Giving an Answer

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Transcript:

Odds are you all know somebody with questions about Christianity. It may be a neighbor. It may be a child or a grandchild.

It may be a sibling or a friend. It may even be you. But we’ve all got somebody around us who has questions about Christianity.

I still have questions about Christianity. I still have things that I wake up in the morning and say, I need to research that. If we ever get to a point where we think we’ve got Christianity all completely figured out, then I think we should be worried.

But odds are you have some questions or you know somebody who does. Now, our questions about Christianity could range from, you know, something simple like, I wonder what he was talking about in that verse. You know, I do that a lot.

I did that even before I got up to preach this morning. There was something in the text that we’re going to look at today. And I thought I understood it when I was preparing this message.

And then I sat down to reread the text this morning, and I thought, I can’t explain this well enough. And so if you can’t explain it, you don’t understand it well enough. And so I had to go do some more research on it.

Our questions can range from something simple like that to something earth-shaking. You know, the things that we wake up in the middle of the night in a panic about. How do I know if I’m really saved?

How do I know any of this is real at all? Our questions range in their gravity, but they’re all important. Some of those questions, as I said, do have a larger scope and a larger impact.

And those are the questions that we most need answered. Now, some of you may, these are the questions like, how do I know God exists? How do I know that Jesus really was who he said he was?

How do I know that the Bible is true? How do I know it’s God’s word? How do I know it hasn’t been changed over time?

One that I hear asked a lot, if there’s a God, why is there suffering and evil in the world? Folks, there are all kinds of questions that can undermine our faith or keep us from faith altogether. And these are questions that desperately need to be answered.

I want to spend the next, I don’t even know at this point how many weeks. I want to spend several weeks going over some of these questions and some of the reasons that we have for believing what we believe. We need to know why we believe what we believe.

If our faith is nothing more than a feeling, if it’s nothing more than I feel this is true or I was taught this by my parents, if it’s nothing more than that, our faith will not stand the test of time. We are like the house built on the sand. that when the winds came and the rains fell and the waves crashed, the house fell flat.

I had a friend who’s gone on to be with the Lord now, but he was one of my church members years ago. And I would find that when I’d come into church on Sunday mornings, more often than not he would have left a newspaper clipping or something on my desk because he felt like I preached better when I was annoyed about something. And he said I’d get more animated.

And it’s not that he was annoying me, but he would clip things out of the newspaper that he knew would annoy me. And this was back in Fayetteville. And one Sunday morning I walked in and I found this absolutely ignorant letter to the editor in the big Arkansas paper.

So there had been some ongoing discussion in the pages of the newspaper. And this man who thought he knew everything about Christianity, even though he wasn’t one, had written in this just absolutely ignorant letter to the editor. I don’t want to say he was stupid, but he was ignorant.

You could tell by the things he said. He was ignorant of what we actually believed. And he wrote some things in there, and knowing that this is being seen by tens of thousands of people, many of whom were in my own congregation, I felt compelled to take a few minutes during the announcements to address something like I’ve done a few times here lately with the subject of abortion.

Sometimes things will come up that need to be addressed that have nothing to do with the message. And so I took some time and I addressed it. First of all, I read the letter to the editor in its entirety to the congregation, because this is one of these things that sounded really intellectual if you don’t know enough to know that this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

I read it in its entirety to the congregation, and I said, if somebody brought these objections to you, how would you respond? And another man, a very dear man, but a very outspoken man, yelled from the back, it doesn’t deserve a response. And I said, oh, but it does.

See, this is the problem. We as Christians have decided that we believe what we believe, and we know what we believe, and we don’t care about evidence, and we don’t care about arguments, and who cares? It doesn’t deserve a response.

Like, we’re somehow above the debate and above the questions. I said it absolutely does deserve a response, and I spent about 10 minutes going over a response to it. If I’d had more time to prepare, it would have been a better response, but I just wanted to give them some things to think about that morning.

And I bring that up to you because I think that can be our attitude sometimes. As I’ve studied apologetics, I know sometimes Christians come with the objection, oh, we don’t need to argue this. You know, people are going to believe what they want to believe.

Or that argument doesn’t deserve a response. Well, we may not feel it deserves a response, but there are people out there with questions and objections. And even if we may not change the mind of the person objecting, there are people out there who hear the arguments against Christianity, and some of them are stronger arguments than others.

But they hear these objections, and if we let them go unchallenged, people are going to think that’s the truth. We need to be prepared to know what we believe and why we believe it. Folks, I’m convinced Christianity is not just true because that’s what my parents taught me.

