Dale Partridge - September 09, 2020


Real Christianity #110： What's The Best Way to Defend Your Christian Faith？


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Transcript

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00:00:00.000 Welcome to this episode of Real Christianity. My name is Dale Partridge, where each week
00:00:13.120 I offer 15 to 20-minute answers to tough theological and pastoral questions. This is
00:00:19.100 a 100% listener-supported audio ministry of relearn.org. And for those who don't know,
00:00:25.720 our mission at relearn.org is to educate and equip ordinary Christians to plant biblical,
00:00:31.860 confessional, and missional house churches. For more information, just visit relearn.org
00:00:37.600 forward slash house. So if you haven't noticed, the culture is becoming increasingly hostile
00:00:44.960 toward Christians and biblical values. As the intensity rises, more and more of us will be
00:00:52.080 required to defend our faith against those who challenge it. But how is that really done? Are
00:00:58.680 we called to be capable of making an argumentation against every point of cultural contention? Do
00:01:05.820 you need to know how to defend the scientific positions for being pro-life, or the theological
00:01:10.820 argument for traditional marriage, how to understand gender? I'm going to be answering a lot of these
00:01:16.620 questions and how we should be looking at this as Christians. But before we begin, I want to just
00:01:22.700 make two quick announcements for this episode. The first is about our program, our companion
00:01:28.120 ministry, standinvictory.org. This is a wonderful program on how to break free from the bondage of
00:01:36.380 pornography addiction or pornography use through the power of the gospel. If you are struggling
00:01:42.600 with this. We've had hundreds, maybe even close to a thousand, but hundreds of people come through
00:01:48.460 and the testimonies are just outstanding. And it's not because of our ministry or because of
00:01:54.140 our program, it's because the Word of God and the power of the gospel and setting people free
00:01:58.420 from the bondage of sin. You guys can check that out at standinvictory.org. Also, if you would like
00:02:04.540 to support somebody who would like to enroll in the program but couldn't afford it, this is pretty
00:02:11.340 common. We actually have a lot of people write us that they can't afford the program. We have a fund
00:02:16.800 called the Stand and Victory Fund, and these are donors that have funded and offered donations to
00:02:24.520 pay for somebody else to go through the program. The program is 50 bucks for three videos, three
00:02:30.560 PDFs, walking them through this journey. If you would be interested in doing that, you could just
00:02:36.780 go to relearn.org forward slash donate. And the way that we'll know that your donation is to go
00:02:43.800 into the Stand and Victory Fund is just make it for $25.25 or $50.25. It's a pretty odd number,
00:02:53.700 not many people donate that total. But if you make a donation of that total, we will earmark
00:02:59.460 it and put it into our Stand and Victory Fund. The second thing I want to mention, COVID has
00:03:05.200 caused thousands of Christians to explore the idea of house church. If that's you, we believe 0.97
00:03:12.480 that the best place to start is by downloading our free PDF. It's called The Basics of Biblical
00:03:19.060 House Church, and you can get that at relearn.org forward slash house. This isn't something that'll
00:03:23.780 give you all the instructions, but it will lead you to the journey if you're interested in exploring
00:03:29.500 that. We also have our program, you guys know, at stjustins.org, which is our full, robust
00:03:36.520 training program for those men who might be interested in planting or shepherding a biblical
00:03:41.340 house church. Let's get to today's question. It's from Luke in Gilbert, Arizona. I've been to
00:03:48.480 Gilbert, so thank you for your question, Luke. He asks, Pastor Dale, recently I have been studying
00:03:54.260 apologetics in an effort to give a defense for my faith as instructed in 1 Peter 3.15.
00:04:00.900 However, there are so many issues to learn how to defend. Can you help me focus on which issues
00:04:07.180 matter most? Hey, Luke, thank you for this question. For those who are listening, I'm going
00:04:12.480 to read the passage of scripture that Luke referenced in his question. It's 1 Peter 3.15.
00:04:18.260 It reads, but in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a
00:04:23.960 defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with
00:04:30.560 gentleness and respect.
00:04:31.880 So the word defense in the Greek is apologion, and it's where we get our word apologetics
00:04:40.760 or the practice of defending the faith.
