Copy of ReThink - Michael Ramsden - 01182019

indifference to just imagine what these guys in Asia will be going through in 60 now in a few days time with a 16 hour jump what we're gonna try and what I'll be trying to do each evening is address an issue a question that seems which is one that seems to be wrestled with out of a variety of levels in different aspects of our culture today so today we'll be looking at this this question is objection that many people bring and feel is the Christian faith inherently arrogant which is a huge challenge because there seems to be a certainty of conviction within the Christian faith that is very easily either interpreted as arrogance or in the worst possible case could be lived out as arrogance tomorrow we'll be dealing with a very different question which is if the Christian God is meant to be one who's meant to be primarily about love kindness acceptance why is it that we also read so much about God's judgment and so on is it possible that in the Bible there are two different God's sort of a loving kind one that we wheel out for PR purposes but then a very different one also contains within the same pages of Scripture are there actually two different gods within the Old Testament and the New Testament we'll be looking at that on Sunday is going to be a slightly change of gear again and we'll be dealing with a slightly different question trying to figure through why is that there seems to be so much anger and hostility in our culture right now we're possibly losing the hallmark of what we understand a Western civilization to be because a civilization isn't marked out by how it handles agreement' civilizations are distinguished by how they handle disagreement and our ability to handle disagreement well seems to be an all-time low right now and we'll be looking at that and through the lens of Jonah and why he was so angry with God with and what is the complaint he bought about him and see what parallel that then brings into our culture today so that's the that's the plan for the journey for those of you who be able to with us all of the time and if you're here tonight and you're not planning to come back tomorrow please don't want anyone else about it there is the story of a bishop who was going to visit one of the churches sort of within his denomination and he was really looking forward to going to speak there because it was a big church and it was well known you know for having very large library congregation and so many of the spoken were really quite small and empty and as a bishop arrived he was looking out into the congregation just before the service started and was disappointed by the fact that hardly anybody seemed to be there and so the bishop turned to their pastor and he said did you tell the people I was coming and the pastor looked at the empty church and said no I didn't but would seem to get out anyway so anyway let's first hey let's hope that's not the consequence of this time that we have here together but let's turn to this question of about the arrogance within the Christian faith is the Christian faith philosophically is it free Christian faith aragón and there are three primary charges areas in which people think that the Christian faith fails this particular test and why it is is inherently arrogant the first one is if you like is a philosophical complaint and it goes something like this if you claim to know the truth and if you say that you believe the truth there has to be an inbuilt arrogance of that because what you're doing is you're claiming that you are right and you think other people may be wrong and the implication is is that you can see better than everybody else I was speaking at a dinner this is quite a few years ago now in London and after I'd finished speaking after dinner again there was a time for question and answers there will be tonight and the very first question was actually asked by a very senior military man who was in the room and he said you know it seems to me that there's a problem with the way you think is a Christian I said what is that he said well he said he said I like to think of religions as mount as pops going up a mountain and you may well have heard this or maybe even you know come across this before he said in your on one particular path the Christian path and it's winding up the mountain to the top but there are all kinds of people on other paths and those paths have different names and they all go to the top and he says what makes he says so is I don't understand he says how you can claim what you're saying in the way that you're doing it now the guy who was asking the question not only was a military man but was remarkably more fit looking than me even though he was older than I was and he looked like the kind of person who might climb mountains for fun and sure enough my suspicions were confirmed when I asked him I said do climb mountains he said yes I'm quite an avid mountain climber I said well have you ever climbed a mountain all the way to the top and he said I have I said when you're standing on the top of a mountain can you see where all paths from the base lead and he paused for a moment and shook his head he says No so I said to him where do you need to be standing to know all paths lead to the top and he hesitated for a minute and he said well and then I said you need to be up here possibly about a thousand feet directly above the top of the mountain and then you can see where the base where the paths lead from the bottom he said that's right I said who's the only person who has that view and at this point he pause and he said well I guess god I said so who are you claiming to be when you tell me all paths from the base of the mountain lead to the top and at this point he started laughing to himself and I said look I'm just trying to figure out which one of us is claiming to be God in this conversation now you see the challenge he is raising a very legitimate concern because arrogance is not a quality which is actually affirmed in any world viewed any level as a positive quality almost anywhere so he's raising a very legitimate concern but in questioning and making the objection he's making he's making a claim for himself to be godlike which actually is pretty arrogant I remember smiling and saying if you are God then there were various questions I wouldn't mind asking you from the main mall level what's the weather going to be like in a few days time when I my family and I going out on a picnic - do you have next week's national lottery numbers because all of that information could be very useful for me we struggle with this and it's partly because it's the way truth works truth is always going to end up excluding somebody somewhere if you want to make the claim and say look all paths lead to God it doesn't matter what you believe or how you live in the end every path will get you there when you say that you're saying that those who believe only some paths lead to God because you're not draw a door Plitt out of Hitler for example had such a great idea so if you wanna say look only some paths lead to God not all of them will take you there then I said if you say all partially to God you are saying that the people who believe some paths lead to God are only one pathway to God or wrong if you say only some path to God because you don't like Genghis Khan you don't like Adolf Hitler and there's some things you want to exclude when you say only some parsley to God you're saying the people who say all parsley to God are only one path leads to God are wrong it doesn't matter how you claim it at some point you're excluding somebody somewhere just shortly after I became a Christian having been raised in a non-christian culture and country almost all of my life because I grew up most of my childhood in the Middle East I was talking with a guy and after I'd become a Christian he smiled and he said Michael that's amazing you're a Christian he says I'm a member of the Baha'i faith and what I didn't realize is he led the baha'i in that particular country and I didn't know very much about the Baha'i at that point so I just simply asked him well what do you believe and he began to explain it to me and eventually he said well what we believe is that we think all beliefs are right I said well I think only one belief is right what do you make about that and he said well that's wrong I said so you're excluding me then he said oh no no no no no no we agree with everybody I said well would you agree with the idea that only one is right he said no we couldn't possibly accept that I said I feel excluded again it it doesn't matter how you position it and this is therefore when we have to be very very careful because it isn't morally better to actually think that you can get yourself out of this problem we're all making a claim to truth at some level the question is how are we doing it you can hold on to a truth in a very arrogant way you can hold and twitch on to a truth a very humble way you don't solve it by diluting the question of truth and it's fascinating now to be living in a world where everyone's debating about fake news and very few people stop to think and ask themselves the question it will be impossible to detect fake news in the absence of truth so every time now on TV and we hear people on the left and the right all the time saying this is fake news well every time they make that statement they're claiming there's a truth out there and we can figure out what it is and if we can figure out what the truth is we can also figure out what's wrong by comparison we're all staking claims to truth somewhere somehow the question is how are we doing it now that leads if you like into the second major objection especially in relationship to the Christian faith and whether it's arrogant or not and it's a moral thing it's sort of like a moral complaint which is inherent in everything I've been saying a few years ago I was speaking at a meeting where what I did was I actually only spoke for about 10 minutes and then we did a very long Q&A and at the end of the time of Q&A this lady came up to me and she said look you didn't my question didn't get asked