Defending The Bible As The Word Of God

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And so what I'm gonna try to do tonight with every fiber in my being, and I feel as tired as you look, but I'm glad you're here, so I will pray that God will bless you, is that you need to spend every minute that you can not defending the
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Bible, but proclaiming the Bible. That's what I'm gonna try to get you to do. And so here's how we'll work it tonight.
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I wanna first think about our mindset from 2 Corinthians chapter 10. Then we'll see how horrific the world thinks the cross is and remind you about 1
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Corinthians chapter one. Then I'm going to give you six reasons why you should defend the
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Bible by proclaiming it and therefore proclaiming Christ Jesus. Okay, are you ready?
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I know it's Sunday night, and I had an early call this morning as well to get to the airport to pick up Kim.
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Kim and Luke are in town, so I'm glad for that. But we will try to keep this at a no -compromise pace.
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Always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. So you need a Bible? We're gonna be engaged. Let's turn our
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Bibles first to 2 Corinthians chapter 10, and I want to just get you to think that the way you evangelize is important.
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I want you to have the right rules of engagement. Conventional warfare is not going to work when it comes to defending the
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Bible. So we'll look at our mindset in 2 Corinthians 10. We'll look at the grossness of the cross for the unbeliever in 1
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Corinthians one, and then we'll give you the six reasons. So I'd like to do a little exposition before I give you to those six reasons.
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Then maybe we'll have some comments at the very end. We'll see how we go. If you look at 2
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Corinthians chapter 10, we need to get our minds right. Kind of reminds me of that old movie,
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Cool Hand Luke, you need to get your mind right, boy. And we need to be prepared for counterintuitive warfare.
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The way you want to defend the Bible is not necessarily going to be the right way.
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And so I'm going to try to get you to forget your civilian ways and think the army way, the military way,
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God's way. So just look at 2 Corinthians 10 .3, if you would, to remind us that though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh.
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2 Corinthians 10 .4, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.
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Paul is basically saying you need to use the right kind of weapons in this spiritual battle.
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Don't you need the right kind of weapons if you're in the army and you're fighting the enemy? So too here you need the right kind of weapons.
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Peashooters are panzers, rubber bands are bazookas.
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I wrote a few more down. Spit wads are howitzers, BB guns are 50 caliber machine guns.
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In California at the swap meets, they're selling these PVC tubes and they're really kind of neat and you just blow on the end of the tube and out shoots this small miniature marshmallow.
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And I walked by the guy and I said, they were three bucks or five bucks or something. And he said, yeah, they go way over there.
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It was in a drive -in movie theater where they had the swap meet. And he said, yeah, I could hit the snack bar from here.
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I said, if you can hit the snack bar from here, I'll buy one of those. And so we loaded the thing up and shot it way over there.
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It's like shooting it up to the balcony and he shot it over there and thought, okay, here's five bucks I can see you're very impressed.
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You're like, oh, great. But it's like shooting marshmallow guns at some kind of tank when
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I need big artillery. I need bazooka.
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How can you fight satanic forces that you can't see? With IQ, mental acumen.
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Ephesians six says, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
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What is our real enemy? Look at verse five. It's the way people think. That's what we're after.
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That's what we have to combat. That's why we need to have our weapons chosen wisely.
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We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing.
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Lofty thing, the picture here is still military. You've got a big castle and it's got a moat and then a huge, huge wall that you'd have to climb up.
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And that's the big lofty thing that we're going to have to destroy.
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We're destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God.
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And we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.
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We're after prisoners of war. We're after POWs and we're after the minds of these people.
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Now let's turn to 1 Corinthians 1. Now I assume you know 1 Corinthians 1 because we've been in 1
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Corinthians for quite some time. I think we're 40 messages in into the longest book of the
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New Testament, but at the rate we're going now, eight verses a week, we're going to get done pretty fast, aren't we? I'm going to slow down just on purpose.
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No. To remind you and to remind anyone who's listening who doesn't come regularly on Sunday morning, let's go to 1
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Corinthians 1, verse 18. And I want to remind you of what people think of your message that comes from the
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Bible. And we're so far removed. We sing songs about the cross in some kind of sentimental fashion, but the cross is a very, very gross, grotesque thing back in the days of the
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Bible. 1 Corinthians 1 .18. What's a good symbol for a religion?
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Oh, maybe a stalk of grain would be nice. You know, fertility. What's a good symbol for a religious meeting?
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Maybe how about a basket of fruit? A few pomegranates and a few oranges. You know,
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God will be good to us and give us fruit. But how about this? For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to those, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.