00:04:44.020 Now, for a long time, I subscribed to the same apologetic ideology as, say, Ravi Zacharias,
00:04:50.700 which is a cultural apologetic that props up or undergirds evangelism, as Ravi would say it.
00:04:59.900 Meaning cultural apologetics are supposed to act in a way as a forerunner to the gospel.
00:05:07.660 The intent is to answer all the harder cultural and quasi-theological or moral questions
00:05:14.200 that are in the way of someone accepting or believing the gospel.
00:05:20.700 And the reason I followed that method for so long was because I believed it was my job and your job
00:05:27.780 to present a defense for the faith or persuade people to the faith is probably a better way to
00:05:36.000 put it. I believed that salvation was a choice that was made by people who have free will.
00:05:42.040 But the question I would ask you is this, is our will ever free? Jesus says in John 8, 44 to
00:05:50.000 unbelievers, you are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. 0.99
00:05:57.020 Second Corinthians 4.4 says, in their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the 0.96
00:06:03.840 unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. Finally,
00:06:10.460 Ephesians 2.1-3 says, and you were dead. That word dead right there is nekros in the 0.99
00:06:19.880 Greek, which means corpse, dead. There's no other definition of that, right? Just corpse or dead,
00:06:24.380 dead body. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the
00:06:31.400 course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work
00:06:37.000 in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying
00:06:43.880 out the desires of the body and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of
00:06:51.220 mankind. So do unbelievers have free will? No. They have a will, but is it free? No. 1.00
00:07:02.120 They have a will that's in bondage to sin and enslaved to the God of this world. That has
00:07:08.440 been the natural and moral result of the fall in Genesis chapter 3, and this is why even our good
00:07:17.340 works are viewed as filthy rags. Sin, we have to remember, isn't just an act, it's a condition
00:07:22.880 that we're in. And so what I'm saying here is that when I believed I could persuade free will
00:07:31.780 creatures to the kingdom of God. I didn't understand the biblical doctrine of sovereignty
00:07:38.820 or total depravity, right? The idea of having free will and having a sovereign God is a bit
00:07:47.900 of a contradiction in a philosophical manner. The only one who has a free will is God.
00:07:54.140 So let me explain this doctrine of total depravity just quickly, which we could talk about this for
00:08:00.060 ours, but I'm going to read Romans 3, 11 through 18. It says, none is righteous. No, not one.
00:08:07.120 No one understands. No one seeks for God. Pay attention to that. No one seeks for God.
00:08:14.460 Verse 12, all have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. Not one does good. Not
00:08:21.680 even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is
00:08:27.900 under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood 0.74
00:08:34.100 and their paths are ruin and misery and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of
00:08:41.580 God before their eyes. First Corinthians 2 14 says the natural person, that is the carnal person,
00:08:50.860 the unbeliever, cannot or does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly
00:08:59.240 to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. In other 0.87
00:09:06.880 words, there's nothing that you can do or say to change the heart of another person. This is solely
00:09:15.540 God's work. You may be able to convince them of a logical argument on a moral matter,
00:09:23.560 but you cannot persuade a person to love God and come to Christ for salvation.
00:09:29.680 This is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3, 6-7, I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.
00:09:37.320 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.
00:09:42.980 This is also why Jesus said in John 3, 3,
00:09:45.420 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,
00:09:52.100 let alone get to the kingdom of God, because you can't even see it.
00:09:55.500 Now, this teaches us that God must first cause someone to be born again
00:10:02.180 before they even can hear the spiritual arguments that you're presenting for salvation,
00:10:09.920 which is the gospel.
00:10:11.500 This is why Jesus would often say, he who has ears to hear, let him hear.
00:10:17.860 You know, basically, spiritual actions cannot occur before spiritual birth.
00:10:23.340 I want you to just take this one to the bank in your brain here, okay?
00:10:28.320 Spiritual actions cannot occur before spiritual birth.
00:10:33.480 You can't exercise saving faith or genuine repentance, which are spiritual actions before
00:10:40.300 being spiritually born.
