How To Fight For The Faith

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Good evening, my Irish Presbyterian brethren. How are you? Good?

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See, I know I'm a Presbyterian church when no one answers. That's how you know you're Presbyterian. I am just, it's a delight to be here in Ireland with you guys.

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Presbyterians are my favorite. As a matter of fact, almost all of my heroes are all

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Presbyterian heroes. Most of my Presbyterian buddies think that I'm not really a Reformed Baptist.

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And actually, this year, I think I will have spoken at more Presbyterian conferences and churches than Baptists, and so I do believe that either this is a good sign of unity in the church, or I am a mission field for Presbyterians globally.

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And actually, if you don't know it, I'm a Reformed Baptist. I hope you guys don't start walking out the door now, but Presbyterianism is my favorite, and as I often say, if I wasn't already in the truth,

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I would be Presbyterian, so come on, you can do it. So if you would join me for prayer as I open up the message here.

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Father, I just wanna pray that you'd bless, Lord, me as I teach your people. I pray, God, that you would bless,

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Lord. Help us to understand your word. Help us, God, to be prepared to give to everyone who asks of us a reason for the hope that's within us.

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Help us to do a gentleness and reverence. I pray, God, that, Lord, your people would leave here tonight,

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Lord, changed, emboldened, encouraged, challenged, Lord, forgetting my name, remembering yours, and going out with your good news on their lips and with beautiful feet.

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Please bless the teaching tonight, God, by your spirit. In Jesus' name, amen. So I guess

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I'm at a bit of a disadvantage. I don't know if you guys know this or not, but if any Irish person comes to the

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United States and does any public speaking, they are automatically very sophisticated.

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They sound very, very smart and intelligent. So I was wondering, if I come to Ireland and I speak, do

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I have to work extra hard to sound at all meaningful or like I know what I'm talking about?

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Does the accent ruin it for me, okay? All right, so it is that way in the United States. If an Irish person speaks, your accent's so beautiful, it automatically makes you smarter.

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So anyone, come and start a business. You'll do well. So tonight we're gonna talk about defending the gospel, defending the biblical faith, and the charter verse, which

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Pastor Red and I wanna talk about of Christian apologetics and the defense of the Christian faith is from 1

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Peter 3 .15. Now this is an important subject to get into today, especially in light of the fact that we live, both you and I, we live in nations that were once, in many ways, dramatically impacted by the gospel message and the

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Christian worldview. As a matter of fact, in my own nation early on, whatever you think about the beginnings of my nation, early on, the

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Christian worldview was in the atmosphere. It was a part of the basic worldview of everybody.

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Even if you weren't Christian, you were Christian, not in a salvific sense, in a redemptive sense.

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But even those who were not in Christ had not turned their lives over in faith to Jesus Christ, who were part of the

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American culture, were very much a part of what was a Christian culture.

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And so they had adopted, in many ways, the common grace that was pervasive all around them.

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They had adopted, in many ways, the blessings and benefits of a biblical worldview. And your nation is, in many ways, the same as mine.

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We have a history of Christians who fought and bled and died to propagate the message of the gospel, to bring the message of reconciliation and peace to the world.

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That's what our forebears did. And we live now in the Christian West in very similar circumstances.

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As I get to talk with you all and get to fellowship and spend time with you, I discover that much of your same problems are my problems, our problems.

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Really, I think, of the Christian church in the West. We have this amazing foundation of Christians who sacrifice so much.

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They were willing to, listen, do two things. One, and that's proclaim the gospel. They were willing to tell it.

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They were willing to speak it, to speak it boldly, to tell the truth to the world. And two, they were ready to defend that faith.

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Now, I'm not saying that in the past it was a utopia with Christians and all things were perfect and we just need to get back to the way things were.

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I am saying that we have so much history behind us with the kingdom of God in the world, in both of our nations, and yet we face, really, the same difficulties.

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And I'm not just talking about the difficulties that are all around us in terms of the secularism, the atheism, the agnosticism, whether it's issues that come from all of that, like transgenderism or homosexuality, be it what may, we face, of course, those things in the culture.

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But I think we also face the same trouble in both of our nations in terms of the church.

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We have, in many ways, been plagued with the idea that preaching the gospel means being nice to people or being faithful to the gospel message means, in some way, just being really kind and nice to people.

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I think we've fallen into the lie that preaching the gospel faithfully in a culture just means being kind to people, not causing problems, not stirring the pot, not making things very, very difficult around us.

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That's not Christianity, brothers and sisters, and it's not the gospel proclamation. Before we talk about defending the

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Christian faith in terms of how we ought to defend our faith in a way that is, one, consistent and intellectually rigorous, and two, faithful to God and the gospel message, we have to talk about what we are facing in the church.

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And what I wanna do is talk in terms of what you see in the Book of Acts. Let me just say this up front.

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I want you to know how I feel about this. Oftentimes, Christians look back in the first century at the Book of Acts and the

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New Testament record. We look at that record and we think, oh, look at that amazing time where there were miracles and the apostles and it was the power of God.

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And I mean, just consider for a moment that we start with some very confused disciples before Jesus and the ascension.

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Now, these are largely blue -collar workers. Consider it.

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These aren't the highly educated, the ones with the degrees on their walls. And it's really compelling if you think about what took place there in that moment when we look back to this amazing time where the

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Christian church, through the power of the gospel and God's spirit, turned the world upside down within a generation.

