Grace Agenda 2018 | Mens Seminar | Doug Wilson: Apologetics Without Apology

apology and everything we've been hearing the high level worlds and collision messages we've been hearing about at the end of the day come down often to one-on-one conversations that you have with people or small group discussions in County if you do open-air evangelism if you do contact evangelism you're going to encounter people who are immersed in this other alien way of thinking they're thoroughly at peace with the zeitgeist with the way our current age is and you're gonna find yourself talking to them and you say have to say what how do i how do I talk to them how how do I go into this how do I conduct Christian apologetics which is apologetics / evangelism in a way that doesn't give away the store in a way that is consistent with what you say you believe so if I could begin with an illustration let's say if let's say a mugger someone with a gun is out for an evening holding people up and he comes up to one guy behind the guy and sticks the gun in his back and says your money or your life and the victim laughs nonchalantly it says well I'm afraid we have a problem here you can't do that I don't believe in guns now suppose the mugger turned embarrassed got read flushed read and put the gun away and sighs I'm sorry I didn't realize you didn't believe in guns and shuffles off trying to find someone who believes in guns that he now is the problem the Vic that is the problem that we have is a breakdown in the scenario right is the problem that the victim didn't believe in guns no the problem there is that the mugger doesn't believe in guns the guy with the gun doesn't believe in guns okay you're talking to a non-believer and you say well the Word of God says and they say I don't believe in the Bible and we say Oh put it away shuffle off just like a stupid mugger problem is not the problem is not that he doesn't believe in the Bible the problem is that you don't believe in the Bible that's what it boils down to URI if you're the shamefaced mugger who puts the gun away the problem is not that the other guy doesn't believe in the Bible the problem is that you don't believe in the Bible that's the problem if someone says to you you can't do that to me you can't you can't cite that passage to me I don't believe in the Bible you should say well it's funny you should say that because the Word of God says right over here are you you we have to believe what we say we believe we have to believe what we say we believe so apologetics without apology what is it that we believe what are we assuming in every apologetic encounter you have to realize that you've got two worlds you this is a worlds in collision set up you've got two worlds the world that God says we're living in and the world that the world says we're living in one of them is the way it is the world we're living in we're not living in both of them all right we're living it there there is a way things actually are we are living in the world as it actually is and we're living in the world that God made and God has told how he has made it God God has framed it and he's explained it to us so I want to talk about some of the fundamental assumptions that we have to make and carry through every evangelistic encounter and every apologetics encounter I have to begin by explaining that I do understand that an abuse of ad hominem is a logical fallacy that that's where you've instead of arguing with a person dealing with this is arguments you call them names there's no reason to think that you've refuted someone's arguments simply because you vigorously attack their person there is another fallacy closely related to the ad hominem double ver ISM by CS Lewis he pointed out the modern tendency to dismiss an argument on no stronger grounds than the fact that you explained how your opponent came to be so silly if you explain how a person got to his position that's not the same thing as answering his position but even though an ad hominem is a logical fallacy it doesn't follow that there's no connection between life style and truth it is inadequate to argue that the atheism of Smith cannot be true because he kicks his dog if he offers arguments then the argument should be addressed a thorough apologetic method will address arguments while at the same time understanding and taking into account their source all right you have to do both why as Christians our intellectual object is to think god's thoughts after him our aim must not be a false humanist humanistic originality but rather in one sense our fundamental task is submission to the way things are how did God make the world how do i how can i line myself up with how God made the world I want to submit to the way things are not not the way sin has wrecked the but the way God made the world in his creational intent this is because we believe that the world is the way it is because of the creator and sustainer of all things but if truth is to be found through submission to God's truth then does it not become a matter of concern if someone claims to have found truth but is living in open defiance of God's law if the world is what God made and if the world is the way God says it is and someone is living in a way contrary to that how how is their rebellion not relevant a relevant issue in our discussion for example Karl Marx engaged in a prolonged shrill and bitter argument with reality the poet Shelley was a life long abscond ER and cheat the existentialist philosopher jean-paul Sartre was a notorious exploiter of women most notably was his mistress say mom dude de Beauvoir quote this is from Paul Johnson's intellectuals and all essentials start treated her no better than Rousseau did his Therese worse because he was notoriously unfaithful in the annals of literature there are a few worse cases of a man exploiting a woman this was all the more extraordinary