00:10:42.080 If you could exercise saving faith and genuine repentance before being spiritually born,
00:10:49.020 why would you need to be born again next?
00:10:51.720 You've already done the thing that justifies you and saves you, which is have faith and
00:10:55.940 repentance.
00:10:56.420 And so, yeah, this is critical because you and I cannot birth new spiritual life in another person.
00:11:07.200 How much input or decision did you have in your first birth?
00:11:13.040 None, right?
00:11:14.320 That's how much decision and say you have in your second birth.
00:11:18.780 None.
00:11:19.880 Spiritual rebirth is a sovereign work of God.
00:11:23.660 And our cultural apologetics will not influence that process whatsoever.
00:11:31.080 Jesus even says in John 6, 44,
00:11:34.440 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.
00:11:41.300 A few verses later in 65, he says it again.
00:11:43.940 He says,
00:11:44.220 This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.
00:11:50.220 In other words, the only way a person can come to Christ is if the Father ordains them to come
00:11:56.900 to Christ. And this is a major point I want you guys to understand here in regards to this
00:12:02.700 question. God is the sole cause of a person being born again and a heart being restored to love and
00:12:11.640 seek Him. And once you understand this in regards to this question, you'll realize that intellectual
00:12:17.500 persuasion on cultural topics is not an effective or biblically mandated practice for evangelism.
00:12:25.860 It's definitely not an alternative. It's definitely not a replacement. And I would say it's generally
00:12:30.660 not as helpful as we might hope it would be. Now, I'm not saying that God has not used
00:12:38.100 cultural apologetics in the grand plan of a person's redemption. He may have done that.
00:12:44.640 I'm also not saying that we as Christians shouldn't present the logical and biblical
00:12:50.900 evidence on moral issues like pro-life or gender or creation. These things are really good things
00:12:56.040 to proclaim. Keep doing that. But I am saying that cultural apologetics has never converted
00:13:03.960 one's soul and never will. I'm also saying that cultural apologetics will add nothing
00:13:11.800 to your ability to convert a person to Christ. We might think that we're, because we're answering
00:13:16.780 their concerns and questions around homosexuality, or we're answering their concerns around,
00:13:22.760 you know, objective morality or whatever it might be, that we're actually moving things
00:13:28.540 out of the way so that we can actually just get them to that place where we can persuade them to
00:13:34.260 Jesus. That is not how it works according to Scripture. And basically, I'm saying don't
00:13:46.840 confuse apologetics with evangelism. There is only one activity that the Lord has allowed us
00:13:53.760 as believers to participate in regarding the conversion of souls, and that is gospel preaching.
00:14:01.240 And we know this because Romans 10, 17 clearly states, faith comes from hearing and hearing
00:14:07.900 through the word of Christ.
00:14:09.520 And the word of Christ is what?
00:14:11.620 It's the gospel, right? 0.85
00:14:13.240 The gospel message is the agent by which God has chosen to midwife his children, right? 0.83
00:14:23.280 In other words, when we preach the gospel, we, in a sense, are acting as the voice of
00:14:30.200 Christ calling his sheep to life. They're born again by way of the gospel that we preach.
