Practical Apologetics (part 3)

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Clear Thinking About Homosexuality (part 4) - [Romans 1]

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So we've been doing this series on apologetics actually you can turn in your Bibles to 1st
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Peter chapter 3 Which has been our launching verse really we've been using 1st
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Peter chapter 3 To get to what apologetics means how
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God expects to do apologetics and What should be our focus as we do apologetics?
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So does everyone have handouts? Okay, so 1st
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Peter chapter 3 if someone can read them, and we'll get into our material who'd like to read loud
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First Peter 3 verse yeah verse 13 through 17. Thank you, so we've seen
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Apologetics the Definition for it comes from verse 15 be prepared to make a defense
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That's apologia to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you So that's the definition of apologetics.
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We want to be prepared to Give a reason why we believe what we believe now the two things that I mentioned earlier
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Honor Christ, so if you remember our goal in apologetics is not to win the argument It is to honor
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Christ sanctify him as holy in your hearts And then when we deal with the others we want to do it with gentleness and respect so we want to remember
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It's not about winning. It's about representing Christ as its ambassador faithfully and With love to those we mean so now with that I just have a few introductory thoughts, and then we'll get into actual conversation and also look into your handouts
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So when you do apologetics How many of you actually do apologetics a love apologetics?
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I think that may be a all right one come on there must be more You know sometimes if you get into apologetics it's it's kind of exciting in one way because you're able to communicate something that you hold dear and passionate about and you are able to engage with someone's misunderstanding or unwillingness to recognize the truth and Whether it's evangelism on apologetics it you can get so caught up in it that it can get heated up You know you can just get so passionate that you kind of start to say okay
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I need to somehow succeed in this engagement and and when we and Actually most apologists are supposed to be the most unpleasant people
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Because you know you be just so locked in the mind on this one goal That this gentleness and respect is one of those things that kind of tend to slip away
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Which is why Peter commands us that ought to characterize the apologists so so to begin with I want to think of three things as we
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Consider the topic of apologetics today First is yourself Second is
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God and the third is the person that you're meeting or speaking with Normally we look at ourselves and the person we are dealing with so we say you know
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I I hold I know I I Hold to the scriptures which I know to be true And this person if it's an unbeliever does not hold to the scriptures and is clearly mistaken on some things
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Truly mistaken and so normally when we engage a versus B And my goal is to communicate the scriptures of the
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Gospels Gospel to this person I'm trying to Convince the person give a good reason from first Peter 315 why they need to acknowledge
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The truth of who God is and what they need to believe about him and submit to the truth unless Pastor Bob mentioned last time you know our goal is not to convince them and Us as reformed believers we understand only
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God can change hearts and transform minds So our responsibility is to be faithful to God with the truth now
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The thing that we sometimes I sometimes forget is that I am right to the degree that I'm Faithful to the scriptures, so if I'm quoting scripture, or I'm interpreting scripture, right?
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Then I'm I don't have to be ashamed of what I'm saying because that is true Now when you engage with someone else
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What are the subjects you typically deal with? an unbeliever
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What would be some things that you talk about okay, so the person says
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I believe in God How do you oh
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That's a great start actually because now you have something to talk about Yes, that's right, so a view of You know some
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God that this person believes in as well as how you can approach this God on different basis now
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Does the scripture give me as a believer the tools to help this person see if he believes in God?
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Yes, so what would be some of the scriptures that I would be thinking of when I talk to someone like that excellent
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Excellent so you what you have done is you've taken that word belief and then Expanded the biblical understanding of what that belief is and you've used scripture to help that person understand, okay?
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There's more to believe than just saying okay. I think there is a God and there is a Response to that belief in terms of how you how you relate to this
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God and it ought to be fear and worship excellent Janet did you want to add something? and What what else could you do so?
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Is that any other way that you can talk to this person who talks about belief in God I believe in God excellent and actually
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This is one of those things that sometimes we get a little Concerned about you know should we let this person talk about what he's thinking because I?
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I'm the Communicator of all truth, so you know I'd rather put a tape on this power They just keep telling so open your ears friend.
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I'm dumping the truth. I mean obviously that doesn't work. I'm just being hilarious here So yes, right
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Very true end of the day you why do you I mean you you? You do apologetics because you want to honor
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God and you love those who are lost you want them to know who the? Loving Savior is the
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Holy Savior is and you want to relate to them as human beings that are they're not like Robots that you program them they need to bow their knees to this
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Lord, and you need to engage with them so and I'm gonna just Bring another subject here for a minute because what
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Frank said helps us think about this last week we looked at Evidential apologetics, and then we were finishing up with reformed apologetics and in today's handout.