and I said well I'm very happy to answer it now and she said well you answered questions for one and a half hours and in that one and a half hours you seemed to assume something but nobody asked you expressly I said well what is that and she said well do you believe that the Christian faith there's something unique special different about the Christian faith that makes it the only way to God I said well yes I guess that's correct she said well I could never become an arrogant person like you and say other people are wrong so I asked her I said well what do you believe when she said well I'm a Buddhist and she said I've been a Buddhist for about twenty years so I said tell me I said didn't the Buddha say that the Hindus were wrong didn't he say that the Vedas aren't a divine revelation from God and didn't he call the caste system which is the central pillar of Hinduism evil and she looked at me and her mouth fell open she said he did say that I read it this morning in my devotions so I said well look if the Buddha said people are wrong but you're happy to follow him why are you not prepared to follow Jesus when he implies people are wrong and she looked at me and she said I don't like where this is going and I said look I appreciate you may not enjoy the direction of where the conversation is going to sit but it seems to me there's an equivalency there it was incredible the next morning to see her as she came along to the church that I happened to be speaking in that morning and after everyone had left she was still sat there alone and I went in sat next to her and then I think some of the real questions then began to pour out she said you know I haven't been to church for over 20 years because I was abused within it so this is the first time I've been back in a place like this for over twenty years and then it was a huge privilege to be able to pray with her a few minutes after that and she was wrestling with that question and it may well be that the reason why if you are here and you have personal struggles and questions about the Christian faith it could be because you think you seen something distinctly morally unattractive in the Christian faith and it's really put you off and I would encourage you not to discount the possibility of something real because of something fake you've encountered previously in the letter to the Galatians which is one of the very first pieces of Christian literature written possibly the first there's a bit of academic debate about that but it is very early the Apostle Paul is one of the very first Christians is writing to the church and he's helping them try to discern between real Christianity and fake Christianity he's trying to help them discern when you talk about the good news the gospel of Jesus Christ there's a real one isn't there are lots of fakes what does the real one look like and in that context he also addresses another question he says a lot of people claim to be Christian but they're not he says so you need to discern it and then he says and here's the way to tell the real from the fake and in Galatians chapter 5 he gives a list he says if you meet someone who claims to be a Christian there should be a certain type of fruit in their life you should be able to taste it and the fruit he says has a certain flavor he says the fruit should taste of love joy peace patience kindness gentleness and so on he describes the taste of the fruit fruit so what the Apostle Paul is saying to his critics in a very nice way is bite me he's saying he's saying look don't just simply accept someone's claim to have become a Christian and met the person of Jesus Christ because they say that's the truth he says taste the flavor of the fruit in their life it should taste like this he says if on the other hand what you taste looks like lust anger rage malice if it tastes like that then you should reject it it doesn't taste the way it should do I was going over to northern Nigeria at the ette towards the end of last year and as I was just before I was leaving I was in a taxicab in Oxford and back in England where I live and I got talking with the taxi driver and he was asking what I did and I explained how I did all of travel and and then he said where are you going to next and when I said Nigeria he said oh I'm Nigerian and I asked for his name and you know as you know where most names have a meaning to them so I said well what's the meaning of your name and he explained the meaning of his name to me and after explaining the meaning of his name I said does that mean you have some kind of Christian heritage and he said oh yes he said I was raised in a Christian family and so on today I checked it all of that a long time ago and then he began to unpack for me how he'd been mistreated at the hands of the church and how various things had gone dramatically wrong in his life he said it's more than the reasons he's I wanted to leave Nigeria and I came to England so I'm not interested in any of that anymore and as he finished unpacking all of this for me I said to him tell me I said you've been working for a taxi driver for many years now has anyone ever given you any fake money and it said oh yes all the time I said does that mean therefore I said when we get at the end of our journey and I give you a 20 pound note to pay for it that you'll reject my money because in the past someone gave you something fake and he simply pause for a moment I said you know where I'm going with this I said please don't reject the real because in the past someone just because in the past and I'll try to give you a fake there should be a moral beauty within the life of a Christian and we're we're we're we're all called to to to live it which is why if you're a Christian and you read the Bible regularly you come to church you often find yourself repenting for the things that you have failed in because no Christian is perfect and what should keep us really humble in terms of how we live our life and treat other people is knowing just how regularly we actually fail in our own life and if you're sat here today and you actually believe that you're a good person that there's basically nothing you never do anything wrong there's only one way out of that state of self-deception you must get married now this leads if you like into the third general area we wrestle with when it comes to this whole question about arrogance and it's to do if you just like with just the general attitude of it there was a professor at the University of Oxford by the name of Isaiah Berlin he he wrote a lot of very famous books he was this incredible mind he applied himself to all kinds of disciplines as a matter of fact within the university even when he was at the zenith of his reputation as an academic when he was on national TV all of the time and plaques and things been erected to him because he was a specialist in so many different academic areas there was some debate you know about how deep he really was you know because he was a philosopher he was a historian he was a sociologist he was he was involved in so many different academic disciplines this question was with this huge mind is you know is he sort of jack of all trades and master of non but I think history is gone to show he's been one of the most a student you know thinkers of you know of the 20th century and Isaiah Berlin one of the things he was very much concerned about was the nature of freedom and tolerance within a society he had come from Eastern Europe and he'd seen what had happened when communism came in and all of a sudden there was no ideological freedom anymore and indeed he was part of a group of people who will look for simply expelled and they came found freedom in the West and so he was very attuned to this question of what does it mean to live free and so he became a major proponent for what's called pluralism now this is not relativism it's it's something different to that it's it's a it's a position he's trying to make to say look we need to find out how to live with each other and enjoying the context of one of his most brilliant essays he says this let me just read it to you he says the enemy of pluralism which for him is that one of the key foundations for any free society he said the enemy of pluralism is monism the ancient belief that there is a single harmony of truth into which everything if at the end is genuine must may be made to fit the consequence of this belief he says is that those who know should command those who do not to cause pain to kill to torture are in general rightly condemned but it these things are not done for my personal benefit but for an ism socialism nationalism fascism communism fanatically held religious belief or progress or the fulfillment of the laws of history then all of a sudden they are justified monism he said is one step away from despotism you see what he's saying he's saying if you ever find someone who believes that they have a truth which is so big it's it's over everybody else that will automatically leave to despotism now remember the first time I read this particular philosophical essay I remember writing a little comment in the margin of it saying what about the truth filled with grace one of the most incredible things I find about the person of Jesus Christ is he's described as a person who was full of truth and grace now when you described someone as grace full what you mean is that there is a beauty to their physical movement you may have noticed that as I walked up onto this platform when you decide describe someone as gracious you say you're saying that there is a beauty to their inner moral movement when we described Jesus Christ as someone as truth in grace it's saying there was something beautiful about the inner moral movement of his life in his heart there was desperately attractive and compelling to other people what about truth that's held and lived with grace is that possible now these questions are becoming increasingly present in our in our time now for all of the reasons I have outlined I don't think that simply because someone is either claiming to have some kind of truth or even want to share with anyone else naturally therefore