Applied Apologetics

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Our Father in Heaven, we thank you this morning for your Word, for the love that you have shed upon us.
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Father, I pray as we look to these questions this morning that your
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Son would be glorified, that we would be edified, that we would be moved to be ready to give an answer to the hope for the hope that is within us.
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We pray these things in Christ's name, Amen. Well, I'm about to give you all an advanced degree in Applied Apologetics.
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I wrote it down this way, I said what we're going to learn this morning is how to tell the truth in love with the best of intentions and still have no friends.
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Thank you. That's a nice intro. What happens when we tell people about Jesus Christ?
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What is their response? Mocking? It's good for you.
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Anybody else? What happened the last time you told somebody about Christ? Peggy. Okay, it depends on where they are in life.
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Sometimes they're more receptive if they're in a desperate situation. Sometimes they're not more receptive, but I mean, it can make a difference.
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Well, let's get into the quiz, and these are some questions or some issues that actually
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I'll just kind of let some of the cat out of the bag, the rest of the cat will have to remain in there. I don't know why
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I said that. Some of these issues came up directly out of an email from a friend of mine, a little exchange that we had.
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He told me about a church that he joined, and well, I'll just tell you, we had this little exchange where I said, well, that's interesting.
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How does your church tell you that you can get to heaven? Here's what he said.
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He said, my church doesn't say anything about how you can get to heaven. And I said, well, how would you say that you're getting to heaven?
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And he said, because of Jesus Christ. So I said to him, I said, do you see a contradiction there?
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Now there was another guy in this conversation with us who happens to be Episcopalian. He got it.
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He understood right away what I was driving at. And my friend said, no, I don't see the contradiction.
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And so we kind of shut down the conversation for other reasons. And then later on, my friend said to me, you know,
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I'd like to talk to you more about this later. Well, he lives in California. So I sent him an email. And this basically, this whole thing kind of spans out of this email.
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And I thought, these are issues that we talk about or that we hear a lot about. And I thought, it'd be good for us to discuss them this morning, so you guys could share my email.
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Number one, should you be happy when someone tells you they are making progress in their spiritual journey?
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Define spiritual journey is good, right? I mean, if we're all spiritual beings, then we're all on a spiritual journey.
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I'm on my own spiritual journey. I guess the question is, you know, are you on some kind of luxury liner or are you on Contiki?
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You know, the little raft out there in the middle of the ocean, the Titanic. And my answer basically was, you know, should you be happy?
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I just put no. And I can imagine Andrew Smith saying this when I did it. No. Let's turn to Matthew chapter seven.
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And as always, although my Bible is up here ready to be opened, I cut pace or anything so I don't have to turn there.
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So when somebody gets to Matthew chapter seven, verses 13 and 14, would you read that place?
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Very familiar verses to us. Yes, go ahead.
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Now would that be a good answer? I mean, think about this, you know, you should be happy that I'm on a spiritual journey.
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Look, the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction.
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And those who enter it or buy it are many. Look, many people are on a spiritual journey.
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Everybody's on a spiritual journey. Why? Because we're spiritual beings. Whether we want to say,
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I believe in God or, you know, someone else wants to say, I believe in God or I, they want to deny that they still have a spirit.
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They still have a soul. As we say, they're still going to stand before God someday and give an account for what they did with their life, what they did with the
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Lord Jesus Christ. They're not going to be able to say, well, you know, I was on a spiritual journey and I didn't quite reach the other shore.
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I didn't quite complete what I intended to do. Everybody's on a spiritual journey, but the difference is people are convinced in their own minds that they're fine.
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People are convinced in their own minds that they're good enough, that the way they're thinking is right enough, and that's the way that leads to destruction.
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Listen to what Simon Kistemacher said. He said, in order to enter by the narrow gate, one must strip himself of many things such as consuming desire for earthly goods, the unforgiving spirit, selfishness, and especially self -righteousness.
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What is self -righteousness? It's that idea that I'm good enough, and if God doesn't like that, too bad for him.
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And you say, well, that's pretty harsh. That's exactly what people are saying. I don't need Jesus Christ. I don't need to obey.
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I don't need all these other things. I'm good enough. God's just going to have to take it.
