Classic Friday: Stop Defending The Bible (Part 2) - [1 Corinthians 1:17 ff]

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Spurgeon on Preaching the Gospel Instead of Defending It

Does this sound familiar to you? Charles Spurgeon. The best way to spread the gospel is to spread the gospel. I believe that the best way of defending the gospel is to spread the gospel. Suppose a number of persons were to take it into their heads that they had to defend a lion, a full-grown king of beasts.

There he is in the cage, and here come all the soldiers of the army to fight for him. �Well, I would suggest to you Spurgeon said, �if they would not object and feel that it was humbling to them that they should kindly stand back and open the door and let that lion out.

I believe that would be the best way of defending him, for he will take care of himself. The best apology for the gospel is to let the gospel out. Never mind defending Deuteronomy or the whole of the Pentateuch.

Preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Let the lion out and see who will dare approach Him. The lion of the tribe of Judah will soon drive away all his adversaries. This was how Christ�s first disciples worked.

They preached Jesus Christ wherever they went, and they did not stop to apologize, but boldly bore their witness concerning Him. Last week, I gave a quote to start the sermon from Charles Spurgeon about a lion, which was a little bit different.

He loved that story so much that he often used it in his sermons. So I thought I would follow Charles Haddon Spurgeon this morning and quote it as well to remind you that the most important thing about evangelism is giving people the good.

News.

Very simple this morning. We'll follow up from last week, and that is, I don't want you to waste your valuable time defending the scriptures. I want you to be proclaiming Christ Jesus. As you know, there's no salvation alternative.

It'd be one thing if there were two saviors, right? Jesus and someone else. And then you could spend maybe not so much time on Jesus, you could spend time preaching that other salvation. But since there's only salvation in Christ Jesus, Acts 4 .12, there's salvation in what?

No one else. No other. There's no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved. I mean, if there was another perfect sin bearer, we don't have to spend as much time preaching Christ.

If there was someone who was a heavenly father who loved sinners so much that he sent his son who also loved sinners so much and who could be the sin bearer and perfect life liver,.

Then you know what?

Maybe we don't have to preach Christ as much. But God has told us that we are to preach the gospel. Dear friend, as you know, every person that you meet will either go to heaven or hell, right? There's no in between.

When I want to be motivated for evangelism, I think of hell because I say to myself, I deserve to go, but I don't because Jesus paid for my sins at Calvary. And also, I don't want other people to go. Do you want your family members to go?

Of course not. Do you want your friends to go? Of course not. You don't want anybody to go, even your enemies. It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of a living God. And no one ever gets saved by talking to them about manuscript evidence and defending the Bible.

But everyone who's saved gets saved when we preach Christ Jesus, the Lord. Romans 10, how shall they call upon him in whom they have not believed? How shall they believe in him whom they have not heard?

How shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they're sent? Just as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring glad tidings of good things. Have you ever looked at feet?

Really? Your feet are the weirdest thing about you. How do you make feet beautiful?

By bringing the good news.

Feet are beautiful of those who bring glad tidings of good things. So faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. Not defense, not arguing, not debating, not bickering, but a proclamation of the free gospel that Jesus Christ has earned for sinners.

That's what we need to do. I don't want anyone, even my enemies, to go to what the Bible has described hell as like punishment, torment, fire, unquenchable fire, eternal fire, lake of fire, destruction, second death, outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth, the pit and the worm.

Hell is eternal and hell is forever and we have been rescued from that wrath. And we have good news for people. So if you take your Bibles, please, and turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 1, I'd like to pick up where I left off last week, and that is a very simple outline this morning.

Reasons you should stop defending the Bible. Reasons you should stop defending the Bible. We want to evangelize properly and if you have 10 minutes to talk to somebody about the Lord, I don't want you to waste a lot of time on things that aren't important.

