Classic Message: Talking To Mormons

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It's been about 10 years since the first time I saw

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Jeff Durbin in action on the sidewalk in front of the

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Visitor's Center of the Mesa Temple during the Easter pageant when he was applying the kind of apologetics he's going to be sharing with you today with a crowd of young people standing around him and they weren't all girls and they were pelting him with questions and even a few insults or attacks of some sort but he was cool, calm, collected and professional and excellent in his answers, his responses and we thought we'd take a break from our other speakers and allow him to share his way of doing things.

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He is the pastor of Apologia Church. He is also on a radio program called

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Apologia which I'll let him tell you about and it's just a pleasure to have

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Jeff with us this morning. Come on up, Jeff. I just want to say,

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Bob, you still have the same amount of hair which is pretty cool. How are you guys?

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Good. Praise the Lord. That's right. It's good to see everyone here today. Thank you guys for hanging out and sticking around for this portion.

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I'll go ahead and start with prayer. If you guys would join me as I pray over the message I'm going to give to you guys today. Father, I want to come before you and thank you,

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God, for using someone like me to deliver a message,

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Lord, that in myself I'm not worthy to give but that you need,

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Lord, the church to hear, to be equipped, to raise up people within your kingdom,

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God, to reach, Lord, the world with the gospel, Lord, and to reach them in a faithful way so that your kingdom may be furthered,

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Lord, and God, I come before you, Lord, I humble myself before you now as your servant, God, in myself unworthy,

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God, but in Christ righteous in him, blameless, forgiven, no condemnation, God, and I come before you,

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Lord, as the speaker right now, Lord, of your word, your holy word, God, that you would guard my heart and my mind, that you would empower me to speak,

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God, for your glory, that you would shape our hearts and our minds today, that you'd bring transformation in our thoughts,

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God, as to how we should be doing this, God, to your glory, and I pray that you would speak through me, get me out of the way, and I pray,

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Lord, that you would use this moment, God, as the moment that marks our lives, Lord, where you encourage us, inspire us, and give us boldness,

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Lord, to reach the world around us with the gospel and in today's context, Lord, specifically our

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LDS neighbors, our friends, our family. So I give this time to you, God, and ask you to,

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Lord, use it for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so I wanted to do something sort of different.

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You got guys here that I think I'll never know as much about Mormonism as they do, the guys that are powerful men of God and women of God that are serving

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Jesus and bringing the gospel to the LDS community worldwide. So I wanted to speak today about a broader look at apologetics.

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Now, don't turn off, don't switch off at the moment, don't run away from that word. If you don't know what it means,

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I'll explain it to you. Apologetics is essentially the practice of science and art of defending the faith.

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It really is a biblical mandate for Christians to defend the faith. And so when we look at this area of apologetics,

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I want to do it in a broader context today, saying, how do we do apologetics to the glory of God?

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Now, if you think that sounds dry and boring, I think it would reveal in us as a community, as the people of God, a wrong way of doing this.

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What I mean is if we're here thinking about how do we reach our Mormon friends and family, and you hear a discussion that's going to be brought about apologetics and that sort of turns you off,

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I'm going to say it's probably because we have the wrong idea of what apologetics is aimed at. Oftentimes in our culture, our

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Christian culture, or particularly Christian culture, we have a view of apologetics, a defense of the faith.

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You sort of have arguments over here and reasons for belief and evidences, and you've got evangelism over on this side.

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And so they're really two separate issues a lot of times. So, for example, oftentimes in our culture, if we have, say, a dialogue going on between a

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Christian and an atheist, you'll typically have a lot of just evidences being thrown out. The atheist says,

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I don't believe in God. I don't see enough evidence for God. And so as Christians, we oftentimes believe what the atheist says about himself rather than what

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God actually says about him. And so what we end up doing is just getting into sort of an enterprise or a practice of just throwing out pot shot evidences at the person, seeing if ultimately, hopefully, something sticks, and I can lead this person to Christ.

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But the truth is apologetics is supposed to be to the glory of God. Apologetics is supposed to be wrapped up in our evangelistic call to repentance and faith.

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In other words, we're not supposed to separate the defense of the faith, how do I defend the faith, from our proclamation of the good news and repentance and faith.

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That's really important. I think you're going to see that distinction come up as we move forward. So if you want to get ahead of me,

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I'll go ahead and let you get there first. 1 Peter 3 .15 is the passage that will start as a springboard passage for today.

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But the message that Bob said, Jeff, I need to title the message, and I need the breakout points, how are you going to do this?

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And so the message, I think, would be aptly titled, Apologetics to the Glory of God. And I'm going to be discussing this really broader than simply the issue of Mormonism, but I am going to come back to it in the end to show us how we actually engage in this.

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And I just want to come before you humbly and just say something to you as well. Bob is a sweet guy.

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Bob has always shown me lots and lots of love. But I want to suggest to you that I deplore the idea that we should be just making this up as we go.

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I don't believe that we should engage in reaching somebody with the gospel with our own ideas, our own pragmatic results over time, saying,

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I think this works, let's use it this way. I truly believe that God wants us, he calls us to defend the faith in the way that he calls us to do it.

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In other words, the Bible actually tells us how to bring the gospel into a culture, whatever it might be.

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And he tells us how to do it biblically. He tells us how to argue. He tells us how to bring the gospel in.

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And so what I want to say is, my hope is that you'll see, and I hope I'm faithful in this,

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I hope that you'll see that my desire is to go to the scriptures to ask the question, how does God say to do this?

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What are his ways in defending the faith and bringing the gospel? And so what I want to do is prepare you not just to deal with people who are

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Latter -day Saints, but with people who are Mormons. And so the starting point is 1 Peter 3 .15, and go ahead and get there now.

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1 Peter 3 .15, this is one of my life verses.

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Bob mentioned that I'm a pastor at a church called Apologia Church. It's right down the road. We meet out of a church called

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Gethsemane Lutheran Church. We're a church planned out of that church. But I also have a radio program called

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Apologia Radio. So clearly, I like the word. Apologia Radio is heard, actually today, you're going to hear it today at 4 to 6 p .m.

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on KPXQ 1360. A little shameless plug there for our radio program. Apologia Radio, 1360, 4 to 6 p .m.

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You can also get all the back episodes at ApologiaRadio .com. It's a show that's heard all over Arizona on 1360

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KPXQ, which is one of the most popular Christian talk and sermon stations. But it's also heard internationally via podcast.

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You can subscribe to it free on iTunes. Just go to iTunes and type in Apologia Radio, and you'll be able to get the podcast.

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And so the reason I bring that up is a shameless plug. But also, I want to be able to give you guys an understanding that this is something very important to us as a church.

