Latest / Harvest After Sunday / Believing Jesus: Digging Deeper
Transcript
- Harvest Media: Welcome to the Harvest After Sunday podcast. I'm Natalie and I'm your host and I'm here with Stefan Wilson, pastor of preaching and teaching. And today we are digging deeper into Sunday's sermon on Matthew 12, 38 through 45, Believing Jesus. And as we walked through the passage, you talked in depth about what it looks like to respond in belief. And our response to the truth is crucial. But I wanna save our response to the truth for later in our conversation and start with what precedes it, which is actually believing Jesus being confronted with the belief part of it. And ⁓ many people have yet to believe they're still seeking or questioning, ⁓ considering. And you said on Sunday, there is more than enough evidence to believe in Jesus. And often the struggle is really with the implications of the evidence, not the lack of evidence. So it's easier maybe to claim there isn't evidence because we don't want to deal with what that means for our response But I think we should talk a little bit and I know people Build their life of career and research on teaching and explaining this and we only have a few minutes But if you could give us some of maybe the strongest arguments and evidences why we can believe Jesus totally because I just kind of like Presupposed it right in the sermon. I said I said there's more than enough. I kind of explain that in a little bit more detail, but I really didn't go into detail of the evidence because we just didn't have time. And that also, ⁓ I don't think was necessarily the direction that we needed to go based on the passage, but it's worth talking about. So when we think about evidence for the truth of Christianity, I think it's actually helpful to pull back a little bit because the claim that exists in the world is there isn't evidence that God exists because you can't see him. We can't hear him. People will say things like, well, God can just show up in the sky and all believe. But there's actually a behind that is a worldview assumption that. Something is true if I can perceive it with my five senses and that is the only way that it is true. That's that's kind of the the scientific naturalist worldview is truth comes from science. It comes from nowhere else. Everything else is opinion and science is definitely a way of discovering things that are true in the world. But it isn't able to tell us everything that is real and everything that exists because if science is required to prove something true, that statement by itself could not be proven true because you can't scientifically prove it. So what we have to do is we have to say, well, what would we say can be convincing reason that God exists and then from there be able to say, okay, so then who is God? And there are a lot. like a lot, we would have a ⁓ six hour podcast episode if I went through all of I'll just give kind of the big ones. The first one is called the cosmological argument. So the cosmological argument is that we live in a universe that is cause and effect. That for everything that happens, there is a preceding cause. And that is true throughout all of history. We are living right now in this moment in this isn't the effect of preceding causes that led to us being here. And we can understand that at even the most basic level. Well, if you live in a cause and effect universe, you have to go back to a first cause that is itself uncaused. So if I live in a series of of effects of preceding causes there had to be something that started all of it and that thing itself has to be Uncaused it has to be already existing and has set everything in motion. Well, that would mean that it has to be eternal It has no beginning because if it did have a beginning then we would have to say and where did it come from? It's a really famous argument from Richard Dawkins who's an atheist ⁓ his book, The God Delusion, where he argues if God created the heavens and the earth, then what created God? And John Lennox has such a great response to that because he just says, well, truthfully, we don't believe in a created God. A created God is by definition a false God that we call idols. Instead, God is uncaused. He didn't have a beginning, so nothing created him. So to live in a cause effect universe, there has to be a first cause that is itself uncaused. It has to be eternal. Then we look at the universe itself, and this is called the fine-tuning argument, or the teleological argument, if you like those kinds of words. I prefer fine-tuning because it says what it actually is. When we look at the universe, the... the electromagnetic force, the force of gravity and the strong and weak nuclear forces are in such incredibly perfect proportion to one another that life is able to exist in the universe, specifically on earth. Were those forces to be adjusted by even the the smallest increment the universe itself couldn't exist. Now, That by itself is statistically implausible, ⁓ but you now add to it a solar system like ours that has giant planets with a huge gravitational field that pull asteroids that would otherwise destroy the earth, pulls them away from the earth, so we're safe. the earth is at just the right distance from a star like the sun, not just any star, but a star like the sun that can provide the right heat, the right light. Then that planet earth has just the right tilt to its axis so that we have the seasons that are necessary for life to exist on earth, our atmosphere, like we just start running down the list. And I heard it. I read it in a book about the