Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals: The following is a ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, proclaiming biblical doctrine for a reformed awakening. To learn more, call toll-free, 1-800-488-1888 or visit alliancenet.org.

Guest (Male): Good to be up here with you this weekend. Thank you so much to the GAPS center for having me here. Tom said that one of the stated missions was to have world-class speakers, and I'm afraid I'm going to get us off-mission tonight. Thank you for your patience.

We are going to talk about a subject that is near and dear to my heart, the subject of apologetics, and not just because it's what I've done some study in, but because it's biblical. As we launch into our time together this evening, if you have a Bible, please open with me to 1st Peter chapter 3. If you know anything about this letter, it's written by the Apostle Peter to a group of Christians that were suffering.

The focus of the letter, as one commentator put it, is to answer the question: if following Jesus is such a good thing, why are we suffering so much? That's what Peter is designing this letter to answer under the inspiration of God. We get here to 1st Peter chapter 3 and just one verse I want to read and then we'll begin. This is God's word. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect. May God add his blessing to the reading of his holy word.

That's our question tonight. Apologetics, what is it? What does it mean when we say this word? Let's define what it isn't. We want to learn how not to make a mess of things. If we don't understand what apologetics is, we will make a mess. First thing is apologetics is not learning how to say you're sorry. I need a lot of help in that, my wife will attest to that, but that's not what this study is about.

It's not a form of intellectual bullying. That's the way it can be used sometimes, where people learn how to defend Christianity against other opposing worldviews and then they get really uptight and want to tell everybody how much they know. That's not what this is about. Apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia, which means to make a defense.

If you look at ancient Greek literature when Plato writes about Socrates' trial, the Greek word there is Socrates' apology. It's his defense before the Greek authorities of his day. When it comes to the scriptures, this word is used a number of times in the New Testament. Peter used it right here when he says always be ready to make a defense; it's an apologia.

Christian apologetics is the application of biblical truth to unbelief. We'll unpack this more in just a second, but right at the outset what we see is that apologetics means there are other systems of thought, other worldviews, other philosophies that are opposed to Christianity. Jesus says things like, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me."

In the book of Acts chapter 4 and verse 12, you have the apostle saying things like there's salvation in no other name but Jesus. It's an exclusive claim to the truth and there's opposition to that. We can define apologetics as the discipline that teaches Christians how to give a reason for their hope. You can see this definition almost quotes word for word from 1st Peter 3:15.

Apologetics offers reasons to believe Christianity is true. Why do we need to do that? One because the Bible tells us to, and two because people today think they have good reasons not to believe the gospel. John Newton had a lot of good reasons he thought not to pay attention to the gospel. People today think they have a whole lot of good reasons not to believe in the Bible, not to believe the truth of Christianity. God commands us to offer reasons.

That's not popular in some circles. Some people say why don't we just tell people about Jesus? Why do we need to do all this reasoning? I'm not a logician, I don't have degrees, I don't know about logic and philosophy. The Bible doesn't ask you to do that. It says know the word of God and be able to offer the reasons why you believe that from the scriptures. All of this is right out of the Bible. This isn't like trying to use philosophy and other things as if they're foreign to the scriptures. The Bible carries its own defense with it.

Christians are called to offer a reason. It used to be where we lived in a Christian society that had Christian assumptions. People would say of course I'm not as good as I should be and I know there's such a thing as sin and maybe God is out there. Those times are long gone. I live and minister in Columbia, South Carolina. The church that I have the privilege of serving at was chartered in 1795 and some of its buildings are older than the state house.

In red-state South Carolina, there is so much anti-Christian thought. Christian assumptions are going out the window. It is a microcosm of what's happening all over the West. Sometimes people say can't we just tell people what Jesus has done for us? Yes, you should be able to do that. But that's not all we should be able to do. People who take that approach say to somebody, "Jesus has changed my life," and the non-believer goes, "Awesome, yoga has done that for me. Why should I believe Jesus instead of yoga?"

Apologetics offers reasons to believe other worldviews are false. We need to understand it's a clash of entire worldviews. It's not just an isolated doctrine here or there. It's a whole system of thought that comes into collision when the gospel is presented. In 2nd Corinthians 10:5, Paul says we destroy arguments and every lofty knowledge raised up against our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus did this, by the way. If you were to flip over to Matthew 22, he starts talking to the Sadducees to show you that he is not anti-reason.