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The word Apologia comes from 1 Peter 3 .15. Now what's interesting here is I want you to come with me for a second here.

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Now think about this. Who wrote 1 Peter? Very good! Sometimes it takes a long time for people to get it.

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It's like, that's not a trick question, or it's very easy. Peter writes it. Now here's what's interesting. That is what many people call the charter verse of Christian apologetics.

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It's really the springboard verse as a basis for all Christian apologetics, the defense of the faith, giving reasons for the hope that's within us.

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But I want you to consider something. The person who gave us that passage, it's the word of God, but the man behind the text who wrote it is

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Peter. And what's Peter famous for? He's famous for denying

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Christ, right? How'd you like to go down in history as the guy who denied Jesus the night of his betrayal, the time that he needed you most?

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Well, it's in history forever. Peter's that guy, right? He has a case of stick -your -foot -in -your -mouth -itis constantly, right?

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He denies he knows Jesus. And so here's the guy near the end of his life, shortly before he's killed by the emperor

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Nero during the Neronic imperial persecution of Christians in the 60s of the first century. Here's the guy that we know of as the coward, as the one who runs away from Jesus.

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He's afraid of a little girl. Not a big dude. Not a big dude. Big beard, big arms, big dude. Little servant girl, right?

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And he's afraid. And this is within, essentially, earshot of Jesus. Well, here's this guy telling us at the end of his life in 1

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Peter 3 .15 that Christians are to be always ready with an apologia.

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Apologia. A reasoned defense for the faith. So I want you to consider that for a moment. If you've ever thought, hey,

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I'm that person. I'm the person that's not bold. I'm afraid to talk. I'm kind of scared.

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You know, you're in good company with the guy who actually gives us the charter verse for Christian apologetics. He's the guy that's chicken.

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He's scared. He denies he even knows Jesus. And then they're hiding, like, behind locked doors in the upper room after Jesus is killed on a cross.

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And they don't even believe that he was raised from the dead. When the girls and women came and said, hey, he's alive, they're like, girl, you're telling tales out of the schoolyard.

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They didn't believe it. So they go running, and they were stunned themselves. But here's the guy who gives us this verse on Christian apologetics and the defense of the faith.

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He's the one that's a coward. And he has the audacity at the end of his life to tell Christians to always be ready with a reasoned defense to everyone who asks of you a reason for the hope that's within you, to do it with gentleness and reverence.

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What happened in his life is significant. He saw Jesus dead, murdered on a tree.

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And when he saw him alive from the dead, and he touched him, and he ate with him, it changed his life and his whole perspective.

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And what he says to Christians in 1 Peter 3 .15 is to always be ready with a reasoned defense, an apologia, to everyone who asks of you a reason for the hope that's within you, yet do it,

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Peter says, with gentleness and reverence. Now, you'll notice something very important here. What did

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I leave out of that verse? Go ahead. The first part.

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Now, you might say, well, big whoop. So you left that part out. But I want to suggest to us as Christians that we've often heard that verse about defending the faith and giving a reason for the hope that's within us.

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We always hear it like I quoted it. For Christians to always be ready to give a reasoned defense for the hope that's within them.

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That's how we hear it. That's even how we quote the passage often as Christians in our communities.

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But what have we left out? To set Christ apart as Lord. Peter first starts the proclamation that you need to always be ready with a reasoned defense for your faith with this first very important foundation.

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And it cannot be missed because it alters the entire way you do apologetics. And that is, he says, to first set

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Christ apart as Lord. And then he says always being ready.

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And the reason why I'm taking aim at this today is because if we're going to do apologetics to the glory of God, then we have to do it the way that God calls us to do it.

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In a biblical way. And that is to say, it's a way with no neutrality. And this is very important because within the

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Christian communities today, in our country and in our culture, we often have an approach to apologetics that separates

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Jesus from the conversation. And you think, no we don't because we're proclaiming the gospel, we're arguing for Jesus.

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But oftentimes when we do the proclamation of the gospel, say in particular with radical unbelief, say with atheism, oftentimes we will disengage from being submitted to Christ as Lord and assuming that the atheist really doesn't know

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God and he just needs a little more evidence to get him along the way. But what does the

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Bible say in Romans 1 about the atheist, about everybody? It says in Romans 1, verse 18, it says,

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The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

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For that which is known about God is evident within them. For God has made it evident to them.

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So as an example here, as a springboard about setting Christ apart as Lord in our defense of the faith,

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I want to point out to you in an example with radical unbelief, a person that says, I don't believe in God, there's no evidence for God, what we'll typically do is all of a sudden we disengage from our commitment to Christ as Lord of our reasoning and we enter into that discussion assuming neutrality, that he's really neutral and so am

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I. Let's see where the evidence takes us, shall we? Maybe there is a God. Let's look at first cause, second cause.

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Let's see if we can move back to an unmovable mover and let's see if that will maybe convince you. Now if you've used that argument before, this is in no way a jab at you.

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It's to say, as a church, I think we need to be sanctified in this issue of apologetics. Apologetics is part of evangelism.

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And part of evangelism is coming to the world with a proclamation that Jesus is Lord. He's Lord of all.

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He's Lord over the universe. He's Lord over politics. He's Lord over all governments. He's Lord over every person, whether they acknowledge it or not.

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He's Lord over my reasoning. He's Lord over my pursuits. He's Lord over everything in my life.

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And when I do apologetics to the glory of God, I first start with a commitment to Christ as Lord.

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We are not neutral. And I want you to take that as the broader, let me have you think through that as I work through the rest of this.

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We're starting first, before I even begin to engage any issue, whether it's with the Jehovah's Witnesses, whether it's with the

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Mormons, whether it's with the new atheists, Dawkins and Dennett and Christopher Hitchens, who is now a creationist, because he died.

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That was a joke. That was a grenade joke, right?

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Pull it. Wait. Got it. Okay. Whatever it is, we have to approach this issue of apologetics to the glory of God with a commitment first to Christ as Lord.

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We're not neutral. They're not neutral, and neither are we. I want you to think for a second about a cultural problem we have.

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I'm just going to touch this. This is not a big part of the message today, but I have to address it. We are in a cultural crisis as Christians today in the issue of apologetics and evangelism.

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And what I mean by that is something that this may sting a few of us in the room, and believe me, I'm not your enemy, but I want to just address an issue that I think is significant for us to address as Christians.

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We're in a cultural crisis. And what I mean by a cultural crisis is I mean a Christian cultural crisis, and that we are now in this culture that is now collapsing.

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We are in a culture that is collapsing because we have failed to be salt to it, and that's a preservative.

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It's not so much about flavor as it is preservation. And we fail to preserve the culture because we fail to engage it and speak into it.