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I've said before several weeks ago when we preached this passage that the unbeliever thinks the cross is stupid, moronic, nonsensical, contemptible, worthy of unbelief.
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Listen to what one man said, that one man could die on a piece of wood on a nondescript hill in a nondescript part of the world and thereby determine the destiny of every person who has ever lived seems stupid.
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How can an unbeliever think the cross saves when Messiahs don't die naked tortured on a tree, do they?
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Why is the word of cross foolish? But it also makes people think that they're sinful.
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Why is the word of the cross foolish? Well, you've got to recognize your own sin. Goes contrary to human wisdom.
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Cicero wrote the very word cross should be removed not only from the person of the Roman citizen, but from his thoughts, his eyes, his ears.
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There's a big thing going on in evangelicalism and that is cussing by pastors. And they think it's really cool, you know, if you cuss and swear from the pulpit, the young crowd will kind of like that.
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Well, the cross to a person back 2000 years ago was like a swear word, was like a bad word.
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We never said this here, but until we got here rather, my kids would come home and they'd say, you know, the kid down the street, they said a swear.
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Swears, they swear and I thought, yeah, that's bad. Well, to the unbeliever looking at this cross, it was like a swear word.
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It wasn't an object of admiration. Wasn't the old rugged cross and the stained glass windows with the cross.
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Don Carson said, what would you think if a woman came to work wearing earrings stamped with an image of the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima?
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What would you think of a church building adorned with the fresco of the mass graves at Auschwitz?
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They didn't like it at all. It was crude and if you went to a dinner party and you dressed up, you didn't say the word cross.
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Look down at verse 21. Look down at verse 21 of the same chapter.
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How does God make foolish the wisdom of the world? For since the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not come to know
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God. God was well -pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
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Human reasoning, we're going to learn in just a little bit, does not get you to understand who
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God is. Because what does the text say? It doesn't make sense to the unbeliever.
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And do you know what? It's not supposed to. It's not supposed to. It's easier to get to Venus by climbing a ladder made of Jell -O than it is to get an unbeliever to say, that's really neat, apart from the
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Spirit of God. Look at down in verse 22.
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So what do we do for these people who don't think rightly? And it seems like it's just banging our head against the wall.
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How are we supposed to talk to people about the cross? Paul says,
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I give them what they don't want. Well, that's interesting. For indeed, verse 22 of 1
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Corinthians 1, Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom. The Jews say, we want a miracle.
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We want to have some child prodigy who's got a 200 IQ and they are really smart and can answer math questions at age three.
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Well, we might go for that. Remember the Jews always asking for signs. Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.
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Jesus answered Matthew 12, an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of the prophet
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Jonah. Well, if you don't want signs, the Greeks want wisdom. 50 different philosophical parties, they all wanted to find wisdom.
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And what do you give them? Both the religious and the unreligious. Verse 23, here's what we do.
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We preach Christ crucified to the Jews, a stumbling block and he knew it as a
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Jew because remember what he did with Stephen. To the Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness.
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Jews want a sign, philosophers want rationale, he gives them the cross.
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He doesn't dispute, he doesn't discuss, he doesn't debate. He says, here's the executed
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Messiah. Now for the next few minutes, I'm going to try to do something on purpose to you and I hope you're gonna still be my friend afterwards.
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I'm going to try to make you be revolted at death penalties.
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Remember, if Jesus would have just died as a martyr, everybody could have said he died for a good cause.
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Band of brothers, he laid down his life for someone else and that's kind of nice or he just died a valiant death.
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But my question to you right now before I try to make you disgusted is how do you take a death penalty, a public execution and say the way you view that public execution determines where you go to heaven?
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Because 2000 years ago, that's exactly what these people thought. Here's a public executed criminal and you mean to tell me the way
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I view that is going to determine am I forgiven or not? Ling Chi was known as the lingering death or slow slicing.
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The torturer slowly cuts and removes several body parts, extending the victim's life and torture as long as possible.
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The reason why they did that is according to Confucius, if you cut a body into pieces, there's no spiritual afterlife.
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And so can you imagine thinking of some person who's going to have the slow slicing, the way
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I think about that slow slicing is going to determine my eternal life. How about the
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Spanish tickler? The victim was tied up naked, sometimes in public and then the torturers began mutilating them, usually starting on the limbs and working towards the neck and then the face, which was always saved for last.
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See, we think of the cross as jewelry. The people back in those days think of the cross as public execution.