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Oh actually it's not in your handout I will will be covering this in a little bit later there are as part of reformed or Presuppositional apologetics the way it differs from evidential is this in evidential
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We tell the person to come alongside, and then we kind of working together to solve a problem whereas in reformed apologetics what we would do is
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Let that person talk about his worldview the way he understands things as a whole
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And we would present the scriptural worldview either biblical truth within its context of the scriptures
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And who God is and so when we go and talk to a person we say okay? This is what you believe and it actually helps a lot because most people when you talk to them about God They think you know there's a trick you're a salesman you're gonna somehow spring something
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And then you know I don't know how when I can say goodbye. You know so they are very nervous It's a lot easier when you say you know let's let's openly talk about what you believe so you know
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Who's this God that you hold on to so you understand? What it is that he's talking about and when you talk about God?
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You talk about who the God of the Bible is and make it very clear This is it really not I didn't come up with this
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This is what the Bible says and you point them to the Bible because end of the day you're not gonna be there 24 -7 you want them to know where to go to in order to find where the truth is so when you when you have an
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Engagement like this, and you understand we are looking at two different worldviews and this worldview has problems
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You're you're doing you're gonna Show them in light of the scriptures how what the truth is and and they understand this comes from the biblical perspective
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Now there was another Comment to about many ways to God or different ways to God and the same thing is that a biblical answer for that when someone says
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What what would the answer be that's right, so this is what
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Jesus said and He didn't say I'm one of them many ways and so once again you look at this is what the world says and this is what the
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Bible says and let me actually maybe complete this conversation So you have the perspective of a reformed or a presuppositional
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Apologist so in a presuppositional apologetics we have three things proof offense and defense
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Proof is you know so someone is walking by and they're just like you know I don't know anything about Christianity Can you tell me what it is?
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Yeah? Wouldn't that be nice so you just go around and say you know this is what? The Bible is this is who
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God is this is what? Manus is who Christ is you just give them the scriptural truth as?
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As you know it and with as much clarity as you can because sometimes you know when I try to I remember when
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I had To first give the gospel. I was I knew it I was in college, and I and this guy was so eager, and I'm sitting down in his room dorm room, and I'm Nothing is coming out
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I'm like I wish I could have clearly told him at that time what he needed to hear and so it's our responsibility to understand
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The truth and present it in a way that makes sense so that they can understand the biblical world that's
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Providing the proof the second is defense where this person says Okay, you've said this, but you know what
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I don't think there is Your God is whatever it is that they attack the truth of Christianity with So then you come back, and that's first Peter 315 you give a reason for the hope that is in you you you give
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You respond with scriptural responses and with like we talked last time whether it is evidences or reason or or faith?
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in terms of what it is that Backs up what you say and so that's the defense part of it
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And then the third part of it is the offense where you go Into this person's worldview and show how this worldview really doesn't make sense
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You know can you have many gods? I don't think it makes logical sense to have more than one
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God if God is what we Believe God is unless God is a little small
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G God you cannot have two big G gods competing with one another and so you know and then
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And this and you can show the irrationality that this world is in unlivable in fact most worldviews will be borrowing truths from Christianity because God is the one who made this world the image of God that is within them and They cannot live cons
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They cannot live out their belief system By not without borrowing from the truth of who the true
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God is so we can show them how their worldview in and of itself is either incoherent or Inconsistent or does not correspond to the reality that they live in so those would be the three
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Aspects of it, but let me step back again So now the questions that you just mentioned we're all very straightforward biblical questions now, let's
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Move not many people. I think you know I think journey or someone said that Carol said that's a great question if someone says
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I believe in God because that brings you right into the subject But someone may say you know you guys you know you are those right -wing
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Republicans. You are You know climate change you don't believe in what's the other thing
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Oh? Gay marriage you know you guys are so biased against you know homosexuals.
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You know those are the type of questions that come now when those types of questions come How should you?
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Look at this person who's raising the question in light of the God who to whom you need to be faithful to and Again think of yourself.
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You know your responsibility before God Yes, Taylor. I Love it when
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I get the right answer the first or not the answer I want So And and actually just a comment before and I think
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I want to get to the heart of what he was saying You know end of the day each of you is gifted differently by God you know the way
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I do apologetics or I do evangelism will be different than the way that you do evangelism you know there may be some people who just you know very aggressive in the way in which you bring out the
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Person and have them deal with questions and others may be more You know you just deal with the person day in and day out
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And then you help them out, and then you find the opportunity for them to start to talk about it The goal is whichever way the
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Lord has gifted you you Honor Christ as holy you don't go about life saying you know unless this person asked me about the gospel
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I really don't care whether they perish or not I don't care if you know I'm faithful to God or not with the Great Commission You want to be risk you want to have the heart where Christ is always lifted up and you use all of your faculties
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With the truth of Scripture to reach out to them So that's one of the reasons why I don't stand here and tell you you don't do apologetics this way
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You know this is the only way because each of you will do it differently as God has equipped you
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But you want to be faithful to God In the way in which you do apologetics and everything that I'm giving you here is just the groundwork
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How should you think about the truth of who God is and how he calls us to do apologetics?