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In order to be a preservation of the culture, we have to say something to it. But our evangelism and our apologetics has of late been of the idea that, well, we'll stay over here in our

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Christian ghetto, and hopefully you come talk to us. Or maybe I'll create a relationship with a person for five or ten years, and then maybe someday

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I'll get the opportunity to tell them about Jesus. And I want to just say to us, guys, if we go to the Scriptures and we look at the first century church, and we say, how were they engaged in changing the stinking world?

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I mean, the gospel went from this little place with 11, basically, these guys aren't like college -educated guys.

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They're like fishermen. They're just these lowly kind of humble guys that Jesus picks out of the world, and he empowers them to preach the gospel.

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And they changed the world in the first century. You don't understand that Christianity turned the world upside down in the first century.

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And I've got to ask the question as Christians, are we doing apologetics to the glory of God? Are we doing it like the first century church did it?

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Because if you look at the book of Acts, you've got a map, a pattern, a model that God has given to us.

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When the Holy Spirit of God is poured out upon his people, which is a promise of the Old Testament that was coming, they walked into a culture that was hostile to the things of God.

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It was hostile to Christ. And they came into a culture that was pagan, and all kinds of different gods and ideologies, and they went in with the gospel and they smashed it.

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And lives are being changed. It was the talk of everything. Paul says in Romans chapter 1, he says, your faith is being proclaimed throughout the entire world.

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That's to say, everybody's talking about you guys. Something was happening. Christians were not hiding it under a bushel.

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No. They were engaged with the marketplaces, the religious context, the highest place of philosophical debate and discussion.

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Look at the book of Acts, guys. Read the book of Acts. Acts chapter 9. What happens? Paul gets knocked off his high horse, comes to this

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Messiah after persecuting Christians, trying to destroy the church, as he says he tried to do in Galatians chapter 1.

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He persecuted the church of God. He tried to destroy it. He's guilty of the murder of at least one

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Christian, and he's throwing many others in jail. He gets knocked off of his high horse, and what does it say? In Acts chapter 9, it says, as soon as he comes to Christ, immediately, he went and he proclaimed the gospel in the synagogues, proving that Jesus was the

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Messiah. Now, I want to suggest to you something. He did not go home and say, let's plan a barbecue for the neighborhood.

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By the way, have barbecues, please. But that should just be part of breathing in our lives, right?

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We live as Christians. We invite as Christians. But you know what else they were engaged in? They went to the toughest places of debate and discussion, and they argued for the truth of the gospel.

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They argued for Jesus as Mashiach, as the Messiah, as the only deliverer, the only Savior. And when they did it, listen,

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Paul goes into the synagogue in Damascus. He proves that Jesus is the Messiah, and if you read Acts chapter 9, something very significant, you need to note, it says that the church was built up, people came to Christ, and some people wanted to kill him.

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We are too afraid today as Christians to be persecuted. We don't want to die.

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And it's because of the fact that we don't want to die that we don't say anything. We don't open our mouths.

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We don't get into tough discussions, because we don't take seriously what Jesus says in Luke when he's talking to crowds of thousands of people.

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And he says to them, if anyone comes to me and does not hate father, mother, sister, he starts listing them all, and even his own life, he's not worthy to be my disciple.

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Many of us professing faith in Jesus today have not even died yet. And that's the problem.

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You see, when Paul describes this union with Jesus in Romans 6 and Colossians 3, he talks about there's a death that's occurred when you come to Christ.

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You've died with him, and you've been raised with him. That's his whole mindset. If you've come to Christ, you've died.

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The old self, crucified with Christ, and you're raised with him. A death has occurred.

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And you see the mindset of a person who believes that a death has already occurred, and he's already new in Christ.

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He is willing to walk into the toughest places. He's willing to go to the synagogues and be persecuted.

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What does Paul say? He says, in one account in 1 Corinthians, he says, I've been beaten times without number,

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I've been stoned, shipwrecked, I'm in danger from robbers, my own countrymen, I've spent time afloat in the sea.

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I mean, everything. And he says, it's a light momentary affliction. And how do you think like that?

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It's because you've already died. And in Acts 9, these people weren't dead. These people are coming to Christ.

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The church is built up, and people are being added to the church daily. How about in Acts, the famous scene?

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Paul goes to the Areopagus. It's a place in history of the highest level of philosophy and intellectual debate.

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It was the intellectual capital of the ancient world, Athens. And what do you see him doing?

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You see him going there and proclaiming the truthfulness of the gospel, and he's not saying, hey guys, what do you think about this?

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Maybe a good suggestion, you want to come join the club? He says, God has raised this

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Jesus up, and now God commands men everywhere to repent. That was the proclamation of the gospel.

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It came with boldness. It came with power. It came with an urgency to it. And guess what? It didn't hide.

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It went to them. Apollos, in the book of Acts, it says he's mighty in the scriptures.

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He was eloquent. And it says that when he was reasoning with the Jews, it says he refuted them publicly, proving that Jesus was the

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Messiah. And the Bible does not say that was a wrong thing to do. Of course we have personal relationships.

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Of course we have friendships. I'm going to have lunch probably this week with a really well -known

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Mormon apologist that has written for fair and farms. I've known him for 17 years. He's a great friend.

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We're going to go have lunch together. We hung out at the temple doing evangelism. We hung out and laughed and spent hours of discussion just hanging out and getting to know each other.

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When his son died of cancer, I prayed with that man. We're good friends, but he knows what

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I will tell him when we talk about Jesus. You see, the proclamation of the gospel has to come with a commitment to Christ as Lord and it has to come with a boldness.

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If we're ever going to change the world with the gospel, if God is ever going to do that through us, it's going to come with us as a church repenting of our indifference.

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It's going to have to come with us as a church realizing we've done this wrong. We have to go to the culture and tell them the gospel.

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We have to proclaim it with boldness. I want to say this, very significant, because you might think that in doing this we might offend.

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I'm going to say, yeah. When you preach the gospel, people are going to hate you. If you're afraid of that, then

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I'm going to ask you to read your Bibles. Jesus says they're going to persecute you. They're going to hate you. If they hated him, they're going to hate you too.

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If you desire to be loved, I would ask you to read Galatians 1 where Paul says, am

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I seeking to please men or God? If I was still seeking to please men, I would not be the servant of Christ. You have to make that decision.

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Who are you going to please? I want to suggest one more thing to you. I'm suggesting you be abusive in your proclamation of the gospel.

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That is, go to 2 Timothy 2, 24 -26. The first thing, I want to talk to you about that boldness, but I want to tell you how it should come.

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2 Timothy 2, verses 24 -26.

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Listen to how Paul words this. He says in verse 24, The Lord's slave must not quarrel, but must be gentle to everyone, able to teach and patient, instructing his opponents with gentleness.