I'm not saying you can't answer a question, I'm not saying you can't say something about fossil records, but I want you to get back on target. If you've got 90 seconds and you're in an airplane and the pilot says, both engines are out, we're going to crash, prepare to meet God.

What do you say in those 10 minutes? What do you say in those 90 seconds? And everything in us, I think, wants to defend the Bible and I want to make sure you realize that you don't need to defend the Bible.

To quote the late J. Adams, when he said to some male seminary students, just between us girls, we don't argue with unbelievers, we evangelize them. That's what we're after, telling people the good news.

The first reason we saw to stop defending the Bible last week is not found in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, but just a quick review. The first reason is the Bible never defends itself. Remember we looked at Genesis and its start, John and its start, we looked at Hebrews and its start, and even if I looked at the book of Revelation, the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show his servants the things that must take place soon.

There's just this bold proclamation in the book of Revelation. The gospel of Mark, it says in 1 .1, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of.

God.

It is a declaration, not a defense. He is not back on his heels, he is on his proverbial toes. The second reason we looked at last week that you should not defend the Bible is that you're never told to defend the Bible.

Nowhere in the Bible does it say, defend the Bible. It needs defending. Some had asked the question, well what about 1 Peter 3 .15? You're supposed to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, and literally in the Greek for the hope that's among you all in ye.

What's the hope that we all have? Our own personal testimonies? The hope that we all have is the hope that 1 Peter 1 talks about, the hope of eternal life through the resurrection of the dead. We all have the same reason for the hope that's in us.

That's not a verse to defend the Bible, that's a verse to talk about who Jesus is. Thirdly, we looked at last week why we shouldn't defend the Bible, is since you can't prove the Bible to be true with anything less than the Bible, don't defend it.

In other words, how would you defend the Bible? With what? Logic? Rationale? Archaeological digs? Those won't work, especially if miracles don't work. What did Jesus say in Luke 16? He said to them, if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.

The greatest miracle of all, raising someone from the dead, that doesn't change a heart. People say, well, you know what, I watched that show, I went to hell and back. And a boy in Nebraska writes a book, you know, Heaven is for Real.

A, he didn't go to heaven, that boy didn't, and B, nobody's gone to hell and back. But if they somehow could go there and come back, that's not going to change the heart because miracles don't change an unbelieving heart.

And the fourth review is from 1 Corinthians chapter 1, stop defending the Bible because you are to give unbelievers what they don't want. They want an argument about scripture, they want to engage you about these things to prove the Bible not true, but we're not supposed to give them that.

Do you remember what we saw? Look at 1 Corinthians 1 .21, just the classic text about God's great wisdom through a crucified.

Messiah.

1 .21 of 1 Corinthians, for since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God. God was okay with, no. God was, you know, so-so with, no. He was well-pleased. What's God well-pleased with?

Through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. This is what God wants us to do, to talk about what the Lord has done, who He is. Verse 22, we know what people want, Jews ask for a sign, some big to-do, Greeks, you know, they're philosophers so they search for wisdom.

But we have a different message, Paul has a divine mandate, we have a divine mandate. We preach, we proclaim, ongoing, present tense, Christ the Messiah crucified, and do the Jews think it's a big sign, no, it's a stumbling block.

Do Gentiles think it's wisdom, no, they think it's foolishness. I mean, how do you market the cross? Remember back at, well, at least I remember back at University of Nebraska in 79, taking marketing classes, and they talked about the four P's of marketing, right, product, I guess you didn't go to school there, place, price, and what's the last one, promotion.

How do you market a product? How do you market the cross? The Jews knew about crosses, just listen to Deuteronomy 21, if a man has committed a sin worthy of death and he's put to death, you hang him on a tree.

His corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day, for he who is hanged is accursed of God. You mean to tell me this is the Messiah, this cursed one who hangs on a tree?

