Always Ready: Chap. 21 Strategy Guided by Belief

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Okay, all right.

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We're in the book, Always Ready, and we're looking at, we've concluded the first three sections of the book.

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Remember, it's divided into five sections. We're in section four, The Conditions Necessary for Apologetic Success.

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We've already looked at chapter 19, God Must Sovereignly Grant Understanding. Chapter 20 we've already looked at,

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One Must Believe in Order to Understand. Tonight, we're looking at chapter 21,

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Strategy Guided by the Nature of Belief. You may be looking at that and saying, well, this is not, what does that mean?

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And actually, as I've gone through the book, this, I think, is one of the core chapters.

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I think this is essential that we understand this if we're going to really understand how to defend the faith in a presuppositional manner.

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And you'll see that what we mean is strategy guided by the nature of belief. Here, let me do the opening paragraph first.

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If someone is to have success at some endeavor, and this is just the introduction.

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It's not talking specifically about apologetics yet. If someone is to have success at some endeavor, it's imperative that he know the proper end, aim, or goal of that endeavor.

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That makes sense. If you're going to plan on doing something, it's a good idea to understand where you're going with it.

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Success at the endeavor does not come accidentally or arbitrarily, and thus you cannot calculate what steps to take without an understanding where you're going.

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I mean, it just makes sense. Even if you're traveling, if you pile into a car and you say, all right, let's get going.

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Well, where are we going? In fact, it's a biblical principle. Remember the uncertain trumpet.

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If you blow the uncertain trumpet, who's going to follow you? If somebody comes up and says, follow me, where are you going?

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I don't know. I mean, it doesn't engender confidence. So this is a general statement he's making here.

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He says, the fact that the medical profession aims to bring health to its patients has critical significance for determining what methods and procedures it employs.

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Makes sense. If you don't understand the disease, how can you understand what the cure is?

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Continuing in the opening paragraph, a man does not know what to do in building his house until he learns what's necessary to keep the roof from falling in.

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Again, simply just makes sense. Moreover, the goal of one's endeavor delimits the way in which he can successfully achieve it.

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What you're looking at, what the goal is, is going to determine how you are going to successfully get there.

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For instance, if your aim is to reach Australia, success demands the exclusion of the automobile. Makes sense.

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You want to go to, you're not going to get very far if you try to go by car. All right.

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So this is an opening paragraph not talking about apologetics yet, but it's laying the groundwork for the fact that in apologetics, these general principles of life hold true.

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Making sense? All right. So therefore, now we're going to get into the apologetic section.

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Therefore, if the apologist is to have success at defending the faith, he should understand the nature of his goal.

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That at which he aims will dictate the method he should follow.

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You follow what he's saying. What is your goal in defending the faith?

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What is the end? What is it that you're looking to do? All right. And you'll see, if you're just, there are some apologists whose goal is to win the debate.

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Okay. I mean, we've, has everybody seen something similar to that? We're, and not even necessarily in a

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Christian arena, but you've seen debates and the whole idea of the debate is just,

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I want to demolish the other, the other person. All right. Now, unless the apologist engaged in a proud intellectual game, which unfortunately some apologists do, all right, the goal of his defense and discussion with the unbeliever must be to see the unbeliever come to belief.

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That is to saving faith. I hope you start to see why I believe that this chapter is one of the core chapters, one of the chapters that you must understand if you're going to ever be, have any measure of success in apologetics.

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The goal of our apologetics is to see that the unbeliever whom you are addressing comes to saving faith.

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If that's true, what is, what can you surmise or presuppose, or not presuppose, but suppose, based upon that being your goal.

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What do you need to know? What do you need to understand? If the goal is to, yeah, yeah, you have to, you have to know the gospel.

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What, what else do we, do you really have to know? Yeah, safe answer.

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How about the nature of faith? What is faith? Don't you think that's an important, if you, if that's what your goal is, is to bring someone to saving faith, you need to understand the nature of saving faith, all right?