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Southeast Asia, sometimes they would execute people by the elephant and the elephants were very smart and could be trained to either crush the person, which would be a quick death, or slowly, slowly dismember them in a prolonged manner.
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I have some really gross ones, but I don't think I'll get too gross. This one's getting grosser.
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This particular way they would execute people is they would slash the victim's throat with a sharp object and then they would pull their tongue out through the open wound.
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And see, the cross is no different because the cross is a public execution. It's a slow torture where the person is suffocating slowly, trying to rise up himself so he can get enough breath.
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And so the Jew comes along and the Greek comes along. The Jew thought about it worse because cursed is the man who is hung from a tree.
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He's not just cursed by people, he's cursed by God. So he's supposed to be my redeemer, my Messiah?
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I'm supposed to trust in that one? That's no reigning Messiah. There he is, naked on a tree, and he can't even save himself.
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And then the Greek is thinking, yeah, that person that was just slowly killed by the elephant, he's the Messiah who's gonna take over the
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Roman Empire and then have a millennial kingdom and everything else. It just strikes us, not so stupidly, because we sing the old rugged cross on a hill far away.
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We're too close to it. Execution by sawing, they'd hang the person upside down so as they sawed the torso in half, the blood would stay down in the brain so you'd stay awake longer.
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And the list goes on and on and on. So what do we do?
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Look at verse 23. What are our options? This is what we're called to do.
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This is what we're always called to do. We preach Christ, not even risen. Risen has a little bit more nicety to it.
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Up from the grave he arose. He's victorious. No, here's the one we preach.
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You don't like it, Jews. You don't like it, Greeks. But this is the way of salvation. We preach
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Christ, what? Crucified.
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To the Jews, they don't like it. It's a scandal. Literally, the Greek is a scandalon. Gentiles, foolishness.
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How do the Greeks perceive the Christian message? AD 178, Celsus said, let no cultured person draw near, none wise and none sensible for all that kind of thing we count evil.
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But if a man is ignorant, if a man is wanting incense and culture, if anybody is a fool, let him become a
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Christian. I could switch it around. Let anybody who thinks that they're uncultured and they're a fool, believe that some public execution could cause the salvation of many.
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Rabbi Trifo said, sir, these and such like passages of scripture compel us to await one who is great and glorious and takes the everlasting kingdom from the ancient of days as son of man.
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But this your so -called Christ is without honor and without glory so that he has even fallen into the uttermost curse that is in the law of God for he was crucified.
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Show me somebody today who talks about the crucifixion of Christ Jesus, public execution, tortured naked on a tree, and I'll show you what the society in five, maybe 15 or 20 will say is hate speech.
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Hate speech. The grandfather of presuppositional apologetics was a man named
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Cornelius Van Til. Just to back up for a second before we dive back in, there's two ways to do apologetics are giving reasons for the faith.
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Two ways. The first way is give evidences that demand a verdict. You know that book from Josh McDowell.
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And we give archeology, science, prophecy, change lives, et cetera. It's evidence.
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We give an evidence to a person and say, see, this is compelling evidence, therefore you should believe. And I'm going to be arguing against that tonight.
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I'm going to be arguing for the other school of apologetics called presuppositionalism.
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Presuppositionalism. And we're presupposing certain things about God, the Bible, the world, et cetera.
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And we're going to get to those presuppositions in just a moment. So evidence, presuppositionalism.
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The father, the grandfather of modern day presuppositionalism was asked a question.
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Pradeep will especially like this since he's getting his doctorate, his PhD in apologetics. Dr. Van Til, how do you know that what you believe is true?
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I am sure of my faith because it sources the Bible, the revealed word of God. But doesn't it then become necessary to establish that the scriptures as true and that they are, as we know them, indeed the word of God?
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Should we then have to defend them? Van Til, the problem with that question is that it shifts the starting point.
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I concede that the truth of the Bible is a presupposition. My argument is simply that this presupposition is the only one from which a
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Christian can begin without surrendering the sovereignty of God. Are you saying that any kind of human test applied to God and his word violates the concept of God?
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Van Til, that is my basic position. I might note here,
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Dr. Van Til, that your supporters see you as a great defender of the faith. You always say that before you butter them up before the final question.
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And even in a recent major critique of your thought, it was pointed out that your apologetic represents a position that is now encountered with increasing frequency.
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On the other hand, isn't it true that you have been accused by your opponents of substituting proclamation for argument?
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Isn't it true that you have been accused by your opponents of substituting proclamation for argument, of championing the idea that the
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Christian faith is its own best defense? Van Til, I believe in proclamation.