Yes, yes, Christ crucified. We don't discuss, we don't debate, we don't argue, we don't defend, we proclaim. It sounds like hate speech, I know, but we proclaim anyway. You mean to tell me that my sins against this holy God deserve an eternal wrath?

Yes, that's what I'm telling you. It's like taking a stick and jabbing it in someone's eye, they don't like it, this is intolerant, this is rude, we don't accept it. Oh, they will accept manuscript discussions, and did men write the Bible, and all this other stuff about archaeological digs, they'll talk about that.

And now we move to the new information. Reason number five, I have kind of a blunt way of saying it, and a nice way of saying number five, which one shall I go for? The blunt, honestly, that's what I love about this congregation, I love the way they love you, because you want the truth, right?

Just please tell me the truth. Maybe I'll go for the nice way first, and then I'll tell you the other, I'll give you both, how's that? The fifth reason why you should stop defending the Bible, is that God purposely uses evangelists and people who match the foolish message.

He purposely has the foolish message, and he has what at least other people would think, foolish people deliver it. That's the nice way. Here's the blunt way. Wanting to look good when you evangelize is a sin.

I want to win this argument, I don't want to look stupid, I don't want to look like some kind of old, you know, ancient, you know, cave dweller. But God's choices, when he has evangelism preach, and God's choices of the message, makes him show no concern what men want.

People match the message. Do you see down in verse 26? For consider your calling, brothers. That means think about it for a long time. Go for an hour walk, and think about this. Not at just a passing glance, but he says, for consider your calling, brothers.

Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose. Does God choose? Verse 27, God chose. Verse 27, God chose. Verse 28, God chose.

God is a choosing God. Verse 27, God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world. He's talking about us.

Even things that are not. Lower caste people to bring to nothing things that are. For all one great glorious grand purpose. So that no human being might boast in the presence of God. God uses people like us to evangelize.

I bet you if we went around the room and talked about personal testimony, so we would just see in the province of God. Oh, my six year old came home from Moana, and I just wanted some time away from my child.

So I dropped him at this place called Bedlam Bible Church, and they learned a bunch of Bible verses, and they had to repeat them to adults. And God used those words for my five year old son, and I became a believer.

I bet we'd hear those kind of stories. How God providentially brought someone into your life to give you this message. Maybe it was a 90 year old frail grandma. But the word is powerful to do its work.

The point is, you never have to feel or think that you're incompetent to give the gospel. If you're a Christian, you know the gospel. You know Christ's life, Christ's death, Christ's burial, Christ's resurrection, Christ's ascension, and you know about sin, and you give them the message.

You're like, well, what if they're smarter than I am? Yeah, they probably will be. I mean, I was never in the military, but I wish I was just so I could kind of talk shop with people and maybe get some, I don't know, respect from military people.

I don't know.

Make myself look good. But I would be, if I was in the military, I'd be a grunt Marine on the front lines. Because I don't know about all this kind of stuff and watching your back and coming over and getting cut off and all these kind of getting put in some kind of fire sack and all these terms.

I have no idea about any of that stuff. So do I have to be the general to evangelize? Do you have to be the colonel to evangelize? Or can you just be the grunt?

God sends you out.

And I don't want you to evangelize on company time because you're told to make widgets on company time or whatever you do. But there are plenty of opportunities. You in other words, know plenty. So minimize time defending and maximize time talking about the Lord.

And you see that with Paul, you see that with Peter, see that with Jesus, you see the John the Baptist, that's what they did. I love it when I meet somebody that I know is twice as smart as I am, but God has chosen to work that way.

Foolish, weak. Yes.

Nope.

I've got the message that can do its work. By the way, why is anybody a Christian?

Verse 30.

What's the efficient cause of you becoming a Christian? Was it your evangelist friend or mother or brother or child?

No.

And because of him, the triune God, he's talking about here, the father you are in Christ Jesus became to us wisdom from God. What's wisdom from God look like in Jesus? Righteousness, sanctification, he set apart redemption.