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And once we grasp what God's Word teaches about the nature of saving faith, we will be greatly advanced in understanding what method of apologetic argumentation should be followed in order to prayerfully achieve success.

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Just like anything else that we're looking at, if, if, if the, our goal is to bring someone to saving faith, we need to understand the nature.

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What exactly is saving faith? And then we can adjust our apologetic methodology to bringing us to, the bringing the unbeliever to, what, the nature of saving faith.

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Follow? So you can see, again, Bonson's logic is, is flawless as he goes through this.

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He says, there can be no doubt that Scripture sets forth Abraham to us as the paradigm of faith. So what we're going to do now is we're going to go in and see what does the

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Bible teach us about the nature of saving faith, okay, in the

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Scripture. There can be no doubt the Scripture sets forth Abraham to us as the paradigm of saving faith.

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Why do you think he would choose Abraham? Why, why would Bonson choose

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Abraham as the example that we're going to look at for the nature of saving faith?

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He acted on his faith? Yeah, that's a, that's a good indication right there.

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How about he's called the father of all who believe? Why, so we go back to the beginning to whom the

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Bible calls, in Romans 4 11, the father of all who believe, all right? So that's a good place for us to start in understanding the nature of saving faith.

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Who does the Bible continually point to as the father of all of saving faith? We are called to walk in his steps.

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That's in verse 12, Romans 4 12. So if we're looking at, if we want to understand as much as we can, or as much as we need to know about saving faith, it's,

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Abraham is the best starting place that we can find in the Scriptures, all right? The kind of faith that Abraham, possessed by Abraham, was that which did not walk by sight or intellectual self -sufficiency.

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All right, now start bringing in some of the past chapters of this book, and we can see why does he choose

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Abraham? Because Abraham, Abraham's faith is pure biblical faith, and that's why the

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Bible uses him as an example. It was not walking by sight or intellectual self -sufficiency, and we're going to look at a couple examples.

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The hope which human reasoning and scientific investigation could afford was not

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Abraham's guiding light, and we'll see that in several examples, but let's just start.

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When Abraham was called by God to leave Ur of the Chaldees, all right, did

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Abraham sit down and say, all right, I'm going to make a list, pros and cons, of leaving Ur and going to a place that I know not of.

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Is that what he did? No? Yes?

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No? Sideways? Yes and no? No. He listened to the word of the

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Lord and didn't, you know, and just obeyed, all right, and we're going to see a couple of other examples here about Abraham as well.

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Instead, Abraham believed the incredible promise, incredible promise by human standards, that even though he was an old man with a visible heir, without a visible heir, his seed would be innumerable, all right?

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This is another area we've already looked at him being called, but now here's where God has come to him, the

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Lord has come to him, and tells him he's going to be the father of a multitude, all right, and yeah, yeah, and he had no children, and even though he was an old man without a visible heir, his seed would be innumerable, and he, what did he do?

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He believed. He believed God, all right? He, in hope, believed against hope.

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That's one of my favorite expressions, that he believed hope against hope, and if you think about that, he hoped, he had no hope in a physical sense, being a hundred -year -old man, all right, but he hoped against human hope, his hope was biblical, so he hoped, he, in hope, he believed against hope, yet according to that which had been spoken by God, that he would be the father of many, father of many nations.

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There you have it, again, juxtaposed. The hope, the physical hope, what would make sense if Abraham had gone to the, to the leaders, to the gates of his community, and said,

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God said, I'm gonna be a father of many nations. What do you think most of those people would have said? You're a crazy old man.

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I mean, you have no hope, all right, according to that which had been spoken by God, contrary to the conclusions which might be drawn by the thinking of man.

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That's exactly what, you can imagine what the people of his day would have said. Yeah, you know, it's, it's funny, because we have thinking like this, even in our day, when, when

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Ginger, Ginger was pregnant with Brooke, the last of my biological children, when

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I had already put in my retirement papers to retire from the police department, and I had guys on the police department say, what are you, nuts?