because to move de Beauvoir was a lifelong feminist so she's a lifelong feminist Sartre is a darling of the intellectual left and he was just a pig to women right he was just is that way I don't have Heidegger down here but Heidegger was a Nazi it would not be at all difficult to fill a volume with names of men and women who shook their fists at heaven with less than altruistic motives now it's quite true that the ethical standards of a man do not have a direct bearing on his opinion that two plus two equals four or that the Sun rises in the east our that's true but suppose that the subject of debate is rather rather than is two plus two equal four rather than that or does the Sun rise in the east but suppose were debating the existence and reality of a judge suppose that's the that's the topic of debate the debate is whether there's one who away and evaluate the thoughts and deeds of the sons of man and cast those who hate him into the outer darkness that is the proposition before the house God will cast adulterers into hell now does that put adulterers in a difficult position in the debate well whatever position it puts them in it's not a disinterested position okay if if we're debating does 2 & 2 equal four and I've got an adulterer and a non adulterer you can see at least on the surface how this debate could be conducted in a disinterested fashion now I think there are ramifications is to go all the way the bottom all the way to the bottom even there but if an adulterer and a non adulterer are debating whether God will throw adulterers into hell it's not a disinterested disengaged discussion okay is the lifestyle of the participants really irrelevant then in other words are the accused qualified to give judgments about the existence of the judge are the accused in a position to give disinterested a disinterested evaluation of the existence of the judge the heart of the problem is the heart the heart of the problem is the heart and so when you're in a discussion with someone who's claiming to I don't I don't find the evidence for God compelling you need to ask yourself are you the mugger putting away the gun or are you the mugger using the gun are you just he says well I I frankly don't find any of your arguments compelling well in actual fact the Word of God says he finds virtually all of them compelling and he's trying to get you to shut up and go away and he says oh I'll never become a Christian yeah you can't you can't bother me and we listened to him we believe him when he's lying to God and to himself and to you and we listen to him the heart of the problem is the heart Romans 1:18 through 22 for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness that's what non-believers are doing they're suppressing truth in unrighteousness because what may be known of God is manifest in them they in other words you're not trying to persuade people of the truth of what you're saying they know the truth of what you're saying they know it they're suppressing you can't suppress something you don't have okay so because what may be known of God is manifest in them for God has shown it to them for since the creation of the world his invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even his eternal power and Godhead so that they are without excuse because although they knew God they did not glorify Him as God nor we're thankful but became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened professing to be wise they became fools now this passage makes a number of claims about the the epistemic condition of every unbeliever they know when used when you speak the truth to an unbeliever there's something in them that resonates with what you just said and they don't like it right but it resumes you change the image for a minute a redefinition of apologetics the non-believer has been given the knowledge of God will call the knowledge of God an overinflated beach ball which they are holding underwater their standing in the pool holding this overinflated beach ball underwater and their arms are quivering the apologist job is to poke the arms hey friend how's it going because the Bible's the Bible says they know they know God they're suppressing the truth in unrighteousness and they're doing it because they want to continue in unrighteousness a moral problem a moral problem not an intellectual problem a moral problem which is refusal to glorify God as God and refusal to thank God - two points refusal to glorify God as God refusal to recognize the goddness of God and secondly a refusal to thank God is the cause of the intellectual problem there is an intellectual problem but the intellectual fog is caused by rebellion it's not the other way around alright rebellion causes intellectual darkness our ethical condition cannot be preserved and protected through the intellect let me say that again our our ethical condition cannot be preserved and protected through the intellect the two are connected but not the way Christians have frequently assumed we are to protect our intellect through our standing before God the reason unbelievers do not believe has nothing to do with the lack of arguments rather their lack of a desire to hear the arguments for the truth of Christianity is the result of unbelief we sometimes approach evangelistic apologetics as though unregenerate men did not love their sin and that's the breakdown in your approach we sometimes a fruit approach apologetics as though unregenerate men did not love sin we speak and act as though an intellectual defense of the faith will somehow impart to the rebellious a desire for holiness it does not we argue with them assuming that they would want to submit to the truth if only they knew it to be the truth but they do know it to be the truth they do they know that they don't want to submit to it Romans 1:28 at this point many evangelists and apologists may be tempted to walk