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So that when you do it you you are not compromising the truth, and you are doing it in a way That's gentle and respectful so back to what
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Taylor just said One of the things like like I said when when
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I engage with this person there are some things in which I can be a Hundred percent sure you I don't need to be ashamed of the gospel
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Jesus Christ is the perfect God and man he died for my sin in those things
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I You know there's really nothing that I need to be ashamed of because the Bible is true And I am communicating what the
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Bible says when once you move from the scriptures into the application of scriptures Or to other domains you know social and cultural issues
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You know I would like to think I'm infallible on those things You know and I want to be very careful that even when it comes to the applications
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Taylor said it just very nicely because you know these do engage these the subjects that I brought up are very close and so you can actually use them to quickly turn them back to the scriptures and bring them to the core of the gospel and then say you know here is something that I'm I'm Confident about I know that this is true
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And and then speak about those things so and there are things that are peripheral things that are
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You know maybe even dubious, and we need to be very careful not to Let other things cause offense
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Rather than the gospel itself you know if the person is deeply offended because you talk to them about their sin and their rejection of God You have not sent you have shown extreme love to that person and you've honored
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Christ But if you have offended the other person either by the manner in which you spoke in fact this week
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I spoke to someone I've been praying for him for a while And then I just spoke and we ended up speaking for a couple of hours and at one point.
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I realized that he didn't have Arguments or he to ability to respond and I could see in his face.
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He was getting distressed I just had to back off because I'm not the Holy Spirit to bring Conviction to that person and I realized that I probably said something that was
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Not appropriate and then turn the conversation around and then Engage with a person from a different perspective, you know just be gentle be be respectful of the people you deal with And so when you do apologetics just remember you know to the degree that you are close to the scripture
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You are representing Christ and everything else no matter how dear it may be to me, and I think
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Taylor said it right You know I could be prejudiced about certain things just as the other person is as well And we don't want to let that be a conflict of Personality or my my view versus history because when
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I do that they align me with this I'd rather this be up and I say I'm wrong.
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I or I don't know You know, there are things that I don't really care about and I say, you know what? It doesn't matter that is something that matters can we talk about that and the same thing with this person, too
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You know There may be there are things if he's an unbeliever that they don't know about the scriptures They that they need to know and you want to communicate that to them and then we could be right on a lot of other
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Things that I'm I'm ignorant of you know, I'm talk about astrophysics My wife asked me a question.
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I said I have to go on YouTube To find out for you, you know people bring up a lot of philosophical questions about you know time and space and things like, okay
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I'm not a physicist and You may be right on that thing, but I know one thing that you need to know and that is the gospel
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So, you know So let's just be aware, you know, we are all fallible human beings and when we relate to one another we want to do it with gentleness and love the the one person who's
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Unchanging on all of this is God, you know, he is always holy He is always true and he we know him through the scripture
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So this is the one thing that we want to say Lord I want to be faithful to you the one who's watching in this engagement is you and I don't care if he thinks
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I'm a fool that I am and you know a bigot whatever it is that he thinks it's not as important as knowing that I was faithful to you when
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I Represented you to this to this person So just just an important thought to keep in mind with apologetics because we can tend to get distracted about the goal so with that Let's take a few questions, especially if you have not asked a question here before We'll just keep those questions in our list and then we'll go through the material and answer them as we get there
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What if you have questions people who have asked you questions that you want to? Bring up here or engage with or things that you don't know how to answer.
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Let's just make a list of those first We already had many ways to God.
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So we will keep that in the back Taylor you had a question Excellent.
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So many ways to God what about the dietary laws of the Old Testament and Any other questions
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Very good So you now you actually have an apologist for another religion coming to you and saying, you know
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You ought to believe in something else so that so other religions coming to you Pressing their truth claims upon you.
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How do you respond? Any other questions any other? And actually in your handout this time you should see one table which talks about the counterfeit
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Gospels and the one sheet handout that you got this week and we'll we'll talk about that in a little bit where it looks like there's got the
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Christian Core or beliefs, but some things are off and then those will help us say, okay
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Maybe we hold to a lot of things but there are some things which are not peripheral But we're actually fundamental that we disagree and therefore we need to engage with that.
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So we've we've seen Unbelief Different beliefs to those that are
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I think what we would call Christian heresies, you know that actually are closer to us
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So with that let's let's leave that and if you have more questions, keep them in mind We'll we'll get through them What we're going to do now is just quickly go through last week's material
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So that way you have a bigger perspective on those four methods We talked about and then we'll come back and look at this week's material as we and try to answer these questions
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So in last week's and does everybody have a copy of this last week's material
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Yes, I think we're probably out right? Okay, so we'll just go through those
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What we didn't cover last time. So last time we looked at factual apologetics or What we called evidential apologetics.