falls into any of these categories of arrogance and as a matter of fact this is the question that Jesus Christ addressed head-on Jesus actually spoke directly to this particular question in this issue and what he said about it was really quite remarkable it actually comes in the form of a story which probably all of you've heard before and you all can find it in the Gospel of Luke where in Luke halfway through Luke chapter 18 we read to some who are confident of their own righteousness and look down on everyone else Jesus told them this parable so in Luke 18 Jesus tells the story a story in response to people who felt that somehow they were superior to everybody else around them and looked down on them now there is an arrogance within that it's what we call self righteous now the trouble with self-righteousness is it describes two different things self-righteousness can describe a manner does that make sense you act in a self-righteous manner you're pompous most people feel that that definition is phenomena swith being British there's another word meaning to that word self-righteous which is the idea that through our effort and our energy we make ourselves right and good people does that make sense and actually sometimes you could argue that you need to be humbly self-righteous does that make sense if you wonder if you want to go on a path of spiritual moral ethical improvement and be a good person one of the things you have to manifest yourself with is also humility so you try to hold on to a humble form of self-righteousness but it's the same Drive does that make sense I need to make myself good I need to live in a way in order to prove myself to other people and even to God and so Jesus is now speaking at two different levels he's addressing this question of self-righteousness is it possible for us to make ourselves right and put ourselves in a good place with other people and even before God and he's also addressing an attitude which is involved in looking down on other people with a form of moral superiority and saying to yourself well thank goodness are not like them that's one of the reasons I think we all love reading the gutter press because when you read that kind of you know all the gossip stories about everybody else you see how badly they live by comparison we're doing just fine okay it's very easy to find any point of comparison where we think well at least I'm doing better than them that's not difficult so Jesus then tells a story which is so well known that we we sometimes don't even correctly understand its setting because I grew up in the Middle East I had very little exposure to the Christian faith and I was enormous ly blessed after I became a Christian to meet a guy by the name of dr. Kenneth Bailey who passed a cup away a couple of years ago who had made sort of a special ism into looking into how the parables have been interpreted classically in the Middle Eastern context and Jesus goes on to tell a story which is very common but most of us we're so familiar with it the profundity has left us because Jesus said two men went up to the temple to pray one a Pharisee and one a tax collector and he starts to tell this incredibly well-known story now when we hear the story if you're familiar with the story well let me just read it just think for a few in case there were a few of you here who aren't and then and then let me just unpack it in turn and see how it addresses this question he says two men went to the temple to pray one a Pharisee the other Rho tax collector the Pharisee stood by himself and prayed God I thank you I'm not like other people robbers the evildoers adulterers or even like this tax collector I fast twice a week I give a tenth of all I get but the tax collector stood at a distance and would not even look up to heaven he beat his breast and said God have mercy on me a sinner I tell you that this man rather than the other one went home justified before God for all those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted now most people read this story and they assume it's a sort of a morality morality tell about why it's important to be humble in prayer and that theme is certainly there but it's actually probably not the main point of this story in any Arabic or sematic languages like Hebrew when you say I'm going to the temple to pray you mean one of two things now in most english-speaking languages we if we say I'm going to the temple to pray or going to my church to pray what we assume by that is you're going into an empty building to find some peace and quiet to pray but in Hebrew Arabic or Semitic languages when you say I'm going to the temple to pray it means one of two things either I'm going to act of public worship like on a Sunday morning or I'm going on my own can be either so the context tells you which of the two it is this is certainly in the context of public worship we can be sure of that and I'll come back to that for a minute so Jesus is basically saying these two people they go to a service at the temple they go at the same time they leave at the same time and they pray at the same time well the reason they both pray at the same time is that every morning in the temple there is a service every morning at sunrise in every evening sunset where a lamb is sacrificed for the forgiveness of sins and after the sacrifice has been made the person who's officiating at the service the guy who's in charge he goes out back there's a curtain behind and he sort of disappears behind the curtain he burns incense and he offers prayers for the nation and the people outside well at this point the congregation are looking at a blank stage there's nobody there so this was the point in the service where people could offer up their own prayers to God since there's just a space now this is when you can pray and so now these two different people pray now the first one has a little ring of humility to it the Pharisee comes up and he says God I think you you made me better than everyone else now notice the subtlety of this God you're responsible for this and you achieved it don't lose what he's saying God thank you for making me this way thank you for making me a little bit better than everybody else here now I'm not going to go into too much analysis into this prayer Sipho suffice to say it's a very dangerous form of prayer I've sometimes used this prayer forget saying giving thanks at meals if you're a Christian or neither even if we were here visiting here today as a non-christian and you ever invited to say grace if you won't have a little bit of fun and I have a sense of humor that one day will get me to a lot of trouble I remember being with a group of pastors once and they said Michael why don't you say grace for us and I said do you mind if I use a pass a passage of scripture to say grace they said that's fine and I said Lord thank you you didn't make us like other men yeah and I quoted this and the waring thing was seven out of eight said our men at the end because they weren't listening to what I was saying carefully enough one of them just simply look at me after the other said our men and they all looked up from the table and he just shook his head I said okay let's say a proper one now so this guy stands there and then simply boasts about how morally superior he is to everybody else and when it comes to arrogance within the Christian faith it's the Christian faith inherently arrogant this is at the heart I think of what most people think because well just imagine a scenario imagine you were to come to me you say Michael Anderson you spend most of your life just talking to non-christians skeptical people all around the world people of other faiths people of no faith you know I have a few friends here is there any way you could have a cup of coffee with them you know I said they're all hardened atheists none of them believe a single word about the Christian faith I say yeah sure that's fine and we all sit down in Starbucks to have coffee because you're a millionaire and you can afford to buy coffee at Starbucks and you know we all we all sit around the table and just as you know someone brings you all the coffees to the table everyone grabs their cup and everyone's about to have a drink I look at your friends that you've invited and I say oh guys before we start the conversation there's just one thing I want to share with you and that is that I want you to know that if I when I die I'm going to heaven for sure and I completely know that now imagine at that point you could give everybody sat around the table your friends a little pad of paper and a pen and you asked them to write down what they thought about me on that pad of paper in the pen what are the words they would use to describe me and they're obvious arrogant self-righteous self-assured overconfident pompous British okay all the you know all the things that you associate with that attitude because what is being heard is very simple what I seem to be saying is guys I'm better than you I am so morally superior to you the even God Himself is anxiously awaiting my arrival in heaven but as for the rest of you I'm not sure about you at all so I've come along to tell the rest of you where you're all in trouble you know and how you need to get yourself out of this mess that is what is heard now the interesting thing is that Jesus Christ here at the end of this story says that after the Pharisee praises prayer God thank you who didn't make me like other people you made me better than them I'm morally doing everything you want me to do and I'm doing doing even more than you require Jesus then has a shocker at the end of it the shocker is that that person who prayed that way didn't go home justified before God didn't go home having been made right with God didn't leave this place of worship in the right relationship with God so the impact of this story to its original audience is profound it's like Jesus saying two people went to church they both attended the same service one of them who had theological training and even had been ordained sat through the same service the same worship listen to the same talk they left at the same time but I only effected