fine tuning of the universe that for all those factors to be in place by chance, it would be the same chance as flipping a coin and having it land on heads 10 quintillion times in a row. Which is impossible, right? So we look at that and say, okay, so ⁓ there must be a first cause that is itself uncaused. That cause of the universe made the universe in such a way that there's no plausible way that it could have happened without design. And then we go to our understanding of the universe. So this is called the transcendental argument, our ability to even comprehend the universe, that reason and logic are trustworthy. the more that we discover in mathematics, the more that we find that mathematical truths are consistent, no matter where you are or when you are. Two plus two has always equaled four, and it will always equal four, all the way down to the most complicated of equations. And as we discover them, we are actually learning about the universe more. And the the groundwork for a lot of that mathematical discovery was laid by people like Sir Isaac Newton who who began to seek to understand the universe more precisely because they believed it was designed and so it could be understood. If the universe wasn't designed we would actually not be able to trust in reason And we would have every reason to doubt the conclusions of our brains because the our brains would be wired for survival rather than truth Add to that the moral argument which the moral argument is The fact that we can say that things are evil presupposes that there is such a thing as good that we're able to then look at evil and say that is not good. And we all share a pretty consistent view of what right and wrong is. which would mean that there is a moral law giver outside of us who has hardwired us with an understanding of right and wrong and that we can judge things as evil because of the moral law giver's standard that he imposed upon creation. So, I mean, that's just four arguments that If we can look at those and say, okay, that is good reason to believe in God. Well then who is God? Well first of all, if there is such a God, he will not be confined to our universe. He has to be outside of our universe, which means we could only know him if he told us what he was like. I can't discover God on my own apart from him telling me what he's like. Because he's outside of the universe, which means I can't use the tools of the universe to discover who he is. I can only use them to find that he must exist. And so what are all the different options of religions in the world? Again, we could go through all of them, but we don't have time. Well, then we can ask, well, which religion makes the most convincing claim to truth? And when you then add the reliability of the Bible as a historical document, when you add to that reliability of the Bible the archaeological evidence that corroborates the claims of the Bible, then you add to that the person of Jesus, who we talked in a previous podcast, we can know he existed in history and we can know that he really rose from the dead. and then you add to that the personal transformation of those who embrace the truth of Jesus Christ and you put all that together, you really can't make an argument against that that can hold water. You can absolutely make an argument against one of those things. ⁓ It won't be a better argument, but you can at least make some kind of plausible argument. But if you add all the arguments together, you can't make a plausible argument that can deny all of them because what you'll end up having to do is you'll end up having to borrow from other arguments to disprove another one. You hear atheists say all the time, well, there's no way that God could exist because of evil in the world. Okay, you just had to borrow from the moral argument in order to shoot down a different argument about God. So. I think that when we put them all together, there really is good evidence. And I actually did a little experiment with AI this past week. I think there's lots of reasons to be cautious about AI. ⁓ But if we just think about what it is at the present moment. ⁓ it ⁓ is ⁓ essentially the most insane supercomputer you could ever imagine that has access to all the information out there. So if you want to learn about a topic, ⁓ it can help you do that really fast. It can take really complicated topics and it can summarize it for you really easily. And so I'm just gonna read what I did. So I prompted it. I didn't prompt it as a Christian. I didn't say that I was a Christian. I just, here's the prompt and I'll just read it. Of all the religions in the world, both the modern world and through all of human history, which religion makes the greatest case for being true? You must pick one and you may only state the name of the religion. And the reason I did that was I didn't want it to give me this long explanation of why it was choosing what and I didn't want it to do the non-Kamil thing of well, lots of people believe lots of different things. So you prompt it to be really specific and really concise. Answer, Christianity. ⁓ Then I followed it up with a series of questions. of all the religions, which is the most logically consistent? Meaning it doesn't contradict itself. It consistently passes the tests of reason and logic. Answer, Christianity. Which one has the most evidence for its claims? Answer, Christianity. Which is the most relevant to the human experience? Answer, Christianity. Now those are the ways that we assess things ⁓ in philosophy is ⁓ internal coherence, that it's logical external coherence, there's