I’m convinced that Christianity is not true just because that’s what I feel in my heart or that’s what works best for me. I was raised in a Christian home. I came to Christ as Savior very early on in my life.

And then I went to OU, and I was challenged. And I thought I knew everything. I thought I could argue anybody under the table.

And I could in high school, but you’re arguing with other high school kids. Suddenly, I’m thrown in with these professors who are very hostile toward everything I believed. And my arguments just didn’t hold up, and I had to go study.

And I had to get to the heart of it and say, what are the reasons for this belief? Is there any evidence to support what I believe here? And I dug and I dug and I studied and I realized still how much I don’t know even now.

But I came away convinced that there are good reasons for the things we believe. There are good reasons to believe that the Bible has not been changed over time. There are good reasons to believe that the Bible is the Word of God as it claims to be.

There are reasons to believe that God exists. There are reasons to believe that Jesus Christ is his Son. And over the coming weeks, I want to go over some of these objections and give you some reasons why we believe these things.

That it’s not just a feeling we have. It’s not just something we want to be true, so we’re going to act like it is. There are reasons to believe these things.

And you may be sitting there saying, I have no doubt that Jesus is the Son of God. I have no doubt that the Bible is true. Why do we need this?

Because there are people in your world who do have doubts about those things. There may be some in this congregation. There may be some sitting here today who have questions and doubts about these things.

And that’s okay. We go to God’s word and we go to the evidence and we discuss those questions. It’s better to ask the questions than to ignore them.

But even if you don’t have questions or doubts, there are people in your world who do. And we’re called to give an answer to them. Now, I’ve wanted to do a series about this topic for a long time.

But I was hesitant because a pastor friend of mine, when I was young, said, you know, if you go and preach to your church, go teach them a series on why we believe the Bible or why we believe God exists or any of these things. He said, you’ve already lost the battle. If you’re having to tell your people why we believe these things, then you might as well hang it up.

We’ve already lost. With all due respect to him, that attitude has kept us from talking about these things, and that’s why we’ve lost a whole generation of young people who walk away oftentimes in their 20s thinking, that’s really not that important. Christianity is a fairy tale. It’s a grouping of myths.

whatever they deem it to be. Folks, we need to talk about the reasons why we believe these things. And God’s Word, it’s not just from a practical standpoint that we need to do it to shore people up.

God’s Word tells us to defend the faith. God’s Word tells us to defend the truth. If you would, turn with me to 1 Peter 3, and we’re going to see what He tells us about this, about giving an answer.

I’m going to read the whole passage to you to start out with. 1 Peter 3, 13 through 17, then we’re going to come back and talk about it piece by piece. It says, starting in 1 Peter 3, 13, And who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good?

But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed. And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and with fear.

Having a good conscience that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. So Peter, writing to these early believers, says we need to be prepared to give a response and we need to be prepared to defend the faith in a world that is going to be hostile toward it.

I think part of the reason for the attitude that says we don’t have to defend this, we shouldn’t explain why the Bible is trustworthy, we shouldn’t explain why we believe in God, it’s just true, people should just believe it. I think part of the reason for that attitude is that we have lived so long insulated and isolated inside what we have thought to be a Bible Belt culture Where everybody believes these things, it’s just part of the fabric of our communities and who we are. If that was ever the case, if that was ever the case, it is not today.

And we know this. We know this. Look at the numbers of people that we encounter on a daily basis who don’t believe.

Look at the numbers of people we encounter on a daily basis who don’t believe in God. Or they might believe in God, a little shaky on it. They don’t believe Jesus was his son, or maybe they believe that, but they don’t believe the Bible’s true.

some people believe these things might be true but it really doesn’t make a difference to their life some people believe how can we know the truth anyway folks we no longer live in that Bible Belt culture if we ever did where we can assume people know these things we’ve got to be prepared to give an answer be prepared to defend that’s not Jared saying so that’s the Holy Spirit of God speaking through the Apostle Peter saying be prepared to defend your faith and we live in a world that is growing increasingly hostile toward Christianity. Now, they’re not throwing us to the lions like they did in Peter’s day, but people’s attitudes are increasingly hostile toward the things we believe. Society as a whole is growing increasingly hostile toward the things we believe.

If you don’t believe that, understand they’re suing the baker in Colorado again. They can’t leave that poor man alone. And he was writing to people.

He was writing to brothers and sisters in Christ who were in a hostile culture. And he said to them, Who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good? All throughout this passage, he talks about our conduct.