one of them in a positive way and it's not the one you think now the second guy Jesus said the tax collector said he beat his breast and would not look up now it's very interesting when you travel around the world like I do and you say to people let's pray well if they're praying people they all do something different a sense okay some people if it's their tradition they will sit down on their seat at that point and they bow their head like this any other people will get down on their knees okay and they kneel and they may look like this and the Anglican Church you're meant to kneel and you look down to the ground like that which I find it's very funny because spatially people normally associate God up there and someone else down there and so who are they praying to when they do that but in in the Jewish synagogue if you're a guy when you pray you open your hands and you look up to heaven so what's unusual about the body language of the in this story as Jesus tells it is this guy wouldn't even look up he wouldn't even do that he said he looks down and he beats his breast now that beat the chest beating is an unusual is an unusual thing the chest beating is normally something you only associate with women as a matter of fact even in the Middle East today if you ever see a funeral or you're watching the news on CNN and some big bombs gone off somewhere and people have died when they're carrying the bodies you'll notice something the men normally shoot their guns into the air and the women wail behind and they beat their breasts and you may have heard that or even seen it on TV so the beating of the breasts is something which is only associated with women and as a matter of fact there's only one other instance in ancient literature where we were hear of a man beating his breast ooop and it's when a guy called John does it at the cross when Jesus Christ is crucified that's the only other time you'll read of it otherwise it's women who do this it's a sign of incredible remorse this guy who is now praying is so remorseful so upset he beats his chest and he looks down and he prays a very simple prayer now in the translation just read to you is translated lord have mercy on me a sinner now if you ever have the ability or the opportunity to study this passage in Greek the way if you read it in the language before it was translated into English that's not what he prays out of interest is anyone here did anyone here know what the key really son is any good Anglicans or people with a high church background single person know what Kira Eleison is well yes ah look at that you see one redeemed person in the room well if you're you service or a more formalized setting there may be something which you may sing in Greek even if you don't understand that Kure Eleison Christe Eleison it means lord have mercy Curia Lashon Christe Eleison Christ have mercy and that's the Greek word for for mercy you lay some except that's not the word which is used in this text the word which is used in Matthew chapter 18 is actually a much rarer word what the guy actually prays is hell a Statoil moy it we would literally translate it into English Lord make up appreciation for me now what does that mean this is how we know these two men are in a public service of worship they're either there in the morning service or the evening service because what has happened as we said is every morning and every evening a lamb is sacrificed for the forgiveness of sins a sacrifice is made a price is paid to make forgiveness possible now we sometimes think forgiveness is free but forgiveness isn't free someone pays for it at some point I'm visiting here in Redding let supposing one of you find out that I love cars which is true I've always been fascinated by cars especially American cars and there's a Bojan you have some a classic American car and you say Michael I hear you really like American cars we'd like to take mine for a spin and I say that sounds like a great idea and I come back an hour later with your classic car or truck or whatever it may be and it still got four wheels but it now looks more like a skateboard than a vehicle you know it's just much thinner than it used to be and it's being dragged in on its roof and you look at me you say Michael what happened you're okay and I say yeah I'm fine I got thrown out of the car but your car doesn't look like the way it used to before I borrowed it and you look at me and you say Michael forget about it don't worry I'll take care of this and I say wow that's amazing thank you well I didn't have to pay for that you've just forgiven me but that's not because no-one pays you pay hi I get it for free that's cuz you pay in every morning and every evening in the temple a lamb is sacrificed it's God's Way of saying I'm gonna pay for what you've done wrong and one guy comes to the service and he stands there and he goes God thank you that you didn't make me like other people I'm so much better than them and as a matter of fact I'm doing even more than you require and the other guy comes and he beats his chest he looks at the ground and he says Lord may this sacrifice be for me may this sacrifice that makes the forgiveness of sin possible may it be for me may this propitiation may it be for me and Jesus says I tell you that man went home having been justified before God not the other in other words the Christian faith is inherently humbling the Christian faith isn't incidentally humbling it's not accidentally humbling it is inherently humbling according to Jesus Christ the only way to be right with him remittance isn't to be self-righteous at all there is nothing you can do to make yourself right with God rather God out of his love has provided a means by which we may know forgiveness from him he gives it he makes it possible he pays and he offers forgiveness to us as a gift to be received now this is why coming back and closing the circle on the arrogance thing that some people fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the Christian gospel because I said it's inherently ambling it is an incredibly humbling thing to stand before someone who knows everything about unison everywhere in which you fail and admit that it's true it is very hard to admit that you're wrong if you want forgiveness to operate in your life there are two things that need to happen now after I finished speaking we're gonna have a short break so you can use the restroom or indeed escape because you were brought here under false pretenses you're told it's going to be interesting and you're already feeling angry that you've been deceived so you'll you'll need this practical advice on forgiveness about to give you anyway but but let supposing you stay for the Q&A and you ask me your question and after you've asked me a question I look at you and I say what a stupid question you have the intellectual capacity more commonly associated with forms of pond-life invisible to the naked eye let's supposing that's my response to your question and and for some strange reason you take that as been insulting and just in case you are wondering that isn't me this comes from a British comedy TV series called Blackadder but we're not going to go into that that's a whole other story so that's my public response to you you asked your question it's a good question and I insult your intelligence in return now the question is how do you feel well you've just been publicly insulted from the platform by in a way which makes it very hard for you to reply back you don't have a right to reply so the answer is you feel under somebody upset and angry now let's supposing that two questions later I suddenly go you know what I'm sorry I spoke to you like that just now please forgive me now be honest would you forgive me if I publicly insulted you in that way and then a few minutes later I casually apologized to you would you forgive me see there were one or two brave people well done Madame shaking your head no yeah you're not gonna forgive me but let's supposing after I publicly insult you a couple of minutes later I'm speaking and all of a sudden my bottom lip begins to tremble tears start rolling down my eyes I collapse on the stage on this platform and I start weeping almost uncontrollably I crawl down the steps on all fours I drag myself across the floor to where you're sat I hold onto your ankles and in between loud vibrant sobs I beg and plead for your forgiveness now would you forgive me okay many of you are hard to please I can I can see that now the answer is you will forgive me when you think I've suffered enough that made sense in our almost every culture of the world forgiveness is earned when you feel I've suffered enough for the wrong I've done and maybe something bad has happened to me you know I lost my job or I contracted some kind of embarrassing illness or you know something bad happened that makes sense when I've gone through enough guilt enough existential angst all of a sudden now you're prepared to forgive me and you go okay you know what actually Michael I it's okay so much other bad stuff is happening to you now I can lick over the bad stuff I was holding against you and you forgive me in almost every culture of the Christian in around in the world forgiveness is earned you have to earn it but in the Christian faith we don't earn forgiveness from God is offered as a gift the tax collector didn't ask for a sacrifice to be made in the temple so he could be forgiven God determined to I paid that price even before the guy had done something wrong God made forgiveness possible and was offering it even before the guy did anything wrong the reason you could be certain of Christian forgiveness isn't because you've done anything great at all it's because God has done something great for you if I let supposing I publicly insult the person sat next to you and you can't believe I've just done that this is it's unbelievable and you walk you're the first person to leave the auditorium and tomorrow morning you see me in a coffee shop in town and I'm having a morning cup of coffee and you come up to me and you introduce yourself and you say Michael that was a interesting Q&A last night you