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I also believe in the need of defending the faith. Scripture enjoins me to always be ready to give an account of my faith.
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But there are two ways of defending the faith. One of these begins from man as self -sufficient and works up to God, while the other begins from the triune
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God of Scripture and relates all things to him. The time we have left, let me give you six reasons that you must defend the
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Bible as the word of God by proclaiming it instead of defending it. And when you proclaim it, you will therefore proclaim
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Christ Jesus. As my father would say, just between us girls, you don't defend the
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Bible with unbelievers, you evangelize unbelievers. All right, few of you,
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I have your eyes closed. I'm gonna just do something here to wake everybody up. That's my heartbeat.
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I went in for a physical last week and I've been really working out a lot. So I was thinking my heart rate was gonna be about 50, you know, biker 50.
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And I wanted him to say, oh, you know, 50, you must be a biker or a runner. And I was gonna say, yes, I am.
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And then I sat down and he said, your heartbeat sure fast for a young man like you.
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I thought, oh, great. I said, well, if you were sitting in one of these little gowns that go down to your belly button, you'd probably be nervous too, pal.
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I didn't say that at all. That's what I was thinking. The first reason you must defend the
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Bible as the word of God by proclaiming it is number one, you cannot prove the
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Bible to be true with anything less than the Bible. You cannot prove the Bible to be true with anything less than the
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Bible. Case in point, try to prove the Bible true by using miracles and you still can't do it.
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And I'm going to try to prove to you that the Bible is greater than miracles. If you can't use miracles to prove the
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Bible, then you better use something that you can prove the Bible with. And that is the Bible itself. You cannot prove the inspiration of Scripture by the miracles in the
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Bible or any other miracle. Turn with me, if you would, to Luke 16.
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Luke 16, you need to stick with what really can change the people, the
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Bible and not something that's less than the Bible. Miracles prove nothing to a human heart that's an unbelieving heart.
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They just want more. They just want it more often. Show an unbeliever a miracle, that's not going to convince them.
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Scoffers that don't believe the Bible aren't going to believe miracles either. So what do we do?
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Bow down to their level. Scripture's greater than miracles. And therefore, Kurt Daniel says, you cannot prove the greater by the lesser.
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Very quickly, without getting into this parable too much, I don't want to spend time doing that, but I want to let you see that the
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Scriptures are the only way to overcome unbelief, never miracles. By the way, that's what the
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Jews wanted anyway. Luke 16, verse 19. ESV, there was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.
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And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table.
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Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. Poor man died and was carried by the angel to Abraham's side.
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The rich man also died and was buried. And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw
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Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. He called out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send
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Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this very flame.
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He who served me at my feet up there, now have him serve me here too. But Abraham said, child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things and Lazarus in like manner bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in anguish.
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Besides all this, between us and you, a great chasm has been fixed in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able.
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None may cross from here to us. And he said, then I beg you, Father, to send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them lest they also come into this place of torment.
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You want to make sure you get this congregation, verse 29 and 30 and 31. But Abraham said, they have
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Moses and the prophets. They have the scriptures. Let them hear them. And he said, no,
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Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. He said to him, if they do not hear
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Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.
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The unbelieving heart could see someone rise from the dead and still not believe. MacArthur says, this speaks powerfully of the singular sufficiency of scripture to overcome unbelief.
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And speaking of Lazarus, what happened in the real gospel account with Lazarus to the
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Pharisees who saw Lazarus raised from the dead? Did they believe? Oh, we saw the miracle, therefore we believe.
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But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done, John 11. So the chief priests and the
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Pharisees gathered the council together and said, what are we to do? For this man performs many signs.
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If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him. And the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.
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Since you can't prove the Bible by miracles, don't try to attempt the
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Bible by any other evidence either. Use the word of God.
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Turn with me, if you would, to Hebrews chapter four. I will be concise with my comments, but I have to talk about it anyway, because I'm going to try to get you to say the
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Bible says over and over and over. Even if that's not what the people want, you need to teach them who
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Jesus is. And I don't want you to spend any time defending the Bible because no one gets saved by your defense of the
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Bible. Hebrews chapter four, verse 12, we're just diving into it. Verse 12 of Hebrews four, for evidences that demand a verdict are living and active.
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Oh, sorry, I just read into that. That was a different study Bible that I had. For the word of God, I want something powerful.
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I want something that works. I want something that can get into the inner recesses of this person that just is glossy on the outside.
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It's trying to keep me at arm's distance. I can't get into his brain, into his conscience, into his mind. What can penetrate, what can permeate right down into his soul?
