Forum 2019: John Lennox - What can I say?

thank you so much for inviting me to forum forum in the ancient world was a kind of marketplace in row the equivalent of the Agora in Greek cities a ferment of exchange of goods and ideas but coming to this forum I would never have believed that I would learn how to communicate a message to my children by bashing my dog with a decapitated duck [Applause] but I'm always open to new suggestions and I shall go home and ponder it forum was where stories were exchanged and in this contemporary world where story plays such an increasingly important role in ordinary life and commercial life we have a big story and today I did something that I should have done many years ago and coming to the forum has been worth it for that I went to see the mark drama and I think every one of you should see it Andrea Paige has done a wonderful job over the years I've known him for many years first in Austria where he devised this but I was riveted watching some of you young people interacting with an audience and I watched both the actors and the audience completely captivated with a story of Jesus now the question that faces me and you is this how do we get the public attention for long enough to watch that entire story you see I'm going to be talking about witnessing of certain aspects of it but in the end we want to present a story the story the big story which is big enough for our colleagues and friends and peers it's big enough for us and them to find a place in it you know one of the things that convinces me of the truth of Christianity is the uniqueness of their story beginning with creation and going on to the new creation giving us a dimension in the past which determines our identity and a very clear-cut and well-defined hope for the future we've nothing to be ashamed of and then I can do anything with the Lord's help tonight it's to encourage you to stand because increasingly you will have noticed that I've noticed that there's been a creep effect in Western society where God is pushed evermore into the private sphere we don't do God in public well I want to tell you I do do God in public and I want to encourage you not to be afraid to do God in public because the silent Christian is a contradiction in terms Christianity is a message that's communicated in words and lives and the drama effect of the mark drama was a very important part of that communication you felt that you were becoming part of the story and it was believable and if only we can demonstrate to the world what the story is because we are afflicted in this country and in the West in general with a profound biblical illiteracy people don't know the content of the story they won't read it they rarely watch it but it seems to me that you've got a tool that's been used around the universities here and another trees that could be multiplied and used in the public sphere getting it it's good in churches but get it out into the public space and let people see it we're called upon to witness now my title for tonight apparently I learned it today but that's usual is what can I say well it's a good question what can I say and the answer is a huge lot of things that would be utterly irrelevant for you but what can I say it reminds me that we are called upon to speak of Jesus we are called upon to witness to the world both by how we live and what we say and those two things belong together because we will not be credible if we don't model in our lives what we believe the early Christians were characterized by a consistency between what they said and how they lived they proved their authenticity as Christians by swimming deliberately against the stream but of course that does not mean that they never got afraid very dramatically the mark drama showed us Peter terrified in fear paralyzed by a young woman saying you were one of them and you know in life I've come to the conclusion that everybody without exception has a level of fear some people are scared of some situations and others of others but once the pressure is put on fear I never forget sitting with a brilliant professor I'd never met him before and we started to talk and suddenly he started to weep I said what's the matter he said my colleagues have silenced me I've tried to talk to them about the Lord Jesus but they have completely silenced me my heart was like two people like that because we know these pressures and they're going to come more and more as political correctness stifles honest and open debate and Peter the man who was so afraid and denied his Lord nevertheless he wrote in later life that all Christians ought to be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asked them a reason concerning their hope always prepared do you feel always prepared do I feel always prepared we get worried of what people might say or might think and in many parts of our world the opposition to Christianity has intensified into persecution the effect on the West is not so open as yet it's forcing Christianity into the private space and because I'm very old and you could see that I meet many people in midlife and older they go to church they read their Bibles they say their prayers but they've long since stopped witnessing and start life off students and I regard myself as a fellow lifelong student by determining you're not going to give up and be silenced I say the pressure is real and God has been extremely good to me in that I experienced maximum pressure in one sense when I was 19 in my second year of Cambridge I find myself at a college dinner sitting beside four Nobel Prize winner I'd never met one before and of course being a conversationalist I started asking him questions and gradually patted silently towards the god question and the dearer I got to the Bohr uncomfortable he became so that I did what I usually do I backed off and that was it so I thought but after dinner he said let it come to my room it didn't sound like an invitation so I went and it was apparent when I got to the room that he'd invited a number of other senior members of the university know students and as I remember it he set me on a chair they stood around the chair and he said Lennox do you want a career in science I said yes sir I do well he said tonight if you want a career in science then in front of witnesses give up this naive idea of God because if you don't