Apologetics 101 (part 2)

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University: Apologetics 101 (part 2) Jeff Kliewer June 11, 2017

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Apologetics 101 (part 3)

Apologetics 101 (part 3)

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Hey All right, so raise your hand if you did the homework who watched the one -hour video of the atheist delusion
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Many most of you okay good good awesome You notice from the
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The movie that it was kind of a combination of what we called evidentialist and presuppositionalist apologetics
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So evidentialist means he gave evidence remember the book that he laid out there, and he said what are the odds that all the ink?
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There's fell on this page, and the words just happen to arrange themselves like this obviously that could never happen a book
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Indicates that there was a designer and that intelligent design then should be
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Considered for things like what DNA? The DNA of a human being it's all encoded before or any kind of living creature is all encoded
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Before a person is born and it's the blueprint for life And could that have just randomly evolved and the answer is of course not
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So that was an evidence that he provided for the existence of God for an intelligent designer
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But then the the guy's name is Ray Comfort. He moved more into a presuppositionalist Approach and began to use the scriptures almost as a sword to bring people to Christ And I found that to be a really interesting because as you notice in the movie that somebody would say okay
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Yeah, I get it there has to be a designer And then he'd say well are you an atheist still and what they said yes?
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and at that point he began to turn them turn their hearts by using the Word of God and the the whole idea of a
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Law of God which exposes their need for Christ and so some of them it seemed like we don't know who got saved out of That but it seemed like many of the people
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Were being touched by that and maybe some of them did come to believe so it's really awesome
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So this this morning. I wanted to begin with about a two -minute clip. That's very clearly
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I mean a presuppositionalist apologetics, so here's the context of what happens.
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We're going to watch only about two minutes of it but what happens is This man named
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Jeff Durbin is a Christian And he's gone out in front of an abortion clinic and is preaching the gospel
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He's calling people to repentance to faith and also offering love saying hey
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We will help you with whatever you need. We'll take care of the baby. We'll take the baby We'll adopt whatever is necessary and they and because of this ministry that they do they've rescued 70 babies
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This one small church in Arizona has rescued 70 babies and many of those Babies are growing up in their church now and are part of that church family so it's an amazing ministry that they're doing but as he's doing this a man walks up and proclaims
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Be quiet women have a right to do what they want with their body So he makes an argument and so what
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Durbin does then is engages him graciously But points out that there's no basis for making a moral argument like that if you don't have
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God So the presupposition that he has is that there's a God and because of that there's morality that flows from God If there were no
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God you can't even make a moral statement. So let's watch this. It's a very interesting exchange
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This is Jeff Durbin and you'll see the other guys Listen you can believe of course what you want
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But what I'm saying is that I'm talking to you as a Christian with love saying That with your position of blind faith that you've granted with no basis for science or morality
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You can't really make an appeal to morality at all because you live by faith. You don't know you're in a gnostic
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You don't know right? So when you walk past here though, you didn't act like you didn't know When you walk past here when you walk past here, you didn't act like you didn't know
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You actually said they should be able to do what they want with their bodies So, how do you make sense of that when you said that you don't have any way to justify morality or science?
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You don't know you live by faith Do you see? No, I see. I feel like this conversation is kind of going in circles.
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I understand what you're saying and I respect what you're saying But I think we're just gonna keep going I want you to know, my name is
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Jeff Nice to meet you Just want you to know why we're here just so you know, you know We love you.
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We care for these women. Over 70 babies have been saved through this work. Carmelo Olivia Grace, Cara, like I can show you pictures
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That's why we're here. We care. We love these people. We want you to know something Just last thing I'll say to you and I really appreciate you stopping
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We're here because we're forgiven because we're saved. God loves us He died for our sins and rose from the dead
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And the message is that all who turn from their sin to come to him will be forgiven and that's what we want for you That's that's the message.
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I appreciate it. I appreciate you James. God bless you, man. You too. Thank you Yeah, he did.