have a distinct way of responding to people's questions my friend al was the one who asked you that question and you insulted them oh yeah how are things between you and Al and I say you know what al has become the closest friend I have in the world there's no one I feel closer to in the world right now than them well you would have to conclude that I had the emotional intelligence of a carrot right to come to that conclusion but let's supposing the reason why i'm studing that coffee shop having coffee is that i'll never left the auditorium that night he stayed they stayed behind and after everyone else left they came up to me and they said Michael are you okay and they took me out for a drink and then I went back to their home and over food we continued the conversation and then they took me to the coffee shop and we talked all through the night and now they just bought me coffee and a few minutes before as they were offering all of this grace and kindness to me I broke down in tears and I said to them al I'm just so sorry I can't believe I made up that stuff about you I can't believe I was so rude about you and now when I tell you when you asked me how's your relationship with al and I say it's the closest relationship I've got on this planet they may not even be a hint of exaggeration in my voice and certainly no arrogance but it doesn't speak to my moral character does it it speaks to theirs forgiveness is possible when the person you've offended is determined to forgive you which is why even if you're willing to apologize but the person you offended isn't willing to forgive you can't be reconciled but if the person you offended is determined to forgive you even before you thought of asking it when you say sorry when you apologize when you repent all you do is you receive the forgiveness they're already offering you and it's the most incredible feeling in the world I don't know have you ever accidentally insulted somebody I'm sure none of you do this I tend to do this a lot but you accidently insult a friend and you say something anything oh I'm sorry I didn't mean that I shouldn't have said that and they go it's fine don't worry about it and then the next day you see them in a crowded room I mean literally you could be stood here they could come in through the door at the back you can look at them from one for one nanosecond that's all you need and you can look at their eyes for one nanosecond and you know if you've been forgiven or not if you ever noticed that and if they haven't forgiven you you know it and you go to them a second time any second I'm really sorry please forgive me the amazing thing is if they've determined to forgive you and you've genuinely repented and said sorry when they walk in the back of the room even there was a hundred yards away you only need to answer their eyes for a moment and it's almost like you can feel the peace between you there's nothing arrogant about it that's how forgiveness operates when the Apostle Paul talked about you can be certain of eternal life it was not an arrogant claim to philosophical truth moral superiority and also super spiritual insight all he was saying was this I know that God has made it possible for us to be forgiven not now just through the sacrifice of a lamb offered every morning and every evening in the temple but Jesus Christ the Son of God is the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world and he's paid the price for me and the reason I'm certain about it isn't because of me but because of him because God is determined to forgive and he's offering us forgiveness even before we ask for it we call it grace and all he's saying is and all I know is all I did as I said I'm sorry and when I said I'm sorry I received the forgiveness that God offered me and I can be sure of it I can rely on that promise 100% why because I'm brilliant no but because God is the Christian faith is inherently humbling if you've been put off the Christian gospel of the Christian faith because you've encountered a lot of arrogance from the past well then I am very sorry about that all I can tell you is that we are commanded in Scripture that we cannot live that way that is not what should mark out the life of a Christian it is simply not permitted the gospel is inherently humbling it is humbling at its very essence and its very nature and it's one of the most incredible things in the world because it brings complete peace it's the other thing about forgiveness I don't you've noticed it you do something wrong it's not it's not an accidental insulting the friend this time it's like big and it's been going on for a while and then you suddenly become aware that the other person now knows what you've been doing so now you have a problem does that make sense you know you're wrong you know how many times you've been wrong and now you know that they know the problem is you don't know how much they know now have you ever noticed especially when it's really serious that we confess to 80 percent of the crime have you ever noticed that we tell them just enough for them to know how serious it is but not so much that we lose their friendship altogether we have a notice that we normally confess as much as we think needed here's the problem it makes for a very uneasy peace because the problem is what happens if they discover the 20% you didn't tell them then what happens and you live in fear of that discovery but it doesn't work like that with God he knows everything he didn't think you were basically okay and you said sorry and it's okay I forgive you and then one day all of a sudden he's checking his notes and he goes hey wait a minute this is far worse than I thought and he calls you back into the Headmaster's study he already knows he's already offering forgiveness to you for stuff you're not even prepared to admit to yourself it's the most humbling thing in this world as we get ready to move into her to a break time I'm wondering if I could ask you where you feel you just and personally in light of all of this I know for many of you would have come here tonight and you're fully aware of everything that's been talked about here and it's a present reality for you but I'm also aware that it's also possible that you can step into a place like this and you suddenly realize that you've you've lost sight of what the heart of the real gospel is it's even possible to think of yourself as a Christian and think but wait a minute I've been so intent on trying to perform for God I've forgotten that what I'm first meant to do is receive what he's offering to me well if that's where you are please don't leave this room tonight without sorting that out come and find someone and just make that simple prayer God I'm sorry the way you receive anyone offers of forgiveness is by saying sorry but we'll also have time for questions and so here's how I think is going to work with the Q&A if I'm right I can see Pastor John stood at the back is we're gonna take a break so as I say you can use the restrooms and but also at the table at the back there are cards um is that right and you would like to come up and explain how it works so so you're gonna the opportunity to do it I'll hang around here for 5-10 minutes and then we'll go back when you're back in here we'll start off with the Q&A whenever we ran out of time and we wrap it up I'll hang around here afterwards for another 15 20 minutes together with my colleague Jim we'll try and answer as many of your questions as we can and make sense if we don't get to your question now don't despair hey I'll hang around even after we formally concluded the meeting so that people can get bed in good time and recover from the shock of having heard me speak we'll hang around even and then we'll try and address the question one-on-one with you we'll try and get through as many of the questions that we possibly can but what I just love to say at this point is thank you for staying awake I'm impressed I almost stayed awake myself in my own talk I'm happy about that and just thank you so much for giving me hearing Pastor John let me hand over to you and take it to the make please thank Michael Voris we are we are going to take about a 12 minute break right now we will come back here at about 5:00 after 8:00 you can feel free to use the restrooms if you need to know where they are if you go out this door you can turn to the right there are some through a doorway that way or you can turn to your left there's something through a doorway on that way if you would like to ask Michael a question there's a table there at the back you can use the index cards that are there we have some pens you can write out those questions drop them in the basket there as well one last thing is if you're here and you would like to help defray some of the costs of having this event some of our Usher's will be at the back with a basket there's no obligation to give to that it's just if you feel led to do that we would we would love to to have that happen so thank you again for being here again we will be about 12 minutes you always you you you you as we mentioned and as many of you have done we will be answering some questions that have been written out there's a group of people who are kind of putting them into some category so you might see them come up here from time to time and hand me some more questions we have some to get started I can't remember if I introduced myself and I was up here before night my name is John I'm one of the pastor's here at writing Christian Fellowship it is good to have each and every one of you here I'm very thankful Michael for your your message to us about arrogance about forgiveness about the message of Jesus and I'm looking forward to having some dialogue with you as we can continue to discuss these questions so I'm going to have a seat here and let's just get right to work here as we have these questions but I need some glasses you'll be putting your zone I'll be putting mine down for you well just like our accent if they've run out of cards feel free to write your questions on hundred dollar bills and pass them forward that's equally acceptable or 100 pound those actually know the