The Sadducees were kind of the theologically liberal group of ancient Judaism. They only accepted the first five books of the Bible as scripture. They come to Jesus because they've watched the Pharisees try to trip up Jesus. The Pharisees are kind of the evangelicals of their day; they believe everything in the Old Testament is the word of God. The Sadducees go, "The Pharisees can't get him, we will."

They come to Jesus and try to put him on the horns of a dilemma because everybody thinks he's a great teacher. They take part of the law of Moses and use it to trip him up. The example they used was a part of Deuteronomy that provides for what's called levirate marriage. If a man died and didn't have any children, his brother was to marry the wife to carry on the line in Israel.

They say seven brothers had one wife. Each of them died in turn, and in the resurrection whose wife will she be? They think they caught Jesus in a dilemma. Jesus says, "You greatly err because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God." He says in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like the angels in heaven. He refutes their reasoning. He says marriage ends at death, so there's no dilemma anymore. He questions their assumptions and logically refutes their argument.

In technical terms, Jesus used an enthymematical hypothetical destructive syllogism. That can be mapped out. The Bible shows us this again and again. Jesus reasons from the scriptures. His favorite question that we have recorded for us in the New Testament is, "Have you never read?" He expects people to reason from the scriptures when he goes back and forth with them.

We want to be able to talk to our neighbors about Jesus. I've lived in different parts of the country, and I've been sharing the gospel and talking to people who aren't believers. They want to know why Christianity is true and I want to give them reason to question why their worldview isn't true. I want to show them that any worldview that's not Christianity is false. That's the bold claim of Christianity. It's true, and anything that is opposed to it is false.

That's not popular to say today either. I'm not here to try to be an exemplar or a martyr for the truth. But Jesus marks it out pretty clearly. He draws the lines and says, "I'm the only way." Any other worldview that says here's another way to be saved is wrong. I had the radio on coming up and heard Zac Brown Band. One of the songs he was singing was that the religion he loved was the religion that all religions are one and all are love.

Here we are in 2019 regurgitating the errors of the 60s. It was tried and didn't work. But artists rehearse the old errors. That's the kind of popular view. Everything's one, everybody's okay, don't be mean and say there's only one way. That's what fanatical jihadists do. That's what people do who run planes into buildings. I don't think that any of that has anything to do with Christianity. There's some bottom-line ground rules for doing evangelism.

Apologetics wants us to be in dialogue with people and say actually there's good reasons to believe Christianity and good reasons to believe anything that is opposed to it is false. What are some of the aims of apologetics? First and foremost, to glorify God. It's not to be used to bludgeon people into the kingdom. First and foremost, we share the gospel and do apologetics to glorify God. To make him look good. To make ourselves look less and to make Jesus look more.

When I walk through the city streets of Columbia, my heart breaks because there are so many people who don't know Jesus and aren't glorifying God. When I talk to somebody about Christ and they don't believe, my job is not to sit there and hammer away at their false worldview. That may happen at some point. I had a very interesting exchange this week with a Mormon. We had to go back and forth about some very serious worldview issues.

It was done cordially and my heart is breaking because I want this man to know Jesus. I want to see God glorified by more people worshiping him than worshiping satanic false gods. Another aim of apologetics is to silence unbelief. Paul says we destroy arguments. Jesus did that to his opponents. After the episode with the Sadducees, the people were astonished at his teaching and no one dared ask him any more questions because he refuted their arguments.

We should point out the foolishness of unbelief and the ridiculousness of some of the narratives being passed around today. The idea that somehow we, with all of our complexity, beauty, art, literature, and culture, all happened by a mechanism we don't know. That from primordial soup and a collocation of atoms and molecules we get Beethoven's fifth symphony is unbelievable.

That needs to be pointed out where in normal settings if we heard somebody say that without all the scientific window dressing, we'd say you have lost your mind. Silencing unbelief is important. Third thing: evangelism. There are times when we will preach the gospel and people will come under conviction of sin. There are other times where I've talked to people for years and tried to answer questions as best as I could before they came to know Christ.

Apologetics is used for evangelistic purposes. We offer reasons for believing Christianity is true so that people will come to know Christ. Fourth thing: apologetics is to protect the church and the believer. I have three children and they have questions. Without fail, my nine-year-old will just stump me. She's got these fabulous questions because her little mind works that way.