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He got that name wrong at the end Did you hear the voice of a woman in the background heckling him saying you don't know you don't know
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I found that to be very instructive to the worldview of someone who opposes Christianity in this case
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It was a Planned Parenthood supporter and as he's protesting there and as he's calling for life and offering to help
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You have basically a cult of death in the background that's calling for death So and but the interesting thing is what she was saying you don't know
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The key to understanding agnosticism is what? You don't know
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That's the definition of agnosticism, okay, so the guy who walked up to him wasn't agnostic he claims he doesn't know but listen
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Agnosticism is part of a religion. It's part of a worldview even though They don't know oftentimes.
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That's with this much certainty as someone who claims to know So whenever you are preaching the gospel if I were to walk up to a
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Mormon and say to this Mormon man Jesus loves you. He died on the cross. What would he say?
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Amen brother. Thank you very much. Have a nice day. He totally Understands that within his own worldview, so here's why apologetics is so important because in order to engage someone with the gospel
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Oftentimes there's a clash of worldviews Which means it's not enough just to recite our faith and to proclaim our faith although That's part of it there needs to be an understanding of what we're dealing with what is the worldview of the person?
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We're talking to to reach a Mormon. You really have to know something about Mormonism now more important than that You need to know the gospel you need to know the true biblical message
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And you preach that and oftentimes the genuine thing will expose the lie to the Mormon himself
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But to really engage people with the gospel apologetics becomes a very useful tool now if we were to go out on the street and preach
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Today If we were to go out on the street and just start preaching How many?
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Muslims do you think we preach to? One in a hundred maybe right how many
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Mormons you think we preach to? and In New Jersey if we were in Utah probably 50 out of 100
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Maybe in Idaho 20 out of 100 in New Jersey probably one if one probably less than one out of 100
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Maybe one or two Jehovah's Witnesses out of 100 But everybody would have a worldview the majority worldview you probably have 30 %
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Christian But the majority worldview is what we're going to spend most of our time on today The majority worldview is secular humanism
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Secular humanism, what is it? Where did it come from we're going to spend a little time looking into that Where did the religion of America today come from?
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Well, I'd like us to start around the time of the Reformation because as we sit here today We believe that the scriptures alone are our source of authority the scriptures came
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From God and so the world that we live in and all of our experiences and everything that we have around us
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That's what we see and we feel and we know But there's something outside of this box
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God who has spoken into this box to reveal something that's beyond us
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Before the Reformation most people did believe that there was a
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God that intervenes into history that speaks into history and Tells us something that we couldn't know on ourselves.
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So We as people were dependent knowers we depended on God to know things and Really that came through at least three means
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Number one the Bible most people and we're talking about European history right now for the most part the
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West in the West Believed that the Bible was the Word of God. They also believed in the authority of the church
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To define things to tell truth that's beyond human reasoning that comes from God and finally tradition
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That the traditions of the church also speak to those things now in the time of the Reformation there were abuses
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That people began to notice and of course Martin Luther is the most famous, right? He nailed the 95 feces on the church door in Wittenberg 500 years ago this year, right
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October of 1517 500 years ago the Reformation begins and the cry of the rest of Reformation were the five solas, right?
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You're saved not by indulgences. You can't buy it. You can't pay for you. Can't spring a soul from purgatory
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The only way is faith alone sola fide and That faith is by grace alone sola gratia and where does the faith need to be placed in Christ alone sola
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Christus? Right and all to the glory of God alone sola to the glory of God.
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I don't know the Latin for that But the fifth of those was what sola
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Scripture so out of the Reformation you have this movement that says we know
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God Because we're dependent knowers and we know him from the scriptures and the scriptures alone
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We no longer trust church tradition or church hierarchy a Pope or a council
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Rather we are dependent knowers because we know from scripture alone
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When the Reformation began it swept through Europe, especially toward the north and into Scandinavia That's where the e -free church came from the
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Lutheranism that that came there has now come to us in evangelicalism
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We're dependent knowers at the same time as the Reformation began There was a second movement that was beginning in the 1500s.