So that is, it is written, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. If you're not a blue blood, rich, influential, powerful person, can you evangelize? And the answer is yes. The gospel, dear friends, does not depend on perfect people preaching it.

What if you're not Cornelius Van Til or R .C. Sproul, can you evangelize? Of course you can. It's by his doing. Weak people are part of the program. But as many as received him, John says, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name.

So what we do as Christians is we say, we have been redeemed. We have been saved. We've been reconciled to God. And therefore we would like to do what he says because we'd like to live a life of gratitude as Pradeep even prayed.

And that life of gratitude is to evangelize to the glory of God and do it his way and not our way. And by the way, just as a reminder, if you've ever, I guess the word to get your attention, chomped it in evangelism, have you ever thought, I'm just ashamed and I didn't say the right thing or I bit my tongue or I should have said that and I didn't say it.

Dear friends, you stand in Christ Jesus. Did you know that? The greatest evangelist who ever lived and what God sees you, he sees the perfect evangelist because he sees the son. You're forgiven for all your evangelistic faux pas, sins and mistakes.

Let me give you another reason why you should stop defending the Bible is that men and women who are unbelievers are depraved. Men and women are depraved. Turn to Ephesians chapter four, please. I want to continue this theme with the Pauline apostle.

We will, the apostle Paul, I want to go back to first Corinthians, but for now, go to Ephesians chapter four. I want to remind you that when you evangelize people, they might be smart like Plato. They might be wise like Socrates, but there's something about their mind you need to know that will help you when you evangelize.

It will remind you. Oh yeah, I wanted to try to debate and rational rationalize and reckon with them and do all.

This stuff.

And evidence demands a verdict type of thing. But I have to remember something about the fall. Remember the New England primer. A in Adam's fall didn't sound too good, but I heard you. We send all right, good.

What happened at the fall?

Well, Paul has been talking about what it's like to be in Christ with this great plan.

Of God.

And he gets into this practical section in chapter four. And he says this, please remember this when you evangelize. Now I say this, or now I vow this, I say verse 17 of chapter four and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as Gentiles, unbelievers don't walk like they do.

How do they walk? We're not talking about walking, walking, but what's their life. They walk in the don't forget this futility of their minds. Unbelievers have defective minds. They have a mind that's meant to worship God and they don't a mind meant to honor God and they don't a mind meant to thank God and they don't.

This word futility means you've got a goal and you can't get there. And the goal is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and they can't get there. Think of the words like this if their mind is meaningless, worthless when it comes to spiritual things, not saying they can't build a bridge talking about when it comes to spiritual discernment, useless.

There's God's revelation in the book. There's God's revelation in nature and their mind, it does not compute, does not compute. So why would I spend time trying to argue with somebody whose mind doesn't work?

I would rather say, you know what, let me give you, I don't know how God does this, but somehow the end is salvation and the means is evangelism through this powerful word through.

This weak person.

So I'm just going to stick to what I've been told to do. One translation of this word futility translates as good for nothing notions. As I've been taught and I've taught you, you've got the unbeliever, they've got the AM antenna and we've got a message that's going out on FM.

And to make things worse, their antenna is broken. Their minds are futile. They can't recognize spiritual truth. The capacity they have for understanding the Bible isn't there. Verse 18, this is almost like the spiral of sin leads to more sin.

As Augustine said, the punishment of sin is sin. They are darkened in their understanding. Think about a dimmer light just going from off slowly, from on slowly off, alienated from the life of God.

Why?

Because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. Their calloused heart. I've been told don't trust a man without calluses on his hands. But one thing I know about every unbeliever, their hearts are calloused.

What can pierce through that callous? It's got to be the word of God. It can't be my intellect. I know they believe in God, Romans one. I know they have a conscience, Romans one and two. So therefore, I'm just going to proclaim it.

I don't have to defend. Verse 19, they become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality.

They are all in.