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Kistemacher goes on to say, the narrow gate is therefore the gate of self -denial and obedience. On the other hand, the wide gate can be entered with bag and baggage.
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The old sinful nature, all it contains and all its accessories can easily march right through.
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It is the gate of self -indulgence. So why does that gate that an enormous, clamorous multitude can enter all at once, and there will be plenty of room to spare?
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They're just all lined up. They're all carrying all their stuff, and they're like, yep, we're just going to take all this stuff and we're headed for the promised land.
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We're going into heaven. It really did remind me as I was just picturing that,
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I mean, people all weighed down, you know, it's like they're going to the California gold rush. They've got their pickaxe and all their supplies and everything, you know, that they're going to take with them, and they think that they're okay.
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That's a physical depiction, obviously, of what's spiritually going on, which is, you know what,
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Jesus may or may not be the way, but I'm okay. I don't have to worry about that.
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God will like me as I am. And what is that thinking? The Proverbs would say, what about that? Proverbs 14, 12, you don't have to turn there,
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I'm going to read it. There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.
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Unbelievers have convinced themselves by the hardness of the heart, the blinding of their eyes, the stopping of their ears, they are convinced in their own minds that they're fine.
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I mean, if not, what would we see when we walk down the streets of Worcester or wherever we live? Holden.
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You know, if I would have gone to Holden Days yesterday, which I didn't because I like to call it Holden Hours, if you're familiar with it, you know, they advertise it as Holden Days and I'm like, what?
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It's from 10 to 2 or whatever it is, you know, that's not even a day. Holden Hours.
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Besides that, then it has the HH. Anyway, I digress. What is it that we would see in people generally if they really understood where they were going?
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If they thought, you know what, I'm on the broad road that leads to hell. Would they be doing that?
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We'd walk around the streets and we'd see people terrified. We'd see people absolutely appalled by their spiritual condition.
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They'd go, somebody help me. What must I do to be saved? Is that what we see?
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No, because in their own minds, they've tuned themselves to think, I'm good enough. I'm smart enough.
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And God loves me just as I am. People who are unsaved, or you know, the answer to this question, what should
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I say when I say they're making progress in their spiritual journey? Well, there isn't really, let's just be honest, there really is no spiritual journey, right?
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There are two camps in the world. Like what I'm going to talk about tonight, you're either saved or you're not saved. There's no kind of migration.
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Well, you know, I'm unsaved, but I'm making my way to the land of saved. I'm climbing the stairway to heaven.
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No. Just no. Number two, what would you say to this statement? People come to faith in many different ways.
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Stephen, I think you might've been peeking at my notes, but that's okay.
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But I mean, it's true, right? People come to faith in many different ways. I mean,
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I think of my own life, you know, here I was a total wreck in a 12 -step meeting.
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And you know, that was just kind of the beginning point for me. But people come to faith in many different ways.
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So you know what? Don't worry so much about what I'm doing, what church I'm joining, what they teach there, all those kinds of things.
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People come to faith in different ways. Well, I don't really care how people come to faith. I'm a person of faith.
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That's as nebulous as I'm on a spiritual journey. What does that mean? What do you believe?
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I'm a person of faith. Okay. What faith?
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What do you believe in? I have a few suggestions that I wrote down here, and we'll see who wants to vote for this.
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A, that's true, but my concern is where you are right now. B, you're right, I need to mind my own business.
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C, I know there's a Bible verse about that, can I get back to you? Or D, some people never come to faith at all, how about that?
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Or let me read it the way I meant it. Some people never come to faith at all, how about that, huh? Hmm. Well, here's what
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I put. A is preferred. That's true, but my concern is where you are right now.
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People come to faith in many different ways. It's just a stalling tactic. And this is what we find when we interact with unbelievers is there are a lot of little smokescreens, diversionary tactics, and this is one of them.
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People come to faith in many different ways. What's the subtext of that? What are they really trying to tell you?
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What's that? Many ways to God, and so don't judge the way
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I'm going about it. Don't judge my faith. Why is it that it is easy for us to acknowledge in our own lives and the people around us that there's truth in what
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James said, that what life is a vapor? And yet when we're presented with opportunities like this, when we're talking to somebody and they say, well, people come to faith in many ways, we go, boy,
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I don't know what to do about that. So I'm going to have to let that go. Here's my ultimate point this morning.