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What is wrong with you? You know, I didn't get much better from the church. The, one of the assistant pastors at the church started calling us

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Abraham and Sarah, and we were kind of like chided even, you know.

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Wisdom of men is not like the wisdom of God. God knew exactly what he was doing in giving us a child, and I wasn't even that old, all right.

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Jim Renahan says I was old ten years ago. All right, he should see me now.

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All right. Which might be drawn by the thinking of men. Notice we're, we're consistently now going to see the, the correlation, the dichotomy between the thinking of man as opposed to the spoken

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Word of God. The thinking of man, but according to the spoken Word of God, that was the nature of genuine faith.

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What is the nature of genuine faith? It doesn't matter what man says. I don't care what man says.

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Man says that I'm crazy. I'm going out from Irithicalities and to a place that I don't even know.

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My relatives are telling me I'm nuts. It doesn't matter. God said to do it. I'm doing what God says to do.

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That's the nature of saving faith. Abraham had to know what was the most dependable, what to presuppose, and what guiding standards to follow.

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It was very simple. God said it. God said it, and he believed

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God, and as we know, he believed God, and what's the rest of that verse?

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Reckon to him his righteousness. All right. Thereby he illustrated so well that faith is the conviction of things not seen.

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And again, talking about Abraham, Abraham demonstrated this throughout most of his life.

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I mean, he did have some areas where he wavered, but he demonstrated this, so that makes it all the more difficult, but again, we see faith is the conviction of things not seen.

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So, and that's the main point of the lesson tonight. Anyway, faith does not rely upon man's autonomous thinking and what it sees, but rather begins with a presuppositional conviction about the veracity of God's Word.

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You can see again how this, this is important that we understand that. We don't work ourselves into faith.

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That would be, that would be a contradiction in terms, even.

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We don't work our way into faith. We don't sit down and work through something. It begins with the presupposition conviction about God's Word is true, and that's what

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I'm going to rest my faith on, in the truthfulness of God's Word. That which is not seen in human ability is seen by faith, which submits to the

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Lord's self -attesting Word. Notice, human ability versus God's self -attesting

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Word, and he quotes, or he cites

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Hebrews 11 27, speaking about Moses, by faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is unseen.

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So important. The essence of Sarah's faith was that she deemed the

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Promiser, God, faithful,

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Hebrews 11 11, but faith, by faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered him faithful who had promised.

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Notice we always see the difference. There's the faith, there's the promise, and the belief in the promise of God. So full dependence on God's veracity, and giving his

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Word epistemic priority over man's excogitation, are eradicable elements of genuine faith.

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All right, now who would like to explain that to me? I came across this and I said,

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I can't wait to read this sentence. Nobody?

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Go ahead. Yeah, what is excogitation?

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It's to think out, to devise, to study intently and carefully in order to grasp or comprehend fully.

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I read that from the dictionary. All right, what is eradicable? Come on, that's an easier one.

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Impossible to eradicate. It's deep -rooted. All right, so in other words, what

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Ponson's saying here is God's truth, God's veracity, and giving his Word epistemic priority.

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We know what epistemic is. What is epistemic? Knowledge.

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His Word, the knowledge of his Word, has priority over all the deep -seated and notions of mankind.

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All right, faith oversees all of those or overreaches all of those.

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The scope of faith, then, is not the horizon of what human hopes dictate as credible. If we go by what is the norm in this society, hope is lost.

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What does our society say about a resurrection? It's impossible.

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Men don't rise from the dead, and they'll put down all kinds of, quote, scientific proofs, unquote, to demonstrate that dead men don't rise from the grave.

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Do you believe that? If you believe that, then you have no hope. What does

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God's Word say? He raises men from the dead. So what are you going to believe?