pounds about to collapse up before dollars oh well if you want to get rid of pounds I'll take them so a first question and this is something that really has spoken to me my background through my career has largely been student ministry right I spent eight years before I became a real pastor I would say college pastor right yeah Phoenix how how can we help with the real posture then as I thought in any way would you know we'll pick up that later when those words were coming out of my mouth I was like okay so how can we help older teens and 20-somethings who are turned off to Christianity to to the arrogance and inequality they perceive wow that's a really good question oh let me let me add a little bit to it because there's a follow up I thought it was a seven question but this is something that I'm seeing more and more how can we help those who see socialism and or communism is more caring right and christ-like then then some other Wow well you know it's really interesting and I think this is where from a European perspective it's interesting how we quickly how quickly we forget history when in 1946 Sir Winston Churchill so famously said an Iron Curtain has fallen across Europe if you want to look at any world situation and you're struggling to figure out where the justice is in it the best thing to do is to track the refugees which way the refugees go am i sense if because whenever there's a dispute between two countries both countries claim what they're doing is just and the other side is wrong so a good way to help figure that out is well where are people going and the answer is tens of thousands of people were running away from communism in Europe into the West just to escape the brutality of the oppression they were under and the full scale of what happened in Europe at that point was only really discovered and and in fact is still even happening now I mean president Putin's Stasi file was recently discovered when the Berlin wall collapsed and they weren't able to destroy all the records and we were able to go in and start calculating how many people have been prisoned and then killed and so on I mean it was tens and tens of millions so so I think at times but the appeal in those systems goes something like this and is it's a very fair point and we won't really have time to address it during the three days I'll be with you so I'll say a bit about it now we've got at least five major problems facing us globally right now now there's a sixth really big one maybe bigger than the other five even put together that I'll be talking about on Sunday morning but the other five are firstly most people don't understand what happened at the financial crisis and how that's driving financial inequality globally right now but it's huge and you have to ask yourself the question where did all the trillions of dollars that were printed by governments around the world where did all that money go and I don't know about you but I didn't go into my bank account I should have become a televangelist house isn't the wrong play now all of that money was pumped into the global economy to try and stop what's called asset prices your price of home from collapsing but it causes a long-term systemic problem the problem that we have in now globally is that the in economics terms that the rate of return on capital has far outstripped the rate of return on income now we could go into this into a lot of detail but what does that mean that basically means if you're middle-class and you have kids the thing that you probably worry about the most is how will my children ever be able to afford to buy their own home it ends they just feel priced out of the market and you have people now in every major city in every country around the globe where they feel I'm not sure I can afford to live here anymore or my kids come how do they get in so people feel financially excluded from their own political economy now that causes some huge problem somebody says because what where's the incentive to work this is why a lot of you know the so-called new generational groups whether it's millennial or ijen whatever want to be mentored by a peer now I remember when I was in my 20s I wanted to be mentored by somebody and I remember asking various Christians who were young in their 40s and 50s could you help mentor me well the new generation want to be mentored by someone the same age as them so if they're 25 they want a 25 year old mentor why well good if you're 50 okay the assumption if by a 25 year old is your idea of mentorship is I should get married in my early 20s okay I get I buy a house you know a couple of years after that after we've run it for a little bit then we start having kids in the early 30s you get the station wagon and then you add in the dog you know and then you hit middle age of 40 well that timeframe is a pipe dream for most twenty-year-olds does any sense the idea of being able to are economically afforded by our house in your 20s is just ridiculous so you delay getting married okay you're probably gonna be single well into your 30s my sense you're wondering about how you can ever afford to buy in so they just they just don't relate they feel completely the complete exclusion so how do you address that felt injustice now at the same time you have another problem which is we've so trained people to think of themselves as objects now whether that's the impact of pornography through culture or how we talk about training our kids to sell themselves doesn't make sense we often talk about if you want the job you have to sell yourself well you know fifty years ago if you talked about selling yourself there was only one profession that applied to historically but now it's just common parlance any sense well that basically means we think of other people as objects to be used now we think it's normal but it's not so if you were if the next question you were to ask me is Michael what's it like to work with Ravi Zacharias and I say he's been using me for 22 years if that's my response without knowing any detail you know I've said something really serious let me sense I've bought a really serious accusation against the guy because you use objects but you connect with people so we have also have a culture now that feels a sort of relational dissonance since that's hard to feel totally at home there's a loneliness there's an American author by the name of Franzen and in his latest second to latest novel he just captures that loneliness in England we've now appointed a minister like a cabinet post for loneliness now sadly they only appointed one probably not a good idea but your missus is just so alone that leads into the third thing about the technological disconnect that we experience I saw a survey recently in which one 23 year old said being online is the loneliest place to be he said everybody is it every relationship I have is based on fake on being fake well that's exhausting to keep up that does it make sense creating a happy persona online takes a lot of him and a lot of energy so so we're setting ourselves up so what you're seeing from a new generation is the same where's the justice in this what where's my chance what hope is there for me where do I connect where do I fit and does anyone see even seem to understand the predicament and the struggle that I have now those struggles are real and some of them are going to have to be addressed without I have to be careful how I phrase this cuz they want you to figure out who it is because I mean you have this to with you know there are conversations you have that you want to share but you have to be careful how you phrase it but let's just say I was talking with a very senior person in front in global finance who helps oversee not millions of dollars or billions of dollars but and not just a few trillion dollars you're talking about huge sums of money because a tree in there a tree in there hear that me nuts that's Starbucks money I mean we're talking serious cash so this guy is more or less right near the very top of the tree in the global financial world where an a huge array of access to information and study and I was gonna talk with the guy for about just half an hour we talked for several hours he's not a Christian but here's what he said to me he said the way money is being concentrated into fewer and fewer hands he says I'm what's going to hit the economy in about five years time he believes in 10 years time a global war will break out about 4 billion people in the planet will die and humanity will reset itself in other words the anger will be so strong and so many people will be forced into poverty who are now middle-class that the only thing he can foresee is just killing on a master destructor so the reason why I take a lot of time with this questions actually it's actually very very profound it if unaddressed it it presents a huge existential threat to to the globe now here's the amazing thing you can look at therefore the whole system you can say the system is dead there's no hope but mercifully I worship a God who specializes in resurrecting the dead so the reason I come to suffer no longer is I actually think it's possible for it to be turned around but the reason why we need to hear the cry does that make sense of the heart is that the cry of the heart it isn't wrong it's just that sometimes we look to implement solutions which are worse than the problem itself and so a writer by the name of G K Chesterton he he wrote a little essay called the medical mistake and in it he says when you listen to politicians speak they often say something like look the country's sick vote for me I'll make it better and he says but there's a big difference between medical science and social science he said in medical science when you go to the hospital the doctor the doctors may struggle to diagnose your illness and they may even disagree about it you go to three different doctors they said you've got three different things wrong with you he said but all of the doctors agree on what a healthy body looks like so the doctors may by necessity send you home from the hospital with one leg less but they will never send you home from the