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That is called the Enlightenment Now the Enlightenment had a different set of presuppositions
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It said that we can know by reason
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By logic how so well there were really two means one is rationalism
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So by logic, I think therefore I am The cart before the horse right the cart said that I think therefore
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I am by logic With that starting point in fact by experience, and that's the second thing so empiricism is called experience and Rationalism is the thinking the logic aspect by logic by experience we can know
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And we can discover absolute truth Right well that moved on through the you know the early part of the
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Enlightenment until a thinker in the 1800s by the name of Charles Darwin Brought another teaching.
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What was that? Evolution right when Darwin brings the theory of evolution
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There's no longer a need for an absolute truth that comes from God Rather the idea is that we are just evolved so instead of a knowledge of God God isn't even necessary any longer so separate
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God from knowledge and the Independent knower the person who can reason and think is moving forward without God Yes Yeah, and all
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I think that the philosophers of those of that day understood the nihilism that would come from that But the common man didn't really get that yet not until now we're moving on to the 20th century
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What happens in the 20th century you have all this optimism of the Enlightenment man is making progress man can have knowledge man can discover
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Truth by reason and empiricism by our experiences what we see and what how we think there's an optimism until the mid around 1915 what happens before the first world war and then in the 1940s a second world war and out of those destructive events
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Europeans and then to some degree Americans are saying There's not progress
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There's not hope and so what you find then is the failure of this modernism the failure of modernism is
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Postmodernism that's what begins to emerge after the world wars What do
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I mean by postmodernism? There's not an absolute truth. There is no truth
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Yeah truth is relative to you So look at the progression that we have from the pre -modern days in the pre -modern days you have a
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God who reveals That's how people know Over time God is removed from the equation
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Knowledge comes from your own reasoning your own experiences, and then with postmodernism
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It's really simply defined by you truth comes from yourself
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So that's the religion of many secularists today many humanists today rather than having
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God on the on the throne revealing Instead what you have is many little gods
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Running around the world each one defining their own truth and the only thing
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That's unacceptable under that world view is to say that your world view is correct
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Because everything is relative d .a. Carson if you look in the notes summarize That I'm not sure if I print that far from thinking in your notes, okay,
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I'll just read this to you these notes later Listen to d .a.
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Carson So does it sound like the religion of today and what it would say to us as Christians far from thinking
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That this loss of epistemological Certainty is tragic now timeout. Let me define terms here
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Epistemological means how do you know the study of knowledge? So d .a.
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Carson is saying it's far from thinking that this loss of epistemological Certainty is tragic
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So instead of thinking that it's a bad thing that people can no longer know things for certain
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Post -modernism glories in the diversity of outcomes This is what they glory and they love the idea of a diversity of outcomes
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It says epistemological certainty in other words being sure, you know, something is
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Undesirable because it breeds absolutism that manipulates people and controls them
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Trampling on the splendid diversity of creeds and cultures and races that constitute humankind
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Let the diversity flourish, but let none of the disparate voices claim to be true or better Let them all claim to be true, but none in an exclusive or an objective sense
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That is the worldview that you will encounter if we chose Princeton This afternoon to go and evangelize
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We're not going to be running into 99 Muslims We're going to run into 99 secular humanists
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You see that is a worldview that has evolved over time
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Dismissing God and here is the crucial question. The crucial issue is epistemology
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How do you know? How do you know something is There a
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God who has revealed Now a deist kind of like some of our early founders of America.
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Some of them were deists They'll say yes, there's a God, but he's distant.