My responsibility as her dad is to teach her good answers from the Bible. One of the things pastors and leaders in the church are supposed to do is to equip the church to answer their own doubts. Let's just be honest about that: all of us are going to have doubts at times. God is not opposed to doubters. You may have noticed that wonderful little episode in the Gospel of John where Jesus meets Thomas.

Think about Thomas. Don't you love him? Let's go back to John chapter 11 when Lazarus dies. What's Thomas' last words to Jesus before they walk over to Bethany where he's going to raise Lazarus from the dead? "Let's go with him so we can die too." Because the Jews are coming after him, if we're with Jesus they're going to kill us. Thomas was the kind of guy you want on your team who's going, "This is not going to work. We're all going to die."

Imagine your four best friends in the world. They've been through everything with you. If one of them called me up and said, "Gabe, you are not going to believe what has happened. He's back, man." That's what happened to Thomas. He has Peter, James, and John going to him, "He's alive! Jesus is back from the dead!" These are his closest friends. Thomas was there when he watched Judas betray Jesus. He saw everything and he still doesn't believe them.

Thomas says, "Unless I see him, I will never believe." What does Jesus do? He comes and stands in the midst of them. The first thing he does is say, "Thomas, come here. Put your hands here. See that it's me. Don't be unbelieving anymore, but believe." Thomas says one of the great confessions: "My Lord and my God." Jesus will condescend to meet us in our doubt. He wants us to be assured that he has number one place in our lives.

He wants you to know that everything he's told you in his word is true. He longs for you to know that and enjoy it. So he condescends to meet doubters. But then remember what he says to Thomas: "Because you've seen me, you have believed?" Jesus is intentionally unclear about whether he is asking a question or rebuking him. But what does he say right after that? "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe." Guess who that is? Anybody in here who's a Christian tonight.

There's only one other time he says blessed outside of the Sermon on the Mount. It's a big deal when Jesus says you're blessed. He says the way that you know you're blessed is if you believe. God wants to use apologetics to help us answer our questions. He will not answer all of our questions the way we want him to. You just got to be ready to live with that. Am I going to get all my questions answered? No.

There's going to be deeper questions of why there is suffering. We won't get all our questions answered, but when God does give us an answer from his word, we can trust it. Apologetics helps us see that. Fifth thing: apologetics helps us become better critical thinkers. It doesn't take but about 20 seconds of tuning in to a news station before you see that people don't think very clearly.

Critical thinking is a lost art. Christians should be people who can think well from the Bible. When Jesus encounters Nicodemus in John 3, he says, "Truly, truly I say to you unless a man is born again he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." Nicodemus asks, "Born again? How can somebody enter his mother's womb?" Jesus says, "Are you *the* teacher in Israel?" Nicodemus, you're the guy who's supposed to know all this and you don't know what I'm talking about.

Jesus says unless a man is born of water and the spirit, he won't see the kingdom. Do you know what he's referring to? Ezekiel 36 where God says, "I will sprinkle clean water on them, I will give them a new heart. I will take away their heart of stone." Jesus is saying from that passage, Nicodemus, you should have deduced what I'm talking about. You should have reasoned to the new birth.

Jesus refutes the Sadducees' argument using Exodus 3:14. He says God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is not the God of the dead but of the living. Would you have deduced the doctrine of the resurrection from the tense of a Hebrew verb in Exodus? I sure wouldn't have. Jesus says to these learned teachers of the law, you think you know me, but you don't know me because you're not thinking through the scriptures well by the power of the Holy Spirit.

As we read the Bible, it will remain a closed book to you unless the Holy Spirit opens it up. The Holy Spirit inspired the scriptures and he illuminates them to believers. He doesn't write new scriptures. With the finished work of Christ came the finished word of God. But he illuminates the ones he gave. He opens them up to us. I didn't become a Christian until my early 20s.

When I did, I will never forget the experience of reading the Bible for the first time as a Christian with the Holy Spirit. I had sat under sermons growing up and none of it made any sense to me. The spirit has to open our eyes when we reason through the scriptures. Apologetics is a means to enable our children and grandchildren to stand in the marketplace of ideas.