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Look at what took place. You have some very confused disciples, just a handful of them, before Jesus. And Jesus says in Matthew 28, 18 through 20, he says this to them, to their shock.

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He says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. That's a dramatic statement.

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That's not a pithy bumper sticker or slogan. That's the truth of the matter. That was by the way the whole story come to fulfillment.

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That's what they saw in front of them, all those promises about the Messiah coming into the world to bring redemption and salvation, forgiveness to the ends of the earth.

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You guys are a psalm -singing church, yes? Oh yeah, now you talk.

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Now, look how easy, yes. You're very proud of that, right? Okay, here's the thing. In the psalms, and by the way,

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I love that you sing the psalms. We always make sure the psalms are a part of our worship as well. I think that's important. And let me just tell you, in history, churches that sing the psalms to God are fighting churches.

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They're churches that believe in victory in many respects. And so when you look at those psalms, what they knew, these disciples before Jesus at the ascension, you look at those psalms, those psalms are psalms of victory.

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You can't read that book. You can't read those psalms and live a life of pessimism.

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You can't live a life looking there at those psalms thinking that God in any way will be thwarted.

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And they knew those psalms. They knew Psalm chapter two, where the father says to the son, ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, the very ends of the earth for your possession.

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They knew the famous psalm of the passion of Mashiach, of the Messiah, where he is essentially displayed as crucified long before Jesus even comes in his earthly ministry, where his hands and feet are pierced.

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His bones are, his heart is like wax melted within him. He is surrounded by dogs and evildoers.

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They cast lots for his garments. Even in that psalm, which shows this death of the

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Messiah, he lays me in the dust of death, the psalmist says. At the end of that psalm, it ends in victory, where the

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Messiah is saying, I will tell of your name to my brothers. And he says this, that all of the families of the earth will return to worship the

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Lord. They knew you had this very complicated view of the

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Messiah, where he is suffering servant. He's the glorified King. He's the one who brings the nations and has victory over the world.

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They knew that story and here they are before this Messiah. And he says, here it is, fellas, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

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And he says, on the basis of that, on the basis of all authority, not some, not limited, not in little places here or there, certain realms, but he says this, over the entirety of the realm of creation in heaven, he says,

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I have all authority. And he says on that basis, go therefore make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the

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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And he says this, teach them to obey. Here's what he essentially says to these blue collar workers, these fishermen, these largely uneducated men.

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He says to them, all right, fellas, I have all authority in the world. It belongs to me. I'm the King of the world.

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Now, fellas, go conquer the world. Go conquer the world.

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You realize, of course, that is the great commission, correct? Not to make disciples here or there and start

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Bible studies in basements. By the way, I'm all for Bible studies in basements. We should do lots of those, but that's not the end goal.

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The goal is Christ's victory over the nations by his gospel.

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That's the message. That's the goal. And he says this to these disciples early on, this small huddle of men and women and what took place.

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The apostle Paul says in his systematic explanation of the gospel in the book of Romans chapter one, he says to this church in Rome that he really doesn't have anything personally to do with in terms of he was there planting churches.

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He longs to see them, he says, and impart some spiritual gift to them. But he says this, he says to that church early on, not long after the resurrection of Jesus and the ascension, he says, your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world.

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That's first century. That's not long after the victory of Jesus over death and his ascension.

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That's powerful. And in Colossians chapter one, the apostle Paul says the same thing.

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He says what? That the gospel has been preached to every creature under heaven. This is an incredible thing in the first century.

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God is transforming the world. He flips society upside down through this ragtag group of believers.

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And we look back at that as Christians. We look back at that time and we think how powerful that was that God was moving and his spirit was powerful and this gospel and people are being changed.

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The entire known world at the time is affected by the gospel.

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And we look back at that as Christians and we think, oh, it was a magnificent time where God was truly moving because maybe that was the beginning of the church and God really needed to do that to get things off the ground.

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And I wanna just be transparent and say I don't buy it. I don't buy it.

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I don't believe that God just had special works then and the gospel was really powerful then.

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And the spirit of God just happened to have all kinds of opportunity then that maybe we don't have today.

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I don't believe it. I believe that we have the same savior, the same gospel that Paul says is the power of God for salvation.

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It is the good news, the power of God for salvation. God sends that message out and he ignites it into life, into his elect's hearts and minds.

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He raises people to life through that gospel that is the power of God for salvation. Same spirit, same gospel, same savior.

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So what is wrong? You see, we can't talk about defending the Christian faith. We can't and make any sense of it for it to be at all meaningful if we don't first check ourselves.

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In terms of what we are willing to lose for the sake of the cross and the lost.

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It's tremendous. You look at history, right? You look at history and you see these moments where men and women, our brothers and sisters, gave everything up to serve the

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Lord and to bring the gospel into hard places. They sacrificed so much.

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They poured out their tears and their blood to make sure that that gospel got around the world and you and I could be sitting here loving

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God today and worshiping him today. And God did dramatic things through his people, these moments throughout time, but every time

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God has moved in history, whether it's in the first century of the New Testament record or it's any other time in history, whether in Ireland, whether in my nation, anywhere in the world

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God has moved, he has always moved with the suffering of his people. He has always moved with the people that were willing to lay down their life for the sake of the lost.

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And brothers and sisters, let me just say this to you. Please understand this. I wanna be as transparent with you as possible. I want you to hear my heart here.