in a walk away in despair if that's the case what's the point right they love there how can I preach to people who love their sin well preaching is God's instrument that he designed in order to speak to people who love their sin okay that's that the preaching of the Cross does something to them without their permission okay that what you're dealing with when your pokie arms you're dealing with them apart from their permission like Ezekiel they are uncertain about the efficacy of prophesying two bones Ezekiel prophesied of the bones you preach to the bones son of man shall these bones live sovereign Lord you know preach to the bones okay but Lord they can't every head is not bowed every eye is not closed their sockets are just opening yes I see that I see that bony thing uh you're not the Evangelist is not walking through a hospital ward trying to convince people to take the medicine you're walking through a graveyard preaching to bones and and you say well how can they be in rebellion and bones at the same time well it says that we word infusions Ephesians to us as we are dead in trespasses and sins in which we used to live okay you put those two together we're walking around in death we this world is full of the Walking Dead okay this is a zombie movie and and they are walking around in a condition of death they're actively making choices they love their sin and you have to preach to them speak to them in a way that reflects your faith in the Word of God as given because they they don't have the same kind of faith they know it's powerful and they reject it they need to encounter someone who knows it's powerful and acknowledges it accepts it preaches it obedience protects the intellect credit in Telecom I believe that I might understand if I refuse to believe then ultimately I'm refusing to understand the testimony of Scripture is that ethical rebellion produces intellectual darkness it is false to say that we can protect our lives with arguments rather we protect the reliability and integrity of argument by how we live our lives you do not protect your life with argument you protect your argument with life I live before God live like a Christian and you will retain your ability to reason if you give way to your lusts if you start produced if chasing idols if you start giving way to the licentiousness of your of your of the flesh you're going to lose your minds as Western culture has lost its mind we have lost our minds why because of lust it's this is lust fog everything about it is lust fog so the disobedient will eventually search out arguments that will justify them in their disobedience they will eventually sir cow to search out arguments because no such argument can be both true and valid it will not be long before the rebellious begin to attack argument itself ie your false Aristotelian categories they're gonna attack logic they're going to attack reason itself Christianity is initially rejected in the name of reason but apart from Christianity reason collapses into an irrational ISM of despair so the the exultation of humanistic reason has wound up in this this frenzy of irrationality that's that's what happens when you when you worship any Idol you eventually lose the idol you worship if you were you know if you're if you're a glutton you've avenged Lawton and a wine we eventually lose your ability to enjoy food and drink if you pursue sexual license you lose your ability to enjoy that every everything you worship everything you put in place of God you're eventually going to lose that thing and if you place a reason in place of God you're going to lose your mind that's what's going to happen this is why a revival of godliness will always produce a revival of learning does not flow the other way learning does not produce godliness knowledge puffs up but love builds up and one of the things that builds up is knowledge you get that knowledge by itself puffs up puffs up love builds up but knowledge is included in what is built up this is also why an abandonment of godliness will eventually destroy learning the process begins with folly disguised as scholarship and learning ie the folly is festooned with footnotes eventually when the bankruptcy becomes evident to all then scholarship itself will be denounced that's what's happening in our universities our universities it began first in in the humanities but the rot is spreading everywhere and it's just I remember years ago I was on a panel education panel on the East Coast somewhere and I was a total story about how we one time at logon school we were hiring a Christian student who had graduated from WSU Teachers College we were interviewing him to teach at logos and I asked him during the interview if a child if you should if you spelled out hor s e and child looked at that and said that says pony what would you say in this Christian student graduate of was who said I'd say well good job waited way to go and when I was asked the question to see if he was had bought into the anti phonics look save foolishness I want your Christian you've just come out of a government-run Teachers College how good were your filters when you were going through this I told this story and and and his filters were clogged you know he he he hadn't done a good job sorting this all out and so I was old that story on this panel and I said it's not it's not long before that's gonna get over to the math department right two plus two equals well Johnny how much do you want it to equal training in dishonest accounting dishonest tax attorney what do you want the answer to be and you know because there's if there is no truth how can you have an answer to a math problem be true if there is no truth how can and this answer be right and yet that answer be wrong so I was doing this reductio ad absurdum but there was another guy in the panel who was a math teacher from Canada and he said I've got bad