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Perhaps God will grant them repentance, leading them to the knowledge of the truth. Then they may come to their senses and escape the devil's trap, having been captured by him to do his will.

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You see, Paul, this is the dude that's going into the places that's proclaiming the gospel. They're having to lower him out of city walls by a basket because people are wanting to kill him.

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There's dudes saying, I'm not going to eat nothing until Paul is dead.

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That's the kind of life he's living. Here's what he says, you must be like this, gentle, able to teach, patient when wronged.

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And he says, if perhaps God may grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth.

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So when you talk about bringing the gospel to the culture, to atheists, to Mormons, to Jehovah's Witnesses, it has to come with a boldness, a proclamation of the gospel, understanding that Romans 1 says it's the gospel that is the power of God for salvation.

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Did you hear that? It's the gospel that's the power of God for salvation, but it's also with a humble boldness.

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Because realizing that I don't have any power to change anybody's heart or mind. I come with the gospel,

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I deliver it, and I deliver it with boldness and confidence and truth, but I also deliver it knowing that I don't have any power to change anybody's mind.

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I bring the message and God opens eyes and hearts and he turns people to himself, leading to a knowledge of the truth.

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That's what you can do with humble boldness. I want to confess something to you. 18 years old, I moved to Arizona.

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I'm not going to give you the whole story, but I went to the Mormon temple when

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I was 18 years old. That was 1996. And I want to say that I definitely love these people and I brought them the truth and I cared for them and I sacrificed my life for them, but I know that there were elements then of arrogance and pride.

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In the sense that I thought it was my job to convince them so that they would be saved. But the truth is, and God shaped my heart a lot over the last decade, is that it is

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God who saves. It is God who saves mightily and he does it all. And you can be humble when you understand that you don't have anything to do with this.

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You bring the truth and God opens eyes. You proclaim the gospel and it's God who's going to change a heart of stone into a heart of flesh, like Ezekiel 36 says.

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That's how you can be humble, understanding that it's God who grants repentance. It's God who grants faith. It's God who opens eyes and gives ears to hear.

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But it comes understanding that Romans chapter one says in verse 16 that it is the good news that is the power of God for salvation.

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Let me just suggest something. When I talked about we're in a cultural crisis, is having some sort of a weird idea that no

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Christian in the first century church held and that is that people get saved by watching you. Nobody comes to Christ by watching your life.

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Please live as a Christian. Please glorify God with your lives. But no one's ever getting saved until they hear the message or they see it.

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Amen? We have to bring it. So I want to suggest to you a couple things here real fast. Number one, first point, and I think you guys already have this because Bob's a genius and he made me write all that down for you guys.

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Apologetics to the glory of God. Number one, thinking and reasoning as a Christian. First thing I already mentioned to you, first, thinking and reasoning as a

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Christian, if we're going to do it to the glory of God, 1 Peter 3 .15 says very simply that we are to set

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Christ apart as Lord. The word there, sanctify, is like something you would use, say, in the temple and you would set it apart as holy.

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You set it apart from everything else as a holy thing. And Peter says for Christians to first set

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Christ apart as Lord in your hearts. Always being ready to give a apologia, a reasoned offense for the hope that's within you.

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So first set Christ apart as Lord. You've got to think and reason like a Christian. That's to say when I engage a conversation with a person, there is no neutrality.

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I am not neutral and neither are they. If you have something to write down and you want to write it down, put it in big bobo letters.

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The myth of neutrality. Nobody is neutral. Everybody's an image bearer of God and everybody knows him.

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The problem isn't a lack of evidence or light, it's a problem of a suppression of truth. Romans chapter one says that in verse 18, it says the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

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What's the problem? Is it that they don't know? No, it's that they do know, but like us before Christ, they're rebels against the king.

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And image bearers of God that are rebels against the king will always be in a process of shoving down.

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It's like the whack -a -mole game. You know what I'm talking about, whack -a -mole? You got that table there and all those things are popping up.

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The life of the unbeliever is these moments of imageness of God popping up and they're just knocking it down, knocking it down, knocking it down.

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We are not neutral and neither are they. You have to first start all your evangelism and your apologetics with a commitment to Christ as Lord first.

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Listen, they're not neutral and neither are we. I'm gonna take you to another passage and that's

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Matthew chapter 12 verse 30 and this is very, very important laying the foundations for apologetics to the glory of God. Matthew chapter 12 and this is verse 30.

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Many of you guys already know the passage but I'd like you to think about it in the light of apologetics. Matthew 12, 30.

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Here's what the Lord Jesus says, Matthew chapter 12 verse 30. Anyone who is not with me is against me and anyone who does not gather with me scatters.

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Can we stop for a moment and just breathe that text in and I just want to suggest to us have we, and this question, have we taken that statement and really absorbed it to really think through all the implications of what it's saying?

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Jesus says whoever's not with me is against me. So when I said to you that neutrality is a myth, do you see where I'm getting that?

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There is no such thing as neutrality. Not in government, not in school, not in politics, not in religious discussion.

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There is no neutrality. Everybody has a commitment to either Christ as Lord and as King or not.

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Jesus says if you're not with me, you are against me. We say, is it really like that decisive?

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There's no gray area. Jesus says if you're not with me, you're against me. Period. And in our apologetic, when we preach the gospel, we have to proclaim the gospel with a commitment first to Christ as Lord, understanding that God calls me to abandon neutrality and submit myself to him as Lord of my reasoning, of my thinking, of all.

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If you're not with him, you're against him. And the next thing I want to suggest to us is Proverbs 1, verse 7. Proverbs 1, verse 7 is a verse that most of you already know.

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It's always like on the graduation things for high school. It's Proverbs 1, verse 7. The fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of knowledge. We know that verse, but have you thought about the implications of it in apologetics, in your defense of the faith?

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Think about it for a second, and I want you to just pause for a moment and really let this set in. Proverbs 1, verse 7 says the fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of knowledge. What does that mean? It is the fear of God that is the starting point of any knowledge at all, that there is no real true knowledge apart from first a reverent submission to God.

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It's not to say that unbelievers don't know things. They clearly do. It's to say that apart from God, you can't really have knowledge.

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You can have no certainty. You can't really truly know anything apart from God. I'll say it to you again.

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Think about the implications and the pure awesome sauce of that verse. Proverbs 1, verse 7 says the fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of knowledge. That's how mighty this God is. He is the source and foundation of all wisdom, of all reason, of all knowledge, of all logic, of anything at all.

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This is the God that we bring to the world. Not a probable kind of God. A more statistically probable

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He exists than not kind of God. It's the kind of God that gives you certainty that says apart from me, you can't know anything.

