Foundation For Witnessing To Unbelievers

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There are different perspectives amongst godly men and women in terms of how you should engage the unbeliever, and it is our perspective that all of us are made in the image of God, the same

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God. Romans 1 says that we all know God, we know the true God, and that we suppress the truth about him and unrighteousness.

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So the problem for all human beings, according to the Apostle Paul, under divine inspiration, isn't a lack of light about God.

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So you have the unbeliever, the atheist who says, I don't believe God exists, I don't think there's enough evidence for God's existence. You know, well you can believe the atheist on their own terms, or you can actually believe

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God, and with his authoritative self -attesting word, who says, no, that image -bearer doesn't know me, and the problem is is that they're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness, and here's the point, listen, we're not saying when we say that, that the unbeliever knows

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God, he's suppressing the truth, that actually he's just sort of like secretly going, I'm just kidding, I really know this God, like sort of a thing.

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It's self -deception. They're so lost, and they're such a rebel against God, that they're self -deceived, and what they do is they end up switching

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God for an idol, engaging in creature worship, worship the creation, and all the rest. Everything is distorted.

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So what we say fundamentally is no matter who we cross paths with, this person is made in the image of God, and they know the true

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God, and they can't help acting that out in real life, and so say, for example, in false religion, man -made religion, it's not as though the person rejects a true

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God, and now they're not gonna worship anything, now they'll worship anything, and so false religion is really just one big long explication of the rebellion of image -bearers of God that don't want the true

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God, so they make one in their image. So you could just name the religion, and we'll show you the image of God there, the points of contact that show that it's an image of God, and that they're creating a

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God that looks very much like them, and with the unbeliever, same situation, they know the true God, but they can't help, even in their denials of the true

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God, they can't help actually being the image of God. So a perfect example is like Lizzie.

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Last week, Lizzie was concerned with justice.

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She had a sense of things that were right and wrong, and things that you shouldn't do, and things that you should do, and she thought that it would just be such an awful, awful thing after somebody is raped, as though that was a bad thing, and that you ought not do that.

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If you made them carry this baby for nine months, and she thought that was unjust. You see, here's an image -bearer of God who denies

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God's existence, and thinks that she's a cosmic accident, actually decrying all the substantial sins and injustices that the

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Christian would also decry, in terms of like, we need to treat people well, respect them, respect and honor them, love them, care for them, all that stuff.

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I mean, she even went so far as to say black lives matter. Not an atheism, right?

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And that's why I kept pointing to her. The point of contact is to say, you know the God that I'm talking about, your problem is sin. And so I'm just gonna play this this portion, unless you guys wanted to say something to that.

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No. Okay. I'm gonna play this portion just to show everybody this moment that sort of led into...

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when you hear us talking about foundations, what I mean is this. We are standing on the

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Word of God, the revelation of God, as the standard, the starting point. It's God's self -attesting revelation.

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That is the reference point. That's the starting point, right? So if we don't start with God, we can't know anything.

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Christ is the foundation of wisdom and knowledge. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ. We're told not to be taken captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

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And so what we say, actually in this conversation, is that apart from God and His revelation, you can't know anything.

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Apart from God and His revelation, you can't prove anything. Apart from God and His revelation, there is no justice, there is no love, there is no truth, beauty, all that stuff.

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And so what we are saying is that God is the very reference point, the foundation for all of these questions.

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If you don't start with God, you don't get science. If you don't start with God, you don't get logic. If you don't start with God, you don't get any of this stuff.

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You have to start with God's self -attesting revelation, okay? That's our fundamental starting point, all right?

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And here's a moment in the conversation where some of that came out, but I want to just say this. The point of this is not merely to destroy the unbeliever's position.

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We do want to do that. We do want to destroy the unbeliever's position to show them that they're in the image of God and that their arguments are futile and they are foolish.

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We absolutely want to destroy all of these claims of unbelief.

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Yes, we do. But it's not merely to win the argument and destroy their system. It's to destroy their system and say, see?

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See? You need Him. See? You need Christ. See? You know Him. You know

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Him deep down. You can't help it. Even in your rebellion with these foolish arguments, you're showing that you know

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Him, right? And you're sort of trying to like, right? It's the kid who's in the closet, right?

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They close the doors, and they're in the closet, and they're covering their eyes, and they're trying to hide from the authorities.

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It's like, at a certain point, you open the closet door, you see the kid, you're like, I'm looking right at you. August does this right now all the time.