news for you you're using as a ridiculous example but that's the way it is in my school now all right in other words there is no right answer because we hate truth we just hate the very idea of truth we and we can't do anything else and they know the irrationality what they're doing they're suppressing that they're denying truth on the one hand what's coming out of their head is a denial of the truth but they're holding the truth down at the same time okay they're conflicted in other words and use you need to be you need to believe God about how conflicted they are when you're talking to them now given this relationship between godliness and the intellect the manner that we display in the presentation of truth is important in second Timothy two 23 through 26 we instructed to correct in humility those who oppose us with hope that God will grant repentance the sovereign God uses means in the salvation of the rebellious and one of those means is humble instruction from the gobbly in particular the apologist should cultivate two things in his demeanor as he talks with those who are in the Roman's one mould and virtually everyone you meet will be in the Romans one mode mold but notice Paul toll tells us what what aspects of the truth are being suppressed and so it's you're poking the arms your those are the things that you should be highlighting the things that they want to go away are the things you want to be front and center his demeanor should address the true areas the two areas identified in that passage as being the heart of the problem the refusal to honor God as God and the refusal to give thanks so first the apologist must be filled with an understanding of the majesty of God if the rebellion of the one before you comes from willful blindness of his majesty then how can that how can he be helped by an evangelist with the same problem if he's being blind to the majesty of God and the Evangelist and the apologist is blind to the majesty of God how if the blind lead the blind they both fall into the ditch the triviality triteness and silliness which characterized as much of evangelical Christianity will not be successfully covered with the whitewash of some argument why is it that our modern declarations of evangelical truth lack the triumphant and majestic tone of the broth of the prophet Isaiah have you not known have you not heard the everlasting God the Lord the creator of the ends of the earth neither faint snores weary there is no searching of his understanding we are presenting that God to the people who want nothing to do with that God all right they they've grown accustomed to the cosy God that lives somewhere in the mezzanine above you know worship centers you we're talking about the maker of heaven and earth that and we need to be aware of the fact that that's what we're talking about this sense of God's grandeur has been lost from the church at large because of the widespread rejection of the biblical understanding of who God really is nothing empties a man of himself quite so much as the realization that God is God in everything and cannot be replaced by a creature in anything including the creature Salvation God has gotten everywhere God is God all the time God is God all the way down and God the the the transcendent and the imminent God the God who is omnipresent in the creation is not identified with the creation so do not muddled up the doctrine of God's omnipresent with some form of pantheism or Pantheon pantheism God is not identified with created order at all but God has got over every square inch of it alright so second so if God is God the godless of God the authority of God the sovereignty of God the glory of God the second thing is the apologist must be filled with Thanksgiving and gratitude filled with Thanksgiving a gratitude again because the rebellion of man is rooted in a refusal to thank God the more he is exposed to thankful Christians the better the more he's exposed to thankful Christians the better the mystery of thankless the mystery of ingratitude begins early who among us who among us has not seen some puffy faced rebellious child refusing to thank some adult for something or other I don't want us I don't want to thankful being thankful is being submissive and I don't want that being in being ungrateful it's prideful we and we're given to pride there's something in the sinful nature of man which does not want indebtedness and saying thank you to God is an intolerable indication of indebtedness and so what should happen in your conversations with unbelieving co-workers or unbelieving neighbors or you know unbelievers in family reunions you need to say what can I do to have my life and my demeanor not not how can I steer this conversation in to say what's your state what's the state of your soul before God there's a place for that but I'm talking about a pervasive attitude and tone through the whole thing how can I live with an awareness of the majesty of God in the presence of this person who is trying to deny the majesty of God and how can i how can I overflow with gratitude in the presence of this person who wants to be ungrateful all the time gratitude is easy both are essential I think but the gratitude is easier because everybody around you loves to complain and what you need to do is not complain number one not complaint and number two be grateful for things that you know when the waitress you're out to lunch with some co-workers and they and they bring a little bowl of little Pat's of butter and you say aren't you grateful little butter thanks and you peel the paper off and there's your butter and I put it on my roll let's give thanks yeah so isn't this a glorious day isn't this wonderful this is a good sandwich you this is really good here's it man and we have you ever thought that when we walk back to the office we can walk on our feet this is just amazing this day is