How all in are they with sin? How morally calloused are they? How insensitive are they to spiritual truth? They're greedy to practice every kind of impurity. It's like Proverbs 10. Doing wickedness is a sport to a fool.

The will of God is affected by the fall. The conscience is affected. I'm sorry. The will of man is affected by the fall. The conscience is affected by the fall. You look at yourself in the mirror today, if you did, and you said the body is affected by the what?

Fall.

If you say, I'm going to talk to someone and they're neutral, their minds are just in neutral and they're kind of coming to this, you know, freely and no other kind of external things, no other internal things.

They're neutral and I'll just talk to them. Colossians one says people who are unbelievers are hostile in mind.

They can't.

You do the four Ps of marketing to the gospel. If the gospel is powerful and it is, it does its work. If I do the four Ps of marketing to some kind of rationalistic explanation and always on my heels defending, it's not going to work.

Proves nothing to the unbeliever. Number seven. Reason number seven. And as every preacher knows, Pastor Steve knows this and the other men that are here that are preached. There's something in your sermon that you're kind of waiting to tell people.

You're like, you know what? This is a good section. This is a section I can get fired up about. I mean, I can get fired up about the whole thing, but this is that point right here where you think I can't wait to say this.

And so we'll close in prayer. We'll do this next Sunday. Oh, no, sorry. We still have time. There is a clock up there. I have no concern about the clock. Number seven. Why shouldn't you defend the Bible?

Answer.

You can't even prove the Bible is inspired to yourself. How did you figure out the Bible to be true, inerrant, infallible, authoritative, sufficient? Did you figure it out?

No.

Who did it? The internal testimony of the Spirit of God. I couldn't make myself believe in the Bible. Why am I trying to get other people to believe in the Bible? Turn back to first. Turn to John 10, please.

John 10. As you know, R .C. Sproul was a wonderful Bible teacher. And if you go to Ligonier Ministries, I would firmly and commend their wonderful ministry. R .C. always gave Latin words. And so I'm going to give you four Latin words today that are pretty simple.

Only Latin I like is words that are very similar to the English words. And so this is the testimonium internum spiritu sancti. You translate that? Internal, internum, testimonium, testimony, spiritu, spirit, sancti, Holy Spirit.

The internal testimony of the Spirit of God. That's how we know the Bible is true. Nobody proved it scientifically. Now, when I go see the Pilate stone outside of Caesarea by the Sea in Israel, they discovered in an archaeological dig a stone that talks about Pontius Pilate.

I say to myself as a Christian, this is real. This is history. But do you know how many thousands of people, how many thousands of Jewish people walk past that? That doesn't save anybody. It confirms what we know that's wonderful for us.

It's the testimony, the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. We can't prove inspiration. Who does?

The Holy Spirit.

And you see that recognition here. Not in an audible voice. Dear God, why is the Bible true?

I said it's true.

Dear God, how do I know this book is true? My bosom is burning. Book of Mormon. Dear God, teach me that this book is true. You see the effects of it here in John chapter 10. Verse 25, Jesus answered them.

I told you and you do not believe. The works that I do in my father's name bear witness among me. But you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. Mark this dear congregation. Verse 27, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.

The Spirit of God bears witness to our spirit and we understand. Verse 28, I give them eternal life and they will never perish. And no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all.

And no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand. I and the father are one. This is the inward work of the Holy Spirit. And we see the fruit here. We see the evidence right there. Reason number eight, that you shouldn't defend the Bible.

Very closely related, but I just wanted to make another point. Reason eight, you can't talk people into loving what they hate and into hating what they love. You say, but I could try. You can't talk people into loving what they hate and hating what they love.

John 3, and this is the judgment. The light is coming to the world and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works should be exposed.

Sinners love sin. Unbelievers love sin with their heart, soul, mind, and strength. Now, here's the question. Why don't you take a look at 1 Corinthians 2? Let's go back there for a second. 1 Corinthians 2, why do people love sin so much?