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We also saw what is revelational apologetics or reformed or presuppositional apologetics and If you look at the slide,
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I think It's on the it's in the second Revelational apologetic slide one of the things is it establishes a close relationship between apologetics and theology
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And I think that's one of the things I've been trying to impress really hard here apologetics is not some philosophical endeavor and our
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Evangelism is not some you know disconnected activity that is from the Bible What we believe in the scriptures impacts everything including the way we do apologetics
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So it needs to be tied together theology needs to undergird our reasoning and our thinking and so that's a good thing
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Now in this particular slide it says it assumes on the right side It assumes a narrowly dogmatic form of Calvinism What would you say about that I didn't prepare these slides these come from the book but Let me put it this way yeah
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Sure, yeah and I think you know when we look for consensus among Christians most of the apologetic material that you look at will come from the
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Evidential or the classical side which are heavily Arminian They rely a lot not not always but most of it relies a lot upon that individuals ability to believe and so forth so what comes from reformed apologetics almost seems like Rejecting a lot of what has gone on before and like I said last time we're not
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Putting these in conflict with each other. We're just making sure they are in the right order when we look at apologetics and therefore if Calvinism forward for its quote -unquote is
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Biblical which we believe it is then we have nothing to be ashamed of if It offends someone else in the
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Christian camp The only reason why people normally don't like reformed apologetics in the church is not really because of our
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Methodology the methodology is a little abstract. They normally don't like it because Calvinist can be really mean
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You guys are whatever, you know fill in the blank and and we want to be gracious in the way in which we deal with others who disagree with sovereignty of God and the exaltation of His ways over our ways and I think the all the fights in the
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Apologetic camps have kind of singled out the reformed people only because they can be just very mean in the way they engage in fact one of the
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Debates that I saw this guy was just brilliant this reformed apologist
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But he and he decimated this I think atheist But it was it was done in such a way that I was like, you know
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I'm sure everybody else who watched it was just thinking. Oh if that's the kind of God you worship, you know I'm not so sure that I want to worship him.
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Even if everything you say makes sense You want to be very careful that you we trust in the sovereignty of God we exalt him uncompromisingly
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But we don't do it in a very mean way The next slide it in it inculcates an awareness of the epistemological factors in belief now we
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Epistemology is the knowledge. How do you understand? How do you know the things that you know and most other things, you know, it's kind of take it for granted when you talk
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About reason it's like, okay, you know, I just see facts and I understand it. Whereas Reformed apologetics gets one level lower and says, okay
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How do you believe we talk about the heart of depravity the way that our presuppositions color the way we look at things
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So we help the other person actually think about their own beliefs and say, you know what? I have presuppositions and so do you and we need to recognize that we are not, you know all like God able to look at everything clearly and then subscribe to what we believe is is
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Actually true. So in fact this week when I was talking to this friend, it was very simple We just went into his worldview we just talked about why he had holds to some things with with deep conviction and then as we
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Engage with it. He could soon see that the rules that he thought were Unchangeable are actually changeable because they are conventions of man and so as long as you understand for yourself where you stand and the and the quicksand that can
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Change very fast in opposition to the Word of God that never changes and is the basis of truth to which we submit as opposed to Making our laws and then trying to stand on them and that's not going to be stable
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So you can actually help people understand why they believe what they believe and and unearthed presuppositions
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What are those things that they hold dear and whether they are valid in terms of what they? hold on to Let me now move to the next section
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And because we're going to come back to revelational because that's the one that we're going to focus on today as well
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Any questions on what we just? Yes, Gary Yeah Epist epistemology actually,
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I think Elder Scott was the first to talk about it here and so epistemology is the study of knowledge
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How is it there are three fields one is metaphysics? What things are in philosophy the second thing is epistemology?
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How do we know the things that we know and the third is I think ethics or morals? You know how ought we to live so those are the three big?
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Areas and philosophy that people study normally everybody focuses on metaphysics. You know what is reality?
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You know who is God or what is man? Most people don't take the time to talk about how is it that we know the things that we know so that's epistemology
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Good question. Thank you All right, so moving on to the next slide here on reason so classical classical apologetics
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This is the one that's been most used all this time It's it emphasizes the use of logical criteria like the law of non -contradiction
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So if someone says something and then contradicts it in the very next sense you can just use that tool to help them see why what they're saying doesn't make sense a
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Self -consistency comprehensiveness does it cover everything? Coherence do one belief conflict with another belief they have in their worldview and so that helps showcase and actually it's a good tool for the
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Presuppositional is too because it can go into this person's worldview and show how it doesn't make sense in their own rules that they they make up so these criteria used to refute the truth claims of a non -christian worldview and establish the exist and Existence establish the existence of God through theistic proofs
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So you're the other slide that came with this colored one. It had a bunch of arguments. It's like a little table
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Cosmological argument moral argument Ontological argument. So these are all different ways in which
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Christians historically have tried to communicate The truth about who God is to this world.
