Defending the Faith

Have You Not Read

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Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of Scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the

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Saints. Before we dig into our topic we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

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Thank you. I'm Andrew Hudson. Joining me today is Michael Durham. Michael, we have another question.

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This question was sent in by a listener. How can a Christian defend his faith rightly?

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That's a good question. How can a Christian defend his faith rightly? You know, when we think about the ways in which

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Jesus spoke with his disciples and taught them not only who he was and what that meant for their lives, but he also taught them how to conduct themselves as his followers.

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And he shaped their expectations about the kind of opposition that they would face, that indeed they would be brought before all kinds of governing authorities, either

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Jew or Gentile, to make a defense for their faith. And he told them what to expect, and he obviously reminded them of things such as a disciple is not above his teacher, and the things that Jesus experienced, the kinds of slanderous attacks that Jesus experienced.

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He wanted his disciples to know that they would face the same thing. So as a

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Christian, we think first of all, I mean there's some great passages that we could look at in Acts and Colossians and 1st

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Peter and Jude, and we will, but just to begin at ground zero, the disciples followed their master

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Jesus. And in rabbinical fashion, when a rabbi would have his disciples, they would do everything he did.

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So if he ate his food in a certain way, that's how they would do it. I'm gonna eat it that way.

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Yeah, if he if he laid down to sleep in a certain way, that's what they would do. If he ducked under a branch of a tree, that's how they would do it in the same fashion.

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So it makes sense to put our attention on Christ. How did he defend his statements?

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He came teaching and preaching the kingdom of God, the good news of the kingdom. He said, repent and believe, for the the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

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Repent and believe in the gospel. And he went about not simply healing and delivering the demon possessed, but he went around preaching the truths of the kingdom.

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And many times he was challenged. Many times the Pharisees or the

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Sadducees or the scribes or the chief priests would confront him.

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Oh yeah, what about this? Yes, and they would challenge him. They did not like it when he healed people on the

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Sabbath and told them to take up their beds and go home. They really didn't like it when he forgave their sins.

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They really didn't like it when he would do things that would challenge their teaching authority, their worldview, what they thought, how they thought the world worked.

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And so they would confront him. So what do we see Jesus doing in responding to his critics?

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What can we glean from his example since he is our master whom we follow? What were some of his ways?

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What were some of his approaches? Well, one of them was, have you not read? Yes, great question.

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Because he, being the second person of the Godhead as the one mediator between God and man, the

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Christ, he himself knew all that was written. In fact, he was the one who brought forth the

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Word of God by the Holy Spirit. That's how holy men wrote the infallible and errant perfect Word of God.

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And so he would draw attention to the text of Scripture. I remember one time the

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Sadducees in particular, who accepted the validity of only the first five books of the

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Bible, the Torah, they rejected any truth about the resurrection of the dead.

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They didn't believe in that. They couldn't find it in the first five books of the Bible, so they said, well, then we're not going to deal with that.

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That's not part of what we believe. And they thought it was ridiculous. They thought it was, they thought it was very foolish.

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And so they tried to trip Jesus up with some strange hypothetical. A long string of husbands.

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Yeah, dying. And then I remember one old preacher was preaching on that text, and he got to the, was it the eighth husband or the seventh husband?

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And then they died, and then he said, and mercifully the woman died too.

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But the, it's a ridiculous example, you know. Right, right. And then Jesus instructed the Sadducees about the resurrection when he said, from Exodus, he quoted

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Exodus, which was in their wheelhouse, you know, that God said that he is the

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God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

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Present tense. So he's not the God of the dead, is he? He's the God of the living.

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Have you not read this, Sadducees? Did you not read that that these patriarchs died and yet they are still living?

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Because God is the God of the living. So that's, that was one of the ways in which Jesus would address his critics, is he would say, have you not read?

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And go to the Word of God and point out the truths of God's Word. So what are some other ways that we find

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Jesus interacting with and addressing those who would oppose his words?

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We can think of when he was asked very difficult questions meant to trip him up, he would respond by asking a related question back.

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You know, and I find that very interesting, wherein, like, well you didn't answer my question.

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Well the point is, if you answer the question I just asked you, you will be answering the question yourself.

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Exactly. You see, and I think that's a very clever way of doing things. People think it's fair to ask any crazy question they want until they are forced to reconcile their worldview with a question coming towards them.