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The word of God is living and active and sharper than any literally two -edged surgeon's scalpel.
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This is not some big sword that you're wielding around like this. This is microsurgery. I remember being in the operating room and they'd have brain surgery and they shaved the person's head and they've got all the different kind of markers, the permanent markers and where they're going to go.
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And they get ready to kind of get inside of the brain. They bore the holes in the skull and then when they're ready to do the operations, it's with just micro -scalpels.
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Precise. Able to just really get down in there. That's exactly what the word of God is. It can pierce things that can't even be pierced.
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Piercing as far as a division of soul and spirit. They're the same thing. They're not different.
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Of both joints and marrow and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Evidences can't do this.
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Miracles can't do this. Here's God's polygraph that can't be tricked. No recesses so dark that God's Word can't penetrate them.
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This is x -ray vision to the soul. And if your approach is, well, you know, my life's really been changed, therefore the
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Scriptures are true. The person, if they're smart, says, you know, Mormon's lives are changed too. AA people's lives are changed too.
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People down at the Moose's Elk's Lodge are changed too. Mason's lives are changed too, at least externally.
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Calvin said, there is nothing so hard or firm in a man, nothing so deeply hidden that the efficacy of the
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Word does not penetrate through it. It discerns.
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The Greek word is, it's a critic. And then for those of you that might be a little sleepy, this should wake you up.
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Verse 13, and there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are naked, gymna, all things are without airbrush, all things are without the skinny carnival mirrors, all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom they have to do.
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What's that word laid bare? It's where we get the word trach. You know what a tracheotomy is?
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Well, how would you kill a lamb back in those days? Well, you could either let the lamb run by and then just poke it and hope you poked it a good spot.
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You could run around kind of like you get the pigs all slicked up and then you run around and try to catch them. No, there's a much better way to do it.
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And that is, you'd get the lamb, you could get your leg up around the lamb, and then you push the head down of the lamb and you expose its trache, right there.
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The lamb's head, you've got your leg around there. You know, if I was an emergent pastor,
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I'd show you a little video clip. Let's see an R -rated movie now, a picture of the sacrifice of the lamb.
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And you have it open and exposed and it's easier because then you can just slit the carotid and slit the jugular vein because it's just open, it's laid bare.
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I told you kids wouldn't sleep now, right? That's what the
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Word of God does. Prophecy doesn't do it, changed life doesn't do it. Some kind of archeological evidence doesn't do it.
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It's laid bare by the Word of God. It exposes man. So I say, get the
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Word out. Number, oh, no, before I go to number two, how about this? Let me come about it from this approach.
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Did you know that the personal experience of hell by a person in hell will still not convince them of the loveliness of Christ?
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You show people, you show me somebody in hell today and they still will not say, oh, yeah, you know, this hell is really real.
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What God says is really true and therefore I'll change my heart. Well, they don't have it in them.
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The sinner in hell will want to be in hell because there's one thing the sinner in hell hates more than his torment. And that's hating the holy
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God who made him. If people who are raised from the dead won't convince people that the
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Bible is true, that God is true, then why would I use something less?
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Let me use the greatest thing. Miracles can't prove anything to an unbeliever. So your determination to preach
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Christ should go up because that can save them. Reason number two, you must remember the depravity of man so that you proclaim the
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Bible, not defend it or give reasons to believe it. You must remember the depravity of man.
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The second reason you must defend the Bible. Let's turn to Ephesians chapter four. I wanna have this in one sermon tonight.
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So how am I, if I'm only on number two, how am I gonna get through six? This morning I had about seven applications of how to imitate
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Paul and we got two. So that's several, isn't it? Isn't two several? In the new math, yes, thank you.
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All right, we'll go a little quicker. Ephesians chapter four. If you remember the depravity of man, you're going to remember something about their mind and their emotions and how they think.
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And so your rationalization should decrease because how are you going to rationalize an unbeliever's mind?
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Ephesians four. Tell me that the fall does not affect the mind. When you look at Ephesians four, 17, 18 and 19.
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Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as a Gentiles or unbelievers do.
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How do unbelievers walk? In the futility of their mind. In the futility of their mind.
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Their mind's defective. It means to be void or no use, meaningless, useless, worthless.
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They are darkened in their understanding. It's like it's compounded, it's worse.
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Alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
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Unbelievers have a defective mind that will not worship God. They cannot think properly.
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Their minds, one commentator called them good for nothing notions. Their minds continue.
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Now you say, yes, but I've met unbelievers, they're not stupid. Correct, unbelievers are not stupid.