you'll never make it you suffer by comparison with your peers you'll never get a higher point n't in the academic world so give it up now and say so I'd never experienced anything like it I can remember shaking and wondering can I say anything done suddenly it occurred to me to ask him I said sir what have you got to offer me that's better than what I've already got and he said the philosophy of Amida butsu he didn't know that one of the things I'd learned from CS Lewis was something about the philosophy of a metre backs all because the very odd philosopher to site because Bergson who was a Jew later confessed he had thought of becoming a Catholic and I just simply said if that's all you've got I take the risk and stick with what I've got and I got up and walked out that's why I'm sitting here are part of the reason tonight because that did something to me it puts steel in my heart and it made me resolve that ever I was in the kind of position I'm now in as a professor at a leading University I would never do what that man did you see if he had been a Christian and I'd been an atheist and he tried to browbeat me out of my atheism he would probably have lost his post the next day but it's not a level playing field and what that taught me was there's a dark side even to the highest levels of academia I'm thankful for the experience because it really made me think we have got something that must at all costs be publicly many years later not so long ago now I was giving a lecture at a very famous mathematics department in America and as I moved in I hadn't realized just how famous the people where and when I was introduced the quantum mechanics world-famous man got up and said he said we're delighted to have professor Lennox here but we just like to inform you we also have five members of the Academy of Science and the Nobel Prize winner as well so no pressure of course so I got up and looked at them and the wall was covered in mathematics equations for science so in order to lighten the tension I said you see I've written my notes up already and that broke the ice but when I'd finished the Nobel Prize winner came up to me he said do you often speak like this I said yes he said why have I never heard it before I said I've never heard these ideas before and they're profoundly important have you written anything I said yes so he shouted to the room a couple of hundred people he said everybody sit there wait so out he went got me to write the names of various books including my own he would out photocopied them and gave them to everybody in the room he said you need to read this stuff because I have never heard it before and I thought what supremely wonderful grace and irony that here I was with a Nobel Prize winner saying to me he'd never heard it before and that's the trouble they've never heard it before he said these arguments are totally new to me so narrow in his research focus so then we are called upon to witness and to swim against the flow and I want to encourage you that you can do that in the power of God's Spirit Jesus is Lord as I said earlier he will direct you and empower you but it doesn't mean that you've got to do it as some grim task because you feel guilty on the contrary witnessing at whatever level will bring you great joy and one of the turning points in most Christians lives is the first time they need someone else to Christ that changes you because what you see is that it works you see I grew up at a Christian home many of you will have done that in Ireland and okay people would say to me of course you believe in God your iris it's a genetic thing and what was so important for me was this was to see that people can change their worldview and I remember starting in college day one I said Lord I would really like to get to know people who don't share my worldview can you lead me to somebody this was day one and we were a group of seven mathematicians and I got to know one man he turned out to be the brightest of us he'd never been to church he was they describes himself that he was an agnostic at the time I talked to him for two years I didn't know very much I had the equipment we have today I had an old tape recorder most of you have never seen one outside a museum you know what a big reels that had got all tangled up and all this kind of stuff and I would write students and for coffee and I ten minutes of it try it looks wonderful just play them something interesting you've heard and well we to see what happens and after two years in one lecture I thought he wasn't reading this thing I said what's happened all he said last night I knelt down in my room and I trusted Jesus as Lord and I learned through experience that people can change their worldview and become Christians and that is immensely important I debated Peter Singer some time ago you can see it on the web and I told the audience my family were Christian and he got up and said well there you are that's my main objection against religion people stay in the faith of which they're brought up so when I got a chance to speak in Melbourne Town Hall I said Peter I told him about my parents what about yours were they atheists yes he said oh I said hmm you stayed in the faith in which you were brought up oh he said but it isn't a faith I said well Peter I was under the impression that you believed it isn't that amazing one of the world's leading philosophers didn't realize his atheism as a belief system we're up against that kind of thing and we have to understand how to respond and act in getting through that so let me think a little bit with you about what Peter says and its context now who's there to harm you 1 Peter 3 if you are zealous for what is good but even if you should suffer for righteousness sake you will be blessed have no fear of them nor be troubled but in your heart regard Christ the Lord is holy always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asked you for a reason for the hope that is in you yet do it with gentleness and respect having a good conscious conscience so that when you are slandered those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame notice the context fear Peter was a good man to write to us about fear because he knew it have no fear of them how can you and I get through the fear barrier there are two barriers for the witnessing Christian one is fear the other is