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So, you know, if you just take maybe I'll take a simple contingency everything that exists
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Contingently has the reasons reason for its existence Universe exists contingently therefore the universe has a reason for its existence
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If the universe has a reason for its existence then that a reason is God therefore God exists
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So it's kind of called a proof for God different people have different meanings of that proof some is like this is a
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Logical truth therefore you must submit to the truth versus this makes a lot of sense, you know And I think the second way of saying a proof makes more sense in this case when we say contingently what it means is
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I Don't exist in and off of my own resources moment you take oxygen out.
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I'm dead, you know There are things that I'm living I'm dependent on and I and I don't
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Source myself. I didn't come into being of my own, you know Some there is some something else that caused me to come into existence
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And so when you look at anything in the universe, everything is contingent dependent on something else and then the universe itself as a whole
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Doesn't live in and off itself you look think of entropy. I think of anything else It's winding down this it it needed something else to start with and that Start thing point or starting source is
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God, you know So you could you could use arguments like this classically to talk about just think about it, you know It kind of makes sense while Psalm 19 would say you look outside and you say wow, there is a
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God This is like, okay, you look at it and then you think about it and you say there is a God Yeah, that's what these guys are going for.
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So we wouldn't shoot these down We just wouldn't use these as the primary source of apologetics. We can use this as a tool
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So back to the colored slides So the strength
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In the next slide there is it affirms the universal applicability of reason so to a degree you can
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Engage with someone on the basis of reason just help them look through things But on the right side it says there it over estimates the adequacy of reason as a criterion of truth
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So there have been classical apologists Okay, I haven't read them recently, but I think sprawl is definitely in this camp where?
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Despite the noetic effects of sin the fact that he would ascribe to as a Calvinist that the mind is depraved the he would
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Push on classical apologetics as a very strong primary means and he actually doesn't like Presuppositional most other
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Calvinist, but he is a very smart guy sprawl, so I'm not fighting with him now
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But but but it is true because if you just use the reason as the pure basis We all know whether it's evangelism or apologetics our biases will come in the way, and then we have difficulty dealing with it
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And let's let's actually move on to the next slide. I just to wrap this up faith apologetics
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Faith apologetics, it's actually not normally seen as a It's a pejorative term mainly because you know it just says okay.
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You just believe you know you need to there is a God you believe it, or you don't believe it and And that that seems like it's a cop -out because you can't really tell them anything else
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But really faith of Judaism actually talks about another aspect of apologetics that sometimes you probably use a lot, but we don't think about it
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As much so let me just read a few points here Fidesim maintains that human knowledge of truth is at bottom a personal matter of the heart or the will
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Rather than the intellect, and I think you know reformed apologetics also will push this a lot
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But Fidesim does a better job at it where it's your commitment to what you hold on to while While your knowledge what you intellectually hold does play a role in the decisions you make at the bottom of the heart
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As we would say you know as a sinner who loves his sin there is a commitment to the way where I am going to place my affections upon and That plays a huge role in terms of what
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I'm willing to believe and so that's that's where this Fidesim gets to it's where is your heart in all of this not just let me just deal with the issues of your mind
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So the next one personal existential experience with God cannot be grounded in a race
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Rational analysis or scientific or historical evidence since it is a matter of the heart now again We wouldn't call this huge dichotomy as you know the your personal
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And existential experience as opposed to evidences and reason and everything else, but personal experiences do matter
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You know I come from a broken home when you tell me about God the father I am thinking something different than what you are you know there are ways in which my
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Thinking is influenced by my life the way I have lived my life And so it is it is important for us to recognize that there is a commitment at this person's bottom of this person's sight soul and We we ultimately want that commitment to be before the thrice.
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Holy God. It's not just an intellectual ascent To okay there is a God who exists and he is holy
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But rather I am the sinner that is before this God and we do want to engage with that person on that existential level as well in fact
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I Okay, let me just read the next one because that's where they get in trouble for days often stress the paradoxical and personal encountered dimension of the
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Christian truth They emphasize the transcendence and hiddenness of God and repudiate natural theology and theistic proofs
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Now when we talk about paradox, I there is a philosopher I like a lot, but I probably shouldn't use his name because he's a very controversial guy, but I'll use him anyway his name is
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Kierkegaard and He is he gets into a lot of trouble because he says
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Truth is subjectivity If I were to say truth is subjective what would be wrong with that amen so when we think of the subject
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I If the truth is dependent upon the person or me then it varies from person to person and it is it can be whatever anybody wants it to be whereas when the truth is in God who
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God is and what he has revealed once and for all as objectively and Independent of my perspective on it if it is true then through this objective
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But what Kierkegaard really said was truth is subjectivity. He didn't say truth is subjectivity
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And he said it in context where it's like Western America now
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Everybody was a Christian and nobody was a Christian everybody knew the words of the scripture But nobody really lived that life of in their lives and so he comes up.