one thing after another if these two if these two attitudes are present then they're going to be used by God to convict the hearer of his basic problem this is not to say that words aren't important the propositions are important the gospel is important the words of truth of the nail which must be driven into the heart the submission of the Evangelist to God as God along with his gratitude would be the hammer alright so the words of the word the propositional words of the gospel are one thing the thing that drives it into the person's heart is the demeanor the demeanor of the Evangelist he is the one God is the one who gives repentance and so you summit summit up as Calvinistic gratitude overflowing Calvinistic gratitude now don't don't fall for the trap of Calvinism has got to be dour and grim and severe that's not that's a caricature that's a cartoon we don't don't want anything to do with that cartoon it's crucial to remember that evangelism and consequently faithful apologetics as well may be may be divided into two aspects law and gospel I'm using them here with the classic reformed understanding much modern evangelism does not bear fruit simply because these elements are neglected or they are twisted when law comes to an unregenerate man he always does two things he acknowledges it as true and he hates it as true it's not our position to seek to persuade him that he has an obligation to honor God as God and to thank him he already knows this that's what he's suppressing it's a truth with which he is suppressing in unrighteousness consequently the individual here's the law everywhere in the creation in his own wicked heart and from the Evangelist in other words we should not seek to get the person to whom we are witnessing to verbally agree to the biblical view of man he is the way God has made him whether he agrees to it or not so that he says I am the end product of so many millennia of so much so many centuries of time and chance acting on matter that is what I am God says no you're created in the image of God and you're rebelling against him which one's true is what he's saying about himself true or is what God saying about him true well you believe that what God says about him is true and he's denying it well don't secretly join with him in the denial right don't don't agree with him that that's what you are he's no he's creating the image of God the whole time so we must assume the biblical view of man we speak on this basis as we speak we know that the one who hears knows at some level that we are speaking the truth this is true however much you suppress it it is on the basis of this that God judges men who reject the gospel they rejected it knowing it to be true the way many Christians conduct their evangelism it is as though they believe the last day the men who stand before God will not be without excuse but the Bible says they're without excuse so we're not we're not seeking to win win men who are honestly unpersuaded we're sinners that means at some fundamental level we're dishonestly persuaded and at some deep level when the truth is proclaimed it resonates the content of our communication should revolve around two things and again these are the two points at which men are rebelling first we must not be hesitant to speak of God as God he is the sovereign creator and sustainer of all things we must not speak of a higher power however man conceived conceives himher it to be we are Christians who serve the father of the Lord Jesus Christ not devotees of some fuzzy benevolence in the sky but as we speak of God we must be clear these words have very clear definitions and that the definitions are not man flatterers God knows everything he oversees everything he brought everything into existence he is holy righteous and good he is a severe judge and a loving Savior he is present everywhere the whole earth is full of his glory from him through him and to him to him are all things the twenty-four elders need to spend more time on their faces so this God is God God is glorious second we must emphasize overtly the obligations of all creatures to render thanks to God everything that has breath is to praise the Lord Psalm 150 verse 6 notice in the Psalms how how often every everything is invited to express gratitude Sun Moon stars people of nations everybody come sing praises to God too often Christians assert that God is the creator without going to going on to apply the obvious ethical response which is Thanksgiving suppose for a moment suppose for a moment that we gave all the engineers and scientists in the war old a Titanic budget and the following task to come up with a functional human hand with all the options a hand that would grow calluses when used playing the guitar or working on anything else that would repair it has a built-in repair kit inside that if you cut it you know mysterious forces inside come up to the surface and make it heal over the course of a week move with the dexterity of an accomplished pianist and so forth these scientists and these scientists and engineers could not do that with all the resources in the world they they couldn't do it and when I wrote these notes I was sitting in my word processor typing away with two of them and they were free given to me where did I get these things what do they made out of peanut butter sandwiches mostly I think growing yeah and then you look you go from and why did God give us fingernails to pick up dimes ah the Lord said at some point they'll have to pick up dimes so we should we should you're standing in the shower hot and cold running water glory to God glory to God the food is hot glory to God I can I can put something in the microwave and and and it's hot in 60 seconds too hot in fact glory glory to God just what you want to do is be looking at absolutely everything with an exuberant Chester Tony and gratitude because God is God is good to