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Jesus also would tell stories, he would tell stories in which the audience who opposed him at some point realized, they're like, wait a second, he's talking about us.

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Exactly. And then everybody would see through the simplicity of these stories, yet the power of these stories, what the real situation was.

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I really liked the way in which Jesus talked about, he said, this this wicked and perverse generation.

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He talked about them as children in a marketplace. And if there's ever a group of children anywhere, they're gonna probably find some way to play together.

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Oh yeah. Yeah. That's what they do. They'll find a game out of anything. Exactly. And so he tells about children playing in the marketplace.

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Now, when you have a big group of children, what do they want to do? They want to get others to play with them.

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The more kids playing, the more fun it is. And Jesus likened the intellectual elites of his day, the ones with all the objections in his day, to little children whining about who won't play with them.

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He said, you're like children in the marketplace, you're wanting to play wedding, and you want everybody to sing and dance, and we're gonna play a wedding.

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And then John the Baptist, he wouldn't dance to your tune, and he wouldn't celebrate the things that you celebrate.

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And so you got mad at him. You said, oh, he has a demon. You know, you insulted him.

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Like little children who were sullen, and they become insulting all of a sudden. And then when the

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Son of Man comes, when Jesus is speaking of himself, all of a sudden you want to play funeral. Oh, let's have a dirge.

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Let's all be sad and walk in procession. And then Jesus said, but I wouldn't lament the things that you lament.

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I wouldn't play that game with you. And so you said, oh, he's a glutton and a wine -bibber.

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You know, once again, sullen children insulting those who won't play their games and follow the rules that they make up on the spot.

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What a powerful way to demonstrate. It pierces the situation. Yes, because when the critics are bringing their arguments to bear, and they're firing away, they sound like they have a good point until Jesus puts it into perspective.

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It's like, you know, we remember what you—and he's calling everybody's remembrance—we all remember what you said about John the

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Baptist, and now look what you're saying about me. You all are so inconsistent.

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You're just like little children. And so we see these are some of the ways, not all the ways, but these are some of the ways that Jesus dealt with those who would oppose his message.

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So we find in him our premier example for defending our faith. I think we see flexibility there.

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We find an absolute trust in God's Holy Word, and we find effective ways of communication.

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For those who are foolishly questioning, who are not sincere, how do we answer those fools?

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Well, Proverbs says to do not answer a fool according to his folly lest you become like him, but also answer a fool according to his folly lest he be wise in his own eyes.

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In other words, don't answer a fool in the same manner of his folly, like joining in in the way that he thinks and expresses himself.

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His worldview, his paradigm, the way he's looking at things. But to answer the fool according to how his folly deserves, demonstrating to him how foolish he is, or just simply proving in front of everyone how foolish he is, that his wisdom really was not.

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Exactly. Otherwise he will be wise in his own eyes. The fool's delight in expressing what they believe to be unanswerable questions.

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Aha, gotcha. Yeah, the gotcha question. And we saw that the

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Sadducees and Pharisees, they tried that with Jesus a lot. And at one point we read in the text, they got beat up so bad doing that.

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I'm done with that. No more, please. Yeah, they decided, we're not gonna ask you any more questions. We're done with this.

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And so in that sense, we see Jesus as the master of that wisdom that we read in Proverbs. And so when the the

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Sadducees and Pharisees came at him, they were coming with their oral traditions, their scholasticism, their rabbinicalism, trying to ask questions that they thought were very tricky, but they were rather foolish.

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And then Jesus would go straight to the heart of the text, or he would go straight to the heart of the man and demonstrate that they themselves were inconsistent, that they were doing these things out of evil.

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So one example would be when they accused Jesus of being empowered by Beelzebul to cast out demons.

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He's like, oh yeah, well. Yeah, what a ridiculous thing. But Jesus didn't say, he didn't say,

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I don't have time for this foolishness. Or he didn't say, that question is so ridiculous,

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I won't honor it with an answer kind of a thing, that rhetorical device.

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Yeah, yeah. Well, he did. He just took their logic, or lack thereof. Tell me about your sons.

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And he, yeah, and he just put it on display like, all right everybody, let's take this accusation and let's bring it out into the open, and let's take a really good thorough look at it everybody.

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And wow, that was lunacy what you just said. And we find that that is a very loving thing for him to do for all the hearers who might have been taken astray by those slanderous claims.