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Have you met smart unbelievers? But the futility of their mind because of the fall is much different than stupidity.
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Paul would not say, oh, Plato's stupid. Socrates is stupid. But he would say their mind should be worshiping
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God, thanking God, but it's futile. They're walking as Gentiles do. Why? Because the punishment of sin is more sin.
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The outcome is they practice things with greediness. They're drooling for it.
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Ask yourself the question, what did the fall do to man's mind? What does sin do to man's logic?
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What does sin do to man's reasoning? What does the fall do to man's rationale? And if rationalism by definition is a method of apologetics that assumes the natural man has the ability to comprehend the gospel message of Christ, if given sufficient rationalistic argumentation, then you ought to say to yourself, but I know the mind of man differently, and I'm not going to think like Aquinas and other people who think that the mind is neutral.
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If the mind is neutral, rationalize. If the mind is righteous, rationalize. But if the mind is depraved, futile, darkened, greedy, and unspiritual, then how can you rationalize with a person?
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True or false? Rationalism is ultimately based on the self -sufficiency of human reason.
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The answer is true. True or false? Rationalism does not grasp the depth of total depravity.
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True. True. Giving proofs to a person whose mind doesn't work, compelling reason for the man to think through issues.
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Colossians 1 says people who are unbelievers are hostile in mind. I don't trust an unbeliever's mind that they can reason through issues that are scriptural because the
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Bible teaches the opposite. Total depravity affects the mind. And the opposite view, this view of apologetics that is evidentialism has its roots in Roman Catholicism.
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Armenians do it as well. Montgomery, Pinnock, Geisler. Others do who are less consistent
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Calvinists. I'm gonna get in so much trouble now when I say this, but that's okay. We can always edit the tape.
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I love these next few guys. I mean, I really love them. And when you see them in the hall of faith, they're up to the front and I'm back 900 rows.
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I remember once I was gonna scalp, I was an unbeliever, scalp some Lakers tickets and a guy was gonna give me the tickets for the playoffs.
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And he showed me the inside of the forum and where I would sit. And he showed me the tickets,
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J4, seat six. And I go, this is really gonna be good. And he said, see right there, you got the bottom part and then this row and that row and another row you're close.
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I went and got the tickets and I was at the very top of everything. He just added two more sections of seats on top of his little drawing and I fell for it.
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I said, what does that have to do with anything? Doesn't have to do with anything.
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He said, I'm gonna be way in the back and Sproul, B .B. Warfield, Francis Schaeffer, Buswell, Gershner are gonna be up close.
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But they are still men who promote the depravity of man and then walk across the classroom hallway to teach apologetics with an apologetical view that somehow makes man's mind less than totally depraved.
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I like evidence that demands a verdict. I like manuscript evidence. I like changed lives.
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I like archeology. I like prophecy for the believer.
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Doesn't it strengthen your faith? But it does nothing to the unbeliever. It does nothing to the unbeliever because there's a moral problem.
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They are not intellectually neutral. You can't treat some unbeliever as if they've got some spiritual antenna because they don't.
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So I say, preach the Bible. Number three, closely related. You can't talk people into loving what they hate and hating and into hating what they love.
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Tied closely together with number two is number three. You fill in the blank, say it out loud.
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The fool has said in his heart, there's no God. This is not the word for stupid person.
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This is the word for morally foolish. The fool has said in his heart, there's no
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God, why? Because how do you sin all day long and sleep at night? Because you've been given a conscience.
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Sinners love their sin with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. So what do they have to do? They have to create something.
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They have to have a construction in their mind to say, here's who this God is. He's not quite as holy. I'm not quite as sinful.
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Option two, evolution. Option three, annihilation. The list goes on and on. Ados Huxley, I had motive for not wanting the world to have meaning.
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Consequently, assumed that it had none and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption.
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The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with the problem in pure metaphysics.
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He is concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do, listen, as he wants to do.
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For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.
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The unbeliever has no basis for what they believe. The unbelievers can't make sense of their own life. And professing to be wise, they became what?
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Fools, Romans chapter one. How can the use of argument, rationalization, debate, archeology, manuscript evidence, and everything else convince a person, no, no, your nature should change and I want you to start loving what you hate and hate what you love.
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It can't happen. Number four.
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Oh, let me just give you a Nietzsche quote before I give you four. We immoralists are trying with all our strength to take the concept of guilt and the concept of punishment out of the world again.