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I am not a motivational speaker. And if you take from this message today, this is a great motivational speech.

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Wasn't that encouraging to hear all those beautiful platitudes and amazing, all that Christianese, all that Christian language that makes us feel so good.

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If that's what you get out of this, then I have failed. I failed.

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I need you to hear me when I say to you as your brother that we are facing a giant today.

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And if we don't wrap our minds around the fact that, ready, what changes the world is the gospel, is the proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ, the faithful proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ.

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And what I'm saying to you is this, if you read that first century record, the New Testament documents, and you read what was taking place there, same

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God, same gospel, same savior, same power of God. If you read that record and you see what was taking place in the book of Acts, you see something far different from what we experience today in the church in the

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West. Far different. I don't care if you're Calvinist. I am too.

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I don't care if we have this rich history of reformed theology and we know our doctrine and the doctrines of grace, and we know tulip,

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T -U -L -I -P, and we know all the ways to explain superlapsarianism and all these fancy things.

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It doesn't make a difference if you are not the kind of Christian that lives like the Christians in the first century, that lays down your life for the sake of the lost.

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It makes no difference if you don't take into consideration the words of Jesus, where he says to his people, he says, woe to you when all people speak well of you, and we are plagued with a

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Christianity in the West today that is far from what we see in the pages in the New Testament.

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Far from it. Listen, it's a blessing to have solid theology, amen. I believe that theology matters.

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If you're into social media, hashtag theology matters. It matters. Theology is the foundation of your practice, how you live your life.

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Theology is not secondary, it's there at the center. However, if your theology doesn't actually impact you and the world around you, it is meaningless.

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I want the person who knows a little bit of very solid theology and spills their blood for the gospel over the person that knows a lot of theology and does nothing for the kingdom of God.

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One of those people is effective for the gospel and for the kingdom of Christ, and one of them is really great at talking about Jesus within the

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Christian ghetto. Fantastic. What does that do for the glory of Jesus in the world and the exaltation of Christ?

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What does it do? I think, I suppose, very little. When you look at the apostle

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Paul and you ask, okay, let's get to the Bible and let's figure out how does the Bible tell us to defend the faith?

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I think you have to do that, by the way. I don't think you should defend the faith and have a system of defending the faith that is sort of based upon personalities.

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I like how this guy does it. I think he's pretty smooth or she's pretty smooth. I don't think you should have an apologetic methodology that is based upon pragmatism, what works for you or doesn't work for you.

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I think you should go to the Bible to say, how does God say to defend the faith and represent Jesus?

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The Bible should teach us how to work out our Christian worldview and philosophy.

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The Bible should tell us how we actually engage the unbeliever on their own grounds. But when you look at that Bible and you look at the apostle

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Paul, I think he's a fantastic representative of what was taking place in the first century.

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I don't believe it was just Paul. I don't believe it was just Peter. And you have evidence of that.

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The apostle Paul gets saved, he comes to Christ, Acts chapter nine, he's knocked off of his high horse.

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He goes right into Damascus, takes a beeline for Damascus and he starts arguing with the

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Hellenistic Jews in the synagogues, in their places of reverence and worship.

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He stirs the pots. He creates godly controversy.

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Now listen closely, if you don't have this, you should have it in your library. You have to forgive the fact that it was written by an

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American. It's called the Kingdom of the Cults. How many of you guys have that in your library? Anybody have

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Kingdom of the Cults? We got one gentleman right here. You should sell some of your

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Presbyterian books on baptism and go buy the Kingdom of the Cults. I'm just joking.

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No, I'm just, that issue to me is very much a side issue, especially with what we face today together.

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But in the Kingdom of the Cults, Dr. Walter Martin, he says, controversy for the sake of controversy is sin.

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Controversy for the sake of controversy is sin.

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Controversy for the sake of truth is a divine command. Controversy for the sake of truth is a divine command.

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And you see in the first century on the pages of the New Testament, the early Christians, like the

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Apostle Paul, is going places and he's loving people. Don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting every single one of you needs to be a street preacher.

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You need to start crying aloud in the streets and going and yelling at people. I'm not even suggesting that.

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I'm saying if you look at his life and his methodology, he went in and he spoke with kindness, gentleness, respect, love, reverence, and he refuted them.

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He refuted them, proving that Jesus was the Messiah. And what was the result in Acts chapter nine of the Apostle Paul going into their place of religious worship and proving that they were wrong about Jesus and that he was in fact the

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Messiah. He did it from the scriptures. That was the Bible as his foundation. It says that number one, the church experienced peace.

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Number two, it was built up. Number three, it was multiplied. And number four, some people wanted to kill him.

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And you think today, I think I can say pretty confidently that in the

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United States, if you have a person who is engaging with the gospel in such a way that it is creating controversy and backlash and people want that person dead,

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I think that majority of Christians in the evangelical West, particularly in my nation, would say, I think you're doing something wrong.

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You're making a lot of enemies here. There's a lot of people who don't like you. And I think that you need to do this in a way that is better, more winsome,

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Paul. I really think we would chastise Paul for not being very much like Jesus. The Apostle Paul has people who are actually taking oaths not to eat anything until he's dead.

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He's going places, the early Christians are going places in the book of Acts, and they were going to the marketplace where everybody was, where people were congregating.