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Sure, there's people on the side like, oh yeah, yeah, that's what's going on here. There's a demon involved.

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Right, but they didn't think it through. But then Jesus helps them think it through. He's the light of the world. And he's like, hey, let's shine some light on this.

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And then all of a sudden, like, oh, that makes no sense at all. Yeah, you're right,

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Jesus. That was ridiculous. So that's a very legitimate thing to do.

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So if somebody is just being, you know, very, very cynical, so on and so forth, and now how do you approach that?

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Well, you know, in Colossians, you know, Paul was concerned about this. And he said in Colossians 4, verses 2 through 6, we've read this passage not so long ago on the podcast, but it's worth coming back to again, given the question.

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He said, continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving. Meanwhile, praying also for us that God would open to us a door for the word.

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Okay, Paul, well, what's a door for the word? Well, it's the idea, remember Paul's traveling around, it's the idea of hospitality.

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When you're going from city to city, what do you need? You need a door open to you that you may enter in and rest and be welcomed.

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You know, Paul wasn't going from La Quinta Inn to Motel 6. He was going from house to house.

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He needed a place to be welcomed, and so he's looking for a door to be open for the word to speak the mystery of Christ.

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So the idea is not simply, you know, here's a slight opening where I can say something in about 90 seconds, which, if that's all you have, that's all you have.

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He's thinking, I want to sit at somebody's table and share with them the mystery of Christ. But he says, for this

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I'm also in chains, but he desires still that door. He still desires an opportunity that he may make it manifest as I ought to speak.

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So to Paul's mind, what he is asking for prayer is that a door open for the word means that I'll have the opportunity to make manifest the mystery of Christ in the way it really deserves to be shared.

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Okay, so now he says to the church in Colossae, you walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, right, those who are outside the church, redeeming the time.

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Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you want to answer each one.

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In other words, he just said, the whole thing I'm praying for here is that I have a door open so I can speak the mystery of Christ as I ought to make it manifest.

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And that's what he wants the Colossian church to do. So their speech being seasoned with grace, seasoned with salt, is not, hey,

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I'm really nice and cool, and when we get done talking, you walk away and you think, wow, what a cool guy that was.

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That's not what Paul is meaning. He's meaning walk in wisdom toward those who are outside that you can make it clear.

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So this is, again, back to the question, how can a Christian defend his faith rightly? It has to do with knowing how you ought to answer each one to make that gospel clear.

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So I think of somebody, for instance, who's part of maybe a false church who doesn't believe in the

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Jesus of the Scriptures, or they don't believe that he actually saves people by his righteousness, that we have to be saved by ours.

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Or maybe someone's a part of an actual cult, like the Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses or so on.

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Or perhaps somebody who is on the outside of the church, and they've got a lot of mixed -up ideas that they just kind of gleaned from everywhere, and they're just so confused.

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How I talk to each one of these people is gonna be a little bit different, right? It sure will be. Because in order to make the gospel clear to a

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Mormon, I'm gonna be doing a whole lot of different work than I would be to a homeless guy who, you know, here's some water, here's a coat, and here's some conversation.

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Because you don't have a lot of human contact, but here we are, we're going to sit together and speak of Jesus. It's gonna be different than when

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I talk to somebody else. But we need to walk in wisdom toward these people, depending on what their needs are, to make it manifest to them.

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So that's why it's gonna be different. So that's one thing we have to take in consideration if we're going to defend our faith rightly.

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We have to think about the person that we're actually dealing with, and we need to know something, maybe a little bit about them, that would be helpful.

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Sure. There's a different paradigm that someone who has a different set of scriptures has, that you must be able to speak towards.

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You know, Muslims, they don't believe the same thing that Jehovah's Witnesses do, or Mormons do, yet they still need to hear the good news, and rightly so, with wisdom.

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So that is a different approach. It's not a different gospel. No. It's a different approach.

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Exactly. And so then we have some passages in 1st Peter and in Jude, and Peter says in verse 13 of 1st

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Peter 3, And so Peter's just pointing out, you know, if you're going around blessing others where you can, and trying to help people, and follow the law, and you're a great subject to the

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Empire, in our context, a good citizen of the nation, who's gonna come after you? No one's gonna oppose you for that.