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Number four. The fourth reason that you should defend the
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Bible and not try to proclaim the Bible and not defend it is the internal testimony of the
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Holy Spirit is the only hope for an unbeliever. The internal testimony of the
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Holy Spirit. Since Boyer is right, the natural man lacks the equipment necessary to examine spiritual things.
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He is like a blind man at an art gallery, like a deaf man at a symphony. Since that's true, what do we need?
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Who do we need? The special regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. Now, let me ask you this.
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I've led up to all this and this is almost the punchline right here. Did you know you can't even prove the
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Bible to be inspired to yourself? You can't force yourself to say,
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I'm gonna figure out how the Bible is true and I'll make myself believe that because the person that makes you believe that is the
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Spirit of God. So why are you trying to convince other people of the truth when you've been told by God to preach to them?
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You didn't even come up with the Bible as inspired and God breathed inerrant, infallible, authoritative and sufficient on your own anyway.
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It's the internal work of the Spirit of God to give you the
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Latin words of the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. Testimonium internum spiritu sancti.
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Even though I don't think R .C. Sproul's right in apologetics, he's certainly right on most everything else.
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Martin Luther, the Bible cannot be understood simply by study or talent. You must count only on the influence of the
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Holy Spirit. John Calvin, these words will not obtain full credit in the hearts of men until they're sealed by the inward testimony of the
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Holy Spirit. And if they need the Spirit of God to understand that the
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Bible is true, how does the Holy Spirit get into someone? Well, you're gonna have to preach the gospel to them, not give them evidence.
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Westminster Confession, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof is from the inward work of the
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Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts. Hebrews 3, just as the
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Spirit says, quoting the Old Testament. Hebrews 10, the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us.
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How do you know the Bible's true? Because the Bible says it's true. If you're Roman Catholic, how do you know the Bible's true?
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Because the church says it is. If you're a charismatic, how do you know the Bible's true? Because I feel it to be true.
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I've experienced to be true. French Confession of Faith, 1559.
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We know these books to be canonical by the testimony of inward illumination of the
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Holy Spirit. The natural man does not accept the things of the
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Spirit for they are folly to him. And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned, right?
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The unbeliever says, I'm going to stiff arm you in the chin. I will rebuff you. I will rebuke you.
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I will attack you. Because that's what a natural man does. No trespassing.
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Enter at your own risk. Mean dog. Beware. That's what the unbelievers do.
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And they don't put a welcome mat out at their hearts to the Word of God. The only way it's done is when they have the Spirit of God and the
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Spirit comes through the message preached. The highest proof of Scripture derives in general from the fact that God in person speaks in it.
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The testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason. One reformer said.
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Number five. Okay, we're going to finish this. We're going to finish this. When I was younger, I thought if you preached over 60 minutes, you must be a really good preacher.
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You tell your friends back at seminary, I preach for 65 minutes. Now I tell pretty much people what
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Spurgeon would say. If you can't tell people in 45 minutes what you can tell them, then you can never tell them. So Charles, I'm at 47 minutes.
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Two more. Number five. The Scriptures are self -authenticating and they don't need to be defended.
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Reason to defend the Bible as the Word by proclaiming it. Scriptures are self -authenticating, self -attesting.
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You say, you know what? When you say, how do you know the Bible's true? And you say, because it is written, because the
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Bible says. I don't really like that. That's circular reasoning. Guilty as charged.
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It is circular reasoning, I confess. It is circular reasoning, but friends, all men argue in circles.
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I just happen to argue in circles that are biblical. How about you? That's right from Kurt Daniel.
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That's how he says it, and that's right. Van Til said, stated that true faith is a step of faith into the light of true knowledge.
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Or the self -attesting Christ of Scripture has always been my starting point for everything I have said.
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In the beginning, God. Tell me one prophet who somehow said, you know,
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Elijah on the mountain range of Carmel. Now let me just kind of prove to you that the Bible's true first before I say these things.
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Nobody talks like that. You say, well, Acts 17, but we'll get to Acts 17 soon enough.
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Van Til was asked a question, evangelicals then, who from your way of thinking should know better and are inadvertently diluting their view of God.
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Is this it? Do you assign such exclusive epistemological authority to Scripture that you part company even with fellow
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Calvinists? Van Til, yes, my good friend, Gordon Clark, believes in the inerrancy of the Bible, but he builds his philosophical outlook not simply on the
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Scriptures as such, but on the law of contradiction, which has its classic statement in Aristotle, and which to my way of thinking has turned out to be an eternally static turnpike in the sky.
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And lastly, number six, and we'll close. Satan is alive and active, therefore you need a more powerful weapon than Satan.