He talks about our conscience. And when he says become followers of what is good, sometimes that’s translated as being zealous for good. Now, we don’t want to be called zealots, because we think of a zealot as somebody who’s so fanatical. They’ll fly a plane into a building in the name of their religion.

Folks, we should be zealots, but we should be zealots for good. We should be fanatical about us doing the right thing. We should be fanatical about being like Jesus and loving like Jesus and speaking the truth like Jesus.

And Peter says, who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good? Now, the implication there is if we’re super zealous about being like Jesus, then people won’t harm us. But that’s not, I should say, the apparent implication is that people won’t harm us.

That’s not necessarily true because we have stories all through the Bible. And you open up Fox’s book of martyrs sometimes, and you’ll see example after example of people who were mistreated and many ultimately killed for following the example of Jesus Christ. You’ve got to look at this in a different way. Look at it the way Paul looked at it.

when he says, for me to live is Christ and for me to die is gain. His approach to it was, hey, if they lock me up in prison, good, I have a captive audience to tell people about Jesus. If they set me free, I can go anywhere and tell people about Jesus.

If they kill me, I get to go be with Jesus. So when you look at life through those lenses, what can anybody really do to harm you? Because if your overriding goal is glorifying Jesus, what can they do to harm you and keep you from reaching that goal?

What can they do to stop you? Because everything they’re able to do is just another opportunity for us to be more like Jesus. So when he says, who is he that will harm you when you become followers of that which is good?

If you’re zealous about being like Jesus, who is it that can stop you from doing that? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed. Now Jesus himself said this, blessed are you when you’re persecuted for righteousness sake.

Blessed are you when men shall revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely. Rejoice and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in heaven for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. He said that’s at the end of what we call the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount.

He said when people mistreat you for the cause of the gospel, You’re blessed. And that word blessed also sometimes is translated kind of like happy. Well, how in the world am I going to be happy when I’m being persecuted for doing the right thing?

Well, happy may not be the right word for it, at least the way we understand happiness. But we can be joyful because there again we’re being like Jesus. Jesus never sinned once in his whole life.

And he was persecuted through his whole earthly ministry. And ultimately was sent to the cross to pay for everybody else’s sins. instead of his own.

So it says, even if you suffer for righteousness’ sake, you’re blessed. And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled. Again, this is so hard to do.

I realize, as I’m telling you this, I’m in the same boat with you. This does not sound fun. And it is a difficult thing to do when we are presented with those circumstances.

And yet God says it is possible. We just have to learn to look at things through the perspective of these apostles who were saying, whatever they do to me, It’s still an opportunity to witness for Christ. Do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled. Verse 15, but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts.

Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Set him apart and set him up here. Put him on that pedestal. It’s all got to be about glorifying God.

If the motivation of our heart is glorifying God all the time, if we can get to that place by the power of the Holy Spirit where we are driven to glorify God, and that is our ultimate goal. Not our happiness, not our momentary comfort, but we’re here to glorify God. If we can get to that place, then what can they really do to us that’s going to stop us from that? Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts.

Desire glorifying God. Pursue glorifying God. Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense.

Always be ready. Be on your toes. Stay on your toes.

Stay ready. Why do I need to know why we believe what we believe? Because you’re told by God to always be ready, to stay ready, to stay prepared.

Always be ready to give a defense. Some of you may say, well, I don’t know all the things I need to know. That’s fine.

God can use what you already know. But you know what? We also should study and learn more.

We’ll never have all the answers. I do not have all the answers. And I hope as we go through this series, I don’t sound like I think I do have all the answers.

I’m telling you what I’ve figured out up until this point. That God can use what you do know. And God can use what you will go out and learn to give a defense.

Doesn’t matter how eloquent it is. Doesn’t matter that you don’t know everything. The Apostle Paul said God has used the foolish things of this world to confound the wise.

And thank God he has. Because sometimes around the wise, I feel pretty foolish with some of my arguments. And yet there are some things, some truths presented in God’s word that you just can’t overcome.

You just can’t overcome with human argument. Be prepared, be always ready to give a defense to everyone. Even that annoying jerk spouting off in the newspaper, yes, even to him.

To the guy next door who’s kind of abrasive about it, yeah, even to him. Now, there is a principle taught in scripture that we’re not supposed to argue with fools, okay? There’s a difference.

There’s a difference between just continuing to spin our wheels and argue with somebody who just wants to argue. But here he’s talking about those who would ask. It says, everyone who asks of you a reason.

Everyone who’s really seeking to understand, they may have serious objections in their mind. But they’re seeking to understand, and they’re looking for an answer. Looking not just for an argument, but looking to answer.

we need to be prepared to answer everyone who asks. To defend everyone, to defend the faith and the truth to everyone who asks. To give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you.