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He created a world So there's an intelligent designer, but then he spun it into motion He stepped back and we're still all here to discover truth for ourselves
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So all we have is empiricism and rationalism a deist that functionally is just like an atheist
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Follow me But no we claim that God not only spun the world into existence
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But then he what spoke and that's the issue. The issue is revelation so there is a clash of worldviews in America today between those who believe in revelation a
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God who spoke and those who believe that he did not So finally the issue the dividing line that we're dealing with is the authority of the
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Bible The authority of the Bible that's what these that's what evangelism comes down to that's what knowing is all about if you believe that God has spoken is the
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Bible it all comes back around to the Reformation sola scriptura The secular humanist will never accept the authority of the
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Bible They hate the idea that the Bible would have authority now, they're fine if you believe the
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Bible Tom That's fine with them What they cannot stomach is if you preach to them that they must repent and believe in Christ on the authority of God's Word That God commands repentance and faith
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That to them is the most intolerant bigoted thing that you could possibly say and so if you say that I was watching on YouTube yesterday.
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Did anybody see the the questioning that Bernie Sanders put to the appointee
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And he brought up an article that that the the appointee I forget his name
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Vaughn or something like that That he had written for a magazine called the resurgent and in that he discusses
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Islam and he says Islam's issue is essentially that they have rejected the
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Son of God And that therefore all Muslims are condemned by God Now Bernie Sanders presses him on that and he says so you're you're saying they're condemnable
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And and he says listen all people Muslims Christians Jews all people are made in the image of God and need to be treated with respect and dignity
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That wasn't enough for Bernie that was not the answer he wanted to hear Because that's that's how we treat people regardless of what creed or what race
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But his worldview this guy Vought's worldview was that in God's eyes
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Because all people are sinners Without the Son of God they stand condemned Where do we get that?
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Romans chapter 1 perhaps The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the godlessness of men who suppress the truth in ungodliness
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So there's a wrath of God people are condemned Because God is made through his eternal power and divine nature his his
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Revelation is general revelation makes himself known, but people reject that truth preferring the lie to the truth
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That's Romans chapter 1 That's the worldview of this appointee so he rightly holds a
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Christian worldview but Bernie Sanders could not grant that this man could hold a
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Truly biblical worldview and let the Bible define what the Christian faith would be And so he presses him and he presses him and finally he threw his face turns red
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Turning red against him for believing that Christ is the only way and this guy did a great job because he didn't want to get
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In a religious debate, so he just kept saying this is this is the statement of faith that Wheaton College That's what
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I was defending. This is a Christian worldview. You know he didn't want to get into it But at the same time his worldview was formed by Revelation and he was consistent with that So there's a there's a complete clash of worldviews there so Bernie Sanders face turns red and at the end
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He throws up his hands. He says I could never vote for something. This is not what America was about Never mind the fact the majority of the signers of the
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Constitution Believed that very thing in the authority of the Bible, okay, so this is what we're up against Okay, understand the worldview of a majority of Americans secular humanism
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Postmodernism now setting it now notice in America today There's still a lot of modernism because you have to have modernism even to function
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Follow what I'm saying if you if you're completely postmodern in your thinking then you wouldn't believe in gravity
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Why would gravity hold you down just jump off a building it might you might float You know you you recognize there are absolute laws that are governing this world
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And so you recognize certain morality well that's a modernist view to say that there would be morality a
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Postmodernist can't even say that that anything is wrong and yet They would agree that certain set things are sinful and wrong so most people still have a modern worldview
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But there's a postmodernism setting in That says nothing is certain
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Postmodernism says you have your own private truth you define your truth Because there is nothing beyond nothing that defines you so that's where we are today, so Certainty really is the enemy of postmodernism
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Certainty Certainty is only possible if God speaks
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So agnosticism and atheism let's let's talk specifically about those things. What what does the word agnostic mean?
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Not knowing so it doesn't agnostic say that there is no God No Yeah, well, they'll just say they don't know if there's a guy they can't know what
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God is like they can't have certainty Is that right yeah, okay, you know saying it's the same thing right
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Okay, so Atheism then what would an atheist claim no God? There is no
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God, that's more of an absolute claim right so a more of a modern way of thinking right so Postmoderns would tend to be more agnostic and a more modernistic worldview would arrive at atheism right to make it a definitive claim
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That there is no God okay, so Robert Maury has seven leaps that atheists have to explain all of these.
