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Should You Defend the Bible? (Part 3)
Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.
Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.
Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Mike Abendroth, I'm your host. Quickly, let's get to the numbers again. Info at nocompromiseradio .com. If you want to write us and ask us a question, if you'd like to see a show on such and such a topic, Ray has sent me 1 ,000 emails with shows to do, and I'll get around to them one of these days, but not tonight.
Actually, it isn't tonight for you. For you, it's 3 .30 in the afternoon, WVNE, the flagship station, the mothership of all Christian radio stations in central Massachusetts, in Worcester. But for me, it's eight o 'clock at night, and we are talking about the subject, do we defend the Bible?
You have an unbelieving friend, you begin to tell them the Bible says that you're a sinner. The Bible says that there's only forgiveness found in Christ Jesus. The Bible says that Jesus was fully God and fully man.
He was fully man, so he could be our representative. He could be our great high priest. He could die on our behalf, and he was fully God because he needed to have power over death and sin and hell, and he needed to have enough righteousness, an infinite amount of righteousness, divine righteousness, that he could give that righteousness to anyone and everyone throughout the ages who believed, and that God raised him physically from the dead, and that he physically ascended, and he will physically return.
And you begin talking like this to people, and they've got their own sins, their own sexual sins, their own immoral things, their own love of money or something else, and they begin to deconstruct what you say.
They don't want to believe it. They're putting their fingers in their ears and just saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't want that. And the easiest thing that they could do is to say, well, Christians are proud people.
Christians are sinful themselves. Christians are in the moral majority. Who do you think you are? You know, you're so narrow-minded. You're this, you're that. If you live more like the Jesus you said you followed, I might believe in you and believe, therefore, in him.
But what they tend to do more often than not, don't you know it? You've been there. If you're a Christian and you evangelize, by the way, you're either a missionary if you're a Christian or you are an imposter, and if you're an imposter, today's a good day to repent.
There's forgiveness found for you. Oh, I wasn't led to share. You don't need to feel led to share. You have been told to preach, and so if your children have a room that need to be cleaned and you tell them to clean the room, and then the kid says to you two hours later, you say, Johnny, why did you not clean your room?
Well, Mom, I wasn't really led to do it. Well, I hope you don't discipline your child if you say the same kind of thing. You know, I was really praying if I could be led for an open door to preach the gospel, my friend, but I really didn't get that open door.
Friend, you don't need an open door. You need to preach the gospel. Don't you love your friend enough to tell them the truth? But here's my point today, part three in our series, defend the Bible, quote unquote, by proclaiming the Bible.
You can't prove the Bible true to an unbeliever, and if you try to prove one point, then they'll say, fine, what's the next point? Eventually, you'll run out of steam and out of gas, and it won't even work, and it's not biblical.
It's not God-honoring. Here's the God-honoring thing. Faith comes by hearing a message about Christ Jesus, and if you'd like to destroy speculations in the feudal minds of unbelievers, you can't use miracles.
You can't use reasoning. You can't use evidences that don't demand a verdict. You can't use archeology. You can't use lives are changed. You can't use, you know, Jesus was rad, and he's my dad kind of mentality.
You have only one weapon, and that weapon is the word of God, and you proclaim the word of God, and Jesus, as he says in John chapter five and Luke 24, these words and these scriptures and Old Testament and Moses and the prophets spoke of me, and as you preach the word, you'll be preaching who Jesus is, and if you don't have enough time to preach who Jesus is, you need to pick a different passage because the Bible speaks of Jesus, so talk about Jesus from the Gospels.
What do you do when your friend says, I don't believe the word is true? The answer for you, my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer for you, oh, you know, it's interesting. I have a little sidetrack here.
Of course, everybody was all excited when Bob Dylan said he was a Christian, and then time and trials proved that that was not the case, but you know who said that she was a Christian just recently? Nina Hagen.
Now, I didn't say Hagen-Dazs. Nina Hagen, I guess, is probably 50-some years old, 55, 58 years old, and when I was a punk rock DJ, she, this German woman, was one of the real hardcore punk singers, and she really had this kind of, it almost sounded this guttural, satanic, some of the things, I think one of her albums, Nun, Monk, Sex Rock or something it was called.