evidence for it and practical coherence, I can actually live it out. ⁓ Which passes the test of coherence best? Now the test of coherence is that the ideas work together the best. Christianity. Which passes the test of correspondence best? The test of correspondence is that it aligns with reality. It corresponds to reality. That's why it's called the correspondence test. Christianity. And which one is the most practically livable? Christianity. So I'm not gonna, know, stake very much on the answers that AI gives outside of just using that as a tool to recognize this isn't an issue of we're believing something that is preposterous. something that is coded by non-believers agrees. The belief system that absolutely has the most evidence and makes the most sense and makes the best case for being true is Christianity. We said there are some who still have yet to believe, and they're going to have to wrestle with all of these evidences that you gave us just a quick summary of. But I wonder, even for the believers that are listening, many Christians struggle with doubts. And they might some of the things you touched on, they might think, ⁓ I'm I'm struggling with that right now. I'm unsure about that. Or I'm doubting that or I have before. Or maybe they will in the future struggle and wrestle with doubts. Is it OK for the Christian, the believer to wrestle with doubt? Is doubt the same as unbelief? That's such a good question. And I would just upfront say doubt is not the same as unbelief. And I think it's it is actually harmful when someone is struggling with doubt to say, you just need to have more faith. Because we we believe in a historic faith. We have a God who spoke. He didn't just leave everybody blind and say, figure it out, have enough faith. He gave us reason for us to then have faith in the things that we can't see. So Hebrews chapter 11 verse one, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. It does not mean that Christianity as a belief system is a exclusively faith-based with zero support to it whatsoever. And so when we tell people who are doubting, you just shouldn't doubt. I actually think that's more exposing that we don't know how to answer those doubts. Sure. I lived in the East Valley for a while and there was a very large Mormon population there. ⁓ And when they struggle with doubts, the common phrase that's used is you should doubt your doubts. It is not a common practice to help to understand the truth that will put the doubt to rest. It is a common practice to shift from the doubt and say, well, you should doubt that doubt and just believe. and, and. A lot of times the young missionaries would come to my house and I would gladly talk with them and I would always send them back with questions for their leaders and ⁓ the response that is consistently given is you just shouldn't go back to that house. Rather than, okay, there's actually a really good answer for that. Okay, that is a problem. If we are confronted with things that rattle us and rather than saying, hey, there's actually a really good answer for that. And I want to build up your faith by providing that answer. We just say, you just shouldn't do that. That doesn't help. And so I think that first of all, we need to acknowledge people do doubt. There we live in a world that is deceptive and is full of lies. But man, those lies are believable sometimes. And it's very easy to get rattled in your faith. And so it isn't doubt. Doubt is not unbelief. I think that doubt is an opportunity to deepen your discipleship. It is a way where I can say, man, I am struggling with this question. So I want to go find the answer. And it's not just I'm going to go find a different answer. It's I need to go find the best answer. And the best answer will always be found in the truth of scripture and the truth of Christianity. And so if you are doubting, you can be confident that if you will share your doubts and if you share it with somebody who can't give you a helpful answer, ask them to point you in the direction of somebody who can. and it will build up your faith. I mean, I was raised in the church, but then I went off to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and I loved it. I met my best friends who I'm still really close with there. That's where I was called to preach. That's where I met my wife. Like I loved my time up there, but it really shook my faith because it's a very progressive environment. very challenging to Christianity. ⁓ Just anecdotally, I initially wanted to be a religious studies minor. My major is criminal justice and I wanted to be a religious studies minor. And the Christianity and Old Testament, New Testament classes were taught by non-believers. And the whole point of the New Testament class was to show you why the New Testament wasn't trustworthy. And I remember just thinking, well, if I'm not getting the truth in here, where else in this program am I not getting the truth? And I changed my mind about a week later. But it can really rattle your faith. And so I would encourage the person who's doubting, seek out the truth. The thing that is the problem is denial It's where because I have doubt I say well then this must be must not be true And so I deconstruct my Christianity. I deny it outright I think that that is very unfortunate and very sad because it's not necessary. We can have our faith built up and live even more confidently because the answers, the best answers are to be found in Christianity. So there's no need for the believer to be laden with guilt if they experienced out but to move towards the truth and