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Anything. We're going to go into what that looks like in a moment. Another verse

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I think you need to hear in Apologetics to the Glory of God is Colossians. I need you to look at this verse. Colossians, New Testament to the right of your

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Bible. Revelation is too far. Colossians 2, and this is verse 12.

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I'll go ahead and read it to you. I'm sorry,

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I gave you the wrong reference there. It's Colossians 2 .2, sorry. Colossians 2 .2,

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I'll read ahead of it. Actually, 2 is good here. I want their hearts to be encouraged and joined together in love so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God's mystery

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Christ. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Him. Again, here's another one of those bold statements of God and His Word about knowledge and wisdom being hidden in God.

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He's the source of all knowledge and wisdom. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ.

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Look what Paul says here. I am saying this, listen closely. This has everything to do with our apologetics and our reasoning.

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I am saying this so that no one will deceive you with persuasive arguments. For I may be absent in body, but I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see how well ordered you are and the strength of your faith in Christ.

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Therefore, as you receive Jesus Christ, Jesus the Lord, walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him, and establish in faith, just as you were taught, overflowing with gratitude.

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Here we go. Be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit based on human tradition, based on the elemental forces of the world, and not based on Christ.

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So you see, there's a philosophy that is a man -centered philosophy, a worldly philosophy. There is reasoning that is man -centered, man -originating, humanistic in that sense.

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And there is a philosophy and there is a reasoning which is according to Christ. And Paul is saying that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ.

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If you want to know anything for certain, you've got to start with God. And I don't mean let's reason to get to God.

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We've done that in Christian apologetics for so long. And it is wrong. We don't reason to get to God.

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There is no reasoning apart from Him. He is the source and foundation of all reasoning at all.

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You get me here? No neutrality. There is all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Christ.

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And the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all knowledge. And so what I'm saying to you is this. Listen, when I set

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Christ apart as Lord and I start with God in my reasoning and in my thinking, I have absolute certainty about what

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I'm saying. When I proclaim truth, I can proclaim it with an absolute certainty. Not a maybe, nobody really knows, possibly kind of certainty.

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It's not like the world's version of certainty where they'll say things like this. You can have absolutely no certainty.

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I'm going to say that really slow. You can have absolutely no certainty.

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Are you certain about that? Do you see the point? Christians don't make those kind of claims.

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With a Christian, we have certainty because God is the source of all wisdom, of all knowledge. We have

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Christ who is the, in him are all hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And so when I come to the world,

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I make certain claims of truth about God, about Christ, about them, about the world, about what they need and about the future.

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And it's with certainty. And what God says is powerful. Christians, you need to love this. God says that the secret things belong to him.

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But the things that he has revealed to us belong to us and to our children. And that's why we come to the world with a certain message, with a certain

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God and with Christ as Lord of everything, including our reasoning.

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So when I engage with the atheists, the Jehovah's Witness, the Mormon or anybody else who has beliefs that are antithetical to God's word,

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I come with the power of the gospel, with a commitment to Christ as Lord of my reasoning, knowing that all knowledge is rooted and based in him.

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And I come with a boldness and a certainty that when God says something, that's true. If Joseph says something and God says something and they are in opposition to one another,

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Joseph is wrong. That is a source.

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So number one is an apologetics to the glory of God is very simply, thinking and reasoning as a Christian, there is no neutrality.

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You have humble boldness and you know that apart from him, we can't have any knowledge at all.

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Number two, I want to say this. Apart from God, we can't have knowledge. Now, what

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I want to do today is, again, I told you this was not so much just simply about Mormonism, but just generally speaking, apologetics to the glory of God.

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So what I'm going to do today is just this. I want to start us when I say that apart from God, you can't have any knowledge.

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I'm going to do that on this spectrum over here from belief to radical unbelief or atheism.

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Okay? So watch this. I just made a claim. Well, I didn't make it. I actually said what he said. Proverbs 1 .7,

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that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Right? And God says this, that everybody knows him.

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He's made himself clearly known to all of us, but the problem is not light or evidence. It's a suppression of truth.

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When I'm talking to my atheist or agnostic friends, what's wrong? They don't have enough light? No, it's that they know him and they're suppressing the truth about him.

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And the Bible even says in the same passage, Romans 1, it says, even when the creation itself is preaching to us, we become futile in our thinking, our foolish hearts are darkened, professing to be wise, we become fools, and we exchange the glory of the incorruptible

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God for an image in the form of corruptible man. What is the MO of every fallen person in the world, including you and I apart from Christ, is that we know him and we suppress the truth about him.

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And what we end up doing is we say, we're wise, we're wise, and we're really fools. And we end up switching

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God for idols. People say, if there's only one God, why are there so many different religions?

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Well, the one God already talked about that. He says that they already know him, but they don't want him and they switch him for idols.

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Whether it be in substance, like drugs, alcohol, sex, whether it be in false religion, like Mormonism or Jehovah's Witnesses or Christian scientists or Rosicrucians or Muslims.

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Keep going, right? Whatever it is, we switch God for idols. But we can't know anything apart from God.

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So I'm going to use radical unbelief as an example. How can you say that the unbeliever couldn't even know anything apart from God?

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And I'm going to give it to you by way of three examples. Are you ready? Here we go. Number one. Starting with God is the foundation of all knowledge, saying that without God, you can't have any knowledge whatsoever.

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Let's start with radical unbelief. If they reject God's claims, number one, I'll do the first area, the uniformity in nature.

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I'll write it down. Uniformity in nature. Number two, laws of logic.

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And number three, ethics. One, two, and three, those three areas.

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Uniformity in nature, laws of logic and ethics. And you guys are going to like this. By the way, this is another shameless plug. Get ready for it.

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No shame. Apology at Radio, two weeks ago, we did an episode on a new series, a documentary coming out called

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How to Answer the Fool. It wasn't an offensive thing. It was meant to go back to what the Bible says about reasoning in this way,

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Proverbs 26, verse 4 and 5. We did a two -hour episode, and on that episode, we had the president of the

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Atheist Secularist Club at a local college join us on the air. He ended up staying for an hour afterwards because he didn't want to leave.

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So it's about three hours of discussion on this issue of how to defend the faith. And you'll get to hear what

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I'm saying to you in motion if you go to ApologyAtRadio .com. Listen to that episode. See what I'm saying. So three areas.

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I say the atheist can't know anything apart from God. That if you don't start with God as the foundation of your reasoning, you can know nothing. First area, uniformity in nature.

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Notice something. Everybody in the room right now, the entire time that I've been speaking, nobody thought for a moment you were going to float away to the ceiling, did you?

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I don't know what kind of medications you guys are on, but generally speaking, nobody thought you were going to float away to the ceiling.

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Right? And when you drove here today, when you got into your car, you didn't get into the car like freaking out, thinking like maybe the laws of physics today are different.