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There's the nature of faith. Do you believe in the pseudo -wisdom of this world, or do you believe in the wisdom of God's Word?

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Yes, absolutely. Rather, the man of faith submits to the a priori dependability of God's Word.

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There's a word that you really need to understand. A priori. What does it mean when you say something is a priori?

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And especially if you're going to be engaged in apologetics or any kind of debating, you have to understand some of these terms.

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It's a Latin term. What is a priori? How about this?

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Mothers, all mothers have had children. That's an a priori statement.

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Why? It's true by definition. It's true.

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If you're a mother, you've had a child. So that's an a priori.

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It's something that is not proven by experience or empirical data. Kind of like presupposition.

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They're related. So rather, the man of faith submits to the a priori dependability of God's Word.

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It's our presupposition. We presuppose the Word of God to be to be truth. That's where we put our faith, and that's an important part of presuppositionalism.

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Just as Abraham did in obeying the command to sacrifice his only son after he had received him according to the promise.

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Abraham believed. He went out, obeyed the command of God. Now remember,

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I mean, I know we've heard many sermons on Abraham and his faith. He was told that he was going to be the father of many nations.

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He's given the heir, Isaac. Then he's told by God to go and sacrifice him. And what did he do?

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No argument. He goes out and he did it. Abraham did this simply accounting

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God's ability even to raise the dead. Hebrews 11 17 to 19.

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He didn't know exactly what God was going to do, but he believed. And he didn't believe because if he was...

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Imagine if he gathered together with the elders of his city and said,

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God told me to go sacrifice Isaac. What would they have told him? Yeah.

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Yeah. Yeah. He must have heard wrong, right?

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But he didn't. He went out and accounting that God had the ability even to raise the dead.

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Abraham did not walk according to the self -satisfying sight and demonstrable verification.

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His faith was made, which made God's ability and faithfulness foremost.

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So he... Abraham had the ability to... It didn't matter what people were saying, what circumstances, what the science of his day was saying.

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He heard the word of the Lord and he obeyed. That's the nature of genuine faith.

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He trusted that no word is too hard for Jehovah. Genesis 18 14.

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Is anything too difficult for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you. At this time next year and Sarah will have a son.

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He simply based on the God himself had declared it. God said it. Abraham believed it.

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God's Word is its own authentication. It is a self -attestingly authoritative.

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You see how this is leading back to our apologetic method, why we have presuppositions.

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And by the way, Reformed Baptists are almost universally presuppositional. God's Word is its own authentication, self -attestingly authoritative.

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Abraham believed God's Word on its own merits. He was fully assured and wavered not in unbelief by concentrating on the promise of God.

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All he did, I mean, and you can see in all of these accounts where Abraham just obeyed that God said it and he just acted.

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And in fact when you read it, I don't know about you, but every time I read it,

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I just, my mouth just kind of hangs open. And just how obedient he was, especially when it came to sacrificing

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Isaac. Here indeed is saving faith. Verse 22 of Romans 4.

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Given this clear example, we can understand why Scripture teaches that our trust must be exclusively in God, putting no confidence in the flesh.

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That's Philippians 3. Trust must be exclusively in God. It's not

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God in science. It's not God in philosophy. It's exclusively in God.

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When a man trusts in himself, he departs from the Lord. Jeremiah 17 .5.

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Thus says the Lord, cursed is the man who trusts in mankind. That's strong words.

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And makes his flesh strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord. And if you doubt that, just read the rest of Jeremiah 17.

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It gets worse. So he departs from the Lord. When he trusts in himself, he departs from the

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Lord. Thus it is sheer foolishness for men to trust their own self -proclaimed autonomous thinking.

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Proverbs 28 .26. He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but he who walks wisely will be delivered.

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Notice how this message is all through Scripture. It's unchanging. It's unwavering. Faith cannot be planted and grow in the soil of human wisdom.