hospital with one leg more how'd you get it in other words they can't agree on the illness but they all know that's a healthy body so they can agree on the good but they're fighting over what's wrong he says in social science is the other way around in social science and political science everyone's happy to say we're where something's wrong what they can't agree on on what is good and so what one person purports to be a cure to another person is even worse than the disease it purports to make better so the inability are now of our political realm to understand well what does it mean to be a healthy human being what does the good look like our inability to answer that question well leads then even to greater political fracture so there is a huge need now to recover what is the biblical vision of human flourishing what is it that God actually intends for us to be and we need to recover some stuff with that so I'll just leave one last thing this is a long answer to this question but it's such a good question in the book of Hebrews it talks about discipline and some of you'll know this passage and hate it others of you will know this passage and wonder about it but it says you know do not despise the Lord's discipline a loving father disciplines his children and we read that and we and it makes us feel a bit nervous in this 2nh cuz well what does that bring to mind well daddy has a big stick and he beats me God is bigger than daddy his tickers beats bigger than daddy's so the beating you get from God is gonna really you know and somehow I meant to enjoy it the word used for discipline there in the Greek literally means to put someone in a position so they can function as they were always intended to so when you talked about the discipline of an athlete I don't know if any of you ever had someone try and train you give you exercises to do someone's had to do that for me recently and when you first start you're convinced they're trying to kill you I mean it honestly feels like and you joke about it you even say to them you trying to kill me but the thing is you know it's a joke it's possible that they're trying to kill you but actually the the thing is they are training you to function in the way you always were meant to that's the purpose of the discipline so when it talks about God's discipline in Hebrews it's literally saying don't despise what God does in your life for you to function in the way that you're meant to function and was embrace it which is why it talks about the difficulty and the hardship and the trial and the even talks about you know the physical you know side of trainings am i sin because that's the parallel so in that sense we need to if you like fall back in love with God's discipline so that we know who were meant to be and we can function in the way we're always intended to otherwise we're going to really struggle because even if we think we're doing right actually it could be hurting us on the other side and how do you think is the best way to communicate that to the generation following us okay well look if any of you around Sunday morning will be picking up on this because on Sunday morning we'll be looking at the Book of Jonah what's fascinating about the Book of Jonah is Jonah is really angry with God and the unique thing about the Book of Jonah in the Old Testament canon is that not that he runs away from God because lots of people run away from God Adam and Eve run away from God but the reason Adam and Eve run away from God is that they know they've done something wrong Jonah runs away from God because Jonah thinks God has done something wrong and Jonah's complaint is God there's been a moral failure in your character and your system here and you're not putting things right and he's furious with God well there's a parallel between how he feels and sees things and how often the new many in the new generation see things there's a failure to put things right and now drastic measures are called for even anger at God so I think what we need to learn and the one thing I will share now is we need to recover the fact that love and affirmation aren't the same thing in other words we think that when someone says no to us and challenges us that's because they hate us but actually the reason someone may say no to you isn't because they were going to do it can be because they're for you and we need to recover that distinction for love and affirmation especially for the new generation which has been trained to believe go with your feelings so if you feel it do it we're as classically in all cultures that's never been the message doesn't matter if you're a Christian or a non-christian or a Muslim or Buddhist all cultures have always taught don't trust your feelings they can lead you astray we've often told you can be whatever you want to be you can function anywhere you want to well again classically the understanding has been not just in the Bible we're just everywhere that's not true so there are some ancient things we need to recover to my sense of universal just to say actually you know what the message that we've brought in from Hollywood may not be the best way to live and the best way to see that assisted to simply see how happy they are yeah Wow well thank you yeah yeah place a good question I didn't who asked that question but it's a very it's a very deep question you almost make me want to come to church on Sunday that's the trouble you have to and this question actually came up a couple of times and and I love I love the question first of all it's written from one of the amoebas in the pond you tell stories about encounters with people where you have wonderful questions or responses where did you learn to do that okay well look first of all I've made a lot of mistakes a huge number of mistakes as a matter of fact when I first became a Christian I I was very aware of the fact about how alien it would sound to everybody because I was non-christian family non-christian culture now I'm a Christian and so it wasn't hard for me to imagine what people thought of me as a Christian because that's what I thought about them you know before I became one so I always knew okay I'm gonna have to be a bit careful here so I was always looking at people when I spoke to them and I very quickly figured out if you're talking to someone and they suddenly get fascinated with their shoelaces that probably means they're not engaged anymore and if you're talking to them and their face starts going red and they start shaking their head like this what about that that probably means they're not agreeing with you at that point and so the way I started to learn was when that used to happen and it happened a lot I would stop myself halfway and I'll just say I said I'm sorry I said can I ask you what are you hearing me say right now and then they repeat to me what they've been hearing me say and ninety nine times out of a hundred literally I would then look at them and say wow I'm so sorry I was actually meaning to say something very different as a matter of fact almost the opposite and then 99 times out of a hundred they would then look at me and say oh well what were you trying to say then and I was okay let me try and put this another way and kept looking for a different way it's to approach until eventually you could they'll say okay that me so the answer is practice I was talking to people they spend a lot of time just talking to people I'm trying to answer their questions and then figuring out when they thought I'd missed it by a mile and then trying to think okay maybe there's nothing wrong with them maybe my explanation isn't very good so let me try to think of another way the other thing too is when I'm talking to people I'm normally praying like crazy in my head I sometimes get to meet with sort of bad people around the world who make their living by blowing other people up and that really focuses you you know it's it's one thing to get shot for preaching the gospel but it's nothing to get shot because you were preaching the gospel badly I mean that's a real tragedy so so when you're in that kind of set that really focuses your mind and you're now certainly asking yourself the question how do I answer this really well I don't want you to misunderstand what I'm about to say because it's not just life or death for you it's also I for death for me so let's just make sure that we're really clear and that really again that for me that I think that's been a huge help quite seriously in my life because and so but but I want you to practice and if you want to I'm sure all of you if your members of this church have non-christian friends and you don't have any non-christian friends then go and knock on your next-door neighbor's house and find out who they are a guy I work with called John Lennox when he went to university in the 60s in Cambridge to study mathematics he'd never met an atheist before and he thought all atheists had beards and so he was looking for someone with the beard and he found one and he walked up and said hi my name's John and they said hi my name's whatever you know Michael he said are you an atheist and they were great he said I have to all kinds of questions for you so the other thing I would encourage you to do which I tend to do is well when I meet people I tend to ask a lot of questions myself what do you think about this how do you feel about this and eventually they start asking me some as well and you get to know a lot of people that way and you didn't you just keep learning and so that's the best yeah and if you're looking for the opportunity to share what you believe of someone keep asking them questions to ask you one yeah what I love about that response is it really models the humility and lack of arrogance that you've been talking about tonight I might bail on that front too believe me if my wife were here at this point she could give you quite a long detailed list of what's happened even less in the last week so you know but you know it the thought of saying I can tell I can tell you're I'm not reaching you yes and then stopping you know that that is actually a very humble thing because you know I I preached most weeks