Our church is about two blocks from the University of South Carolina. We have a number of college students that come to our church and I feel for them, who are standing for Jesus in a hostile environment. We want to make sure they're equipped. I don't want my children to be afraid to go into the world and have people challenge their ideas. I want them to stand for Jesus and be salt and light to this culture.

Jesus says no one after lighting a lamp covers it up. In the same way, Christians are to show off Jesus in the world. How does Paul do apologetics? He reasons from a biblical worldview. In the book of Acts, the pattern is he goes to the synagogue every time, until you get to Acts 17. He is in the intellectual capital of the ancient world, Athens. He starts in the marketplace talking about Jesus.

They call him a seed-picker. They bring Paul before the Areopagus. Does he reject the biblical doctrine of God and try to accommodate to their culture? He does not do that. He thinks carefully about what he's going to say and presents the biblical worldview. He says there's a God in heaven who made everything. Ancient Greek philosophy did not believe that there was one creator.

Paul talks about judgment. One thing you can count on if it's not biblical Christianity, they will have an aberrant teaching about hell. I remember when God awakened me to the question that changed my life. The question used to be: how could a loving God send anybody to hell? Then when Jesus opened my eyes, the question became: why didn't he send me there? Why has he preserved me this long?

Jesus' two favorite sermon topics were hell and money. Why? Because he loves us and wants to warn us. As Christians, if we aren't scared of hell and people going there, something's wrong with us. It ought to keep us awake at night to think about a precious image-bearer of God going to hell where they will be punished for not trusting Christ. Can you think of anything more terrifying?

Paul says God has given proof of all this by raising a man from the dead. That's when he lost them all. Some mocked. Some said we'll hear you some more at another time. We have the same thing today. Then some believed. That's what happens when apologetics is done well. 2nd Corinthians 10:4 says, "For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds." You don't use fleshly methods to spread the gospel.

The worst thing Jesus tells you to do if people reject him is shake the dust off your feet. Not use a sword or run planes into buildings. When Paul says we don't wage war the way the world does, he says we don't use their tactics. Instead, we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

I want to take my thoughts captive to obey Jesus because I fail at that. We destroy those opinions and take thoughts captive. We listen. We don't pretend to have all the answers. As we listen and refute, we're taking our own thoughts captive. We're seeing the world that God made through God-shaped glasses. This is a continuous action; we're always taking our thoughts captive.

What you really worship is revealed by what your mind drifts off to when you're thinking about nothing else. That's why the New Testament focus on our thinking. How you think becomes how you live. Apologetics is necessary. It's the calling of all believers. It's not for an elite few; it's for anybody who claims the name of Jesus. No, you don't need to be a trained logician. You simply need to know your Bible.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a phenomenal preacher in London. He would tell stories of walking down the street and seeing professors from the local university. A man began to share the gospel with them and they began to mock him. Lloyd-Jones stood at a distance and listened as this man began to embarrass them with his knowledge of the Bible, refuting everything they were throwing at him simply using the word of God.

Apologetics takes place in the wilderness of this life in union with Christ and therefore victory is guaranteed. Jesus was in the wilderness 40 days. Israel was in the wilderness 40 years. Jesus is the new and better Israel. Israel failed in the wilderness. Jesus comes and succeeds. The devil tests him and he wins because he knows you and I give in to temptation way too easily.

He succeeds in our place so that we know when we're in the wilderness of this life waiting for the promised land of heaven, he's right here. Because he triumphed, you will make it through. Apologetics entails reasoning from the scriptures. Meditation is just sanctified worry. God doesn't want us to worry. When we worry, we're thinking about a problem from a bunch of different angles.

Meditation on the Bible is thinking through things without the worry component. How blessed is that man who meditates on the law of God day and night? That only happens as we meditate on the word and reason from it. Apologetics is a gospel thing used by God to bring others to himself. It's the duty of all Christians. Ultimately, it's to make Jesus look good. Let's pray.

Thank you, Lord, for these folks gathered tonight. Thank you for being a God who loves us when we are not lovely. Whose grace is unbounded and whose power is unimaginable. Make us, Lord, those who enjoy you and love you and are used by you in apologetics. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals: This has been a ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions and who proclaim biblical doctrine in today's church. The Alliance hosts conferences, produces radio and internet broadcasts, and publishes online and in print. We continue only with your support. To give a financial gift or learn more, call toll-free, 1-800-488-1888 or visit alliancenet.org.