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I think are helpful apologetics. I got that from Robbie Zacharias his book he had quoted from these.
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I don't actually know Robert Maury, so I don't endorse him I'm not sure who he is. I took that from Robbie Zacharias Notice the new atheism is aggressively hostile toward Christians There are atheists that are intent on proving us wrong
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Atheists that are intent on proving that there is no God and will attack your faith So be aware of that that the new atheists are often on the attack.
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They're on the move So now three things quickly how would you speak to a postmodern that might crack through a
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Secular humanist what are some approaches that you could take number one? agree with the nihilism of postmodernism
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Follow this agree with the nihilism of postmodernism
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Post the postmodern worldview when they're honest with themselves when they're falling asleep at night when they contemplate the universe
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And what is and what is not? They're nihilistic There's no hope
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There's nothing coming of this world There is no God there.
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There's this world has no meaning. There's no purpose There's no morality. There's no basis for morality and the only
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Result of the worldview of Americans today is despair Proverbs 26 4 & 5 answer a fool according to his father
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Begin your apologetic to a secular humanist by agreeing
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That in their worldview It's nothing but despair Because what ends up happening?
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I think is they arrive at that place and that's what their mind tells them There's no
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God There's no morality if there's no God. There's no meaning to my life. There is no purpose
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There is no plan this suffering is only suffering and that's all this world has it's not redemptive
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There's no reason for it and ultimately they drift towards this despair And then in their mind they circle back around to the beginning and they try to reason it through hoping that it'll end at a different place
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They might do that for days and days at a time But in their quietest moments
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They know that if there is no God It's hopeless Point them in that direction
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Answer a fool according to his father Show them that this is truly where their worldview leads
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You'll notice in Ray Comfort's video Did you see living waters the atheist delusion there was that man out on the pier who who is arguing against God vehemently?
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And then Ray Comfort said do you want to kill yourself? He said yes, I want to kill myself Where did that that nihilism come from?
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in his heart He knew that his worldview was empty and meaningless and Ray Comfort then began to comfort him and say don't do that Please don't do that.
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There is a God there is hope but it begins by exposing the folly of the fool make sense
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So lead people down that path. Yeah, I think one thing that was very interesting is that the atheist and the agnostic are
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Have those beliefs. Yeah, because they don't have to be accountable to God. That's right.
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Yeah No one accountability. Mm -hmm. Yep You could also say to them that you believe what
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Hitler did wasn't wrong, right? Exactly. Yep That's a moral argument that can only be defined by revelation.
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Yeah, otherwise, it's just his subjective truth versus theirs Yeah, you believe what he did was right?
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Yeah, he did. Yep That's exactly right rich. So number one you answered answer the fool according to his father number two
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Every moral evil evil goes back to who gets to define right and wrong You have to address the intellectual sin of autonomy
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Genesis chapter 3 you go back to the garden Did God really say?
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Who gets to define truth and you point out to a person? Are you
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God? Do you speak? Who do you listen to who do you believe? Well an atheist will say well Degrassi says or Richard Dawkins says and you say who gets to say what is true
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I believe Jesus and Then you put them on the defensive and you say why should
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I listen to Dawkins? Why why does he speak truth? Why is he so reliable?
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Why can't he air and then you bring it back to who you follow who you believe?
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You would have to have the knowledge of God to say there is no God exact Yeah, confirm a universal negative unless you have universal knowledge.
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Absolutely true. Yeah, there's no authority There can be no authority there It's just one other fallen person from their perspective from their little tiny bit of empiricism that they can gather
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They say that the eye can only capture about 25 frames a second So what can you even believe from the things that you see?