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Maybe right is not right, left is not left, up is not up, down is not down. Maybe things all changed today.

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Or when you got out of bed today, you didn't pull your covers aside and then think for a moment, maybe

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I'll float to the ceiling today. Now you got up, you put your feet on the floor, you walk to your bathroom to use the bathroom probably.

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Because based on past experience in this world, you know that if you don't get up to use the bathroom, there will be problems later.

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Amen? Right? And everybody in this room right now, today you drank something today, hopefully, or you're going to at some point today.

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Why'd you do that? Why'd you drink something? You're thirsty.

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So what? Don't drink. What happens? You die.

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Based on past experience, we know that past experience shows that the way that this operates is we have to drink or we're going to die.

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So you're doing it all the time. You're doing it right now. You're sitting in that chair and what are you depending upon? The uniformity in nature, that the future will be like the past and you don't even think about it.

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We operated according to that all the time and guess what? All of science is based on the principle of induction that the future will be like the past and so what's this?

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When God says that apart from him, you could know nothing and that apart from him, your thoughts are futile and you become a fool, it is in the most simple part of life that we all hang on to every single day, the uniformity in nature.

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You're going to depend upon it every second of your life. You're doing it right now and you just did it again and you did it again and you're doing it right now.

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Do you get how this is so big? Uniformity in nature. But what's this? What does the atheist believe about the universe?

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There is no God. There is no purpose. There is no meaning. We are all fish that became philosophers.

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We came from the goo to you. We were once fish that moved to apes that moved to you.

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There is no God. There is no purpose. There is no meaning. There is only blind and pitiless indifference, Richard Dawkins, the most famous atheist on the planet said in his book

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River Out of Eden. No good, no evil, blind, pitiless indifference and so what's this? I went to a lecture at Gammage this past year.

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Lawrence Krauss, famous physicist, atheist and Richard Dawkins dialoguing on stage and this is what they said.

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Krauss said, we're stardust and Dawkins is like, yes, we're apes and what

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Krauss said was that the physical constants in the universe probably came about by sheer accident.

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Hold on. Which means that it's confusing that this physicist is applying all these laws of math and science and assuming uniformity in nature because he believes they came about by sheer accident.

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Now watch this. If the universe has no guidance, no direction, no governance, no purpose, no meaning, if we are all just meat bone protoplasm bobbing on the surface of the cosmos, we don't know that the future will be like the past.

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We have no justification for the next five seconds being like the past. So if you stand on an unbelieving worldview that there is no

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God, no meaning, no purpose, that we all just came out of nothing to something, non -moral matter became moral, inorganic matter became organic, fish became philosophers, goo became you, and we're all just protoplasm bobbing on the cosmos, if you believe that, then you have no justification for an appeal to science, to reason, to math, to anything.

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And as a matter of fact, I want to remind you, you've been depending upon the uniformity of nature the entire time.

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And you just did it again. And you just did it again. Now watch this, as a Christian, when

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God says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all knowledge, when I make a knowledge claim and I say the future will be like the past, I have a justification for it when

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I have Christ as my Lord and I start with him. Because Hebrews chapter one says this,

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Hebrews chapter one says this, that Christ upholds all things by the word of his power. And what that means is this, that he carries the universe along to its intended destination.

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What the Bible very clearly says is it says that God has given to the universe a fixed order. So when

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I, as a Christian, start with God, I don't engage in this with a neutral mindset. I say, no, Jesus is

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God. His claims are true. He is who he claims to be. He says he carries the universe along to its intended destination.

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I have a justification for all that I'm doing. The atheist is showing what? That he knows God. Why? Because he says no meaning, no purpose, no nothing.

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The universe is chaos in motion, time and chance acting on matter. And then he does his, he balances his checkbook.

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He does his chemical tests in the lab. Do you get the point? He drinks water, he gets out of bed thinking gravity is going to hold him down today like it did yesterday.

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He gets on airplanes. Think about it. The atheist rides on airplanes thinking that the laws of physics are going to hold today like they did yesterday.

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And isn't it miraculous when they do? The atheist isn't supposed to believe in miracles, is he?

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Number two, laws of logic. Apart from God, you can't know anything. If you don't start with God, you can't know anything.

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Number two, laws of logic. What if I were to walk in today to the conference and I walked up and Bob says, this is

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Jeff. I've known him for 10 years and great guy. Come on up, Jeff. And I walk up and I go,

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Vroom. and I go, and I go, and I go, and I go. and I go, and I go, and I go, and I go,

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And a purple up and down the scientists over the ice cream moon underneath a space shuttle and fish see under rocks and cheese steaks.

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Amen. How long would you hang out in the conference? Well, Well, if there weren't any good speakers before, you might actually hang out because it's very entertaining.

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But you'll notice that that's not appealing to the mind of any person here, is it? Everything I just said didn't make any sense whatsoever.

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It didn't follow any law of logic. It wasn't consistent. It wasn't rational. And the amazing thing is that the

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Bible says that if you don't start with God, you can't know anything. And I want to say this. In radical unbelief, if they reject their

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Creator's existence and don't first start with God, they have no basis for appealing to laws of logic.

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Because let me ask you a question. Has anyone in here ever smelled a law of logic? What does it smell like? Have you ever seen one, tasted one?

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Do laws of logic grow somewhere in Arizona, maybe in Flagstaff? No, definitely not in Flagstaff. Where are the laws of logic?

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Can you stub your toe on one, trip on one? Can I give you a hot cup of law of logic for breakfast and drink it down?

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Laws of logic are immaterial, and yet they are universal and they are unchanging.

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And you all, watch this, as image bearers of God have been assuming the laws of logic the entire time

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I've been speaking up here, haven't you? You have been holding me to rational consistency, logical consistency the entire time.

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Now watch this. The radical skeptic or atheist is standing on a worldview that says, what about humans?

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We used to be fish that became philosophers. What was Krauss' statement at Gammage? He says, we're all stardust.

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He says, the atoms in one hand come from a different star that exploded than the other. You're all stardust.

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And Dawkins says, yeah, we're apes. We're apes. Now I'm going to ask you the question.

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If I stand on atheism apart from God, if I actually reject my Creator's existence and I stand on that worldview, that we used to be fish that became philosophers,

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I have a question. How do you have any justification whatsoever for universal, immaterial laws of logic?

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Remember that the naturalistic materialist atheist who rejects his Creator says that all that exists is matter.

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All that exists is matter, and yet, can you hand me a law of logic?

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Can I touch it? Can I feel it? Laws of logic are immaterial in nature.

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I had a public debate about two years ago with two very well -known atheists in the Arizona area.