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He was going to the place of highest philosophical debate and discussion like Mars Hill and the

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Areopagus. So he's engaging with the average person, with the religious person in their place of worship.

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In that context, he's going to the marketplace of ideas at the Areopagus, probably being put on a preliminary trial at that point.

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He's before trial. He has his life in danger. And this is an amazing thing, the Apostle Paul.

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He lays his life down and preaches the gospel in such a way that people are coming to Christ. The world is flipping over now, turning to Christ in his generation.

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And you know what he says about it? That suffering, giving up everything for that. You know what he says about it?

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He says, I'm in danger every day from my own countrymen, from robbers, from false brethren, false

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Christians. In the first century, there were fake Christians in the church attacking

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Paul and the other Christians. They were creating controversy and heresy was creeping in.

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That was in the first century. You know what he says about all that suffering, all that difficulty? He says, you know, famously, it's a light and momentary affliction.

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In the context of eternity with God and the blessing of eternal life, he sees these struggles, these trials, the conflicts that are happening now within the church, the purity of the church is at stake.

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He has people who are attacking him, condemning his ministry. He has the state after him. He has Christians in the church after him.

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He has Jews after him. And he calls it a light and momentary affliction. It's an amazing perspective he has.

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You know the famous passage, I hope it's in the Irish Standard Version, where he talks about Jesus and he says,

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I don't, I'm hard -pressed between two things. I don't know which one I wanna do. I don't know.

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I mean, to stay here with you and to bear fruit is great. He says, but I long, essentially in the

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Greek is, I long to weigh the anchor to sail away and be with Jesus.

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I don't know which one I wanna do. To be with Jesus is far better, but to be here with you is fruitful.

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And he's, I don't know which I wanna do. And so this is a man who lives his life in such a way that he is losing from the world's perspective everything, but he is gaining so much.

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And what is the effect, brothers and sisters, of a church that faithfully represents Christ, tells the truth and sacrifices for the cause of love for God and love for neighbor?

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What's the result? The world is transformed. What's the result? You. You are the fruit of that early work,

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Christians who gave up everything so that you could know Jesus. Now, of course, we know that God is sovereign and it was in his providence and he was in control, but he uses insignificant little people like you and I to change the entire world.

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And the hope that you and I have about that world being transformed by the gospel is not in you.

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It's not in your power. It's not in your abilities and your intellect. It is in the

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God who is within you, the God who has made promises about the future, what he's gonna do in the world.

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He has told us that Christ is at the right hand of the Father and he is there putting all of his enemies under his feet.

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Who are some of those enemies? Well, you were. You were.

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I was before God opened my eyes and my heart. And how did that happen?

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How did you come to Jesus? How are you united to Christ in his death and resurrection? How? It was the grace of God and it was through the gospel.

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And I just wanna suggest to you brothers and sisters here in Ireland, if we do not start faithfully proclaiming the gospel in the midst of a hostile culture, we only have greater days of darkness ahead of us.

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We can't keep saying, well, God is sovereign. Truly he is.

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Yes, he is. He is sovereign. But embracing cowardice, laziness, and making the excuse that God is sovereign is not a

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Christian virtue. God calls us to suffer. One last verse

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I wanna say on this before we talk about the defense of the faith. Remember, the apostle says, very powerful,

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Philippians 1 .29. He says, to you Christians, to you it has been gifted.

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It's a gift. It's a gift. It smells like Christmas.

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Wait, this is covenant or church, sorry. It smells like a birthday, okay? It's got a bow and it's wrapped nicely.

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It's a gift from God. To you it has been gifted, not only to believe in Christ.

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That's a gift from God here, gift. Not only to believe in Christ, but also to suffer for his sake.

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It has been granted to us to believe in Jesus. That's a gift, and to suffer.

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My call to you as we begin talking about defending the faith is to ask God to challenge you.

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Ask God, ask him. Pray a risky prayer. You are, by the way, you are an amazing, amazing praying church.

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That's one of the most encouraging things I've seen over this last week with you is that you are an amazing praying church.

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You are a praying people, and that is a blessing to see that you pray so much.

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You are definitely a praying church, and that's a huge blessing to see that. But how about this?

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Pray risky prayers. Pray some prayers that actually are dangerous prayers.

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Ask God, ask God to use your denomination, your church to be salt and light to Ireland.

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Salt, in Jesus' day, salt is used as a preservative to stop things from spoil and decay.

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Light dispels the darkness. Ask God, ask him, I challenge you. Ask God to use you, this people, your denomination to be salt, a preservative for Northern Ireland, for Ireland, and light to dispel the darkness.

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Ask God to get you out of your comfort zone. Ask God to start challenging you and using you on a daily basis to engage with your neighbors and your families and your friends, your unsaved neighbors, the people that you don't know, the people who are not

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Christians, the people that you normally don't hang out with and fellowship with. Ask God to use you to dramatically impact this little island for the glory of Jesus.

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Ask him to take you out of your comfort zone. Ask God to challenge you to expose where your idols are.

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What are your idols? What stops you from living risky, missionary, sacrificial lives in Ireland?

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What is it? Is it comfort? Is it love of approval? Are you seeking to please men or God?

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Oh, I pray that God would raise up the church in your country and mine to put both of our countries under the feet of Jesus through his gospel.

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And brothers and sisters, it must happen through the gospel. That is the power of God for salvation.