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How do you know that something wasn't slipped in in that that fraction of time where you didn't see it? That's what sleight of hand is right so you can't even trust your eye
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So, how can you base your worldview on what you see what you experience and what you rationalize
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There's and I find it intriguing Contradiction self -contradiction, but my brother is a great example of that.
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He's agnostic. Yeah, but he's a lawyer Right, and so there has to be absolute law for him to be a lawyer
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Absolutely, but there can't be absolute law for him to be an agnostic Correct. Yep. It's a point now answer the fool according to his father.
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They show the the inconsistency This is I think presuppositional apologetics
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It's showing where inconsistencies are you defend the revelation of God? And so the key to being a good presuppositional apologist is not actually to know everything about what everybody else believes
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It's to know your revelation so well that you can defend it when you're on the streets in Kensington And the
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Muslim brings you a hundred contradictions in the Bible you can say all right, let's look at a pick which one you want to talk about and They go to that verse and you can show them why this is not a contradiction
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But if you really understood what was being said here, this is what it means in context So you defend your revelation?
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You show the consistency of the Bible meanwhile showing the inconsistency of the other worldview
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That's that's presuppositional apologetics showing where a worldview breaks down where you have you descend into incoherence
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The morality argument that happened at that Planned Parenthood How did that descend into incoherence a man walks up to Jeff Durbin and gives him a moral?
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Command get out of here. Why are you telling women can do what they want with their body? That's making a moral statement, and so what a
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Durbin do He showed the incoherence of them even making a moral argument they have no basis to stand on he on the other hand can stand on the authority of Jesus Christ and the
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Word of God Psalm 139 that says God forms a baby in the womb or John the Baptist leapt in the womb when
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Jesus was in room you mentioned death cult you said that was a death cult a death cult Proverbs 836 all those who hate me
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God says love death. It's so true So true to see how vehemently they argue for nothing, but death me it's a cult of death.
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You're right Yeah, and it makes sense from their worldview. You know Their worldview ultimately is incoherent.
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There's no morality there there can't be any morale no basis for morality, okay? So the first thing that you do you answer a fool according to his folly right?
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So you go with them down their train of thinking and you press them right to where they know they are hopeless nihilism despaired
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Go with that let them experience that and feel that and point them to that because ultimately the next thing is you do have something
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Who gets the right to speak are you an autonomous independent knower or is there a knower?
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outside of the box who can speak into the box who gets to say and Then you preach
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Christ you say Christ said everyone on the side of truth listens to me Jesus said
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I am the way I am the truth. I am the light you present Christ as the revelation of God That God has come in the flesh and with him came light
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Light has come into the world, but men love darkness rather than light they refuse to come to the light But the light has come into the world
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God that light represents revelation in the beginning was the Word and the word was with God and the word was
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God you say God has spoken a word He has given knowledge He has broke into the box in the person of Jesus Christ and then in the written record of his word
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So it goes back to who gets to define right and wrong Point them to Genesis 3
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Genesis 3 the original sin Has God really say
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That was the issue in the garden, and that's their issue, too That was all of our issue until we submit to the authority of God's Word Has God really said?
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So finally John, this is what I just started to mention the light has penetrated the box
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In our evangelism we often jump very quickly to the cross right and rightfully so we need to get there
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We need to preach the cross We need to explain that Jesus died and that he rose But focus on this idea of him being revelation from God.