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He was a fideist He would just say those kinds of things that will make you think make you squirm And then you'd be like, you know, if you don't live the life that God calls you to live
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Then what everything that you are assenting to means nothing, you know You have no truth in you is basically what he was getting at.
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And of course, you know The reason Kierkegaard is a lot of trouble is he wrote it in a very small context and he wrote very controversial words and all our atheistic friends from SAR to Well Nietzsche didn't use him but it's kind of similar all of these guys
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Borrowed that existentialism from Kierkegaard and then they took it off with a godless world
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Which is everything is subjective about what I believe now so we need to be careful when you talk when you press the claims of you the will because we
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End of the day the Bible does call into account each person where their commitment is how they're going to live their life
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And we need to be and actually the question that Frank just brought up. It's you know,
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I believe in God In addition to everything that you guys talked about I would go to first John and say, okay, what does that How does that show itself in your life?
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And I think Frank you talked about it. It's like, you know, there is a Transformation in the life of a believer if you truly believe and trust in God rather than just say, okay
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I think there is a God who exists because like you said, you know, the demons tremble when they know about the God But they don't have a trap.
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They don't have a commitment to this God that they believe All right, so I think
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I Think the rest of the material on the colored printout is
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I Think we can we can skip through you can just use it as a reference
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It just summarizes the different views that we have there and then it takes each of those questions.
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Does God exist and Then it talks about How you can answer that in each of those four methods that we looked at same thing you know, do you believe in the
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Bible and Do you believe in Jesus? Do you believe in evil and so forth? So there's answers to them in those slides
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So I'm not going to take the time to look at it. But any questions so far what we've covered All right.
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So let me know Go to your new slide the one that we have for this week those single page slide Does anybody need slides?
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Oh, yes Carol. Go ahead That's that's very good. In fact, I'm going to take a few minutes to answer that while The question
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I have for those who came in late if you don't have a single page slide Andrew can pass them out. If you if you don't have one just raise your hand and You will will pass them out so Actually just this morning.
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I was reading again pantheism and how they look at life and reality There are two ways in which people can
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Respond to that one is, you know, just dismiss it completely and in some in most cases, you know
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We don't have the resources to kind of dig into everything that this the claims of this worldview is end of the day
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I think like you said if there is we we don't necessarily have to handle it in a the
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Classical way to say okay if they reject the classical way, that's fine. We can still talk about the
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The call of the gospel to them, you know, they may be looking at it through different perspective But you can still present the gospel even if you don't understand anything about their so -called claims of no non logic but in fact, there have been many good apologists who have actually gone into that system and said now your your worldview seems to defy logic but the
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Life that you live seems to very strongly hold on to the logical system of the world
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So the choices you make and everything other than your philosophical system seems to be very very logical so what you have actually done is you've caused a dichotomy between whatever you think is true and The true world in which you live in and now the question is how do you connect those two?
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So and some of the apologists who have who critiqued this philosophical system, I think have done not a very good job.
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They've kind of Almost like thrown stones from the outside without realizing what this system is because this system is pretty elaborate.
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It's like that Beautiful mansion except it doesn't have any foundation. You know, it's like really really well built
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It's been over centuries people have thought and fixed it up but it is fundamentally flawed in the way in which
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The pantheism as a whole is set up So, you know whether someone is called to engage with it and showcase the lack of foundations in this worldview or just Show very simply.
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I think Schaefer Not Schaefer Schaefer was in some college when one of the students they had a
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Bible study and Francis Schaefer was there and This this guy I think it was
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He was a Indian Hindu Or somewhere and he came and talked about pantheism and then
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I think this Christian I wouldn't do this But he he took this pot of boiling hot water and put it over his head and said well according to your worldview this is unreal and therefore should not impact the world that you live in and I mean, obviously the point was to make it clear that you live in a world where logic and Reality is what it is that you see and so There are ways in which to help people think about the disconnect between the the philosophical imaginations and the reality of the world we live in because they
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Can tend to you want to but do it with sensitivity because the end of the day is not about breaking that philosophical system
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But trying to get to that person about his need for a savior And so like you said, you know, maybe logic is not the way to handle it fine
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But you can show that even their system is using logic. Yeah That's right.