shame and the big problem is getting through that how do you get through it notice what Peter says well the obvious answer to getting through it is to read 100 books and apologetics well books on apologetics may be useful but you usually find that most of them are non memorable why is that because they're not coming from living questions in your experience but before you get to that notice what he says it's to do with Jesus Christ as Lord what does he say he says in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as wholly alternative translation separate in your hearts Christ as in other words the key to witnessing and continuing to witness is that you make a conscious and repeated decision that Christ is going to be your supreme value and guide and Shepherd separate in your hearts it's a deliberate activity and when the fear starts to come the first thing we need to think about is our relationship to the Lord Lord I'm falling into a black hole I'm finding this difficult look you are my lord please empower me to get through this situation sanctified Jesus in your heart as holy so the antidote to fear ends our attitude to the Lord set him apart well we ought to remember too that when our Lord talked about witness he told us who ultimately bears the responsibility of witness it's God the Holy Spirit when the Holy Spirit shall come he whom I will send from the father said Jesus the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the father he will bear witness of me and you also will bear witness so the major weight of responsibility for witnessing is taken by God the Holy Spirit and so often we live as if it depended entirely on us that whether God's throne stands or falls and people's eyes depends on me that is not true the Lord Jesus is more interested than others than we are and this helps to set our perspectives sanctify a man as Lord rely on God the Spirit to witness through us and bring us through our uncertainties and fears now perhaps the most important practical thing what is Peter talking about here be always ready to give an answer to anyone that asks you that's not preaching is it that is dialogue the normative form of witness is dialogue and notice it's dialogue instigated by the person who's not yet a Christian for anyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is within you when did that last happen to you that bothered me as an 18 19 year old at college and you know you got to learn to learn from younger Christians and there was a younger Christian at another college who was at the heart of the nearest thing I've ever seen to be a revival in Cambridge he and his friends led within a termer to over 100 students to Christ they faded an entire rugby team and made a huge impact on the University and I got to know him I was intrigued by this and I raised this verse they said to look you know I think I know how to answer questions and give reasons but nobody's ever asked me he said have you ever asked them I said of course not he said why not well I said they haven't got any hope he said try asking them so the next time I was going to London actually and I was sitting on the train and I saw a chap next to me reading a book of metallurgy and I said to your scientist he said yes I had metallurgist in the university are you student I said yes mathematics so I pulled out a Gideon New Testament and started reading it and held it so he could see it and after a while I could see him dancing over he said excuse me you said you're a mathematician that's right and you're reading the New Testament that's right and I went on reading and of course curiosity got the better of him and he said look I don't really mean to interrupt you but that doesn't make sense to me you're scientist I'm a scientist and you're reading the New Testament I said that's right and then I remembered what this young student that said to me I said tell me we're nearly in London what hope have you got and he started to shake and tremble he was in his 50s he said I guess we'll all just muddle through I said you know that's not what I meant what of the hope have you got personally he said none whatsoever can I read your little book I gave it to oh by the way you believe scriptures the Word of God when did you last give anybody a bit of it and as we'd finished coming into the station a woman arose behind and she had hair way up like this and she said I believe in mother earth so I could see where she was coming from but anyway she said I'd been listening can I have one of those books and my wife had put into it's wonderful to have a wife that supplies you with Scripture make sure you marry you man my wife that surprises you with Scripture but that taught me so much and the secret is Socrates Richard quoted Socrates last night Socrates was the man who became famous for asking questions and the one thing I would encourage you to do is ask questions and learn to do it here's a little tip for you when I meet someone new I try to keep asking them questions until they ask me one for some of you especially the Irish and maybe the Scottish that will be an immensely difficult discipline we've all got a message and where sometimes taught that we've got to get rid of this message and so on and of course we put people's backs up but it's most interesting if you try this just keep asking questions ordinary questions about them who they are about their families never please start with what did they do that's getting to know people in the wrong way try to ask questions that will tell you who they are and sooner or later they'll ask you a question just ordnance and in that way friendship develops and I have fun this such a wonderful unpacking of this verse which looks so innocent and we know it so well but we don't realise it's one-to-one dialogue context conversation is absolutely key so learn to ask questions and I don't need to say this to you but learn to speak naturally when you're talking about Christian things because most people can talk naturally about sport and politics and so on but when they come to talk about God they frighten people to death because they get nervous change their voice and all that we got to learn to talk about God naturally and we got to learn to be the first to change the subject that's so important if I have the slightest sense that somebody's getting bored I want to be the first to change