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That's the third thing Revelation that the light came into the world That a word came here from God make sense
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Focus on Jesus as being the revelation of the father He makes God makes himself known in the person of Jesus Christ So this is presuppositional apologetics to an atheist or an agnostic a secular humanist
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You answer them according to their folly Go with them and show them the bankruptcy of their own worldview and that they should be despairing
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That suicide would make sense If there were no God, but then you point them to Christ You show them that it's really an issue of who
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Gets to speak not not what is right and wrong that comes from it. Don't get caught up in arguing
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Homosexual marriage and all these things those can be side trails and then they're the reason that we hold what we do is because we
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Listen to who we listen to and all the what comes from that But get back to the core of the who gets to say what is true
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The who and for us that's Jesus let them defend their their Richard Dawkins Let them show us why that's so why he's such a good reliable source
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Right, and then finally Jesus as revelation and then you'll get to the cross
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You'll get to the sacrifice of resurrection, but talk about Jesus as light as the word from God Psalm 119 the psalmist for 176 verses
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I think it is each verse Talks about the beauty of God speaking into the box that light comes in to our darkness
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It's a lamp unto our feet a light for our path Each one is about the Word of God the law of God the commands of God the statutes of God.
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It's God speaking Psalm 19 has a similar thing the heavens declare the glory of God, but then it goes but your word
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It's like honey to my lips. The word is special revelation The only way that we can be certain that we can have knowledge that we can know things is because God speaks
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So in closing up this whole thing and we'll move on to the next one Islam the the only thing the dividing line is revelation
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It's the Word of God God has spoken According to all these other worldviews that people have around us
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We're just out here based on our own experiences our own rationality
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Essentially just making our own truth Believing what we ever want to believe so it comes down to that yes
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I had my students write a paper a couple weeks ago on which of the
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Ten Commandments was the most difficult for them or people generally to When we gave them the most difficulty, so that's a suggestion in their writing that The law is written on their hearts.
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Yes. Yep. They knew and they didn't do they In no instance did anyone say it wasn't true right where the commandment wasn't
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What an opportunity you have and I love that you use unbroken there to have the kids read that yeah
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Yeah, yeah, that's yeah That's Romans 2 so Romans 1 you have this general revelation
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Romans 2 you have conscience Everybody has that testimony of right and wrong
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Yeah in the sermon today We're going to look at the rich young ruler and you'll see the method of Jesus to use exactly that the law the
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Ten Commandments and And moral law that's also written on the heart to bring conviction of sin
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So that's a huge evangelistic tool we'll talk about today in the sermon So any other questions or any more conversation about the secular humanist about that worldview, and how do we engage that?
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as Christians What book do you recommend?
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On secular humanism I'll have to get back to you on that I'll get you have to recommend some one argument.
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I've made is that The computer human brain and nervous system are more complex than the most sophisticated computer
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You wouldn't insult the human genius behind the computer. Do you deny that there's no genius behind the human brain and nervous system, right?
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Right, you know Yeah, yeah, I've only ever the eyeball made
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Darwin's ill He said he couldn't figure out how the eyeball could have possibly evolved right? Yeah, irreducible complexity of the eye, right?
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You'd have to have all those cones and lenses and everything functioning at the same time. One can't evolve without the other
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It's insanity So yeah, there might not be time today, but maybe tomorrow or next week or whatever how you would deal with What I would call deflective questions you talked at one point that the majority of our founding fathers that signed
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Constitution believed And then the deflective question would be yes and the majority of them that signed it believed in slavery
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But we've learned over the years. So that's a deflective question. How would you deal with? Yeah, good question.
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Well, obviously we're not basing any of our Apologetic on what the the constitutional writers believe they're prone to air
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They're you know, they're human. So that's not our authority. You know, the Constitution even isn't our authority
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We're saying our revelation is the Bible. So there's let's talk about that. That's who that's
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God speaking. So Yeah, I mean in that case you just say that you're right Obviously there there were blind spots based on culture in that time and men who were
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Christians Were still confused on that is they were dark in their minds were the hearts were hard in regard to the issue of slavery
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So you don't argue that point, you know, but we're saying we don't base our beliefs on Yeah But we kind of be perfect right we claim to be
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Jesus like we're right we're not yeah And I think that's that's one thing that I've dealt with a lot of people
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Say like listen, we're not you still make mistakes. That's the reason why yeah Absolutely, we don't have all figured out right there's a journey
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Stand I was just thinking no Constitution Jefferson and also
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Benjamin Franklin how they Diverted the thinking of Americans back at that time because they were looked at great men
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Yeah scholars and yet they took the Word of God and they changed it Yeah, they did to this deity that were we for this country and sort of follow along with what is true.