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Yeah But at the end of the day you want to see person centric, you know, each person comes from a different angle either
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He's a committed philosopher or he is just someone who's avoiding the truth of scripture with all these smokescreens
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And we want to try to get them the gospel. That's excellent. And that goes back to what we talked about two worldviews
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We try to get into their worldview and say, you know Let's now try to live this out and I'm asking you some genuine questions
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How you would do these things and you would see that it's it's not possible because end of the day It's extreme fideism because there's really no way for someone who holds to this worldview
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To hold on to truth as it is. It all has to do with experience and end of the day you
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Unmediatedly Become one with the infinite. I mean, that's basically the only solution they have and until that point really everything else is
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Nonsensical because it doesn't make sense in the world they live in All right, so I hope all of you have a slide let's quickly look at this what
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I have here again Apologize small slides. You could maybe go home and read them. But this first table
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I have I mean none of these are mine I've just picked them up as examples of what you Can look at in fact, this is one of the tools
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I use this week, which is end of the day if you are trying to engage with someone and they're like, you know, they say my worldview is non -logical or You know,
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I believe in a goal orality or I believe in a different God the one thing that is probably the most controversial but also the most
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Fundamental to our belief system is the person of Jesus Christ So the first slide here just talks about who
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Christ is his resurrection Which is you know, sometimes even when I was younger, I'd be like I don't want to talk about the resurrection because How do you explain it?
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It just happened. I can't explain it and in reality, you know, that's really
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Paul says in 1st Corinthians 15 If the resurrection didn't happen, let's pack up and go home and he's actually writing about The resurrection in and he actually let's actually if someone can just read 1st
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Corinthians 15, I think 1 to 4 It's actually an apologetic work when he writes that Whoever has it, please go ahead and read it 1st
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Corinthians 15 1 to Yeah, if you stop right there, you know, it seems like he's just making a proposition
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He's propositionally declaring the truth. And then if you look at verses 5 through Actually through 8 he's then talking about the evidence for the
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Resurrection, it's like okay, and I'm not just making this up it's like Peter saw it the 12 saw it the you know up to I think 500 saw it and then
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James saw it and then I saw it It's like, you know, this is not like some myth that was made up and you guys are in the same generation
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You know what? I'm talking about and this is the evidence for it. So The point here being, you know, our evidences are fine for us to use as I've mentioned in the four methods, but The Jesus who he is the cross and the resurrection are central to what we believe and I think
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It's actually much easier to engage with because when you talk about God, it's gets off into abstract thought, you know
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Philosophical realm or some mystical sense, but when you talk about Jesus, this is someone who lived
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Here on earth and it was actually one of the person I was talking to is like, you know Do you know that he lived or maybe he did?
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well maybe we can talk about that he lived that he lived and then you can actually talk about a lot of these things because these are
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Stuff that is very hard to wiggle around you can just say I choose not to believe in him or believe in what the scriptures
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Say but this just gives you a simple way of engaging with the truth of the scriptures and who
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Jesus is And actually I'm not going to go through that flowchart for the sake of time, but If you can just scan it, do you have any questions on what you see in that first table?
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All right. So the second table this black and red one. This is really a classical apologetics
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Workflow if you will it just talks about how you the previous one was evidential. It was looking at it from the evidences this comes from Reason, you know, nothing comes from nothing something comes from Something else or someone else and then it just kind of walks its way through to Christianity.
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It just gives you This is this would be a typical classical apologetic
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Workflow if you will prove the Basis of Christianity as opposed to know God and then talk about the truth of the
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Bible and then get them to the gospel And then the last on the back side,
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I think you have two tables One is about the counterfeit Gospels and this comes to what Joanie you were talking about What is missing in these and this
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I want to take a few minutes to talk about So if you look at the counterfeit gospel, let's just pick one
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Yeah, let's take moralistic The story in the moralistic gospel is our sinful condition is seen as the individual sins we commit
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Redemption comes through the exercise of willpower with God's help What's wrong with it or what seems to be right with it?
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Yes, that's right Now when you look at moralistic and this is very important because many unbelievers think of Christians as moral law -keepers, you know that we see
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Others as having not kept certain morals and therefore they are somehow inferior or you know
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Sinners because they didn't match up to this standard, which is partially true But it is not our standard is
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God's standard and they think that if these people were to somehow elevate their lives by willpower or commitment or something else then they would be acceptable to us or to God and sadly, that's the
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There are some churches that have brought that bought that in and think sins is something that you know is about us
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What is a sin? It's an offense against God.