us all day long all the time in millions of ways every moment of every day how many diseases are is your body fighting off right now what's your Libya liver doing for you right now what kind of engineering went into your ankles and then you look at the human eye what the human eye can do and what happens when you have just one of them and Huck how can you have depth perception and and you look at any square inch of life a square inch of your lawn your front lawn a square inch of bark on a tree and you have task a cascading torrent of mysteries you you could you could spend the rest of your life writing thousands of books on that one square inch of your lawn because of everything that's going on and God just gave it to you just gives it to you everything's just given we as creatures have an obligation to thank God those in rebellion who do not thank God need to be reminded of the obligation God is God he is not like we are God is good he daily gives to each of us Christians and non-christians alike far more gifts and we can even keep track of Matthew 5:45 as we testify to these things the testimony has the force of law it does what the law is supposed to do which is to increase and reveal transgression Romans 3:20 in Romans 5:20 it condemns it's no wonder these truths are suppressed for non-christians there's no good news at all yet but after law comes the gospel the message of the cross and resurrection reconciles sinners to God and part of this reconciliation is the dispelling of intellectual darkness the futility of thinking is gone because the hardness of heart which produced it is gone hard hearts make for soft heads because the Spirit of God has taken away the heart of stone the way a man thinks is altered forever everything has not done all at once but the process has begun because the rebellion is over the process of the renewal of the mind is established which is Romans 12:1 and 2 so to wrap up this is not a cold intellectualism first Peter 3:15 instructs sanctify the Lord God in your hearts always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear having a good conscience that when they defame you as evildoers those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed good reasons good defense come from good hearts good reasons good defenses good arguments come from good hearts if I'm only prepared intellectually I'm not prepared intellectually if all I've got is from books then I don't have anything the representative of Christianity must have sanctified the Lord in his heart he must have a good conscience and then he must give his defence his apology is apology it and his reason for hope the one to whom he's the one to whom he speaks has not sanctified the Lord in his heart and does not have a good conscience that is why he's in intellectual darkness as mentioned mentioned earlier the popular dichotomy between the head and the heart is a false one but to use the terms assumed by it for a moment if someone concerned for heart religion rejects the importance of doctrine the problem is not in his head the problem is in his heart it is not bearing the front of the proper fruit this is because if a man sanctifies the Lord in his heart the result will be defense's arguments and reasons all right do you see that I can't I can't get there by defense's arguments and reasons but if I sanctify the Lord in my heart it's going to it's going to give me my mind love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your brains and all your strength but you it's got to start here it starts with the heart that works its way out you can't get to the heart through the brains but you if you get to the heart you will get to the brains and if you if it doesn't effect loving God with your mind then if you're not really dealing with the heart so if a there are many Christians who want to have a truncated simple religion Creed but Christ no law in love there are many responses no creeper Christ I would say first that's a nice little Creed there no creeper crash no live just roll great little Creed which which council approved did that was a committee back in the founders our soup kitchen back in the 50s well first that's that's a Creed number two no Creed but Christ I'd say great who's this Christ who is he who are you talking about you have to you have to you have to be prepared to answer questions you can't just assume that you can assert things and have everybody say oh and not follow there there's going to be an engaging Q&A session alright so you have to you have to get into sound doctrine you have to pursue as far as the Bible pursues it you should pursue it all right and you should be getting your answers from the text and you shouldn't be afraid to ask an answer hard questions if a Christian apologist who is into sound doctrine lives a life that's an ethical stretcher case then the problem in his heart will eventually show up in his thinking we cannot seal off one part of us from another one of the reasons when we look at all the encroachments that neo-paganism is making in the church right and there are a lot of them and I'm not sure that we can really refuse to rent the church to a loving couple homosexual couple I'm not sure that we can really say you know whenever you see whenever you see any kind of waffling and noodling and backfilling and all that stuff going on you can depend upon it that this occasion is not the first instance of the compromise it's the first visible instance of the compromise it's the first visible instance so you want to say okay when you rent when you rent your sanctuary to the for the first homosexual marriage what I want to know is how many years of porn use were rampant in that congregation before that for that what was all going on under the surface because if your if your Christian life is in tatters then at some point it's going to erupt at some point it's going to come out in