Why are they asking? Because of the hope that’s in us. What are we answering for?

The hope of the gospel. I read something this week that I think summarizes it pretty well, and I can’t remember to quote it verbatim. But the man said, my goal, this was an apologist, somebody who defends the faith.

He said, my goal is not to convert somebody around to my way of thinking. See, a lot of times when we do apologetics, when we do defense of the faith, our goal is to convert somebody over to our way of thinking. It’s to win the argument.

He said, my goal is not to convert somebody to my way of thinking. My goal is to break down the barriers that keep somebody from having a relationship with Jesus Christ. That’s the goal. It’s not to win the argument. It’s to win the person.

I’m never going to be able to argue somebody to where they agree with me 100% on everything. I don’t even agree with me 100% on everything. I go back and look at some of my sermon notes from just a few years ago, and I’m thinking, why did I say that?

My wife and I don’t agree on absolutely everything. Even doctrinally, you and I in this room do not agree on absolutely everything. I’m sure.

I bet we could find some place where we have different understandings of something. Our goal in defending the faith is not to win an argument and convince you that you’re wrong and I’m right and you need to come around to my way of thinking. Instead, it is to tear down the barriers that keep somebody back from a relationship with Jesus Christ. As the Apostle Paul wrote about tearing down strongholds and imaginations and everything that exalts itself against Christ. We build up barriers and walls and things in our minds, these objections.

And it’s our job, with the help of the Holy Spirit, with the power of the Holy Spirit, to go and undermine these walls. Not so that people will agree with us, not so that we’ll win the argument, but that we might win the person. Be prepared to give an answer for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.

I feel like I’m getting ahead of myself and giving you some of the points ahead of time, but that’s all right. With meekness and fear. Some translations say this as gentleness and respect.

I like meekness and fear, but gentleness and respect may be easier to understand. We’re called to give a defense for Christianity with gentleness and with respect. And then he goes back to our way of living.

He says, having a good conscience, having a clear conscience, a conscience that says, you know what, I know that I did what God expected me to do. I know I said what he expected me to say. I know that my life backs it up as much as possible.

having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. Now Peter knew exactly what he was talking about when he said this, because you read back some of the things that the pagans early on said about Christians. Some of the accusations that they threw at Christians because they didn’t understand what we believed and it’s just vile.

When they would see the affectionate nature of Christians toward one another, the fellowship of the body, there must be intimate relationships going on. There must be, I don’t even want to list things. There must be all kinds of perverse practices going on.

They would hear about the Lord’s Supper. They would hear about communion and say, they’re practicing cannibalism, Because they would misunderstand the whole idea of his body and his blood and partaking of the Lord’s Supper. They would say that Christians were responsible for introducing plagues into cities.

Never mind the fact that the Christians were the ones nursing the sick while the pagans were throwing their own family members out into the streets. They would say that Christians were responsible for all sorts of evils that befell Rome. And Peter’s saying they’re going to say all sorts of evil things about you.

They’re going to accuse you of some of the most vile things that they can think of. He said, but you just live in such a way, you just back up the gospel with your life in such a way that those who say you’re participating in these vile things are going to be ashamed because those that hear it are going to know it’s not true. They’re going to know that it’s not true.

You know, sometimes you know somebody really well. I’m not talking about, oh, we thought we knew him. I didn’t realize he would have all those people buried in his backyard.

I’m talking about you really know somebody. I know my wife. If somebody were to come and say, well, she said this.

She was participating. She was down at the bar last night. And say, you are insane.

I know my wife. And that is not true because I look at the pattern of not only who she is now, but I look at the pattern of how she’s lived her life. I know that that’s not true because of her conduct.

And he says for us to do the same thing. for us to live like Jesus Christ, for us to love others like Jesus Christ, for us to speak the truth like Jesus Christ. So when the naysayers come along and say, those Christians, those people down at Trinity Baptist Church, did you hear they’re practicing cannibalism? And they’re dancing around, they’re dancing around with candlelight and goats and doing God knows what.

The people in the community are going to say, you’re crazy because we know who they are and we know how they live. That those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed, for it is better if it is the will of God to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. He said sometimes you are going to suffer.

Sometimes you are going to suffer. Even as Christians, we’re going to suffer. And you know, sometimes we bring the suffering on ourselves.

I said sometimes. I’m not going to go full on Pat Robertson here and say every time there’s a tornado, somebody did something to somebody. Because we see in the Old Testament that when God would send something like that to punish people, he also announced the reason why.