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So to the text, 1 Peter 3 .15. Go to the text, 1 Peter 3 .15. You're probably already there in your

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Bibles. I wanna break this charter verse into three sections. Tomorrow at the seminary

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I'm gonna be doing more of an advanced discussion on the defense of the faith and apologetics.

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So if you would like to get a more detailed discussion where I can expatiate more on some complicated issues and more higher level stuff,

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I encourage you to go to Apologia Studios on YouTube and we'll put those lectures up there in about a week or so after I get back.

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So you guys will be able to watch those as well. Tonight I wanna talk about the core issues, the fundamental issues, the most important issues.

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Because let me just say this to you. Listen, please hear me on this. Apologetics to the glory of God does not depend on you being a skilled debater, the person that could stand up and debate an atheist publicly or a

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Mormon publicly or a Roman Catholic publicly. Apologetics to the glory of God is not dependent, listen closely, it is not dependent upon your intellectual prowess, how good you are at public speaking and how good you are at refuting arguments.

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Apologetics to the glory of God is something that all of us should do, could do, if we do it standing on the word of God and biblical principles.

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Hear me on that. Every one of us is an apologist. Yes, you are.

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Anytime you give a reason for your faith, you are a Christian apologist, you are defending the

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Christian faith. And here's the thing, listen, there are many things that are gifts in the church, gifts to unique people that not all of us have.

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I'll give you one gift, being a woman. That's an amazing thing. Now our culture wants to denigrate that, it wants to destroy it, it wants to say, no, no, no, women, you're not really so special, you're just like everybody else.

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Men can do what you do and you can do what men do, there's no special gifting, there's nothing special about being a lady.

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Our culture just denigrates humanity and says, no, no, no, women, you're not so special, there's nothing about you that I couldn't do.

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It's really, I mean, I'll just, I know this is an excursus here, but I just wanna say this briefly. I was a chaplain at a hospital, as our pastor said, and I was forced, yes, forced, to do diversity training.

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Our hospital went from essentially a Christian -owned hospital for drug and alcohol rehabilitation to being owned by a secular hospital company and they got rid of essentially the

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Christian program and just started basically making this a secular hospital. And they brought in somebody to make sure that we were all trained on our diversity.

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And the gentleman who came, I tried to love as much as possible, he came and he was obvious where he was at sexually, let me just say that, it was obvious where he was at.

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And he made it clear to everybody what he believed about that and he was coming in to train us on diversity.

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And he was asking questions and answers of this large crowd of doctors and nurses and therapists and then one

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Christian pastor. And he says, okay, so they've done surveys and they've asked people, if you were looking for a therapist, a counselor, would you want a man or a woman as a counselor, as a therapist?

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And he said to the crowd, he said, what do you think people most commonly answer when they're looking for a therapist, what gender do they choose?

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Now pause and think about that for one moment. Think of how would you answer that? What do you think? If men and women are looking for a therapist or a counselor, do they look for a man or a woman?

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What do you think the answer was? Come on, Presbyterians, you're allowed to talk now. This is not

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Sunday service, okay? What do you think the answer is? If a man or a woman is looking for a counselor or a therapist, what gender do they most often choose?

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Oh, there you go, right? Seems like an obvious thing. You know what's amazing? Is he asked that question and the room said the same thing.

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They said it much faster. They must've been Baptist, but they said a woman.

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And this man says, right, that's what everybody says. They say they want a woman therapist. And he says, and why do you think that is?

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He says, why do you think people look for a woman therapist or a woman counselor? Let me ask you.

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Why do you think people look for a woman therapist or a woman counselor? Tell me. Because they're what now?

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They're gentle? Very good. They're sympathetic? All right, good, okay.

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Anything else? They're loving? What's that? They listen better.

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Now that was just rude. No, gentle, loving, sympathetic. They listen better.

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And you know what's amazing? I'm in Ireland and those were the same answers that happened in Phoenix, Arizona at this diversity training.

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And this man, this man disses everybody who's saying that.

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He says, right, that's what they say, but it's not true. It's not true. It's not true. It's not true.

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He goes, it's not true that women are more nurturing. It's not true that women are more caring like that.

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He goes, it's not true. We're exactly the same. Men and women are exactly the same.

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They can be the same kind of counselors. And he says, it is just a social myth that women are more nurturing and loving and caring than men are.

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And I thought to myself, excuse me. He says, yes,

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Pastor Jeff. I said, isn't it just the biological way of things that women give birth to children?

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He says, well, yes. I said, so wouldn't that, from a biological perspective, make them a little different than men?

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And he said, well, of course. And I said, and don't you think that because biologically women give birth to babies that they would be designed or have it built into them that they're more nurturing, loving, caring, that they would have that specialness of mother?

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And he says, well, yes. And that's what the world does today. Think about it. They say, no, no, no, you're just a woman and you're just a man, but you're exactly the same.

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There's nothing special. There's no gift of being a woman. Our world tries to destroy the beauty of being a woman.

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You're not so special. You're not so gifted. But listen, there are, I believe, special gifts of being a mom, being a dad, being a pastor, being an evangelist.

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There's all kinds of unique gifts that go across the board that all of us may not be a part of.

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However, here is something that is across the board. It is called into all of our lives.

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The Bible says for all of us, whether you're male or female, whether you're young or old, whether you are a person with a degree on your wall or no degree, whether you're the farmer or the professor in the university,

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God says to each and every one of us, be ready with a reasoned defense to everyone who asks of you a reason for the hope that is within you.