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What I want us to think about is when we interact in any conversation with anyone and you're on any tangent of a spiritual nature, you need to be thinking life is a vapor.
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This person that I'm talking to, even though I've never met them before, or even though they're my best friend, or whoever they are, this person's life may end in the next five minutes.
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This may be the last opportunity they ever have to hear the gospel, and so I'm going to sit here and I'm going to say, well, you know what?
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I don't know what to say to this person, so I'm going to say something like, you're right,
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I need to mind my own business, or that's how I'm going to act. That's just not, people say that when you tell them the truth, that's not loving.
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The least loving thing you can do is to not tell them the truth. Number three, my church does not teach about heaven or hell.
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I mean, when he said that, I was just kind of dumped on it. How do you respond? Well, that, actually, that was my first thought, right?
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I mean, and believe me, I went to their website, and it might as well be, let's see, how can
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I say this to be politically correct? It might as well be some kind of, yeah, institution would be nice.
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It might as well be some kind of political action committee. Let's just put it that way, because that's really what it is. It's not any kind of, anything close to a church.
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But here are some potential responses. Let's look at Matthew chapter 5. Matthew chapter 5, and I put this under the bulletin point,
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Jesus believed in hell. Well, you know, you say you're a Christian, and you belong to a church that isn't
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Christian. Jesus believed in hell. Matthew chapter 5, verses 29 and 30, and would somebody please read those?
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Matthew 5, verses 29 and 30. Yeah, go ahead.
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Thank you, Jonathan. So whether or not this is hyperbolic language, and I don't really think it is, what
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Jesus is warning about something. He's saying, listen, you need to stop sinning, and you need to remove the things that cause you to sin, or what?
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You could find yourself in hell. Jesus believed in hell. Jesus also believed in heaven.
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Turn over to Matthew 19, verses 23 and 24. Matthew 19, verses 23 and 24.
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And who has those? Bruce. Now, what can we learn just by reading these two verses here?
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That there's a heaven, and it's difficult to get there, and being rich makes it difficult.
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Why? It's the same picture that we would see in Matthew 7, where he's talking about, you know, the road is broad, and as Kistamacher said, you know, people want to take all their baggage in there, because they think it's going to be easy.
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But the narrow way to heaven, the true way to heaven, is not easy to get into.
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But we could also learn this, that what? I mean, if we look at the end of verse 23, it says, enter the kingdom of heaven.
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At the end of verse 24, enter the kingdom of God. So heaven really is the kingdom of God, the place where God is.
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There is an actual kingdom of God. There is an actual heaven. There's no two ways about that. Jesus understood there was both heaven and hell.
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So you say to somebody, well, Jesus believed in heaven. Jesus believed in hell. Can I ask you some questions about spiritual things?
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Sure. Because we have a nice person that we're talking to. What is sin? You need to walk people through just the basics of the gospel.
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What is sin? How do you deal with sin? How can you stand before a holy God and say,
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God, you have to let me in? Well, first of all, we're not going to say that, but secondly, it is so presumptuous to think that those of us who have sinned, which means the entire human race, could somehow just enter into the presence of a holy
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God. God says his eyes are too pure to even countenance evil, to even look upon evil in Habakkuk 1.
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So how are we going to spend eternity in his presence with sin? And the answer is, you can't.
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How are you going to get into heaven? So then ask him, what do they know about God? We have many opportunities to talk about, from scripture, the holiness of God and these kind of things.
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Broader question. I mean, there are broader questions that you could ask. Do you think it's possible to know
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God? These are all good questions, and it's good to ask people why.
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Why do you think it's good to ask people questions when you're trying to evangelize them?
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It gives you an idea of where they are in their understanding, yes. It helps them realize where they are.
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I think that's so key. And the other thing is, what happens if somebody asks you a question and you don't know the answer to it?
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If you ask me, because if you're a listener of NoCo, you know that I don't really like music trivia.
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It just sticks into my head. So if you ask me a question that I don't know, what's going to happen?
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I'm not like that. I'm going to get home and try to find the answer. No, but what will happen?
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It's going to stick in my head, and I'm going to keep thinking about it, and then finally, you know, the answer is going to be
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Engelbert Humperdinck. Well, probably not, but I can name a song by him, but that's terrifying.