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It was an awesome debate, packed out. It was even webcast. It was an amazing time. We had these atheists in front of us.

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One of us was a naturalistic materialist, which means he believes all there is is matter in motion. We evolved from the goo to us, fish to philosophers, all that stuff.

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I know that he believes as an atheist with his rejection of God. I know that he believes that all that exists is matter.

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That's what he believes. I said to him, Sean, are laws of logic material or immaterial?

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Are they made of matter or not? Now, if he's a consistent atheist, he knew what I was doing.

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He says, material. I said, can you hand me one, please?

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The audience started laughing. He said, no, no, no. It's happening inside of our brains.

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I said, okay, so laws of logic are the result of brain gas, which means ultimately what?

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The atheist couldn't help doing what he's doing right now because he's just fizzing. He's fizzing atheistic thoughts.

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I'm fizzing Christian theistic thoughts. If I don't start with God, I have no basis for laws of logic that are universal and unchanging and necessary.

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Listen, Christian, don't go into the world scared and running away from the atheistic or unbelieving worldview and you're apologetic.

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You stand on the rock of God's word and you have certainty. Laws of logic are for Christians. We went to the, sorry,

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I'm going to say this, we went to the atheist thing. What was it called?

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Atheist Conference. It was in Washington, D .C. It says the largest gathering of atheists in history, they said.

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We had this shirt we made because we were filming a documentary, and it had the Trix bunny. It said, silly atheist, logic is for Christians.

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We did that because we wanted to make sure we got in conversations that day. But you get the point.

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Now watch this. Here's an experiment to show you what this means, laws of logic. If you don't start with God, you can't know anything.

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If laws of logic are the results of brain chemistry firing, it means that you couldn't help thinking what you're thinking right now.

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You're just fizzing. And imagine this. How do we get truth claims in a worldview apart from God that says that laws of logic are just the results of brain gas?

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It'd be like, Douglas Wilson says, taking two bottles of soda, one Dr. Pepper, one Mountain Dew.

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Taking those bottles of soda, shaking them up, inviting everyone, come inside, guys. We're going to have a huge debate.

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The debate of the century. Come on, have a seat, take a seat. Shake up the bottles of soda, shake them up, shake them up really good.

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Everyone's waiting, and you're like, a debate with Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew? Uh -huh. Ready? Put them down, pop the tops, and they start fizzing.

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And then ask the question, which one's winning the debate? You would say, they're fizzing.

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Chemical reactions don't produce truth. And when the atheist who rejects

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God doesn't start with him, he's fizzing. His biochemical responses aren't in charge of anybody, so he can't hold anybody to a law of logic.

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I was talking to an atheist once in a lecture, and so I'm pressing him on this issue.

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You believe you're just a bag of stuff. You believe you're just, you're chemically just firing right now, correct? He says, yes. I said, so are laws of logic necessary and universal?

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He goes, well, no. I said, so they are. He goes, no. I said, so yes.

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He goes, no. I said, so yes. Got it. Got it.

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Good. He goes, no. I said, so yes. He goes, why are you doing this?

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I said, why am I not doing this? He goes, stop. I said, so don't stop.

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Keep going. He goes, stop. I said, okay, I'll keep going. He goes, no, stop. I said, I'll keep going.

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And I go, is it bothering you that I'm contradicting you right now? He says, yes.

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I said, no. Laws of logic are universal and unchanging.

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If you don't start with God, you can start saying very stupid things like laws of logic are not necessary and universal.

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So they are. Do you get the point? He's an image bearer of God that knows his creator.

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He's suppressing the truth about him. And you do not need to assume neutrality when you engage in apologetics against that worldview.

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If you don't start with God, you can't know anything. Last point I'll make here on this is on the point of ethics.

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I'm over time now, aren't I? Okay, good. Okay, thank you. I have sins in this area, don't

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I, Ben and Colby? They tell me you got 50 minutes. I'm like, oh, shoot. That's why they put me before lunch, though, by the way, is so that I don't make any other speaker mad.

54:55

I just ruin your lunch. So ethics. Here we go. Ethics.

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If I don't start with God, I can't know anything. Ethics. Okay. Notice something that when you engage in a discussion with an unbeliever, what are they anticipating the entire time you're talking to them?

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If you don't start with God, if you don't start with God as the foundation of all reason, of all knowledge, of all certainty, if you don't start with God, notice in a discussion, the atheist, when they talk to you, what do they anticipate?

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They anticipate that you are required to tell them the truth. What if an atheist said to you, prove

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God's existence to me? And I say, oh, you don't know? Where have you been? Where have you been?

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What are you talking about? Where have you been? You haven't been watching the news? Don't you know? He's made an appearance today and that everybody on the planet today is converted to Christ.

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You don't know this? Where have you been? Where were you? Well, I'm sorry that you missed it.

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He goes, what are you talking about? Am I allowed to lie to you in discussion and debate like that? What is assumed the entire time you even dialogue with radical unbelief?

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The necessary element of truth, that you are required to treat the person you're speaking with with dignity and honesty and respect.

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But what does that assume about the person? That they are not simply meat bone protoplasm stardust bobbing on the surface of the cosmos.

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What moral obligation does stardust have to other stardust? Nothing.

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No obligation whatsoever. And I want to suggest to you a quick story to explain this and so you'll see it.

56:35

Richard Dawkins, the most famous atheist in the world today, not because he's rigorous, but because he is militant.

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Richard Dawkins has written many books, The God Delusion, The Blind Watchmaker, River Out of Eden, The Greatest Show on Earth, all these different books.

56:48

He speaks around the world. He is the friend of atheists. They love him. They exalt him.

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Richard Dawkins. Richard Dawkins in his book, River Out of Eden, says this. He says, there is no good.

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There is no evil. There is only blind and pitiless indifference. And he said, we are just apes.

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Okay. No good, no evil, blind, pitiless indifference. Stand on that apart from God.

57:11

Stand on his worldview. So Richard Dawkins, I'll give you a little scenario. Richard Dawkins, his publisher, this is pretend by the way,

57:19

I'm just gonna be a little scenario. Richard Dawkins publisher comes to him and says, Professor Dawkins, we'd like you to write a new book.

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Your books have been very successful. We'd like you to write a new one. And Professor Dawkins says, well, I'd love to. Thank you. And he writes a book, gives him the manuscript.

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They sign a contract for his royalties. And the book now is published and goes out. Six months later, he turns the news on.

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Professor Dawkins book has sold 10 million copies in six months. Dawkins says, oh, goody. But no check.

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And so he just thinks maybe something's wrong here. Maybe just take a little longer than normal, just no check. And so then a year goes by, and now he finds out 20 million copies sold one year.

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Still no check. And so Professor Dawkins, who believes that we're apes and stardust, and there is no good and there is no evil, there is only blind and pitiless indifference, goes and calls his publisher.