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Satan blinds people, he deceives them, he sends out false teachers, he's at work in the sons of disobedience, he blinds the minds of people, he snatches truth from them,
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Matthew 13. So how are you going to get around Satan?
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Arguments. And by the way, here's some really good news. If you're not a good arguer, if you haven't been to classic apologetics seminars, if you have not read
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Evidence as a Man to Verdict, if you don't know of a good testimony in your heart, if you don't know anything about manuscripts, dating, anything about archeology, do you know you can still talk to an unbeliever?
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If you're a Christian, you can talk to the smartest man ever born about the gospel. At Harvard, at Yale, at Oxford, you know the truth, because God said,
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God saves through the truth proclaimed. A message about Christ is what saves people. Romans chapter 10.
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You don't need to prove the Bible is true, and you don't need to prove that God exists. Just like in Romans chapter one.
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Every unbeliever believes in God. There's no such thing as an atheist, no such thing as an agnostic, because Romans chapter one says, they all believe there's a
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God, but they have to push the truth of this God underwater so they can live at night and sin during the day. Spurgeon snorted when asked if he would defend the
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Bible. Defend the Bible? I'd as soon defend a lion. If you have five minutes to talk to an unbeliever, and they ask you something about, you know, did
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Adam have a belly button? Where did Cain get his wife? I think it's okay if you answer the question.
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I think it's okay if you said, now let me give you an answer. But that's not the real issue here. The real issue is short life, eternal sins, eternal damnation, holy
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God, and go through the gospel to preach them the truth. And guess what? If the spirit of God saves them, they'll come to you and they'll go, well, you know,
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I really believe most of the Bible, but that James is a kind of a straw epistle, and I'm not quite sure
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I believe what the gospel of Mark says. Show me an unbeliever who gets saved, and what will I show you?
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I'll show you somebody that says, I accept the word of God, because they have the internal testimony of the spirit. By the way,
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I wish we had about 70 to 80 new Christians around this place. Wouldn't that be good? The new
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Christians, show me new Christians that are involved with defending the Bible. They're saying, God changed my life, let me tell you about God.
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New Christians are never involved in church splits because it would never come to their mind. It takes a lot of years to grow before you wanna be involved in a church split.
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You gotta mature a long way before you start fighting over turf wars. The new Christians say,
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I met a savior. No, he met me. And I wanna tell you about the only savior who can save from sins.
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Well, the Bible's not real. How can you believe that ancient book? It was written by men. Whatever you think about that book, it doesn't matter because the
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Bible says that you believe in God, and the Bible says Jesus is the only son of God who died a substitutionary atonement on the cross, was raised from the dead, and you better believe.
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You need to look to him and live. Go back to Numbers chapter 21. They're all getting bit by these snakes, and God, in his mercy, says,
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Moses, hold up the brazen serpent, and if they look to it, they'll live. Well, I don't really know if that's brazen.
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I don't really know if it's a serpent. How do I know it's really a brazen serpent? How do I know if I really look, I will live? How do
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I know even Moses is who he says he is? I'm not quite sure. And people are running around. I know you're dying of the snake bite, and I know it's starting to turn necrotic with the tissues there, and I know you're close to death, but let me tell you why this is possibly true.
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What do you tell the people? Look and live, or die and perish.
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I'm not saying if someone says, how do you know the Bible's true? And then you just slap them with your hand figuratively and say, you're sure stupid.
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I'm not saying that. Well, maybe I am. No, I'm just kidding. Here's what I'm saying. Don't waste the time you have when you're supposed to go proclaim the good news to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem.
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You're supposed to preach repentance, not somehow defending God. Defend the Bible? I'd just as soon defend a lion.
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You should preach the gospel, and you will see people change, and then they'll believe in the gospel.
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How do I know the Bible's true? It doesn't matter. The Bible says. Now, if you say, yeah, but I'm still an evidentialist, the evidentialist in the congregation tonight will still agree with me that salvation of souls comes through the preaching of the gospel.
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I just want you to minor on that. Excuse me, minor on that. Major on that, and minor on the rest.
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All right, that should do it. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we exalt your name tonight, and we thank you that you made us believe that the scriptures are true.
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You gave us a new heart, and that new heart said what we didn't want to hear before, we hear now gladly with open arms.
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We believe the testimony of scripture because your spirit gave us new life that says we love you. Thank you for that, and I pray for Bethlehem Bible Church that you would give us opportunities to preach
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Christ crucified, even though we know the world's going to think it's foolish, and even though they'll think we're foolish, we'd like to be obedient,