And it wasn’t after the fact. I say that. I can’t think of any instances where it was after the fact.

But sometimes we do bring suffering on ourselves through bad behavior, don’t we? Sometimes we do. Sometimes we do.

Anybody else in here ever do anything stupid? Or is it just me? Yeah.

Okay. And sometimes, sometimes when you do something stupid, there’s a natural consequence that comes from doing something stupid. All right?

I remember twice as a teenager, I was a very careful driver. All right? But I remember two times as a teenager forgetting to look both ways as I was backing up my vehicle and backing into somebody else’s.

You know what? I did something stupid and there was a natural consequence that now I have to pay out some money to fix somebody’s vehicle. And in both cases I knew the people and that made it even more embarrassing.

We do stupid things and we bring suffering on ourselves. But other times we can suffer even if we’re doing the right things. And we have no better example of that than Jesus himself.

No better example than Jesus himself of somebody suffering, even doing the right things. And yet on top of that, we have so many other examples of martyrs. Even down to today, people suffering when all they’re doing is trying to represent Jesus Christ. And God says here, it’s better if it’s the will of God for us to suffer doing good than for evil.

And we look at that and think, how on earth is it better for me to suffer when I didn’t even do anything wrong? Well, because you’ve got the suffering either way. But in one case, there’s the benefit of I’m glorifying God in the midst of it.

When we’re suffering for doing evil, it’s just I’ve got the suffering and I’m an idiot. It’s better to suffer for the cause of Christ than just to suffer because we made bad decisions and brought it on ourselves. So we take all of that together.

And he’s talking about our witness. in a hostile world. And he tells us that we need to witness to this hostile world and in this hostile world through our behavior and through our words.

And a lot of times we want to take either of those and just do one of them. Because there are some people who will tell you all the things they believe, but they sure don’t live it. And there are others who fall in line with, I’ve heard it attributed to so many people.

I think St. Francis of Assisi, not Assisi, Assisi is the one I most commonly hear it from, preach the gospel to all the world and if necessary use words. No.

I mean, that sounds great and spiritual, but no, that’s like saying feed the hungry and if necessary use food. How do we preach the gospel without words? The expectation is, oh, just live a good life and people will see it and come to Christ and you don’t have to say anything.

That’s baloney The Bible says faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the word of God. Folks, we’ve got to do both. We’ve got to preach the gospel with our lips.

Some of you are saying, I can’t preach. It just means tell people about Jesus. Preach the gospel with our lips, with our words, but we also need to have the life to back it up, because it makes it a lot harder to question.

Why would somebody want to go to the difficulty of questioning the intellectual arguments for Christianity? Why would they want to go to all that work when they can just look and say, that can’t possibly be true, look at how they live. That’s so much easier.

That’s the lazy way out. And that’s the way the world’s going to take if we give them the opportunity. And I’m not knocking them for that.

I do the same thing. What you say can’t possibly be right, look at how you act. I do the same thing.

But why give them the opportunity to discount Jesus just because of something as silly as me refusing to do what I’m supposed to do? So we see in this passage that Christianity has, I’m going to give you the points here. Here are my points, just real quick.

Christianity has always faced serious challenges. We come up with the idea that it’s something new, people are more hostile than they’ve ever been. No, they’re not throwing us to the lions yet.

People are not more hostile toward Christianity than they’ve ever been. Christianity has always faced serious challenges, whether it’s cultural challenges, whether it’s intellectual challenges, whether it’s government persecution. We’ve always faced serious challenges, but we are called on to answer those challenges.

We don’t get to just retreat and say, well, we believe what we believe, and if they don’t agree, rain on them. As my grandfather used to say when he was done with somebody, rain on you. We don’t get to just write them off and say that.

We are called on to give an answer for what we believe. What do we believe, and why do we believe it? What is the reason for the hope that we have?

What is the reason for the hope that we have in the gospel of Jesus Christ? So we’re called on to answer those challenges, and how do we do it? Here are five things that I see outlined in this passage about how we do this.

First of all, we seek to glorify God, not ourselves. He says, sanctify the Lord in your hearts. Our motivation in defending the faith has to be to glorify God, not to glorify ourselves.

We have to be careful with that, because when we start thinking, I’m going to defend Christianity, I’m going to make the arguments, we start to think about how smart we are and how important we are, that we know all these things. Now, it’s not about showing how smart we are. It’s about glorifying God.

Second of all, we explain our reasons for our faith and what we believe, not shame people for not sharing them. So in other words, we need to be, I don’t want to use the word safe space, okay, bec