It was, you know, against the Catholic Church, et cetera, but according to World Magazine, and I hope it's true, well, this part is true. She did release a new album, and the new album's all about Jesus, and she covered the Depeche Mode, Personal Jesus song.
There's all kinds of other songs about having faith in him, and he's got his eyes set on you. He knows what you're going to do. He's a forgiving God. Unbelievable. Nina Hagen, N-I-N-A H-A-G-E-N, and so you say, how did you get on the whole Nina Hagen story?
Well, if Nina Hagen is a Christian, she is a Christian because of the word of God that was preached to her by someone, and then the spirit of God was pleased to use the word to illumine her mind and grant her saving faith, which included repentance and trust.
You proclaim the Bible to people. Don't waste one minute defending the Bible. Quit defending the Bible. It doesn't need to be defended. Did Jesus defend the Bible? Did Paul defend the Bible? Did Peter defend the Bible?
Did Mary defend the Bible? Did Anna defend the Bible? Did Ezekiel defend the Bible? This is getting kind of boring, isn't it? Did Isaiah defend the Bible? Did John the Baptist defend the Bible? Did the Sons of Thunder defend the Bible?
Moving away from characters who are in the Bible, did John Calvin defend the Bible? Did Martin Luther defend the Bible? Charles Spurgeon defend the Bible? You will find in their lives, certainly if somebody said, where did Cain get his wife?
If you want to give the answer, that's fine by me, but then get back to the cross. Get back to guilt, grace, and gratitude, according to the Heidelberg Catechism. Get back to sin and the Savior. Get back to you must be born again.
Get in light of Jesus's death on the cross. Get back to the God-man. That's what we want to do. Reveal Christ Jesus. That is what we are called to do. I just had to take a sip of Lipton green tea diet citrus, natural flavors.
Anytime you see natural flavors, you ought to be very, very careful. But that is another subject. You should preach the Bible as true. Dr. Van Til was a very interesting, presuppositional, apologetic person, and he was interviewed.
And so let's just eavesdrop on Van Til, and this is right in line with, you defend the Bible by preaching it. This is the man who said, "'The self-attesting Christ of Scripture has always been my starting point for everything I have said.'".
Everything. By the way, evidences are good for you, the Christian, but they're not good for the unbeliever. The gospel's good for the unbeliever, and that's of first importance, 1 Corinthians 15. Dr. Van Til, how do you know that what you believe is true?
I am sure of my faith because its source is the Bible, the revealed Word of God. But doesn't it then become necessary to establish that the Scriptures are true, and that they are, as we know them indeed, to be the Word of God?
Answer by Van Til. This is worth it. This is worth it. This is worth the money that we pay to be on this radio station for this slot, for this slot from 3 .30 to four. You're glad you tuned in, Van Til.
The problem with that question is that it shifts the starting point. I concede that the truth of the Bible is a presupposition. My argument is simply that this presupposition is the only one from which a Christian can begin without surrendering the sovereignty of God.
Wow. Are you saying that any kind of human test applied to God and His Word violates the concept of God? Van Til, that is my basic position. Question. I might note here that your supporters see you as a great defender of the faith, and even in a recent major critique of your thought, it was pointed out that your apologetic represents a position that is now encountered with increasing frequency.
On the other hand, isn't it true that you have been accused by your opponents of substituting proclamation for argument, of championing the idea that the Christian faith is its own best defense? Now, what is that?
That is a slow ball over home plate. That is gonna be whacked out of this park. Aren't you, aren't your opponents saying you substitute proclamation for argument? This is gonna be good. Stay tuned next week for No Compromise Radio.
No, we've got time. We've got 14 minutes left. Van Til, I believe in proclamation. I also believe in the need of defending the faith. Scripture enjoins me to be always ready to give an account of my faith.
But there are two ways of defending the faith. One of these begins from man as self-sufficient and works up to God, while the other begins from the triune God of scriptures and relates all things to God.