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Yeah, no one's gonna, yeah. But nonetheless, you know, someone's gonna get ticked off that you believe that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the

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Father except through Him, right? They're gonna, you know. Because that has wide -reaching implications. Yeah, that's hate speech, you're killing me.

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Uh -huh. Exactly. Violence. So verse 14 says, But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you are blessed.

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That's straight from the Sermon on the Mount, straight from his master's mouth. He says, If you suffer for righteousness' sake, you're blessed.

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And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled. Don't fear a man that's a snare. Fear the Lord, correct?

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Verse 15, But sanctify, or set apart, the Lord God in your hearts. And always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you.

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With meekness and fear, having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ, may be ashamed.

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For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. Now this is a remarkable, what a rich passage, so full of application here.

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I think there's a, there's something here I just want to show, there's a dynamic here. On the one hand, Peter says, don't fear man.

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At the same time, he says, sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. And he also says, give a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.

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He just said don't fear a man, so who are you fearing? Well, you're not fearing God. Exactly. So there's fear involved.

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And you know, when you fear the Lord and you're giving a reason for the hope that is in you, that's when you can do that in meekness.

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You can do that with a good conscience. And I think it's remarkable, you begin by recognizing the authority of God in your life, and from that, you give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you.

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So you're not, you're not pretending as if God is not Lord.

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You're not pretending as if Christ is not King. You're not being neutral.

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You are partisan from the beginning. I belong to the Lord, and this is going to be proven by the fact that you're doing good, you're working righteousness, and when they defame you as an evildoer, right, you know, you're evil because you believe in Jesus.

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You're evil because, you know, you got married to one woman and you're still married and you're having children.

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You're evil for having children. You're evil for working hard and keeping a clean yard and living in a house.

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You're evil for driving a car. You're evil for voting, you know, so on and so forth, whatever.

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And other outsiders are looking at you like, that doesn't look evil. Exactly. So those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed.

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I think of, you know, I think of the people who orchestrated the

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FBI raid on the man who was a sidewalk counselor outside of the abortion clinic.

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Yeah, I know exactly. And so what's happening now? What's happening now is that all of that detail is being brought out into the open, and the people who authorized that and promoted that, they're all being very much shamed in front of everyone, you know.

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And so Peter just acknowledges, hey, this is the way it is, right? And it's better, right, if it is the will of God to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.

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So isn't that the fear, though? The fear is that we're going to suffer if we defend our faith.

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But defending our faith rightly does not mean necessarily that there are no consequences.

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You know, like, for instance, if you're taking brownies out of the oven, if you do it rightly, there's no consequences.

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You do it wrongly, you can get your hand burned, okay? That's not the way it is when defending your faith.

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When you defend your faith rightly, you might still end up suffering. And that's what Peter is saying, but he's saying, don't be afraid of that.

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Yeah. Don't be afraid of that. Now, we've looked at Colossians and Peter, and they have been looking at the people from the outside, the people from the outside who are pointing the finger at the people in the church, scoffing, mocking, trying to shame them, so on and so forth.

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But there is such a thing as defending your faith against false teachers from the inside.

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We call that polemics versus apologetics. Apologetics is making a defense for the faith from those who were outside pointing in, then polemics is something we're looking within.

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And the Bible talks about that as well. So Paul speaks to the elders of Ephesus about preaching

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Christ, preaching the whole counsel of the Word of God, making the main thing the main thing, and saying that there's wolves that can arise up from among you, and you have to always be on your watch and guarding.

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And then Jude, Jude also talks about that. And so in Jude, of course it's all one, there's not doing any chapters, it's just one.

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It's just Jude. It's just Jude. So in the first verse we read, Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, it says to those who are called, sanctified by God the

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Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. I love that greeting.

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Oh, it's wonderful. He says, Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation,

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I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.

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For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men who turn the grace of our

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God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.

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And he goes on to talk about how these are people who have infiltrated the church, and they need to be confronted.

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But he says, contend earnestly for the faith. Contend earnestly for the faith.

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And near the end of his letter he says, But you, Beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the

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Holy Spirit. So there's a need to build, to invest, to labor, to establish oneself more and more in the faith, in the gospel, in the truth of Christ, and to contend earnestly for it.

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Now contending earnestly, that has a certain approach, correct? It's not like advocate occasionally.

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Or beguilingly, like very skillful techniques or anything like that. Earnest, like I'm gonna put all my all into this.