00:14:38.400 And he uses our words out of our mouths, which is they should only be the gospel,
00:14:44.240 which is the word of Christ to bring about faith. And this is why Jesus says in John 10, 24 through
00:14:50.540 30, the Jews then gathered around him and they were saying to him, how long will you keep us
00:14:55.640 in suspense. If you're the Christ, just tell us plainly. Jesus answered them and said, I told you
00:15:01.260 and you do not believe the works that I do in my father's name. These testify me, but you do not
00:15:07.880 believe. Why? Because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they
00:15:14.640 follow me and I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out
00:15:19.660 of my hand. My father who has given them to me, pay attention that my father who has given them
00:15:24.800 to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the
00:15:30.120 Father are one. When we preach the gospel, those who have been granted salvation by God the Father
00:15:38.400 will hear His voice through your gospel preaching, and they will follow Jesus, and Jesus will keep
00:15:48.720 them. We are simply just the means by which God accomplishes his redemptive work. Now, what does
00:15:55.060 that all mean in regards to your question about apologetics? It means that instead of learning
00:16:01.120 all the sophisticated arguments against homosexuality or abortion or pedophilia or
00:16:08.140 creation or morality, instead, focus all that energy and time, in my opinion,
00:16:15.980 on learning the mechanics of the gospel. Seek to understand the gospel to such a degree
00:16:21.980 that you can present it clearly and correctly in almost any circumstance. And, you know,
00:16:29.580 instead of studying these philosophical ideas, grind the beauty of the biblical theological
00:16:36.100 doctrine of salvation. It's what we call soteriology, right? So deep into your soul
00:16:42.040 that you can communicate it, defend it, discuss it, morph it, use it, apply it as effectively as
00:16:51.540 the Apostle Paul did. Be ready to speak with children or with bankers or with drug addicts
00:16:57.740 or with the homeless or with the elderly. You don't need to change the message for any of these
00:17:04.540 groups. You simply need to adjust the delivery. The message is the same. The method might be
00:17:10.180 slightly different. And this is what that verse in 1 Peter 3.15 truly means is give the reason
00:17:18.520 for the hope that's in you. And what's the reason for your hope? It's not because you can explain
00:17:26.520 away the Big Bang Theory. It's not because you understand the argument for, you know,
00:17:32.100 objective morality. The reason you have hope, it's the gospel. You have hope because of the gospel.
00:17:39.140 Okay, what Peter is saying here is be prepared to present and explain and defend the gospel,
00:17:48.460 the thing that gives you hope, and do that with gentleness and respect.
00:17:53.760 This is our commission.
00:17:56.440 Cultural apologetics are great.
00:17:59.160 They are an awesome tool to shift logical thinkers toward a more moral society.
00:18:05.240 So I'm not shunning those away.
00:18:07.420 But changing minds will never change hearts. Only the gospel can change hearts. So if you're going
00:18:15.200 to invest time and energy to learn all these sophisticated arguments, Luke, I would say,
00:18:21.400 no, I would spend that time studying theology, understanding the gospel, so that you can better
00:18:28.060 present the gospel to those people that the Lord puts in your path. So hopefully that answers your
00:18:34.840 question, Luke. I know it was a long, you know, background and explanation to get there, but
00:18:42.380 hopefully that was helpful for you. I'm going to leave you guys with a few resources that you can
00:18:47.340 find on the post page for this episode at relearn.org. This is episode number 106, and it's
00:18:54.800 titled, What's the Best Way to Defend Your Christian Faith? So a great book to check out
00:19:01.360 is Conversion by Michael Lawrence. It's a little yellow book. The next resource is a book titled
00:19:08.760 Expository Apologetics, Answering Objections with the Power of the Word. This is by Dr. Voti
00:19:16.920 Bauckham, and I think is a great resource on what is biblical apologetics in difference to
00:19:23.980 maybe a cultural apologetic that would be more like a Ravi Zacharias style. And by the way,
00:19:30.180 I'm a major Ravi Zachariah fan in terms of I've really appreciated his ministry, so don't think
00:19:36.480 that I'm throwing him under the bus. He's a fantastic man, and I've listened to probably
00:19:42.000 several hundred of his podcasts over the years, and he has very fruitful discussions to be
00:19:49.440 listening to, but I just think that this is important is that don't confuse apologetics
00:19:55.220 with evangelism. Anyways, that's a rant. But the last resource I'm going to give is,
00:20:01.680 it's a video, and it's called The Essentials of the Gospel, and it's by Paul Washer. Again,
00:20:07.220 I think a lot of us need to understand, what are those essentials? Because the gospel is so big.
00:20:11.360 What do I really need to talk to somebody about in order to present the gospel effectively?
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00:21:04.840 I think that's it for this episode. Hopefully this was fruitful and edifying for you all.
00:21:09.420 My name is Dale Partridge, and I will see you next week.
00:21:13.900 Thank you for listening to this episode of Real Christianity. If you're a regular listener to
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00:21:38.020 relearn.org forward slash house lastly do you have a theological question you would like answered
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00:21:49.700 this episode of Real Christianity. We'll see you next Wednesday.