Question, evangelicals then, who from your way of thinking should know better, are inadvertently diluting their view of God. Isn't this it? Don't you assign such exclusive epistemological authority to Scripture that you part company even with fellow Calvinists?
Answer by Cornelius Van Til, yes, my good friend Gordon Clark believes in the inerrancy of the Bible, but he builds his philosophical outlook not simply on the scriptures as such, but on the law of contradiction, which has its classical statement in Aristotle, and which to my way of thinking has turned out to be an eternally static turnpike in the sky.
Oh, you wanna rewind that? You wanna just take your mouse cursor and just move back about five minutes and re-listen to that again? We at No Compromise Radio want you to proclaim the scriptures. And I think even if I'm wrong with my apologetic methodology, I think judgment day will be better than it would have been if I would have spent all my time defending the Bible.
I'm supposed to preach the Bible. I'm a preacher. And Jesus said, my sheep, hear my voice. The Bible is the word of God. And the Bible speaks clearly. John Murray said, the Holy Spirit may be said to bear perpetual witness to the divine character of that which is his own handiwork.
So my job is to preach the word. That's my job. And I think that should be your job as well. Wouldn't you rather talk about Jesus versus manuscript evidence and Byzantine and Alexandrian text types and all that?
No way. I think you should preach the word of God for lots of reasons. But the last reason today on No Compromise Radio, one more sip here of this Lipton green tea, is that Satan is alive and powerful.
Satan is alive and powerful. Therefore, you need a more powerful weapon than Satan. And that weapon is the word of God. So preach Christ Jesus crucified from that weapon. Satan has an influence over unbelievers.
And it is a gory, wild influence. And he uses lots of different weapons. False teachers he uses to deceive people. Listen to 2 John 7. For many deceivers have gone into the world, gone out into the world.
Those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist. He works in them. Not only does he use false teachers, but Satan himself works in them. Ephesians 2.
In which you formerly walked according to the course of the world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. And so whether it's Satan or his demonic hordes, there is a satanic work in unbelievers.
And it gets worse before it gets better. Satan blinds people's minds so they don't believe the gospel. 2 Corinthians 4. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
And you know, it only goes from bad to worse again because Satan snatches the truth from unbelievers. And remember Matthew 13 in the parable of the soils. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart.
This is the one on whom seed was sown beside the road. You've got a person who is deceived with deceivers, with blinding, with a lack of understanding. MacArthur says Satan uses false teachers who promote spiritual lies and contradict God's truth.
He uses fear of what other people might think about a person becoming a Christian. Satan constantly uses pride to blind people to their sinful condition and need of salvation. He makes them believe they're not really so bad or that if they do need improvement, they can improve themselves.
He uses doubt, prejudice, stubbornness, procrastination, love of the world, love of sin, and every combination of those ploys. Matthew 8 -15, commentary, page 357. So what do we do? How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?
And how are they to believe in him of whom they never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? Well, I've been reading Romans 10, 14, 15.
As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. But they have not all obeyed the gospel, for Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed that he has heard from us? So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ, our message about Christ.
God saves people through the preaching of his son. For some, that is offensive. For others, they don't like it. For me, I believe we need to preach the gospel, even though it's offensive, even though it doesn't seem to work all the time.
First Peter 2 .8, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, for they stumble because they're disobedient to the word. And then we also see the eternal reprobation. And to this doom, they were also appointed.
It was a stumbling block. It was a scandal. It was a trap stick in the Greek. You can't prove the Bible. You can't prove God's existence. People cannot unprove God's existence. People can't unprove the Bible to be true.
And your reasoning is not going to be received by unbelievers because they are saying, because of their moral problem, that there is no God. A fool has said in his heart, there is no God. The unbelievers that you talk to, every one of them, Romans 1 is true of them.
And they are suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness. They aren't thankful to God. They aren't honoring God. They aren't praising God. They believe in God because they see his power in creation.
