a

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Trinitarian and this is the idea that people have that you can actually do things this way.

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Eventually they're going to read this text, you know, unless you're going to not tell them about the

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Bible, that's not going to work too well. Eventually they're going to read this and they're going to go, wait a minute, if this is who

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Jesus is, if in him all things soonest they can, they hold together, then you were lying when you said that there's a neutral ground that we can stand on.

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You can't lay that aside and as a Christian, you can't. You can't say, let's step out of God's world and see if I can prove that it's

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God's world. You can't do that. We are stuck in the middle of God's world. We can't get out of it and so the amazing assertion of the

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Christian faith concerning the centrality of Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, yes, we do believe it's all.

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And you need to understand something, I hate to have to tell you this, but at this time in church history, if you believe that the scriptures are sufficient and that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Jesus Christ, we're a small minority.

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Because you have to believe that the scripture, you have to believe this is truly from beginning to end the word of God and it's consistent with itself.

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And sadly, right now in church history, I believe someday this is going to change and this could be the vast majority.

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Right now in church history, if you believe that, small minority.

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That's why presuppositionalism is only for people who take the Bible seriously. The liberal can't do that.

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The liberal doesn't want to do debates anyways because they don't really believe they have access to truth. But we do.

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And that truth includes the assertion that all things were created by Jesus Christ.

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Therefore, there's no neutral ground. The myth of neutrality is just that, a myth.

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It's a lie. This is where we have to start. And I'm very thankful.

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You see, the reformers didn't have to deal with the secular world. They lived in a religious world.

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And so they didn't have to deal with a lot of the argumentation we have to deal with today. And I'm very thankful that God raised up wise men in the church to address these issues.

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And one of them was a very godly man. I never got to meet him. I've known a lot of people who did know him.

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But a godly man, known by his neighbors as one who was always talking about Jesus.

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A godly man by the name of Cornelius Van Til. And Van Til put together the supremacy and sufficiency of Scripture with its teaching about who

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God is and who man is and knowing well the philosophies of mankind, recognized that many in the

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Christian faith were not being consistent with all the

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Scripture teaches in dealing with the challenge of secularism. And then men came after him.

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And they don't all necessarily agree with one another on every little jot and tittle. But the one that we know in our fellowship so very well,

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Greg Bonson, one of the chief interpreters of Van Til, took that methodology and taught us the most effective and biblically consistent way of defending our faith in this secular world that we live in.

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And I am very thankful that Jeff and Luke from the beginning, even back when they were...

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If you haven't seen it, I did a debate where I teamed up with Michael Brown and we debated two

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Unitarians. It went so badly that Summer came up to me during the break and really discouraged me because she was like,

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I almost feel sorry for those guys. I'm like, honey, don't feel sorry for them.

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It's bigger than that. And if you watch the video of that, you'll see this little scrawny, skinny, clean -shaven guy asking a question during the

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Q &A named Jeff Durbin. And I believe Apologia had just started the year before.

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And that early on, they made the commitment, if we're going to talk about apologetics, we're going to do it in a way that is consistent with the

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Word of God. And that's why we're talking about presuppositional apologetics in this portion of our

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Foundations series. I hope it's helpful to you. I'm looking forward to seeing what Jeff does, having laid the foundations now in making the application because that's where we'll go as we go on from here.

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Let's pray together. Father, we do thank You for this time. We thank You for Your truth, for Your Word, its consistency, its clarity,

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Your preservation of it over time. And we do pray that we would trust in its sufficiency, trust in the sufficiency of the message of the

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Cross and the work of the Spirit. May we not move off toward the temptations of the world to use the wisdom of the world.