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We have concepts of earnest money, like hey, I'm gonna do this, so I have a buy -in here.

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So this earnest defense, it's I'm fully in. Correct.

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I remember talking to a couple of gentlemen where we were disagreeing about what does the Bible have to say in doctrine of sin.

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And the person I was speaking with, when we were talking about the nature of sin, what is the biblical definition of sin,

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I just mentioned out of 1st John, well sin is lawlessness. The law being the expression of the character of God, sin is that which is against God.

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God is the arbiter, He's the definition and so we're kind of talking about what sin is.

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And then he mentioned that oh yeah, that's a great definition, classic and all that kind of thing.

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And then he started talking about a definition of sin that he really found compelling from someone who came up with the definition of sin that was that sin is that which opposes human flourishing.

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That which opposes human flourishing. Flourishing in what way? What are we talking about here? Exactly, and that becomes very difficult to define because everybody's version of human flourishing looks different.

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Does that mean that's everything that's good for me like in my viewpoint? Well they would say well what's good in God's viewpoint obviously but in this definition of sin the man who put that forward and was really promoting it and has been for a long time said now the reason why

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God is against sin is because he is for human flourishing.

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And so his ultimate ends are I don't want to mistake ends and means here but in the end he's just thinking about what's best for me.

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Exactly. That's what occupies God's mind. And that's right, that's what he's all about is human flourishing.

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So the reason why he's against sin is not because it is contrary to his holy character.

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He's against sin because it's against human flourishing. He is for human flourishing therefore he's against sin.

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And to me that is you know a wonderful sounding way to end up in all manner of terrible places doctrinally and so I contended earnestly saying that is you know that is not a biblical definition and in fact it puts

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God in orbit around human flourishing along with the rest of us. God's not the center of that definition.

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That's not fearing God that's putting man and human flourishing at the center and God's just in orbit with us.

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So I pointed that out to the to the PhD I was talking with and and he said hmm well

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I suppose that his position is open to that criticism. Oh. Now that is not earnestly contending for the faith like well this is an interesting position on this idea of the

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Bible this is another interesting position on this oh this is a very novel position over here and oh certainly they'll be open to various criticisms.

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That's not contending earnestly for the faith. These things matter it's not an intellectual exercise.

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So I would say if you're gonna contend rightly for the faith you should have some skin in the game. You're building yourself up on your most holy faith and this is where I think sometimes it can be very challenging when when you're talking with somebody and they are contradicting your dearly held beliefs you could go the other way instead of being some you know kind of professorial irenic you know

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I'm just going to ponder all the possibilities oh that's very interesting isn't it too and just be very you know detached from it.

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The other side of it is if anybody says anything that even dares look askance at my dearly held beliefs.

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Yeah. I'm gonna blow my top. Yeah. And that is where the passage in first Peter helps us because we are not to be afraid right the reason why we would get angry and maybe yell or or just go over overboard is because we're actually fearing those who are challenging what we believe but if we're fearing

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God for sanctifying the Lord God in our hearts and we're fearing him rather than man then we can give a reason for the hope that is in us with meekness where strength is under control instead of out of control.

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My wrath isn't doing anything good. Yeah the wrath of man does not achieve the righteousness of God so we have to and we have to have that in order and I think that's probably one of the more difficult things is to be able to talk with people who are saying things that if they are true there's no salvation the

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Bible is not true you know everything that I believe is a lie how do

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I deal with people saying those things in a way where I'm not becoming sinful myself and in my wrath.

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Yeah letting your emotions take over. Yeah. All right thank you for addressing how we can defend the faith rightly.

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Michael what are you thankful for? Well I'm thankful for books. I'm thankful for resources that that are put together by brothers of mine

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I've never met and one day I trust that I will but they've done a lot of labor a labor of love in the text of Scripture and they have they have written to exhort their fellow believers in the riches and the beauties of Christ throughout the

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Scriptures and I can reach over and open up that book and and read the things that they have they have studied and they have learned and be benefited by those and I'm very grateful for that that's that's a that's a treasure and I'm very thankful to the

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Lord for for good books. I'm thankful to God for his giving of different giftings and roles and offices here in his body bringing us into maturity through his spirit to look like his son one day we'll we'll be like his son and it's a it's a beautiful thing meanwhile the brothers and sisters who are laboring for his sake here in the body are a great blessing and which