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It's so hilarious. If August does something naughty he's not supposed to be doing right now, you know, we're like, honor your father and your mother, and he almost can say it now.

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But he will do something where, like, if he's not supposed to do something, and we're like, Augustine? He does this now.

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He closes his eyes. The object permanence. Like, if I make all the objects go away, they won't still be there.

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He just sits there like that. When I close my eyes, the entire world goes away. Right, in 60 seconds, they're just like this.

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It's like, they're not there. They're gone. They can't see me. But that's what children do.

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When the authority comes in, the children close their eyes. They try to hide themselves. Well, the purpose in talking to the unbeliever, and trying to expose the image of God in them, is to, guys, listen, peel their fingertips back and away from their eyeballs.

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Pull their eyelids open. Help them to see, but not merely for self -aggrandizement, like, make yourself feel good.

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I really beat up an unbeliever. It's to expose the sin and point them to Jesus.

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That's the whole point of, like, presuppositional apologetics. All that. I think it's the most consistent, philosophically consistent, and biblically consistent position, but it's also the position that says, it's about the gospel.

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The whole time, you are holding on to Christ as the presuppositional apologist. You're holding on to Christ, God's Word, His revelation.

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You're holding, holding, holding, holding, holding. You're not compromising. You're not pretending neutrality. And then the whole way through the conversation, finally, you get to the point where you can go, now, look.

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Look, the whole time, I've been hanging on to Christ, and that's why I can make sense of this, and you can't.

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That's why you need Christ, because you're sin. Before you go to that, I was gonna say, because just along those lines, you know, we saw some silly criticism that's not even worth mentioning,

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I don't think, of your interaction with her last week, but just along those lines,

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I was gonna say, like, you know, like, sometimes, like, you have to really demolish the worldview before you can give them the good news.

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Yeah. And I thought you did a masterful job of that with Lizzie, you know, like, because the criticism was, like, well, when she's mentioned her dad leaving or whatever, like, you should have just stopped and given her the gospel, and I was like, well, there's a time for that, but she, at that point, like, she needed to be shown that either the position she's standing on is either folly or she's stealing from mine.

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Yeah. You know, so you have to show her that there's nothing, there's no hope in her worldview first before you can say, here is your hope.

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Yeah, and hopefully, you can see in the history of Teaching from Apology at Church, we've dealt a lot with trauma, and we enter into that discussion, and we try to apply the biblical worldview to it, to heal from that.

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We started off out of a drug and alcohol rehab facility. Those people are often very, very traumatized, and so the whole focus of our ministry, the first couple of years at Apologia, you would hear it all the time, how to deal with loneliness, you know, the brokenness of a relationship with a parent or a loved one.

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So dealing with trauma, of course, but this was a discussion where we're supposed to be talking about abortion, and dealing with her worldview over the issue of abortion.

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This was an opportunity to give her to the gospel with the point of contact over the issue of abortion,

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Black Lives Matter, all that stuff really related to her unbelief, and so here is...

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Well, and you can absolutely, if you have a criticism of how someone else, like, handles their interaction, you can absolutely go preach the gospel to someone in exactly the way.

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Yeah, do it yourself. You want to. I don't even mean that in, like, a snarky way. I just mean, please, if you feel inspired to go do that, and you feel like you know how to do it, please do.

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Then you should definitely go do it. At the end, because we could really use the help. If you have an hour of free time to write up a criticism of this, you should maybe just use that hour to go preach the gospel.

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Hit the streets. And I will say this, and I mean this respectfully to brothers and sisters in Christ, I listen to men often.

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I'm on the phone with men often in my life that I really respect, and I cherish their wisdom. They are godly men, whether it's

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Pastor James or, you know, just... I won't name them, but a lot of guys. And I listen.

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And when they say, hey, I think you could do this better, or you should try this, or hey, let me ask you why you did that, I'll listen.

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I listen to the men who were in the fight. I listen to the men who get their hands dirty.

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What I have committed not to do as a minister of the gospel is, because I have to keep my focus on Christ and pleasing

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Him, is I will not listen to the criticism of armchair evangelists, apologists, and pastors.

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I don't do it. So if you're that kind of person that's, you know, sort of like sitting back in your easy chair, you know, typing away, like this is how you should do this.

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My answer to you is like what Joy said. Well, then please do show us, because we really need some help out here, and please do it.