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Yet do it with gentleness and respect. Here is something that God calls on all of us to do, to be ready with a reasoned defense.

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So I'm gonna point you to this text, 1 Peter 3 .15. I'll read the text through, and then we'll break it into three sections.

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One, verse 15, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy. That's one, first part.

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Two, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.

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That's two. Three, yet do it with gentleness and respect. So three parts.

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That's what I'm gonna ask us to focus on. Three parts. First, first, often neglected, very often neglected.

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It says to set Christ apart as Lord in your hearts. Now, Christians love to talk about the defense of the

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Christian faith. We have a long and rich heritage history of building organizations, educational institutions,

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Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale. These were institutions given to the world on the basis of the biblical worldview and for the glory of God.

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We have a long and rich heritage and history of blessing the world with arithmetic and philosophy and art and beauty and architecture and education and poetry and music and all these things.

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That's a gift from the Christian church to the world. You're welcome, world. We're big on intellect and debate.

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We love the fact that we have Christian apologists that go after the best the world has to offer and we meet them head on.

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We read their books and materials and we answer all their objections. Christians are known in history for being intellectually rigorous.

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Now, I say that in history. We're losing much of that heritage, but this text says before you defend the faith, before there's a reason defense to everyone who asks of you, it says you set

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Christ apart as Lord. Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.

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To sanctify something in the temple or the sanctuary, so you set it apart as holy.

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And this is what Peter says to Christians. He says, set Christ apart as Lord in your hearts.

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You enter into the defense of the Christian faith. Listen, not neutral.

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Not neutral religiously, not neutral philosophically, not neutral morally.

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Now, listen closely. This is so important to get. Christians today often, often in so many different realms approach that particular realm with a sense of pretended neutrality.

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If it's in the political realm, oftentimes the unbeliever who generally pretends to be neutral, when he's fighting for a particular kind of legislation or whatever it is, they fight boldly for their worldview and position.

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They will confess to having a secularist, humanist perspective, and they will put forth legislation that is consistent with their worldview and ultimate commitments.

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Listen, please. Christians often, often in your country and mine, when engaged in that realm, say the legislative aspect, they will immediately pretend neutrality, and they'll say,

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I'm letting go of my Christian commitments. I'm not saying we should have this legislation because I'm a Christian.

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I'm not saying that I want to add my Christian position here. We pretend neutrality when we argue for our positions.

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We pretend neutrality in education. We pretend neutrality in the legislature.

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And brothers and sisters, we pretend neutrality oftentimes when we debate with the atheist or the agnostic.

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We say, well, let's just see where the evidence takes us. Maybe Jesus isn't Lord. Maybe he's not the

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Messiah. You know, maybe there's a good chance God doesn't exist. And we pretend neutrality when

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Jesus says, you're either with me or against me. There's no neutral ground with Jesus.

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And what Peter says here to Christians in light of defending the faith is Christian set

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Christ apart as Lord. When you go to engage in the defense of the faith, you don't pretend neutrality.

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You stand on the rock. Never forget that Jesus said that there are two kinds of people in the world with two foundations and two destinations.

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I talked about this on Saturday. It was the basis of what I talked about. Two people in the world with two foundations and two destinations.

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Which one are you? Everybody in this room right now, everybody in the hearing of my voice right now is one of two people.

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Jesus says, you are either the fool or the wise man. You are either on the rock or you are on sand.

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And there are two destinations, Jesus says. One ends in desolation and one actually weathers the storm when the wind and the storm and the rain comes and hits both houses.

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One makes it through the storm. One lives to see another day. And Jesus says the person who has their house built upon the rock is the one who has their house, their life built upon him, his word.

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Which one are you? So the first part of defending your faith is first and foremost, you must stand on Christ.

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You must not be neutral. You must never be ashamed, brothers and sisters, of standing on this revelation saying, do you want to know why

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I believe what I believe? It's because he says.

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It's because God has spoken. God has disclosed himself. He stepped into history.

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And if you want to know the basis of my certainty, it's not in my own ability to reason.

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It's not in my fancy arguments. The reason I am certain is because he has spoken.

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That's how I know. And so the basis of apologetics is first and foremost, Christ must be set apart as Lord in your hearts.

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And number two, very simply, I think it's easy enough to grasp. And that is, he says, the Christians, you must always be ready, always be ready to give a reasoned defense to everyone who asks of you a reason for the hope that's within you.

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So let me ask you, have you been making yourself ready? Do you think about it?

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Do you contemplate, how do I reach these people? How do I get to this community?

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What do I need to know to actually engage them and make sure that this is put under the feet of Jesus?

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How do I engage with this group over here? How do I engage with my neighbor over here? What does he believe?

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What does she believe? How can I be made ready to actually give them a reasoned defense? And it's really powerful if you think about what

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Peter says here, because Peter's the guy who is famous for what? What's Peter famous for? What's Peter famous for?

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Denying Christ. How'd you like to go down in history as that guy? He's famous for denying

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Jesus, and near the end of his life, before he is killed under Emperor Nero, the Emperor Nero, he says to you and to me, to Christians throughout all the ages, he says, be ready with a reasoned defense for everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that's within you.