I'm used to speaking for 40 minutes uninterruptedly yeah and and so to take the time to stop and say you know this is too important for me just to get words out yeah yeah and I want to make sure that you're hearing the right thing that that was beautiful and then I love the fact that you're encouraging us to talk to people who don't think the same way that we do yeah it's the best way to figure out what do you hear when we've already done that in this evening when I said look imagine I talked to some of your non-christian friends and I say hey I'm here tonight to tell you I know for sure I'm going to heaven well what everyone's gonna hear is you're so morally superior to the rest of us you know do you think you should get in you're better than us one of us that makes you think that and actually I'm trying to say the opposite yeah I'm no better than you I'm even be worse the question is if forgiveness has been offered and you can receive it that changes everything yeah and the trouble is if you're very narcissistic or self righteously self assured the trouble is you become very defensive and it's very hard to admit you're ever wrong and if you're married to someone like that it gets even more complicated well thank you this question as you think about apologetics about defending the faith without communicating truth is there a particular methodology of apologetics you prefer find the most effective like presuppositional ism or evidentialism well I tell it if you're really interested in this I don't know how many of you are familiar with our ministry there's a solid by a guy called Ravi Zacharias who I feel has a lot of promise if he keeps working hard at his delivery lacking a little passion in this communication maybe but a part of that this really gifted guy and we actually have something called the online Academy which I'm I'm part of and the what we do through the online Academy is we we say how did Jesus approach this and the answer is well if you read through the four Gospels Jesus asked a lot of questions you know depending on what translation you have it's about 147 yeah that's a lot of questions and I can rule when I first became a Christian and I started reading the Bible for the first time I'm sure this never happens in America but when I was growing up overseas and I used to listen to world leaders be interviewed the interviewer would ask them a question and they'll answer a totally different question and then the interviewer would say you know mr. president mr. prime minister I'm really sorry that wasn't my question and then they'll ask it again and then the leader would ask another question you know and the interview was still saying well I'm not sure you've answered my question yet so I'm a brand new Christian for me there was a very clear moment I became a Christian it was on a Saturday night and I went to my first Bible study on a Tuesday and and I was really panicking because by Tuesday I'd read through the New Testament twice and I was going working through the Old Testament but the thing that really bothered me was the Gospels because I was reading the Gospels and gee people come to Jesus they ask him a question and he answers a different question and I was reading it going he's a politician I don't believe this um and but the more I've studied those questions the more I realize he'd never avoided a single one what he was doing he had a specific reason why he responded with the question every time someone once asked a rabbi why he always answer a question with the question to which he said why shouldn't I answer a question with a question and Jesus isn't playing games with people the reason he asked so many questions isn't really actually even for his benefit it's actually ultimately for theirs and so the approach you like that that we often we try and teach a model is look learn to ask questions there's a reason why Jesus Christ asked so many questions so take a leaf out of his book and let become a good question ask or answer your question ask you yourself and and and the brilliance of what he does is very clever so and it so it ties into all of those things so a classic example which we could have talked about tonight was in Luke 1818 when someone comes to Jesus and says good teacher why do you call me good yeah so say say good teacher sorry the question is good teacher what must I do to inherit eternal life that's a really interesting question so Jesus is so someone asked Jesus that question what do I do to inherit eternal life and it's interesting that Jesus doesn't say well repent and believe because that's definitely what you need to do it's just why doesn't he start with that mm-hmm and I'm convinced he the reason he doesn't do it isn't because he's confused and the Apostle Paul had to come along and clarify them Romans I think he knew what he was doing so the question Jesus asked is why do you call me good now that's really interesting you want to know how to inherit eternal life you think you'll get it by being good and so the guy is saying hey Jesus you're good you're going to heaven tell me what to do I want to go to and Jesus says what makes me good that's not the answer it guys expecting what makes someone good and then Jesus says only God is good well that's actually quite profound if you have to be good to go to heaven and only God is good who is going God who's already there and no one else in other words your application to join the Trinity is refused because you don't meet the minimum entry requirement so now the guy is now thinking very deeply wait a minute if you have to be as good as God to get into heaven how is it possible when the answer is well forgiveness you need to be forgiven all that stuff you've done and I'll give you my righteousness and that will get you in but if you want to be good then you've already got a problem but though asking the question really makes the guy open up and that's just one example out of many but the the key thing is is I think that and that's why we put such a huge emphasis on so in terms of apologetics they learn to ask questions of very the best apologists the last century francis schaeffer he complained at one point he said the trouble with guys who go to seminary is that when they graduate it's not that they don't know the answers the problem is they don't understand the question and so we really have to understand the question so missions the cries of the heart of the culture and then we can speak to it what I will say which hopefully will encourage all of you is we do live in a very confusing time right now I mean really so much has been turned on its head and as a matter of fact especially now we know I'm speaking to political leaders in Bermuda as well I think I'm speaking to a different president or prime minister or cabinet every single month this year and the question is why there's so many political leaders in so many different countries we want to spend time and it's not because I've got some kind of brilliant political analysis or I'm you know I mean clearly you know being good-looking helps but and humble but I I think part of the what's driving that is they're saying we're struggling to understand the culture in which we live and the incredible thing about Scripture is it shines a very bright light that helps us understand culture in the way that we should see it and that's what even they're looking for now me since I need to understand the times in which I'm in so it is confusing for a lot of people but then we think from being giving this very bright light so if we learn how to use it well it becomes a great door opener so I want to ask just a follow-up on that as you talk about these being confusing times because I think you describe it very accurately as we look at those confusing times and how those times are shifting so rapidly now the pace of change just continues to accelerate guy who's a pastor in North Carolina wrote a book called meet Generation Z and his contention is that this is it's going to be the last definable generation because the rate of change is so fast now that we're not going to be able to say okay people who were born within these 20 years have these same characteristics it's now two or three years you know with that rate of change accelerating and the times being confusing how do we navigate those waters and communicating truth yeah and that's why then I think trying to listen to where people are so you can understand okay what connects now because things are moving very quickly someone wants very famously said it's hard to see the walls of your prism if the cell is made of glass and the current cultural prison that we live in is like a glass a glass walled room and because we can look through it we think everything's okay but actual we're still trapped so it creates the illusion of freedom that isn't there now I don't want to unpack all of this because it will take too much time but back in the 60s in the Western world we thought culture could replace God let miss handsome okay we don't need God but culture holds us together our culture holds us together and broadly speaking culture is our identity our values our meaning that the shared things that bind us together and when people disagree you know the appeal would be but we're all good Americans doesn't make sense and then there was an appeal to culture you know ultimately okay the other guy won but where there you know we're the same people we have the same vision what you don't make that you made some bigger appeal culture was the thing that bound you together but now all of those issues identity language symbol affinity all the things which we think of a culture have now become part of the culture war so cultural language now isn't the means that you appeal to to bring you that sentence shouldn't go out and if you're listening to the recording you know just wondering what sentence was deleted according then you shouldn't have been such a cheap cadence so at home you should have come here a live thing and he would have anyone mister

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Length: 95min 49sec (5749 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 19 2019