They see his wisdom manifest across the skies, manifest in childbirth, but they can't believe in him. They don't want to believe in him because they like to sin. And the Bible says in Romans 1 .22, professing to be wise, they became what?
Fools. They think they have autonomous authority. They think that they need to verify scripture, but we know they can't. We know that scriptures without apology make themselves to be known as the true and eternal word of God.
And it doesn't take very long to study Christ Jesus and his view of scripture. And I want to have the view of scripture that Jesus had of scripture. One man said, all forms of intellectual argument rest in the final analysis upon one or the other of two basic presuppositions.
A, man is the final or ultimate reference point in the human predication. B, God speaking through Christ by his spirit in the infallible word is the final or ultimate reference point in human predication.
Those are your two choices. So I think B is better. I think B is much better. We believe that the triune God, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit speak in the word of God with true, final, and absolute authority.
That's what we believe. And we believe the unbeliever's mind is perverted, warped, torqued, and he cannot understand the word of God. Yet God, through the preaching of his word, occasionally, often, quite regularly, graciously opens the heart and the minds of the unbeliever.
And so all the proofs that you have for the Bible to be true, they don't work. Thomas Aquinas and the rationalists, they cannot prove anything. If God's existence could be proved, could really God be the infinite God that he is?
No. The premise here at No Compromise Radio Ministry is that you should preach the word, not defend it. That you proclaim the word of God, like Van Til said. You proclaim the gospel, and it will destroy when God sees fit, and ultimately, it'll be proven to be so at the judgment seat.
It destroys any kind of alleged proofs against the non-existence, against the existence of God. Proofs of the non-existence of God. So everything that you've been taught, I'm saying probably you better rethink.
And I think our view of the scripture should be just like Jesus Christ. High view of scripture that Jesus had high confidence in and reliance upon the holy scriptures. And when you look at his public ministry, you will see a man, more than a man, yes, but Jesus a man, who proclaimed the word of God and didn't spend one ounce of his time somehow trying to prove it.
No, he accepted Jonah as true. He accepted Lot's account as true. He accepted all those supernatural ones, Sodom and Gomorrah and Noah and Adam and Eve as true. It is written, listen how Jesus talks to Satan in Matthew.
Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Jesus says in Matthew, go Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only. Matthew 11, this is one about whom it is written, behold, I send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way before you.
Over and over and over, Jesus saying, it is written, it is written, it is written. The scriptures have ongoing, eternal relevance and stability. Jesus didn't give kind of the big picture of the Old Testament or the gist of it.
He quoted from the Old Testament many times exactly as it was written, it is written. That's really the crux of it. How disingenuous for Jesus to speak with such declaration if the scriptures were anything but 100 true.
That would be sheer and shrewd audience manipulation. Instead, Jesus says it is written and he believed that Moses and the prophets were authoritative, sufficient, inerrant and the word of God, clear and sure.
So if you have friends, here's the punchline, here's the so what. If you have friends that are unbelievers and they question the Bible, I still think what you do is you just talk about sin. How are you going to have your sin forgiven?
Because one day you'll die and then stand before God. And then you're also gonna have to add more sin to that for questioning the inerrant word of God as God says it's sure and reliable and you say it's not sure and it's not reliable.
So they're just adding sin and more sin to sin as John Gershon would say. So at No Compromise Radio, you can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com. I think if you got Josh McDowell's book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, you should keep that book and you should read it and it should be retitled Evidence That Encourages Christians Evidence That Encourages Christians.
And if you say, well, Josephus said that Jesus was real and so-and-so and archeological data and digs, that doesn't change the life of an immoral unbeliever because what changes people's lives is the gospel.
So preach what can save their lives and change their lives and that is the good news that Jesus came to die for sinners just like them and he was raised from the dead. And those that look away from self and look to God, God grants salvation.
And if you believe in Jesus Christ, you will not be disappointed. And that is what we preach to people, death, burial and resurrection, sin, salvation and glorification, guilt, grace and gratitude, sin and the Savior and you preach it, the love of God and the wrath of God.
Proclaim the truth of scripture, don't defend the Bible.
No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.
Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.