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Here's the guy who denies Jesus because of a little servant girl, and now something happens, he saw the resurrected

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Lord, his life was transformed for good because he saw him alive, and now he goes from being a coward who's afraid of a little servant girl to now being a man who says to Christians throughout all ages, you be ready with a reasoned defense for everyone who asks of you a reason for the hope that is within you.

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Something happened. Something happened when he met Jesus alive from the dead that transformed him from the inside out.

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From his heart to the end of his fingers, he was changed, and he says, be ready with an apologia.

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The word there is a reasoned defense. This is actually a good setup right here. This is, by the way, a beautiful church.

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Looks like a judge, right? You feel like you're in court a bit, right?

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Maybe that's a bad example. Take that out of your mind, okay? But you know, the judge is behind the bench, and you have people, the defense and the prosecution, you have the whole setting there, and Peter's using a word that is very much at home there, an apologia, a reasoned defense.

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You go into a court, and you don't come in willy -nilly. You don't come in with a cavalier attitude.

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You come into court with reasoned arguments, with evidence, with facts, with eyewitnesses.

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You don't come in willy -nilly. You come in ready with a reasoned defense for everyone who asks of you.

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Let me ask you. May I humbly ask you, have you contemplated your mission field?

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You know, you hear that word, and I have to confess, I feel the same. You know, you hear mission field, you hear missionary, and you think about some faraway place and some very powerful

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Christian who lays everything down. You think about people who are ready to risk things, and maybe you don't think about yourself when you think about that, but I wanna tell you that if God has you here, welcome to your mission field.

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You are a missionary here. Ireland is not completely under the feet of Jesus yet, so brothers and sisters, wake up, you're not done.

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You're not done. You're the missionary here. Have you contemplated what it means to give a reasoned defense to those who are around you?

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Who is around you? What is around you here in Northern Ireland that you need to be ready to give a reasoned defense to?

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How do you reach the people in your area? What are the big groups? Who's your neighbor? What does he believe?

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What does she believe? The person you have contact with at your work constantly.

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Now, I'm not asking you who the Christians are around you. Your mission field is to the unbelievers, the people that you don't know, the people who are not like you.

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What do they believe? What do you need to know to be ready to reach them? Because here's a good discussion quickly, and I'm not an expert in this area, but I hear it all the time in Ireland.

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You've got the conflict between the Protestants and the Catholics. Well, let me ask you, if you're a believer, have you actually spent time trying to understand how to reach the

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Roman Catholic next to you? Not in a cultural Irish way, in terms of I'm Protestant, you're

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Catholic, this is my team and that's your team, but let me ask you, have you thought about what they believe and why you believe what you believe?

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Why are you Protestant? Have you thought about how to actually engage them with the gospel so they can be reconciled to God and experience peace with God?

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Or is it just cultural? Is this just your team? Is it just an Irish thing? Have you thought about how to reach them because they are a mission field who needs

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Jesus? They're lost if they believe in the gospel of Rome. Are you ready with a defense?

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Have you prepared? Have you taken time to invest yourself in understanding them so that you can actually reach them with love?

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Let me tell you this, this is very, very important. Two things Jesus tells us about the great commandments.

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Master, what's the greatest commandment in the law? And Jesus says, Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad.

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Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength,

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Jesus says, and he says, the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. And let me just say, not being ready with an answer, not being prepared with an apologia, not engaging the culture around you demonstrates the greatest hatred for your neighbor.

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You wanna show how much you hate your neighbor, truly hate them, say and do nothing to reach them.

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See, Christians disagree on things. We do, we disagree on tertiary issues, the adiaphora, we disagree on side issues.

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We disagree on whether or not we should sing psalms exclusively. There's disagreements within the

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Presbyterian church even about that issue, but that's not a salvific issue. It's not justification through just the psalms.

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Christians disagree on whether you can smoke a cigar to the glory of God or not. Christians disagree of how you should shape your church.

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Christians disagree over whether you should baptize infants or not baptize infants. We have disagreements with one another, and we can have those disagreements in -house, but I'll tell you what we cannot disagree on.

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We cannot disagree on what those great commandments are, and Jesus says it is to love God and love your neighbor.

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And what we're talking about tonight is a matter of loving God and loving neighbor because abandoning my neighbor to the darkness demonstrates the greatest hatred for my neighbor.

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Third point in this text, and I will confess my own failings here.

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I hope you will too. I think it's where we all recognize that we fall off, right, we fall off the map on this one.

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What's it say? It says, be ready with that reason defense to everyone who asks of you a reason for the hope that's within you, yet do it with gentleness and with reverence, right?

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Gentleness and with respect, and I have to confess, God has sanctified me a lot as a very young man in Christ.

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I think I made a lot of errors here. I fell on my face a lot here, and God had to crush my own heart and take away my haughtiness and my pride and put my heart at rest in the comfort of knowing that he is sovereign over salvation, and so I wanna confess publicly,

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I have great sins in my past in the area of not showing gentleness and respect, but that's the call.

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Christ is Lord, first set him apart as Lord, be ready with a defense for everyone who asks of you, and then do it with gentleness and with reverence, and this is really, really important because listen,

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God is sovereign over salvation, amen? Yes, God is sovereign over salvation. He's the one that does the saving.

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However, God uses us as the means of how that takes place, and he draws his elect, and what he calls us to is a genuine love for neighbor that shows itself by when

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I am engaging with them, I am being gentle and respectful. Now watch this, don't misunderstand that.