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But moving right along. If you ask somebody a question, then it's going to, if they're a thinker at all,
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I mean, there are some people, you know, the questions just bounce off their head, but for most people, if they don't know it, it's going to bother them.
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Now they may react in a particular way like my friend did initially, but later on, they're going to want to go back and revisit that because it's haunting them.
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It's stuck in their head. So I think asking questions is good as long as you don't kind of, and where were you, you know, give them that thing.
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But okay, moving on. Number four. Many sacred texts, and this is pretty close to the quote, the conversation we had.
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Many sacred texts from the Quran to the Talmud and from the, I can't even say it, that thing, the
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Gita and the Veda, which are both Hindu texts, by the way, to the
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Tao, Tao Te Ching, which is Taoism. That's another
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Eastern mystic religion. All have truth worthy of study. In other words, all these books have truth in them.
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How do you respond to that? And we have multiple choices here.
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A, all truth is God's truth, which is true, but it's not a truth that I really like. B, do any of those books claim to be without error?
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C, Satan often counterfeits the truth to confuse unbelievers. Or D, the
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Bible says it's breathed out by God and that it is perfect. Well, I mean,
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I think there are several places that you could go. I wouldn't recommend C. The only reason I wouldn't recommend
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C is because then you get into this whole kind of church lady conversation, which might not be the best way to go.
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But I prefer D because it's the truth and it's startling. If you tell somebody that the
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Bible is perfect, what do they say? I think it's kind of, you know, it's an amazing claim.
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And yet it's right out of what scripture? What's that?
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That it's perfect? And a hush fell over the room.
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I heard the answer. The answer is? It might be in there, but I know it's definitely in Psalm 19.
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Psalm 19, verse 7, the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul of the testimony of the
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Lord is sure, making wise the simple. Like I said before, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 2
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Timothy 3 .16. Now listen to what Kistenwacker says about being breathed out, the word
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God breathed out, the breath of God, occurring only here indicates that all scripture owes its origin and contents to the divine breath, the spirit of God, the
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Holy Spirit. The human authors were powerfully guided and directed by the Holy Spirit, even as we saw this morning in 2
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Peter. As a result, what they wrote is not only without error, but of supreme value for man.
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It is all that God wanted it to be. It constitutes the infallible rule of faith and practice for mankind.
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Just think about that concept there, supreme value. Do we think about the
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Bible as having supreme value? And if we don't, then how do we tell people that it has supreme value?
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How do we tell people that it is God -breathed and perfect if that's not how we live our lives on a daily basis?
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Supreme value. You know what, just as an aside, I remember Dr. Barak saying while he was in the mission field in, where was he,
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Bangladesh, he met with a Muslim man on several occasions and on one occasion he gave the man's son, because the man's son had requested this, a
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Bible. And the father was a bit offended by it, that he hadn't given him one.
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So Dr. Barak gave him a Bible. You know what the man did, this
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Muslim man, what he did with the Bible? He hugged it and kissed it because he recognized it to be the word of God.
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And then I think, I have a hard time putting my Bible on the ground. Why? Because I think about how that unbeliever responded to the word of God, and I think about how
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I should think about it. It's not because I worship this physical Bible, but it's because I want to be constantly reminded of how valuable the
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Bible is. So I'll usually, even if I'm going to put it below my seat, I put a hymnal or something below it, because I just want to think about scripture rightly.
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Supreme value. Now here's something you can ask your friend.
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Is there anything more important than this truth? Our Creator has given us a perfect book about Him so that we might know
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Him. Number five, what's great about my church is that we allow for diversity of belief and exchange of ideas without any sort of judgment.
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What's your response? I have several here. That sounds more like a 12 -step group than a church. It does.
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That may not be the best answer, though. B, how many conflicting opinions can simultaneously be true?
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Can be simultaneously true. There we go. C, what's great about Christ is that He told us what the truth is and that it is singular.
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And D, would you look at that, I'm late for my dentist appointment. I think a lot of us probably prefer
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D. Oh, I've got to go get six teeth pulled. Which answer do you like?
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C. I like that one. That's very good. Before I get there, though, let's just contemplate this for a minute.
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The truth is that unbelievers generally are enemies of the very concept of truth.