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In fact in the therapeutic Row, that's the same problem where it's like we haven't reached our potential or we it's it's about us it's about an offense against a thrice holy
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God that we call sin and the fact that all are sinners and and none of us is capable of keeping a
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Pleasing God completely by our selves here on earth until we are glorified and I think
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So when someone comes at it like that you want to be careful about how we respond So you see their announcement of the good news is spiritual instruction
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What we do to gain God's flavor and then the churches of people where they keep up the standards of the community now
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Sadly, that's the view in which most unbelievers look at Christianity, too And we need to be very careful because we may be thinking about sin in the biblical way when you're talking to an unbeliever but when we say sin, they may be talking thinking about this and and sometimes it doesn't
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Stop with just saying a sentence No As soon as an offense against a thrice holy God because they may not know what a thrice holy
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God is So we may need to actually slow down try to understand where they're coming from when we deal with presenting the gospel in a way that is clear and They understand what?
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What the gospel gospel is? And in fact on the on the other table we have what
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I think is a much better description of the gospel And I think creation fall redemption and restoration are four good themes to keep in mind in the back of your mind anytime
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You're talking to someone. This is basically the gospel, but it's also The framework the worldview in which we live in and so when anything comes your way, you can always filter it through this
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Through this grid to say, okay, what specific area are we dealing with? Is this something related to the fall that I'm talking about?
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So when we talked earlier about Questions of Environment or something else that's peripheral use the grid and then figure out what
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Things you need to bring you can talk about creation and fall as the grid through which you can now engage with that subject
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Make sure you don't cause offense from your own perspective But then turn that around to talk about what is true that you can always hold on to God made everything and it is good man has sinned and brought the curse upon this world and this world is actually destined for destruction and We were created as stewards of this world, but we have become greedy and corrupt and we have decided to Pillage this world for our own selfish intent now, and then we talk about mankind's
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Value over the rest of creation this I now see what
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Christine and Turning numb even with all the animation here. You guys must be Frozen solid we will find a way to remedy that But and yeah, if the person you are list talking to is frozen, they may not hear what you're talking about You have first -hand experience now
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So so that's the grid that you want to keep in the back of your mind while you're engaging and always the closer you are to the scriptures the
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More you the more confident you can be that your prejudices are not coming in. So let's now wrap up with the questions that we saw
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We talked about many ways to God we talked about dietary laws There was one more here
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What was the other question? Was another question
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I thought okay, so when we look at dietary laws, for example What I mean not knowing the person who asked the question
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Can somebody else who hasn't maybe responded until now? What would you say? You know, you should not eat shellfish or Certain type of animals
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What would you tell them okay
51:57
So you start to explain there is a distinction between the food laws in the
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Old Testament and then something that is even more Fundamental that Jesus is talking about in the New Testament Now if the person is asking a very casual conversation then you've already redirected it to something that is gospel -centered what comes out of your heart is sins that need to be dealt with and And the quicker you can make the transition the better now, but if the person is really committed, you know
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I really need to know why your God said this now, what would we say about that? Excellent.
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And and the thing is, you know, the thing is I may not know the answer when the person is asking me this and I say, you know what? I don't know. I know it is there
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I know it's not applicable Jesus talked about something Let me get back to you And then the more we know the theology of the Bible really, you know
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There are some like some of the people I was talking to this week. They were like You know your oh you come up with all these excuses
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It's like no, let me try to explain and see if it makes sense And actually what Elder Scott just said there is the gospel.
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It's there was a people that was set apart God gave some unique laws for these people at a certain time, which actually
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Jesus finally fulfills and and Completes it but these were given so they could be set apart.
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They could be different sanctified It's actually the word for root for holy that comes from there
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There was something God was doing to these people and maybe we need to think about it in what way is God making them different and and and again the
53:22
Quicker you can transition to the gospel like Andrew said the better because now you can get them to understand why you know
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God doesn't change his mind He his truth is always true But there he had a purpose for these people at this time and now he has revealed it in his son
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Okay, we are out of time so let me any other thoughts before we close The purpose of this whole mini series was simple, you know
53:47
When we think of apologetics when we think of the people who come up with all these great and difficult questions It's easy to get afraid because we may not know what to say
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And my contention is each of you here knows what to say if you're a believer And I think if you keep the
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Lord Sanctified in your heart you want to please him and you want to be humble about your own Incompleteness because we are not
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God and we are faithful to the truth of Scripture to the degree that we do that we both demonstrate this love for this person with gentleness and respect and and Actually one thing
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I didn't say too much is pray because end of the day This is a spiritual battle and it is only for God to intervene and change hearts and minds.
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Let's pray a Loving and gracious father. We thank you a lot for this morning.
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We thank you for your word Help us a lot to be good students of the word help us to live by the world that the dark and dying world around us can see light and salt in The midst of your people
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I pray for each one here and those who are not here that Lord you would use us as your ambassadors that we would be filled with the truth of your gospel that we would
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Be loving in Communication of your truth
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To this world. May you be exalted Lord in all that we do and say we commit the service into your care