the subject and I find people with sometimes say no what you're saying is really interesting can we keep without now I know that they're got a real interest in doing so so I go back to doing that well what about the problem situation when we get stuck well let me tell you you're gonna get stuck I get stuck I can remember likes her into a couple of thousand people and Harvard and they're quite bright some of them in Harvard you know and I had a public Q&A with two thousand people which is very interesting but one of them stood up and he started asking his question and when he'd finish the sat down I said thanks for that question then I looked at the audience and they said does anybody here have a clue what he's talking about because I don't and I brought the host on that was the end of it always be prepared to admit when you don't understand or can't answer you know you'll never lose face and we care about losing face beware of the person that says I don't care what people think they do care what people think and people who don't care what others think can be very dangerous because they can develop insensitivity culturally in every other way so it's very important to immediately say you know I'm sorry I I can't cope for that question it's new to me but listen I tell you what would you mind if I go away and think about this and come back and we'll have coffee next week you're not human you're not their caricature of a Christian who's got all the answers it makes such a difference well I get a lot of invitations to speak and a minister contacted me some time ago and he said we'd like you to come and talk about science and religion in our church and I said I'm sorry really but I get hundreds of invitations but I've got an idea for you would you like Richard Dawkins as well can you get me Richard Dawkins oh I said very easily he said what do we have to do well I said what do you have to do if you really want me and Dawkins is get a copy of one of my debates for Dawkins and dirty your church if you have to but dude the neutral building is better and play a bit of it not too much of it nice and here's a key thing get five members of your congregation to come and sit at the front and field the questions dead silence I haven't got five such people well I said your reverence if you haven't got five such people you're not doing your job properly always said well there's mr. so-and-so on I said okay do me a favor write and tell me how it all turns out because you may make a complete mess of it so months later I got this Barbara's letter dear professor Lennox thank you so much for not coming to our church we tried what you said and we made a spectacular mess of it the five Christians couldn't cope with the questions and one of them in the end stood up and said to the audience look we seem to know less about this stuff than you do so why don't we just call a truce for tonight and starting next Tuesday we'll meet and we'll explore what Christianity is about next sentence we still have 38 non-christians in the group you can do that in your room like I did over the country to study I'm not our ticket doesn't matter play them something you've got some wonderful materials and you see cfb thinking & soha now of course you want to get them to scripture I talked about the mark drama but there's only covered mark isn't there and uncovered John and these things are wonderful because step by step you want to overcome your fears and introduce them to the Word of God now one little thing I need to say is the word for defense is apologia from which we get the awful English word apologetics it's not an English word it's a transliteration of Greek and it is misleading in the extreme I meet people they say to be I believe you're into apologetics I said aren't you oh no no that's for intellectuals this is very wrong folks apologetics is not a subdivision of philosophy 101 the word apologia for defense is used by Paul and several instances and acts and always its main content is his life story you've got a story and I hope the time spent here this week is going to enhance your story and increase it you've got a story that no one can take from you that is to be your major apologetic of course God calls some people to deal with intellectual problems but it's crucial not to give the impression that this is a job for the very bright Christians we've done Christianity and Christians and immense to service by giving that impression because it is meant that folks think they are not capable of answering when people ask them a reason for the hope that is within them when all the time they're sitting on their own story and they need to communicate it I would like to see the word apologetics band Peter may introduce the term persuasive evangelism that's much better because it's something for all of us today but now what's important if you're bright make sure you love the Lord with your mind and this is my final thought as this clock has got a minus sign in front of it unfortunately well mathematically I just multiply it by another minus sign we'd get a plus [Applause] I appeal to you folks get into God's Word and spend quality time I meet so many people and not only students that say I have no time right worker died afterwards when you go to your room how much time you spend watching a screen and doing things with it that of nothing to do either with your study or your Christian life and then tell me you have no time young people in this country you must realize this psychologists tell us our rewiring their brains by fiddling with multiple electronic devices at once I believe that as evangelical students and lecturers we've got to learn a new discipline electronic fasting but I'm done god bless you all there's enough potential in this room there's enough potential in this room to turn this country upside down the Lord did it with 11 with the nine hundred of you go out and give reasons for the hope that is within you and God bless you all thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: UCCF: The Christian Unions

Views: 47,342

Rating: 4.9178886 out of 5

Keywords: UCCF, Student, University, Christianity, CU, Students, Christian Union, Evangelism, Mission, Student Mission, John Lennox, John, Lennox, Professor, Maths

Id: BrCpdOMlIs0

Length: 38min 30sec (2310 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 29 2019