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This text does not say that there is never a time where as a Christian you must breathe fire.

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That's also in our Bibles. There are times to breathe fire and times where you're not to breathe fire, and it's sort of like there are different speeds between the motorway and the sidewalk.

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Look, I'm learning the Irish language already. Motorway, we say highway, okay?

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See, that's wonderful, it's like immersion. I'm already picking it up. I can live here and understand your language. Some of you,

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I can, but there are different speeds, right? Like on the motorway, you go a certain speed, because the context is right, and there's a speed for the motorway, and there's a speed for the sidewalk.

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You don't go the same speed on both things, hopefully. There's a reason for those different speed limits, and not every conversation is exactly the same way.

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Sometimes you're facing something that is such a giant, it is so destructive that you need to breathe fire, and other times where you're speaking to your neighbor or a friend at a coffee shop or wherever you may be on the farm, gentleness and respect is very, very important.

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I wanna say that one of the great blessings of my own ministry is we go, say, one example is we go to the

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Mormon temple in Mesa, Arizona. Every year, we go twice a year, not two days.

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We go for like these long time periods because they have events at the Mormon temple. One time, which is actually coming up as soon as I get home, is the

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Mormon Easter pageant where they have over 100 ,000 people show up for about a week -long event where they do a play, a show, every night.

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It's a almost half a million dollar production. Again, 100 ,000 people plus come and show up over that week, and we go engage them with the gospel because there's the fish.

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There's where they're at, so I'm gonna go get them. So we go and preach the gospel. We've been there, I've been there for 20 years.

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Thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of opportunities to preach the gospel.

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We have handed out thousands of tracts. We have, I don't even know how many conversations, and let me just say this to you.

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One of the most rewarding things to me in terms of it's humble and I'm praising God for it is there are times where we're out there preaching to people and giving them, we're having conversations and giving them tracts and trying to engage them and create relationships, and we even sometimes go out to eat afterwards with some of these people.

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There are times when people come and they're very hostile towards us. They don't want us there.

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They are not happy we are there. Sometimes they might try to rough us up. They might try to grab our shirts, tear our tracts up, spit in our face, throw food at us.

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Yes, that takes place. But the most rewarding thing for me is when somebody starts getting aggressive with me, and there are

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Mormons that have been there for over a decade that know me well. Some of them are well -known

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Mormon apologists that write works defending Mormonism, and it's rewarding when someone's about to rough me up or they're getting in my face yelling at me, and one of these

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Mormons comes over and says, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, don't treat him that way. Look, look, these guys have been here for a long time, and these are the kind of people that we want to be here.

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They love us. You're not to abuse him. When you hear a Mormon that you've told if he doesn't turn away from the

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Mormon gospel, he will perish without Christ, when you hear that same Mormon tell others this man loves us, it demonstrates that, yes, you can speak the truth in love where your opponents understand that though your message is offensive to them, they know you love them.

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You know, there's a really famous story. I hope I don't bore you with sharing it if you haven't heard it, if you've heard it before.

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It's a story of a denomination and a little church, and this little church within this denomination lost their pastor, and so they call up to the denomination and they say, hey, we would like you to get us a hellfire and brimstone preacher.

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Give us the hellfire and brimstone preacher. We want fire, and we want all of it.

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We want hell, and we want to talk about heaven and repentance, give us the hellfire and brimstone preacher, and so the denomination looks around and they get a hellfire and brimstone preacher, and they send him to the church, and two weeks go by, and that church kicks out the preacher, and they call the denomination back, and they say, hey, give us the hellfire and brimstone preacher.

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Give us another one. We want one that just tells the truth, and it's hellfire and brimstone. They go, okay. They grab another one.

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They send him to the denominational church, and that church has him for about three months, and then they throw him out, and they call back again.

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They say, give us the hellfire and brimstone preacher, and they find another one, send him out, and that guy is there for 30 years of ministry, and the person who kept sending him out got a little irritated by it.

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30 years. They just got one, kicked him out, got one, kicked him out, got one, kicked him out, and they got one guy that stays there for 30 years, so he's irritated, so he calls the guy up.

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He says, hey, you know, this guy's been there for 30 years now, but you know, you kept asking for hellfire and brimstone preachers, and we sent one, kicked him out, another kicked him out.

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He's there for 30 years. You said you wanted hellfire and brimstone preacher. He goes, what gives?

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He goes, well, yeah. The first guy was a hellfire, yeah, and the second guy was also hellfire and brimstone, yeah.

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Third guy, the difference is, this third guy, this last guy, he sounded like he didn't want us to go there.

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Do you see it? You can speak the truth and love, which is a command of God.

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You can tell somebody the truth and do it in a way where they understand, listen, it's the message that might offend them, but not you.

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Oftentimes, as Christians, we seem like we haven't learned the difference between being a prophet and a jerk.

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Now, there is a line there, and it's distinct. What does the

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Bible say about our condition? It says Ephesians 2, we're dead in our sins and trespasses by nature, children of wrath.

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That's the nature of a fallen person, all of us before Christ, by nature, children of wrath.

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That's what the Bible says. We are hostile, we are enemies, we are sinners, we are ungodly. That's what the

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Bible says. No man is able to come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, John 6, 44,

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Jesus says no man can come. That's our condition, and the gospel message, the call to repent and believe is offensive to the unbelieving already.

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You and I don't have to add offensive behavior to an already offensive gospel.