humility truly seeking answers that they might know in in community. It sounds like with trusted people to help provide those answers. Totally you think about think about the disciples. ⁓ They they experienced quite a bit of doubt in those early days. And Jesus was so compassionate toward them. We call Thomas doubting Thomas because they said he's risen and he says unless I touch the marks in his hands and touch his side, I will not believe. ⁓ And I think it's kind of unfortunate that we call him Thomas the doubter. Like that's what he's been named throughout all of church history. I just think that was a very human moment. And so when Jesus comes to Thomas, what does he do? He doesn't say, you should have believed. He says, touch me. Like here are my hands. Here is my side. And Thomas doesn't touch him. Thomas falls at his feet and says my lord and my god. So what that helps us to see is perhaps some of the doubts that I carry. They don't necessarily in my own mind need to be answered the way I think they need to be answered in my doubt. But when I am in community with other believers and when I am seeing the truth, then I'm able to see like, ⁓ no, this really, like this is convincing. And I really can continue to submit my life to this. Is there a difference, I wonder, between... Like we said, there's more than enough evidence to believe. That does not equal complete understanding. And when we have grabbed on to the idea that, and make it a demand really, that I could have complete understanding, I mean, we're not going to. be able to worship God as God. If we've made ourselves equal with him, if we have complete understanding, you said in the beginning, of course he's outside of our universe. That makes him God. And we've said, I know in a podcast or two before, his ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts are. So there will not be complete understanding. But as we move towards the truth and humility, there is more than enough evidence for us to believe. And to that person who might say, I need to understand him completely for me to believe in him. I would just gently push back and say, then you're looking for a God of your own making. I think you said it well. By wanting to understand him, we're elevating ourselves up to his level, or we're bringing him down to ours. Either one, not reality. And so we should actually look for a God who does go outside of our knowledge because then he really just might be God. In fact, I've said this ⁓ not on here but to many different groups, especially when I was teaching apologetics. ⁓ I said the reason I'm a Christian is because of the doctrine of the Trinity. That is, that is the thing that convinces me of the truthfulness of Christianity. ⁓ And C.S. Lewis said something very similar in mere Christianity that it, something like the Trinity had to be revealed about God. Man could not make it up. You wouldn't make it up. You would make God sound a lot more like you and me to make him more easily believable. but the fact that God exists as Trinity and that the reality of God as Trinity actually makes so much sense out of the world and out of our lives in the world, that for me was the final piece of saying, okay, this really is God because, precisely because he is not like me. That's really powerful. think your response to something that is just a bit outside of your complete understanding being the thing that ultimately makes you believe and trust God is such a testament to the reality of our response to the truth. And that's what I want to spend the last bit of our time talking about. you talked on Sunday, you presented so many great application questions as we talked about, what does it look like to respond in belief? So for the person who is believing, our lives will show our response and that ⁓ you gave three things in the sermon. The first submitting to the truth. We've mentioned the word humility already several times. This takes humility. Submitting takes humility. And you, the reflective questions that you provided, I thought were powerful and challenging, great tools to examine our lives. You said, where in my life am I resisting the truth? or not submitting to the truth? What a great question. ⁓ It made me think how... Do I even know what the truth is? Am I going to the truth? Am I studying God's word regularly? How else will I know the truth? And then I also was thinking of the truth of God's word that tells us our own hearts are deceptive and wicked. So even with a great reflection question from you or from anyone when we are examining our own lives, that's a limited effort because we can deceive ourselves. Our own heart can deceive us. And so I thought, ⁓ We might need outside perspective as we need to be in community and in relationship Maybe asking a trusted person in our life. Where do you see in my life that I'm not? Submitting to the truth. I might know it but I'm not submitting to it and ⁓ We might need to be doing that in relationship or getting counsel. Yeah Yeah, the the believer who is living, you know, kind of the Lone Ranger version of Christianity. ⁓ Boy, he's right all the time. Right. Absolutely. Because there's nothing to confront where he's an error. But if we're honest about our human condition, we error. constantly. And God's Word exposes those errors and helps us to see what in our life is out of alignment with His Word. But God did not design it. us to have that be the only means by which we are confronted with the truth. By his design, he made us as relational beings from the very beginning. They were to relate to one another and in their