in the Psalms cleanse me from secret vaults keep me from presumptuous sins then I will be innocent of the great transgression alright well we're dealing with in church after church after church is eruptions of the great transgression they set up a big statue of bail and then are thix and we're having an emergency meeting this and and some of us are wondering why we're even having to debate having a bail on the narthex because it seems to us that this goes without saying that we shouldn't be doing this and I would say yeah okay great transgression is that a great transgression yes that's why that's why it's appalling me it's such a great transgression but we should be asking well how many presumptuous sins how many secret faults for how many decades for how many decades how many things were hushed up how many things were just quieted open and not dealt with biblically how many things how many cases of church discipline drop to the ground and we're not pursued how many how many compromises that were not big controversies led to this one okay that's so that's just the way that's the way God has determined the world's going to run so we can't seal off one part of our life from another when people get out of biblical balance they lose the they lose the very thing that they deem most important Pharisees worship the law but in fact the in effect destroyed it Piatt tests say that we must concentrate on the heart but the result is a heart that doesn't produce fruit anymore in the name of clean hearts they produce rotten ones our more intellectual brethren neglect the heart and consequently are really neglecting the head in the name of sound minds they destroy the base foundation of all clear thinking which is practical obedience practical straight up the middle obedience Jesus is Lord shall we do what we shall we do what he says Jesus is Lord let's do what he says now we're not gonna work our way to heaven that way but we have confessed that Jesus is Lord we've had our sins forgiven we've all gathered together to sing praises to him he's Lord I tell you what let's do what he says let's do what he says just that the Bible teaches that intellectual darkness intellectual darkness is this is the result of rebellion not the cause of it those who have been brought out of darkness have a responsibility to speak to those who are still in it as they speak it is crucial to realize the source of intellectual darkness and to address it through the demeanor of the speaker the content of what is said and the demeanor of the speaker is directly related to the life of the speaker the life of the Evangelist the demeanor of the Evangelist not just put a smiley face on it it's live like a Christian live like a Christian in your interaction with your wife live like a Christian as you deal with your kids live like a Christian and everything every Jesus is Lord in every area of life live like a Christian there and have that come out in your demeanor and then have it come out in the content of what you want to say to the unbeliever if the apologist displays God's character and demonstrates thankfulness to him then it is far more likely that God's mercy will be demonstrated back in the Timothy passage you do these things not because you're putting Nick you're not because you're putting coins in the vending machine when you're evangelizing you're not putting coins in you're not buying a product but you're doing certain things in the hope you're doing certain that things in the hope that God will grant repentance and God tells us to do these things in that hope meaning he's more likely to grant repentance to the unbeliever when we're doing what we're told then if we're if we're disobeyed so the apologist should display God's character and demonstrate faithless grateful grateful thankfulness to him then it's far more likely that God's mercy is going to be demonstrated these same truth these same two truths should spill over into the content of what is said until this happens we're not we're not going to see what has been absent from evangelical Christianity for hundreds of years and when it manifests itself we're gonna see we're gonna see it again what we need the need of the hour is apologetics on fire what we need is scholarship on fire what we need is preaching on fire we need mines on fire we don't need cold intellectually cold scholasticism we need scholarship on fire all right we don't need nice prim arguments on pages we need the whole thing burning we need we need people to see oh you mean this is true we need actually this is true we need we need to tell it everybody it's true jesus said to preach the gospel to every creature it's good news it's true and going back to circling back around to the first point I made the fundamental thing about evangelism and apologetics is it is not to get the unbelievers to believe the first task is to get the believers to believe we want the believers to believe why why should the unbelievers believe when we don't why why should the unsaved believe when the save don't believe or we we miss may technically believe but we sure don't act like we believe what why don't so getting you the issues getting evangelicals saved getting evangelists saved getting apologists saved it or getting them to the point where they realized what it is to be saved and they're in that and that's being communicated that's overflowing so let let us worry less about the unbelief of the unbelieving world and worry more pray more preach more concern ourselves more with the unbelief of the believing world father God we thank you for your kindness to us we commit all this to you and ask you to watch over us we pray in Jesus name [Applause]

Channel: Canon Press

Views: 25,567

Rating: 4.9488816 out of 5

Keywords: canonpress, graceagenda, christchurch, dougwilson

Id: AUhHtpOsb2A

Length: 50min 25sec (3025 seconds)

Published: Wed May 30 2018