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And that's what we're broadly talking about today. When you are in a conversation with an unbeliever, as I said a couple weeks ago on a
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Sunday night, basically there are two camps. There's the camp of Christ and everybody else.
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And you think, well, that's pretty black and white. And that's what I'm going to be talking about tonight. It is black and white. We have, as it says in 2
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Corinthians, we have nothing in common with them. Yes, we suffer from sin.
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Yes, we suffer. We're all present in the same world. But when it comes to the way we think, the way we view things, what we value, completely different.
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And when it comes to the truth, we believe what? That there is truth and the world has gone out of its way to say what?
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There is no such thing as absolute truth. Which, of course, is an absolute truth that there's no such thing as.
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There's no such thing as absolute truth. Are you sure about that? Right? It's kind of a contradiction.
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But they're enemies of the truth. They don't want to believe that there's truth. They don't want to believe that its ultimate truth is knowable.
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Why? Because that kind of gives them a buffer, an insurance policy. Look, if there's no absolute truth, then maybe there's no
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God of that truth. And then I'm not responsible to him. Somebody mentioned this earlier, or getting back to the idea that Jesus gave us one truth.
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He said, John 14, 6, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
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So you could look at your friend and say, well, what kind of diversity is there in that statement? How diverse was
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Jesus in his views? Number six, I don't like the fact that religions are so exclusionary.
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The whole you're with us or you're against us mentality is, and that should be, it's the wrong you're in both those cases.
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My secretary, meaning me, is fired. You're, apostrophe, R -E, with us or against us is offensive.
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What's your response to that? Here are our choices with regard to Bethlehem Bible Church.
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Our church is very inclusive. B, Jesus said a lot of things that were us versus them oriented.
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C, our pastor is a lot nicer in person than in the pulpit. You should talk to him. Hey, he says that I just, you know, kind of paraphrase what he says.
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Or D, my personal favorite, I'm offended by your narcissistic need to have the world bend to your whims. C, is that C as in yes or C as in answer
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C? Okay, B, I kind of like B.
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Jesus said a lot of things that were us versus them oriented. Let's look at John 17 verses 7 and 9.
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And this is the high priestly prayer, the intercessory prayer of our Lord for his disciples.
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John 17 verses 7 through 9, and who would read that please? Now, if you're looking for something inclusive,
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I mean, I guess they can't read this passage at this church. There are a lot of things they could read from these various books, but they couldn't read this because it's just so divisive.
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Jesus isn't praying for everybody. He's only praying for some. He's only praying for his disciples. Listen to John 15 verses 18 and 19.
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If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own.
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But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
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He was really giving the disciples low self -esteem. The world hates those who believe.
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They hated Jesus before that. This is the, you know,
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I'll just, this is the real world. It's not all this fluffy marshmallow stuff.
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This is the real world. There is a division between darkness and light. Number seven, how could anyone believe the
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Bible has not been changed by men? How can anybody believe that?
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Here's what I said, basically, and you have to ponder this for a minute. I mean, because I think it's good in a couple of different ways.
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If the creator of the universe was able to do so by doing what? By speaking it into existence, right?
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Is he not capable of protecting his word from the evil intentions of men?
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If he wanted to give us a revelation in a book, and men came along and wanted to subvert that, to change it, to make unauthorized additions to it, is
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God capable of protecting it? I think so. Not only is he the creator, he's the sustainer of all things, and yet we want to think, oh, you know, man got a hold of it at the
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Council of Nicaea, because I read, what's that book? That insane book about, what's that?
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Yeah, The Da Vinci Code, thank you. That's what it should be called, The Insane Book. The Da Vinci Code, and I know that at the
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Council of Nicaea, those evil Christians were tossing out the books by those lovely, wonderful Gnostics, and they just didn't allow them to have an equal say, and it was totally undemocratic.
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Really? Psalm 138, verse 2 says, talking about God, you have exalted above all things your name and your word.