relating to one another, they would then relate rightly to God as well and it's the same for us. That's why there's like a hundred and sixty different one another commandments in the New Testament because our Christian walk is inseparable from our Christian community together were made to to build one another up in the truth to confront one another when we are in sin to bear one another's burdens ⁓ while also being careful to not fall into the same sin right in in all that is this interaction all around the truth and if I am neglecting that then one, I have too high a view of my own ability to rightly divide the word of truth. And the second issue for me, that's the way that I'm gonna go about it, is that when I am out of step, I will persist in folly. Proverbs makes very clear that the wise person loves correction. and it's the fool who's right in his own eyes. Well, where am I gonna get correction? I'm gonna get it from believers around me and I'm going to receive it. I'm going to take their rebuke as love and I'm going to say, though I don't see that, you see it, I appreciate you pointing it out and I repent. Not easy. Not comfortable. I often wonder, God, like, what is your purpose in making so much of our growth and sanctification and maturity tied up in relationship? But it is so clear in scripture that is a part of his plan for us. But ⁓ man, we all find lots of reasons to avoid that because it can be really challenging. It feels like friction. It feels embarrassing. It makes us feel angry. It makes us dig our heels in all kinds of human responses. But we can trust God and that his plan for our sanctification and growth is good. And somehow that involves doing it in relationship. You also talked about responding in repentance. And I think I think this could be similar to the believer that is struggling with guilt about doubt is I think as believers when we are like, I have to repent again. Yeah. Repent again that we could become discouraged. Yeah. But this is the sign of maturity of a believer that ongoing regular repentance is a part of our spiritual growth and maturity, isn't it? Yeah. I don't remember who said it. It's probably Charles Spurgeon. And it seems like when in doubt, attribute it to Charles Spurgeon. somebody. I remember reading ⁓ that he said that Christian maturity does not mean that you sin less. It means that you become more aware of just how sinful you are. ⁓ And that ⁓ in a strange way was very encouraging to my soul. because I do think that as you go through the Christian life, you do reach points of being discouraged where you just, you think, I should be past this. I can't believe we're here again. ⁓ And I think that now if we link it to our conversation just a moment ago about the community of believers, we feel that way about one another. Like, why can't you just get past this? You think about a married couple having the same troubles 20 years later, or a young man still struggling with the same sins, and you just start to think, Man, is that evidence that I am actually not in the faith? And as I was preparing the sermon last week, I just had a time where I was reflecting and that idea just came to mind of the person who feels like they repent too much. ⁓ And it really is, ⁓ it should really be. a bolstering of my faith, if I can say that, when I sense this increasing nature of my repentance. ⁓ That what is actually happening is I'm seeing it more. And maybe to put it a different way, ⁓ you're seeing more clearly than you ever have when you're repenting more than you ever have. And so it's just good, a good reminder for us to, to repent continually because there is much there and I am prone to wander. I am prone to turn back. I am prone to hear the lies of the world and believe them, which means that daily I am adding up. things that I now look back on and say, man, I need to turn from all that. I need to turn again and fix my eyes on Jesus because I am so prone to turn my eyes away. And you're talking we can kind of even parse out here confession and repentance I think because if you're continually just convicted of the same sin and Confessing agreeing with God about your sin, right? Maybe there's not a lot of maturity happening but repentance as you just said I'm turning I'm turning that requires action. So the more we're seeing true repentance and actual Action being taken after I'm convicted and confess my sin and agree with God about my sin of taking action and that is of course the mark of a maturing believer. Yes. And then lastly, talked about living with Christ, where our response in belief is when we welcome him into our life. And I found the illustration in the text about the demon cast out and then returning to the house to find nothing had taken residence in its place. I found that so powerful. And again, a really challenging way to think about even repentance. And you can see how these are building on one another. Am I struggling with repentance? because I'm not submitting to God and I need the help of community to do that. Okay, now I'm repenting, but am I actually turning and am I welcoming Christ in to my life, communing with him so that there's less of an opportunity to return to the same sins over and over so easily? Yeah, I was having a conversation with somebody ⁓ after the service where we were talking about that piece of the text with the... illustration Jesus gives about the demon coming back to the house and it's empty and And we're talking about the danger of moral reform without repentance and without regeneration. So there's kind of two pieces. It's moral reform