What's the deal with all this? And I think if you understand the reason, it might help you stay on target. And that is talk about law and gospel, God's standard of holiness. And then how Jesus met that and offers it by faith alone.

1 Corinthians 2, 14, the natural person.

That's the unbeliever.

That's not the supernatural person, the believer. The unbeliever does not accept the things of the spirit of God. They are folly to him and he's not able to understand because they're spiritually discerned.

Why do people disbelieve? I'll give you the answer through two ungodly philosophers who at least have the decency to be honest. Nietzsche, we immoralists, sexual immoralists, are trying with all of our strength to take the concept of guilt and the concept of punishment out of the world again.

I want to sin and I don't want a conscience and creation to somehow condemn me. Conscience either accusing or excusing. My conscience is accusing me because adultery is written on my heart. That is, do not commit it.

So I've got to come up with some kind of machination so that the world is meaningless and I can do what I want. That's how the unbeliever thinks. And at least he's honest. And by the way, if you're a Christian, you grow up at a Christian home and you're 18, 22, 25, and you begin to say, I'm not really sure I believe in the Bible anymore.

You know what I always say to you? If a young man comes and says that to me, I always say, I'm sorry to hear that.

What's her name?

And the same goes true for young ladies and for older people who want to do things they ought not to do. Huxley, who wrote Brave New World, if you've never read it, that's okay. We're living in it. I had motive for not wanting the world to have meaning.

Consequently, I assumed that it had none and was able, without any difficulty, to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. One click away on Google if he was in our century. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with the problem in pure metaphysics.

It's not metaphysics. It's not like some philosophy. He's concerned to prove there's no God for a valid reason.

Why?

He personally should not do as he wants to do. Or why his friend should not seize political power and govern in a way to find most advantageous for themselves. Here's the punchline for Huxley. For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.

I'd like to be sexually free to do whatever I want. I can't have this be true. Man wrote it. There's contradictions. Archaeology doesn't match up. And you see the machinations going through their mind.

There's a reason for that. How can you cut through that with your own rationale? There's no possible way. Unbelievers stand accused by creation. They're already condemned. How can I then rationalize with them to be out of that scenario?

I need to give them not general revelation or my own thoughts. I need to give them special revelation, the gospel. How do you deal with people in Romans 1? Even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened.

Professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. How do you evangelize people that worship bugs and scorpions and money and fame?

The fool has said in his heart, there's what? No God. They're not stupid. It's not an IQ issue. It's a moral issue. And then lastly, why should you stop defending the Bible? And we'll go out on a very, very high note.

And that is the Lord Jesus never defended the Bible. Jesus never defended the Bible. And I know you could say to me, WWJD doesn't always work. That's true. Does anybody here still have a bracelet on WWJD?

Nobody? Wow.

That's amazing. Very mature congregation. There are some things Jesus does. We can't follow his example, right? He's the perfect God man. He dies, subordinary death. There are some things we can imitate.

And when we watch him pray, and then he says, pray like this. Oh, he's taught us to pray. There's some things when we watch Jesus, that would be good for us to learn. What was Jesus's view of the Old Testament?

Jesus comes on the scene, and at age 30, he's instituted into the ministry of proclamation. And he's prophet, priest, and king. What would be the first thing Jesus would do if there were errors in the Old Testament?

The Old Testament is pretty big. There's a lot of stuff in the Old Testament. The first thing Jesus would do, if he had any business being the prophet, is that Jesus would come, and he would tell us, while some of this is true, this whole deal with Jonah, you know, and some fish, and spitting him up, and all that.

I mean, it's just like this allegory of Israel, and, you know, a Song of Solomon, or whatever. 400 years after Malachi has been written in our Bible, or 2 Chronicles in the Jewish Bible, 400 years is a lot of years for manuscript evidence, for other things to get involved, books added, books subtracted.