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He's not going to let his name be sullied, and he's not going to let his word be sullied. I said something else, and I don't think
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I wrote it down here. I said something else to him. I made that argument, and then I said, you know,
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I said, it's not like we're saying this, and we have absolutely no evidence. I don't like, I don't prefer evidence as a way to make an apologetic argument, but this evidence is right in line with what
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I'm talking about. If I say that God's powerful enough to preserve his word, and then I can say there are thousands of manuscripts that we have with very little variance in them, and when you consider that they're done in the ancient world without the aid of computers, they're done by hand, there are bound to be some little copying mistakes that factor in over time, but what happens is when you get thousands of these, and you start comparing them, then you can figure out, okay,
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I see how they did that. I mean, it'd be like if you told 5 ,000 third graders to all write the same thing down.
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Would they all get it right? And the answer is no, because they don't teach them how to write anymore.
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They all have to type on it. But no, they wouldn't.
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But if you took all those thousands of them and put them together and started examining them, could you reconstruct, if you'd never heard a word that I said in the classroom when
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I told those 5 ,000 third graders what to write down, could you reconstruct it? The original, yes.
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And that's exactly what people a lot smarter than you and I have done over the years is they have compiled, they've looked at all these things, and they have sorted them all out.
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And I feel very comfortable in saying that we have something so close to the original documents that if we had the original document,
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I dare say it would take us days to find the errors. We'd be talking about apostrophes and commas, things like that, small, minute parts.
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Who is God? He's all -powerful, and that's the point we wanna drive home. Listen to Isaiah 46 .10.
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Talking about God, it says, "'Declaring the end from the beginning, "'and from ancient times, things not yet done, "'saying, my counsel shall stand, "'and
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I will accomplish all my purpose.'" God says that, and yet somehow, men were able to change the
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Bible. And what I find more amazing is those guys must have been really smart because while they were doing this conspiracy, they managed to put it back together in such a way that it doesn't conflict with itself, that it works in perfect harmony.
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Those guys were really, really super smart. It's like they had computers 2 ,000 years ago, right? God is the author and the architect.
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He put it all together and he preserved it. Number eight, I and many others are searching for truth.
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We may not be on a path that you agree with, but we are searching. What's it?
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No one seeks after God, which is? Which is? Romans 3, verses 10 to 12.
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They may think they're searching, but it's a bit like this. You are searching for God, you say, but you're ignoring the map that he gave you.
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You might as well say, well, I'm going to Australia, and you head towards, you go north because you have absolutely no idea where you're going.
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Number nine, how would you respond to this one? Social justice was something
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Jesus very much prioritized. Stephen. Well, that's a great point because if Jesus was all about, solving financial inequities or I'm sorry, inequities, then what he should have done was, don't break that.
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We can sell that. Do you realize how many people we could feed with that? Or that should have been the attitude. But here's what,
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I just summed it up this way. I said, in what verses, right?
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Search first or seek first the kingdom of God. But my point is, in what verses did he talk about social justice?
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Because the point is that they will say these things, but they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, Mark. Well, that's exactly right.
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And Mark is actually anticipating the next question. Because if you look at it, this is what my friend said, right?
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I want to preach the Bible to him. And he says, if someone doesn't view the
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Bible as relevant, you can't use it as an argument against them, right? Well, I don't believe in the
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Bible. So stop citing the Bible to me. Okay, well, I have to yield.
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Let me read this, 2 Corinthians 10, verses three to five.
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For though we walk in the flesh with physical bodies, we are not waging war according to the flesh.
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For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds.
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We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey
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Christ. How do we do that? We destroy strongholds, which are spiritual strongholds, which are false teaching, which are false doctrine, which are ways of thinking other than biblical ways of thinking.
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And what we do, that person is saying, listen, let me just change the language a little bit.
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You want to talk about the light of scripture. I don't believe in the light of scripture.
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I would rather argue in my realm of darkness. I would rather argue from my realm of ignorance.
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You have your circle of truth. I have my circle of truth. Please join me in my circle of truth. And when you say yes, guess what?
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You've lost. You have lost. The exact right thing to do is what you were saying.
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You have to keep going back to the gospel. You have to keep going back to the word. Why? Because we are not going to win.
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When I say win, we're not going to establish any truth to them by getting into the mud with them and wrestling.
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We have to continue to proclaim truth to them and hope that God will open their eyes.
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We don't win the battle on our own. And to get into an argument of sinful logic with them, because we still have our own sinful thoughts, our own sinful logic and fallacies floating around.
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And so to think we're going to somehow outfox them in that where it's where they're steeped.