without regeneration. I'm a non-believer and I'm just trying to fix up my life. Or moral reform without repentance. I am a believer, but I am foolishly thinking that I can fix this thing without making it a repentance issue. both of them, what I'm doing is I'm seeing something legitimately wrong in my life and I'm just trying to to say, okay, I'm gonna stop doing this. Okay. first of all, for how long, and second of all, let's say you are able to just stop doing this. What's gonna take its place? Something just like it. If something else doesn't take up residence in your heart. I can't tell you how many people I have interacted with in church and in Christian life where they will have some huge addiction issue in their life, whether it be drugs or alcohol and or a myriad of other things and they will they will let's say let's say alcohol they'll stop drinking. Okay, okay that's that's great and then they just replace it with a different addiction. ⁓ And That is the living out of I didn't let something, I didn't let someone else take up residence in my life. It wasn't that I just needed to stop this thing because I needed to clean up my life. It's that this thing was actually revealing an idolatry within my heart and a desire towards something that is not Jesus. And the only way for me to actually be free from that thing is for me to replace it with the satisfaction, fulfillment and life that only comes from Christ. But I can't do that alone. I need to do that in community. That's why accountability in Christian life is so important. There are lots of secular versions of accountability. If you are struggling with alcohol and you don't want to drink anymore, you can go to all kinds of recovery groups that are maybe religion adjacent, but are secular psychology applied, and you can get accountability. And so you can feel like you beat that thing, and maybe it's effective, but. There is a different level of accountability in the Christian life where we are all, because we're communing with Christ, now we're out of love, holding one another accountable, checking in with one another, bearing one another's burdens, coming alongside one another. That's all a part of walking in faith with Jesus. And you can see in things like recovery groups or different things, they borrow. Like you talked about in the beginning, they borrow from other methodologies, religions. So you can see, OK, stop doing this and serve other people and help people. Or they're borrowing pieces, but ⁓ there's no complete coherence to the approach. Even like, well, what's to say it was wrong in the first place? Right. What was ruining my life? In what way? Well, that's only if you think there is a right way to live. do get that idea from? So the really only coherent life-changing thing is Jesus and scripture. ⁓ For those that want to dig even deeper into evidences for God, are there further resources where you would point people? Yeah, there's so there's lots. Yeah, but I'll narrow it down to probably the two most accessible ones and they're two sides of the same coin. So first the positive side, Tim Keller wrote a book called The Reason for God. was a in New York City. in Manhattan and he really made it his approach to do what's called cultural apologetics. So to show that the issues in culture are ultimately an underlying worldview issue that when you can see the problem for what it is and that's sin and you can see the solution for what it is and that's Christ, you can live a life that you're meant to live and that is to glorify God. And so he would engage the culture he would engage the people on the level of the culture to show, I mean very very similar to Francis Schaeffer ⁓ you know 80 years ago, and he would engage them that way and was very effective at helping people to see the truthfulness and reasonableness for belief in Jesus Christ. And so he wrote a book called The Reason for God which is a means of doing that. The other one, the negative side of the coin is It's called The Problem of God by Mark Clark. ⁓ And what he does is he tackles the objections. So where Tim Keller says, let me show you the reasons, Clark says, let me show you why the objections are insufficient and that the truth of Christianity is in fact ⁓ true. He kind of takes it from the approach of, you've got the, they called them back in the early 2000s, they called them the four horsemen of atheism. ⁓ Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins. They were called the new atheists because they were bringing new arguments that nobody had ever heard. Fun fact, they were thousands of years old and had been shown to be wrong many times over, but ⁓ Clark takes those head on. And so that, would say that's the book for the doubter. The person who's like, man, I watched a YouTube video and it really shook my faith, read Clark's book, The Problem of God. If you're the person saying, I'm just struggling to see confidence in the claims of Christianity, read Keller. And then I'll just add those who are more struggling with as a believer my response and like what is my life actually showing about my response in belief go to the website or the app and see all of the opportunities we have to join a small group join a men's discipleship group There's one-on-one discipleship for women and all of those links are available there. Go talk to someone ⁓ Do it what with one another in community in our church? Yeah. Well, thanks for joining us for the Harvest After Sunday podcast, where we help you grow into the image of Christ by applying the truths of His Word for His mission. We'll see you Sunday.