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Hello. And they say, oh, hello, Professor Dawkins. Thank you for calling us. He says, oh, how have you guys been? What? Good, good.

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Listen, I just wanted to call, see if there's something wrong with the mail or anything. They go, no,

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Professor Dawkins, everything's fine. It's been about a year since the publication of the last book, correct?

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He says, oh, yes, yes. And Professor Dawkins, it is doing swimmingly well. Twenty million copies one year.

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He goes, right, right. I did see that. I haven't received a check. And they go, uh -huh.

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No, I don't think you heard me. I haven't received a check for the royalties, the promise we've made with each other.

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Book from me to you, money from you to me. And then they say, uh -huh, uh -huh.

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Have a nice day, Mr. Dawkins. He goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait. I'm confused here.

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We made an agreement. We made a promise to each other. I'd write the book and then you'd pay me the money. And they say,

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Professor Dawkins, we read the book. Whatever do you mean?

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Professor Dawkins, we read the book. There is no good. There is no evil. There's only blind and pitiless indifference. We are stardust and we are apes.

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Now, do you think that Richard Dawkins would say, oh, and hang the phone up? Or do you think that Professor Dawkins would make a beeline to his lawyer's office to file a claim and a lawsuit against a company that made a promise to him and has broken their promise?

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What does the atheist stand on? A rejection of his creator. But what does he do the entire time? He images God his whole life.

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He may say there is no good, there is no evil, only blind and pitiless indifference. But guess what? He won't live that way.

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Because image bearers of God can't help being image bearers of God in his world. They may suppress the truth about him.

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They may claim things like you can't really know anything for certain. There is no good. There is no evil. But they won't live that way. And you as a

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Christian and I as a Christian have a commitment to Christ as Lord of everything, including our reasoning, and we don't need to live in a world where we assume neutrality against the unbeliever.

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And the next thing I'll leave you with is just the third point. It's very simple. It's just this. How do we reason like a Christian? It's a two -fold apologetic.

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Number one, are you ready? Proverbs 26, verses 4 and 5, and we'll end on this point. Proverbs 26, 4 and 5.

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Bob is such a gentleman, such a sweet guy. I've known Bob for a long time. And Bob loves me.

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And so Bob said, I want Jeff to share with you how he does this. But if I could let you on the inside of that.

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How do I do this? This is not Jeff's technique, thankfully. Thankfully it's not.

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Proverbs 26, verses 4 and 5 says this. Don't answer a fool according to his folly, or you'll be like him.

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And then the second part sounds like a contradiction. It says, answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.

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There's a two -fold apologetic that we bring to the world, and that's how we proclaim the gospel in our reasoning with a person.

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Number one, don't be like them. In your reasoning, in your presuppositions, in your commitments, don't be like them.

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When bringing the gospel to an unbeliever, don't be like them and pretend neutrality.

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I just don't know if there's a God. I need evidence. Don't go that way. If you reason like the unbeliever, listen, if you start to reason like them and detach yourself from a commitment to Christ as Lord of your reasoning as a starting point of all your foundation, reason, and wisdom, and knowledge, and anything, listen, here's the problem.

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When you reason like the unbeliever, and you think, hey, maybe Joseph was right. Maybe the church did fall away.

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When you reason like them, listen, it's like getting onto their airplane. No matter what you talk about on the plane, you're going to their destination.

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And you could be on an airplane going west, and you can get to the front of the plane and take a dart to the back of the plane.

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You're not going east. Don't reason like the unbeliever. Don't reason like them.

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Don't assume neutrality like them. You start with a commitment to Christ as Lord of your reasoning, and you start with his word as the rock and the foundation of everything you believe and everything you think.

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That's in every area. With the Mormon, the Jehovah's Witness, with the atheist, with the Mormon, I start with the very words of God, and I proclaim them to him.

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When he makes a claim against God's existence, and as one God, three persons, I go to the scriptures,

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I say, this is what God says. It's not even a possibility that there's more than one God, because God says, before me there was no

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God formed, now there shall there be after me. There's no chance that salvation is also through my works and my obedience, and that I could become exalted and a god or goddess of my own planet one day, because God says very clearly,

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Romans 3, verse 28, we conclude that a man is declared righteous by faith apart from works of law, and that God is the first and the last, and besides him, there is no

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God. He says he doesn't even know of any other gods. He's God alone in the heavens above and on the earth below.

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There is no other. I start with God, and I don't reason like them. And the second thing you do is what

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I've already done today. Answer a fool according to his folly. What does that mean?

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You start standing on God's word the whole time, but sometimes it's a good idea to step over into their worldview and to make them look down at their feet as to what they're supposed to be standing on, like with Dawkins.

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You say you're standing on atheism, no God, no good, no evil, blind, pitiless indifference.

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Sometimes it's helpful to walk over to the atheist and stand on his worldview and say, look down, you're an ape, why are you arguing with me?

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It would look something like this, but maybe not entirely like this. Be careful. If you're in a local

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ASU college class, your professor is teaching you neo -Darwinian micromutation macroevolution.

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He says, you all are apes. You're stardust. There is no good, no God. Universe came from nothing.

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It's time and chance acting on matter. And you raise your hand, you say, professor, we're apes?

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He says, yes, yes, apes. OK. You get up. You walk over to his desk.

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You stand up on it, and you squat. And he says, whatever are you doing?

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You look over at him. Start picking bugs off yourself and chewing on them. He walks over to you and demands you to get off his desk.

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You reach over into his hair. You start picking bugs out of his hair. And then he starts getting very ferocious and furious with you, saying, get out of the classroom.

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And you start pounding on your chest. Do you get the point?

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I'm not suggesting doing that. But something like that would be helpful. It's stepping into their worldview to show the complete collapse of it.

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I'll give you one example, and then we're done. Mormons say the Bible's been corrupted. It's missing many plain and precious parts.

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The Bible's been corrupted. It's missing many plain and precious parts. Here's how you would reason in a biblical way.

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You say to them, is Jesus Lord? And they say, what? Yes.

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Can Jesus ever lie? And they say, what? No. And so what you do is go to Matthew 24, 35, and you say this.

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Jesus says, heaven and earth will pass away. My words will by no means pass away. He says his words will never, ever pass away.

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Joseph says they did. Jesus says they wouldn't. Is Jesus Lord or no? That's standing on their worldview, saying you say

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Jesus is Lord, but your claims about his word are that he lied.

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You show them the internal consistency, and you stand on God's word, and you say this. Listen, my friend. Jesus says heaven and earth will pass away.

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My words will by no means pass away. You can trust him. Let's pray. Father, thank you, Lord, for this day and your goodness.