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It requires that instead one presuppose the Word of God. You have to put your faith in the

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Word of God. Therefore Paul declares that his speech was not rooted in persuasiveness of human wisdom.

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In order that your faith should not stand on the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

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Paul was very persuasive. Paul knew how to argue.

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Look at, and we're going, remember, probably the last thing we're going to do as we go through this book is look at Paul's encounter with, on the

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Areopagus, on Moore's Hill. And we'll see, I mean, Paul knows how to argue. But notice what he tells the

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Corinthians. He says, I didn't come to you with persuasiveness in human wisdom. I didn't use, you know, my philosophy classes when

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I was sitting under Gamaliel. He says, no. He says,

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I came, I wanted your faith not to be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

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Faith begins with the Lord and submits wholeheartedly to his wisdom.

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It is set over against reliance on one's own understanding. And of course we know what's coming.

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What Bible verse is coming after that? Got to know it. Proverbs 3, 5.

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The book of true wisdom exhorts us, trust in the Lord with all your, with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

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Notice that the important thing here is notice it puts two things in antithesis.

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This is the message of Scripture. You know the Bible is a book of antithesis. But here we have trusting in the

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Lord, lean not on your own understanding. There's an antithesis there.

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If you're leaning on your own understanding, you're not trusting in the Lord. If you're trusting in the Lord, you're going to stop leaning on your own understanding.

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And that goes, that's exactly the message of this chapter. But what's coming next,

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I had to put this verse in. This is the next verse. It's not in the book, but I just felt that I had to add this because this just expands on that.

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In all your ways acknowledge him. In all your ways acknowledge him.

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Notice, notice what that means. That means not just in apologetics, not just in your faith, not just in your religious worship and practices, but in everything.

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What are the ways that it's talking about? How you live your daily life, what you do with your finances, what you do in your family, your business practices, everything.

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In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your path straight. In other words, he will level the field in front of you and give you the right way to go.

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Same thing is true for apologetics. That's one of the ways. We have to acknowledge him and him first.

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And how do we do that? By presupposing the veracity of God's truth. Is that making sense?

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When one willingly limits his faith, presuming to question the ability or truth of God based on human intellect or argumentation, it is a serious provocation before the

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Lord. Notice, willingly limiting his faith, presuming to question

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God's ability or the truth of God. These are serious violations.

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Consequently, faith is obviously not to be grounded in man's self -reliant thinking.

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What is it to be grounded in? The Word of God.

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God must be taken at his Word, for he is truth itself.

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And then we come to the closing paragraph. Since this is the end which we hope to achieve in speaking apologetically, it should be clear that our defense must be rooted in the presupposed work of God, rather than guided by clever arguments which rest in assumed intellectual autonomy.

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We ought not, in our apologetic, teach the unbeliever to trust in himself in order to savingly rely wholly on the

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Lord. What does he mean by that? This is a very interesting summary, a very interesting conclusion.

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It's a message to the Christian apologist. And what is he basically saying?

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Especially the last couple of sentences. And I want to make sure, before we leave,

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I want to Yeah, yeah.

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What's the warning? There's a warning in this paragraph. In your apologetics, don't teach the person you're debating with how to trust in himself.

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In other words, don't you be an example. Don't you use these self -authenticating wisdom of man.

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Don't use philosophical arguments to try to prove the nature of faith. Remember, what's our apologetic methodology?

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We want to get him to saving faith. That's the whole purpose. And you're doing that. Don't use a methodology that's going to teach him to be self -reliant.

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And so the apologetic method that we use has to be consistent with the end of our apologetics, which is what?

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To bring the person to saving faith. And how do we do that? Go back to chapter 20 to understand one must what?

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Believe. So Bonson doesn't pull any punches here. That's the last of the chapter.

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Any other questions on this chapter? Do you see why I said this is like one of the foundational chapters, even though it's tucked in the middle, but it's so important.

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Strategy guided by the nature of belief. Any other questions on this chapter? No? We good?