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They know all the arguments that they want to have. We're just going to lose. We've given up.
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It's like we've given up the high ground and we're going to go down onto the plains and fight with them.
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And it's not the way to go. So if someone doesn't believe the
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Bible, and they don't want to hear it, well, that's fine. What else should we use with them?
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What are we going to do? We're going to reason with them on the basis of their thinking. Listen, Romans 121, for although they knew
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God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking.
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So we're going to go to them in their futile thinking and we're going to start trying to reason with them from that.
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We can't do that. We also can't use evidence alone. As I've said on many occasions, what's the problem with evidence?
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Well, if we think about the ultimate evidence would be walking, talking, meeting, greeting
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Jesus, and then seeing him do miracles. Multitudes saw that and they did not believe.
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And I have another challenge, something you can think about and mull over for the next few days and then shoot me an email when you finally come up with an answer.
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Is evidence ever cited in the Bible as a source of salvation? My answer to that is only the
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Bible is certain to accomplish anything. We know these verses well. Listen, Hebrews 4 .12, for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two -edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of mind, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
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Isaiah 55 .11, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to be empty, but it shall accomplish that which
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I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. It may bring someone to salvation.
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It may bring additional judgment to them. It may put them in a state of utter confusion which
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God will use to bring them to salvation. But here's what we know. The word works.
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Number 11, what matters is wisdom from any source that inspires you to act ethically and spiritually.
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Now, I'll confess that this actually came from a church's website. So we have, what does it mean to act ethically?
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Who sets the standard? Those are good questions to ask, by the way. Because if you say that you are, you don't believe in objective truth, which this church does not, then what does it mean to act ethically?
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Who decides what's ethical? Who decides? What is spiritual? Same thing.
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Again, this is all very postmodern, and it really is just a denial of the truth. Here's the foundation or the baseline of what they're claiming, that there are many truths, there are many paths, there are many ways that will lead us back to God.
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But the truth is what? There is one truth, and there are many imposters. Number 12, humanist teaching cannot or can warn us against idols of the mind and spirit.
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My response to that is humanist teaching is an idol. It's also an illusion because it has the illusion of wisdom, and because it seems so liberating, right?
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It's the smart people coming up with answers to life's problems. Number 13, and we'll probably have to conclude here.
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Anything that teaches us to honor the sacred circle of life and live in harmony with the rhythms of nature has value.
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And right away, I just wanted to go right into the Lion King. But I did find, yeah,
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I did find the circle of life in the Bible. Listen to Genesis 1.
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So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him.
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Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
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That's the circle of life, only it's not really a circle, right? I don't know what it is, but it isn't a circle.
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What is it, a rhombus? I don't know, but it's not a circle.
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Man's on top of creation, that's the way it is. We have dominion over everything and all creatures are not equal.
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I guess I can do 14 and 15 super quick. Our church works for a world community that, with peace, liberty, and justice for all, that must be the
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Church of the United Nations. I'm not really familiar with, I don't even know what that means. Number 15, in order to grant the appropriate worth and dignity that each person inherently owns, we have to accept them as they are.
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Listen, when we accept people as they are, when we tell them, essentially, the Stuart Smalley gospel, that you're smart enough, you're good enough, and goodness gracious takes a life,
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God loves you. We are just giving them a hug and sending them to hell.
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Let's not do that. We need to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. We need to use his word when we're talking to people.
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And remember, when we stop using the word and try to, now, I'm not saying it has to be exclusively the
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Bible. It can be reasoning drawn from the Bible. But when we step off into their world and get into their arguments on their plane, we've lost.
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There's no victory in winning an argument over unbelief. Let's see who has the better ideas about unbelief.
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We're not going to win that. We want to declare Christ and him crucified. Let's pray. Father in heaven, what a joy it is to have your word, to know that you have preserved it, to know that you have given it to us in so many ways these days, so many ways that we can access it,
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Lord. Even if we have a smartphone and we're on a bus with someone, we have access to the Bible. Father, we thank you and we praise you for that.
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I pray that you would just cause us to think when somebody asks a question or when we engage in a discussion and we can steer it towards spiritual matters, that we need to be faithful to use the sword.
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We need to use the weaponry that you have given us and not anything else because only your word is sure to work.