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And so Now I'm liking what we're doing here with the apologetics, but we should have had the apologetic back then but Jefferson Franklin Jefferson Yeah, well he went through and literally cut apart a
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Bible and he took out the parts that he thought were Ultimately then it's it's he that's the authority at that point in his mind, you know
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He's the authority that gets to decide what's true. So who gets to speak the truth? Yeah, that's the issue
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All right. Now with the remaining things like I mentioned 90 % of the people that we're going to encounter are secular humanists in their thinking even if they're in church
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Sometimes they're claiming to be Christian when you begin to press them and you say Jesus is the only way and they say well
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No, no. No, I mean it's fine for us But you know every other road leads to God to you notice that's the same humanistic thinking the same post -modernism the hatred of certainty
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That others have so that there could be people who are identifying as Christian, but really their core worldview is humanist
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The human is the autonomous one. The human is at the center of their worldview not God But the human is determining what's true make sense
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So that's most of it beyond that you will get worldviews that are set in truth.
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For example a Muslim that Believes that God has spoken into the world only they believe that that speech was the
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Quran It's a different source that says different things. So let's look at some of these different worldviews.
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We won't spend much time It's actually we're out of time. I would have gone right to 1030. Sorry, we're done
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Let me close the perfect stopping point we finished the big one and then next week We can just kind of do an overview
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What I did is I gave you kind of apologetic bullet points that I have found really helpful in my
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Interaction with each of these different groups and so we can talk about what you want to talk about next week
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You know, we might not need to spend time on Islam or Mormonism. We might talk about something else I know there's somebody in our church that visited an
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Iglesia Ni Cristo It's a cult out of the Philippines without knowing that he was in a cult visiting there and he's just noticed it was anti -trinitarian
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So he picked up on the fact that it was wrong But we talked about it later and I was able to show him what that is
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But the point is you might have encountered some of these different groups and we can spend time on that next week We won't have time to you know, obviously go through all the religions of the world and and Do any justice to any of them, but we will spend a little time on it next week
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All right So another thing Casper had mentioned that the book that he had used to prepare his resurrection study
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He can get them for like four or five bucks. I have a sign -up sheet here somewhere that I'll pass around If you would like to get that See a clipboard.
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Maybe I left it in my office I'll run and grab it but on the way out if you want to sign up he will get you a book and You want to give him like four or five bucks?
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Then then you can have that it's a book about the resurrection and all the arguments that he gave there was a lot of material It'd be nice to have it in a written form
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It's more of an evidentialist approach. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll be good. Yep. Yep.
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So there's some merit in that for me I'm more of a presuppositionalist and I found that I could try to argue someone into the ground about the resurrection and it doesn't address the
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Fact that their heart is suppressing the truth that they already know that there is a God So I think the presuppositionalist approach that we've talked about is probably better for our culture today
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Not that there's not a place for the evidence as we saw with them, you know The book argument that Ray Comfort did
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I think there's like your muscles Yeah, yeah. Yep. Exactly. Yeah, that would be good for for Muslims because they do believe that there's a truth source and they might
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Be more willing to listen. So let's pray father. Thank you so much for this class.
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Thank you for Apologetics and that you've called us to do it To always be ready with the reason for the hope that is in us
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I pray that we would be growing in our knowledge Lord I pray that we would be sharper in our evangelism because of this look help us to love people
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Even if they have a completely opposite worldview from us, even if they're lost and trusting themselves as little gods
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Autonomous centers of knowing Lord God We pray that we would love them and point them to the one who is truly has knowledge yourself the way the truth the life
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So Jesus equip us and use us Lord send us out as apologists
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Lord God Strengthen us and we pray for the rest of this class that we would continue to grow in these areas in Jesus name.